Another German Prince figures in my reminiscences, though he claimed the title par excellence. He belonged to a very different order of prince, and of man too, to the distinguished men I have just named. This is Prince Puckler Muskau, the author of a slight book of travels in England, that attracted some attention about thirty years ago. He appears to have been something of a fop, and a great deal more of a gossip, a fashionable bird of passage, going from place to place in search of ideas, and apparently, from his books, not finding many worth the carrying away.

When in Ireland, his Highness was mobbed by enthusiastic Celts, desirous of getting up a demonstration to express their hatred of what was English, in an affectation of intense admiration for what appeared to them most antagonistic to it. Paddy made a blunder as usual, misled by a resemblance in the sound of the name, and Prince Muskau was fêted as the Prince of Moscow, one of the first Napoleon’s creations in the person of the gallant but unfortunate Marshal Ney. If the Irish had known how little of a Bonapartist was the object of their noisy regard, Prince Puckler would have been roughly handled. When he reached London, ” the German Prince’” found more discerning friends ; some, however, chose to take liberties with his title, and metamorphosed it into ” Prince Pickle and Mustard.”

From: Grantley Fitzhardinge Berkeley: My life and recollections. (1866)