Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical SketchesMcCarthy, Justin
History
Modern Leaders: Being a Series of Biographical Sketches
McCarthy, Justin
Biography
This then is the character which the son of the Queen of England bears,
in the estimation of the vast majority of his mother's subjects. Almost
any and every one you meet in London will tell you, as something beyond
doubt, that the Prince of Wales is dull, stingy, coarse, and profligate.
As for the anecdotes which are told of his habits and tastes by the
artists and officials of the theatres which he frequents, I might fairly
leave them out of the question, because most of them that I have heard
seem to me obvious improbabilities and exaggerations. They have
nevertheless a certain value in helping us to a sort of historical
estimate of the Prince's character. Half the stories told of the humors
and debaucheries of Sheridan and Fox are doubtless inventions or
exaggerations; but we are quite safe in assuming that the persons of
whom such stories abound were not frugal, temperate, and orderly men. If
the Prince of Wales is not a young man of dissipated habits, then a
phenomenon is exhibited in his case which is, I fancy, without any
parallel in history--the phenomenon of a whole watchful nation,
studying the character and habits of one whose position compels him to
live as in a house of glass, and coming, after years of observation, to
a conclusion at once unanimous and erroneous. But were it proved beyond
the remotest possibility of doubt that the Prince is personally chaste
as a Joseph, temperate as Father Mathew, tender to his wife as the elder
Hamlet, attached to his mother as Hamlet the younger, it would still
remain a fact indisputable to all of us in London, who have eyes to see
and ears to hear, that the Prince is addicted to vulgar amusements; that
he patronizes indecent exhibitions; that he is given to the
companionship of profligate men, and lends his helping hand to the
success and the popularity of immoral and lascivious women.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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