THE PRINCE OF WALES.
"It is now sixteen or seventeen years," says Edmund Burke, in that famous passage to which one is almost ashamed to allude any more, so hackneyed has it been, "since first I saw the Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision." That glowing, impassioned apostrophe did more to make partisans and admirers for poor Marie Antoinette among all English-speaking peoples, probably for all time, than any charms, or virtues, or misfortunes of the Queen and the woman could have done. I can never of late read or recall to mind the burning words of Burke, without thinking of a certain day in March some seven years ago, when I stood on a platform in Trafalgar Square, London, and saw a bright, beautiful young face smiling and bending to a vast enthusiastic crowd on either side, and I, like everybody else, was literally stricken with admiration of the beauty, the sweetness, and the grace of the Princess Alexandra of Denmark. In truth, I am not in general an enthusiast about princes or princesses; I do not believe that the king's face usually gives grace. In this instance the beauty of the Princess Alexandra had been so noisily trumpeted by literary lacqueys already, that one's natural instinct was to feel disappointed, and to say so, when the Princess herself came in sight. But it was impossible to feel disappointment, or anything but admiration, at the sight of that bright, fair face, so transparent in the clearness of its complexion, so delicate and refined in its outlines, so sweet and gracious in its expression. I think something like the old-fashioned, chivalric, chimerical feeling of personal loyalty must have flamed up for the moment that day in the hearts of many men, who perhaps would have been ashamed to confess that their first experience of such an emotion was due to a passing glimpse of the face of a pretty, tremulous girl.
If ours were days of augury, men might have shuddered at the omens which accompanied the wedding ceremonies of the Prince and Princess of Wales. When Goethe, then a youth, surveyed the preparations for the reception of Marie Antoinette at Strasbourg, on her way to Paris, he observed significantly on the inauspicious fact that in the grand chamber adorned for her coming, the tapestry represented the wedding of Jason and Medea. The civil authorities of London certainly did not greet the fair stranger with any such grisly and ghastly emblazonings; but there were other and even more inauspicious omens offered by chance and the hour. The sky darkened, a dreary wind whistled; presently the rain came down in drenching streams that would not abate. There was a mourning-garb at the wedding—the black dress of the Queen, who would not lay aside her widow's-weeds even for that hour; and the night of the wedding, when the streets of London were illuminated, the crowd was so great that, as on a memorable occasion in the early married life of Marie Antoinette, people were crushed and trampled to death amid the universal jubilation.
Well, we defy augury, with Hamlet. But I think some at least in the crowd who welcomed Alexandra felt a kind of doubt and pity as to her future, which needed no inspiration from omens and superstition. No foreign princess has ever been so popular in England as Alexandra; and assuredly some at least of the affection felt for her springs from a pity which, whether called for or not, is genuine and universal. The last time I saw the Princess of Wales was within a very few days of my leaving England to visit the United States. It was in Drury Lane Theatre, then fitted up as an opera house in consequence of the recent burning of Her Majesty's Theatre. The Prince of Wales, his wife, and one of his sisters were in their box. I had not seen the Princess for some time, and I was painfully impressed with the change which had come over her. Remembering, as it was easy to do, the brightness of her beauty during the early days of her marriage, there was something almost shocking in the altered appearance of her face. It looked wasted and haggard; the complexion, which used to be so dazzlingly fair, had grown dull, and, if I may say so, discolored; and I must be ungracious enough to declare bluntly that, to my eyes at least, there seemed little trace indeed of the beauty of a few years before left in that dimmed and worn countenance. "Only the eyes remained—they would not go." Of course, it must be remembered that the Princess was then only just recovering from a long, painful, and exhausting illness; and she may have—I truly hope she has—since then regained all her brightness and beauty. In any case, it would be unjust indeed to assume that the wasted look of the Princess was to be attributed to domestic unhappiness. But even a very matter-of-fact and unsentimental person, looking at her then, and remembering what she so lately was, might be excused if he fancied that some of the unpropitious omens which surrounded the Princess's marriage had already begun to justify themselves in practical fulfilment.
For even at the time of the marriage of the Prince and Princess there were not wanting prophets of evil who predicted that this royal union would not prove much happier than state-made marriages commonly are. Even then there were stories and reports afloat which ascribed to the Prince habits and tendencies not likely to promote the domestic happiness of a delicate and refined young wife, hardly more than a mere child in years. Indeed, there was already considerable doubt in the public mind as to the personal character of the Prince of Wales. He certainly did not look a very intellectual or refined sort of person even then, and some at least were inclined to think him, as Steerforth says of little Em'ly's lover, "rather a chuckle-headed kind of fellow," to get such a girl. There was, certainly, a breath of serious distrust abroad. On the Prince's coming of age, and again, I think, on the announcement of his approaching marriage, the London daily papers had set themselves to preaching sermons at him; and a very foolish chorus of sermons that was which broke out from all those tongues together. The only marked effect of this outburst of lay-preaching was, I fancy, to impress the public mind with the idea that the Prince was really a very much more dreadful young man than there was any good reason to believe him. People naturally imagined that the writers who poured forth such eloquent, wise, and suggestive admonitions must know a great deal more than they felt disposed to hint at; whereas, I venture to think that, in truth, the majority of the writers were disposed to hint at a great deal more than they knew. For, indeed, almost all that is generally and substantially known of the Prince of Wales has been learned and observed since his marriage.
