The royals - Kitty Kelley [112]
Little did he know. The monarchy had used television to enhance its image because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Only years later would it look like a blunder.
ELEVEN
Prince Charles peered at the poster on the dormitory wall with its photo of three young women sitting on an Edwardian sofa. The girls smiled invitingly under their slouch-brimmed hats. One long-haired beauty wore sandals; the other two were barefoot. The caption read “Girls Say Yes to Boys Who Say No.” Proceeds from the sale of the poster supported the draft resistance.
“Appalling,” said the Prince, shaking his head. “Bizarre and appalling.”
The Prince of Wales was not a man of his times. While many Cambridge students were protesting the war in Vietnam, he was playing polo. He avoided political activists, whom he called “nutters.” And he disliked hippies. He called flower children “freaks” and damned feminists as “idiotic man haters.” He loved the Goons, a group of British comedians known for broad humor and brash antics. (Germans referred to the group as Die Doofen, or “The Stupids.”)
Charles celebrated himself as old-fashioned. “I am proud to be a square,” he said. While other young men streamed into singles’ bars and took part in the sexual revolution, the Prince of Wales sipped cherry brandy and held on to his virginity. He stood ramrod straight during the swinging sixties and praised the sanctity of marriage. He declared he would not wed before the age of thirty.
By the time he was eighteen, the world’s richest* teenager still hadn’t gone on his first date. But three years later, in his last year at Cambridge, he was seduced by a young South American girl, who was a research assistant to the master of his college. Following his sexual initiation, Charles took a string of lovers, and he instructed each to call him “sir”—even in bed.
“I adore Prince Charles,” said novelist Barbara Cartland, “and Lord Mountbatten, whom I was very fond of, always said Charles would make a great King. Dickie helped him become a man by giving him the privacy he needed at Broadlands [Mountbatten’s estate] to discreetly entertain young women. Away from the prying eyes of the press.”
Charles looked up to Mountbatten as “the most brilliant and kindest of great-uncles/grandpas,” and Mountbatten reveled in that role. “Mostly, he enjoyed acting as royal procurer,” surmised John Barratt, Mountbatten’s private secretary. “We arranged several weekends at Broadlands for Charles to entertain young women—Lady Jane Wellesley, a direct descendant of the Duke of Wellington; Lucia Santa Cruz, daughter of the Chilean Ambassador; and Camilla Shand, whose great-grandmother Alice Keppel was the mistress of Edward VII, Charles’s great-great-grandfather. Camilla later married Major Andrew Parker Bowles. She was quite pleasant and frisky, but Charles was a late bloomer.† Pity he was too inexperienced then to know that she would become the love of his life.”
One young woman Mountbatten served up was his fifteen-year-old granddaughter, Amanda Knatchbull, the second daughter of Lord and Lady Brabourne.† Nine years younger than Charles, Amanda fired her grandfather’s dynastic fantasies. Mountbatten saw her as the next Queen of England and, ever the scheming matchmaker, did all he could to foster her relationship with Charles, who was her second cousin. Mountbatten invited them to spend weekends with him at Broadlands and threw them together on family vacations. After one such holiday in the Bahamas, Charles revved Mountbatten to new heights by writing, “I must say Amanda really has grown into a very good-looking girl—most disturbing.” When Prince Philip learned of Mountbatten’s matchmaking, he approved. “Good,” he said. “It beats having strangers come into the family.” Until Amanda was old enough to be considered seriously, Mountbatten advised Charles to become “a moving target” for women. In a letter, he recommended