CHAPTER XXXII 



The Duke's foibles and the press — Another ' paper ' marriage prophesied — 

 Illness and death of his grace — Character — The fair sex and the late 

 Duke — A reason why the Duke never married — His Inirial— Altera- 

 tions of the late Duke's Piccadilly mansion — A ' running footman.' 



The times to which I am alluding were then as rife 

 in ' freaks of Nature ' as at present, but the bolder 

 front (to place as nice a construction as possible on 

 the coarseness of that period) which Society showed 

 permitted many of these objects of a perverse curi- 

 osity to be either visited by the elite, or exhibited in 

 their houses, in much the same way as some of their 

 descendants have since admitted dancing-girls and 

 prize-fighters. However, for these and other reasons 

 I refer the reader to the quotation from Pope on the 

 title-page of this work. For the aforesaid reasons, 

 combined with Queensberry's tastes, it is not surpris- 

 ing to find it recorded by the journals of that day 

 that he was still a connoisseur in all things pertain- 

 ing to the flesh — horse or biped. Though eighty-five, 

 he no doubt created in the journalistic mind a belief 



