LONDON. CARLTON HOUSE AND THE STREETS ADJOINING [It is a cloudless midsummer evening, and as the west fades the stars beam down upon the city, the evening-star hanging like a jonquil blossom. They are dimmed by the unwonted radiance which spreads around and above Carlton House. As viewed from aloft the glare rises through the skylights, floods the forecourt towards Pall Mall, and kindles with a diaphanous glow the huge tents in the gardens that overlook the Mall. The hour has arrived of the Prince Regent’s festivity. A stream of carriages and sedan-chairs, moving slowly, stretches from the building along Pall Mall into Piccadilly and Bond Street, and crowds fill the pavements watching the bejewelled and feathered occupants. In addition to the grand entrance inside the Pall Mall colonnade there is a covert little “chair-door” in Warwick Street for sedans only, by which arrivals are perceived to be slipping in almost unobserved.]

SPIRIT IRONIC What domiciles are those, of singular expression, Whence no guest comes to join the gemmed procession; That, west of Hyde, this, in the Park-side Lane, Each front beclouded like a mask of pain?

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR Therein the princely host’s two spouses dwell; A wife in each. Let me inspect and tell. [The walls of the two houses—one in Park Lane, the other at Kensington—become transparent.] I see within the first his latter wife— That Caroline of Brunswick whose brave sire Yielded his breath on Jena’s reeking plain, And of whose kindred other yet may fall Ere long, if character indeed be fate.— She idles feasting, and is full of jest As each gay chariot rumbles to the rout. “I rank like your Archbishops’ wives,” laughs she; “Denied my husband’s honours. Funny me!” [Suddenly a Beau on his way to the Carlton House festival halts at her house, calls, and is shown in.] He brings her news that a fresh favourite rules Her husband’s ready heart; likewise of those Obscure and unmissed courtiers late deceased, Who have in name been bidden to the feast By blundering scribes. [The Princess is seen to jump up from table at some words from her visitor, and clap her hands.] These tidings, juxtaposed, Have fired her hot with curiosity, And lit her quick invention with a plan.

PRINCESS OF WALES Mine God, I’ll go disguised—in some dead name And enter by the leetle, sly, chair-door Designed for those not welcomed openly. There unobserved I’ll note mine new supplanter! ’Tis indiscreet? Let indiscretion rule, Since caution pensions me so scurvily!

SPIRIT IRONIC Good. Now for the other sweet and slighted spouse.

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR The second roof shades the Fitzherbert Fair; Reserved, perverse. As coach and coach roll by She mopes within her lattice; lampless, lone, As if she grieved at her ungracious fate, And yet were loth to kill the sting of it By frankly forfeiting the Prince and town. “Bidden,” says she, “but as one low of rank, And go I will not so unworthily, To sit with common dames!”—A flippant friend Writes then that a new planet sways to-night The sense of her erratic lord; whereon The fair Fitzherbert muses hankeringly.

MRS. FITZHERBERT [soliloquizing] The guest-card which I publicly refused Might, as a fancy, privately be used!... Yes—one last look—a wordless, wan farewell To this false life which glooms me like a knell, And him, the cause; from some hid nook survey His new magnificence;—then go for aye!

SPIRIT OF RUMOUR She cloaks and veils, and in her private chair Passes the Princess also stealing there— Two honest wives, and yet a differing pair!

SPIRIT IRONIC With dames of strange repute, who bear a ticket For screened admission by the private wicket.

CHORUS OF IRONIC SPIRITS [aerial music] A wife of the body, a wife of the mind, A wife somewhat frowsy, a wife too refined: Could the twain but grow one, and no other dames be, No husband in Europe more steadfast than he!

SPIRIT OF THE YEARS Cease fooling on weak waifs who love and wed But as the unweeting Urger may bestead!— See them withinside, douce and diamonded. [The walls of Carlton House open, and the spectator finds himself confronting the revel.]