RECOLLECTIONS OF NEW CROWN PRINCE.

Marlborough Daily Times, Volume X, Issue 314, 21 June 1888, Page 3

RECOLLECTIONS OF NEW CROWN PRINCE.

L “A Former Tutor” of the new #Crown Prince oi Germany coniriTvutcs some scattered recollections of liis royal tutor to this month’s Murray’s Magazine. Ho does not accept the common estimate of his character. “Prince‘William, when I knew him, was a frank, wellmannered, genial little boy.” The writer of the article visited Germany to learn the language in 1873 and through an introduction to a certain learned profesr or obtained the post of teacher of English to the young Prince. Previous to commencing his tutorial duties, he was ushered into the presence of the Crown Princess—tho present -Empress Victoria —and he gives the following account of his interview : the princess royal. She was anxious, she said, that

her son should acquire a good English accent; she herself was told by her friends when she went Home that she had lost the art of talking pure English. I replied that in that case my ears must have been dulled by my residence abroad, and I plumed myself not a little upon my courtier-like answer till I was told afterwards that it was great presumption in me to have answered at all. The Princess went on to say that she wished Prince William to read Milton and Bunyan. Paradise Lost, or at least the first few books, we accordingly studied with the most painstaking care. On one occasion Her Eoyal Highness sent for me to say what 6ho wished read after Paradise Lost was finished, and I was regretfully compelled to acknowledge that we had only arrived at the second hook, and that there was little prospect of “ our wandering steps and slow ” reaching the gates of Paradise for at least another twelvemonth.

The young Prince was apparently a very apt pupil. lie could write English well, and knew as much of English history and English literature as hoys of fifteen at an ordinary English public school.

A BIRTHDAY LETTER TO QUEEN

VICTORIA. His mistakes in composition (writes his sometime tutor) were no doubt of a different class. He wrote Germanisms, while an English lad’s faults would rather be slipshod grammar or colloquialisms. But ho had no difficulty in expressing himself in English so as to make his meaning perfectly distinct; while as for talking, lie spoke it just as fluently as I did. On one occasion, I remember, he brought me a birthday letter to Queen Victoria to correct. I ivent through the first page with him, pointing out that we should turn this phrase this way and alter the other to something else, till I stopped short and told him that the whole letter was perfectly intelligible, and that probaoly his grandmother would sooner receive a letter from him than a letter from me. THE NEW CROWN PRINCE’S CRIPrLED ARM. Much has been said and written about Prince William’s crippled arm that is far from accurate. I had been in the habit of sitting close beside him every day for weeks, before I ever noticed that his arm was in any way different from that of other people. Even then I only observed it because my attention was called to it by others. Then I perceived that the left arm was always in almost exactly the same attitude, and that the Prince could only move it very slightly, bending it a little up or a little down from its normal position across his body, as though it were fixed in an invisible sling; and that if he wished to use it to steady the sheet of paper on which he was writing, lie was obliged to raise it on to the table with the other hand. No doubt this lack of power is a great inconvenience and loss, especially to so ardent a soldier as Prince William, for it compels him, I understand, to ride only horses that have been specially trained for his use, but it is fortunately no disfigurement whatever.