King Joachim of Naples, from whom the entire princely house of Murat is descended, began life at the close of the last century as a mere stable-boy, while the first Prince Kutusoff, founder of the grand Russian family of that name, achieved his greatness a hundred years ago by the skill which he displayed as the valet and barber to Czar Paul, a monarch whose own great-grandmother, Empress Catherine, was the chambermaid of a village inn, where she first attracted the attention of Peter the Great, who ultimately married her.
Earl Served as Porter.
That the prejudice which formerly existed in exalted circles against menial occupation is rapidly disappearing is abundantly proved by the number of titled personages who are content to take at meal-time their place, not at the table of the master of the house, but at that of the domestics in the servants’ hall.
Thus in the course of a civil suit against Sir Charles Nugent it came out that he was earning his livelihood as a groom, while Lady Nugent was taking in washing. Yet the Nugents are among the most ancient and illustrious of all the grand houses of the nobility of Europe, some of their members being princes of the Austrian Empire, while the head of the family is the Earl of Westmeath.
Here in this country Lord Drummond, the grandson and heir of the British Earl of Perth and the French Duke of Melfort, died several years ago while occupying a menial position—that of door-porter in the establishment of one of the proprietors of the great New York daily newspapers; and the writer can remember having found, a few years ago, Prince Benjamin Rohan, who by virtue of his birth is the titular cousin of every crowned head in Europe, and is descended in a direct line from Godfrey, Duke of Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade, and the first Crusader King of Jerusalem, serving as a waiter in one of the smaller restaurants in Second Avenue, New York City.
Sir Thomas Echlin, head of the ancient house of Echlins, which has been settled in Ireland since the reign of King James I, and whose baronetcy is nearly three hundred years old, recently was employed on the Dublin police force in the humble capacity of an ordinary “bobby” at six dollars a week, and was formerly footman in a London family.
One of the last things that Lord Beaconsfield did before his death was to obtain from the queen a pension of five hundred dollars a year for the widow of the late Lord Kingsland, whom, in spite of her rank as a peeress of the realm, he had discovered earning a bare living as a washerwoman in a large family at Kensington.
Lord Kingsland, prior to his accession to this ancient peerage, had been a waiter in a Dublin hotel, but on becoming a lord, through the death of his uncle, abandoned this calling and preferred to rely upon his wife’s earnings at the washtub.
Happiness.