The only dissenter, in fact the only person who received an invitation but deliberately absented himself, was Lord Harleston.
“I am damned if I will make a fool of myself to please the Prince of Wales or anybody else for that matter,” he had told Robert. “Could anything be more ridiculous than a lot of grown men dressed up like ninnies, prancing about with wigs on their heads!”
“Where is your sense of fun?” Robert had asked him mockingly.
“Fun? Do you call that fun?” Lord Harleston snorted. “I would rather roll about on the grass on Hampstead Heath with a pretty girl.”
Robert laughed.
“Who would not?”
Now to Lord Harleston’s dismay Alva Vanderbilt had said,
“I visualise you as Sir Galahad or perhaps you would prefer to be Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. You would look so handsome, Selby,
