Diana in Search of Herself

by Sally Bedell Smith

  When Diana and Charles met with Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, that spring for premarital instruction, they couldn’t hide the troubles in their relationship. Runcie recalled that his assistant, Richard Chartres—“a very observant man”—noticed that Charles was “seriously depressed. You [could] tell from his voice.” Runcie and Chartres concluded that it was an arranged marriage, but Runcie believed Diana would “grow into it.” Runcie was fond of Charles, and considered him “highly sensitive” and “capable of hidden acts of kindness.” The Archbishop was touched that Charles “encouraged [Diana] a lot when she looked a little anxious and wan.” Runcie noted perceptively that Diana was “very tender, very unformed,” yet “had a sort of shrewdness and was tremendously observant … of anything about you.” In Charles’s presence, Diana seemed awed. “He’s very deep, Charles,” Diana told Runcie with childlike adoration.

  No one, not even Charles, knew that Diana suffered from severe bulimia nervosa from practically the moment they were engaged. In her childhood and adolescence, Diana had shown a low tolerance for stress and a need for a safe environment where she would be accepted and encouraged. Given her vulnerabilities, Diana now found herself in the worst possible place—with a fiancé who couldn’t completely devote himself to her, a family that couldn’t support her, and a press and public that clamored for her attention, expecting her to perform perfectly.

  When Diana had faced a previous highly stressful situation—her O-level exams—she had fallen apart and failed. When she felt strain in her personal life, she had turned to food for relief. The pressures of being the prospective bride of the Prince of Wales were too much, and her bulimia relapse seemed almost inevitable. “There are circumstances which bring difficulties to the surface,” said a leading British psychologist. “Some have been mild or never very apparent. I could imagine if she had been in a supportive situation it might have been different.”

  Diana later blamed Charles for the onset of her bulimia a mere week after their engagement, telling Andrew Morton, “It was all very strange. I just felt miserable.… [Charles] put his hand on my waistline and said, ‘Oh, a bit chubby here, aren’t we?’ and that triggered off something in me—and the Camilla thing. I was desperate, desperate.” Charles’s unthinking mockery may well have pushed a button. According to eating disorder expert Kent Ravenscroft, “comments like that can set teenage girls into a cycle of bingeing and purging.”

  Yet larger forces were also at work, as even Diana’s close friends conceded. Said one, “All these terrible memories of her childhood, and all these insecurities, came back and she became very ill.” In the view of another friend, “her bulimia was triggered by the responsibilities of being a public figure. She was a perfectionist, and her bulimia was created by lots of different reasons. But to get people on her side, it was better for them to think Charles caused the bulimia than other things like her public responsibilities and expectations.”

  A crucial catalyst was Diana’s preoccupation with her portrayal in the press. On March 9, Diana appeared at her first royal engagement, a benefit for the Royal Opera at historic Goldsmiths’ Hall. She wore an extravagant black strapless taffeta dress, with a décolletage displaying her ample bosom. According to former Vogue editor Felicity Clark, Diana had put on weight since being photographed by Snowdon for Vogue the previous fall. Clark, who later visited Buckingham Palace regularly as part of a Vogue team helping with her wardrobe, said that Diana had chosen the dress because there wasn’t time to have a ball gown made. The design was too bold for the occasion, and Diana miscalculated by choosing black, which royals traditionally only wore for mourning. “It is what happens when you first wear grown-up clothes,” said Clark. “You dream of how you look in something. I am sure she wanted to create a sensation. She wanted to look fantastic. She knew the eyes of the world would be on her.”

  She made the hoped-for splash, “but then she was rather overwhelmed by the attention,” said Clark. Behind the tabloid headlines (DI’S DARING DEBUT in the Daily Express and DI TAKES THE PLUNGE in the Daily Mirror) reporters applauded the dress, but Jean Rook in the Daily Express noted the “ounce or two of puppy fat” under Diana’s arms. Diana had already expressed dismay about her image on television, hiding her head in her hands and moaning, “Oh, God, I look awful.” Now that her weight had been criticized so directly, Diana was even more agitated.

