Eventually she took an engagement for the ballet at
the Opera House, but her dancing was very inferior. At last she
was recognized as an impostor, her real name being Mrs. James,
and Irish by extraction, and had married an officer in India.
Her engagement at the Opera was cancelled, she left the
country, and retired to Munich. She was a very violent woman,
and actually struck one of the Bavarian generals as he was
reviewing the troops. The king became perfectly infatuated with
her beauty and cleverness, and gave her large sums of money,
with a title, which she afterwards bore when she returned to
England." ("Memoirs of an Ex-minister," by the Earl of
Malmesbury.)

Lord Malmesbury is wrong in nearly every particular which he
has got from hearsay. Lola Montes did not retire to Munich
after her engagement at the Opera House had been cancelled, but
to Brussels, and from there to Warsaw. Nor did she play the
all-important part in the Bavarian riots or revolution he
ascribes to her. The author of these notes has most of the
particulars of Lola Montes' career previous to her appearance
in Munich from her own lips, and, as he has already said, she
was not in the least reticent about her scheming, especially
when her scheming had failed. For the story of the events at
Munich, I gather inferentially from his notes that he is
indebted to Karl von Abel, King Ludwig's ultramontane minister,
who came afterwards to Paris, and who, if I mistake not, was
the father or the uncle of Herr von Abel, the Berlin
correspondent of the _Times_, some fourteen or fifteen years
ago.--EDITOR.]

She fostered no illusions with regard to her choregraphic talents; in
fact, she fostered no illusions about anything, and her candour was the
best trait in her character. She had failed as a dancer in Warsaw,
whither she had gone from London, by way of Brussels. In the Belgian
capital, according to her own story, she had been obliged to sing in the
streets to keep from starvation. I asked her why she had not come from
London to Paris, "where for a woman of her attractions, and not hampered
by many scruples," as I pointed out to her, "there were many more
resources than elsewhere." The answer was so characteristic of th