Diana in Search of Herself

by Sally Bedell Smith

  By any reasonable standard, Charles and Diana should have spent enough time together to get to know each other in depth and to see each other in a range of circumstances. But the public spotlight made a normal courtship impossible, and as 1980 drew to a close, Diana’s anxiety began to show. “I will simply die if this doesn’t work out,” Diana confided to Mary Robertson. “I won’t be able to show my face.” The closest Charles came to a proposal was shortly before Christmas during a visit to the Parker Bowleses, when he said, “If I were to ask, what do you think you might answer?” Diana responded with a giggle. The next month, when she stayed at Althorp, Diana’s distress over the continuing uncertainty was obvious. “I rang up and spoke to Raine,” recalled Elsa Bowker. “I said, ‘How is Diana?’ Raine said, ‘She is very sad. She is in the park and she is walking alone, and she is crying because Charles is not proposing.’ ”

  It was an article of faith in the tabloids that Prince Philip began haranguing Charles to get married well before Diana. “He’d been saying for some time that if Charles didn’t hurry up and find a bride there would be no one suitable left,” observed Stephen Barry. Now that the royal train story had cast Diana in a bad light by implying that she and Charles had slept together, Philip weighed in more forcefully that Charles should propose or end the relationship. “He counseled his son that he could not delay a decision for much longer; that to do so would cause lasting damage to Diana Spencer’s reputation,” wrote Dimbleby. “The Prince interpreted his father’s attitude as an ultimatum.”

  Against this backdrop of urgency, two friends—Penny Romsey and Nicholas Soames—approached Charles in January 1981 to voice their reservations about Diana. Penny Romsey, who was married to Mountbatten’s grandson Norton Romsey, had “sensed the absence of intensity in [Charles’s] feelings for Diana,” wrote Dimbleby. Penny pointed out how little the couple had in common, and she worried that Diana seemed to be courting tabloid photographers, posing for them “to her best advantage.” Her biggest concern was that Diana had apparently “fallen in love with an idea rather than an individual” and acted as if she were “auditioning for a central role in a costume drama” instead of grasping “the enormity” of her role as consort. Norton Romsey backed up his wife’s impressions more forcefully, which only angered the Prince. Still, Penny Romsey’s observations were significant, according to a friend of Charles’s, because she was “one of the sharpest and most closely observing friends of the Prince. She felt something was wrong. It was an intuitive sense.”

  Nicholas Soames expressed his annoyance to a Palace official that Philip had imposed “such a terrible mismatch on his son.” A former equerry to Charles, Soames so identified with the Prince that his house was “a monument to their relationship, with the Prince of Wales feather motif on everything and Prince of Wales pictures everywhere,” said a friend of Soames. To risk Charles’s displeasure under those circumstances indicated how strongly Soames felt. Soames was not known for his perceptiveness about women, but he told Charles that he and Diana were “too completely unalike,” according to Soames’s friend. “Nick thought Diana wasn’t up to Charles’s weight, to use a riding expression. She was pretty childish and very unformed.”

  Between the pressures and the misgivings, Charles told another friend that he was in a “confused and anxious state of mind.… It is just a matter of taking an unusual plunge into some rather unknown circumstances that inevitably disturbs me, but I expect it will be the right thing in the end.” Finally, after a skiing holiday in Switzerland with his friends the Palmer-Tomkinsons, whose “support helped to steel his nerve,” he invited Diana to Windsor Castle on the evening of February 6, where he asked her to marry him and she accepted instantly.

  Diana’s description of the proposal was both tormented and contradictory, offering a revealing snapshot of her quickly shifting feelings. Her words should also be viewed through the prism of her insecurities, along with her later animosity toward Charles. “There was never anything tactile about [Charles],” she complained. “It was extraordinary.” When Charles proposed, she recalled laughing and thinking “This is a joke,” a fairly inappropriate reaction to a moment she had been openly longing for.