  Diana’s descriptions of her bulimia were informed by language honed on the therapist’s couch: “my escape mechanism.” The first time she was sick after her engagement, she recalled, “[she] was so thrilled because [she] thought this was the release of tension.” She likened bulimia to “a secret disease. You inflict it upon yourself because your self-esteem is at a low ebb, and you don’t think you’re worthy or valuable. You fill your stomach up four or five times a day—some do it more—and it gives you a feeling of comfort. It’s like having a pair of arms around you, but it’s temporary. Then you’re disgusted at the bloatedness of your stomach, and then you bring it all up again, and it’s a repetitive pattern which is very destructive to yourself.”

  She confessed that “when you have bulimia you’re very ashamed of yourself and you hate yourself, so—and people think you’re wasting food, so you don’t discuss it with people.” She also claimed that “the thing about bulimia is your weight always stays the same, whereas with anorexia you visibly shrink. So [with bulimia] you can pretend the whole way through. There’s no proof.” But in Diana’s case, there was plenty of proof. From the time her bulimia reemerged in March 1981 until the wedding in July, Diana’s weight dropped nearly fourteen pounds—from 140 to 126—and her waistline contracted from twenty-nine inches to twenty-three-and-a-half inches. As she herself said, “I had shrunk to nothing.”

  Diana vacillated between bulimic bingeing and purging and anorexic self-starvation, much as her sister Sarah had done. Both anorexia and bulimia are linked by a morbid fear of fatness, which Diana and Sarah shared. Yet Sarah was basically an anorexic who periodically controlled her weight by purging, in addition to fasting. Diana was primarily a bulimic who engaged in binge eating and compensated for her gluttony with forced vomiting, fasting, excessive exercise, and later, colonic irrigation. Although the conditions are closely related, psychiatrists believe it is likely that women with bulimia nervosa are “psychologically different” from those with anorexia nervosa, which seems to have been the case with Sarah and Diana.

  Diana’s abuse of food was not deliberately self-destructive, but a way to quell inner turmoil. In a letter to a relative five months after her marriage, Diana wrote, “I am ashamed to think I ate everything in sight [during a recent lunch], but if it’s any consolation, felt so much better with a stomach filled.” Vomiting, like vigorous exercise, releases endorphins, the chemicals secreted by the brain that have a tranquilizing effect. “It’s a good antidepressant and antianxiety mechanism,” said Dr. Kent Ravenscroft. “Some people become addicted in part because of the secondary physiologic[al] effects.”

  The signs of Diana’s obsession with food seem all too clear in retrospect. Even before her engagement, Charles’s valet observed that “she loved eating sweets. She always got into the car with her Yorkie bars or bags of toffees.” After she moved into Buckingham Palace, her puzzling eating habits became more conspicuous. “Lady Diana never ate properly then,” Stephen Barry said. “She picked like a bird at chocolate, yogurts, and cereal. She never dr[a]nk but [ate] lots of fruit, and in those days she was always running down to ask the chefs for an apple or any sweet leftovers made by the pastry cooks. It seemed funny to us. She wasn’t adjusting to being royal. The Prince hasn’t been to the kitchens for years. They are right at the back of the palace and miles from anywhere. It seemed a long way to go for an apple.” Most tellingly, Diana ate copious amounts of ice cream, which bulimics often consume before eating other kinds of food so they can induce vomiting more easily.

  Diana’s immediate family might have been expected to detect he
r condition before anyone else. Her mother, Frances, later said that because of her experience with Sarah, she had “recognized all the symptoms very quickly with Diana”—although if she knew during the engagement period, she didn’t sound an alarm, nor did she directly intervene in Diana’s illness as she had with Sarah. As she rather weakly explained, “There are an enormous number of reasons for anorexia and bulimia taking hold and you have to know those reasons to be able to help.” Diana’s mother remained in the dark about the reasons, either because Diana refused to tell her or Frances declined to ask. “It’s a very difficult area,” Frances said, “because you’re told you mustn’t pander. That can accentuate the problem, but if you don’t take enough notice, that can be damaging, too.”

  During the months before the marriage, Frances spent more time with Diana than she had in many years. By some accounts there was friction between mother and daughter, which wouldn’t have been surprising under the circumstances. Frances took Diana shopping several times a week and helped out in the office. Diana’s sister Jane also came by regularly to give whatever assistance she could, and Diana periodically stayed at Jane’s apartment in Kensington Palace. Diana was then closest to Jane, and relied on Jane’s husband Robert Fellowes for guidance.

