Grace of Monaco

by Robinson, Jeffrey

  Their visit with John XXIII was slightly less formal not only because he, as a pope, was less formal than Pius XII, but because Rainier had known him when he was nuncio in Paris and he’d stayed at the Palace.

  “He was then Monsignor Roncalli,” Rainier recalled, “and came here for some official ceremony, although I can’t remember which. He was a jolly, more down-to-earth man. Pius was a cerebral pope, a deeper thinker, a more reflective pope. John was probably the right pope for that time. He was social, more outgoing, and wanted much less ceremony. The style changed again with Paul VI. I always thought of him as a pope for transition. A man of ample goodwill who didn’t make waves.”

  There wasn’t much time to get to know John Paul I, but John Paul II was a man about whom Rainier had strong opinions. He said he found this pope very conscious of the media, very conscious of his image in the press. And that didn’t necessarily sit well with Rainier, who said he’d have liked to see John Paul, “spend more time tending to the flock.”

  Grace’s deep commitment to her faith inspired a Monaco-born, Rome-based priest to suggest within a few months of her death that she be put forward for beatification. Father Piero Pintus announced on the first anniversary of Grace’s death, at a mass he held for her on that occasion at his church in Rome, “I propose to make Grace Kelly a saint. As an actress, I preferred Ingrid Bergman. But Grace of Monaco was a faithful wife and an impeccable mother. She lived in a world where it was more difficult to preserve one’s faith. She was rich in temperament and rare in potential. She had the gift of grace and not only in her name.”

  The idea of having her mother canonized struck Caroline as a lovely thought but she wasn’t sure it was possible. So she started to look into it and discover that, in fact, it is highly unlikely. “To become a saint,” she found, “you need to have performed some miracles when you were alive and those miracles had to have been recorded in the church. Now, there is something in the church called ‘Blessed,’ which is one of the steps towards beatification. Maybe Mommy could become that.”

  Father Pintus claimed there are people in Europe and the United States collecting miracles attributed to Grace. There were stories about mothers with sick children praying to Grace, seeing a vision and watching as the child was cured. But until some of those claims were fully substantiated, Saint Grace would be a long way off.

  Even Rainier suggested, “The priest involved with that movement made a lot of noise but I don’t think it’s very serious.”

  Caroline agreed with her father. “I’m afraid we’re a little short on documented miracles.”

  GqH

  The Grimaldis, however, have never been short on friends. Among Rainier’s were Ronald and Nancy Reagan.

  Politically, Grace leaned more towards John Kennedy–style Democratic party politics, but if Rainier had been American, he’d almost certainly have been a Republican.

  “That’s been a very warm friendship,” he said, “We got to know them very well and got to see their life in the White House up close.”

  Rainier, Caroline, Albert, and Stephanie visited the Reagans there on a couple of occasions. Rainier stayed in the Lincoln Bedroom while the others had rooms upstairs. On the night table next to the bed in everyone’s room—just like those fancy hotels where they leave a piece of “sleep well” chocolate on the pillow—there was a little gift bottle of jelly beans with the presidential seal.

  “The President took Albert and myself to see the Oval Office,” Rainier went on, “and told us that the only time he got any exercise or any fresh air was when he went downstairs from the private apartments to the office. I thought to myself, what a change. Eisenhower had a putting green on the lawn there and he could move about pretty freely. Now the White House is like a fortress. When you look out of any window all you see are fellows in uniforms with guns patrolling the grounds with dogs. At the entrance you have a huge reinforced concrete triangle so you can’t just crash through the gates and drive straight in.”

  Visiting the Reagan White House just after the President was shot in 1981, Rainier found security so tight that it was like a prison. “We had very nice accommodation but every time you went into the corridor some security man would pop out from behind the curtains to see what was going on. You couldn’t possibly switch rooms there.”

  Nancy had mentioned to Rainier one evening how she loved the theatre but complained that the only theatre she and Ron could go to was the Kennedy Center because it was modern and had been planned with presidential security in mind. “Kind of sad, no? She said the only movies they ever saw were ones they showed in the White House. I thought to myself, who’d want a job where you had to live like this. It might be the worst in the world.”

  The Reagan-Grimaldi friendship was such that Nancy Reagan was one of the first people to arrive in Monaco when Grace’s death was announced.

  A gesture, Rainier said, that was very much appreciated. “Nancy was very sweet to come to Grace’s funeral. We put her up in the Palace. Although the Secret Service started being a bit rude when they decided there wasn’t enough security in the Palace with all the guards. We finally told them that if she stayed here she was our responsibility and they had to accept that. Frankly, I think the Secret Service just likes to show off. And maybe they could use a little dusting off because you can spot them immediately. They have wires coming out of their ears and they speak to their watches. You don’t find many other folks like that.”

  GqH

  It’s interesting how, after speaking to so many people who knew Grace and Rainier as a couple for a very long time, they all mentioned the word “devoted.”

  It’s possible, of course, that people who weren’t devoted to them didn’t stay around too long.

