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 Taking the Town
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Chalking in Central Park. 8:45 PM. Photo: JH. |
June 1, 2009. Yesterday was a sunshine sparkling Sunday in New York. Warm enough for sunbathers in the parks and by the rivers with a slight cool breeze that picked up and rushed the trees by nightfall.
Prince Harry came to New York on Friday and was on his way back to London by Saturday evening. But in the meantime, he took the town – the little that he saw of it and that it saw of him. He has his mother’s common touch and his own zest for life.
On Friday he visited Ground Zero and paid his condolences. On Saturday morning before the polo match on Governor’s Island he visited a community organization for kids in Harlem called Harlem’s Children Zone with Prince Seelso of Lesotho.
The polo match was a fundraiser for Sentebale, the charity that Harry and Prince Seelso have created to help poor children and AIDS orphans in Lesotho. Free to the public, the VIP tent brought up to $50,000 per table and there was a $500 ticket for picnicking on the grass. |
| Prince Harry. |
Nacho Figueras. |
The world already knows Madonna was there, looking very retro-Carnaby Street, with her adopted son, as was the designer Marc Jacobs and his fiancé Lorenzo Martone; Kate Hudson, Chloe Sevigny, LL Cool J, not to mention Debbie Bancroft, Cornelia Guest, Debbie Bancroft, Amy Sacco, Samantha and Aby Rosen, Euan Rellie and Lucy Sykes, Bronson Van Wyck, Byrdie Bell; the first lady of New York State, Michelle Paterson, Donna Karan, David Lauren, Veronica Webb, Rachel Roy.
Polo, long called the Sport of Kings, is a rich businessman’s sport in America, as opposed to its earlier incarnation in the first half of the 20th century when the main poloists were the scions of American wealth, many of whom had estates on Long Island. Cornelia Guest’s father, Winston Guest, was one of the few American 10-goaler indoor poloists.
The crowd who turned out at Governor’s Island came to see England’s Prince Charming, the boon to the tabloids, a celebrity/boldfaced crew scions and sirens of glitz and bling. |
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| Nacho Figueras and Prince Harry embrace. |
| Cecile Bonnefond and Prince Harry. |
| Larry Boland and Prince Harry. |
| Prince Harry shows off his Paiget. |
| Samantha Barnes, Sabina Belli, Mark Cornell, Nacho Figueras, Cecile Bonnefond, Prince Harry, Aisha Thompson, and Prince Seeiso. |
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America knew nothing about the personality of Prince Harry, aside from his famous parents, grandmother, brother, and of course his tabloidal adventures in late-night club-going. What they discovered was an enthusiastic fellow with a good sense of humor, a deftness with a polo mallet, a sensitivity to the world surrounding him and especially to the children. Right after the polo match, he made a visit to the USS Intrepid and then was on a plane back to the UK. No nightclubbing over here for the dear boy, tch-tch. And don’t think the crowd who paid tribute (and big bucks) to see him at wield his mallet on Governor’s Island wouldn’t have like to seen him in action in the late night clubs. But uh-uh; the Palace calls it.
Americans have always loved the English princes. The first great visit was that of Prince Harry’s great-great-great-grandfather Edward VII, who, as then Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales, son of Queen Victoria, came to America at age 19, almost a hundred fifty years ago in 1860.
Bertie, as he was called by his family, visited Canada and then came into the US via Detroit (almost forty years before it became the auto city). He traveled to Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Washington, and finally arrived in Manhattan in early October of that year.
At 19, the prince already was working his way into the character of international playboy prince that he was to become — much to the dismay of his mother. In Philadelphia he’d seen the famous sopra no Adelina Patti and was so knocked out by her (and her performance — Verdi called her the greatest vocalist that he ever heard) that he requested an audience with her after the show.
In New York half a million people lined the harbor and the streets to catch a glimpse of him as he and his entourage made their way in carriages up to the new Fifth Avenue Hotel on Madison Square.
The Fifth Avenue Hotel was where Lincoln had stayed only months before when he made a speech at Cooper Union which launched him eventually to the Presidency.
The hotel’s reading room was a hub for some of the town’s most prominent businessmen, politicians and operators like Boss Tweed, Jay Gould, Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt. General Ulysses S. Grant launched his Presidential campaign at a dinner at the hotel. It was a cool place for a young visiting prince.
