The royals - Kitty Kelley [117]
“Margaret told me that she called to Tony to answer the door, but he pretended to be asleep,” said a friend. “The bell kept ringing, so finally she got up. She was in her nightie with her hair in rollers. Six people were standing at the door; they said that Tony had invited them for tea. Margaret realized that Tony had set her up simply to make her look foolish.”
The Princess retaliated in London by tipping a pot of coffee over his negatives. “Oh, so sorry,” she said with singsong sarcasm. At a New York City party given by Sharman Douglas, Margaret held court on one side of the room, Snowdon entertained friends on the other. The hostess, whose father was U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain in 1947, shuttled between them. Greeting Margaret, she inquired about the Queen.
“Which Queen are you referring to?” said the Princess, waving her cigarette holder. “My sister, my mother, or my husband?”
At the end of the evening, the Princess wanted to thank the kitchen staff. She expected her husband to accompany her, so she sent an aide to fetch him.
“Sir, Her Royal Highness is ready to go into the kitchen.”
Snowdon ignored the man and continued talking.
The aide waited. He cleared his throat and tried again. But Snowdon kept chatting. Finally the aide interrupted.
“Sir, I beg your pardon, but Her Royal Highness is ready to go into the kitchen.”
“Really?” snapped Snowdon. “And what is she going to do in there? Scramble some eggs?”
A week later the Snowdons attended a private dinner party in London. “It was ghastly,” recalled their hostess. “When we sat for dinner, Tony put a bag over his head. The first course was served. He did nothing. Nobody addressed a word to him, just pretended he wasn’t there. Finally Princess Margaret said, ‘Why are you wearing a brown bag over your head?’
“ ‘Because I can’t stand the fucking sight of you,’ he said.” He left a note on her dressing table headed “Twenty Reasons Why I Hate You.”
No one was spared the bickering. In front of friends, Snowdon belittled his wife’s appearance and her taste in clothes, especially her shoes, which she had custom-made to make her look taller.
“Oh, ma’am, what a pretty parachute silk,” he said as she swept into their drawing room for a dinner party. She was wearing a flowing blue chiffon caftan designed to conceal her recent weight gain. He looked down at her high-heeled platform shoes. “Oh, and I see we have on our finest little prewar peep-toes.” Later, he said, “You look like a Jewish manicurist.”
At the beginning of their marriage, Snowdon helped his wife perform her royal duties, for which she received an allowance of $45,000 a year. “He was very good for me—then,” recalled the Princess, who admitted that he charmed where she offended. She once shocked the head of a children’s organization by announcing, “I don’t want to meet any daft children.” Later he chafed at the indignity of escorting her to hospital openings, ship launchings, and tree plantings. He especially resented the implication that he was a kept man. “I support myself,” he told reporters. “I pay $2,500 a year in taxes.”
By then he had resumed his career as a photographer with the Sunday Times. “Photograph by Snowdon” was a prized credit line for the newspaper. He enjoyed access to people unavailable to other photographers. The actress Vivian Merchant attributed this entrée to his marriage, not his talent. “Of course, the only reason we artistes let you take our pictures,” she told him one evening at a dinner party, “is because you are married to her.” She stabbed a finger toward Princess Margaret. Snowdon seethed.
His troubled marriage was known to journalists, who gossiped among themselves but never committed their stories to print.
“I remember going to Kensington Palace to look at a photo shoot,” recalled a Times staffer. “Snowdon and I were sitting down, poring over proofs. I did not know the Princess had entered the room until I heard her high-pitched voice over our shoulders.
“ ‘What pretty pictures,’ she