I have omitted one or two incidents in the chapter on Prince Edward which I think I must relate now. When I was giving up my position on the Damien Fund Committee, which had become the Leprosy Fund, the Prince said, "I find you too serious, Harris. What I really want are some more of your naughty stories; why not come up and dine tomorrow night and tell me some?"
Of course I went and told him a round dozen of humorous stories which he had never heard before and which amused him infinitely, whether they were old or new: I only remember one or two in particular. I told him the old chestnut about the first time the Prince de Joinville met the famous actress Rachel: he passed her his card after writing on it: "Quand? Ou? Combien?" (When? Where? How much?) Rachel replied: "Ce soir; Chez moi; Rien." (This evening; my house; nothing.) To my astonishment, Prince Edward liked it so much that he tried to memorize it.
The second was better. There is a story told in New York of the friendship between an Englishman and an American who were out together one day on Long Island: they came upon a pretty girl fishing in a very, very shallow little brook.
"What are you fishing for there?" exclaimed the Englishman, "There are no fish in that shallow brook; what can you hope to catch?"
She swung round on the rock she was sitting on and said cheekily: "Perhaps a man."
"In that case," laughed the American, "you shouldn't sit on the bait."
The girl tossed her head, evidently not appreciating the freedom; and the pair went away. Half an hour later the Englishman burst out laughing. "I didn't see your joke at first," he said.
"Joke?" said the American; "it was pretty plain."
"I didn't think so," said the Englishman. "How could you know she had worms?"
I remember telling the Prince of the gormandizing habits of the English city folk and of the smells made at the Lord Mayor's banquet, corrupting the whole atmosphere of the great hall. He laughed but said it was a pity to tell anything against one's own country; he would rather forget it. And the story of Fowler, the famous Lord Mayor who made it impossible for Lady Marriott, at her own table, to sit out the dinner, seemed to him appalling. He hoped I would never mention it. "We should forget what's unpleasant in life," was his guiding rule.
"But sir," I said, "there are similar instances in France, though they are treated more lightly."
"Really?" he asked in some excitement. "Tell me one."
"There is a story told," I said, "of Monseigneur Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, who was supposed to be one of the wittiest men of his time. He was at dinner once with a lady who made a peculiar little noise and then proceeded to shuffle with her feet on the parquet so as to cover the indiscretion with similar sounds.
"'Oh, Madame,' said the witty Bishop, 'please don't trouble to find a rhyme; it is not important.' "
The Prince laughed but did not prize the witty word at its real worth.
There are two stories about the Prince himself which are really funnier and which should find a place here.
For several years in London he was really in love with a lady who had a title and who was extremely pretty and on his own level in love of life and humor.
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.
The reply would come back, "I shall be ready dear." But she never was ready.
The hour would strike. The gentlemen-in-waiting would all be on the qui vive. The Prince would grow impatient and send up again. Reassuring answers would be returned, but no Princess. The Prince would fume and fret and threaten to go on alone and finally, twenty minutes late, the Princess would sail in with her stereotyped smile and amiable manners, as if unconscious of anything wrong. But the Prince could never forgive the perpetual waiting. He often said it was like a pea in one's boot-intolerable.
And when annoyed by waiting he sometimes criticized her bitterly; one day he was told she was dressing her hair and would be down soon. As the maid disappeared he cried: "Hair indeed; she has no more hair than her brother and he's as bald as an oyster." Another time I praised her smile. "Yes," replied the Prince, "her smile's the best part of her fortune; it has made her popular and it is easy for her to smile for she can hear nothing: she's as deaf as a post."
Some English aristocrats could never forgive Edward's loose morals. There was a certain Duke who would not meet the Prince, even when he had invited himself to dine with the Duchess. "Is the Duke really ill?" I asked his wife on one such occasion. "Dear no!" she replied. "He's locked in the w.c. on the third floor, with a novel, and will not appear till the Prince has gone. We all say he's ill."
When he was on the Riviera, Edward usually lived at Cannes. Mrs. Vyner, who was the queen of the English colony there, had always been one of his special favorites. And no one wondered at it, for Mrs. Vyner had the genius of charming, sympathetic manners. He disliked the Prince of Monaco, who was serious and a friend of the German Emperor, whom he loathed. Yet he frequently ran over to Monte Carlo to have a fling at the tables, and at one visit there he met Lady Brougham in one of the gambling rooms. As every one knows, she had a lovely villa at Cannes, and in fact her husband's father was the person who really brought Cannes into notice and made it the favorite winter resort of the best English set.
Lady Brougham was a delightfully pretty and vivacious woman, always beautifully gowned and up-to-date in the sense that she would be furious if the date were not tomorrow rather than yesterday. Her husband was a large, heavy, pompous person with unfeigned reverence for what he regarded as principles, which were usually mere conventions: he took himself seriously; I always thought of him as a sort of English Chadband. When Prince Edward met Lady Brougham that evening in the rooms of Monte Carlo, he said to her after a few moments' talk, "Dear Lady Brougham, I should like to dine with you next Sunday evening. May I?"
"How kind of you," exclaimed the lady. "We should be only too proud."
"All right," he said, "I will write you," meaning he would send her a list of people he would wish to meet him, "and we'll have a little game of 'bac' afterwards, eh?"
Lady Brougham professed herself delighted and they parted. As soon as she could find him, she told Lord Brougham the Prince was going to dine with them on the next Sunday, but when she mentioned the little "bac" afterwards, Lord Brougham put down his large flat foot decisively.
