ANOTHER VOICE
Princess Monster as a model for the New Britain
AUBERON WAUGH
Aletter from Theodora J.M. Van Lot- turn in last week's Spectator came all the way from distant Guatemala to make the point that, whereas the writer had formerly felt that Lady Diana Spencer undertook certain obligations in marrying the Queen's heir, 'that was before I learnt that he had been two-timing her from day one'. From this intelligence, Miss Van Lottum conclud- ed, 'That's an affront no wife should be expected to take and present a smiling face to the world . . . My sympathies are with the Princess.'
It is not only in Guatemala that this view is held. I have heard many women express it in London. How are they all so sure that Wales was two-timing from the very start? A much more likely scenario, it seems to me, is that the Prince and his paramour decided to lay off the hanky-panky on his marriage, but to remain friends. It was only when the 'shy and lovely girl who has won the hearts of millions' (News of the World) showed signs of becoming a manipulative anorexic, given to hysterical mood-swings, that the older couple were driven back into each other's arms.
Either story is equally romantic in its way: a beautiful, young woman made ill by her husband's coolness and infidelity, or an honourable, decent prince who found him- self married to a monster. Choose which you prefer. It was Nigel Dempster who, less than 16 months after the royal wedding, while we were all still swooning with love for the Princess, warned the world that the Prince of Wales had become a 'desperately unhappy' man. The Princess had become a `very wilful and spoiled girl. Suddenly, get- ting this enormous power, having people curtsy and bow to her, doing everything she wants, she's become a fiend. She has become a little monster.'
Commenting at the time on Dempster's revelation, which was thought to have come from Princess Margaret, I wrote in The Spectator of 18 December 1982:
Gloomily, we decided she would almost cer- tainly go mad before very long. Apart from the fact that she was plainly a nervous filly, and few young women could be expected to survive the strain of so much exposure, there was the metaphysical dread that in represent- ing Britain's Youth and Hope for the Future she was in fact representing two somewhat parlous entities.
Although her wise old step-grandmother, Dame Barbara Cartland, has pointed out
that men do not wish to make love to women who always weep and throw tantrums, it is only Julie Burchill, so far as I know, among the nation's commentators and chatterers, who has made the simple, metaphysical identification: Princess Mon- ster is the New Britain, or at any rate the newest part of it. On that basis, Burchill loves her. Others, by the same token, are free to regard her with fear and loathing.
If the Prince of Wales represents the old monarchy, the Princess represents some- thing new and entirely different. Do we want it? The fact that we debate the ques- tion in public proves that the old monarchy, alas, has had its day. No institution which exists entirely to be venerated can survive in an ethos which is dedicated to ending deference in any form. Under constant, sadistic attack from the Murdoch press and the new Mirror group, the monarchy is no longer in any position to preside over our decorous decline. The French royalists who demonstrated in the Place de la Concorde last week may have been 200 years late, but at least they turned up. Where are our English royalists? When Malcolm Mug- geridge complained about the Queen's speaking voice some 30 years ago, he received excrement through the post for months. Lord Altrincham, who supported him, had to change his name. Nobody seems to revile Richard Littlejohn, who claimed in the Sun (22 January):
If my postbag is anything to go by, the British public has had it up to the back teeth with the Royals. There is a residue of affection for the Queen and her mum, but that's about it.
In moments of desolation, I begin to feel `Take a litter, Ms Jones.' he may be right. There is no good in point- ing out to these ignorant, rancorous oafs that London will be a dimmer, dingier place without its palaces and parades — just as Vienna has become since the Habs- burgs were sent packing — or that we are voluntarily destroying the only thing we have left to give us a sense of being differ- ent, a sense of national pride. The Wind- sors have served this country well, but noth- ing has happened in the past few weeks to make me alter my advice that they should be allowed to return to Germany with dig- nity and decorum, the plaudits of a grateful people ringing in their ears, and leave Princess Monster behind on her own, to receive the cheers of her adulatory fans, Madonna-like, until they grow bored and decide to tear her to pieces.
As a nation, we are too exhausted to come up with anything new and too stupid to see the advantages or the strengths of the old; we have become too mean and too envious to support a monarchy — too nasty and too rancorous to defer to anyone but I would like to think that enough intel- ligence is left to save us from fatuous new enthusiasms to replace our old ones. Where President 'Bill' Clinton can face his fellow countrymen and countrywomen (it would never do to forget his countrywom- en) and talk of a 'spring reborn in the world's oldest democracy that brings forth the courage to re-invent America', an equivalent flight of oratory in this country would be greeted with nothing but a long raspberry. To that extent we are, thank God, unsavable.
Others will talk of the tremendous ener- gy and optimism of America against our own surly lassitude. In fact, large parts of the United States show such a wilderness of spiritual and intellectual desolation as the world has never seen. Its children and young people, bored out of their minds by television's bright, optimistic voices, are committing suicide in their thousands, unable to communicate with each other even on the most basic sexual level. Mar- ket-led democracy leads to nowhere but a lonely seat in front of the television set, eat- ing popcorn and drinking cola. Our only hope of avoiding this fate is to identify the New Britain, whether it is called Princess Squidgy, as its admirers prefer, or Princess Monster, John Littledick or Richard Little- john, and wherever possible knock it on the head.
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