WHAT THE PARKS CONTAIN.
In the inclosures, where these bands furnish music, chairs are arranged, and all persons who enter and take seats are expected to contribute two-pence toward the musicians for the pleasure of hearing the music.
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BATHING IN HYDE PARK.
There are also sheets of water in Regent's Park, Victoria Park, Battersea Park, St. James' Park, and Kensington Gardens. The sheet of water, or stream, in Hyde Park, is known as the "Serpentine River," from its sinuous course. This is quite a large sheet of water, and is much frequented for free bathing, on warm days in the heated term. Here, thousands of people may be seen on a sultry afternoon, plunging to and fro in the cool waters, and in case of any accident—for the water is deep—the boats, ropes and drags of the Royal Humane Society's Life Saving Apparatus, are always ready for immediate use, and numbers of people are rescued and taken from the Serpentine, and resuscitated.
When the winter months come, and the Serpentine becomesfrozen over, the Londoners congregate there in great numbers to skate, or play at golf or curling.
There is a large lake in the Regent's Park ornamented with small, well-wooded islands, and in Kensington Gardens there is one of the finest museums of art, science, and curiosities, in the world. There are rocky dells, and grounds for sham fights, in Hyde Park, there are the rarest exotics in the Palm House at Kew, and every known species of bird, beast, reptile, and fowl, may be found in the Zoological Gardens, which comprises eighteen acres of space in the Regent's Park.
In Richmond Park, which is ten miles distant from the London Post Office Centre, there are two thousand three hundred acres of hill, dale, plain, and forest, and here are to be found deer-parks, rabbit warrens, romantic foot-paths, ancient oaks, horse-chestnuts, and thorny ridges, with a variety of sequestered spots for pic-nics and pleasure parties. This noble park can be reached by a sail of fifteen miles on the River Thames, which is skirted by Richmond Park for some distance.
There is a grand Observatory for scientific purposes in Greenwich Park, which is noted all the world over for its correct calculations, and all the watches and clocks in Great Britain are set by Greenwich time.
THE WORLD'S FAIR.
Bushy Park, at Hampton Court, where there is a splendid gallery of ancient and foreign paintings and sculpture, the property of the nation, and free to the people, was formerly the residence of Cardinal Wolsey. This royal palace and park is to London what St. Cloud is to Paris. The palace stands on the banks of the Thames, and when completed, in 1526, for the great Cardinal, it contained 282 apartments, and as many beds. The Great Hall is inferior to none in England, and is ornamented with stained-glass windows, stags' heads, spears, flags, trophies, figures of men-at-arms, and other medieval ornaments, and the walls are hung with tapestry, depicting the story of the Patriarch Abraham's life. The largest grape-vine in the world grows in the park, and extends over a space of 3,000 feet. This vine was planted one hundred years ago, and produces, every year, about 2,000 bunches of black, sweet grapes,which are reserved for the Queen's private table. An attendent, showing the royal vine to me, informed the writer that it was high treason to steal the grapes, and I have no doubt that he believed what he said. The Queen has, also, a bed-room here, which she wisely refrains from sleeping in, as, I have no doubt, she would catch influenza from the draughts.
But the great curiosity of Hampton Court Park, is the "Maze," an intricate complication of pathways, that wind in and out, and which have served as a standing conundrum and riddle from time immemorial, for the amusement of the Cockneys. Any one who enters this maze without a guide cannot leave it again, so intricate and puzzling are the foot-paths, which are overshadowed, embowered, and interlaced with young trees and umbrageous shrubbery. By fastidious Londoners this maze is called the "Labyrinth."
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THE LABYRINTH.
One of the most popular places of rural resort in the vicinity of London, is the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, a suburb of the metropolis, and about ten miles from the city.
It is no exaggeration to say, that next to St. Peter's, at Rome, this is the most wonderful structure in the world, and equals in point of magnificence, some of the creations of the Arabian Nights.
When the great World's Fair of 1851 ended, there was a general desire among all Englishmen, that this magnificent structure, which had held the great cosmopolitan show, should not be destroyed. A committee of some nine gentlemen was formed, by whose direction it was taken to pieces for the purpose of reconstruction. This committee had purchased the building, and a company was chartered with a capital of £500,000, in shares of £5, and so confident were the Londoners of the success of the new scheme, that the shares were quickly taken up and the operation of removing the vast building to Sydenham, its present site, was commenced.
THE CRYSTAL PALACE.
