DWALA was a social success, an object of multiple affection. His large grave ways, his modesty, his kindliness, made him personally beloved. He was, of course, always a ‘native’; there was no escaping that. But to be tolerated, if you are tolerated everywhere, is social greatness.
One thing he lacked, they said—the sense of humour. The tiny shock that makes a human joke was too slight for his large senses. But humour, after all, is a rather bourgeois quality.
He was adopted from the beginning, pushed, trumpeted, imposed, by that powerful paper the ‘Flywheel.’ He had captivated Captain Howland-Bowser, its correspondent, at the first encounter. The ‘Flywheel,’ descending after a century, from its Olympian heights, into the arena of popular favour—by gradual stages, beginning with the great American ‘pill competition’—had put itself on a level with the rest by adding a column of ‘Beau Monde Intime’ to its daily issue. The thing was done on the old Olympian scale. The column was not entrusted to a chattering magpie-newswoman, or to a broken-winged baronet, as is the way with lesser sheets; but to an eagle of the heights—the famous Captain Howland-Bowser, our modern Petronius, the Grand Old Man of Pall Mall; the Buck from Bath, as envious youngsters called him; the well-known author of ‘Furbelows’ and the ‘Gourmet’s Calendar.’
The fateful evening is recorded in his ‘Memoirs of a Man about Town,’ that farrago of entertaining scandal, which proved a mine of wealth to his sorrowing wife and family, to whom he bequeathed the manuscript when he died, as a consolation for a somewhat neglectful attitude in life:
‘It was at Lady L——’s that I first met Prince D——, that “swart monarch” whose brilliant career, with its astonishing dénouement, made so much stir in 19—. I remember that evening well. We had supper at the Blackguards; homards à la Cayenne with crème de crevettes, cailles Frédérique, salade Howland-Bowser, &c., &c. Tom Warboys was there, gallant Tom; Harry Clarke, of Sandown fame; Lord F—— (Mrs. W——’s Lord F——); R——, the artist; poor H——, who shot himself afterwards; and a few others. W-rb-ck W-m-ss came in later, and delighted the company with some of his well-known anecdotes. We formed a brilliant little group in the dear old club—Adolphe was in his zenith then. The Prince was in great form, saying little, but enjoying all the fun with a grave relish which was all his own. R—— was the only blemish in the galaxy; il faisait tache, as the volatile Gaul would say. H—— was getting hold of him at the time to choose some pictures for the Prince’s “’umble ’ut” in Park Lane. R—— raised a general laugh at his own expense when I pressed him for an estimate of Grisetti’s “Passive Resistance,” the gem of our little collection. The knowingest men in London were agreed that it was not only one of the wittiest pictures of the year, but the girl the man was kissing was the most alluring young female ever clapped on canvas. R—— valued it at twenty pounds—the price of the frame! We roared. It had cost a cool two thousand, and was worth at least five hundred more. So much for experts! He was very chapfallen the rest of the evening.
‘However, revenons à notre mouton, as the gay Parisians said, when the siege was raised and bottines sauce souris went out of fashion. It was at the supper-table that Prince D—— revealed that extraordinary delicacy of perception which first opened your humble servant’s eyes to what a pitch refinement can go. His manners, by-the-bye, were unimpeachable: stately, and yet affable. Non imperitus loquor. But the amazing thing was his palate. There are delicate palates in London—though many who pose as “men of culture” have little or none—but the delicacy of Prince D——’s was what I should call “superhuman,” if subsequent events had not proved that this extraordinary gift had, by some topsy-turvy chance, fallen to the lot of one who, I suppose, after all, we must now acknowledge “sub-human.”
‘I had just brought to what I thought, and still think, perfection, a mixed claret, on which I had been at work a long time. The waiter had his orders. “Fiat experimentum,” said I, and three bottles, unmarked, were brought. Every one at table was given a liqueur glass of each to taste. The company mumbled and mouthed them, and each one gave a different opinion—all wrong. The poor “gamboge-slinger” admitted at once that he didn’t know port from burgundy: I had suspected as much.
‘“Well, Prince,” said I, “what’s your opinion?” To my astonishment I saw that he hadn’t touched a drop. He sat quite still, leaning back in his chair; his nostrils quivered a little. Suddenly he put out one of his long fingers—his hands were enormous—and touched what I shall call, for short, “Glass A.”
‘“That is a good wine,” he said, “the same as we had at home night before last.” He turned to poor H——.
‘“Château Mauville,” said H——.
‘“And that,” he said, touching Glass B, “is thin and sour; it smells of leather. And that,” he said, touching Glass C, “is a mixture of the two, and very good it is.” Saying which, he drank it off and licked his lips.
‘“Gentlemen!” cried I, jumping up; “this is the most extraordinary thing I ever heard. Without tasting a drop, the Prince has guessed exactly right. It’s Château Mauville, which I have mixed—a sudden inspiration which came to me one morning in my bath—with an inferior Spanish claret, tinged with that odd smack of the wine-skin, which I thought would fit in with the rather tea-rosy taste of the Mauville.”
‘You can imagine the excitement which this event produced in that coterie of viveurs. From that moment his success in London was assured. The story got about, in a distorted form of course, as these things will. I was obliged to give the correct version of it in the “Flywheel” a few days later.
‘It was I that introduced him to Lord X——, who had been complaining for years that there wasn’t a man in town fit to drink his Madeira. Trench by trench the citadel of public opinion was stormed and taken. How well I remember,’ &c., &c.