“Well, she took liberties, that's all,” said Boswell. “For instance, in
her 'Side Talks with Men' she had something like this: 'Napoleon--It
is rather difficult to say just what you can do with your last season's
cocked-hat. If you were to purchase five yards of one-inch blue ribbon,
cut it into three strips of equal length, and fasten one end to each
of the three corners of the hat, tying the other ends into a choux, it
would make a very acceptable work-basket to send to your grandmother
at Christmas.' Now Napoleon never asked that woman for advice on the
subject. Then there was an answer to a purely fictitious inquiry from
Solomon which read: 'It all depends on local custom. In Salt Lake City,
and in London at the time of Henry the Eighth, it was not considered
necessary to be off with the old love before being on with the new, but
latterly the growth of monopolistic ideas tends towards the uniform rate
of one at a time.' A purely gratuitous fling, that was, at one of my
most eminent patrons, or rather two of them, for latterly both Solomon
and Henry the Eighth have yielded to the tendency of the times and gone
into business, which they have paid me well to advertise. Solomon has
established an 'Information Bureau,' where advice can always be had from
the 'Wise-man,' as he calls himself, on payment of a small fee; while
Henry, taking advantage of his superior equipment over any English king
that ever lived, has founded and liberally advertised his 'Chaperon
Company (Limited).' It's a great thing even in Hades for young people
to be chaperoned by an English queen, and Henry has been smart enough to
see it, and having seven or eight queens, all in good standing, he has
been doing a great business. Just look at it from a business point
of view. There are seven nights in every week, and something going on
somewhere all the time, and queens in demand. With a queen quoted so low
as $100 a night, Henry can make nearly $5000 a week, or $260,000 a
year, out of evening chaperonage alone; and when, in addition to this,
yachting-parties up the Styx and slumming-parties throughout the country
are being constantly given, the man's opportunity to make half a million
a year is in plain sight. I'm told that he netted over $500,000 last
year; and of course he had to advertise to get it, and this Xanthippe
woman goes out of her way to get in a nasty little fling at one of my
mainstays for his matrimonial propensities.”
“Failing utterly to see,” said I, “that, in marrying so many times,
Henry really paid a compliment to her sex which is without parallel in
royal circles.”
“Well, nearly so,” said Boswell. “There have been other kings who were
quite as complimentary to the ladies, but Henry was the only man among
them who insisted on marrying them all.”
“True,” said I. “Henry was eminently proper--but then he had to be.”
“Yes,” said Boswell, with a meditative tap on the letter Y. “Yes--he had
to be. He was the head of the Church, you know.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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