  In her interviews with Morton, Diana several times invoked the “voice inside” that seemed to propel her almost against her will, an expression of the unusual detachment she said she had felt since childhood. In this instance, “a voice said to me inside, ‘You won’t be Queen but you’ll have a tough role.’ ” At another point, she said, “From day one, I always knew I would never be the next Queen.” Yet in her 1995 Panorama interview, Diana cast doubt on her earlier recollection: “As for becoming Queen,” she said, “it was never at the forefront of my mind when I married my husband. It was a long way off, that thought.” To add further contradiction, Morton himself wrote in a 1991 article that Diana said to her friends, “After everything I’ve been through, I’m determined to be the next Queen of England.”

  By Diana’s account, when she told Charles after his proposal that she loved him, he only replied, “whatever love means.” She remembered, possibly with sarcasm, “So I thought that was great! I thought he meant that!” Moments later in her recollection, she swung 180 degrees and said, “I thought he was very much in love with me, which he was, but he always had a sort of besotted look about him.” Then she turned just as rapidly to add, “It wasn’t the genuine sort,” hinting at her persistent fears of rejection. Diana’s feelings of isolation and confused identity were equally apparent in another puzzling observation: “Who was this girl who was so different? But he couldn’t understand it because his immaturity was quite big in that department.”

  Several days after the evening at Windsor Castle, Diana went to Australia to begin making arrangements for the wedding with her mother. Diana took this separation badly, calling it a “complete disaster.” While she missed Charles terribly, she later claimed he never called her on the phone, and when she tried to reach him he wouldn’t call her back. But Stephen Barry remembered that Charles and Diana “spoke constantly but guardedly on the telephone.… Generally, she called him. His engagements were booked so far in advance she knew where to find him.” Charles himself recalled, in a television interview, what happened when he first rang Australia—where Frances Shand Kydd had carefully hidden her daughter from the press—and asked to speak to Diana. “We’re not taking any calls,” came the reply. It took some rather heated persuasion to convince them that he was in fact the Prince of Wales. Diana’s statement that he didn’t call, which became significant evidence of callousness in her case against Charles, was a classic illustration of the way she lashed out when she felt abandoned—a pattern that would repeat itself throughout her marriage.

  The engagement announcement came on February 24, and the television interview given by Charles and Diana that day became bigger news than the engagement itself. The couple both looked exceedingly nervous as Diana bit her lip and Charles grimaced. “Can you find the words to sum up how you feel today?” asked a questioner. “Difficult to find the right sort of words,” Charles said, glancing at Diana as she nodded. “Just delighted and happy. I’m amazed that she’s even brave enough” (turning to her and grinning) “to take me on.” With that, they both laughed as the interviewer asked, almost offhandedly, “And I suppose in love?” “Of course,” said Diana, with a half-grimace, half-smile as she rolled her eyes. “Whatever ‘in love’ means,” said Charles, smiling, as Diana giggled and echoed, “Yes.” “Put your own interpretation on it,” added Charles. Commented the interviewer, “It means two very happy people.” Replied Diana, “As you can see,” nodding her head and smiling.

  Out of that brief exchange, with all its body language and conspicuous embarrassment, Charles’s four words—“Whatever ‘in love’ means”—have been played back endlessly over the years to portray him as chilly and aloof. Diana told her astrologer Debbie Frank that she had been “shocked” by his answer in the interview—although Diana also claimed
that Charles had used similar words the night of his proposal. “She told me it … was the first real indication … that Charles didn’t think or feel like ordinary people,” said Frank. Seen in full context, with Diana’s mild eye-rolling mockery as she said, “Of course,” and her very distinct “yes” following Charles’s uncertain words, his response seemed less offensive than many have implied.

  Given the number of times Charles publicly discussed the meaning of love and marriage, his reply was consistent with his tendency to intellectualize matters of the heart, especially when they intersected with his sense of duty. “It was an idiotic question,” said a man who was a friend of Charles and Diana, “and the answer was typical of [Charles’s] self-doubting, probing personality. It was an awkward attempt at introspection.” Like any upper-class male, Charles also shrank from the sort of public display of emotion demanded of him. “He was very good at hiding what he was thinking,” noted Stephen Barry. “He always had his feelings under control.”

