by John Pearson
Al Fayed could be immensely charming and was, of course, very, very rich. He made sure that any contact with Diana came through Raine, and whenever Diana visited Harrods, he was always there to greet her in person and to make a fuss of her, just as he had with Johnnie. He insisted that it was his privilege to do so. By now he had appointed Raine to a non-executive directorship of Harrods and he offered a similar position to Diana. She was tempted, but in the end reluctantly refused. But she did not refuse his offer in 1997 to spend a luxurious holiday with al Fayed and his family at his villa in the South of France. By accepting this invitation, Diana’s fate was sealed.
It was a sign of improving relations between Diana and Prince Charles that he now raised no objections to his sons spending two weeks of their summer holidays with their mother at the Fayed villa outside San Tropez. By all accounts the holiday was a success, so successful that al Fayed, who was never one to miss a trick, suddenly saw the chance of a lifetime.
Although Diana had previously met his son Dodi when playing polo with Prince Charles, it was only now, in the romantic climate of the South of France, that she seemed to notice him. More than that, al Fayed saw at once that she was obviously attracted to him. Think what it would mean if the mother of the future king of England could be somehow persuaded to fall in love with his only son, Dodi. For any other father it might have been hard to arrange. For al Fayed anything was possible.
Diana and the two young princes returned to England at the end of the holiday, but by then she had already accepted an invitation for another holiday - without her children. She had two previously arranged engagements, one in support of the land-mine campaign in Bosnia, and the other a short Greek island holiday with her close friend, Rosa Monckton. For both trips al Fayed put a Harrods private jet at her disposal.
Diana was both vulnerable and valuable, just how valuable al Fayed showed by spending a reported $20 million simply to ensure the success of the romance. It went on the Jonikal, a 200-foot luxury yacht which he purchased specially for the occasion. At the same time he ordered Dodi to break with his American fiancé, the model Kelly Fisher, leaving him free to fall in love with Diana.
Once more, Diana’s life, unknown to her, was being taken over. A few weeks later, aboard the Jonikal, Dodi fell in love with her and she with him, exactly as al Fayed intended. They seemed inseparable. However, the world press closed in on them, and so did the past when they returned to Paris.
Had Diana not made her peace with Raine, she would never have become involved with al Fayed, nor would she have been in Paris with his son. But now the circle was complete as she returned so unsuspectingly to the Ritz Hotel with Dodi on the evening of the 30 August. Of course there were elements that no one could have foreseen and which also became part of her fate - the hurried telephone call Dodi made to his father in Oxted for instructions leading to a change of plan, the jostling photographers gathered round the doors, and the arrival of the man who was to kill her, the depressive, alcoholic driver, Henri Paul, with the equivalent of six whiskies and twenty milligrams of Prozac in his bloodstream.
As Diana and Dodi went through the doors of the Paris Ritz on that August night in 1997, who would have thought that the close friendship Johnnie and Raine Spencer had struck up with Mohammed al Fayed at the same hotel in 1980 would end seventeen years later with the deaths of both of their children.
Epilogue
When Diana met her death in the Paris tunnel at the Place d’Alma shortly after midnight on 31 August 1997 it was a tragedy in the strict Greek meaning of the word - the inevitability of fate in the life and death of the great and famous. With Diana, one keeps noticing this inevitability in the sequence of events, some of them buried deep within the past, but all converging on her failed royal marriage, the manner of its break-up, its aftermath, and now her death.
There was much within her early life that had directed her towards her marriage - all those aunts and grandmothers with their places at court, the early childhood spent so close to the royal home at Sandringham, the fact that her brother was a godson of the Queen, and that her sister would marry the Queen’s future private secretary. Above all, there was her father’s fervent wish, as a former royal equerry himself, to advance the Spencers by linking them through marriage to the Royal Family. The Royal Family had also needed Diana Spencer - as mother of the royal heirs, as future queen, and to give glamour and excitement to an ageing court.
