Ma’am Darling

by Craig Brown

  While the others were enjoying their tea, the Princess’s corpse was driven three and a half miles to Slough crematorium for a municipal cremation. ‘Police were on duty at each roundabout and junction on the short journey from Windsor,’ reported the Daily Telegraph, ‘but they were not needed. There were no crowds lining the route and the hearse was merely waved through the late-afternoon traffic without fanfare.’

  The Princess wished to be buried with her father in the Royal Vault at St George’s Chapel, and had opted for cremation as there was no room in the vault for a full coffin. The cost of cremation at Slough was £280, plus a surcharge of £20 for those, like the Princess, who lived beyond the borough. It is not known whether or not this fee was waived.

  Princess Margaret had insisted that her children and her sister should not attend the cremation, so they joined the rest of the Royal Family for tea at the Castle while the coffin of English oak, accompanied by only three courtiers – the Dean of Windsor, the Princess’s former private secretary, Viscount Ullswater, and the lord chamberlain, representing the Queen – headed off to Slough. In honour of the deceased, the gates of the crematorium had been given a fresh splash of paint.

  A service of remembrance for the Princess was held at Westminster Abbey on 19 April. Before it began, an orchestra played a selection of the Princess’s favourite music, including the ‘Awakening’ pas de deux from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, and pieces by Bach. The service itself was set around Fauré’s Requiem, with Felicity Lott and Bryn Terfel singing solos, and contributions from the choirs of Westminster Abbey, King’s College, Cambridge, and St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Lord Linley read from Corinthians (‘O, grave, where is thy victory?’), and the actress Felicity Kendal read an extract by William Penn.

  As the congregation of 1,900 milled out of the Abbey, Sir Roy Strong, as he now was, felt that the service had lacked a certain something. It was, he thought, ‘a perfectly choreographed, unemotional ritual gone through like clockwork but lacking any spirit. How could it have been otherwise? She was such a capricious, arrogant and thoughtless woman. And yet she was a loyal, practising Christian with flashes of generosity along with wit.’

  His final verdict on his old friend was brief and to the point: ‘The common touch she had not.’

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  On 13 and 14 June 2006, Christie’s auctioned 896 items from the collection of Her Royal Highness The Princess Margaret: cigarette lighters, silver salvers, fans and pepperpots; candlesticks, umbrellas, tiaras and chairs; paintings, playing cards, trophies, menu-card holders; portraits, mirrors, brooches, bowls, toys, books and occasional tables; snuffboxes and pillboxes, fish knives and forks, photo frames, tea sets and sugar bowls; gifts from her mother, gifts from her father, gifts from her grandmother, gifts from her aunts; gifts from musicians and movie stars, gifts from artists and authors; gifts from the rich, gifts from the poor; gifts from countries, royal families, corporations, regiments, town councils and housing associations; gifts from the crew of the royal yacht Britannia; gifts from the pensioners of Balmoral, Birkhall and Sandringham.

  Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return: a life in 896 objects, ready for dispersal to the four corners of the earth. Where had she kept it, this great mountain of bric-à-brac? The jewellery alone – brooches, necklaces, hairpins, earrings, wristwatches, earclips, bracelets, key-chains, bangles, rings, pendants, lockets – amounted to 185 different items, which sold, in all, for £9,598,160. While she was alive, those who chose to pity her would point out that the only property she had ever owned was her modest villa on Mustique, a gift from an old friend. Yet she had always had the wherewithal to buy something infinitely more splendid. One single piece – Queen Mary’s antique diamond rivière, consisting of thirty-four diamonds, weighing eighty-five carats – sold for just under £1 million.

  Over the course of two days, the remnants of Princess Margaret went under the hammer. They say that when you drown, your whole life flashes before you. Do the wealthy see it hoisted aloft by men in brown coats?

  Watch it go down! The silver teaspoon given to the five-year-old Margaret for Christmas 1935 by Queen Maud of Norway, complete with a Santa Claus label on it, bearing the handwritten message, ‘for dear little Margaret from Aunt Maud’ – gone, for £3,840! A set of three white-and-gilt-painted pelmets that once masked the tops of the curtains in Apartment 1a in Kensington Palace – gone, for £1,200! A French gold toothpick box, circa 1800 – gone, for £1,600! A gem-set gold Cartier cigarette case,* engraved ‘To Margaret from her very devoted Papa GR Christmas 1949’ – gone, for £102,000, twenty times its highest estimate! A cigarette box, ‘Presented to Her Royal Highness The Princess Margaret by The Government and People of the West Indies as a token of their abiding loyalty and affection on the occasion of her visit to Port of Spain in April 1958 when on behalf of Her Majesty the Queen she graciously inaugurated the Parliament of The West Indies’ – gone, for £8,400!

