"Who is that man?" said I to an usher, nodding in the direction of the bald-headed person.
"That man" said the flunkey, "why, that's not a man, 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!