; _Die Munchener
Vergange_; _Unter den vier ersten Koenigen 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.

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hitherto unpublished particulars relating to the trail blazed by Lola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 S