Ma’am Darling

by Craig Brown

  9.00 A.M.: She has breakfast in bed, followed by two hours in bed listening to the radio, reading the newspapers (‘which she invariably left scattered over the floor’) and chain-smoking.

  11.00 A.M.: She gets into a bath run for her by her lady’s maid.

  NOON: An hour in the bath is followed by hair and make-up at her dressing table, then she puts on clean clothes – ‘as one would imagine of a Princess, she never wore any of her clothes more than once without having them cleaned’.

  12.30 P.M.: She appears downstairs for a vodka pick-me-up.

  1.00 P.M.: She joins the Queen Mother for a four-course lunch ‘served in an informal manner from silver dishes’, with half a bottle of wine per person plus ‘fruit and half a dozen different varieties of native and Continental cheeses’.

  And so on. In the afternoon, she catches up with her diary or brings her photo album up to date. If there is an appointment planned for the following day, she practises her speech.

  More often than not, these royal duties proved tiresome beyond words, and the Princess returned in a sulk.

  ‘Many of them were pleasant-enough chores but obviously the thrill of visiting schools, addressing umpteen societies, visiting factories and laying foundation stones would quickly pall … I’m afraid that sometimes on her return to Clarence House after one of these outings Margaret would not be able to disguise her expression of gloom or outright relief.’

  Every now and then, the Queen Mother would be there at the front door to greet her returning daughter. ‘I well remember one rather revealing incident, which amused me very much indeed. It was a sullen rainy day. The Princess had been driven back from some tedious function and was greeted by the Queen Mother who waited with me just inside the half-open main door of Clarence House.’

  The Queen Mother offered Princess Margaret a cheery greeting. ‘Hello, darling. Did you enjoy yourself?’

  At this, ‘Margaret scowled and sighed: “Honestly Mother, I was bored stiff.”

  ‘The Queen Mother raised her eyebrows in surprise, threw me a glance and said confidentially to the Princess: “Never mind, darling. You must always remember to look interested even if you are not.”

  ‘But Margaret was not impressed. She huffed her shoulders and stomped off down the corridor leaving the Queen Mother looking after her with the glimmer of a smile round her mouth.’ With that, the Princess shut herself in her sitting room, and played an LP by Frank Sinatra.

  At 4.30 p.m. on a normal day, it would be time for afternoon tea. This consisted of scented China tea, a plate of sandwiches and two or three fancy cakes, served in her sitting room on a tray covered with a fresh white cloth. More often than not, the Princess wouldn’t eat anything. At the same time, her mother would be served exactly the same spread, but in her own apartment upstairs.

  At 5.30 p.m. it would be time to prepare for the evening ahead. ‘With the help and advice of the faithful Mrs Gordon, the Princess selected a dress – either a simple cocktail affair for the more casual social occasion, or, for a big evening, one of the flamboyant, billowing evening gowns which she was able to wear to such a wonderful advantage. With a choice of shoes and her matching assessories [sic] laid out for her, Margaret would sit once more before her own reflection in her dressing table mirror and make herself up and carefully comb her hair into position.’

  For Payne, ‘evening at Clarence House began with the descent of Princess Margaret from her bedroom, changed, made-up and invigorated by the prospect of an evening out with her friends’. Meanwhile, he would have cleared away the tea things and arranged the evening drinks tray, ‘ready for Margaret and her visitors’.

  Invariably, these visitors were the Woosterian group of young aristocrats known by the press at the time as ‘the Margaret Set’. After drinks they would go to a West End theatre (‘their tickets obtained discreetly through a booking agency’), and from there back to Clarence House, ‘tumbling out of their cars laughing and calling out to each other’, ready for more drinks.

  ‘They might even decide to have a little late dinner,’ records an aggrieved Payne, adding that ‘these decisions were always a thorn in my side, for they never thought about it until 11 o’clock or so, which meant I had to wait up all evening, and then stay up to serve dinner at midnight’.

