The Petticoat Men Read Free Page B

to be passing.’
    ‘Did anything of any nature likely to offend her absent husband, occur between you on these visits?’
    His voice was loud and clear and royal. ‘Certainly not.’
    ‘Thank you, Your Royal Highness.
    ‘No questions,’ murmured the prosecution.
    But public opinion and journalistic coverage was not deferential in some cases, and apart from the unforgivable fact that The Times had actually reported the case and mentioned the Prince , an also unforgivable – nay, disgusting – article was splashed insolently over the pages of one of the less conservative newspapers.
The great social scandal to which we have frequently alluded has now become blazoned to the world through the instrumentality of the Divorce Court. Every effort was made to silence Sir Charles Mordaunt; a peerage, we believe, was offered to him. All the honours and dignities that the Crown and Government have it in their power to bestow would readily have been prostituted to ensure his silence.
We have no hesitation in declaring that if the Prince of Wales is an accomplice in bringing dishonour to the homestead of an English gentleman; if he has deliberately debauched the wife of an Englishman; – then such a man, placed in the position he is, should not only be expelled from decent society, but is utterly unfit and unworthy to rule over this country or even sit in its legislature.
    However, today, the verdict had been given that had led straight to the Prince’s champagne-imbibing and other delightful activities with his mistress in Chapel-street. Lady Harriet Mordaunt, aged twenty, the offending wife – who had certainly received letters from various gentlemen not her husband and who had recently given birth – was pronounced insane by the court, to the relief of many people (except her husband who therefore could not obtain a divorce). Because if she was insane, she was not, therefore, responsible for her wild accusations against other gentlemen, including His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales – who had given her two high-stepping ponies, certainly.
    Which her husband had shot dead.
    Mr Gladstone had already spoken gravely to Queen Victoria.
    The Queen could not bear Mr Gladstone: his booming voice, his ridiculous high collar, his business antecedents, his pompous manner in addressing her.
    ‘But I feel sure, Your Majesty,’ the Prime Minister insisted in his – it is true – somewhat booming tones, ‘that giving the Prince some real work to do, letting him see some official papers, perhaps sending him to Ireland, might be of great benefit to the renown of Your Majesty’s family.’
    But Her Majesty had answered disdainfully that she would not hear of giving her son and heir any work of importance, as he was not fit to have any hand at all in affairs of state. Her Majesty was now in the ninth year of mourning following her husband’s death. She wore black at all times, and refused almost all requests to be seen in public or to carry out royal duties, but continued to ask for money – from the public purse – to maintain her family’s position. She knew perfectly well that the unbecoming (not to say rakish) activities of her married, eldest son, the Prince of Wales, did not help her case but she did not quite understand perhaps the feeling about the monarchy that was growing in parts of the country. The Queen advised Mr Gladstone, with much certainty, that her subjects loved her.
    It was Mr Gladstone who understood that royalty was becoming more and more unpopular in certain quarters with the almost-disappearance of the reigning monarch; he felt it might be difficult to weather another such ‘revelation’ as the present one. (He did not quite put it into those words.) But when he delicately raised with the Queen the subject of the purpose of the Royal Family, she remarked to her intimates that he addressed her as if she were a public meeting.
    The Prince himself, ensconced with his family and his coterie in Marlborough