Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/627

 He rejoiced to escape from the constraints of public life into the unconventional ease of privacy. At times he enjoyed practical joking at the expense of close friends. But while encouraging unembarrassed social intercourse, he tacitly made plain the limits of familiarity which might not be over-stepped with impunity. He loved the old fashions of domesticity. His own and his relatives' birthdays he kept religiously, and he set high value on birthday congratulations and gifts.

While he derived ample amusement from music and the drama, chiefly from the theatre's more frivolous phases, he showed small capacity for dramatic criticism. A man of the world, he lacked the intellectual equipment of a thinker, and showed on occasion an unwillingness to exert his mental powers. He was no reader of books. He could not concentrate his mind on them. Yet he was always eager for information, and he gathered orally very varied stores of knowledge. A rare aptitude for rapidly assimilating the outlines of a topic enabled him to hold his own 2SEo. in brief t*lk with experts in every subject. He did not sustain a conversation with much power or brilliance ; but his grace and charm of manner atoned for any deficiency of matter. If his interest lay more s love of in persons than in things, he remembered personal details with singular accuracy. He illustrated his curiosity about persons by subjecting all his guests at Sandringham to the test of a weighing machine, and by keeping the record himself. At the same time he deprecated malicious gossip, and his highest praise of anyone was that he spoke no ill-natured word. He was never happy save with a companion who could talk freely and cheerfully. Solitude and silence were abhorrent to him.

A loyal friend, he was never unmindful of a friendly service, and he was always faithful to the associates of His loyalty y earl d jj e wag fond in friendship. ,. i / j jj of offering his friends good ad- vice, and was annoyed by its neglect. He could be at times hasty and irritable ; but his anger was short-lived, and he bore no lasting ill-will against those who excited it. His alert memory enabled him from boy- hood to death to recognise persons with sureness, and many stories are told how instantaneously he greeted those to whom he had been once casually introduced when meeting them years afterwards in a wholly unexpected environment. His circle of acquaintances at home and abroad was probably wider than that of any man of his time. But he never seems to have forgotten a face.

Physical courage was an enduring characteristic. By bodily peril or adverse criticism he was wholly un- moved - I f hi* native shrewd- ness stimulated an instinct of self-preservation, he never showed any sign of flinching in the face of danger. He admired every manifestation of heroism, and in 1907 he instituted the Edward medal to reward heroic acts performed by miners and quarrymen. Two years later a like recogni- tion was designed for brave service on the part of policemen and firemen. While religion played no dominant part in his life, he was strict in religious observances, and required those in his employment at Sand- ringham to attend church regularly. He had a perfect tolerance for all creeds, and treated with punctilious courtesy ministers of every religious persuasion. He was greatly attached to dumb animals, and his love for dogs excelled even that for horses. A favoured dog was always his companion at home and abroad. On tombstones in the canine graveyard at Sandringham there are many inscriptions bearing witness to the king's affection for his dog companions. The latest of these favourites, his terrier, 'Caesar,' was led behind his coffin in the funeral procession. XVI As the heir to the crown, the eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert was the subject of portraiture from his infancy. The earliest portrait apparently is the large chalk drawing by Sir George Hayter in 1842. As a child the Prince of Wales was painted several times by Winterhalter, the court painter, and was also drawn and painted in miniature by Sir William C. Ross. Most of these early portraits, some of which are familiar from engravings or lithographs, remain in the royal collection at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle. The prince was painted in groups with his parents and brothers and sisters by Sir Edwin Landseer and Robert Thorburn, as well as by Winter- halter. A portrait by W. Hensel was painted in 1844 for King Frederick William of Prussia, one of the prince's godfathers. Other portraits were also drawn by R. J. Lane and artists who enjoyed the queen's confidence. As the youth of the Prince of Wales happened to synchronise with the invention and great development of portrait Portraits.