Part of the tragedy comes from the sense of loss for what might have been had the marriage worked. What is left is pity for Diana as a victim, caught between these two great families - the Spencers and the Windsors. Both needed her and both had used her.
Ours is a world that lives by stories and, thanks to the worldwide media, Diana’s life became our most addictive story. It was the great televised ceremony of her marriage that had made her overnight the most famous woman in the world, and throughout the dramas and disasters that ensued, the interest of her public rarely wavered. For them, she was the fairytale princess who had been badly treated by her Prince and by his court, and it was this that caused such endless fascination.
But there remained one thing the story lacked - the happy-ever-after ending she was always seeking. She had never found it in her short, unsatisfactory love affairs, and her friends were wondering if she ever would. In the spring of 1997 Diana seemed caught between her role as mother of the two young Princes, the causes she believe in, and the excitements offered by the rich and famous, particularly in America where she was becoming very popular. Her future was still uncertain, even when the press and television showed a radiant Diana with Dodi al Fayed holidaying in the sun.
At this point no one knew that the romance had been stage-managed by Mohammed al Fayed. Again, the story was all that mattered, and the hope that Diana had found true love at last kept her worldwide audience enraptured.
Had Diana not died with her lover as she did, this affair would probably have ended like the others, if only because so much was stacked against it. There would have been al Fayed himself to contend with, and her role as mother of the royal heirs. There was also Dodi, playboy son of a dominating father. But at this stage of the story, the one thing that mattered seemed to be that Diana was in love.
Writing to the widow of Robert Louis Stevenson shortly after her husband died, Henry James said that few other deaths had been ‘so romantically right’ as his. In terms of her story, so was Diana’s. Her death was so sudden and so shocking that it came like the death of a great Romantic heroine. It had all the classic elements - she was beautiful and young, she had suffered, and she seemed to be so much in love.
There were two great ceremonies in the life and death of Diana – her marriage which made her a megastar, and now her funeral which made her a legend. One had been a celebration of joy and hope. The other brought with it the finality of death - an even more powerful emotion. Due to the unexpectedness of Diana’s death, all the other members of the Royal Family found themselves acting out the parts which death allotted them - the grieving sons, the heartbroken Spencers, and the Royal Family that had once rejected her.
Her funeral became the final retribution which Princess Diana brought upon the House of Windsor. For, by dying as she did, she had cast its members in the roles in which she saw them, and that was how the world now saw them too. They had no time to change their image. Prince Charles did his best by flying instantly to Paris with her sisters to bring her body back to England. But when his tortured face appeared on the television screens, was it guilt or was it grief that lay behind his suffering? Now divorced herself, Camilla Parker-Bowles was left with the most unenviable role of all.
The Queen had originally wanted Diana to have a private funeral, but ended by agreeing to a full royal funeral at Westminster Abbey. For the people’s expectations and the story, continued to dictate what had to happen - the two young Princes walking between their father and their uncle, following the gun carriage which bore the coffin of their mother,
the vast and silent crowd of mourners, the royal women standing grim faced and isolated from the people as the funeral cortège passed Buckingham Palace.
In death it was Diana who was finally triumphant, and it seemed dramatically right that at her funeral her brother, Charles, Earl Spencer, should have the most important part of all to play. It is not given to many men to have the chance to rebuke the monarch from the pulpit of Westminster Abbey in front of millions. But Charles Spencer seized the moment and, speaking on his sister’s behalf, promised to maintain the Spencer influence in the lives of the two young Princes. By speaking as he did, he said what everybody wished to hear, and the unprecedented rumble of applause that filled the Abbey at the end of his address will haunt the Royal Family for ever.
When the funeral was over, it was Diana’s brother who reclaimed her body and took her home to Althorp. This was an important decision for the Earl’s own future and for that of Althorp. It is for burying her there that he will be remembered, for his decision has set his mark upon the house for ever.
