by Kitty Kelley
“Immediately afterward, everyone in the royal family went to Windsor and left the Duchess by herself,” recalled one of the Queen’s stewards. “I was working in the gold-and-silver pantry then and I remember them all—the Queen Mother, the Queen, and Princess Margaret—planning to leave for the country without the Duchess of Windsor. It was despicable to treat her like that after all those years. I can still see her thin and withered face peeking out from the window sheers of Buckingham Palace after everyone left. She looked so alone and bereft.”
For Charles, the importance of marrying well was again underscored in November 1972, when he and his sister held a dinner party to celebrate his parents’ silver wedding anniversary. The country paused to honor the Queen’s twenty-five-year marriage to Prince Philip in a celebration that lasted all day. Schoolchildren were given a holiday, and the Queen invited one hundred couples to attend a commemorative service in Westminster Abbey. Although the couples were all strangers, they shared Her Majesty’s wedding date. So she invited them to pray with her. At the end of the service, the Duke of Edinburgh moved into the center aisle and crooked his arm to escort his wife out of the Abbey, just as he had on their wedding day. But Her Majesty was no longer looking in his direction, so the arm was not taken. The couple walked out side by side, smiling but not touching, a reflection of their marriage, which was an effective partnership—congenial, but not intimate.
Thousands of people poured into the City of London to hear the Lord Mayor praise the Queen as an unfailing example in public and private life. “Through the medium of television you have allowed us to look into your uncurtained windows more freely than any generation before,” he said. “Of the many great services which you tendered to your subjects in these twenty-five years, that vision of this happiness in family life which you and your consort and your children so evidently enjoy yourselves must have strengthened the unity of every family in the land.”
Even Willie Hamilton offered his congratulations. Parliament’s most outspoken critic of the monarchy surprised people with his tribute. Seconds later, though, he criticized the commemorative plates and spoons being hawked on the street and slammed “the sordid, greedy commercialization of the event and the money-grubbing loyalists, who are busy cashing in on the irrational sentiment worked up on this unusual royal occasion.” He suggested that the Palace should have stipulated all profits be donated to charity, particularly to children who were born deformed because their mothers had taken the drug thalidomide. The Palace ignored his suggestion.
“I looked like a crank then,” he recalled. “Twenty years later, I looked like a prophet.”
The Queen was so pleased to share her wedding anniversary that she ventured from her customary reserve and circulated among her subjects, trying to make small talk. People were agog; their sovereign had never been known to speak to ordinary people. This was the first royal walkabout London had ever seen, and flag-waving Britons cheered as the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles, and Princess Anne melted into the crowd, greeting people and trying to make the royal family appear less remote.
Stressing her commitment to family life, Her Majesty made a short talk of lace-capped innocence. “A marriage begins by joining man and wife together, but this relationship between two people, however deep at the time, needs to develop and mature with the passing years. For that, it must be held firm in the web of family relationships, between parents and children, between grandparents and grandchildren, between cousins, aunts, and uncles.”
When she spoke those words, most Britons, according to a 1972 Harris poll, believed it was the monarchy that set the standard of morality for the country, even more so than the church. Such confidence in the Crown prompted the Queen to send a “gracious message” to Parliament asking for a pay raise. Although one million people were out of work at the time, no member of Parliament, except one,* wanted to deprive the sovereign of her tax-free allotment from the Civil List.
“Why should she get millions when old-age pensioners will die of cold and starvation this winter?” Hamilton asked from the floor of the House of Commons. Outraged Tories rushed to their feet, shouting in protest. The Labor MP paid no attention. “And look at this,” he thundered, waving a list of the Queen Mother’s staff of thirty-three, including five Ladies of the Bedchamber and eleven Women of the Bedchamber.†
“What the blazes do they do? What size bedchamber is this? All right, the Queen Mother is an old-age pensioner and we say, ‘Yes, she has always got a pleasant smile on her face.’ But my God. If my wife got that pay, she would never stop laughing.”