Still, even before, and long before the marriage, there were ominous rumors. Those that I mention I give simply as rumors—not, indeed, the mere babble of the streets, but as the kind of thing which people told you who professed to know—the talk of the House of Commons, and the clubs, and the fashionable drawing-rooms and smoking-rooms. People told you that the Prince and his father had had many quarrels arising out of the extravagance, dissipation, and wrong-headedness of the former; and there was even a painful and cruel report thus whispered about that the death of Prince Albert was the result of a cold he had taken from walking incautiously in a heavy rain during excitement caused by a quarrel with his son. Stories were told of this and that amour and liaison in Ireland when the Prince of Wales was with the camp on the Curragh of Kildare; of his excesses when he was a student at the University; of his escapades at many other times and places. Certain actresses of a low class, and other women of a still lower class, were pointed out in London as special favorites of the Prince of Wales. Of course every man of sense knew, first, that stories of this kind must be taken with a large amount of allowance for exaggeration; and, next, that the public must not expect all the virtues of a saint to belong to the early years of a prince of the family of Guelph. In England public opinion, although it has grown much more exacting of late years on the score of decorum than it used to be, is still disposed to look over without censure a good deal of extravagance and dissipation in young and unmarried men, especially if they be men of rank. Therefore, if the rumors which attended the early career of the Prince of Wales had not followed him into his married years, the world would soon have forgotten all about his youthful indiscretions. But it became a serious question for the whole nation when it began to be whispered everywhere that the Prince was growing worse instead of better during his married life, and when to the suspicion that he was wasting his own youth and his own credit came to be added the belief that he was neglecting and injuring the young and beautiful woman whom state reasons had assigned to him as a wife. In good truth, it is really a question of public and historical interest whether the Queen of England is likely to be succeeded by an Albert the Good or another George the Fourth; and I am not therefore inviting the readers of The Galaxy to descend to the useless discussion of a mere piece of idle court scandal when I ask them to consider with me the probabilities of the future from such survey as we can take of the aspects of the present.
Those who saw the Prince of Wales when he visited this country, would surely fail to recognize the slender, fair-haired, rather graceful youth of that day in the heavy, fat, stolid, prematurely bald, elderly-young-man of this. It would not be easy to see in any assembly a more stupid-looking man than the Prince of Wales is now. On horseback he shows to best advantage. He rides well, and the pleasure he takes in riding lends something of animation to his usually inexpressive face. But when his eyes and features lapse into their habitual condition of indolent, good-natured, stolid repose, all light of intellect seems to have been banished. The outline of the head and face, and the general expression, seemed to me of late to be growing every day more and more like the head and face of George the Third. Anybody who may happen to have a shilling or half-crown of George the Third's time, can see on the coin a very fair presentment of the countenance of the present heir-apparent of the English throne. Whether the Prince of Wales resembles George the Fourth in character and tastes or not, he certainly does not resemble him in face. Even a court sycophant could not pretend to see beauty or grace in our present Prince.
I think that to the eye of the cynic or the satirist the Prince of Wales shows to greatest advantage when he sits in his box at an advanced hour of some rather heavy classic opera, or has to endure a long succession of speeches at a formal public dinner. The heavy head droops, the heavy jaws hang, the languid eyes close, the heir-apparent sinks into a doze. Loyalty itself can see nothing dignified or kingly in him then. I have watched him thus as he sat in his box during some high-class, and to him, doubtless, very heavy performance at the Italian opera, and have thought that at times he might remind irreverent and disloyal observers of Pickwick's immortal fat boy. I have sometimes observed that his little dozes appeared to afford innocent amusement to his sisters, if any of them happened to be in the box; and occasionally one of the Princesses would playfully poke her slumbering brother in the princely ribs, and the Heir of all the Ages would open his eyes and smile languidly, and try to look at the stage and listen to the music; and then, after a while, the heavy head would sink once more on the vast expanse of shirt-front in which the Prince seems to delight, and the fat boy would go to sleep again. But this would only happen at certain performances. There were times when the Prince had eyes and ears open and attentive, even in the opera house. His tastes in general, however, are not for high art in music or the drama. He is very fond of the little theatres where the vivacious blondes display their unconcealed attractions. There are, as everybody knows, several minor theatres in London where the audience, or, I should say more properly, the spectators, will be found to consist chiefly of men, while, on the other hand, the performers are chiefly women. These are the temples of the leg drama. "Pièce aux jambes? Pièce aux cuisses!" indignantly exclaims Eugene Pelletan, denouncing such performances in his "Nouvelle Babylone"; and he goes on to add some cumulative illustrations which I omit. Well, the Prince of Wales loves the pièce aux jambes, and the theatres where it flourishes. He constantly visits theatres at which his wife and sisters are never seen, and in which it would be idle to deny that there are actresses who have made themselves conspicuous objects of popular scandal.
Now, I am far from saying that this necessarily implies anything worse than a low taste on the part of the Prince of Wales. But there are stations in life which render private bad taste a public sin. In London, of late, there has been a just outcry against a certain kind of theatrical performance. It is held to be demoralizing and degrading that the stage should be made simply a show-place for the exhibition of half-naked women, for the audacious display of legs and bosoms. Now, I beg to say for myself that I have entire faith in the dramatic as in every other art; that I believe it always when truthfully pursued vindicates itself, and that I think any costume which the true and legitimate needs of the drama require is fitting, proper, and modest. I regard the ballet, in its place, as a graceful and delightful entertainment; and I do not believe that any healthy and pure mind ought to be offended by the kind of costume which the dance requires. But artists and moralists in London alike objected, and justly objected, to performances the whole purpose, and business, and attraction of which was the exhibition of a crowd of girls as nearly naked as they could venture to show themselves in public.