He asked her to meet him after the theatre one night and had borrowed the house of his aide-de-camp, a Mr. T. W. The aide-de-camp, in giving him the key, told him that supper would be laid out and that all the servants would be sent away so that he might feel completely at ease. The lady had said she could only make herself free after the opera; and after the opera she drove to Mr. T. W.'s house and found the Prince fishing in the gutter: he had dropped the key and couldn't find it again.
The lady had driven up in a hansom, and she finally persuaded the Prince to get in with her and drive about for an hour or so; at the end of the drive, he took her to the corner of the square in which she lived; they both got down, and the Prince handed the cabby a shilling. Immediately the cabby hopped off his box in wild wrath crying, 'What's this? What's the bloomin' bob for?'
The Prince said, 'Your fare, my man!'
'Fare,' cried the cabby, 'for two hours driving and ten miles!'
The lady, having seized the situation, took out her purse hastily and gave the cabby two sovereigns.
When he saw that the pieces were gold, his manner changed. 'Thank you, mum,' said he, 'thank you kindly. I know'd you was a lady as soon as I seed you. But where did you pick 'im up?'
No one was so delighted with this story as the Prince, who told it with huge gusto. I give the story as an exemplification of the extraordinary ignorance of common things shown by some of the privileged. The Prince told me that he had always heard that a shilling was the price paid to cabmen, and he thought that was the cabman's fare, for two hours' work.
The other story is perhaps a little more risky. A later flame of the Prince, when he became King, had a very pretty daughter about thirteen. The Prince, calling one day, happened to see the pretty girl and spoke enthusiastically about her to the mother. The mother said she would go and bring her in; and she went out and told her daughter that she was going to present her to the King and she must be very careful not to offend him in any way. 'If he wants to kiss you, let him kiss you,' she said. 'What does it matter?'
In a few moments she brought the beschooled child in and presented her to the King and he began talking to the girl; the mother made some excuse and went out of the room. A quarter of an hour later she came back and found the girl alone: the King had left. 'Well, what happened?' she asked.
'Nothing,' said the girl. 'I don't like him much, he paws one about so.'
'Did he kiss you?' said the mother.
'Oh yes,' replied the girl, 'he kissed me; he put his hands on me; pulled me down and made me sit on his knee; he said I was beautiful and charming; I tried to smile, but I don't care much for him-fat old man-he looked at me so funnily.'
'But why did he go away?' the mother asked.
'I don't know,' said the girl. 'He suddenly put me down and got up saying, 'Oh, I'm coming,' and hurried out of the room; but, mother he hasn't come yet!'
'That's all right,' said the lady, 'you have been a very good girl.'
This incident was supposed to be the reason why the lady received over a hundred thousand pounds from the King.
I must tell another story to show him in a better light. A certain banker's wife who had been a great friend of the Prince's got into difficulties. Her husband's bank was on the point of failing, and the husband told his wife that she would have to ask the Prince for the five hundred thousand pounds which had been advanced to him; so she wrote to the Prince, begging him to come and see her.
He came, and she told him all that had happened and her dreadful difficulty.
'Don't you distress yourself,' he said. 'Of course I will get the money at once.
If my friend Baron Hirsch calls, please see him: I think he will make it right.'
The next day Baron Hirsch called and saw the lady and said he wanted to give her a cheque for five hundred thousand pounds, plus interest. When she thanked him, he said, 'If you would receive me sometimes and regard me as a friend, I would write this cheque for a million just to make the figures round, you know, as you say in England.'
Every woman is inclined to prefer round figures and so the lady smiled and was delighted, and the cheque was made out for a million.
When the lady told me the story, she added: 'The Prince, you know, is really good and kind: he called two or three days afterwards to ask me to tell my husband how much he had been helped by the loan and to assure me that if he could do anything for me at any tune, he would be eager to do it. He is a great gentleman.'
There was a Mr. X of good position in London in the nineties, who made himself conspicuous by his devotion to the Prince's wife. People said all sorts of things and hinted at worse, but the association was strictly platonic: everyone knew that the Princess was impeccable, a heroine after Tennyson's model:
Faultily faultless, perfectly regular, icily fair.
Those who knew asserted that as a signal favor he was now and then permitted to hold the Princess' hand while extolling the loveliness of nature.
But for some reason or other, perhaps from the uneasy sense of dignity which everyone ascribed to him, the Prince rather resented the way his wife's name was coupled with that of Mr. X.
At Wadhurst once the Prince and Mr. X were both present at a garden party.
The day was perfect, the park lovely. In the great tent, equipped with small tables, a most perfect luncheon was served. Afterwards a Spanish girl danced, as only a Spaniard can dance, with satanic vigor and impudence, spiced with provocative glance and bold gesture. She was applauded and encored again and again and was followed by an Indian nautch girl, whose challenge was not of spirit and defiant gesture, but of yielding and languor and deliberate revealing of round limb and lithe grace of form.
Everything that day seemed perfect. It would have been hard to imagine a better luncheon or more lovely surroundings, and the hostess had brought just the people together who suited each other. The Spanish dancer broke up the English restraint and set pulses beating; the nautch girl deepened the note. As usual in England, the loosening of bonds led to innocent fun: a pretty girl took a scarf and gave an astonishing imitation of Alma; another, I think a daughter of the house, forthwith beat the gitana, dancing with infinite spirit and go; everyone was standing in groups, talking, chattering, laughing. The footmen had cleared away the tables almost as silently as spirits; the Prince was the center of a gay circle.
Suddenly someone threw an orange at a friend; it was caught and returned like lightning, thrown and returned again, but this time badly aimed, it struck the Prince on the shoulder. He turned around, his smile gone, picked up the orange and then dashed it at Mr. X, who was standing opposite to him and could not possibly have been the guilty one.
The insult was so plainly intentional that Mr. X started forward as if to avenge it when one of the men standing by caught him, whirled him round and led him immediately out of the tent.
But the Prince had marked the gesture and was so infuriated that he exclaimed:
'That man must leave the house or I shall,' and he went in search of his hostess.
The Marchesa sought to pacify him; but he held to his resolve and the hostess had nothing to do but tell Mr. X of the Prince's decision. He behaved perfectly.
'I'm so sorry, Marchesa,' he exclaimed, 'but really if I offended, it was quite involuntarily. I hope you know I would do nothing consciously in your house that you would object to. I've already packed and will get up to London by the evening train.
'Now, please don't fash yourself. It'll all blow over and I am, as always, infinitely indebted to you for having allowed me to come.'
He was so handsome and so submissive that he quite won his hostess, who always afterwards took his part.
I do not give this as a proof that the Prince was jealous. He had no reason to be and he knew it, though like most loose livers he was inclined to be suspicious and did not believe much in any virtue. Still of his wife he felt perfectly sure.
He often used to say that she was perfect save for one fault, and that annoyed him beyond measure.
The Princess was always late-incurably unpunctual, and the Prince, believing that 'punctuality is the politeness of princes,' loved to be exact to the minute; used to boast that he was never late in his life.
When they were going to any function he was always ready ahead of time and ten minutes before the start would send up to the Princess to warn her.
