Lola's light was not hidden under any bushel. An American firm of publishers, convinced that there was money in this sort of thing, made an acceptable offer and issued the work with a prefatory inscription:
+--------------------------------------------------------+
TO
ALL MEN AND WOMEN OF EVERY LAND
WHO ARE NOT AFRAID OF THEMSELVES
WHO TRUST SO MUCH TO THEIR OWN SOULS THAT THEY DARE TO
STAND UP
IN THE MIGHT OF THEIR
OWN INDIVIDUALITY
TO MEET THE TIDAL CURRENTS OF THE WORLD, THIS BOOK IS
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED BY
THE AUTHOR
+--------------------------------------------------------+
The title-page of this effort ran as follows:
+---------------------------------+
THE
ARTS OF BEAUTY
OR
SECRETS OF A LADY'S TOILET
WITH HINTS TO GENTLEMEN
ON THE
ART OF FASCINATION
BY MADAME LOLA MONTEZ
COUNTESS OF LANDSFELD
NEW YORK
DICK AND FITZGERALD, PUBLISHERS
18 ANN STREET
+---------------------------------+
A Canadian publisher, John Lovell, on the look-out for a novelty, read this effort and suggested that a friend of his, Émile Chevalier, of Paris, should sponsor an edition of Lola's Arts of Beauty for consumption on the boulevards. "I am too much an admirer of the gifted author," was M. Chevalier's response, "to undertake the work without consulting her." Accordingly, he got into touch with Lola, offering to have a translation made. "Thank you," she replied, "but I wish to do it myself. You, however, can put in any corrections you think necessary. I have not written anything in French since the death of poor Bon-Bon [Dujarier], and I want to see if I still remember the language." Apparently she did so, for, shortly afterwards, the manuscript was sent across the Atlantic and delivered to M. Chevalier. Within another month it was on the bookstalls. "I have retouched it very little," says the editor in his preface, "as I was anxious to preserve Madame Lola's distinctly original style. Her pen is as mordant as her dog-whip."
M. Chevalier was charmed with the fashion in which Lola had acquitted herself, and wrote florid letters of thanks to her in New York. With a supplementary lecture on "Instructions for Gentlemen in the Art of Fascination," which was added to fill up the book, he declared himself much impressed. "This," he says, "exhibits a profound knowledge of the human heart, and is altogether one of the finest and most piquant criticisms on American manners with which I am familiar." "Who," he continues, warming to his work, "is more thoroughly qualified to discuss the development and preservation of natural beauty than the Countess of Landsfeld?"; and in an introductory puff he adds: "These observations are very judicious, and as applicable in Europe as in America. They should, I feel, be indelibly engraved on the minds of all sensible women."