A breach of etiquette was committed on one occasion by a friend of mine, a compatriot, who had accompanied me to one of these gilt-edged affairs. She stood up behind the very last row of the chorus and--used her opera-glasses! Not unnaturally, she wanted for once, poor girl, to get a good look at royalty; but it is needless to say that she was hastily and summarily suppressed. When the Prince and Princess were seated the concert could begin. There were two customs that made those functions particularly oppressive. One was that all applause was forbidden. An artist, particularly a singer or stage person of any kind, lives and breathes through approbation: and for a singer to sing her best and then sit down in a dead and stony silence without any sort of demonstration, is a very chilling experience. The only indication that a performance had been acceptable was when the Prince of Wales wriggled his programme in an approving manner. A hand-clap would have been a terrific breach of etiquette. The other drawback--and the one that affected the guests even more than the artists--was that, when once the Prince and Princess were seated, no one could rise on any pretext or provocation whatever. I think it was at my second appearance at the Royal Concerts that an amusing incident occurred which impressed the inconvenience of this regulation upon my memory. The Duchess of Edinburgh, daughter of the Czar, entered in the Prince of Wales's party. She looked an irritable, dissatisfied, bilious person; and I was told that she was always talking about being "the daughter of the Czar of all the Russias" and that it galled her that even the Princess of Wales took precedence over her. Those were the good old days of tie-backs, made of elastic and steel, a sort of modified hoop-skirt with all of the hoop in the back. The tie-back was the passing of the hoop and its management was an education in itself. I remember mine came from Paris and I had had a bit of difficulty in learning to sit down in it gracefully. Well--the Duchess of Edinburgh had not mastered the art. She was all right until she sat down and looked very regal in a gown of thick, heavy white silk and the most gorgeous of jewels--encrusted diamonds and Russian rubies, the latter nearly the size of a pigeon's eggs. Her tiara and stomacher were so magnificent that they appalled me. The Prince and Princess sat down and every one else followed suit, the daughter of the Czar of all the Russias among the others in the front row. And she sat down wrong. Her tie-back tilted up as she went down; her skirt rose high in front, revealing a pair of large feet, clad in white shoes, and large ankles, nearly up to her knees. There was a footstool under the large feet and they were very much in evidence the whole evening, posing, entirely against their owner's will, on a temporary monument. The awful part of it was that the Duchess knew all about it and was so furious that she could hardly contain herself.