  After dinner there would be smoking, and the gang would stroll back into the sitting room. ‘Within minutes, the record-player went on. Brandy and cigars were ordered in quantity and the Margaret Set let their hair down, kicking off their shoes to dance on the carpets, helping themselves to drinks and sorting through the Princess’s vast collection of records, from pop singers to Dixieland to real cool jazz.’ Payne notes, sniffily, that despite her ‘very fine’ collection of classical music, ‘my Princess’s taste was definitely low-brow, and for the most part, the symphonies, concertos and arias remained solidly in their covers’.

  His work was not done until the last guest had left, and the Princess had finally gone to bed. ‘I would be expected to remain up until Margaret turned in, maybe at two, three or four in the morning.’

  So one day would end, and the next begin. ‘These late nights were inevitably followed by the “morning after” which meant that Margaret would not be seen until the early afternoon. No such luck for me, of course. I was still expected to respond to the urgent calls of the Royal dogs and take them out for their early-morning exercise.’

  For all her devil-may-care attitude to late nights and fun, Margaret was always a stickler for order, her timetable as rigid as can be. Every evening, the drinks tray was her first port of call. She would stand and check it to see that everything was in place. ‘Chief object of her scrutiny was the special bottle of sealed Malvern water … which the Princess insisted on taking with her Scotch whisky,’ Payne recalled.

  In even the most ruthlessly calibrated hierarchy, it is these niggly little demands that can so often cause a rupture. Payne says he first realised the intensity of the Princess’s love of Malvern water and hatred of all other brands when he accompanied her for a weekend in the country.

  ‘I remember it was on one of these weekends away – it was actually at the Devonshire house of Margaret’s cousin, Mrs Ann Rhodes* and her husband – that I realized how strong was my Princess’s insistence on Malvern water with her drink. This ridiculous habit of always taking Malvern water had often caused me trouble and embarrassment, not to mention an occasional tongue-lashing, throughout my service with her. Now I was to see someone else put on the spot by my Princess’s petty refusal to drink plain tap water.’

  It was the evening of their arrival in Devon. Princess Margaret, ‘a little weary after our long journey’, had changed for dinner. Drinks were about to be served. ‘Of course, none of the other guests could be served until Margaret had made her choice … I knew that at this moment she would be looking forward to her usual whisky and water.’

  Denys Rhodes said, ‘What will you have to drink, Ma’am?’

  ‘Whisky and water,’ came the reply.

  ‘Certainly.’ First, Denys Rhodes filled a glass with ‘a generous helping’ of whisky. Then he raised a crystal jug filled with tap water, which he was about to pour into the Princess’s whisky.

  ‘Instinctively, I pushed forward to warn him. But I was too late. Before I could speak, the Princess had spotted what he was doing and in a voice which stilled all other conversation in the room said: “No Denys. Not that. I want WATER in my whisky.”’

  The room fell silent. No one could fathom what on earth she was on about. At the same time, Payne sensed that ‘they seemed to be hoping – by the look on their faces – that they were about to witness a royal tantrum.

  ‘Mr Rhodes was apparently quite puzzled too. He looked at Margaret as if she might have been joking and with a slight smile playing about his lips said: “But this is water, Ma’am.”

  ‘But Margaret wasn’t having any of that, as I could have told him. She looked him up and down and completely ignoring the rest of the co
mpany said in her most Royal tones: “That is not water. It is only tap water.”’

  Princess Margaret beckoned Payne over. ‘John knows exactly what I mean. Fetch my special water here immediately, will you?’

  Payne went to the kitchen and picked a bottle of Malvern water from the crate he had brought with him. When he went back into the room, he found that the other guests were still not talking, while Mrs Rhodes, ‘in a slightly vexed voice’, was saying, ‘But Margaret, water is water wherever it comes from. You’ve got to admit that.’

  But no: she dug in her heels. Water is NOT water. Payne went over to the Princess and showed her the bottle of Malvern water. ‘It was still sealed; Margaret always insisted on this.’ The Princess nodded her head, and turned to her cousin.

  ‘This, Ann, is water. Now do you see what I mean?’

