The Magnificent Montez | Page 2

to me as a "leading authority on anything to do with the stage"; and the secretary of a theatrical club, anxious to be of help, wrote: "Sorry, but none of our members have any personal reminiscences of the lady." As she had then been in her grave for more than seventy years, it did not occur to me that even the senior jeune premier among them would have retained any very vivid recollections of her. Still, many of them were quite old enough to have heard something of her from their predecessors.
But valuable assistance in eliciting the real facts connected with the career of this remarkable woman, and disentangling them from the network of lies and fables in which they have long been enmeshed, has come from other sources. Among those to whom a special debt must be acknowledged are Edmund d'Auvergne (author of a carefully documented study), Lola Montez (an Adventuress of the 'Forties); Gertrude Aretz (author of The Elegant Woman); Bernard Falk (author of The Naked Lady); Arthur Hornblow (author of A History of the Theatre in America); Harry Price (Hon. Sec. University of London Council for Psychical Investigation); Philip Richardson (editor of The Dancing Times); and Constance Rourke (author of Troupers of the Gold Coast); and further information has been forthcoming from Mrs. Charles Baker (Ruislip), and John Wade (Acton).
Much help in supplying me with important letters and documents and hitherto unpublished particulars relating to the trail blazed by Lola Montez in America has been furnished by the following: Miss Mabel R. Gillis (State Librarian, Californian State Library, Sacramento); Mrs. Lillian Hall (Curator, Harvard Theatre Collection); Miss Ida M. Mellen (New York); Mrs. Helen Putnam van Sicklen (Library of the Society of Californian Pioneers); Mrs. Annette Tyree (New York); Mr. John Stapleton Cowley-Brown (New York); Mr. Lewis Chase (Hendersonville); Professor Kenneth L. Daughrity (Delta State Teachers' College, Cleveland); Mr. Frank Fenton (Stanford University, California); Mr. Harold E. Gillingham (Librarian, Historical Society of Pennsylvania); Mr. W. Sprague Holden (Associate-Editor, Argonaut Publishing Company, San Francisco); and Mr. Milton Lord (Director, Public Library, Boston).
In addition to these experts, I am also indebted to Monsieur Pierre Tugal (Conservateur, Archives de la Danse, Paris); and to the directors and staffs of the Bibliothèque d'Arsenal, Paris, and of the Theatrical Museum, Munich, who have generously placed their records at my disposal.
Unlike his American and Continental colleagues, a public librarian in England said (on a postcard) that he was "too busy to answer questions."
H. W.
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CONTENTS
FOREWORD
CHAPTER
I.
PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE
II. "MARRIED IN HASTE"
III. THE CONSISTORY COURT
IV. FLARE OF THE FOOTLIGHTS
V. A PASSIONATE PILGRIMAGE
VI. AN "AFFAIR OF HONOUR"
VII. "HOOKING A PRINCE"
VIII. LUDWIG THE LOVER
IX. "MA?TRESSE DU ROI"
X. BURSTING OF THE STORM
XI. A FALLEN STAR
XII. A "LEFT-HANDED" MARRIAGE
XIII. ODYSSEY
XIV. THE "GOLDEN WEST"
XV. "DOWN UNDER"
XVI. FAREWELL TO THE FOOTLIGHTS
XVII. THE CURTAIN FALLS
APPENDIX I. "ARTS OF BEAUTY"
APPENDIX II. "LOLA MONTEZ' LECTURES"
INDEX
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LOLA MONTEZ, COUNTESS OF LANDSFELD Frontispiece
"JOHN COMPANY" TROOPS ON THE MARCH IN INDIA
HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE, HAYMARKET, WHERE LOLA MONTEZ MADE HER DéBUT
BENJAMIN LUMLEY, LESSEE OF HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE
LOLA MONTEZ, "SPANISH DANCER." DéBUT AT HER MAJESTY'S THEATRE
VISCOUNT RANELAGH, WHO ORGANISED A CABAL AGAINST LOLA MONTEZ
ABBé LISZT, MUSICIAN AND LOVER
FANNY ELSSLER, PREDECESSOR OF LOLA MONTEZ IN PARIS
PORTE ST. MARTIN THEATRE, PARIS, WHERE LOLA WAS A "FLOP"
SUPPER-PARTY AT LES FRèRES PROVEN?AUX. FIRST ACT IN A TRAGEDY
RESIDENZ PALACE, MUNICH, IN 1848. RESIDENCE OF LUDWIG I.
"COMMAND" PORTRAIT. IN THE "GALLERY OF BEAUTIES," MUNICH
KING OF BAVARIA. "LUDWIG THE LOVER"
LOLA MONTEZ IN CARICATURE. "LOLA ON THE ALLEMANNEN HOUND"
BERRYMEAD PRIORY, ACTON, WHERE LOLA MONTEZ LIVED WITH CORNET HEALD
LOLA MONTEZ IN LONDON. AGED THIRTY
A "BELLE OF THE BOULEVARDS." LOLA MONTEZ IN PARIS
THE "SPIDER DANCE." CAUSE OF MUCH CRITICISM
LOLA MONTEZ IN "LOLA IN BAVARIA." A "PLAY WITH A PURPOSE"
LOLA AS A LECTURER. FROM STAGE TO PLATFORM
LOLA MONTEZ IN MIDDLE LIFE. A CHARACTERISTIC POSE
"LECTURES AND LIFE." FROM STAGE TO PLATFORM
COUNTESS OF LANDSFELD. A FAVOURITE PORTRAIT
GRAVE OF LOLA MONTEZ, IN GREEN-WOOD CEMETERY, NEW YORK
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THE MAGNIFICENT MONTEZ
CHAPTER I
PRELUDE TO ADVENTURE
I
In a tearful column, headed "Necrology of the Year," a mid-Victorian obituarist wrote thus of a woman figuring therein:
This was one who, notwithstanding her evil ways, had a share in some public transactions too remarkable to allow her name to be omitted from the list of celebrated persons deceased in the year 1861.
Born of an English or Irish family of respectable rank, at a very early age the unhappy girl was found to be possessed of the fatal gift of beauty. She appeared for a short time on the stage as a dancer (for which degradation her sorrowing relatives put on mourning, and issued undertakers' cards to signify that she was now dead to them) and then blazed forth as the most notorious Paphian in Europe.
Were this all, these columns would not have included her name. But she exhibited some very