The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Magnificent Montez, by Horace Wyndham

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Magnificent Montez
From Courtesan to Convert

Author: Horace Wyndham

Release Date: May 12, 2007 [EBook #21421]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAGNIFICENT MONTEZ ***

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 mer