"The distress," says his highness, "in truth, consisted in this: that the people, instead of having three or four meals a day, with tea, cold meat, bread and butter, beefsteaks, or roast meat, were now obliged to content themselves with two, consisting only of meat and potatoes. It was, however, just harvest time, and the want of labourers in the fields so great, that the farmers gave almost any wages. Nevertheless, I was assured that the mechanics would rather destroy all the machinery and actually starve, than bring themselves to take a sickle in their hands, or bind a sheaf, so intractable and obstinate are the English common people rendered by their universal comfort, and the certainty of obtaining employment if they vigorously seek it. From what I have now told you, you may imagine what deductions you ought to make from newspaper articles."
This valuable information is followed by an anecdote:—
"Yesterday, 'entre le poire et le fromage,'"—(at what period of a Cheltenham dinner that might be, his highness does not condescend to explain)—"I received the twice-declined visit of the master of the ceremonies, a gentleman who does the honour of the baths, and exercises a considerable authority over the company of an English watering-place, in virtue of which he welcomes strangers with most anti-English officiousness and pomposity, and manifests great care and zeal for their entertainment. An Englishman invested with such a character has mauvais jeu, and vividly recalls the ass in the fable, who tried to imitate the caresses of the lap-dog. I could not get rid of my visitor till he had swallowed some bottles of claret with me, and devoured all the dessert the house afforded. At length he took his leave, first extorting from me a promise that I would honour the ball of the following evening with my presence. However, I had so little inclination for company and new acquaintances, that I made faux bond, and left Cheltenham early in the morning."
Who the master of the ceremonies at Cheltenham, thus uncourteously likened by his highness unto an ass, may be, we have not the advantage of knowing; but certain it is that, however derogatory such an office might at first sight appear, the characters and profession of some of the individuals filling it prove that it is not so considered; and it is, at all events, highly improbable that a gentleman, paying an official visit to a foreign prince, would force his society upon his illustrious host for a sufficient length of time to drink several bottles of claret; and still more improbable is it that any man—gentleman or not—could contrive to "devour all the dessert the Plough at Cheltenham afforded," at a sitting. If, however, the arbiter elegantiarum of Cheltenham did really conduct himself in the manner described, he followed the example of Hamlet with the daggers,—he spoke of ceremony, but used none.
At page 14, we reach Llangollen, where his highness is pleased to make an observation, which, coming from a prince, sounds strange. He tells his Julia that "where he pays well, he is always the first person!" "We represent him to ourselves (quoth Goethe) as of a dignified appearance;" but the landlords and waiters seem to have wanted such discrimination. He then informs us—
"that his appetite, enormously sharpened by the mountain air, was most agreeably invited by the aspect of the smoking coffee, fresh guinea-fowls' eggs, deep yellow mountain butter, thick cream, 'toasted muffins' (a delicate sort of cake eaten hot with butter), and lastly, two red spotted trout just caught; all placed on a snow-white table-cloth of Irish damask;—a breakfast which Walter Scott's heroes in 'the highlands' might have been thankful to receive at the hands of that great painter of human necessities. 'Je dévore déjà un œuf.'—Adieu!"
It is laid down by Hannah, in "Hamilton's Bawn," that a captain of a horse
"has never a hand that is idle;
For the right holds the sword, and the left holds the bridle;"
and we infer, from the animated account given by his highness of his own activity, that he must have been either a dragoon or a hussar, for, while with one hand he is describing to the sentimental Julia the delights of his breakfast, he is, by his own showing, actually eating an egg with the other.—His notion of being served with guinea-fowls' eggs we presume to have arisen from the price which the innkeeper charged for them, for although eggs are plenty in Wales, princes are scarce; but what his highness means by describing Sir Walter Scott as a great painter of human necessities, is quite beyond us.—After breakfast, he impudently intrudes himself on Lady Eleanor Butler and Miss Ponsonby, and quizzes them and their pretty cottage in a style which, all the circumstances considered, one might almost be tempted to call brutal. Those amiable spinsters are, however, no more—and we may pass on.