The new structure was begun, and the first column raised, on the 5th of August, 1852; and, immediately after, several gentlemen were despatched to the principal cities on the Continent for the purpose of bringing to England casts of the finest pieces of sculpture in existence, and other specimens of the fine arts. The splendid Park, Winter Garden, and Conservatories were committed to the management of the late Sir Joseph Paxton, who invented the architectural part of the Palace of 1851. The arrangements of the various other departments were assigned to men of eminence and skill, in whose hands the structure grew, until it quickly attained its present splendor, and the New Crystal Palace was at length opened to the public on the 10th of June, 1854. Some idea of the magnitude and extent of the operations carried on in the fitting up of this enormous house of glass may be gathered from the fact, that at one time there were no fewer than 6,400 men employed in carrying out the designs of the directors. The edifice is completely transparent, being composed entirely, roof and walls, of clear glass, supported by an iron framework; and it is said that these materials are more durable than either marble or granite, and, if properly cared for, will utterly defy the ravages of time. The extreme length of the Palace, including the wings, is 2,756 feet; which, with the colonnade leading from the railway-station to the wings, gives a total length of 3,476 feet, or nearly three-quarters of a mile. The width of the great central transept is 120 feet; and its height, from the garden front to the top of the louvre, is 208 feet, or six feet higher than the Monument on Fish Hill. It consists of a basement floor, above which rise a magnificent central nave, two side-aisles, two main galleries, three transepts, and two wings. In order to avoid sameness and monotony in such an immense surface of glass, pairsof columns and girders are advanced eight feet into the nave at every seventy-two feet. An arched roof covers the nave, and the centre transept towers into the air in fairy-like lightness and brilliancy. There are also recesses twenty-four feet deep in the garden fronts of all the transepts, which throw fine shadows, and relieve the continuous surface of the plain glass walls; and the whole building is otherwise agreeably broken into parts by the low square towers at the junction of the nave and transepts, the open galleries toward the garden front, and the long wings on either side. The building is heated to the genial temperature of Madeira, by an elaborate system of hot-water pipes, and the supply of water is drawn from an Artesian well. The Tropical Department, once a great feature of the Palace, has ceased to exist; having been destroyed by fire about three years ago.
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THE CRYSTAL PALACE.
There are large and beautiful pleasure grounds all around the Crystal Palace, and all the great national fetes, concerts,and open air demonstrations, take place here. Patti, Nillson, and Sims Reeves, sing here in benefits for charitable associations, and for a shilling, a person may listen to ballads on Saturday afternoons, at these concerts, sung by the greatest living English tenor. Then there are acres of restaurants and dining saloons inside and outside of the Crystal Palace, and apparatus and cooking utensils are on the premises, whereby ten thousand people may find dinner, all at one time, and sit down to tables in five minutes after dinner has been ordered. During the long summer evenings, promenade concerts are held at the Crystal Palace, and fireworks are let off in the presence of great crowds, who enjoy the sports and junketings much as a New York crowd may do on a Fourth of July night, in the City Hall, or Madison Park.
The contents of the Palace itself are calculated to puzzle the brains of a philosopher. Everything wonderful, curious, precious, or difficult to find at any other place, may be found at the Crystal Palace.
Specimens of architecture, sculpture of all ages, tombs, temples, busts, statues, capitals, hieroglyphs, from Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Italy, portions and entire courts from the glorious Alhambra, gigantic relics and ruins from the Palaces of Babylon, Susa, and Nineveh; fragments of the Christian temples of Italy, the castles and churches of Germany, the Chateaux of Belgium and France, and the Cathedrals and Mansions of England, from the earliest ages to the present time, all of which are arranged in "courts" in the most systematic order.
Beside these there are many Industrial "Courts" containing the most wonderful and useful inventions of the genius and scholar. Then there are gigantic models of the tremendous animals who existed before the flood, with models of huge and hideous reptiles, and saurians, who did their level best in the same period.
Some sunny Saturdays as many as fifty thousand people pay visits to the Crystal Palace, and to see and enjoy all these wonders, the charge is only one shilling, including concerts, music, fireworks, and flirtations.
The last time I was there it was on the occasion of the Royal Dramatic Fete, for the benefit of the profession, and fully a hundred thousand persons were present, including the Prince and Princess of Wales, and many of the nobility.
COST OF GROUNDS AND BUILDING.
