[Page 270.]—“P—— of W——, who was a sloven.”
“Argument with the Princess about her toilette; she piques herself on dressing quick; I disapprove this. She maintains her point; I, however, desire Madame Busche to explain to her that the Prince is very delicate, and that he expects a long and very careful ‘toilette de propreté,’ of which she has no idea. On the contrary, she neglects it sadly, and is offensive from this neglect.”
In this extract from Lord Malmesbury’s Diary, it will be seen how accurate his observations were, and how well they tally with Lady Hester Stanhope’s, who must have had opportunities of knowing all this even better than his Lordship could.
His Lordship in his diary again returns to the subject. “I endeavoured,” (says he) “as far as was possible for a man, to inculcate the necessity of great and nice attention to every part of dress, as well as to what was hid as to what was seen. I knew she wore coarse petticoats, coarse shifts, and thread stockings, and these never well washed, or changed often enough.... It is remarkable how amazingly her education has been neglected, and how much her mother, although an English woman, was inattentive to it.”—Diaries and Correspondence of the Earl of Malmesbury, v. iii. pp. 207, 211.
END OF VOL. I.
FREDERICK SHOBERL, JUNIOR,
PRINTER TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS PRINCE ALBERT,
51, RUPERT STREET, HAYMARKET, LONDON.
Transcriber’s Note:
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