A PRINCELY GREENGROCER.

Press, Volume XLIV, Issue 6843, 30 August 1887, Page 2

A PRINCELY GREENGROCER.

[Evening Standard, July 11. J

High Society in Vienna has received a ] .hock. A Prince belonging to one of the f most ancient and illustrious families in the ' Empire has so far forgot himself as to go ' into trade. Prince Alfred yon Wrede. like ' many other German noblemen with a long pedigree and a rather short purse, has found that the task of living as befits his rank is too much for him. Readers of cheap serial novels will recollect that when gentlemen of rank and fashion tind themselves in this "situation they enlist as privates in the armies of foreign powers, and emerge in a few years, with their maimers unimpaired, as Generals ot Division and Governors of provinces. The Prince yon Wrede does not seem to have thought of this expedient. His judicious friends pointed out that no doubt something might be done for him. If he would enter tho Civil Service of his Royal and Imperial Majesty Francis Joseph 1., a small place—with a small salary attached—might be procured. The young nobleman did not jump at the chance. Perhaps he thought that several hours of daily drudgery, at tho wages of a butler in a fashionable family, was not tho way to regain his lost fortune. He determined to go into trade, and being evidently a young man of spirit, with no nonsense about him, he has proceeded to carry out his intentions in the most thoroughgoing fashion, by setting up a greengrocer's shop in a suburb of Vienna. Moreover, he is going to attend to the business himself. His Serenity will stand behind the counter and sell kreutzer's-worths of spring onions and fresh cabbages. The bow which may have charmed Archduchesses will bo wasted on young Jewesses coming in to cheapen a stick of horseradish or a bunch of carrots. The Prince will personally superintend the sale of hundredweights of i coal, and himself adorn the outside of his shop with ornamental legends glorifying ! his wares. Perhaps he will keep a boy in time ; but from the (we admit) scanty mii formation in our hands, we are led to infer that he is in a small way at present, and is . obliged to perform these little oßlccs for i himself. No wonder Court Chamberlains - shake their heads, and great ladies whis- - per sadly about him in the drawing-rooms of Vienna.

If he had been an Englishman, the afl'air would have been less startling. There are, it is true, occult distinction fn the gentility of different trades, even among ourselves. A gentleman, as Sidney Smith pointed out some time ago, may brew, but he must not bake. Similarly, one of the novelists of the " American school " has informed us that the dealer in cotton is not as the dealer in leather in the eye of the refined and truly Democratic society of cultured Boston. Howsoever these things be, it would appear that nowadays a gentleman need not be ashamed to turn an honest penny by buying and selling. The younger sons of Peers are glad to sit on a high stool in Mincing lone or Lcadenhall street, in order to gain an insight into tea and indigo. Gentlemen of quite as good families as the Wredes go on the Stock Exchange. The letting of cabs for hire is not thought beneath the dignity of tho holder of more than one great historic title. Nor is retail trade forbidden. Millinery is becoming quite a fashionable vocation with certain members of the "classes," nor is it confined to the fair sex. If report speaks true, there arc to he found certain gallant officers, late of her Majesty's Service, who have turned their swords into scissors, and now compete with graduates of Girton and Newnham in supplying the latest things in bonnets and trimmings to the general public, or to such members of it as are inclined to pay what are known as "West-end prices. , ' Greengrocery, <it is true, is not a line that has been extensively pursued so far. But there is no reason why It should not be. The Austrian Prince's courageous experiment may be the beginning of a "new departure," and Soon we may have gentlemen-fruiterers, as well as military milliners ana titled livery-stable keepers. After all, the distinction between growing cabbages and selling them is not essential; and the gentleman farmer has been quite recognised for a very long time past. But, indeed, it is only in comparatively recent times that trade has been considered as beneath the dignity of a mail of family. In the age of chivalry, curiously enough, the idea does not seem to have existed. Anybody might engage in trade, and most people were eager to get the chance. Gentlemen were soldiers, statesmen, or freebooters, as the case might be, because those professions lay nearest to their hands; but when an opportunity cf becoming merchants offered itself, they grasped at it eagerly'enough. Edward IV. of England was one of the largest dealers in his time. He held a whole fleet of merchantmen, and occasionally managed a " corner " in English wool with the skill and boldness of a Wall-street operator. Half the great German families, whose aristocratic pride is so great that they can only intermarry with reigning Houses, are descended from merchant princes. The Fuggers were weavers of Augsburg, though nowadays a Fuggcr would lose his rank if he allied himself with a daughter of the Howards or the Nevilles. The Wclshers were money-changers, the Belnns tile burners, and the Scbonborns hereditary butlers to the Archbishop of Maenz. It is recorded of Louis the Saint, Landgrave of Thuringa, that he entered partnership with a travelling pedlar, and took a regular share of his annual profits. To come down to much later times, it is proved that Francis of Lorraine, the husband of Maria Theresa, was in business in a quiet but profitable way as an army contractor and wholesale clothier.

It would be an advantage in more than one country if the nobility took to imitating the example of the Prince yon Wrede. The vicissitudes of great families is a fertile, if rather hackneyed, theme for the moralists. England affords a good many texts for them to preach upon. It is not not very long since the heir to one of the oldest of our Peerages was a working carpenter, who, believing it difficult to support a title on thirty shillings a week, wisely forbore to claim his rights. At the present moment there,are many people who believe that the lawful inheritor of a great Scotch Peerage, celebrated in the annals of the Jacobite rebellions, is a working miner in a Welsh village. In England, however, we fortunately know nothing of " Ebenbiirtigkeit," and only the actual head of a noble House enjoys a title of honor. Consequently, noblemen who "go under "subside qufetly into the mass of commoners, aud we havo no proud but impoverished patrician caste. Iv Germany an aristocrat cannotget rid of the privileges, or rather tho burdens, which are transmitted with hia blood. He may be as poor as the nearest " bauer," and live like him, but he cannot marry out of his rank. Moreover, every son of v nobleman ia saddled with the ancestral title. Thus there ore Princes who have no estates, and Counts who would bo glad of any employment that would provide them with the means of paying for their dinner at the table d'hote. In Hungary, ragged noblemen used to be so common before the reforms of ISIB that there was a regular term for these "onesandalled" aristocrats. It is one of the great social problems of the Continent to know what to do with these gentlemen. They do not take to politics, and if they did they could hardly live by it. The learned professions, which, Mr Matthew Arnold says, have an aristocratic tinge in England, are plebeian on the Continent. No Prussian Junker would think of making his son a doctor, a schoolmaster, or a clergyman. There is the Army of course, and it is the great resource of the German and Austrian Adel. Still, every gentleman cannot be a lieutenant in the Cavalry, or a captain of Infantry ; nor is' there room for all the candidates in the ill-paid and overcrowded Civil Services. It would be a good thing for German society if it were regarded as by no means abnormal or derogatory for a gentleman of good family to go into business. For one thing, the distance between the classes— which, -pace Mr Gladstone, is smaller in England than In any other European conntry—would be abridged; and, for another, the competition in the matrimonial market would be reduced. For, as things stand now, a marriage with the daughter of a wealthy trader or financier j istheone really lucrative profession open | to the young; aristocrat in most Continental State--, not exclusive of Democratic and Kepub i.-an France.