The entire cost of grounds and building, with works of art and curiosities, was seven million dollars. There were 15,000,000 of bricks, 6,000 tons of iron, 20,000 loads of timber, 300,000 superficial feet of glass, 1,200 iron columns, one mile and a half of clerstory windows, and other materials in proportion, used in the construction of the edifice, and the space of ground enclosed under the transparent roof is twenty-five acres, being one-fifth greater than the area of the base of the Great Pyramid.
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CHAPTER XVI.
THE RAKES OF THE ROYAL FAMILY.
ENGLAND has been singularly unfortunate in her Royal Families.
York and Lancaster, Plantagenet and Tudor, Stuarts or Hanoverians, they have been, with here and there an odd exception, a very bad lot, morally speaking.
It is a curious history of crime and bloodshed, of dishonor, perjury, and harlotry, this history of the Monarchs of England, since the days of William the Norman, who had three illegitimate children, and massacred thousands of his Saxon subjects every year, down to the days of George IV, the most gentlemanly blackguard of his time and of Europe.
VAGABONDS IN KINGLY ROBES.
Roll back the hoary gates of the past, and look at Richard Crookback, who reveled in blood, and died in Bosworth Ditch, a death only a little better than that of Edward IV, whose children Richard basely murdered, and we find succeeding him a scoundrel like the Eighth Henry, a brutal fiend, with his six successive wives, all of whom perished miserably, but the first and last wives, Catharine of Arragon and Catharine Parr; and then we find his two children—Mary, an honest fanatic, burning human beings for the honor of God; and next comes Elizabeth, who has been facetiously styled the Virgin Queen—with her paramours and favorites. Follow this hideous old spinster to the yawning verge of the tomb, and she is still to be seen with her parchment visage and grey hairs, seeking newlovers, or butchering the unfortunate Queen of Scots, until at last the dread moment of all approaches, when she tells her horrified chaplain that she will give millions of money for a moment of time. Then we have a pusillanimous monarch, James I, who spends his best years discovering witches and writing fantastical and forgotten treatises against tobacco, or permitting a man like Bacon—whose life was worth that of a thousand Kings, to be degraded and made miserable, till at last his great, far seeing eyes are closed in a final sleep—his heart having broken to pieces in the meridian of his genius.
Then comes Charles I, a good man in his mild way, a patron of the arts, a good husband and father, but withal he is doomed to the block.
Vainly he endeavors, in battle and statecraft, to stem the onward march of the people who are determined to hurl all obstacles from their path which stand in the way of their new ideas.
And now comes up the Brewer, Oliver Cromwell, one of Carlyle's heroes, (and by the way, all of Carlyle's heroes are dripping with blood,) a most accomplished and unrelenting butcher, one who thanks God for his "precious mercies" when a thousand men, women, and children are driven over a bridge into a deep river beneath, impelled by the pikes of his ruffianly soldiery. Then he dies, and Charles II, a dissolute royal scamp succeeds, and he of course has to dig up the crumbling skeleton of Cromwell to hang it on Tyburn tree, that all men may see what manner of divinity it is that should hedge around a King.
Think of this royal vagabond, who has for his mistress a Stewart, a Duchess of Cleveland, a Louise de Queroailles, who also becomes a Duchess of Portsmouth, and last but not least, poor simple, soft hearted Mistress Nelly Gwynne, who left to the nation Greenwich Hospital to atone for her lost soul.
It might be expected that in these days of the daily newspapers and telegraph wires, of railroads, female suffrage and personal journalism, that royalty, and notably, English royalty,would improve, from a slight sense of decency and a proper regard for public opinion, if for no other cause. Let us see.
Ten years ago I vainly endeavored to penetrate the dense masses who lined Broadway, New York, and filled the air with their shouts, as an open barouche, containing the then Mayor of the chief city of America, sitting on the back seat, and a fair faced youth with flabby skin and retreating chin, clad in a scarlet uniform and having an Order of the Garter pendant from his breast, passed up the thronged thoroughfare between two lines of citizen soldiery, whose bayonets, bright as silver, reflected back the many hues of the excited and surging masses.
Five hundred thousand people of both sexes had turned out in holiday attire, that ever memorable day, to do honor to a foreign prince, whose government, since that thoughtless hour, sought during the terrible confusion of a civil war, by every means in its power, by money, influence, by Alabama pirates, by unceasing and bitterly hostile journalistic attacks, by speeches in and out of Parliament—through the pulpit and the rostrum, to destroy the Republic of the West. In fact that government moved Heaven and Earth to annihilate and obliterate the liberty, union, and might of the American people.
