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 drama of Lola Montez was unfolded. In a number of directions, however, the result of such investigations proved disappointing.
"Lola Montez--h'm--what sort of man was he?" was the response of a prominent actor, recommended 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.