In the lecture on "Gallantry," Lola had a warm encomium for King Ludwig.
"His Majesty," she informed her audience, "is one of the most refined and high-toned gentlemen of the old school of manners. He is also one of the most learned men of genius in all Europe. To him art is more indebted than to any other monarch who has ever lived. King Ludwig is the author of several volumes of poems, which are evidence of his natural genius and elaborately cultivated taste.... He worships beauty like one of the old troubadours; and his gallantry is caused by his love of art. He was the greatest and best King Bavaria ever had."
In another passage she had a smack at the Catholic Church: "An evil hour brought into Ludwig's counsels the most despotic and illiberal of the Jesuits. Through the influence of his ministers the natural liberality of the King was perpetually thwarted; and the Government degenerated into a petty tyranny, where priestly influence was sucking out the very life-blood of the people."
More than something of a doctrinaire, her observations on "Romanism" (which she dubbed "an abyss of superstition and moral pollution") might have fallen from the lips of a hot-gospeller of to-day. "Who," she asked her hearers, "shall compute the stupefying and brutalizing effects of such religion? Who will dare tell me that this terrible Church does not lie upon the bosom of the present time like a vast, unwieldy, and offensive corpse? America does not yet recognise how much she owes to the Protestant principle. It is that principle which has given the world the four greatest facts of modern times--steamboats, railroads, telegraphs, and the American Republic."
This somewhat novel definition of "the four greatest facts of modern times" was received with rapture by its hearers.
Despite certain jeers from some of the reviewers, the lectures continued to attract the public. The novelty of Lola Montez at the rostrum drew large audiences everywhere; and she had no difficulty in arranging a long tour. Feeling, when it came to an end, that a similar measure of success might be secured on the other side of the Atlantic, she resolved to visit England.
Just before leaving America for this purpose, she wrote to a one-time Munich acquaintance, who was then editing a New York magazine:
YORKVILLE, August 20, 1858.
MY DEAR MR. LELAND,
I wish to thank you for the very kind notice you gave in your interesting magazine of my first book, and I have requested Messrs. Dick and Fitzgerald, my publishers, to send to your private address a copy of my Arts of Beauty. I hope, as a critique, it will be found "not wanting" (I do not mean not wanted).