by Kitty Kelley
“Marie-Christine was tall, blond, and beautiful,” continued John Barratt. “Lord Mountbatten thought she would add a bit of glamour to the House of Windsor. So he helped Prince Michael get permission from the Queen to marry. The Queen consented, but she would not attend the wedding, even though it was not in a Catholic church. The Pope had forbidden that. So they had a civil ceremony, and Prince Michael* had to renounce his place in the line of succession.” Charles hardly needed a more glaring example of a marriage going haywire than that of his aunt, Princess Margaret, who was creating an international scandal.
The Italian magazine Men ran a cover story on the “wild and intimate parties” of the Snowdons, citing an alleged passion for pornography. The article described the Duke of Edinburgh as being disgusted by what it called the disgraceful behavior of Snowdon, who, the Duke said, “entered society through the tradesmen’s entrance.”
The satirical television show Spitting Image featured the Snowdons in a sketch entitled “Nightmare Couples.” “We paired the most horribly mismatched people we could think of,” said Roger Law, the show’s talented proprietor. “We had Margaret Thatcher and Johnny Rotten; Roman Polanski and Mae West; Diana Ross and Ian Smith. And, of course, Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones.”
Esquire magazine reported the Snowdons’ sniping at each other, especially over her insistence that even their closest friends observe protocol and treat her with the deference due royalty.
“You address me by my Christian name,” protested a newspaper editor, who had known Margaret all her life, “so why can’t I address you the same way?”
“You can’t, that’s all,” said the Princess loftily. She insisted on being addressed as “ma’am” or “ma’am darling” and referred to as Her Royal Highness. She exacted abbreviated curtsies from women and small neck bows from men. Once she entered a room, no one was allowed to leave. And if she wanted to party until four in the morning, bleary-eyed guests had to dance attendance. No one sat in her presence without her permission, and if she wanted to sing, no one dared talk.
The Snowdons soon went their separate ways. Margaret built a home on the Caribbean island of Mustique, which her husband never visited. And he held weekend parties at his Sussex cottage, which she never attended. They maintained an open marriage with lovers on both sides. The Princess, who got a reputation as promiscuous, dallied with several of her husband’s friends, including rock star Mick Jagger, writer Robin Douglas-Home, actor Peter Sellers, and photographer Patrick Lichfield, who was also a first cousin once removed.* “We’re kissing cousins,” she said. “So it’s okay.”
Snowdon, too, engaged in extramarital affairs, including a year-long romance with Lady Jacqueline Rufus-Isaacs, the twenty-two-year-old daughter of the Marquess of Reading. But he objected to his wife’s romance with the nephew of former Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home. The romance had started in December 1966 when Snowdon was traveling on a photo assignment for the Sunday Times. Upon his return, he learned that his wife had spent the weekend with Douglas-Home at his country estate. Snowdon flew into a rage, and Margaret quickly ended the relationship. The aristocrat fell further into alcoholism and drug addiction. A year later he committed suicide. He had begged the Princess to leave her dismal marriage, but she refused. In an exchange of letters with Douglas-Home, she wrote that she was too afraid of her husband:
Darling, I can’t…. I don’t know what lengths he won’t go to, jealous as he is, to find out what I am up to, and your movements too. Can I make you happy from a distance? I think we can, just by being there for the other. Promise you will never give up, that you will go on encouraging me to make the marriage a success, and that given a good and safe chance, I will try and come back to you one day. I daren’t at the moment.
The Snowdons’ marriage became a dog’s bone as they wrestled it to the ground. They chased it, gnawed it, and bit it. At the beginning they had nipped each other like frisky pups; now they snarled like pit bulls.
Both chain-smoked and drank too much. Margaret, who suffered from migraines, started drinking gin and tonics for breakfast. She took pills to sleep and became so depressed, she went to a psychiatrist. Snowdon, who spent weeks at a time away from her, wanted a divorce, but she refused. She saw no need to disturb their life. Their enmity triggered vigorous sex, she confided to friends, and she relished it. She treasured the framed collage that Tony had made for her when they first became lovers. He had collected bits of leaf, a peacock feather, a coin, words cut out of a magazine, and a crown floating above a small pink satin bed. The puzzle, which apparently carried an intimate message, was signed with a picture of a pony. Crossing out the letter P, he had inserted T for Tony. Margaret hung the collage in her bathroom.