  The Baroque bed that once belonged to the Princess’s grandparents, the Earl and Countess of Strathmore – gone, for £48,000! A pair of George III silver-mounted ivory lemon-squeezers – gone, for £2,800! A George V silver cup, a trophy from the Royal Windsor Horse Show, bearing two inscriptions, the first ‘WON BY H.R.H. THE PRINCESS MARGARET’, the second ‘ROYAL WINDSOR HORSE SHOW 1944 FIRST PRIZE THE BEST WAR-TIME UTILITY SINGLE DRIVING CLASS PRESENTED BY ODEON THEATRES LTD’ – gone, for £16,800! The original artwork of the eighteen-year-old Margaret’s picture on the cover of Time magazine, June 1949 – gone, for £11,400! An antique Victorian diamond and gem-set bee bar brooch, originally a christening gift to the Queen Mother, accompanied by a note in Princess Margaret’s own hand: ‘Almost the first bit of jewellery given to Mum … given to me 10 Feb 1945’ – gone, for £33,600!

  A Virgin and Child travelling icon, in a frame of rubies, together with a card inscribed ‘from Pope Pius XII 1949’ – gone, for £14,400! A presentation copy of Liberace: An Autobiography in its original dustjacket, signed on the title page ‘To the Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, With fond remembrance of the Royal Variety Performance in 1972. Liberace 1973’, accompanied by a doodle by the famous pianist of a grand piano and candelabra – gone, for £540! An eighteenth-century side table, a twenty-first birthday present from the St John Ambulance Brigade Cadets – gone, for £10,800!

  A thousand potential customers filled five sales rooms; another five hundred were in touch by telephone. Within the first thirty seconds, Lot No.1, a ruby, cultured pearl and diamond necklace, valued somewhere between £1,200 and £1,500, had shot past the £6,000 mark, eventually selling for £27,600. Lot 2, a pair of child’s ivory bangles, worthless without provenance, sold for £3,840, almost twenty times the estimate. By its close, the sale had raised £14 million, with a number of lots going for up to a hundred times their estimate. The Princess’s Fabergé cigarette holder, guide price £2,000, sold for £209,600; the oak chair Queen Mary sat upon for the 1937 coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, guide price £300–500, sold for £38,400. Four sets of playing cards with King George VI’s cypher, circa 1940, guide price £200–300, sold for £13,200.

  A Russian jewelled two-colour gold-mounted guilloche-enamelled Fabergé clock, once the property of Queen Mary, sold for £1,240,000. The Princess would have heard its discreet tick-tock as she woke each morning: it had lived above the fireplace in her bedroom.

  To some, including a few members of her own family, it seemed as though a price had been attached to virtually everything the Princess ever owned. There had, though, been one or two hasty last-minute withdrawals. On the first day of the sale, Christie’s announced that an ornate 1930s cast-iron railing acquired by the Princess from Ascot racecourse and transferred by her to the rose garden at Kensington Palace would be withdrawn from sale: it emerged that fixtures and fittings from any royal residence are protected by law, their removal punishable by a custodial sentence of up to seven years. ‘The client has decided to give it to the n
ation,’ explained a spokesman for Christie’s. The railings were returned to Kensington Palace without further ado.

  The two people responsible for this almighty clear-out were Princess Margaret’s two children, Viscount Linley and Lady Sarah Chatto. ‘I had the sale for a very simple reason, which was an inheritance tax situation, and wanting to build for my family’s future and my children’s education – normal family requirements,’ explained Viscount Linley. ‘We are a modern family who need to live in a certain way.’ In fact, his mother had already left him and his sister £7 million in her will; death duties came to just over £3 million.

