AND ANOTHER THING
When the royal theatre goes dark
PAUL JOHNSON
Agifted young historian, with a sensi- tive imagination, should make a study of the interaction between charm and power. It is a neglected subject and an important one. What is charm? Difficult to say; but some people clearly have it, others don't. A really well equipped ruler can get by with- out it, just — witness General de Gaulle and Margaret Thatcher — but with others the possession of charm can be a substitute for more substantial gifts.
A classic example was the transition in 1933 between Herbert Hoover and F.D. Roosevelt, seen in historical mythology as a change from darkness to light. Hoover was a much abler and more knowledgeable man than FDR, and their policies did not sub- stantially differ, but whereas Hoover radi- ated a repellent gloom, FDR made people feel good, wanted, useful and so happy. J.F. Kennedy's charm successfully concealed an abyss of weaknesses; Richard Nixon's lack of it, despite many sterling assets, was a key factor in his downfall. Ronald Reagan, overcoming his age and limitations, made his charm work hard for him; Jimmy Carter and George Bush, without the gift, remained one-term presidents.
American leaders, being heads of state as well as government, need charm much more than our prime ministers. And a head of state who has no authority needs it most of all. Therein lies the problem of our royal family. They don't have it. All the royal charmers of recent generations — Queen Alexandra, the Queen Mother, the old Duchess of Kent (and her daughter), Princess Diana — have been outsiders. The House of Windsor itself seems solidly based on a bedrock of chilly, uncomfort- able marble. It warms to no one, and no one warms to it. In good times, it doesn't matter terribly; when trouble comes, you notice it just isn't there. According to John Major, it was the Queen who decided she should pay tax. If so, why didn't she announce it herself, gracefully, and thus make a virtue out of necessity? That is what Queen Elizabeth I would have done, as indeed she did in her 'Golden Speech'.
The historical records are often dumb but they occasionally allow the voice of royal charm to speak faintly. Alfred and Cnut reinforced their brains and will with neatly displayed charm. The Plantagenets could be great charmers, Henry II, his son Richard, Edward Longshanks, Edward III and his eldest son, the Black Prince, being conspicuous examples. There was a Lancas- trian charm exhibited by Henry V, which half-concealed his steely ruthlessness, and a jovial Yorkist charm with which Edward IV masked his greed. Charm in monarchs sits comfortably with both villainy and foolish- ness. Henry VIII, compensating for his cold, flinty father, turned on his charm at will, to the delight even of those who knew it was false: in old age his speeches could still reduce his much tried Commons to tears of gratitude. His daughter, Elizabeth, inherited the gift, which her half-sister, Mary, did not, and put it to more honest and constructive use — no one was more skilled at softening angry hearts with a gra- cious phrase or a warm letter. The Stuart charm, sitting alongside fecklessness and even treachery, was notorious: men happily died — they scarcely knew why — for Mary Queen of Scots and Charles I, and, still more hopelessly, for Prince Charles Edward; and they would doubtless have died for Charles II — the most seductive of all of them — if he had lacked the wisdom to make it necessary.
The House of Hanover-Windsor, by con- trast, has made almost a cult of charmless- ness. As Dr Johnson put it: 'George I knew nothing and desired to know nothing; did nothing and desired to do nothing.' Seventy years later, Thackeray pronounced a simi- lar verdict on him, and on George II too. George III tried hard, but the charm simply was not there. As for his sons, 'between them', as the Duke of Wellington put it, `they have personally insulted every gentle- man in the kingdom'. His daughters, immured in the 'Windsor Nunnery', were pathetically charmless, a bunch of bedrag- gled 'old cats', as one of them said, 'who ought to be sewn in a bag and drowned in the Thames'.
It is true that royal charm is an elusive thing. That grotesque old Bourbon Louis XVIII, so fat he had to be carried, so greedy he not only insisted on being served first (moi avant!') but would consume an entire dish of new peas intended for his whole family — rather like Evelyn Waugh — once fell down on parade and could not get up. He firmly rejected the assistance of a young officer and insisted on waiting, supine, until the captain of the guard was summoned, as 'the proper person to raise us up'. This story, circulating, added to his popularity, confirming that one form of charm is to make other people feel morally superior to you. By contrast, his younger brother, Charles XII, tried to do the right things, including pointing out publicly, on his accession, that he had not had a mis- tress for 30 years, but soon found himself in exile all the same. No charm, you see.
For royalty there is an alternative to charm, which is not something you can learn or consciously acquire, and that is to turn into a symbol. Queen Victoria, who had no charm, contrived to do this, after one or two false starts, and gradually made herself the embodiment of the virtues, prej- udices, tastes and habits of the expanding middle class and the upwardly mobile workers. This was a huge achievement, and a more solid base for the popularity of a constitutional monarchy than any amount of charm. To some extent, both George V and George VI, likewise charmless, suc- ceeded in doing the same thing, and it looked for many years as if Queen Eliza- beth II was pulling it off too. But, while making no obvious mistakes, she has slowly got out of touch, and, as the gulf between her and her subjects has widened, the lack of charm has become more damaging. Then again, like George III before her, she has been badly let down by her children. Like it or not, fair or unfair, parents are to some extent judged by their offspring's behaviour. The royal sons and daughter are by no means wicked — far from it — but they are unheroic, fallible and, above all, charmless. Royals who lack charm should marry it. The Prince of Wales did precisely that, and then threw it away. Charm is not rational or just or moral; there is nothing virtuous about it, quite the contrary as a rule. It is a conjuring trick. But what is monarchy without magic? The royal scene in Britain today is like a theatre in the piti- less daylight — the gilt chipped, the plush faded, the music silent, the floorboards echoing, the dust visible. We are waiting for a new play to go into rehearsal. But who will write it?
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