I beg leave to say that my name is Maria Dolores Porres Montez, and I have never changed that name.
As for my theatrical qualifications, I never had the presumption to think I had any. Circumstances obliged me to adopt the stage as a profession, which profession I have now renounced for ever, having become a naturalised Bavarian, and intending in future making Munich my residence.
Trusting that you will give this insertion, I have the honour to remain, Sir, Your obedient servant, LOLA MONTEZ.
The assumption that she had ever been known as "Betsy Watson" was due to the fact that she was said at one period to have lived under this name in Dublin, "protected there by an Irishman of rank and fortune." With regard to the rest of the letter, this was much the same as the one she had circulated after her London fiasco. It was very far from being well founded. Still, she had repeated this story so often that she had probably come to believe in it herself.
As The Times at that period was not read in Munich to any great extent, Lola, wanting a larger public, sent a letter to the Allegemeine Zeitung. This, she thought, would secure her a measure of sympathy not accorded her elsewhere: "I object to being made a target for countless malicious attacks--public and private, written and printed--some whispered in secret, and others uttered to the world. I therefore now stigmatise as a wicked liar and perverter of the truth any individual who shall, without proving it, disseminate any report to my detriment."
The letter was duly published. The attacks, however, did not end. On the contrary, they redoubled in virulence. All sorts of fresh charges were brought against her. Many of them were quite unfounded, and deliberately ignored much that might have been put to her credit. Lola had not done nearly as much harm as some of Ludwig's lights o' love. Her predecessors, however, had made themselves subservient to the Jesuits and clericals. When her friends sent protests to the editor, refuge was taken in the stereotyped reply: "pressure on our space does not permit us to continue this correspondence."
By those who wished her ill, any stick was good enough with which to beat Lola Montez. Thus, when a dignitary died--no matter what the medical diagnosis--it was announced in the gutter press that he died of "grief, caused by the national shame." The alleged last words of a certain politician were declared to be: "I die because I cannot continue living under the orders of a strumpet who rules our dear Bavaria as if she were a princess." Ludwig took it calmly. "The real trouble with this poor fellow," he said, "is that he never experienced the revivifying effects of the love of a beautiful woman." A popular prescription. The local doctors, however, were coy about recommending it to their patients.