The Daily Picayune New Orleans - Sunday, May 19, 1895

BEHIND THE SCENES.
Movements of Actors in the Great Drama of the World.
Personal and Social Events Occurring Abroad.
Instructive and Entertaining Panorama of Royal and Imperial Life.
Reported Daily for the New Orleans Picayune by the Marquise de Fontenoy.

Queen Victoria has been greatly scandalized and shocked by the accounts which have reached her of the skirt and ballet dancing performances in public out in the antipodes of the earl of Yarmouth, eldest son and heir of the marquis of Hertford, and has, I learn, written a very severe letter to Viscountess Gormanston, under whose patronage and in which precense the young earl commenced his high kicking and skirt dancing in the Theatre Royal of Hobart. Lady Gormanston is the wife of the governor of the colony of Tasmania, and her majesty evidently regards the better half of the governor as representing the feminine features of British royalty. The countess of Hopetoun, on the other hand, has come in for the cordial approval of the queen and has received a letter under an Osborne date to that effect. Lady Hopetoun, it may be remembered, declined, like her husband, the earl, to have anything whatsoever to do with Lord Yamouth; refrained from inviting him to the government house at Melbourne and not only socially ignored him but even gave him to understand that those who showed him any courtesy would incur their displeasure. In spite of this he made his appearance on the stage at Melbourne in behalf of some charity and in aiddition to the scandal caused by his presence there was a still further amount of unpleasant talk created by the disappearance of one of the organizers of the entertainment with all the money taken at the door. I may add that Lord Yarmouth's father, the marquis of Hertford, who, like the marchioness, was formerly a member of the queen's household and of her immediate entourage, entirely approves of Lord and Lady Hopetoun's attitude towards his son, and expresses himself with the utmost bitterness in London against Lord and Lady Gormanston, whom he charges with having encouraged his son to defy the proprieties. Nor can anyone be surprised at the indignation of the marquis since the unpleasant talk created in England by the news of Lord Yarmouth's terpsichorean performances out in Australia reached London just in the very thick of the Oscar Wilde scandal. The queen draws the line at private performances and mere masculine impersonations of feminine dramatic roles. She did not object to her youngest son, the late duke of Albany, taking female parts in comedies and farces, and among others who have achieved distinction in this particular phase of the dramatic art, are her favorite equerry. Alee Yorke, brother of Lord Hardwicke and Mr. Herbert Gardiner, who holds the post of minister of agriculture in the present cabinet. But she considers that Lord Yarmouth overstepped the bounds of propriety and taste altogether.