  With a bow, Payne presented the fresh glass to Princess Margaret. All was well; conversation recommenced.

  The ever-watchful Payne logged the Malvern incident as a prime example of the Princess’s unsettling combination of obstinacy and ignorance. ‘This type of demonstration of stubbornness by my Princess never failed to amuse me, especially if it concerned her love of Malvern water. But I soon learned that Margaret could not recognise the taste of Malvern water from any other kind. It was only a Royal whim that made her an addict to this particular liquid.’

  At this point in his memoir he reveals that on a number of their weekends away he ran out of Malvern water. ‘And I knew that if a fresh bottle had not been produced when called for it there would be a stern reproach for me from the Princess. She had decided that without Malvern water she could not drink whisky and therefore I was depriving her of a decent drink. That is how Margaret’s mind worked.’

  To avoid a scolding, Payne would pick an empty bottle from the crate, then hunt around for a used Malvern seal. ‘This could mean sorting through the rubbish in the waste bin or grubbing about on the kitchen floor.’ Having ascertained that no other servant was looking, he would covertly fill the empty bottle with tap water before carefully fitting the seal in place. ‘A little glue and some gentle re-arranging of the red and white paper seal and it would look as good as new.’

  It was a trick that worked a treat. ‘Of course, my Princess never spotted it. She would check the seal when I showed it to her, but, trusting me as she did, she never bothered to scrutinise the seal closely. I always felt a little guilty at fooling her but she drank her whisky and “water” as usual and never showed any ill effects. In fact sometimes I would swear she appeared to enjoy it more than the real thing.’

  * More accurately known as Margaret Rhodes, née Elphinstone (1925–2016). Her autobiography, The Final Curtsey (2011), was an unexpected bestseller.

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  As she grew older, Princess Margaret turned pickiness into an art form, snubbing hosts who offered her items of food and drink that were not exactly what she wanted. Staying with friends on Corfu in the mid-1980s, she was invited to dinner by a neighbour who had never met her before. Prior to her arrival he went to an amazing amount of trouble, scouring the island for as many different types of whisky as he could find, so as not to be wrong-footed. When the evening came, he asked her what she would like to drink. ‘Famous Grouse, please.’ ‘Ma’am, that is the only one I haven’t been able to get.’ ‘Then I won’t have anything, thank you.’ And with that, she turned away to light a cigarette.

  At times, it seemed as though she was taking a perverse pleasure in finding things not up to scratch. Hugo Vickers recalls the first time she came to dinner with him. ‘She said, “You won’t have a Robinson’s barley water,” and I said, “Of course I have,” and she looked a little disappointed.’

  Her hosts knew to serve her first. The more obsequious would withdraw any dishes she refused – potatoes, for instance – so that others could not have them either. Nor were her fellow guests permitted to carry on eating once she had finished. The Princess tended to wolf down what little food she ate, which meant that slowcoaches would have to down tools with half their food left uneaten.

  Far more than her sister, she was given to pulling rank. She once reminded her children that she was royal and they were not, and their father was most certainly not. ‘I am unique,’ she would sometimes pipe up at dinner parties. ‘I am the daughter of a King and the sister of a Queen.’ It was no ice-breaker. Even in her youth, she would accept invitations only on the understanding that the names of her fellow guests were submitted to her lady-in-waiting beforehand, accompanied by a full CV. Throughout her life she delighted in exercising the power of veto. One hostess remembers an Indian friend being blackballed, on the grounds that the Princess didn’t like Indians.

  When exactly did she first show signs of being the world’s most difficult guest? By the age of twenty-eight she had already developed a reputation: when Cynthia Gladwyn, the wife of the British ambassador to France, heard that the Princess would be accompanying the Queen Mother on a visit to Paris in April 1959, she felt very put out. ‘This put a different complexion on the scheme,’ she recalled in her diary some time later. ‘… Her reputation, when staying in embassies and government houses, was not an encouraging one.’