Devoutly religious, she believed a dreadful marriage was better than a divorce, especially for their son and daughter. At first she and her husband had not wanted children. “After we got married, Tony changed his mind,” she said. “So I gave him two children.” Now she wanted to keep the marriage together because of six-year-old David and three-year-old Sarah. Margaret also knew that a member of the House of Windsor was forbidden to divorce. And for her, divorce seemed inconceivable. “I do not say I don’t want a divorce,” she told a friend. “But I believe it is my duty to keep my solemn vows—my duty to my family, myself, and my country.” Snowdon appealed to the Queen, saying his marriage to her sister had become intolerable.
The Queen, who shied away from any kind of family confrontation, wouldn’t address the subject of her sister’s marriage until the Daily Express published rumors of a rift. Then the Queen’s advisers recommended she meet with the Snowdons. Reluctantly the Queen invited the couple to Buckingham Palace after business hours on the evening of Monday, December 18, 1967. Margaret told a friend that the meeting was “en famille” and included Prince Philip and the Queen Mother.
Philip bluntly declared himself in favor of an informal separation. He compared the Snowdon marriage to a barnacle on the bottom of the monarchy. The only solution, said the seaman, was a wire brush. Margaret snuffled, and the Queen Mother, who avoided anything unpleasant, was teary but noncommittal. Her silent presence bolstered the Queen, who had said she needed everyone behind her for this decision. Snowdon, who wanted a clean break, sat silently. Tucked in his jacket were three of Margaret’s love letters from Robin Douglas-Home. After listening impassively, the Queen said she wanted time to consult her advisers. With no decision reached, Snowdon left. Margaret stayed behind and later told her friend Sharman Douglas that the Queen’s parting advice was: “Why don’t each of you go your own way—but please be quiet about it.”
Snowdon felt trapped, and he reacted like a caged animal. With no escape in sight, he struck back with pitiless cruelty. He humiliated his wife at every turn, often in front of other people.
On a trip to Corfu, Greece, after a long boozy lunch with friends, he suggested that he and Margaret rest for a few hours before their dinner engagement. So they retired to separate bedrooms for a nap. An hour later the doorbell of their suite rang.
“Margaret told me that she called to Tony to answer the door, but he pretended to be asleep,” said a friend. “The bell kept ringing, so finally she got up. She was in her nightie with her hair in rollers. Six people were standing at the door; they said that Tony had invited them for tea. Margaret realized that Tony had set her up simply to make her look foolish.”
The Princess retaliated in London by tipping a pot of coffee over his negatives. “Oh, so sorry,” she said with singsong sarcasm. At a New York City party given by Sharman Douglas, Margaret held court on one side of the room, Snowdon entertained friends on the other. The hostess, whose father was U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain in 1947, shuttled between them. Greeting Margaret, she inquired about the Queen.
“Which Queen are you referring to?” said the Princess, waving her cigarette holder. “My sister, my mother, or my husband?”
At the end of the evening, the Princess wanted to than
k the kitchen staff. She expected her husband to accompany her, so she sent an aide to fetch him.
“Sir, Her Royal Highness is ready to go into the kitchen.”
Snowdon ignored the man and continued talking.
The aide waited. He cleared his throat and tried again. But Snowdon kept chatting. Finally the aide interrupted.
“Sir, I beg your pardon, but Her Royal Highness is ready to go into the kitchen.”
“Really?” snapped Snowdon. “And what is she going to do in there? Scramble some eggs?”
A week later the Snowdons attended a private dinner party in London. “It was ghastly,” recalled their hostess. “When we sat for dinner, Tony put a bag over his head. The first course was served. He did nothing. Nobody addressed a word to him, just pretended he wasn’t there. Finally Princess Margaret said, ‘Why are you wearing a brown bag over your head?’
“ ‘Because I can’t stand the fucking sight of you,’ he said.” He left a note on her dressing table headed “Twenty Reasons Why I Hate You.”