  Yet the question of whether they were in love remains unanswered to this day—for her as well as for him. According to one theory, propounded by James Whitaker and royal biographer Anthony Holden, Charles’s feelings shifted when he traveled to Australia after the engagement. “Wherever he went, he would see her image on the TV,” recalled Holden, who was part of the press pack. “James and I think we saw him fall in love with the idea of her at a distance.”

  Charles was notably restrained in writing to friends that March: “I am very lucky that someone as special as Diana seems to love me so much. I am already discovering how nice it is to have someone round to share things with.” Charles didn’t appear to be “in love” with Diana at the outset. He was fond of her, and he hoped that his feelings could grow into love through a deepening of shared values and interests.

  Diana’s view of Charles’s feelings fluctuated wildly, and over the years she offered varying versions to friends, depending on her mood at the moment. When she felt she had been a “sacrificial lamb,” she dismissed Charles for choosing her only to produce a male heir. During her first meeting with astrologer Penny Thornton in 1986, Diana spoke of her “unrequited love for Charles” and recounted how devastated she was before her wedding by a “categorical denial” from Charles of “any love for her.” A year later, according to Thornton, Diana told her “unequivocally that the marriage was arranged … by her grandmother … and the Queen Mother” and that the romance “was created purely by the media.”

  At other times, Diana expressed resentment of those who doubted Charles’s love. “What really hurt [her] was the claim that Charles never loved her,” said astrologer Debbie Frank. Diana insisted to Frank: “He did love me and I loved him. It wasn’t all arranged.” According to one of her close friends, “Diana said he was in love with her at the beginning, but that his idea of love was a bit different from hers.”

  Charles could see that Diana was infatuated with him, but even he was unsure how deep her feelings ran, as he indicated when he observed to friends that she “seems to love me so much [emphasis added].” Asked if Diana might have been more in love with her fiancé’s title than with him as a person, her brother Charles replied “nobody with insincere motives could look that happy.” Diana’s mother also saw in Diana and Charles “genuine happiness and deep affection for each other.” “When she first fell in love,” explained one of Diana’s close friends, “of course part of it was that he was the Prince of Wales, but he was lovable in many aspects.… He really was her first love, the only man who really impressed her.”

  Yet if Diana’s later recollections were an authentic gauge of her mood in 1980 and early 1981, she felt intense resentment, anger, fear, depression, and jealousy behind her expressions of affection. Diana needed to be consoled and cared for, and had she felt secure, her disquieting undercurrents might have subsided. But life with the royal family behind palace walls only offered the illusion of protection. Diana was an emotionally bruised adolescent without a clear identity, and royal life, with its rigid protocol and fishbowl confines, would become a source of anxiety rather than a safe haven.

  She had to leave her friends, her work, her comforting routines—an environment in which she did as she pleased and avoided entanglements (“I couldn’t handle [them] emotionally.… I was very screwed up”) that threatened her fragile self-esteem. She had to commit herself to an intimate relationship with a powerful man, to fill a demanding role for which she was unprepared, and to submit to the harsh and unceasing judgment of the intrusive press. Inevitably, she would be overwhelmed by her inadequacy, and she would experience disappointment as well as a sense of betrayal. Her fears of rejection would turn into a pattern of self-destructive behavior and emotional withdrawal that would stun not only the royal family but Diana herself.

  Chapter 8

  “It’s a relief that she is going to have protection from Buckingham Palace at last…. I’m sure being Princess of Wales won’t change Diana in any way. For me she’ll always remain my sweet lovable little sister”

  —SARAH SPENCER MCCORQUODALE,

  in the Daily Mail, February 25, 1981

  Once the engagement had been announced, Diana moved into Clarence House, the home of the Queen Mother. That night Diana dined with Charles and his grandmother—an occasion Diana did not mention when she subsequently complained that “nobody” was “there to welcome me.” Three days later, Diana settled into her own apartment in Buckingham Palace, where she was to stay until the royal wedding on July 29.

