Dust jacket notes: "In an age of adventuresses, beautiful Lola Montez was perhaps the most flamboyant, notorious and mysterious of them all. An intimate of Franz Liszt and Victor Hugo, of Chopin and George Sand, in her youth she played an important part in Bavaria's history as confidante - and, some said, mistress - of King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Then she danced her way through the music halls of Europe and America to the little mining town of Grass Valley, California, where she began by shocking the more circumspect and ended by creating something of a salon. A controversial figure always, Lola was the center of political and even religious quarrels in the stormy days of her life in Munich when she was Ludwig's protegee. She caused him to lose his throne in 1848, and the battle that broke into flames around her head sent her fleeing to England, where she married a youth of wealth and social position, only to have his family bring a charge of bigamy against her. Her fame had grown with her notoriety and next she came to New York under contract to tour America. Her stage career was stormy. Her daring dances, including the famous 'Spider Dance,' evoked admiration from some, outraged others - but no one ever ignored Lola. When her first husband died she married a burly California newspaperman, Pat Hull, with whom she went to Grass Valley, where she long had owned shares in a gold mine. Through a body of letters from Grass Valley miners made available for the first time, Mrs. Holdredge has been able to reconstruct an intimate and detailed account of this little-known California period of Lola's life as part of an over-all biography which brings light and life to the career of one of history's most fabulous adventuresses." Read more
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