The Magnificent Montez

The Magnificent Montez, by
Horace Wyndham

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Title: The Magnificent Montez From Courtesan to Convert
Author: Horace Wyndham
Release Date: May 12, 2007 [EBook #21421]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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[Illustration: Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld
(From a lithograph by Prosper Guillaume Dartiguenave)]

THE
MAGNIFICENT
MONTEZ
From Courtesan to Convert

By
HORACE WYNDHAM

"When you met Lola Montez, her reputation made you automatically
think of bedrooms."
--ALDOUS HUXLEY.

HILLMAN-CURL, INC.
Publishers
NEW YORK
* * * * *

FOREWORD
Sweep a drag-net across the pages of contemporary drama, and it is
unquestionable that in her heyday no name on the list stood out, in
respect of adventure and romance, with greater prominence than did
that of Lola Montez. Everything she did (or was credited with doing)
filled columns upon columns in the press of Europe and America; and,

from first to last, she was as much "news" as any Hollywood heroine of
our own time. Yet, although she made history in two hemispheres, it
has proved extremely difficult to discover and unravel the real facts of
her glamorous career. This is because round few (if any) women has
been built up such a honeycomb of fable and fantasy and imagination
as has been built up round this one.
Even where the basic points are concerned there is disagreement. Thus,
according to various chroniclers, the Sultan of Turkey, an "Indian
Rajah" (unspecified), Lord Byron, the King of the Cannibal Islands,
and a "wealthy merchant," each figure as her father, with a "beautiful
Creole," a "Scotch washerwoman," and a "Dublin actress" for her
mother; and Calcutta, Geneva, Limerick, Montrose, and Seville--and a
dozen other cities scattered about the world--for her birthplace. This
sort of thing is--to say the least of it--confusing.
But Lola Montez was something of an anachronism, and had as lofty a
disregard for convention as had the ladies thronging the Court of
Merlin. Nor, it must be admitted, was she herself any pronounced
stickler for exactitude. Thus, she lopped half a dozen years off her age,
allotted her father (whom she dubbed a "Spanish officer of distinction")
a couple of brevet steps in rank, and insisted on an ancestry to which
she was never entitled.
Still, if Lola Montez deceived the public about herself, others have
deceived the public about Lola Montez. Thus, in one of his books,
George Augustus Sala solemnly announced that she was a sister of
Adah Isaacs Menken; and a more modern writer, unable to distinguish
between Ludwig I and his grandson Ludwig II, tells us that she was
"intimate with the mad King of Bavaria." To anybody (and there still
are such people) who accepts the printed word as gospel, slips of this
sort destroy faith.
As a fount of information on the subject, the Autobiography (alleged)
of Lola Montez, first published in 1859, is worthless. The bulk of it was
written for her by a clerical "ghost" in America, the Rev. Chauncey
Burr, and merely serves up a tissue of picturesque and easily disproved
falsehoods. A number of these, by the way, together with some

additional embroideries, are set out at greater length in other volumes
by Ferdinand Bac (who confounds Ludwig I with Maximilian II) and
the equally unreliable Eugène de Mirecourt and Auguste Papon.
German writers, on the other hand, have, if apt to be long-winded, at
least avoided the more obvious pitfalls. Among the books and
pamphlets (many of them anonymous) of Teutonic origin, the
following will repay research: Die Gräfin Landsfeld (Gustav Bernhard);
Lola Montez, Gräfin von Landsfeld (Johann Deschler); Lola Montez
und andere Novellen (Rudolf Ziegler); Lola Montez und die Jesuiten
(Dr. Paul Erdmann); Die spanische Tänzerin und die deutsche Freiheit
(J. Beneden); Die Deutsche Revolution, 1848-1849 (Hans Blum); Ein
vormarzliches Tanzidyll (Eduard Fuchs); Abenteur der beruhmten
Tänzerin; Anfang und Ende der Lola Montez in Bayern; Die
Munchener Vergange; Unter den vier ersten Königen Bayerns (Luise
von Kobell); and, in particular, the monumental Histeriche of Heinrich
von Treitschke. But one has to milk a hundred cows to get even a pint
of Lola Montez cream.
With a view to gathering at first hand reliable and hitherto unrecorded
details, visits have recently been made by myself to Berlin, Brussels,
Dresden, Leningrad, Munich, Paris, and Warsaw, etc., in each of which
capitals some portion of colourful