AN EMBARASSED DUKE.

Dunstan Times, Issue 1121, 26 October 1883, Page 3

AN EMBARASSED DUKE.

It is no secret (says a London correspondent of the Melbourne Age) that Her Majesty the Queen has been suffering from an excess of melancholy which at one time gave rise to serious anxiety on the part of her medical attendants, at another even culminating in rumours of an abdiction. It is, perhaps, the fact of the Queen’s indisposition'whtch has rendered criticism more tender w;;h respect to the expose which Her Majesty has permitted to take place, without apparently any attempt to divert the contretemps of the financial difficulties of so poor a connection of the royal family -is the Duke of Tcck, the portionless German princeling who was permitted to win the hand of the Queen’s cousin, the popular Princess Mary of Cambri- g ■. Five thousand a year is doubtless a small sum on which to maintain the elevated position i.i society which circumstances force upon those near to the throne, 'the Duke’s circumstances were however, well known to the bride’s family before the knot was tied,, but ir, was thought that With the aid of a colonelcy or two, and other mid pickings, the Duke and Duchess would be able to jog along very fairly, especially when the Queen threw in to their other resources the use of Remington Palace rent free These sanguine anticipations appear not to have been justified by events, an - ! a long career of luxurious impecuuiosity eliminated the other day in the public sale of the p-rsonal effects of the straitened Duke and Duchess, The auctioneer male matters worse by making some evidently inspired ami utterly fallacious excuses for a coarse of proc dure the motives for which were only too palpable to the meanest intelligence. The Teok affait was farther complicated by the appointment of the Duke of Connaught to another colonelcy, the public disgust at which culminated m a good deal of censure being passed on the conduct of of the royal family in allowing the dirty linen of the dynasty *o be washed out of doors. In this stale of feeling even the hiihcst personage in the realm was exposed to popu ar dissatisfaction. It may, however, be stated that the Duchess of Teck’s brother, the Duke of Camhri Ige, has for some time paid, and still continues to pay, the entire expenses of the high class education which is being given to his sister's children, and whio i are. as may be supposed, by no means inconsiderable. His Royal Highness has gone beyond this, and offered to make out of his private income a no st generous allowance to his impecunious re 1 ives, the sole condition being, I am told, that his hi other-in-law should abandon certain ex]ensive connections Which, if not the S'e one, are at any rate tie main cause of bis present poverty. The D. ke having declined to accede to this highly reasonable condition, the Com-mauder-in-Chief has very propie.ly held aloof from contributing to the continuance of a state of affairs which no one solicitous for the happiness of the Duchess would be willing to perpetuate. It is probable that the Queen has made similar stipulations before coming to the rescue, and ns these have been disregarded the result has been the same as in the case of the Duke of Cambridge. The above statement of facts will show how groundless is the last attempt to attach an a-persion to the stainless domestic conduct of the Queen.