The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1912-06-21
EDWARD WITS EDUCATION
HE MIGHT HAVE BEEN A PRIG
 HAD HE BEEN COMPLACENT.
Prince COnsOrt Trained His Son as a Hot House Plant and the Queen Sought to Regulate All His Actions, and Withheld Responsibility-Thc Baccarat Scandal Was a Result.
Especial laCorrespondence of The N. Y. : .ss.+sF Eyeninr PostA


 Especial Correspondence of The N. Y. :.s.>Es Evening Post)
 London, June 7.-The most interest ing news. of the day is the publica- tion of supplement to dictionary Not the sort of thing. one would say. to make much of a stir. But when the dictionary in question is the Die tiOnary of National Biography, and the supplement is volume containing the first competent memoir of King Edward the Seventh, the incident ob- viously deserves a place among the events of the year. It's importance depends largely on the fact that the bfographer. Sir Sidney Lee, has been able to draw. upon flrst-hand informa- tion not previously accessible.
 The education of a prince can never ly possible to imagine more foolish attempt at it's solution than the meth cd actually, adopted in the training of the late King. The Prince Consort tried to bring up his eldest son as a hot-house plant. AS a boy and as 8 youth the heir of the throne was not allowed the wholesome discipline of free association with others of his own age. His meetings with the compan- ions carefully chosen for him were rigidly supervised. His natural dis- inclination for study was increased by l. II. most prominent subject, history, was treated as a matter of mere facts and dates Fiction was withheld as de- moralizing, and even Sir Walter !Scott came under the spaternal ban" Resi- dence at Oxford, so effective in widen ing the outlook of. the average under graduate, was made practically worthless to the Prince of Wales, ow- ing to the restrictions with which it was fenced about. Tn short, the whole course of his education, instead of being a fit preparation for career of cisely of the kind that, in the case of a complacent victim, would have pro- duced a mollycoddle. or a ,prig.
 Tied to the Queens Apron Strings.
 Worst of all, the royal purpose to shelter the Prince of Wales from the world was persisted in after he had passed the period of adolescence. He was twenty years of age are when vsns h,s toria's anxiety for his protection be- came still more sintense. "Abounding in maternal solicitude. she never ceas- ed to think of the Prince of Wales as a boy to whom >she owed parental guidance. the more so because he was fatherless. A main effect of his fath- CTS death was. consequently to place him, in his mothers view, almost in permanence in statu pupillarI She claimed to regulate his actions In al- most all relations of life" An extract from one of the Queens letters to, her uncle, King Leopold. supports this con clusion of the biographer. Speaking of her late husband'ss plans. she said: And no human power will make me swerve from what he decided and wished. apply this particularly as regards our oa1ildren-Bertie, etcs-for whose future he had traced everything so carefully. I am also determined that no one. person. may he be ever so good, ever So devoted among my servants is to lead or guide or dictate
 Queen. victoria's autocratic disposi-