Wise words
PetroneIla Wyatt
When I was a child I remember some song from the radio called 'Nobody Loves A Fairy When She's Forty'. It was supposed to be funny but every time I heard it I felt so sorry for this poor unloved fairy that tears pricked my eyes.
I had forgotten that song completely until the news that Princess Margaret had died. Commentators have pointed to the ambiguity shown by the public at her death, comparing the sad sparseness of floral tributes to the thousand gardens that bloomed when Diana. Princess of Wales was killed in a car crash with her lover.
Well, nobody loves a Princess when she is 71. She is too old to be glamorous and too young to be the 'nation's favourite granny' especially as that role is already filled by the last Empress of India.
The impression of Margaret is of someone who was bitter, imperious and demanding. Robin Day once told me a story of a night when he was forced to drive the Princess back home to Kensington Palace from a dinner party. It was 2 a.m. and Day longed to leave as he had an early call at the television studio. But the Princess kept him in the kitchen for two hours. He did not dare even to ask to sit down as the Princess remained standing. He recalled how she fixed him with a rheumy eye and poured out her loneliness. For one awful moment Day thought he was expected to sacrifice his body for his country hut eventually she allowed him to return home.
There were many such tales as these, and when, aged 14, I found myself in the same box as her at a racecourse. I hoped very much to be ignored — though obviously not for the same reasons as Day. But my father was obdurate. 'Princess Margaret wants to meet you,' he boomed in a voice that brooked no dissent, especially as the whole room had heard it.
In those days she was still described as glamorous but the woman who stood before me seemed anything but. She was small and plump and her costume — for this is the only adequate word to describe it — added to the peculiar spectacle. A large green hat with an enormous feather obscured the upper half of her face. I remember being struck by how large her nose was. She appeared all nose, in fact. 'Hello, Ma'am,' I said, apprehensively, hobbling about in some absurd un-racecourse
like shoes. She shot me a fearsome look, 'How old are you?' Fourteen."You look much older.' Crikey, what did that mean? I was absurd, ridiculous, lamb dressed as mutton? 'I meant that as a compliment,' she added, and smiled. •She then began to ask me what books I enjoyed reading. I blurted out that I was in the middle of Anna Karenina. 'Yes,' she said, 'I can identify with her.' I think we talked about Russian literature for about 15 minutes before some lady-in-waiting whisked her off. A royal who read books! It was as if a banker had turned out to be a molecular scientist on the side.
I did not meet her again for over ten years. In the interim, apparently, her moods had worsened. I was invited to a dinner for her and warned on no account to leave before she did. I dreaded sitting up until three. I also dreaded meeting her again. By this time I was editing the Mandrake column in the Sunday Telegraph and some not very complimentary items had appeared in it about the royal family. But, like my father, the hostess was obdurate. 'And do you know Petronella Wyatt, Ma'am?' 'Indeed I do,' she said, rather to my horror, Her neat words nearly struck me dumb. 'I like your column very much. It has some good sense in it . . . from time to time: She laughed. 'It must be very hard writing a column. I admire you.' 'Oh, no,' I demurred. Any ass can do it.' I doubt that, but a career can assuage life's disappointments for a woman.'
I suddenly had the feeling that she was unusually sympathetic to young girls and wondered whether it had anything to do with 'having her heart broken when they wouldn't let her marry the man she loved'.
But perhaps her disappointment would have been greater if they had. Peter Townsend seemed a dry old stick, even when he was young. I could see them, ten years into their marriage, he flummoxed by her penchant for metropolitan culture and she bored and disillusioned by his lack of conversation.
The last words she ever spoke to me were, 'Don't worry if you never marry. It will save you a lot of vexation.'
Glamorous she was not, but wise she was.
Previous page