  But friendship for Grace and Rainier never seemed to be a one-way street, as Rainier’s old pen pal, Khalil el Khoury, testified. “When the Lebanon fell apart, we didn’t have to flee our home but there was nothing more I could do for my country, unfortunately, as the odds were too great and the players were too big. So my family and I left. We didn’t have any place to go until Rainier gave shelter to me and my wife and our children. He offered us passports. He gave us new roots, Mediterranean roots which are our natural roots, and the feeling of security to have this place and this nationality. It was a gesture of love and friendship.”

  Over the years it’s a gesture often repeated for the same reasons.

  King Farouk, for example, used to spend a lot of time in Monte Carlo. He’d take the entire second floor of the Hotel de Paris, some 20 rooms, because even as ex-king, he traveled with an entourage of about 40 people. Whenever he wanted to go somewhere he needed several dozen cars. Grace and Rainier got to know him and they both liked him.

  “He was an interesting man,” Rainier said. “I always shock people by saying I liked him. I’m not saying that I agreed with everything he did politically in his own country or how he behaved or certain decisions he made. But the times I saw him I found him to be a very nice man, although he was also a very lonely man. He was concerned about his country, about his family, about his son. He once told me, ‘We have a saying that a man who has a son never dies.’ I think he believed greatly in this. When he asked me to be his son’s protector, of course I accepted.”

  Rainier admitted that another reason he liked Farouk—much the same reason he liked Onassis—was the man’s flamboyance. “I like it for others but not for myself. It wouldn’t fit in with my way of ­living.”

  While he was king, Farouk used to come to Monaco because he enjoyed gambling. And most of the time, he’d arrive on his yacht. “The first time I went on board,” Rainier said, “I was taken back by how very obvious it was that he didn’t trust anyone around him. He couldn’t trust anyone, from his personal barber right down to the sailors.”

  When Farouk returned to Monaco after he was exiled, Rainier still received him the same way as when he was king. “That pleased him. I think it also astonished him. Don’t forget how young he
was when he became king and what he had to go through. I’m talking about the intrigues and the assassination plots, with the British trying to kill him I don’t know how many times, and the isolation in which he found himself. Members of his own family encouraged him to perform every vice possible. He was a sad character and he had no place else to go. Of course I gave him asylum. It was the right thing to do. He didn’t live here but he came here once or twice a year and carried a Monegasque passport. I’m still in touch with his son. He was married in Monaco. He’s developed into a very nice man who has great respect for his father. It turned out to be quite a good family. They stayed together. They live very quietly and simply in Switzerland.”

  When cellist Mstislav Rostropovich needed a passport after his Soviet citizenship was revoked, Rainier made him and his wife Monegasques. Neither of them spent much time in the principality, but that’s not the point. As Russian exiles, with Monegasque passports, they were able to travel. Rainier’s gift of a passport was also extended to the Shah of Iran when he went into exile.

  Rainier said, “I thought it was only right. I was revolted with the way the rest of the world treated him when he was down and out. Everybody at Persepolis was licking his boots, shining up to him. Remember how every country in the world tried to get money out of him? Persepolis was just the grand finale. He was the policeman of the Gulf and the best friend of the West as long as the West needed him. But as soon he went into exile everybody slammed their door on him, especially the countries that had once gotten the most use out of him.”

  High on that list, he continued, were the United States and France. “Tell me what they ever got from Khomeini? When I saw everyone close their to doors to him, I went to my Minister of State and said, ‘Why can’t we invite him here?’ The Shah was pretty much alone at that point. There was just his immediate family because most of his entourage had deserted him. France not only refused to take him in but, after having given asylum to Mr. Khomeini, they allowed Khomeini to return to Iran. And the Americans were worse. They could have offered him so many possibilities. All right, don’t move him to Los Angeles because there’s a big Iranian population there. But how many of those Iranians now living in America went to school there thanks to the Shah’s generosity? The United States is a big enough country. They could have found somewhere he’d be safe. Sure, there was a security problem but we were assured that he was willing to handle most of that himself. So we offered him asylum here. The Empress and the children still have Monegasque passports. Maybe the way the world treated him brought out the boy scout in me.”

  Chapter 32

  Rainier Revisited

  In the years following Grace’s death, Rainier said, his sister, Antoinette, came back into the mainstream of the principality’s life. She appeared alongside him at certain functions, especially the Red Cross Ball.

  But then, Antoinette’s son Christian had written a book about the Grimaldis that was anything but flattering. For the most part it was dismissed as sour grapes, the nasty musings of a spoiled young man who renounced his responsibilities, defied his uncle, and subsequently saw his inheritance cut off. If Rainier blamed Antoinette for any part in that, he wasn’t going to say as much.

  Anyway, as Antoinette had assumed the role of elder states­woman, and taking into account the way their lives have gone, Rainier seemed more than willing to put their past behind them.

