Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/592

 purpose of visiting Alfonso XII, the new king of Spain, at Madrid. Thence he passed by rail to Lisbon to enjoy the hospitality of Luis I, king of Portugal.

On 5 May the Serapis reached Portsmouth, and the prince was met there by the princess and their children. The English people welcomed him w ith enthusiasm, and at the Guildhall on 19 May he expressed anew his delight with the great experience. The Indian tour conspicuously broadened the precedent which the prince had set in boyhood by his visit to Canada. The personal tie between the princes of India and English royalty was greatly strengthened by his presence among them in their own country. In future years the prince's two sons successively followed his Indian example. His elder son, the duke of Clarence, in 1889-90, and his younger son and successor, George (when Prince of Wales), in 1905-6, both made tours through India in their father's footsteps. When King George visited India for the second time in the winter of 1911-2 after his coronation he went over much of the same ground and observed many of the same ceremonies as his father had done thirty-six years before.

The prince at once resumed his usual activities at home and on the European continent. The fascination which France exerted on him from boyhood had fully ripened, and in 1878 the popularity, which came of his repeated presence in Paris, acquired a signal strength. His position there was based on ever broadening foundations. Even when he was a favoured guest of the imperial court, he had not limited his French acquaintance to imperial circles. Louis Philippe and most of his large family, into whom the prince consort's kindred had married, had been exiles in England since 1848, and the prince from boyhood shared his parents' intimacy with them and their partisans. Thoroughly at home in Paris, he always succeeded in the difficult task of maintaining the friendliest intercourse with persons who were wholly alienated from one another by political sentiment or social rank. He enjoyed visits to the duc and duchesse de la Rochefoucauld-Bisaccia (15 Oct. 1874) and to the duo d'Aumale at Chantilly (22 Oct. 1874). La comtesse Edouard de Pourtales, le comte La Grange, le marquis de Breteuil, and all the royalist members of the French Jockey Club who stood outside the political sphere, were among the most intimate of his French associates, and with them he exchanged frequent hospitalities. The marquis de Galliffet, one of Napoleon's generals, who afterwards served the republic, was many times a guest at Sandringham. At the same time the prince was on equally good terms with republican politicians of all views and antecedents. On private visits to Paris the prince gained, too, admission to theatrical and artistic society. Freeing himself of all official etiquette, he indeed so thoroughly explored Parisian life that he was in person as familiar to the public of Paris as to that of London. To the French journalists and caricaturists he was a 'bon garçon,' an arbiter of fashions in dress, 'le plus parisien des anglais,' even 'plus parisien que les parisiens.' If the press made somewhat insolent comment on his supposed debts, his patronage of fashionable restaurants, his pupilage to his mother, and his alleged intimacies with popular favourites of the stage, the journalistic portrayal of him as a jovial Prince Hal was rarely ungenial (cf., L'Oncle de l'Europe, 1906, passim).

The International Exhibition in Paris of 1878 gave the prince an opportunity of publicly proving his identity with French interests in all their variety. The prince presided over the royal commission which was formed to organise the British section, he impressed its members,  among whom were the leaders  of British commerce, with his business capacity as well as his courtesy. He spared no effort in promoting the success of the movement, which was intended to give the world assurance of France's recovery from the late war, and of the permanence of the new republican form of government. The prince entertained the members of the English commission at the Café de la Paix on 29 April before the exhibition opened. In the days that followed he together with the princess took part in Paris in an imposing series of public celebrations, and his presence deeply impressed the French people. On 13 May he attended in state the opening ceremony, which was performed by Marshal MacMahon, the French president. With the marshal and his ministers he was at once on the friendliest terms and lost no opportunity of avowing his affection for their country, and his strong desire for a good understanding between her and England. He was the president's guest at the Elysée, and Lord Lyons, the English ambassador, whose acquaintance he had made at Washington, gave in his honour a brilliant