Such a reception had not been given, twenty-five years before, to the gallant, noble-minded, and chivalric Lafayette, the companion of George Washington, one of the finest characters in all history, or the unwritten records of mankind.
This fair-faced, flabby-skinned youth, in the lobster colored and laced coat, who stood up in the open carriage, (hired from the New York Corporation hack-driver-in-chief, and charged for in the bill afterward rendered, at five times the real price,) was no less a personage than Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Fellow of Trinity House, Colonel of a Regiment of Foot, a General in the British Army, (like Captain Jinks,) Baron Renfrew, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Dublin, and eldest son of Queen Victoria that is, and in the future to be King of England and Defender of the Faith, by the Grace of God and the permission of the Radical English Trades Unions.
A CHANGE FOR THE WORSE.
He was not a very bad looking lad of nineteen or twenty, that sunny afternoon, as he bowed repeatedly and raised his Generals' chapeau, with its plume of feathers, and doffed it to the radiant republican female faces, and curtesied like a backward school boy, in acknowledgement of the wild shouts which pealed upward in the clear atmosphere, although no spectator there could have accused him of having an intellectual or cultured face. How well we can all now remember, to our shame, the manner in which he was petted, and caressed, and toadied, and dined, and wined, until in the estimation of his toadies he had almost attained the stature of a God, this boy with the retreating chin and imbecile face—this hope and pride of the Guelph family.
Still with all the marked and inherent imbecility of a descendant of George III in his features, the young scion of royalty had not, at that time when I first saw him, developed the seeds of immorality, want of honor, meanness, and utter sottishness which have since made his name infamous among his subjects, and despised by the princes of Europe.
The young lad for whom America could not do too much honor in feteing and feasting, has since surrounded himself with pimps, panders, parasites, and blackguards, of the lowest kind.
His name is a bye word of scorn in the British metropolis, and for a lady of rank or position to be seen three times in his neighborhood, is certain dishonor to her and her relatives.
It was nearly ten years after that bright sunny day, in Broadway, with its shouting multitudes and noisy cheers, before I again saw His Royal Highness Albert-Edward Prince of Wales.
One night, in going through High Holborn, and being without any settled purpose as to where and how I should spend the evening, I accidentally noticed the blazing gas lamps of the "Casino," a well-known dancing hall, frequented by the loose livers and aristocratic idlers of the English Capital.
After a moment's hesitation I entered and found the place—as is usual on summer evenings at all the London dancing halls—pretty well crowded.
Scores of couples, of both sexes, were whirling frantically in the Old-World Teutonic waltz, and in the flushed faces and excited gestures of the gyrating dancers I could notice a total forgetfulness of modesty and decorum.
From the alcoves came the sounds of the clinking of wine-glasses, the rattle of Moselle bottles, the pop, pop, of champagne corks, and songs, choruses, and loud shouts of laughter, together with a Babel-jabber of many confused tongues.
My attention was attracted while listening to the music from the fine band, to a group that occupied a position which partially screened them from the glances of the larger portion of the audience and dancers, sitting and standing back as they did in an alcove.
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PRINCE OF WALES.
There were a dozen persons, perhaps, in the party, of both sexes, five or six men fashionably attired, and as many women, in all the grandeur and magnificence of harlotry—open and defiant—but well-bred harlotry.
There were two central figures conversing in this group, and I could see that they were listened to with attention while speaking, one of them, particularly, a slightly bald-headed man, having secured the ears of his audience.
The other central figure was a woman, beautiful, but of that beauty which is leprous to the sight, and fatal to those who encounter it as the shade of the Upas Tree.
"Who is that man?" said I to an usher, nodding in the direction of the bald-headed person.
"Thatman" said the flunkey, "why, that's not aman, that's His Royal 'Ighness the Prince of Wales,—and long may he reign over us."
And this worn, blase, sottish and almost brutally stupid-looking person in the Scotch tweed suit, with drooping eye-lids and sore eyes,—as if he seldom went to bed, and then did not stay long in it, looking to be forty-five years of age; prematurely bald, and without a particle of that apparent divinity which, it is said, doth hedge a monarch, was the self-same young lad of twenty, whom I had seen environed by bayonets in Broadway, ten years before.
THE PRINCE AND HIS FRIENDS.