No one was spared the bickering. In front of friends, Snowdon belittled his wife’s appearance and her taste in clothes, especially her shoes, which she had custom-made to make her look taller.
“Oh, ma’am, what a pretty parachute silk,” he said as she swept into their drawing room for a dinner party. She was wearing a flowing blue chiffon caftan designed to conceal her recent weight gain. He looked down at her high-heeled platform shoes. “Oh, and I see we have on our finest little prewar peep-toes.” Later, he said, “You look like a Jewish manicurist.”
At the beginning of their marriage, Snowdon helped his wife perform her royal duties, for which she received an allowance of $45,000 a year. “He was very good for me—then,” recalled the Princess, who admitted that he charmed where she offended. She once shocked the head of a children’s organization by announcing, “I don’t want to meet any daft children.” Later he chafed at the indignity of escorting her to hospital openings, ship launchings, and tree plantings. He especially resented the implication that he was a kept man. “I support myself,” he told reporters. “I pay $2,500 a year in taxes.”
By then he had resumed his career as a photographer with the Sunday Times. “Photograph by Snowdon” was a prized credit line for the newspaper. He enjoyed access to people unavailable to other photographers. The actress Vivian Merchant attributed this entrée to his marriage, not his talent. “Of course, the only reason we artistes let you take our pictures,” she told him one evening at a dinner party, “is because you are married to her.” She stabbed a finger toward Princess Margaret. Snowdon seethed.
His troubled marriage was known to journalists, who gossiped among themselves but never committed their stories to print.
“I remember going to Kensington Palace to look at a photo shoot,” recalled a Times staffer. “Snowdon and I were sitting down, poring over proofs. I did not know the Princess had entered the room until I heard her high-pitched voice over our shoulders.
“ ‘What pretty pictures,’ she said.
“ ‘Oh, God,’ said Snowdon, hissing with irritation. He refused to stand up. Just jerked his head toward Her Royal Highness and said, ‘Meet the chief Sea Scout.’*
“It was a biting remark, incredibly rude, and intended only to humiliate her,” said the embarrassed reporter. “He then ignored the Princess for the next fifteen minutes until she finally left the room. He sighed with relief.”
The couple’s carping made their friends uncomfortable. “The marriage could never have worked,” said one woman. “There was an evil fairy at Margaret’s christening, and Tony, who is admirable and interesting, is hugely demanding. Both of them wanted to be stars, and their stars collided. He was more talented, but her appetite demanded constant attention, which he could not and would not give. She has a male ego in that it’s voracious. He’s got one, too, but he deserves his plaudits. She just demands hers.” The British press maintained an official silence about the royal marriage because the Princess, then fifth in line to the throne, is the Queen’s sister. “The British penchant for gossipy bitchiness cannot be offloaded on the monarch, who is inviolate, dull, and worthy,” said British writer Andrew Duncan. “The younger sister, therefore, becomes the outlet for hypocrisy.”
At first the stories that leaked into print protected the Princess more than the commoner she married. McCall’s magazine reported the Earl of Snowdon had attended a party “wearing too much makeup.” At another party, Private Eye reported him “racing across the room to Rudolf Nureyev and greeting him with a kiss full on the lips.” The satirical magazine referred to Lord Snowdon as a dog on a leash: “The Princess is continually losing her husband. He slips off his lead and vanishes, often for weeks on end.” The magazine suggested the Queen was so angry at her petite brother-in-law that she did not speak to him for eighteen months after his outrageous performance during the 1969 Christmas dinner at Sandringham: “It was then that the minuscule genius climaxed the evening by leaping onto the dinner table, crying, ‘And now—it’s Tony La Rue,’ and commencing a lively striptease.” The next year Princess Margaret went to Sandringham alone with her children while her husband spent the holiday in a London hospital having his hemorrhoids removed.
“The Queen has always been very fond of Lord Snowdon,” said a member of her staff, dismissing the magazine’s suggestion of displeasure. Years later, when Her Majesty met an Oscar-winning cinematographer, she asked him what he did in films. He said he was director of photography.
“Oh, how terribly interesting,” the Queen was said to have replied. “Actually, I have a brother-in-law who is a photographer.”
“How terribly coincidental,” the cinematographer responded. “I have a brother-in-law who’s a queen.” Her Majesty moved on without saying another word.