  “I went away to school when I was 11 and she stayed home,” he said, “living either with my mother, my father, or with my grandfather. So from that time on there wasn’t very close contact between us. We grew up, each on our own side. You say she attempted to take the throne but I wouldn’t go that far. She may have criticized me. And maybe she even went further than criticism. But I’ve always been on fairly good terms with her. The incident at the time was grossly over-exaggerated. She’s conducted her life and I’ve conducted mine, but the bridges have never been taken down, the conversation has never been cut off. All right, I might have been annoyed with her and she might have been annoyed with me. We’ve had our differences. But we’ve remained on speaking terms and, anyway, I don’t know of any brother and sister who have never had their differences.”

  He wasn’t particularly comfortable talking about that incident many years before when Antoinette and her then husband had tried to usurp power. Except to say that he never considered it a full-fledged attempt to take the throne.

  On the other hand, there were some attempts at his throne he was happy—even amused—to speak about.

  There was a fellow named George Grimaldi, who ran a pub and a garage in the south of England, who claimed to be the 13th Marquis and the rightful prince. “That never got him very far.”

  Then there was an Italian lawyer named Grimaldi who insisted he had a genuine, documentable claim to Rainier’s throne, being a direct descendant of a Grimaldi who, in the 16th century, had the throne illegally taken away from him. “When last heard from, he was still living in Italy.”

  After that, someone in the German branch of the family tried their hand at pretending. But that claim to succession was so obscure, Rainier said, “It isn’t entirely sure how we’re related.”

  The thing is, he went on, “These people pop up every now and then. Grimaldi is a common name in Genoa and so there are always a few people there who pretend to be the rightful prince. Recently there was one in Corsica. There are lots of Grimaldis there, too. This chap announced that he was really the rightful heir to the throne but that he didn’t particularly want to rule. He said he’d do me a favor and let me stay.”

  Rainier’s title as Prince of Monaco was actually only one of 142 that he had. There was a whole series of Dukes, Marquises, and Counts that made up the list. In fact, he was said to have been the most titled man in the world.

  Many of those titles brought with them some sort of medal. Add various awards and honors that were bestowed on him over the years and it turned out that being so highly decorated became a real problem when he had to wear his finery at official functions.

  He explained, “I must be frank and say that medals don’t particularly interest me. They’re given by people who are perhaps expressing a kind thought or recognize something I’ve done. I appreciate that and accept the medal in that spirit. But I don’t attach any importance to medals and have never been anxious to get them.”

  Nor was he especially anxious to wear any of them.

  However, because they were given in a certain spirit, he found it difficult to wear one and not others. So he usually wound up having to wear them all.

  “But contrary to whatever gossip you sometimes hear around Monaco,” he said, “and you already know what I think about that, I do not spend my days looking at my medals, admiring them and polishing them.”

  He suddenly couldn’t keep a straight face. “Nor do I wear my medals on my pajamas.”

  GqH

  After admiring some of the photos in his office, especially of his children, Rainier responded, “The hardest part of being a parent is not being able to protect your children from the pain. And to protect them from themselves, which is often a difficult thing to do. Grace and I always encouraged our children to make their own choices because in the end it’s their own life.”

  Still, he said, it’s not always easy to let a child go ahead and do that, especially when you can see that it’s the wrong choice. “Caroline’s first marriage wasn’t a happy one. Both Grace and I knew it but we hadn’t got much choice. When you have a child come to you determined to share her life with somebody, what do you say? I think it was better to go along with it than to fight it. I think the most important thing when a parent has a crisis or conflict with a child is to keep the door open all the time so they know they can always come home to find shelter and refuge.”

  There was hardly any doubt that when Caroline announced her engagement to Philippe Junot her parents disapproved. “He had a very bad reputation and not much of a personality. I didn’t like his background. H
e didn’t have much of a job. I didn’t know what he did besides being part of a Paris clique who had some money and spent their nights out at clubs.”

  On one occasion before the marriage when someone asked Rainier, “What does Junot do?” The answer he got was, “Anything or nothing.”

  By the time word got out that the marriage was on the rocks, a story was circulating that Grace and Rainier had reassured Caroline, literally up to her first step down the aisle, that if she wanted to change her mind, if she wanted to back out of the wedding, she could and they would stand by her.

  No, Rainier said, it wasn’t quite like that. “I think you have to play the game as sincerely as you can. That’s really the issue. You have this child who is in love. All right, we did try to stop her up to a reasonable point, at least to talk her out of it. But she was intent on doing it, so what else could we do except go along with it?”

  He said he liked Stefano, appreciated him as a good husband and a good father and saw that he made Caroline happy. He also understood her grief when Stefano died. “Growing up has been difficult for our children. They’ve had very public lives. It hasn’t been easy.”

  Grace’s death, he recognized, was especially difficult for Stephanie.

  Nevertheless, when she went off to do her own thing, Rainier conceded, he wasn’t always pleased. “It sometimes hurt. But deep down, I liked to think I understood that she was merely doing what she felt she had to do. Listen, parenthood is never easy. You have to swallow a lot and let things go. But the main thing is to keep talking. To keep the door open. The child should know where home is and how to get back there, to know that no one is going to wave a wooden finger and say, I told you so.”