  Lady Gladwyn could not have been aware of an unfortunate incident a few days before. On the morning of a lunch in Rome held in the Princess’s honour, the ten-year-old daughter of a senior British diplomat had been taught to say grace. But when the big moment came, she grew tongue-tied. While the Princess and everyone waited expectantly, the little girl whispered to her mother that she had forgotten what to say.

  ‘You remember, darling,’ replied her mother encouragingly. ‘Just repeat what Daddy and I said before lunch.’

  ‘Oh God, why do we have to have this difficult woman to lunch,’ piped up the little girl.

  The Gladwyns met the Queen Mother and Princess Margaret off their plane at Orly airport. They had flown direct from Rome after a meeting with the Pope. Her diaries suggest that Lady Gladwyn was ill-disposed towards Princess Margaret from the start: while she describes the Queen Mother as ‘radiant as always’,* the Princess is, she notes, ‘looking far from radiant’ in a ‘distinctly ordinary coat and skirt’.

  Along with radiance, she emitted delight. Her authorised biographer, William Shawcross, chronicles this trail of delight. Wherever she goes, she delights everyone, and they are in turn delighted by her delight, whereupon she is delighted that they are delighted that she is delighted that … and so forth. If you shut his book too abruptly, you’ll notice delight oozing out of its sides. Returning from Australia, the young Elizabeth hears that the King is ‘delighted with the enthusiastic reception’. For her birthday, the King and Queen give her a Chinese screen. ‘She was delighted,’ reports Shawcross. Off on another trip, she leaves the children with Queen Mary. ‘The Queen was, as always delighted,’ writes Shawcross. In time, George and Elizabeth are elevated to King and Queen. Her husband bestows the Order of the Garter upon her. ‘She was delighted.’ She meets President Roosevelt, whom ‘she thought delightful’. She also found train drivers ‘delightful’, and ‘delighted’ in mimicry. After the coronation she visits Balmoral. ‘It was delightful,’ she says.

  It clearly takes a certain steeliness to be quite so radiant, quite so delighted twenty-four hours a day. The famously effete Stephen Tennant, the brother of one of the Queen Mother’s early suitors, described her as ‘hard as nails’. The Duke of Windsor agreed, calling both his mother and his sister-in-law ‘ice-veined bitches’.

  Queen Elizabeth II is also sometimes described as ‘radiant’, though less frequently so, perhaps because her efforts at radiance appear rather more dutiful. But from the age of twenty-five, Princess Margaret was rarely described as ‘radiant’, other than on her wedding day, traditionally an occasion on which the adjective is obligatory, to be withheld only if the bride is actually hauled sobbing to the altar.

  On that April morning in Paris, Lady Gladwyn ascribed the young Princess’s determined non-radiance
at Orly airport to her late nights ‘dashing around in Rome in a smart set’. She had mixed with aristocrats, artists and film stars, returning to the Rome embassy in the early hours of the morning. But this was, she felt, no excuse for her general off-handedness. ‘Princess Margaret seems to fall between two stools. She wishes to convey that she is very much the Princess, but at the same time she is not prepared to stick to the rules if they bore or annoy her, such as being polite to people.’ This was soon to become the accepted view of the Princess among those who bumped into her socially.

  Her purpose in coming to Paris was twofold: to have her hair styled by the famous Parisian hairdresser Alexandre, and to be fitted for a dress by Dior. Any additional obligations she regarded as a bit of a chore. At a small cocktail party in the embassy, she proved to Cynthia Gladwyn that she was ‘quick, bright in repartee’, but also ‘wanting to be amused, all the more so if it is at somebody else’s expense’. This, she felt, was ‘the most disagreeable side to her character’.

  After the cocktail party, they all went upstairs to dress for the forthcoming dinner for sixty in the State Dining Room. On the way, Margaret asked her hostess, ‘Will it be short or long?’ Lady Gladwyn sensed a trap. ‘I knew that this trivial detail had often been a stumbling block; that if it was decreed that we would all wear short dresses, she would embarrass everybody by making an entry in the most sweeping of ball dresses, and vice versa.’ Even at this early stage, she had taken against the young Princess. Did she merit such instant disapproval, or was it a perverse reaction to her fame?