  Diana’s father stayed in the distance, but he and Raine made some remarks after the engagement that could only have put more pressure on Diana. Commenting on Diana’s fortitude in the face of media scrutiny, Earl Spencer told The Times, “She never breaks down because Diana does not break down at all.” Raine defensively added that Diana was neither highly strung nor prone to depression.

  Diana’s parents and siblings had too much of a vested interest in a successful royal marriage to probe her feelings. The excitement was contagious, and it carried them all along. “If she had been in a united family, it would have been all right,” said Michael Colborne. “During the engagement her mother came into my office every day. It was helpful, but I don’t think Diana had ever experienced that before. They got on, the adrenaline was flowing.”

  By all appearances, Diana was enjoying herself, especially the most visible aspects of being a princess. She loved inspecting her wedding presents; when she saw the suite of sapphire jewelry—a bracelet, watch, necklace, and earrings—sent by King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, she exclaimed, “Gosh, I’m becoming a very rich lady!” She also immersed herself in building her wardrobe, an activity that Charles encouraged.

  Through her sister Jane, Diana met the four editors from Vogue magazine who helped her select a wardrobe, gave her tips on makeup, and taught her techniques for walking through crowds and posing for the cameras. “At the beginning the people at Vogue would tell her, ‘You should wear this for this occasion and these other things for another occasion,’ and she was listening and learning a lot,” recalled Roberto Devorik, who worked with the Vogue editors. “Diana seemed to enjoy the new glamour.” Vogue editor Felicity Clark remembered that “Charles was very interested in her clothes. He participated occasionally in choosing things. It was lovely and nice.”

  Diana showed off her newly glamorous image in a series of public appearances—dining with the Saudi king, promenading at Ascot, watching polo at Windsor and tennis at Wimbledon—all of which received blanket coverage in the press. LADY DI-ET! proclaimed The Sun, marking its approval of Diana’s more svelte figure.

  The ever-vigilant hacks detected a few hints of tension. James Whitaker noted that, during Ascot, Diana left Charles to spend time with an old friend named Humphrey Butler, and that Charles had gone home alone. Several weeks later, Whitaker quoted some tart remarks Diana made to tennis star Chris Evert Lloyd about Charles: “He can never sit still,” Diana complained. “He is like a great big baby. But one day I hope to calm him down.”

  Charles was trying to change his habits to accommodate a woman who needed far more attention than he had anticipated, and he showed his apprehension in a joint television interview taped for broadcast several days before the wedding. “I tend to lead a sort of idiotic existence of trying to get involved in too many things and dashing about,” he said, “and this is going to be my problem—trying to sort of control myself and work out something so that we have a proper family life. It isn’t easy.” When interviewer Angela Rippon said, “You’ll have a wife by your side. That’s obviously going to make an enormous difference to you,” Charles replied, “Well, it’s marvelous to have a lot of support,” prompting Diana to quietly murmur—as if giving herself a grim reminder—“Better like it.”

  In late June, Charles and Diana attended a twenty-first birthday party for Prince Andrew at Windsor Castle, where Diana was reported to have “requested rock numbers and flung herself about energetically to Shakin’ Stevens numbers.” “She was in great form that night,” recalled a member of Diana’s family. “She looked radiant.”

  Behind the scenes, Diana’s anxieties took on a new and unfortunate focus in mid-July. Charles had asked Michael Colborne to help him organize gifts for various friends as tokens of gratitude. “There were more than a dozen [gifts] that [Charles] was giving to Lady Tryon, Camilla, and others,” recalled Colborne. At the suggestion of a friend, Charles came up with a special keepsake for Camilla: a gold bracelet with a blue enamel disk stamped GF, which stood for “Girl Friday,” Charles’s nickname for her.

  Colborne ordered the bracelet, which was delivered to his office along with the other gifts. Diana later claimed that Colborne had told her about the bracelet, but he insisted that Diana had found the box on his desk and opened it. As a friend of Charles’s explained, “If you make a habit of opening parcels and letters out of curiosity, thunderbolts do strike.” Diana was convinced the initials stood for “Gladys” and “Fred,” which would have symbolized Camilla and Charles as a couple. “I was devastated,” Diana recalled.