The social highlight of Albert Edward’s visit was a ball at the Academy of Music, a large concert hall/theatre located on Irving Place and 14th Street. The Academy of Music preceded the Metropolitan Opera House as the premiere venue for opera in New York.
Three thousand were invited to the ball for the prince. The city’s grandest grandees and biggest bankrolls were all scrambling to get a ticket. There was the inevitable question: who would have the honor of dancing with the prince. Everybody loved the prince. No doubt dreams of marital possibilities danced in the heads of many young women and many a mother and father. |
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| The hotel's reading room, where the city leaders and operators gathered. |
| The hotel's dining room, where the Prince of Wales could see the locals dining. |
The ball turned out differently than planned and ended up just this side of catastrophe. The weight of the three thousand guests was more than the floor in part of the concert hall could bear, and it collapsed — although only two people were slightly injured in the crush — and the prince, thankfully, made it back to the Fifth Avenue Hotel in one piece. Oh those Americans.
Prince Albert Edward after his visit to the city ventured north to Boston where he was presented to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Oliver Wendell Holmes, three of the greatest Americans. |
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In Boston the prince was also introduced to a man named Ralph Farnum, then an octogenarian who was the sole survivor of the Battle of the Bunker Hill in the American Revolutionary War against Great Britain and George III, the great-grandfather of Prince Albert Edward. The prince was evidently very charming to Mr. Farnum who was quoted as having expressed no hard feelings over the prince’s visit.
Prince Albert returned to England by sea in a special frigate escorted by three other warships. The trip across was hazardous and they ended up way off course so that their arrival in England was long over due. The voyage took three and a half weeks, and there was a moment when they had no idea back at the palace if the prince would be returning. However, as we know, he did. He was Prince for the next forty-two years after that as Mama lived on and on and on.
In 1924, Prince Albert Edward/Edward VII’s grandson Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, Prince of Wales, known as David to his family, came to America, just like his great-grandnephew Prince Henry this past weekend, for a polo match.
The Prince started out his trip, just like his grandfather did in 1860, in Canada. When he crossed over the border at Detroit, he was entertained by the automotive tycoon Henry Ford and his son, Edsel Ford at the Ford estate Fairlane.
He arrived in New York via Long Island where he’d gone ashore in Glen Cove and immediately went to an estate lent to him by James A. Burden, “Woodside in Syosset. The 120 acre estate came with stables for riding and a farm to provide the supplies for the family and staff, (now the Woodcrest Country Club).
The Burden estate was within driving distance of Meadow Brook where the international polo event took place. This was a very prestigious affair and played by some of the greatest poloist in the history of the sport in America – including Devereux Milburn, Tommy Hitchcock, Winston Guest. The polo club invited European royalty, Indian maharajahs and others prominent in the sport, and many of them attended. The games were accompanied by a lively social life on the players’ private estates in the area.
Besides the games, the Prince of Wales was feted wherever a hostess could get him. He was guest of honor at a party given by Mrs. James Mackay at Harbor Hill, the fabled estate of her son Clarence Mackay (later famous as the father-in-law of songwriter Irving Berlin). Although he was mainly out of sight for the public, his presence titillated New York society who had houses on the North Shore. A popular song in America the following year was “I Danced With the Man Who Danced With the Girl Who Danced With the Prince Of Wales.” Swoon.
The Prince had a reputation for his time that was somewhat like that of Prince Harry. He loved the nightlife, jazz and parties best exemplified by American popular culture, and he adopted a lot of it. It was one of the things that gave him his reputation early on for being frivolous. He also was, comparatively speaking – considering that he was heir to the throne of what was the greatest military and economic power in the world (about to enter its nadir as it were) – he was an informal-ish fellow. He liked good times, music, dancing, and as it turned out, older, married, domineering women.
All of these characteristics and qualities along with his lofty international title, made him Prince Charming for Americans.
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| The prince on his visit to Henry and Edsel Ford in Detroit. |
The prince. |
He barely saw the city that trip (thirty years later as the Duke of Windsor, he’d have an apartment with his duchess in the Waldorf Towers). He did visit the American Museum of Natural History, had a short ride on a subway, and played polo with the great Ziegfeld star Will Rogers.
When the Prince of Wales returned to England in October 1924, he declared his trip to America as “one of the most wonderful times of my life.” Prince Harry pronounced his visit “fantastic,” and his forebear Prince Albert Edward loved every minute of it too.
It’s been a mutual love affair forever. |
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