Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life

by Daniel Joseph Kirwan

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 London Lancet, the highest medical authority in England, found it necessary, some eighteen months ago, to deny the charge 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.