Unlike Home, who never in all the vicissitudes of his career denied
his personality, Diss Debar as frequently as she changed her base of
operations seems to have changed her name and her ancestry. Once in the
heyday of her career she gave a series of interviews claiming to be the
daughter of King Louis I of Bavaria and Lola Montez, a Spanish-Irish
dancer who had a spectacular and adventurous career which covered
Europe in its course, reached to the Russian Court and later America.
It is supposed that Diss Debar was the daughter of a political refugee
by the name of Salomen who settled in Kentucky and that she was born in
1849 although there is no documentary proof of it. According to the
story she was named Editha and as she grew up became known as a wayward
child bent on doing what she should not and perfectly callous to all
restraining influence of parental affection. “At times her waywardness
took such extraordinary turns that her parents thought she was not
entirely sane and sought the advice of a doctor, who said she was
really a sort of victim to an unholy passion, but that she would grow
out of her failing as she grew older,” a prophecy which never came true.
When Editha Salomen became of age she left home and for several years
her father lost all track of her. Later, to his great astonishment, he
discovered her settled in Baltimore, moving among the best of society,
and posing as a member of European aristocracy. As the “Countess
Landsfeldt and Baroness Rosenthal” of the peerage of Bavaria she
availed herself of all the privileges which members of nobility enjoyed
in the Republic, was courted by American youth and found American women
“only too delighted to be led by a Countess.”
Where the Kentucky girl with her peculiar temperament and
characteristics could possibly have secured the education and knowledge
which she displayed through all her exploits I am at a loss to
understand. She must have inherited a liberal share of shrewdness,
together with a fancy for reading ancient history, and at an early
age realized that although not handsome she possessed some charm of
personality which attracted attention and which enabled her to pose
successfully as a member of the nobility.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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