The Daily Telegraph, which broke the news of the shindig, said the prince and about 20 friends attended a weekend party believed to be at a Norfolk estate owned by a guest's father.
The paper said the guests had been sworn to silence, quoting Thomas van Straubenzee, a likely partygoer, as saying: "I'm very sorry but I have got to keep it a secret. I hope you understand."
The bash - thrown just before Harry was due to leave for an expedition to the Arctic - surely disappointed the paparazzi, who were kept in the dark.
A 2008 royal bachelor bash thrown for Peter Phillips, William's cousin, was tabloid gold, yielding tales of drunken escapades across the Isle of Wight and even - it is alleged - a grainy picture of a royal rump.
The British media has also speculated about Kate Middleton's bachelorette party, with one tab reporting that her sister Pippa will be throwing a "Dirty Dancing"-themed soiree at the family home in the wealthy English village of Bucklebury.
Just remember: No one puts her highness in the corner.
* In news of the former American royal family, Patrick Kennedy, the 43-year-old former Rhode Island congressman and son of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, is engaged to be married to Amy Petitgout, a New Jersey sixth-grade teacher.
It's the first good news in a long time for a New Jersey teacher.
Kennedy, a lifelong bachelor, got engaged Saturday in Rhode Island to Petitgout, former aide Sean Richardson said yesterday. No wedding date has been set.
Richardson said they met about a year and a half ago at an event in New Jersey. Petitgout has a 3-year-old daughter, Harper, from a previous marriage.
Liz love letters go on block
Before becoming a bride eight times over, Elizabeth Taylor was a 17-year-old starlet scribbling letters to her first fiance, charting on pale pink stationery his progression from her one-and-only to the one who got away.
"I've never known this kind of love before - it's so perfect and complete - and mature," Taylor wrote to William Pawley on May 6, 1949. "I've never loved anyone in my life before one third as much as I love you - and I never will (well, as far as that goes - I'll never love anyone else - period)."
Teenagers really don't know themselves, do they?
Taylor, who died last week at age 79, was engaged to Pawley in 1949, just before her first marriage to Nicky Hilton. More than 60 of the letters she wrote him between March and October of that year (if it were today, we'd only have worthless tweets and emails) will be auctioned in May by RR Auctions of Amherst, N.H., which bought the letters two years ago from Pawley, who lives in Florida.
"My heart aches & makes me want to cry when I think of you, and how much I want to be with and to look into your beautiful blue eyes, and kiss your sweet lips and have your strong arms hold me, oh so tight, & close to you . . . I want us to be 'lovers' always . . . even after we've been married seventy-five years and have at least a dozen great-great-grandchildren," Taylor wrote, showing she also had a future in romance novels.
The online auction, set for May 19-26, will also feature letters Taylor's mother wrote to Pawley after the engagement ended, including one in which she wrote, "You have a nervous condition and a problem with jealousy, as such you and Elizabeth can never be together."
How harsh. It's like a Bronte novel. But mother should have known that saying never to a teenage girl could lead to . . . seven husbands.
Bobby Livingston, spokesman for the auction house, said the letters were estimated to be worth $25,000 to $35,000 before Taylor's death, and he expects they could fetch two or three times that amount now.
Tattbits
* A 19th century painting of St. Petersburg that Mikhail Baryshnikov purchased decades ago will be auctioned to help benefit new works at his Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City.
"Old art should make new art," the ballet dancer said yesterday.
"View of St. Petersburg" by Petr Petrovich Vereshchagin is to be sold at Sotheby's on April 12 as part of the auction house's Russian art sale, where it is expected to fetch $300,000 to $500,000.
* A website that sold Beatles
songs online for 25 cents apiece before they became legally available has agreed to pay record companies nearly $1 million to settle a federal lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton Tucker signed off on the settlement between BlueBeat.com and music companies EMI Group PLC, Capitol Records and Virgin Records America on Friday. The judge ruled in December that the site violated the music labels' copyrights and presented unfair competition.
* "Dancing with the Stars" star Kendra Wilkinson spoke with celebuzz.com about whom she has bonded with on the show.
"I love everybody on the cast," Kendra said. "Chelsea Kane, she's my little girl. I'm taking her under my wing. I'm breaking her in. She's a Disney star and 22. It's time for her to be a woman and hang with me a little bit."
And the folks at Disney wept.
BANGShowbiz.com and Daily News wire services contributed to this report.
E-mail gensleh@phillynews.com.
