Exhibit item:
Residence of Lola Montez, Grass Valley
Lettersheet, mounted in the Jules Rupalley album, 1853-1857

Quotation:
JAMES J. AYERS
Gold and Sunshine, Reminiscences of Early California, 1922

"...[I] took a position in the Courier office with Judge Crane. The assistant editor was 'Pat' Hull, a good writer and very genial gentleman, who afterwards became sixth, or ninth, or somewhere thereabouts, husband of that very eccentric woman, Lola Montez, the Countess of Lansfeldt.

The Countess had built a cottage in Grass Valley, and was very fond of pets. Two of these were well-grown grizzly bears, which she kept chained at her front door.

Poor 'Pat' used to say, when speaking about his alliance with the famous Countess, that the greatest difficulty he encountered in his courtship was to get passed those grizzly 'guardians of her palace gates.'

But love laughs at grizzlies as well as locks, and 'Pat' won and married the lady. Then came his troubles. The most truculent of the bears, in a playful mood, breakfasted upon the calf of one of 'Pat's' legs, and he killed it.

That was enough. War commenced in earnest between him and his spouse, and Lola carried her matrimonial grievances into court in the shape of a suit for divorce."