WHEN ROYALTY TRAVELS "INCOG."

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 65, 3 August 1912, Page 2

WHEN ROYALTY TRAVELS "INCOG."

The Prince of Wales, who has gone to stay in Paris in order to improve his French ,has adopted an incogito. Paris knows him simply as the Earl of Chester (says Pearson's Weekly). Though this is his first such experience, it will certainly not be his last. All modern Royalties, with two exceptions, find an incognito at times an absolute necessity. It is only the Czar and the Kaiser who have always refused to veil their identity, however thinly. The disguise of an incognito i 9 usually very thin indeed. Every one knew, for instance, when the Duke of Lancaster was travelling, that the owner of this title was King Edward. But incognitos serve two purposes. When a sovereign or a prince travels merely incognito he simply means to save his brother Royalties and himself the trouble and expense of State visits. He prefers to see them inform-' ally. I3ut when the phrase "strict incognito" is used, it is a request to be left in absolute privacy. Queen Alexandra has often travelled as the Duchess of Lancaster, but she has also paid flying visits to Paris under the strict incognito of Mrs. Stephens. Princess Victoria, too, has stayed there as plain Miss Jones. Our present King and Queen have seldom found incognitos necessary, and never since they came to the throne. But when Duchess of York, Queen Mary frequently travelled as the Countess of Killarney. King Edward had quite a large selection of incognitos. When Prince of Wales he usually preferred to appear abroad as the Earl of Chester, the Earl of Carrick, Baron Renfrew, or the Earl of Cornwall. As these titles attach to that of the Prince of Wales, when he became King he abandoned them for that of the Duke of Lancaster. ■Sometimes excessive zeal on the part of the police tends to defeat the object of the incognito and draw attention to the Royalty who wishes to be left alone-. King Edward, when a Prince, was often troubled in this way. Once when in Naples he was annoyed by the constant presence of two detectives. Sending for the chief of police, he invited him to bring his men into the Royal sittingroom. Offering them cigars, he gave them a good-humored lecture on the way in which their work ought to have been done. And ended with: "I don't like your clearing people out of my way when I want to go anywhere. I don't mind being a prince. I do seriously object to being treated as an epidemic disease!" And the crestfallen police retired to ponder more tactful methods. King Alfonso, who used to travel as the Marquis of Cavadonga, had the same fault to find with the French police. When staying at Biarritz once he made it his daily amusement to try to dodge them. After a vain attempt one day on the golf course to baffle his shadowers, he turned back and held out his wrists, remarking: '■lf it is the Marquis of Cavadonga you want, I am he. Bring out your handcuffs. My only prayer is that you may never know the tortures that wring a murderer's soul, as I do!" King Edward often used to talk of the little incidents that happened when he travelled incog. Strolling through the Louvre once with an equerry he noticed a couple of Americans who kept turning from the pictures to eye him furtively. At, last one of the two, a lean, elderly man. with a goatee beard, came up and asked squarely: "Sir, are you the Prince of Wales?" "Mv name is Renfrew," was the genial answer.

The American muttered bitterly: "Confound you. young man, you've lost me twenty dollars," and stalked off disconsolate.