Tory members stamped their feet in protest. To criticize the expenditures of the Queen Mother sounded blasphemous to them. “This is an obscene speech,” yelled one Conservative MP. But Hamilton pushed on, objecting to the raise proposed for Princess Margaret. “For this expensive kept woman?” he roared. “She should be sacked.”
Not even Her Majesty was immune. Hamilton harrumphed: “There are one thousand women in my constituency who could do the Queen’s job.”
At first the Palace had tried to ignore Hamilton and dismiss him as a nuisance. “He’s a bloody communist,” said Prince Philip, who had been criticized in Parliament for saying that England should worry more about its deserving rich than its hopeless poor. Outrage in the House of Commons* over that comment forced the Prime Minister, James Callaghan, to remind critics of a long-established custom “to speak with respect of members of the royal family.” There was no such rebuke from the Prime Minister after Willie Hamilton’s attack.
“He’s just a common† little Scotsman,” said Princess Margaret, spitting out “common” like a fur ball. Her cut-glass accent sliced the word with contempt. For her, the rigid dictates of the class system ruled. People were defined solely by bloodline—not character, education, wealth, or accomplishment. Birth determined worth. And royalty stood at the top of humanity’s ladder. Everybody else scrambled below with no hope of ascending. The Princess spared no one, not even her paternal grandmother. “I detested Queen Mary,” she told Gore Vidal. “She was rude to all of us, except Lilibet, who was going to be Queen. Of course, she [Queen Mary] had an inferiority complex. We were royal, and she was not.”
As royalty, Margaret did not carry cash. Nor did she pay her own bills. She didn’t even own a credit card. Her finances were handled by the head of her household, who managed her allotment from her Civil List. She complained constantly about her paltry allowance and was not above bartering.
“One Christmas someone gave her a huge gift basket with all sorts of bubble baths, perfumes, oils, and lotions that took two people to carry,” said William C. Brewer, a former associate of Crabtree & Evelyn, the fragrance company. “The Princess and her lady-in-waiting came into our shop in Kensington the day after Christmas with the mammoth gift. I knew it was Princess Margaret from the springalator platform shoes. She had come to return the gift, and she refused to accept a store credit. ‘I want cash,’ she said. What could we do? Although it’s against store policy, we gave her a cash refund because she’s Princess Margaret. The lady-in-waiting took the money and the two of them walked out.”
Margaret expects to be accommodated because she is royalty. Her mother and her sister have the same expectations. When they are invited to be houseguests (or, more accurately, when their ladies-in-waiting call their friends who have large country estates and inquire about the possibility of a royal visit), advance people arrive to make sure that the weekend premises will be suitable, not just for security, but for royal comfort.
When the Queen Mother visited British barrister Michael Pratt, he told friends that her lady-in-waiting arrived beforehand with a list of instructions: gin and tonic in the bedroom, no noisy children, and bronco paper fanned out in the bathroom. “Bronco paper is a heavy, rough, brown paper that is abrasive and good for cleaning motor oil off the linoleum,” recalled one of Pratt’s friends. “Most people want only the softest toilet tissue for their bums, but that old horse
insists on having sandpaper wipes from World War Two when the country was on rations. They don’t even sell bronco paper anymore. You have to special-order it on Walton Street, or else fake it by sloshing tea on white fax paper.”
Princess Margaret’s friends, who describe her as the houseguest from hell, also receive a list of instructions: tune the piano, get lots of Ella Fitzgerald records, import some young men who like to sing and dance, and have a recording of “Scotland the Brave” by the Royal Highland Fusiliers. Most important: provide potables—Gordon’s eighty-proof gin and tonic for midmorning through midafternoon, and from midafternoon until midnight, Famous Grouse Scotch whiskey. “You must make sure she has jammy dodgers for tea,” said one of Margaret’s hostesses. “Jammy dodgers are little circular sandwiches cut out of white bread with raspberry jam in the middle. The raspberry preserve must be seedless because Her Royal Highness does not like seeds stuck in her teeth, so you have to purchase imported preserves.