Diana’s secret grave on an island in the middle of the lake at Althorp is the perfect resting place for a legend, and her presence there is inescapable. The lake is surrounded by enormous lime trees, and for sixty days at the height of summer, people come from around the world to remember her. They cannot see where she is buried, but they know that she is there. It is a place with a magic of its own. A memorial urn stands on the edge of the water, and the island has been planted with two hundred white rambling roses.
Ironically, Johnnie Spencer’s plans for the salvation of his family have worked, although in a sad and awful way. Through the death of his favourite daughter Althorp’s future has been totally assured, together with the future of the Spencers. Diana has also done what was expected of her by the House of Windsor, by leaving them the two Princes. The fact that Prince William bears a strong physical resemblance to his mother, and shares something of her legend, may prove the brightest hope for the future of the monarchy.
After his funeral speech, Charles Spencer became immensely popular, but such popularity rarely lasts. He could never take Diana’s place, and his own divorce proceedings, coming so shortly afterwards, with their revelations of his marital infidelities, negated any claim he might have had as a moral guardian of the two young Princes. But in spite of this the influence of Althorp and the Spencer family on the royal children will continue as they grow older. Charles Spencer, unlike the Windsors, had always loved Diana so that as royal uncle he will inevitably be the most important link they have with their mother. In the same way, William and Harry will always be drawn to Northamptonshire to visit their mother’s island grave, and visit their uncle and their Spencer cousins. The main influence in the boys’ lives will obviously come from the Windsors. But the Princes have the Spencer blood. They too belong to Althorp.
Sources
Introduction
The two general books on the Spencers which are drawn on in the Introduction are: The Spencers of Althorp, Georgiana Battiscombe (London: Constable, 1984); and Charles Spencer’s Althorp, the Story (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998).
Chapter 1: The Rise and Rise of the Spencers
Julia Cartwright, Sacharissa (London: Seeley, 1893). Gives details of Waller’s muse, the first Countess Sunderland.
T. F. Dibdin in Aedes Althorpianae (London: Shakespeare Press: 1822). An account of the mansion, books and pictures at Althorp House.
M.E. Finch, Five Northamptonshire Families (Northamptonshire Record Society, 1956). An invaluable source for the social and financial rise of the Spencers at Althorp in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
Harold Nicolson, Good Behaviour (London: Constable, 1956). For details on Sir Philip Sidney’s death and funeral.
Nikolas Pevsner, The Buildings of Northamptonshire (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1961). Provides details on Althorp and the Spencer tombs in Great Brington Church.
J.H. Round, Studies in the English Peerage (London: Constable, 1901). Describes the Spencer family’s invented connections with the medieval Despensers.
Lawrence Stone, An Open Elite England, 1540-1880 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). Has a useful section on Northamptonshire families.
G.M. Trevelyan, English Social History (London: Collins, 1945). Covers sheep farming, Tudor enclosures and the Tudor wool trade.
Peerage of England (London: Collins, 1779). Describes the first Sir John Spencer, and gives details of his will.
Edward Hyell, Lord Clarendon, History of of the Rebellion and Civil Wars of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967). Describes the character and death of Henry Spencer, first Earl of Sunderland.
C.V. Wedgewood, The King’s Peace (London: Collins, 1955). Account of Sunderland’s attitude to the Civil War.
The King’s War (London: Collins, 1958). Circumstances surrounding the death of Henry Spencer, first Earl of Sunderland.
Chapter 2: Shameless Sunderland
G.N. Clark, The Later Stuarts, 1660-1714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949).
John Evelyn, Diaries, ed. William Bray (Bell, 1908) and The Journeys of Celia Fiennes (Cresset Press, 1947). Both provide the contemporary sources on Althorp and Sunderland himself.
Charles James Fox, History of the Early Reign - James II (London: Millar, 1808). On Sunderland and Louise de Keroualle.
H.C. Foxcroft, The Character of a Trimmer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1946) includes a strongly hostile view of Sunderland.
