THE PRINCE OF WALES

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXV, Issue 18613, 8 July 1930, Page 13

THE PRINCE OF WALES

WOULD RATHER BE MAN THAN MONARCH. PROUD, HUMAN AND LONELY. Does the Prince of Wales keep a diary in which he speaks to his own soul? If he does it will be a more human document than any written by king or prince since Marcus Aurelius, that greatest of all the Roman emperors, wrote his “Meditations.” For here is a man born in the purple of kings, cradled amid proud traditions, knowing from childhood that, given health and life, it would be his lot to hold a sceptre over the greatest empire the world has ever known; trained and educated more rigidly than ever was prince in Russia—for Queen Mary was very strict in the training of her children—who came to manhood to be surrounded by a sea of adulation and fulsome, sickening flattery. He has been Prince Charming not only to the civilised world, as well as a barbaric world outside the pale of our culture, but to every pretty, ambitious princess in Europe. And yet remains a bachelor. There are many unpublished anecdotes of the Prince, which reveal his character more truly than his chronicled story. One or two which have been told of his childhood show the real man that was to come. When he was eight years of age he was getting a grounding in Catechism and church lore. He asked his tutor: “Is everyone equal in Heaven?” “Yes, sir.” “And will great grandmamma go there?” “Yes, sir.” “And yet everybody be equal. Oh, great grandmamma will not like that!” A Hardy Boyhood. A child of eight who could thus read the overbearing, dominant character of Queen Victoria, did not lack either shrewdness or commonsense. It was inevitable that the Prince must have a hard childhood, a hard boyhood, an over-studious youth, held in hand by too tight a rein. Thackeray, in his “Four Georges,” gives a grim picture of the mother of George 111., who never was tired of dinning into the ears of her eldest born, “Be a King, George!” And who, when she asked a younger son of her what he was thinking of, received the unexpected reply: “I was thinking that if I live to be a man, and I have a son, I will never let him have a childhood as unhappy as my own.” I am not suggesting that the Prince’s lot was akin to that of his ancestor, for he had a happy childhood, with this qualification, that the training for a throne begins soon after the cradle. I am justified in this belief by a little incident which occurred in Northern Italy during the last year of the war. The British railway transport officer at a certain Italian station was busy with his chart when he heard a voice ask, “Is my train in, please?” Without looking up he asked, “Which train is that?” and received the answer, “The Royal train.” When he looked up he saw that it was the Prince of Wales. “Your train will be in in a quarter of an hour from now. sir,” he said. “Won’t you come in my hut and have a little refreshment whilst you are waiting?”

The Prince thanked him, but suggested, “Couldn’t you get a little spot of something for Lord Cavan? He’s marching up and down like a caged Bengal tiger. I daren’t speak to him.” The officer saluted, went outside, approached Lord Cavan, and, whilst giving him the information, asked him to have a little refreshment while he

waited. Lord Cavan, being human after all, consented, “had a little nip,” then stalked on to the platform once more. The officer respectfully invited the Prince to have another, but he refused unless his host joined him, which the latter promptly did. As the Prince sipped his whisky and soda, he gave a thankful sigh, and said: “Ah, this is better than being at home!”

It is through such anecdotes that I read the life, the ways, the very thoughts of the Prince. His every nay is a revolt against the rigid training of his youth. He has a passionate love of life, of all things human, and a fierce hatred of pomp and purpled circumstance. That is why he loves to get to the wilds, face to face with nature, even with danger, with a few human souls who can make him forget the loneliness which is the lot of princes. That is why he is at home everywhere save in a ceremonious court.

He is a man such as that Roman poet who wrote: “I am a man, and everything human is dear to me." He goes among the miners of Northumberland and Durham, sees their wretched huts, and says with fierce intensity, “They are damnable!" While in Somerset, hearing of a local strike of miners, he sends the miners’ fund a contribution of ten pounds, with a priceless letter of sympathy. In Bradford, after going through the mills, he gives the laughing advice to women to wear longer dresses for the sake of the Yorkshire wool industry. He becomes the first Master of Marine, and makes a speech with an eloquent tribute to our sailors, the guardians of the Empire. Let him get away from pomp and circumstance, and ceremonial. and he can be so greatly human.

I think this is the reason why he is a bachelor; he refuses to be the father of princes; he will not condemn his children to the barren etiquette of a court, especially as it is the proudest court in Europe. As a rancher, a farmer, a huntsman, a rider, a soldier, he is happy. Time after time he eluded his guardians during the war, and found his way to the trenches, where he shared his cigarettes with the Tommies, often ate the same rude fare, joined in the chorus of their songs, and enjoyed himself more royally even than his impromptu comrades. When he gave the dinner to the V.C.’s no voice rang merrier than his own in the trench choruses. Poor Prince! He is a modern. Hamlet for whom the world is too big. He is the proudest, shyest, most human, and most lonely man in life, and too little at the same time. Everybody loves him. Few will envy him.