“Royal weekends are such a nightmare. The worst pressure is if you have the Queen to stay. Then you must lock your cats in the stable because Her Majesty abhors cats. You have to have barley water for her because that’s what she uses to cleanse her face. You have to send your children away because the royals can’t stand children. My son hates when the royal family descends on us, especially Margaret. He says she’s like the front of Notre Dame—all gargoyles—and should have water spouting out of her mouth.
“All members of the royal family believe the prestige they bring to their hosts justifies the inconvenience and expense of their visit. It’s an arrogant assumption but indisputably valid because I don’t know anyone within the aristocracy who has ever turned them down, myself included. Lord Douglas of Neidpath threatens to bar Margaret’s next visit, but so far he hasn’t.”
The prospect of a royal visit can turn a household upside-down. “Every time that call came from the King’s [George VI’s] equerry or the Queen’s [Elizabeth’s] lady-in-waiting, my mother would go into a faint,” recalled the daughter of a marquess. “ ‘Oh, God, oh, God, they want to come for tea.’ You couldn’t say no. You just couldn’t. So we’d rush around for biscuits, unearth the Earl Grey, and find some clotted cream. Then we got cleaned and scraped the horse muck off our shoes. We dreaded their arrival, but we were ready.
“In they’d pounce. The first visit I remember was King George VI, Queen Mary, the Countess of Athlone [Queen Mary’s sister-in-law], Princess Elizabeth, Prince Philip, and Princess Margaret. I was eight, my brother was three. We stood to attention when they arrived. I had to curtsy to the floor and he had to bow with his neck, bringing his chin to his chest….”
Over the years Princess Margaret came to rely on the largesse of rich friends like the Aga Khan and Imelda Marcos to provide villas and yachts for her pleasure. She especially enjoyed visiting Italy and regularly invited herself to stay with Harold Acton at La Pietra in Florence and Gore Vidal in Ravello. She also expected to be paid to attend certain overseas charity events and demanded first-class accommodations—planes, hotels, limousines, hairdressers—in addition to a personal appearance fee. She acted as though this were her due. The royal presence deserved royal compensation, especially from rich Americans.
“I remember when one of her best friends arranged for Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon to be guests of honor at a charity ball in New York,” recalled writer Stephen Birmingham. “The Snowdons charged us $30,000 as their personal appearance fee, but we couldn’t pay them because we couldn’t raise enough money from ticket sales. They left New York feeling exploited and we felt robbed. Worse, the Princess never spoke to her friend again—all because of a lousy $30,000.”
Even her friends described her as temperamental. “Margaret is operatic,” said one man. “I’ve known her all my life. I’ve escorted her places, been entertained in her home at Kensington Palace, even stayed with her in Mustique. Yet I’m utterly dispensable. I’m there only for her entertainment and amusement when she needs to be entertained and amused. Beyond that, I’m nothing to her. I’m not otherwise acknowledged…. I stayed up one night drinking and singing songs with her—God, how she loves to sing, fancies herself better than Barbra Streisand—and two nights later I saw her at the Palace for a big party. She walked in and strode past me as if I were a marble column. Not so much as a glance, nod, or a smile. That’s royalty. It’s beyond arrogance. It’s total indifference to another human being.”
Princess Michael of Kent* became known as the Pushy Princess after insisting that Thorn EMI (a record company) send her ten color television sets for her servants’ quarters before she’d attend a cocktail party. The TV sets arrived—and so did the Princess-for-hire.
She showed a basic understanding for the commerce of royal patronage. Walking by Mozafarian Jewelers on Beauchamp Place in London, she spotted a decorative ivory bear in the window. “It cost $1,000,” said the owner’s daughter, “and she wanted it. So my father said, ‘Wrap it up for her.’ ” The Princess walked out with the fanciful object, and her personal secretary sent a thank-you note, which the owner then displayed in a gold frame.
The British royal family appears eccentrically tightfisted to the people who serve them. “Prince Charles doesn’t like to spend money,” said his former valet Stephen Barry, “and he moans about the price of everything.”
Like his mother, Charles counts the chickens in the freezer at each one of his palaces and insists that leftovers be warmed and served, “night after night,” according to one of his secretaries, “until there is no food left. He cannot abide waste.” He also squeezes his toothpaste with a sterling silver implement called a mangle so he can get the last drop. Then he insists the tubes be recycled.