But how changed he was! Long nights of dissipation and debauchery had seamed the once youthful and unwrinkled features, and the under part of the face hung in heavy, adipose folds, like the dewlaps of a bullock. His figure was stout and without grace, and to me he seemed like a beer-drinking bagman or commercial peddler, half John Bull, half Hanoverian. The tweed suit, a material which he affects very much, was not at all calculated to set off or adorn his figure, and the great grandson of George III looked very undignified indeed as he leaned over the painted harlot resplendent in silks, and glistening with jewels, who is known to all wild London scapegraces, and young men about town, by the name of Mabel Gray, a name assumed for a purpose—to hide her identity with the gutters from which she has sprung.
The Prince of Wales, despite all the counsels and admonitions of the Queen (of whom whatever may be said, the merit cannot be denied her of being a good mother), has, I regret to say, the reputation of being a very sorry scamp.
His intimates are, generally, the worst and most abandoned roues of the Clubs, the lowest turf blackguards and swindlers, and when he chooses a companion who is not a swindler or a blackguard, a debauchee, or a decoy, he is sure to be a fool.
The young man standing by the side of the Prince of Wales when I entered the dancing hall, was Charles, Lord Carington, whose mother was of the great family of d'Eresby, the head of which is Lord Willoughby d'Eresby, Lord High Chamberlain of England, to whom is entrusted the duty of looking after the morals of the English people and the sanctity of the British drama. It is he who gives passes to the House of Lords on Saturdays, on slips of blue paper which the unwashed are very eager to obtain; and it is also the duty of the Lord High Chamberlain to watch every new burlesque when produced, in order that the skirts of the ballet girls and blondes may be of the proper length, and not too short for the proprieties.
Lord Carington's grandfather was a rich man named Smith, who was ennobled for some reason or another, and his large fortune and title has descended to the present possessor, who is known to be one of the wildest and most rakehelly young noblemen in London. He is a lieutenant in the Guards of the Queen's Household Brigade, and one of the boon companions of the Prince of Wales. The latter is constantly to be found in company with this "Charley Carington," as he is called, who was the perpetrator of a most cowardly outrage upon the person of Mr. Grenville Murray, an aged gentleman who was supposed to be proprietor and editor of the "Queen's Messenger," a satirical weekly journal, in which Mr. Murray was said to have written several scathing articles upon the "Hereditary Legislators" of England. In one of these articles a sketch was given of Lord Carington, under the title of "Bob Coachington, Lord Jarvey," in which the practice of driving a mail coach and four horses to and fro between London and its environs and taking up passengers for money, a favorite pastime of Lord Carington, was referred to in no very flattering terms. For this supposed affront, without any positive proof to warrant the outrage, the gallant Lord Carington, aged 25 years, set upon Mr. Murray, as he was coming out of the Conservative Club, of which he was a member, and beat him badly. Mr. Murray is about 60 years of age, and was of course not able to defend himself, and when he sought justice in the usual way at the Marlborough Street Police Station, of the magistrate, Mr. Knox, he found the Prince of Wales and a number of titled ruffians sitting on the bench along side of the dispenser of justice!
TWO IMBECILES.
Of course Mr. Murray received no justice in that Court, and not only was he refused satisfaction, but in addition an attack was made upon the person of his counsel, when a libel suit had been preferred against the "Queen's Messenger," by the aristocratic friends of Lord Carington and the Prince of Wales, who did this to intimidate him from writing farther in his journal of the scandalous conduct of the Queen's relations and the rottenness of the higher nobility.
In addition to this Mr. Murray was expelled from the Conservative Club by a ballot of one hundred and ninety votes, only ten members of the Club having the personal courage to withstand the influence and threats brought to bear against them by the Prince of Wales, Lord Carington, and their minor satellites.
Lord Carington is fond of driving his coach and four and taking up passengers in the outskirts of London, charging them a nominal fare. While sitting on the box or seat of the coach he usually holds to his lips a huge horn, which he toots like a raving maniac, much to his own satisfaction and the edification of the floating community, who with the fondness of all Englishmen for a live Lord, smile benignantly if not affectionately upon this imbecile young nobleman.
In the words of the song, the "Prince of Wales goes everywhere to see the sights of town" with Carington, and at the Dramatic fete at the Crystal Palace in 1869, while his beautiful, good, and neglected wife sat on a dais and received the donations for the Dramatic College, the Prince manifested in public his intimacy with Carington by laughing and conversing with him, arm-in-arm, much to the horror of all the pious old dowagers who were present and had heard wild stories of Lord Carington.
