ROLL OVER, CASANOVA
Victoria Mather complains that the
playboy has been eclipsed by the cad
IT is a truth universally acknowledged that a not-so-young man with a financial deficit must be in want of a wife, or, at the very least, a woman on whom to prey. Just when you thought the liberation of women had confined the cad to the pages of Goth- ic fiction, along come James Hewitt, Greg Martin and Massimo Gargia.
Mr Hewitt is like the Circle Line, an intermittent service on life's gravy train, but he comes around just as one had given up hope of being taken for another ride. Pre- sumably, his forthcoming book reveals just enough about Diana, Princess of Wales to justify initially a £600,000 serialisation fee from the Mail on Sunday (which has now been dropped because of the intervention of Earl Spencer and leaks from other news- papers). It holds just enough back to ensure that another golden egg can be hatched when Hewitt's funds again run dry. It's the modern twist on necrophilia.
Greg Martin seduced Tara Palmer- Tomkinson, with dubious intent. Big mis- take. Tara is a contemporary heroine: writer, model, party person and survivor. She's been to rehab and back, and we do not appreciate our girl being targeted by a man who's been in more beds than Alan Titchmarsh's spade.
Massimo Gargia, who sounds like an espresso machine, is less a cad than a play- boy. Last week his sexagenarian confes- sions as 'the ultimate playboy who charmed his way into the decadent world of Europe's super-rich jet-set' were seri- alised in the Daily Mail. He slept with Greta Garbo (once, and even tabloid spin- doctoring failed to make it sound exciting), Dame Cecile de Rothschild and. . . who cares? He's an old prototype of a perenni- al species, the social climber who uses rich and famous women as life's ladders.
The eternal pattern of the predatory male is defined by the cad and the Casano- va. There is a distinct difference between the two. The dividing line, as with every- thing else, is power and money. No one who was seduced by Warren Beatty ever claimed that he was a cad. More like, 'Dar- ling Warren, can I cook your dinner, iron your shirts, wipe your feet and, by the way, would you like to use my body at the same time?' If asked out to dinner by Jack Nicholson, the response of a right-thinking woman would be to buy a new dress and get her hair done. James Bond is surely the fictional epitome of a 20th-century Casanova, and the Bond girls are decided- ly not victims.
We can be confident that Mr Beatty is capable of paying for a girl's dinner. The cad is always patting his pockets frantically and claiming that he's left his wallet at home: `But I'll pay you back, angel face.' There is no recorded instance of Mr Bond's martinis being underwritten by any of his lovers; Sir James Goldsmith, a titanic Casanova, pro- vided handsomely for all his mistresses and wives. Prince Aly Khan, Gianni Agnelli, Dis- card d'Estaing and Alan Clark, just deceased, all have the reputation of Casanovas because their images were enhanced by power, money, fame and sta- tus. The cad is a nonentity hoping to achieve money and status by his association with a gilded woman. A cad kisses and tells. It is impossible to imagine Agnelli or Aly Khan having anything to do with the Mail on Sun- day other than drowning its representatives off their yachts. In the case of Mr Hewitt, once an officer but certainly no gentleman, the most hurtful aspect of his revelations for Princes William and Harry must be that their mother was stupid enough to be taken in by this human garbage.
Yet this is the trouble with cads. Not having the charismatic advantages of fame and money, they are entirely flattering and intensely handsome. It is their currency. Luring birds out of trees is a mere bagatelle. English roses are particularly susceptible to the sort of man who appears actually to like women, since most English men don't. They'd rather be out doing boy things: shooting, fishing, cricket, White's. The cad ostensibly lives only for you, his goddess. That he worships at several tem- ples is usually well concealed. Before he picked on Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, Greg Martin had hedged his bets on Sabrina Guinness. Someone who met him on his trajectory through the social scene said that initially, true to form, he appeared 'entirely charming and fabulously good-looking. Then one got a bit closer and realised he was a phoney, old and had wrinkles'.
Massimo Gargia belongs to the Tender is the Night world of Dick and Nicole Diver; a little dissolute, but he did not set out to hurt anyone. That is the distinction between the playboy or Casanova and the cad. The cad makes false promises. Casanovas promise nothing. Indeed, the Casanova is upfront and tends to play the game at his own level, so, provided a woman knows his form, he adds to the gaiety of nations. In his dance to the music of our time we are all consenting adults. The cad preys on the weak and unsuspecting, or is just unforgiv- ably unpleasant (think of young Winston Churchill who left his admirable wife, Min- nie, for a Belgian jeweller).
The ultimate dividing line between the cad and the Casanova is one of style. Style is a subjective judgment, but John F. Kennedy, who behaved appallingly, defi- nitely had it and is therefore a Casanova, and Bill Clinton does not have it and is thus a cad. Kennedy had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, Clinton had an affair with a fat woman who looks like an air hostess and compounded the offence by claiming that oral sex is not sex. As a defence, the world thought it sucked.
Are cads a regenerated life-form, given the extraordinary financial inducements offered by the tabloids? Well, the cads are alive and positively thriving. John Bryan recently claimed that he 'slept with two royal women in one day', although it is doubtful whether the Duchess of York counts as royal. Enrique Iglesias, son of crooner Julio, said: 'I want to sleep with more women than my father.' And, of course, James Hewitt was on track for about £2 million for his tawdry tale.
The world has gone mad when, in a supreme pot-calling-the-kettle-black claim, the editor of the Mirror, Piers Morgan, says, 'Hewitt would sell any information that he had about Princess Diana at the blink of an eyelid . . . he is the ultimate cad and bounder.' I never thought I'd be in accord with a Mirror editor. Jack Nicholson can call me any time, but I hope dogs pee against Mr Hewitt's cavalry twills.
The author writes the Daily Telegraph's Social Stereotypes column.
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