J.P. Kenyon, Robert Spencer - Earl of Sunderland (London: Batsford, 1958) is the main source on this enigmatic character, also Kenyon, The Stuarts (London: Batsford, 1960).
Daniela Mignani, Le Ville Medicee (Arnaud, 1980). Gives an account of the court of Grand Duke Cosimo III of Tuscany at the time when Sunderland visited it.
Nigel Nicolson, Great Houses of Britain (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1978). For details of seventeenth-century Althorp.
Christopher Simon Sykes, Black Sheep (London: Chatto & Windus, 1982) devotes a chapter to the Sunderland’s own black sheep son, Lord Robert Spencer.
Chapter 3: The Great Inheritance
Winston Churchill, Marlborough His Life and Times (Edinburgh: Harrap, 1956). A powerful and strongly supportive picture of Marlborough and his times.
G.N. Clark, The Later Stuarts, 1660-1714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949).
Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). An invaluable source on Charles Spencer, third Earl of Sunderland and the Marlborough inheritance.
Louis Kronenberger, Marlborough’s Duchess (London: Weidenfeld 8c Nicolson, 1958).
J.H. Plumb, Life of Sir Robert Walpole (Cresset Press, 1956). Gives a generally favourable view of the third Earl of Sunderland.
A.L. Rowse, The Early Churchills (London: Macmillan, 1956). Rowse gives the best overview of the Spencers and the Churchills.
Gladys Scott Thomson, ed., Letters of a Grandmother (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993). From Sarah Marlborough to her favourite granddaughter, Diana ‘Lady Dye’ Spencer, later Duchess of Bedford.
Marjorie Villiers, The Grand Whiggery (London: John Murray, 1939).
Chapter 4: A Liberated Woman
Frances Harris, A Passion for Government: The Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991). Continues the story of the great inheritance up to and beyond her death.
Horace Walpole, Diaries, ed. W.S. Lewis (CT: Yale University Press, 1937-84). Describes the attempted marriage of Lady Diana Spencer and the Prince of Wales.
Chapter 5: The Divide
A.L. Rowse, The Early Churchills (London: Macmillan, 1956). Covers this episode and offers interesting views on the health of the eighteenth-century Spencers.
Lord Rosebery, Life of Chatham (London: A.L. Humphrey, 1910). Deals with question of the Spencer legacy.
Horace Walpole, Diaries, decribes the character and death of John Spencer.
Chapter
6: The First Earl
Joseph Friedman, Spencer House: Chronicle of a Great London Mansion (London: Zwemmer, 1993). Describes the building and subsequent redecoration and restoration of Spencer House.
Chapter 7: ‘A Wild and Scrambling Life’
Earl of Bessborough, ed., Georgiana (London: John Murray, 1955). Extracts from the correspondence of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.
Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (London: Harper-Collins Publishers, 1998). The most scholarly account of the Duchess’s life.
Iris Leveson Gower, The Face Without a Frown (London: Muller, 1944).
Brian Masters, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981) is also useful.
Chapter 8: The Great Library
Flora Fraser, Lady Hamilton (London: Secker and Warburg, 1996). For details of relations of Nelson, the Spencers and the Hamiltons.
Anthony Hobson, Great Libraries (1970).
Anthony Lister, The Althorp Library of the Second Earl Spencer (Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, vol. 71, no. 2,1989).
Lady Sarah Lyttleton, Correspondence (London: John Murray, 1912).
Richard Milward, The Spencers in Wimbledon, 1744-1994 (The Milward Press, 1996). Gives a detailed picture of the second Earl’s life and times at Wimbledon.
G.M. Trevelyan, George III and Charles Fox (London: Longmans, 1929). Includes an account of the second Earl at the Admiralty.
Chapter 9: Reform and After
Walter Bagehot, Biographical Studies (London: Longmans, 1895). Lord Althorp and the Reform Act. A dissenting nineteenth-century view of Althorp.