He often used to say that she was perfect save for one fault, and that annoyed him beyond measure.
The Princess was always late-incurably unpunctual, and the Prince, believing that "punctuality is the politeness of princes," loved to be exact to the minute; used to boast that he was never late in his life.
When they were going to any function he was always ready ahead of time and ten minutes before the start would send up to the Princess to warn her.
The reply would come back, "I shall be ready dear." But she never was ready.
The hour would strike. The gentlemen-in-waiting would all be on the qui vive. The Prince would grow impatient and send up again. Reassuring answers would be returned, but no Princess. The Prince would fume and fret and threaten to go on alone and finally, twenty minutes late, the Princess would sail in with her stereotyped smile and amiable manners, as if unconscious of anything wrong. But the Prince could never forgive the perpetual waiting. He often said it was like a pea in one's boot-intolerable.
And when annoyed by waiting he sometimes criticized her bitterly; one day he was told she was dressing her hair and would be down soon. As the maid disappeared he cried: "Hair indeed; she has no more hair than her brother and he's as bald as an oyster." Another time I praised her smile. "Yes," replied the Prince, "her smile's the best part of her fortune; it has made her popular and it is easy for her to smile for she can hear nothing: she's as deaf as a post."
Some English aristocrats could never forgive Edward's loose morals. There was a certain Duke who would not meet the Prince, even when he had invited himself to dine with the Duchess. "Is the Duke really ill?" I asked his wife on one such occasion. "Dear no!" she replied. "He's locked in the w.c. on the third floor, with a novel, and will not appear till the Prince has gone. We all say he's ill."
When he was on the Riviera, Edward usually lived at Cannes. Mrs. Vyner, who was the queen of the English colony there, had always been one of his special favorites. And no one wondered at it, for Mrs. Vyner had the genius of charming, sympathetic manners. He disliked the Prince of Monaco, who was serious and a friend of the German Emperor, whom he loathed. Yet he frequently ran over to Monte Carlo to have a fling at the tables, and at one visit there he met Lady Brougham in one of the gambling rooms. As every one knows, she had a lovely villa at Cannes, and in fact her husband's father was the person who really brought Cannes into notice and made it the favorite winter resort of the best English set.
Lady Brougham was a delightfully pretty and vivacious woman, always beautifully gowned and up-to-date in the sense that she would be furious if the date were not tomorrow rather than yesterday. Her husband was a large, heavy, pompous person with unfeigned reverence for what he regarded as principles, which were usually mere conventions: he took himself seriously; I always thought of him as a sort of English Chadband. When Prince Edward met Lady Brougham that evening in the rooms of Monte Carlo, he said to her after a few moments' talk, "Dear Lady Brougham, I should like to dine with you next Sunday evening. May I?"
"How kind of you," exclaimed the lady. "We should be only too proud."
"All right," he said, "I will write you," meaning he would send her a list of people he would wish to meet him, "and we'll have a little game of 'bac' afterwards, eh?"
Lady Brougham professed herself delighted and they parted. As soon as she could find him, she told Lord Brougham the Prince was going to dine with them on the next Sunday, but when she mentioned the little "bac" afterwards, Lord Brougham put down his large flat foot decisively.
"I cannot have any gambling in my house on Sunday; it is against my principles."
"Nonsense," cried his wife, "don't be disagreeable; your principles are only bearishness."
"No, no," he said, and his long upper lip came down and his jaws set in the way she had learned thoroughly to dislike. "I draw the line at gambling on Sunday nights. I cannot allow it."
He stuck to his guns till at last his wife, unnerved and disgusted, cried, "Then you must tell the Prince so yourself, for I won't, and then we shall never be on his 'list.' I think it is beastly of you."
The pompous person went off nevertheless to beard the Prince. When the Prince saw him, he cried in his German accent, "Oh, Lord Brougham, I have just met your charming wife and she was good enough to say I might dine with you next Sunday."
"Surely, Sir," replied Lord Brougham, bowing, "we would be delighted, but my wife tells me that you want to play baccarat afterwards. It will be Sunday, Sir."
"Does that make any difference?" asked the Prince.
"Yes," said Lord Brougham, blurting out the unpleasant truth, "it is against my principles to have gambling in my house on Sunday."
The Prince looked at him quietly. "I am very sorry, Lord Brougham; in that case there will not be any 'bac.' I shall write to Lady Brougham. I would not hurt your principles for anything."
"I hope, Sir," began Lord Brougham, again pompously, but the Prince bowed slightly and turned away. He had had enough of the large gentleman's principles.
Next morning Lady Brougham received a little note from him which ran thus:
Dear Lady Brougham:
I am sorry but I shall not be able to dine with you on Sunday next as I must really go to Mentone to pay a duty visit.
I hope I have caused you no inconvenience. I should hate to do that for you are always charming to me.
Yours sincerely,
Edward.
"There," said the lady, flouncing into her husband's room about twelve o'clock next day, "that is what comes of your silly principles. I wish all your principles were at the bottom of the sea. They make life not worth living."
But Lord Brougham was full of self-content till he found that a good many people who gave zest to life did not care to meet him after they had heard the story; in fact, he began to wish that his principles had not been so rigid when it was too late, for one peculiarity of Edward was that he never forgot or forgave a slight to his dignity. His vanity was at least as imperious as Lord Brougham's principles. From that time to the day of his death he never dined in the Villa Eleonore.
Edward was most generous and kindly so long as things went in accord with his wishes. At a reception by the Vyners one night, the Prince walked up and down the room with his arm on my shoulder while I told him one or two new stories. Suddenly I said to him, "You know, Sir, I mustn't accept any more of your kind invitations as commands because I must get to work; I must withdraw from all this London life and try to make myself a writer."
"A little gaiety will do you good from time to time," he replied.
"No, Sir," I said. "Please believe what I say; I must get to work."
He seemed huffed, greatly put out. "You are the first," he said, "who ever spoke to me like that."
"It's my necessity, Sir," I said, "that drives me to work. I shall always be proud of your kindness to me."
"A strange way of showing it," he said, and turned away.
Once later at Monte Carlo I was talking to Madame Tosti, the wife of the well know London musician, when the Prince came directly across the room to speak to us. I don't know why, but I felt sure he meant to be rude to me, so I took the bull by the horns and copied Beau Brummel's famous word to King George. "Now I leave you," I said to the lady, "to your stout friend." And I turned away, but I could see that the Prince was furious.
I must end these stories of the Prince with the wittiest thing I had ever said.
One night he went to the house of the Duchess of Buccleuch, whose husband didn't like him because he thought him a loose liver. The Prince was in extraordinarily good form and won everyone-really found a kindly and appropriate word for twenty or thirty people, one after the other. I told him his success had been as astonishing as Caesar's at the battle of Zela, when he afterwards wrote to his friend Amantius, "Veni, vidi, vici" (I came, I saw, I conquered). "Of course," I went on, "that's not what Caesar really said; what he really said was, 'I saw, I conquered, and-I came!'" The Prince laughed heartily. "You are incorrigible," he said. So I was encouraged to tell him the famous witticism of Degas. Some one spoke condemning Minette or Muni, as it is often called in French, meaning the kissing of the woman's sex. Degas replied with the old saying: "Quelle triste vieillesse vous vous preparez!" (What a dreary old age you are making for yourself!) The Prince pretended not to understand what I meant, and when it was explained, thought the practice unmanly.