"I cannot have any gambling in my house on Sunday; it is against my principles."
"Nonsense," cried his wife, "don't be disagreeable; your principles are only bearishness."
"No, no," he said, and his long upper lip came down and his jaws set in the way she had learned thoroughly to dislike. "I draw the line at gambling on Sunday nights. I cannot allow it."
He stuck to his guns till at last his wife, unnerved and disgusted, cried, "Then you must tell the Prince so yourself, for I won't, and then we shall never be on his 'list.' I think it is beastly of you."
The pompous person went off nevertheless to beard the Prince. When the Prince saw him, he cried in his German accent, "Oh, Lord Brougham, I have just met your charming wife and she was good enough to say I might dine with you next Sunday."
"Surely, Sir," replied Lord Brougham, bowing, "we would be delighted, but my wife tells me that you want to play baccarat afterwards. It will be Sunday, Sir."
"Does that make any difference?" asked the Prince.
"Yes," said Lord Brougham, blurting out the unpleasant truth, "it is against my principles to have gambling in my house on Sunday."
The Prince looked at him quietly. "I am very sorry, Lord Brougham; in that case there will not be any 'bac.' I shall write to Lady Brougham. I would not hurt your principles for anything."
"I hope, Sir," began Lord Brougham, again pompously, but the Prince bowed slightly and turned away. He had had enough of the large gentleman's principles.
Next morning Lady Brougham received a little note from him which ran thus:
Dear Lady Brougham:
I am sorry but I shall not be able to dine with you on Sunday next as I must really go to Mentone to pay a duty visit.
I hope I have caused you no inconvenience. I should hate to do that for you are always charming to me.
Yours sincerely,
Edward.
"There," said the lady, flouncing into her husband's room about twelve o'clock next day, "that is what comes of your silly principles. I wish all your principles were at the bottom of the sea. They make life not worth living."
But Lord Brougham was full of self-content till he found that a good many people who gave zest to life did not care to meet him after they had heard the story; in fact, he began to wish that his principles had not been so rigid when it was too late, for one peculiarity of Edward was that he never forgot or forgave a slight to his dignity. His vanity was at least as imperious as Lord Brougham's principles. From that time to the day of his death he never dined in the Villa Eleonore.
Edward was most generous and kindly so long as things went in accord with his wishes. At a reception by the Vyners one night, the Prince walked up and down the room with his arm on my shoulder while I told him one or two new stories. Suddenly I said to him, "You know, Sir, I mustn't accept any more of your kind invitations as commands because I must get to work; I must withdraw from all this London life and try to make myself a writer."
"A little gaiety will do you good from time to time," he replied.
"No, Sir," I said. "Please believe what I say; I must get to work."
He seemed huffed, greatly put out. "You are the first," he said, "who ever spoke to me like that."
"It's my necessity, Sir," I said, "that drives me to work. I shall always be proud of your kindness to me."
"A strange way of showing it," he said, and turned away.
Once later at Monte Carlo I was talking to Madame Tosti, the wife of the well know London musician, when the Prince came directly across the room to speak to us. I don't know why, but I felt sure he meant to be rude to me, so I took the bull by the horns and copied Beau Brummel's famous word to King George. "Now I leave you," I said to the lady, "to your stout friend." And I turned away, but I could see that the Prince was furious.
I must end these stories of the Prince with the wittiest thing I had ever said.
One night he went to the house of the Duchess of Buccleuch, whose husband didn't like him because he thought him a loose liver. The Prince was in extraordinarily good form and won everyone-really found a kindly and appropriate word for twenty or thirty people, one after the other. I told him his success had been as astonishing as Caesar's at the battle of Zela, when he afterwards wrote to his friend Amantius, "Veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered). "Of course," I went on, "that's not what Caesar really said; what he really said was, 'I saw, I conquered, and-I came!'" The Prince laughed heartily. "You are incorrigible," he said. So I was encouraged to tell him the famous witticism of Degas. Some one spoke condemning Minette or Muni, as it is often called in French, meaning the kissing of the woman's sex. Degas replied with the old saying: "Quelle triste vieillesse vous vous preparez!" (What a dreary old age you are making for yourself!) The Prince pretended not to understand what I meant, and when it was explained, thought the practice unmanly.
To atone, I told him another story which pleased him a little more. A married woman took her young sister of twelve for the first time to the theatre. The child sat entranced, though the play was a poor melodrama to the third act, when the hero asks the heroine to marry him: she will not; again he asks her and she refuses. "If you refuse again," he cried, "I'll make you my paramour!"
At once the little cockney girl exclaimed, "'Ark at the swine!"
Then I told him another story which pleased him better. "At the end of one of my lectures in New York," I began, "a man in the audience rose and evidently as a joke said:
"'The lecturer spoke of "virgin" once or twice; would he be kind enough to tell us just what he means by "virgin"?' "'Certainly,' I replied, 'the meaning is plain; "vir," as everyone knows, is Latin for a man, while "gin" is good old English for a trap; virgin is therefore a mantrap.' "Everyone laughed and a lady in the hall rose and kept up the game.
"'I believed,' she said, 'that all traps were usually open and afterwards closed, while the reverse seems to be the case with the mantrap.' "The laughter grew and finally a man got up: 'I have another objection,' he said. 'Traps are always easy to enter and hard to get out of, whereas this trap is hard to enter and easy to get out of.' "
The Prince, laughing, said, "You made those two answers up, Harris, I'm sure."
"I give you my word," I replied, "that the definition was all I invented."