Behind the rumors about the Snowdons’ royal marriage lay a sordid mess of drinks, drugs, bright lights, and wild nights. “But worse than anything were the cracking rows,” recalled a former lady-in-waiting for the Princess. “Dehumanizing to them and to those around them. Tony traveled on photographic assignments—Tokyo, Melbourne, New York—as much as he could to get away, and Margaret longed for him to go. But after a week without him, she’d get bored.”
During a three-week assignment in India, Snowdon did not contact his wife. After the first week, the Times photo editor began receiving daily calls from the Princess, inquiring about her husband, who cabled the newspaper three times a day but didn’t communicate with her. When the photo editor was unavailable, his assistant took the calls from Kensington Palace and left messages on the editor’s desk: “HRH called,” or “It’s ma’am—again.” By the end of the third week, the messages from the assistant reflected the maddening frequency of the calls: “Please ring the royal dwarf.”
The disintegration of Princess Margaret’s marriage put subtle pressure on Prince Charles, whose only responsibility in life was to marry well and reproduce. He was constrained by two pieces of eighteenth-century legislation: the 1701 Act of Settlement, which prohibits the heir from marrying a Roman Catholic; and the 1772 Royal Marriages Act, which requires the heir to receive the sovereign’s permission before marrying, unless the heir is older than twenty-five. Then he must declare his intention to marry and proceed only if, after twelve months, both Houses of Parliament do not object. Born to be King, Charles knew that he needed to give the country a Queen and insure the continuation of the House of Windsor. Since he had been three years of age his future marriage had been a running story in the press, which did not hesitate to suggest suitable candidates for him. The need to make a perfect match was reinforced by every royal occasion during the seventies.
The death of the Duke of Windsor in May 1972 revisited the shame of the former King’s abdication and the lonely exile forced on him—all because of an inappropriate marriage. Despite the hostility of his family toward the Windsors, Charles felt sympathy for the Duke and Duchess. He had accompanied his parents on an official trip to Paris a
nd visited briefly with his great-uncle ten days before he died.
Knowing the seventy-seven-year-old duke was terminally ill, the Queen agreed to see him during her five-day state visit to France. Despite urgent calls from the Duke’s doctor, Jean Thin, the Queen would not rearrange her schedule. The doctor implored the Queen’s secretary to relay how gravely ill the Duke was. “He’s on the verge of death,” said the doctor. The next day, the doctor received a call from the British ambassador, Christopher Soames, who was concerned that the Duke’s death might interfere with the Queen’s state visit.
“Now, look here, doctor,” Jean Thin recalled the ambassador saying. “The Duke has got to die before or after the Queen’s visit but not during the visit. Do you understand?”
A reporter questioned the Queen’s secretary about Her Majesty’s apparent callousness toward the Duke of Windsor. The Queen’s secretary told the reporter, “You know he’s dying. I know he’s dying. But WE don’t know he’s dying.”
Charles, who accompanied his parents to the Windsors’ home in the Bois de Boulogne outside Paris, had been jolted by the sight of the fragile old man, wasted by throat cancer. Although racked and emaciated, the former King had insisted on getting out of bed to pay proper homage to his sovereign. Charles was touched by his gallantry.
The Duchess of Windsor, who had been reviled by the royal family, found the Queen cold and remote. “Her manner as much as stated that she had not intended to honor him with a visit,” the Duchess told the Countess of Romanones, “but that she was simply covering appearances by coming here because he was dying and it was known that she was in Paris.”
Upon the Duke’s death, Charles wanted to extend kindness to the Duchess, who had been vilified for so long by the royal family. He graciously offered to meet her plane in London and to escort her to her husband’s funeral, but the Palace said no. The Queen’s courtiers explained that as heir apparent he would embarrass the throne by making such a royal gesture to a twice divorced commoner. “It might be misinterpreted,” said the Queen’s secretary. Charles realized that the obstacle continued to be the Queen Mother, and he could not offend his beloved grandmother. So the Earl Mountbatten of Burma was dispatched to meet the Duchess. She was invited to stay in Buckingham Palace, but only for the duration of her husband’s funeral.