  In theory, the palace was filled with people who could help ease Diana into her role. As her sister hoped, Buck House, as it is often called, did provide a wall behind which Diana could hide from the invasive press, but her sense of security ended there. With its endless rooms and more than 200 employees, Buckingham Palace is a forbidding place, more like a large apartment and office building than an embracing household. Each member of the royal family has a separate apartment, and a sense of isolation is almost inevitable, since the royals spend a great deal of time alone when they are in residence, often dining separately. “At the door you are met by footmen and then you walk down echoing corridors and you don’t see anyone except the occasional cleaner,” said a man close to Prince Charles.

  Diana had a suite consisting of a sitting room, bedroom, bathroom, and small kitchen. She was assigned a maid and footman, and although she had grown up with servants, the footman remarked to Charles’s valet, “What shall I do? Lady Diana never seems to ask for anything.” By her own later admission, her view of royal life had been astonishingly simplistic: “I had my own money and lived in a big house, so it wasn’t as though I was going to anything different.”

  She occupied her time with wedding preparations such as shopping, making lists, and writing thank-you notes, assisted by her mother or her new private secretary, Oliver Everett. She was so eager for company that she sought out footmen and maids to chat with, showing an informality unheard of in the royal family. (Though in keeping with her need to maintain control, she bristled when any servant took the liberty of addressing her in an overly familiar way.) But much of the time she was by herself, watching soap operas, doing needlework, or tap dancing for hours—to the point, recalled Charles’s valet Stephen Barry, that she “quite ruined the music room parquet.”

  “The Prince of Wales has made everything far easier for me,” Diana told reporters a few days before her wedding. Reflecting back on this period in later years, however, Diana spoke in withering terms about the royal family and the courtiers of the royal household—the high-level staff who served the family. She said they treated her coldly, and she complained that no one helped her learn the ropes: “I was just pushed into the fire.” She hastened to add that she managed by dint of her upbringing, although her behavior indicated otherwise. In her first official appearance, she said she was confused about such basics as which hand to use for holding an evening bag, and whether to precede Charles when making an entrance. Said her former employer Ma
ry Robertson, “Diana told me … she’d received virtually no support or advice from the royal family, ever.”

  Diana came from a family of courtiers; her own father had been an equerry to King George VI and to the Queen, and her Spencer and Fermoy grandmothers had been ladies-in-waiting to the Queen Mother. The top layer of courtiers have traditionally been upper-class men drawn from the elite public schools and the officer corps of the military. They serve as private secretaries—actually chief advisers to each member of the royal family—press secretaries, equerries who help plan and supervise official trips, and an array of assistants. One level below are officials who work as accountants and office managers; the bottom rung in the household is occupied by footmen, maids, butlers, and other servants who operate “below stairs.”

  The various ladies-in-waiting to the Queen and other female members of the royal family also come from aristocratic backgrounds, but their positions are not as prestigious as the male courtiers. “The lady-in-waiting is part secretary and part servant,” said a woman close to the royal family. “She is responsible for answering correspondence, and when someone like me comes to visit, the lady-in-waiting has to offer me a drink and carry my bags.”

  Pay for the senior courtiers has historically been low, but the prestige and the perks are considerable. Courtiers often receive free lodging in “grace and favor” apartments attached to the royal residences, travel widely, and carry a sense of importance that comes with proximity to royalty. It is a culture that encourages sycophancy when dealing with members of the royal family. As Stephen Barry noted with understatement, “Few people voice criticism of what the Prince of Wales chooses to do.”

  The conventional wisdom is that Diana received “less training in her new job than the average supermarket checkout operator.” Yet there is ample evidence—including effusive letters of gratitude from Diana—to indicate that she received a great deal of help from the moment she entered Buckingham Palace. Jonathan Dimbleby described the way several advisers tried “to instruct her in the ways of the court and what they saw as her duties.… They explained that her future role as consort … would be more complicated than she might have realized, and that her husband would not be at her side as often as either of them might have wished. They also told her that … she would always be expected to walk somewhat in his shadow.”