Mabel Grey, who has ruined scores of young aristocrats and brought them to beggary, is the reputed mistress of Lord Carington, and has made several visits with him to Paris, Baden, and other places on the Continent. It is said that he has already squandered twenty thousand pounds upon this well-bred harlot, and it is the current talk in London that the Prince of Wales has also been on terms of an improper intimacy with MabelGrey. At all events he is not ashamed to be seen speaking to her in Casinos or addressing her in public places, and the dear Prince has on several occasions been seen drinking champagne with her in the music halls and dancing rooms of the English capital. This is a very bad business for a bald-headed father of five children.
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PRINCE AND CABMAN.
The Prince of Wales, with all his immense riches, is mean and very penurious in money matters. He will argue for fifteen minutes with a cabman in the street about an over-charge of a sixpence, and has been known to get into an altercation with ticket sellers in the box offices of places of amusement for the sake of a shilling or half a crown, in a most undignified way. One night when getting out of a cab at Cremorne the driver attempted to charge the Prince four shillings for a ride when he should have charged him but two-and-sixpence. The Prince, who was a little intoxicated, refused to pay the over-charge. The London cabbies are the most impudent,brassy set of fellows I ever saw, and this cabman was more than usually pugnacious. The Prince attempted to go into the Garden, and had presented his ticket, when the cabman with a yell clutched his coat, and tore away the skirt in the struggle to get more fare. The Prince was recognized by some of the attendants of the place, and the horrified cabman was handed over to the police for assault on the blood royal. Fearing the ridicule of the London press, the Prince told the policeman to release poor Cabby, who was only too happy to escape transportation for life.
INFAMY OF THE PRINCE.
For the past seven years the Prince of Wales has been a prominent actor in almost every scene of aristocratic dissipation and debauchery which has been enacted in the English metropolis. He is well known in the coulisses of the Opera, and has openly maintained scandalous relations with ballet dancers and chorus singers. Even the shame of the thing would not restrain him from loudly and familiarly applauding and clapping his hands, whenever any of these female favorites of his came on the stage, while the strains of Beethoven or Rossini could not elicit from him as much as a smile of gratified approbation. The taste of the Prince for music may be imagined from the fact that "Champagne Charley," and "Not for Joseph," are his two most cherished melodies.
His relations with Mademoiselle Helena Schneider, the opera bouffe singer, were most notorious, and he has been known to leave the bed side of his wife in her illness to hasten to Paris at the summons of this notorious woman of Darkness, and Sin, and Shame.
Among his special female favorites, are many of the better known soubrettes of the London and Parisian theatres, and notably he was an admirer of Finette, the famous Can-can danseuse of the Alhambra.
He is flippant, shallow, and heartless, and the record of his life thus far has caused many a scalding tear to fall from the eyes of his royal mother.
The LondonLancet, the highest medical authority in England, found it necessary, some eighteen months ago, to deny thecharge that was made openly against the Prince, which if true, would stamp him with infamy. The Princess of Wales, who is a good and noble lady in every sense—and a long suffering one in some respects—during the summer of 1869, visited the baths of Wildbad, in Germany, for the benefit of her health, which had been sadly impaired. I dare not in these pages insult my readers by giving the cause of her ill-health, which is more than whispered about in English society.
The Prince has, I believe, five handsome children—their good looks coming to them from their vigorous Norse mother, but it will not be from any precaution taken by their father, if they do not hereafter suffer from the results of his early indiscretions and follies, in the Haymarket and the purlieus of Paris.
In a good many respects the Prince of Wales resembles another Prince of Wales—one who succeeded his father as King. I mean George IV. Like him, Albert Edward is already a broken debauchee, and like George IV Albert Edward has a vicious way of making his wife suffer through his follies and disgraceful behaviour. Unless the Prince is predestined to experience a sudden and speedy conversion, it is more than probable that the next King of England will excel and put to shame the open acts of profligacy which made George IV so notorious.
One thing could be said for George IV which cannot be said for the Prince of Wales. The former was a gentleman in manner if not one at heart—but this Prince, while being thoroughly heartless and "stingy," has the breeding of a waiter in a lager beer saloon. He is heavy, slow, unready, hesitating, and flabby, without a spark of culture or a trace of the refinement which belongs to his station.
PRINCE AND BREWER AS FIREMEN.
