Osborne was gloomy. Many of the patients there were neurasthenic and should have been in a special neurasthenic hospital. A. A. Milne was there, as a subaltern in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment, and in the least humorous vein. Vernon Bartlett, of the Hampshire Regiment, who had introduced me to the Quarr Fathers, decided with me that something must be started. So we founded the ‘Royal Albert Society’; its aim was to revive interest in the life and times of the Prince Consort. I was president and my regalia consisted of a Scottish dirk, Hessian boots, and a pair of side-whiskers. Official business was not allowed to proceed until the announcement had been duly made that the whiskers were on the table. Membership was open only to those who professed themselves students of the life and works of the Prince Consort, those who had been born in the province of Alberta in Canada, those who had resided for six months or upwards by the banks of the Albert Nyanza, those who held the Albert Medal for saving life, or those who were linked with the Prince Consort’s memory in any other signal way. The members were expected to report at each meeting reminiscences that they had collected from old palace-servants and Osborne cottagers, throwing light on the human side of the Consort’s life. We had about fifteen members and ate strawberries. On one occasion about a dozen officers came in to join the society; they professed to have the necessary qualifications. One said that he was the grandson of the man who had built the Albert Memorial; one had worked at the Albert Docks; and one actually did possess the Albert Medal for saving life; the others were mere students. They submitted quietly at first to the ceremonies and business, but it was soon apparent that they were not serious and had come to break up the society; they were, in fact, most of them drunk. They began giving indecent accounts of the private life of the Prince Consort, alleging that they could substantiate them with documentary evidence. Bartlett and I got worried; it was not that sort of society. So, as president, I rose and told in an improved version the story which had won the 1914 All-England Interregimental Competition at Aldershot for the worst story of the year. I linked it up with the Prince Consort by saying that he had been told it by John Brown, the Balmoral ghillie, in whose pawky humour Queen Victoria used to find such delight, and that it had prevented him from sleeping for three days and nights, and was a contributory cause of his premature death. The story had the intended effect; the interrupters threw up their hands in surrender and walked out. It struck me suddenly how far I had come since my first years at Charterhouse seven years back, and what a pity it was that I had not used the same technique there.