  Out went objects accrued by the Princess over the course of seven decades: the twelve silver birthday-candle holders that had been placed in her first and second birthday cakes, each engraved with the initials ‘MR’; her Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Walt Disney breakfast set (circa 1937), comprising an electroplated nickel silver cup, plate and bowl, with knife, fork and spoon featuring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck; three umbrellas employed by the Princess on rainy days in the 1960s and 1970s; the Poltimore Tiara, its thirty-four diamonds mounted in silver and gold, bought by the Queen Mother and given to Princess Margaret to wear at her wedding. The candle-holders had raised £6,600, the Disney breakfast set £7,200, the three umbrellas £2,400, the Poltimore Tiara £926,400, sold to an anonymous buyer from Asia.

  Several items in the sale had been gifts from staff and subjects, the fruit of whip-rounds: a silver snuffbox for her twenty-first birthday, ‘Presented to Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret by The employees at Sandringham 21st August 1951’; a bronze statuette of a man and child, with a presentation plaque, ‘To HRH Princess Margaret from the people of Uganda, 6 May 1960’; a rose bowl from the Government and People of Victoria, Australia; a mahogany and tulipwood dining table, ‘Presented to Her Royal Highness on the occasion of her marriage to Mr Armstrong-Jones by members of the Army, 6 May 1960’; a Wedgwood mug ‘Presented to HRH Princess Margaret Countess of Snowdon on 1st July 1980 by the Beth Johnson Housing Association on the Occasion of the Opening of Compton Close, Lichfield Road, Stafford’. Before the auction went ahead, the Queen issued an instruction that the proceeds from any item given to her late sister in her official capacity should be donated to charity.

  Asparagus tongs, binoculars, hymnbooks, bell-pushes, lemon-squeezers, menu-card holders, dice, trunks, table ornaments, scissors; a toothpick box, a mustard pot, an academic gown, a travelling stationery box, a child’s rattle, The Tale of Peter Rabbit. The auction revealed quite how much stuff the Princess had accumulated over her seventy-one years: had it been worth hundreds rather than millions she might well be remembered not as a collector, but as a hoarder.

  The auction catalogues also suggest that one of her suspicions was ill-founded: for years she complained that her grandmother, Queen Mary, had nursed a grudge against her. Yet the sheer abundance of Queen Mary’s gifts to Margaret told a different story. As well as the Fabergé clock, Queen Mary also gave her an art deco pearl and diamond necklace for her eighteenth birthday; a pair of Fabergé jewelled glass scent bottles; an art deco sapphire and diamond bar brooch (‘For darling Margaret on her confirmation day from her loving Grannie Mary R, God Bless You, April 15th 1946’); another confirmation present of a set of mother-of-pearl fruit knives and forks (‘for darling Margaret from her loving Grannie Mary April 15th 1946’); a silver-gilt dressing-table service in a brass-bound rosewood case; a needlework fire screen, a present for Christmas 1947; a French painted fan with a note in Queen Mary’s hand: ‘Fan which belonged to Queen Alexandra given her by her sister Marie Empress of Russia – given to Princess Margaret of York by her grandmother Queen Mary, 1932’; a silver-gilt dressing table decorated with flowers containing a complete service along with a card inscribed in Queen Mary’s hand, ‘Queen Mary bought this dressing service for Princess Margaret some day’; an Irish oak linen chest; a silver nine-piece tea and coffee service; a fan of Honiton lace (‘made to order of Victoria Mary, Princess of Wales, for the St. Louis Exhibition, USA in 1904, given to Princess Margaret by her grandmother Queen Mary in 1939’); and The Letters of Queen Victoria, the first volume marked ‘For darling Margaret from Grannie Mary 1944. These 3 volumes were given to your Great Aunt Victoria by her father King Edward VII.’ Given so much, and so regularly, by their grandmother, few other grandchildren would have nursed a grievance about being unloved.

  There were gifts from many others besides, including books signed by writers from the more comfortable end of society, among them Patrick Leigh Fermor (‘For Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret, with the author’s humble duty … Feb. 1959’) and Harold Acton (‘For HRH the Princess Margaret, with humble duty and affection, from the old aesthete, Haroldo’). A book called Pavlova Impressions was inscribed by Margot Fonteyn, ‘Ma’am who is such a great inspiration to the Royal Ballet, affectionately, Margot.’ Five volumes of the plays of Noël Coward were signed ‘To Her Royal Highness the Princess Margaret. Dear Ma’am, This brings you my affectionate best wishes for your happiness always, Noël Coward.’

