Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London LifeKirwan, Daniel Joseph
History
Palace and Hovel; Or, Phases of London Life
Kirwan, Daniel Joseph
London (England) -- Description and travel; London (England) -- Social life and customs
This fair-faced, flabby-skinned youth, in the lobster colored and laced
coat, who stood up in the open carriage, (hired from the New York
Corporation hack-driver-in-chief, and charged for in the bill afterward
rendered, at five times the real price,) was no less a personage than
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, Duke of Cornwall, Fellow of Trinity
House, Colonel of a Regiment of Foot, a General in the British Army,
(like Captain Jinks,) Baron Renfrew, Duke of Rothesay, Earl of Dublin,
and eldest son of Queen Victoria that is, and in the future to be King
of England and Defender of the Faith, by the Grace of God and the
permission of the Radical English Trades Unions.
[Sidenote: A CHANGE FOR THE WORSE.]
He was not a very bad looking lad of nineteen or twenty, that
sunny afternoon, as he bowed repeatedly and raised his Generals'
chapeau, with its plume of feathers, and doffed it to the radiant
republican female faces, and curtesied like a backward school boy,
in acknowledgement of the wild shouts which pealed upward in the
clear atmosphere, although no spectator there could have accused
him of having an intellectual or cultured face. How well we can all
now remember, to our shame, the manner in which he was petted, and
caressed, and toadied, and dined, and wined, until in the estimation
of his toadies he had almost attained the stature of a God, this boy
with the retreating chin and imbecile face--this hope and pride of the
Guelph family.
Still with all the marked and inherent imbecility of a descendant of
George III in his features, the young scion of royalty had not, at that
time when I first saw him, developed the seeds of immorality, want of
honor, meanness, and utter sottishness which have since made his name
infamous among his subjects, and despised by the princes of Europe.
The young lad for whom America could not do too much honor in feteing
and feasting, has since surrounded himself with pimps, panders,
parasites, and blackguards, of the lowest kind.
His name is a bye word of scorn in the British metropolis, and for a
lady of rank or position to be seen three times in his neighborhood, is
certain dishonor to her and her relatives.
It was nearly ten years after that bright sunny day, in Broadway, with
its shouting multitudes and noisy cheers, before I again saw His Royal
Highness Albert-Edward Prince of Wales.
One night, in going through High Holborn, and being without any settled
purpose as to where and how I should spend the evening, I accidentally
noticed the blazing gas lamps of the "Casino," a well-known dancing
hall, frequented by the loose livers and aristocratic idlers of the
English Capital.
After a moment's hesitation I entered and found the place--as is
usual on summer evenings at all the London dancing halls--pretty well
crowded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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