His Royal Highness has a great passion for running with the "masheen," as a New York rowdy would term it, and Captain Shaw, of the London Fire Brigade, is greatly admired by the Prince for his gallant management of that very efficient Corps. The latter has often taken a ride on a fire engine through the London streets. The Prince, while on a visit to Brighton some yearsago, made the acquaintance of a rich young London brewer, who had more money than brains. This was just the sort of a man to suit the Prince, being very fond of rich young men, who in many cases are only too happy to have the honor of paying the bills contracted by his Royal Highness. This eminent young brewer had, with the Prince, a similar taste for fire engines, and it was suggested by the future King of England that the brewer, who had a fund of good nature, should send to London for a fire engine, at his own expense, and have it transported to Brighton, where in course of time the Prince hoped it might afford them much amusement. The brewer of course complied with the Prince's request, and before long one of those grotesque looking fire machines, that are every now and then to be seen darting through the London streets, made its appearance at Brighton. Night after night the Prince and the brewer made the quiet villas and the Parade of Brighton resound with their shrieks and howls, as they drove at headlong speed through the watering place, the two maniacs sitting astride of the apparatus which was drawn by two horses; and finally the thing became such a nuisance to the residents of Brighton, and so many complaints reached the Queen's ears of the Prince's riotous conduct, that at last he was sent for and severely reprimanded by her Majesty, and for a few days he kept on his good behavior, to relapse again like a fever patient.
It is useless to conjecture as to the probability of the Prince succeeding to the throne, but if ever he does, he will no doubt revive the days of Charles II and his dissolute court. His beautiful and virtuous wife will perhaps fall into the place which Catharine, of Braganza, was compelled to accept as the consort of that rakehelly monarch, and Albert Edward will, no doubt, find in Lord Carington material for a successor to Sir Charles Sedley, and in the Duke of Hamilton a scamp, worthy of the reputation borne by the Earl of Rochester.
It is a mistake to think, moreover, that the Prince of Wales is alone among his family, in his vicious course, or that he has not numerous imitators among the nobles bearing some of the proudest names in England. Although he is yet but ayoung man of thirty years of age, he has those around him who ape his immorality and copy his disregard for the usages of society.
Still, the Prince cannot be blamed for the follies of his relations. The Duke of Cambridge, cousin to the Queen, and old enough to be the father of the Prince, has as bad if not a worse reputation, than the Prince of Wales.
George Frederick William Charles, Duke of Cambridge, Earl of Tipperary, and Baron of Culloden, is a first cousin of Queen Victoria, a Field Marshal and Commander-in-Chief of the English Army.
This Prince is about fifty years of age, and lives in an unlawful way with a Miss Fairbrother, by whom he has had several children, I believe. It might be expected, of a prince so closely related to the Queen, and occupying such a high position as chief of the British Army, that he would set a good example to the younger branches of the royal family. On the contrary, the Duke is well known, everywhere, as a royal rake, and his shameless amours are beyond number. The old prince is slightly bald from his course of early piety, and suffers so dreadfully from the gout, the result of early dissipation, that he is nothing but a wreck, being compelled annually to pay a visit to the mineral baths of Germany, and American travelers upon the continent at Baden, Ems, and Hombourg, will occasionally encounter an old, broken, and bloated personage, limping on a stick, who will quarrel with a waiter, in Hanoverian Deutsch, for the sake of a kreutzer, and when once excited it is very difficult to calm his rage, which, sometimes, degenerates into a helpless imbecility. This is the Duke of Cambridge.
A MAD KING.
From his illicit connection with the lady to whom I have referred, the mock-title of "Duke of Fairbrother," has been given to this illustrious Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Fancy such a Duke of Cambridge holding the baton of Wellington, and leading such soldiers as Havelock, Outram, Colin Campbell, and Napier of Magdala. And this very same imbecile Duke has had command of the English Army, and notably at the Alma, in the Crimean campaign, his conduct was such as to makethe spectators doubt whether he was a madman or a coward. In the heat of the fight, the Duke lost all management of him self, and began to make strange noises, and to act in a strange manner, until he was carried from the field, kicking and biting in a maniacal fashion.
For the taint is in the blood of the English Royal Family, and may never be eradicated. The Duke of Cambridge is a lineal descendant of George III, who, by his inherent madness, lost half of the British Empire, and who was in the habit of answering reasonable questions, with such replies as,—
"What, what, who, who, where, where, why, why—BLIM!" Should the Prince of Wales hereafter behave himself in an unseemly fashion, his tainted blood may, to a certain extent, be blamed for the outbreak.
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CHAPTER XVII.
FAST YOUNG ENGLAND.
