The Magnificent Montez

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THEATRE ROYAL, HAYMARKET | |

(Under the Patronage of Her Gracious Majesty The Queen,

His Royal Highness Prince Albert, and the Élite of Rank and Fashion.

On Wednesday, April 26, 1848, will be produced a

New and Original and Apropos Sketch entitled:

"LOLA MONTEZ, or THE COUNTESS FOR AN HOUR."

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"An hour."

This was about as long as it lasted, for the reception by the critics was distinctly chilly. "We cannot," announced one of them, "applaud the motives that governed the production of a farce introducing a mock sovereign and his mistress. In our opinion the piece is extremely objectionable."

The Lord Chamberlain apparently shared this view, for he had the play withdrawn after the second performance.

"Es gibt kein Zurück" ("There is to be no coming back") had been Ludwig's last words to her. But Lola did not take the injunction seriously. According to a letter in the Deutsche Zeitung, she was back in Munich within a week, travelling under the "protection" of Baron Möller, a Russian diplomatist. Entering the Palace surreptitiously, she extracted a cheque for 50,000 florins from Ludwig. As it was drawn on Rothschild's bank at Frankfort, she hurried off there, and returned to Switzerland the same evening, "with a bagful of notes."

To convince his readers that he was well behind the scenes, Papon gives a letter which he asserts was written by Ludwig to a correspondent some months later: I wish to know from you if my dear Countess would like her annuity assured by having it paid into a private bank, or if she would rather I deposited a million francs with the Bank of England.... I am already being blamed for giving her too much. As the revolutionaries seize upon any pretext to assert themselves, it is important to avoid directing attention to her just now. Still, I want my dearly loved Countess to be satisfied. I repeat that the whole world cannot part me from her.

While he was with her in Switzerland, Papon strung together a pamphlet: Lola Montez, Mémoires accompagnés de lettres intimes de S.M. le Roi de Bavière et de Lola Montez, ornés des portraits, sur originaux donnés par eux à l'auteur, purporting to be written by their subject. "I owe my readers," he makes her say smugly, "the exact truth. They must judge between my enemies and myself." But, in his character of a Peeping Tom, very little truth was expended by Papon. Thus, he declares that, during her sojourn in the land of the mountains and William Tell, she had a series of affaires with a "baron," a "muscular artisan," and an "intrepid sailor." He also has a story to the effect that "two pure-blooded English ladies, the bearers of illustrious names," called on her uninvited; and that this circumstance annoyed her so much that she made her pet monkey attack them.