Country life
Pray for the Princess
Leanda de Lisle
I don't suppose I was alone in feeling as if someone I had grown up with had been killed. Diana was only a year younger than me. She was brought up in the country, had been educated at a similar school and shared a flat with a girl who had been in my class. Still we weren't 'introduced' until I was 21, when she became engaged to the Prince of Wales. It seems she's hardly been out of my sitting-room since: showing me her first child from the steps of the hospi- tal, telling me about her divorce, asking me to help her ban land-mines. Of course, the television screen didn't allow me to talk back to her. But like everyone else I had my views. Whether it was in the pages of a newspaper or over a dinner table, people from Northumberland to New York were happy to state what she should do and how she should do it. Now she was gone, and I sensed myself to be very, very small.
When I went down to the nursery I dis- covered that my nine-year-old son had woken his brothers to tell them the news. `Who will look after the children?' my six- year-old asked. The Princes will soon go back to boarding-school and I hope they won't feel too alone. It must have been dif- ficult for them to make friends naturally. There were various royal princesses at school with me and, although I'm sure most of their classmates were kindly, they were regarded as oddities and therefore difficult to talk to in a normal way. The Princes have now been singled out by tragedy as well.
A friend who was orphaned while at boarding-school once told me how his school-mates would cross the corridor to avoid him. They didn't want to upset him by saying anything, but, while he didn't want to dwell on his situation, he found it very difficult when those around him pre- tended nothing had happened. The Princes will be aware of the press and public's oft- mentioned concern for them, but I should think that they would find that concern quite frightening. The emotional support they need can come only from their family — and friends.
In any case, the rest of us are busy dis- tancing ourselves from what happened in Paris and building a pedestal to put Diana on. It was notable that the BBC, whose journalists damned the evil tabloid press, showed pictures of the Princess and Dodi Fayed leaving the Ritz on the news, hours after they had died. How long can it be before we see pictures of the Princess dying in her car? Perhaps I'm being optimistic when I say 20 years. But I see them surfac- ing in a biography sold with the promise of `new revelations' and illustrated with 'as yet unpublished photographs'. Just think what's happened to John Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. As the hymns of praise become more extravagant, so less and less will remain sacrosanct.
When the emperors of Austria were buried, tradition required the lord cham- berlain to knock on the closed door of the crypt and crave entry for the king-emper- or's body. But the monk on the other side only opened the doors when, on the third knocking, all titles were dropped and entry was sought for 'a poor sinner who begs God for mercy'. Similarly, at Mass last Sun- day, the priest asked us to pray for the Princess 'who now stands before God, not as a saint but a sinner'. After hearing the adulatory retrospectives on her life, this seemed inappropriate, but it was a timely reminder that now she is herself. A door has closed behind the Princess and our opinions of her don't matter any more. I suppose they never really did.
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