WHY Londoners should presume to sneer at the morality of the volatile Parisians, has always been a sore puzzle to me. During the past fifteen years, sharp observers of society in the English Capital have been appalled by the visible and marked progress of moral and social deterioration among the people who affect to give tone, and breeding, and refinement, to all that they do or say, as leaders of society.
Polite London Society has always plumed itself upon being superior, in a moral sense, to the corresponding class in the French Capital, but it must strike those who have held such views, that there is no basis for the belief any longer, when the notorious fact is offered to them, that two of the highest personages in England are men who lead lives of immorality—I refer to the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge. I have however said enough of those two loose gentlemen, and I shall proceed to consider the subject in its larger bearings.
I boldly assert, that English Society, of the highest class, is to-day as rotten in every sense, as were the French nobility, with their mistresses and their "little establishments," before the whirlwind of the Revolution of 1793 swept away all that was of hideous corruption and infamy, never to rise again.
The proudest names among the English nobility are those which have some moral or dishonorable taint affixed to their titles, by their conduct in life.
MISS HARRIET MONCRIEFFE.
Many of my readers must recollect the termination of the famous Mordaunt case, in which the Prince of Wales was implicated, and it will also be remembered that the few facts which were developed on the trial, despite the attempt of Lord Penzance, (acting under pressure of the Throne,) to hush them up, had the effect of shaking England to the centre, socially speaking.
Miss Harriet Sarah Moncrieffe, now Lady Mordaunt, is a daughter of Sir Thomas Moncrieffe, a baronet of one of the oldest families in Scotland. The family seat is at Earn, in Perthshire, and the mansion and grounds are among the finest in North Britain. The family was a large one, four sons and six daughters being born to Sir Thomas and his wife, who was a daughter of the Earl of Kinnoul. Lady Harriet's eldest sister is married to the Duke of Athole, one of the richest and most powerful of the Scotch nobles. Then she has a sister married to the Earl of Dudley, and another to a Mr. Forbes, of a wealthy Scotch family, into which, if I be not mistaken, Lady Douglas-Hamilton, a sister of the Duke of Hamilton, is married. One of the sisters—the Duchess of Athole, has for her mother-in-law the Dowager-Duchess of Athole—who is a tried and trusted friend of Queen Victoria, being, as I believe, a Lady-in-waiting, or a Lady-of-the-bed-chamber to the Queen, or something of that sort. Altogether the family and its connections are among the very thickest cream of English aristocratic society.
In December, 1866, Lady Harriet Sarah Moncrieffe, then eighteen years of age, and surpassingly beautiful in person, and most graceful in manner, was married to Sir Charles Mordaunt, of Walton Hall, Warwickshire, who was then twenty-nine years of age, and a very wealthy bachelor, possessing one of the finest country seats, with mansion and grounds, in all England. The main buildings alone were erected at an expense of over $350,000 of American money, and to this most delightful and picturesque spot the young bride was taken to spend the honeymoon. Everything that the heart of a fashionably bred woman could desire was hers, she had troops of servants, a fine oldbaronial mansion, a large stable full of horses, a yacht, a gallery of paintings, a villa on the Continent, equippages, diamonds, ladies'-maids, and a town house in London. And beside her lightest word was law to her loving husband. She had been presented to the Queen, and in her life-pathway sunshine fell and gladdened her young spirit. But there was a canker in the bud—a skeleton in the closet—as there always is. Lady Mordaunt had loved below her station before she married Sir Charles, and had sought to marry the object of her affection, but her mother, who was a very worldly minded woman, was determined that she should marry the rich Sir Charles Mordaunt, who had houses and lands, while "poor Robin Adair" had to go about his business.
Of course the natural consequences had to come. Sir Charles had a yacht, and now and then went on cruises to Norway and up the Baltic, and ran his craft from Erith to the Nore, and on many a sunny day the snowy jib-sail of his boat was seen from afar by those nautical minded people who frequent the breakwater at Cherbourg. When he was at home he was either hunting with the Warwickshire hounds, or looking for plover and grouse on Scotch moors. Any other spare time he had was taken up in his parliamentary duties, for he had the ineffable honor of signing "M.P." after his name.
And the young, gay, beautiful, and high spirited Lady Mordaunt—how was it with her? Being left very much alone, she developed herself. She delighted in balls, the Italian—yes, and the Bouffe Opera, she liked Croquet parties, garden parties, Crystal Palace concerts, and flirtations, and one evening, in company with Captain Farquhar, an officer of the Guards, she visited the "Alhambra," a celebrated dancing hall, which is supported by the London demi-monde.