CHAPTER XLIV
I
EDWARD THE SEVENTH AS PRINCE OF WALES—PERSONAL INCIDENTS
Everything, or almost everything, has been said about King Edward the Seventh, every tribute paid him from every quarter of the world; and the mourning of his people is the best tribute of all. I should like to add an estimate from a different point of view and a tribute, but I suppose they would have no proper place in these papers, and I confine myself therefore to memories. I will go back to the period when he was Prince of Wales, and to the place where he put off most of the splendours belonging to his rank, and where most of the man himself was to be seen; not once nor twice, but for years in succession.
Homburg was to the Prince of Wales a three weeks' holiday. I do not think he took the medical side of it very seriously. He drank the waters and walked, as the doctors bade him, but with respect to diet he seemed to be his own doctor and his prescriptions were not severe. But then nobody, the local physicians excepted, ever did take Homburg very seriously as a cure. What the Prince liked was the freedom, of which he was himself the author. On occasions of ceremony and in the general course of his life at home, strict etiquette was enforced. At Homburg the Prince used his dispensing power and put aside everything but the essentials. He lived in a hired villa. He wore lounging suits in the daytime—sometimes of a rather flamboyant colour—and a soft grey hat. In the evening a black dining jacket, black tie, black waistcoat, black trousers, and a soft black Homburg hat. The silk hat and the dress coat and white tie or white waistcoat were unknown. Most of the officers of his household were left at home, but General Sir Stanley Clark was always with him.
His way of life was as informal as his dress. He was there to amuse himself and it was an art he understood perfectly. Homburg is a village, but it had, or had at that time, many resources. The three or four streets of which the place consisted were so many rendezvous for the visitors. The lawn-tennis grounds were another. The walks in the woods were delightful. There were drives over the hills and far away, in the purest air in Germany. If you tired of the little watering-place or its guests, there was Frankfort, only eight miles distant, with resources of a more varied kind. But in Homburg itself the Kursaal, though there had been no gambling since 1869, and the hotels, were always open and sometimes lively.
What the Prince liked was society, in one form or another. The open-air life suited him. It was sufficiently formal but less formal than indoors. He liked strolling about and meeting acquaintances or friends. When you had once seen His Royal Highness leaning against the railings of a villa—the villa stood each in its own ground—and talking to a lady leaning out of the first floor window, and this interview lasting a quarter of an hour, you felt that the conditions of life and the relations of royalty to other ranks in life had taken on a quite new shape in Homburg.
But the attitude of respect was maintained. Certain formalities were never forgotten. The Prince was always addressed as "Sir" or as "Your Royal Highness." But these observances were not irksome, nor was conversation restricted or stiffened by the obligations of deference or by the accepted conventionalities which, after all, were more matters of form than of substance. And in his most careless moods the Prince had a dignity which was the more impressive for being apparently unconscious. Nobody ever forgot what was due to him; or ever forgot it twice. It was an offence he did not pardon; or pardoned only in those who could not remember what they had never known. A foreigner, an American, who erred in pure ignorance might count on forgiveness.
The Prince gave many luncheons and dinners, almost always at Ritter's or at the Kursaal. I should think there was never a day when he did not play the host. The dinners at the Kursaal were given on the terrace, always crowded with other dinner-parties. At Ritter's they were on the piazza. This open-air hospitality was the pleasanter because it was so seldom possible in England. He had brought the art of entertaining to perfection. He put his guests, even those who stood most in awe of royalty, at their ease. The costume perhaps helped. When a company of people were in dining jackets and the men wearing their soft black hats, even at table, by the Prince's command, etiquette became a less formidable thing. The Prince talked easily, fluently, and well. He might ask a guest whom he liked to sit next him, ignoring distinctions of rank, but during the dinner he would talk, sooner or later, to everybody. There might be a dozen guests, a number seldom exceeded. I will give you one example of the dialogue which went on, and no more. The late Duke of Devonshire, at that time the Marquis of Hartington, was sitting nearly opposite the Prince, but at some distance, and this colloquy took place:
"Hartington, you ought not to be drinking all that champagne."
"No, sir; I know I oughtn't."