chant," 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 Eugene 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 Graefin Landsfeld_ (Gustav Bernhard); _Lola Montez,
Graefin von Landsfeld_ (Johann Deschler); _Lola Montez und andere
Novellen_ (Rudolf Ziegler); _Lola Montez und die Jesuiten_ (Dr. Paul
Erdmann); _Die spanische Taenzerin und die deutsche Freiheit_ (J.
Beneden); _Die Deutsche Revolution, 1848-1849_ (Hans Blum); _Ein
vormarzliches Tanzidyll_ (Eduard Fuchs); _Abenteur der beruhmten
Taenzerin_; _Anfang und Ende der Lola Montez in Bayern_