Hungarian Princess Travels With Menagerie of Wild Pets: Her Highness Lwoff-Parlaghy Comes to Washington With A Couple of Young Wolves, a Few Alligators and Other Beasts in Her Baggage

It Happened on
June 21, 1908

Detroit Free Press June 21, 1908

HUNGARIAN PRINCESS TRAVELS WITH MENAGERIE OF WILD PETS
Her Highness Lwoff-Parlaghy Comes to Washington With a Couple of Young Wolves, a Few Alligators and Other Beasts in Her Baggage.

Special to The Free Press
Washington, June 20.—Princess Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy is in town.

And that’s not all. With her are three maids, by courtesy French, a first, a second and a third attaché, a marshal, a courier, a butler, a chef and for good measure three or four other men servants.

And that’s not all. With her also is one small yappy, white woolly dog, a pair of guinea pigs badly in need of a haircut, a couple of young wolves, an ibis, a falcon, several owls and a family of alligators.

And that’s not all. With her also are several drays of the gaudiest luggage that any local hotel has ever sheltered. It is all printed red, white and green, the Hungarian colors.

All these, princess, suite, menagerie and impedimenta, at the Willard. They arrived from Hot Springs, Va., at 3:45 this afternoon in the private car Magnet, attached to a regular Chesapeake & Ohio train. They proceeded to the hotel after some delay, in half a dozen carriages, and after considerable excitement on the part of the hotel employees, her highness was finally established in a suite which comprised almost the entire southeast wing of the second floor. The princess had ordered a room with a balcony and was justly indignant when she found she had been relegated to the fourth floor, where there was no balcony.

In vain did the manager explain that the lower floors were not in use in summer, that they were closed and entirely dismantled. They must be opened and refurnished. Madame wanted a balcony and must have a balcony. The closed rooms were opened and furnished in the shortest possible time and Madame La Princess Lwoff-Parlaghy was installed in a “suite” of something like twenty rooms with a balcony.

She has what figures as her second sitting room exclusively for her menagerie and is lamenting tonight that she decided to ship a young bear, a dear little tiger kitten and a furry little lion cub direct to her home at Nice. They were the stars of the collection and it is liable to be dull without them for the next month until her highness sails.

The Princess Lwoff-Parlaghy is the most picturesque lady who has enlivened Washington for many moons. She was here for a few days last February but attracted very little attention after the fiction that she was here to paint the president had been denied, both at the White House and by madame herself. She is Hungarian by birth and Russian by marriage, but that did not last long. Like any American girl she had to get rid of her Russian prince. The princess is said to be a painter of some note in Europe.

After the princess got half settled in her apartments she was promptly informed that it would be necessary to register herself and suite. She told them to send the register up, which was done. She also desired the privilege of flying the Hungarian flag from the hotel’s flagpole. The management balked at this.

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