——“What name, madam?”
——“Oh!... Mrs. Christian!” cried the Princess gaily, at the same time glancing at her husband, with an expression that betrayed her enjoyment of the fun of the thing.
Marie Antoinette, the haughtiest of queens, loved to play the shepherdess.
In the month of September, 1883, the Poet Tennyson saw a little of the King of Denmark’s Court. Seated one evening near the young Empress of Russia and her sister the Princess of Wales, he felt ill at ease, not knowing by what title he ought rightly to address those royal ladies: “I do not know,” he said to them, “what I ought to call you?”
“Oh!” cried the charming Princess of Wales, “there is no difficulty: Minnie and Alec, to be sure!”
The Princess’s name is Alexandra, and that of the Empress of Russia Marie Fedorovna.
Surely this was a very pretty answer, and such as one would expect from the Princess en vacances.
Poor Tennyson! Mr. Gladstone has raised him to the peerage. The Poet Laureate of England has consented to change his glorious name into that of Lord Tennyson. For a long while, the news was treated by the republic of letters as a hoax or a poor joke; but, alas! the report was only too true. The graceful Saxon bard, who has so sweetly sung of King Arthur and his knights of the Round-Table, takes his seat in the House of Lords, just like Mr. Guinness, the manufacturer of double stout. Ah! quel honneur, Monsieur le Sénateur!
It is a very shabby trick Mr. Gladstone has played him.
The word esquire seemed quite ridiculous enough after the two names: Alfred Tennyson; but Lord Tennyson! No, it is almost too much for one’s ears.