“All the Windsors are mean as cat’s piss,” said John Barratt. “All of them—from the Queen on down, and she’s the leader of the miserly lot. They pay little to staff * because they think it’s an honor for us to serve them. They give miserable presents—and then only at Christmas. The Queen once gave her laundress a bag of clothespins, which was her idea of a practical gift. She gave her seamstress a heavy horseshoe magnet to pick up the pins she dropped on the floor during fittings. Her Majesty does better for friends, of course, especially if they’re famous. She gave Noel Coward a solid gold crown-encrusted cigarette case for his seventieth birthday, a bizarre present from someone who professes to hate smoking, but lavish. The usual present from the Queen is a photograph of herself or one of her with the Duke of Edinburgh in a sterling silver frame with the royal crest.
“When it comes to those who serve them, Princess Margaret gives the same kind of frightful present as the Queen. Margaret gave one of her elderly ladies-in-waiting a lavatory brush because the poor dear didn’t have one in her loo when she visited.”
The Princess spent weeks before Christmas choosing appropriate gifts for her family, her friends, and her staff and wrapped each present personally. She selects sensibly but has been known to splurge for special employees. One year she gave her detective a video compact disc player and her chauffeur two shirts from Turnbull & Asser. That same year her butler, who had been hired only a few weeks before, received a less extravagant gift. “It was a very nice silk tie from Simpson’s,” he said. “The Princess explained that I would have received a little something more had I been with her longer.”
“The Queen gives the spare minimum,” recalled Barratt, “blow heaters, bath mats, a shovel. She would ring up and ask what Lord Mountbatten would like. I’d tell her that he needed new spurs. So she’d give him spurs. It’s a very useful way of giving a present, although it lacks spontaneity. But then spontaneity would be out of character for the royal family, where everything is programmed.”
The Queen seemed hardworking to her subjects, who appreciated her frugality. They took comfort in her conscientiousness as she recycled her wardrobe and passed her castoffs to her sister and her daughter. They nodded approvingly when one of her corgis killed a rabbit at Balmoral, and she carefully presented the bl
oody animal to her chef. “We can eat this,” she said. They saluted her practicality when she gave each of her staff at Sandringham a pot of chrysanthemums for Christmas with the instruction: “Give the pot back to the gardener when the plant dies.” They approved of the memo she wrote to the Head of the Household to change the forty-watt light bulb in her bedside lamp to one of sixty watts—”but not until this one is finished.” They liked her small efforts to conserve, especially during the droughts of the 1970s. When she alerted her households to save water, signs promptly went up in the lavatories of Buckingham Palace: “Don’t pull for a pee.”*
Her subjects accepted certain extravagances as basic necessities for the Queen such as her luggage—172 custom-made trunks of hand-tooled leather that carried her feather pillows, her hot-water bottles, her favorite china tea set, and her white leather lavatory seat.
Her arch, stilted manner was interpreted as dignified, even when she appeared to be totally out of touch. On a visit to Budapest she toured a homeless shelter and saw a line of unshaven men sitting on a bench outside. She said, “It must be so nice here in the winter.” She tried to relate to a group of housewives in Sheffield, England, by saying, “I find it difficult keeping my floors clean, too.”
Recognizing that Her Majesty’s world was remote and rarefied, her courtiers instituted regular luncheons at the Palace to introduce her to interesting people. “It’s supposed to be a hedge against high huckletybuck,” said an actor who has been a regular guest, “but I haven’t seen a change in ten years’ time…. She’s still the Queen, who sent six half bottles of nonvintage champagne to Winston Churchill on his deathbed… she’s the wealthiest woman in the world, and this, of itself, tends to make one so aloof and distant as to be unapproachable. Poor woman cannot relate on a human level… just doesn’t know how… making small talk pains her.” The Queen’s opening remark to one luncheon partner illustrated the vast distance between monarch and subject: “You can have no idea,” she said, “how much work is involved in maintaining a private golf course.”
