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.
But valuable assistance in eliciting the real facts connected with the career of this remarkable woman, and disentangling them from the network of lies and fables in which they have long been enmeshed, has come from other sources. Among those to whom a special debt must be acknowledged are Edmund d'Auvergne (author of a carefully documented study), Lola Montez (an Adventuress of the 'Forties); Gertrude Aretz (author of The Elegant Woman); Bernard Falk (author of The Naked Lady); Arthur Hornblow (author of A History of the Theatre in America); Harry Price (Hon. Sec. University of London Council for Psychical Investigation); Philip Richardson (editor of The Dancing Times); and Constance Rourke (author of Troupers of the Gold Coast); and further information has been forthcoming from Mrs. Charles Baker (Ruislip), and John Wade (Acton).
Much help in supplying me with important letters and documents and hitherto unpublished particulars relating to the trail blazed by Lola Montez in America has been furnished by the following: Miss Mabel R. Gillis (State Librarian, Californian State Library, Sacramento); Mrs. Lillian Hall (Curator, Harvard Theatre Collection); Miss Ida M. Mellen (New York); Mrs. Helen Putnam van Sicklen (Library of the Society of Californian Pioneers); Mrs. Annette Tyree (New York); Mr. John Stapleton Cowley-Brown (New York); Mr. Lewis Chase (Hendersonville); Professor Kenneth L. Daughrity (Delta State Teachers' College, Cleveland); Mr. Frank Fenton (Stanford University, California); Mr. Harold E. Gillingham (Librarian, Historical Society of Pennsylvania); Mr. W. Sprague Holden (Associate-Editor, Argonaut Publishing Company, San Francisco); and Mr. Milton Lord (Director, Public Library, Boston).
In addition to these experts, I am also indebted to Monsieur Pierre Tugal (Conservateur, Archives de la Danse, Paris); and to the directors and staffs of the Bibliothèque d'Arsenal, Paris, and of the Theatrical Museum, Munich, who have generously placed their records at my disposal.