  According to Diana, Colborne let slip that Charles planned to give Camilla the gift that evening. In a “rage, rage, rage,” Diana confronted Charles, who tried to explain the gift, but she was unmoved. They had a bitter fight when Charles told her he was determined to deliver the bracelet to Camilla as a graceful and courteous farewell gesture. Diana accused him of dishonesty and later said, “he cut me absolutely dead.”

  Charles decided to present the bracelet to Camilla at lunch on Monday, July 27. On Saturday, July 25, during a polo match at Tidworth, Diana’s public facade of cheerfulness cracked when she burst into tears and rushed off. Prince Charles caught up with her at Broadlands, where she had gone to rest. “It was easy to see that he was worried,” said Stephen Barry. The next day’s newspapers were filled with stories of her breakdown, which Charles explained by saying the crowded polo match was “just a bit too much for her.” All the hacks showed up on Sunday when Diana was due to watch more polo at Windsor Great Park. Under the headline THAT’S BETTER!, Whitaker described Diana at her “radiant best,” while the Daily Mail said she “kept her composure and her smile.”

  Only John Edwards in the Daily Mirror broke from the party line of a quick recovery to describe a darker mood: “The radiance for television at the end of the day couldn’t change things,” he wrote. “Something had gone wrong for sure. Diana was mostly tired and tense.… She hardly smiled.”

  He noted how she had lingered in the Queen’s private enclosure, “twisting a white cardigan in her hands, peeping nervously from behind the door at the crowds.” Later, he observed that Diana “turned her head uneasily from side to side.… She rubbed her forehead with both hands and looked disturbed. She was never relaxed.”

  Edwards read her body language correctly, because Diana was dreading Charles’s meeting with Camilla the next day. That Monday, as he was delivering the bracelet, Diana had lunch with Sarah and Jane, and later recalled telling her sisters that she couldn’t go through with the wedding, to which they replied, “Well, bad luck, Duch, your face is on the tea towels, so you’re too late to chicken out.” Diana incongruously recalled being pleased by this response because her sisters reduced her anguish t
o a laugh. In such exchanges, Diana showed how she could shift quickly from a mood of serious distress to one of jocularity, causing others to feel puzzled about which signals they should heed.

  Later, Diana and Charles went to St. Paul’s Cathedral for their final wedding rehearsal, this time under the television lights. Afterward she broke down again. “The tension had suddenly hit me,” Diana recalled. “I sobbed my eyes out. Absolutely collapsed, and it was collapsing because of all sorts of things, the Camilla thing rearing its head.” Reinhold Bartz, the husband of Diana’s first cousin Alexandra Berry, later said that Diana’s distress continued during a small reception in the early evening for family and friends. He said her “eyes were swollen as if she’d been crying,” leading him to conclude that “she had cracked under the strain.” At a grand ball given by the Queen that evening, Diana was all smiles once more as she and Charles greeted well-wishers at the top of a staircase.

  That night, “in the hours leading up to his marriage to Lady Diana Spencer, Prince Charles lay in bed at Buckingham Palace with Mrs. Camilla Parker Bowles,” James Whitaker announced on the first page of a book he wrote about the Wales marriage in 1993. Calling Charles’s actions “the grossest deceit on his future wife,” Whitaker asserted that “Diana was simply there to make a marriage of convenience.” According to Whitaker, Charles had taken Camilla to his bed on Monday, July 27, while Diana slept at Clarence House following the Queen’s ball.

  It was one of the most damaging charges made against the Prince of Wales, and, by all reliable accounts, it was wrong. Whitaker cited two sources for his information: an unnamed informer and Stephen Barry, who was dead by the time the book came out. But in his own book, Royal Service: My Twelve Years as Valet to Prince Charles, published in 1983, Barry had written, “Buckingham Palace was totally unsuitable for anything secret to take place.” Michael Colborne, who was part of the team working night and day at Buckingham Palace to prepare for the wedding, said the assignation “didn’t happen, that is for certain. It couldn’t have happened without a lot of people knowing. It would have been impossible—and suicidal. It was not in the Prince’s character to do something like that.”