Produced by Suzanne Shell, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net [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.