File:Princess Victoria of Wales.jpg

Identifier: withinroyalpalac00font (find matches)
Title: Within royal palaces : a brilliant and charmingly written inner view of emperors, kings, queens, princes and princesses ...
Year: 1892 (1890s)
Authors: Fontenoy, marquise de, pseud
Subjects: Courts and courtiers
Publisher: Philadelphia, Hubbard Pub. Co
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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Text Appearing Before Image:
due to an anointed of the Lord, if not in esse, at any rate in
futuro, I prefer to continue to consider him in the light of a
warm-hearted friend, as an honorable and kindly gentleman
in every sense of the word, and as a man whom, either as
Prince or peasant, any one would be proud and happy to pos-
sess as a friend.
With traits of character such as these, it is only natural that
he should be exceedingly popular with all classes. Indeed it
is open to question whether the English people do not prefer
the presence to the absence of his faults. For the latter are
those of a generous, pleasure-loving nature, and without
these petits vices, as the French call them, he would run the
risk of being regarded with the same disfavor as his father,
the Prince Consort, whose blameless life and faultless char-
acter led to his being considered by the English people at
large as something of a prig.
On the whole, they are right to view the faults of the Royal
Welshman with indulgence. For, aside from the natural dis-
Text Appearing After Image:
Princess Victoria of Wales.
122 WITHIN ROYAL PALACES.
inclination to provoke outbursts of ill-temper on the part of
so good-humored and jovial-hearted a Prince, there is a uni-
versal disposition to abstain from all individual criticism or
censure of his conduct. He lives in an atmosphere of such
loyalty that it may almost be described as sycophancy, and
although he may be made the object of collective and indirect
criticism from those who do not come into actual contact with
him, yet there is no one who ventures personally to point out
to him the right and wrong of his ways. If he has remained
an honorable and true-hearted gentleman, and if his record
is free from all but mere venial sins, it is due to his own sound
common-sense, his innate honesty of purpose, and his in-
grained horror of everything that is mean and vulgar. And
with regard to this distinction between collective and Individ-
ual criticism, it is well to bear in mind that all the sentiments
which foreigners are disposed to regard as indicating dis-

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