  Like many family sales, possibly most, this one caused a certain amount of friction. Some muttered that her children should not have sold her wedding tiara, for instance. ‘The tiara was obviously a very strong image,’ countered Viscount Linley, ‘but, being realistic, we have a young family that needs educating, and education does not seem to be getting any cheaper, going by recent figures … We looked very long and hard about whether to include it or not, but I think my mother would have felt it was a good idea. It was an iconic piece, but who in the family would be in a position to wear it very often, versus the opportunity it gave? So it was a very rational decision.’*

  Both his father and his sister were also said to be upset by Viscount Linley’s inclusion of Pietro Annigoni’s 1957 portrait of Princess Margaret, a sister piece to the portrait of the Queen hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. After some discussion, Viscount Linley bought it back for £680,000, over three times its original estimate; any remaining misgivings about the auction were buried beneath an avalanche of hyperbole.

  ‘The extraordinary results of this important and unparalleled sale are a wonderful tribute to a beautiful and stylish princess,’ concluded François Curiel, chairman of Christie’s Europe. ‘HRH The Princess Margaret’s widespread appeal was reflected in the exceptional prices.’

  * The thirty-seven cigarette-based items in the auction, including fifteen ashtrays, one of them a wedding present from the 3rd King’s Hussars, stand as testament to the Princess’s prodigious devotion to tobacco. Her reputation as a dedicated smoker clearly preceded her on trips abroad: gifts of cigarette lighters, cigarette boxes and cigarette cases came from France, Russia, Austria, Belgium, Italy, the West Indies, Canada, Hungary and the Channel Islands. Lot 363 was ‘A filigree cigarette-case and cigarette-holder, perhaps Yugoslavian. The cigarette-case of book form with filigree scroll and flower front and back and reeded side, the inside applied with a plaque engraved with a signature, the cigarette holder with a composition mouthpiece, contained in a fitted green leather case, with a note inscribed in an unknown hand “From Tito 1952 or 3”.’ It fetched £6,600.

  * The cost of privately educating a child at a boarding school for a fourteen-year period was then estimated at £468,000 for a boarder and £286,000 for a day pupil, so the sum needed for Princess Margaret’s four grandchildren’s education would not have exceeded £2 million.

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  From the Mustique-island.com website, 2017

  For generations, those who have visited Mustique have been captivated by the unique sense of island life; where you can enjoy the ultimate in luxury villa living with the privilege of being on your own private tropical island.

  There are not many rules on Mustique, no protocol or expectations. Guests can simply do as they wish.

  Enjoy the privacy of your own villa, or the legendary house party atmosphere at The Cotton House, when fellow guests get together to enjoy anything
from a gastronomic dinner, a cocktail party, to a beach barbeque, or Jump Up at Basil’s. On Mustique, anything goes.

  Explore the island at your own speed, where a whole host of experiences await; from swimming and scuba diving in the jewel coloured waters, to sailing and snorkeling with the turtles at nearby Tobago Cays. Onshore choose from riding horses along the beaches to honing your tennis skills at the renowned Mustique Tennis Club, or indulge in a world-class spa treatment.

  Les Jolies Eaux

  Standing dramatically on a private peninsula at Mustique’s southern tip, this legendary villa, previously featured in Architectural Digest, was designed for HRH The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon.

  Accommodation

  Living

  Les Jolies Eaux has been extensively refurbished and expanded to incorporate a new master bedroom, dining pavilion, media room and office as well as offering spacious and comfortable indoor and outdoor dining areas.

  Bedroom

  Bedroom 1: King, AC, En-suite with Dressing, Shower, Double Basins & WC

  Bedroom 2: King, AC, En-suite with Dressing, Shower, Tub, Double Basins, bidet, WC & private porch

  Bedroom 3: Queen, AC, En-suite with Shower, Double Basin, WC and private porch

  Bedroom 4: Twin, AC, En-suite with Shower, Double Basin, WC and private porch

  Bedroom 5: King, AC, En-suite with Dressing, Shower, Double Basin, WC and private porch

  Villa Features

  AC

  Media/Entertainment Room

  iPod docking station

  DVD/TV

  Wi-Fi and Broadband