The royals - Kitty Kelley [128]
The Queen dusted herself off.
“Where is your beautiful ring?” asked the lady-in-waiting.
“I hid it,” said the Queen.
“Where?”
“In a very private place.”
The Queen looked at the lady-in-waiting and asked about her tiara.
“I hid it,” said the lady-in-waiting.
The Queen raised her eyebrows inquiringly.
“Same place,” said the lady-in-waiting.
The Queen looked at her and smiled. “Pity Margaret wasn’t here,” she said. “We could’ve saved the Rolls.”
Despite the public derision, the Princess continued her relationship with Roddy Llewellyn because she said he was the only person who was kind to her. “I need him,” she sobbed. “He’s good to me.” The Queen, aware of public opinion, begged her to reconsider. Margaret refused.
“That friendship may be in the modern trend,” said Willie Hamilton on the floor of the House of Commons, “but it has turned the Princess into a royal punk.” This time few members of the Tory Party rose to object. In fact, the only person to defend the Princess was her young lover.
“I would like to see Willie Hamilton or any of the others do all her jobs in the marvelous way that she does,” said Roddy Llewellyn. “People love the monarchy and appreciate with their whole hearts the job Princess Margaret does.”
By then the public had turned against the Princess. A national opinion poll reported that 73 percent of the country felt her way of life had harmed her public standing and that of the monarchy. So the Queen told her sister she must make a choice: either give up her lover or give up public life.
Margaret cursed the “prayer makers” in the church and mocked the establishment newspapers for their pious editorials against her. She called them all “slop buckets of hypocrisy.” But in the end she caved in to public pressure and agreed to do her duty.
Looking worn and tired, she carried out her official duties but frequently arrived late or left early, pleading fatigue. Her doctors warned her to stop smoking and drinking, but she did not listen until she was hospitalized with gastroenteritis and alcoholic hepatitis. Even when faced with a lung operation, she continued smoking sixty unfiltered cigarettes a day, which she puffed through a tortoiseshell holder. She suffered a nervous breakdown, and shortly before the divorce announcement, she threatened suicide.
Margaret had not reckoned with her husband’s determination to be rid of her. Despite their separation, she never believed they would divorce. So she was surprised when Snowdon asked to dissolve their marriage. She said she wouldn’t stand in his way, especially if he wanted to remarry, but he said he had no such plans. He simply wanted a divorce. The announcement was made on May 10, 1978. But seven months later Snowdon remarried. His lover, Lucy Lindsay-Hogg, was pregnant. Margaret read about the marriage in the newspapers. “He didn’t even have the courtesy to call me beforehand,” she told a biographer, “and he never told the children.”
The first royal divorce since King Henry VIII’s divorce from Anne of Cleves in 1533 placed unremitting pressure on the Prince of Wales as he approached his thirtieth birthday. “This is the Year,” headlined one newspaper, printing a photo montage of all the “suitable” young women Charles had dated and discarded. Another newspaper announced, “Prince Stranded Between Altar and Abyss.”
Prince Philip teased his son about the press coverage. “You’d better get on with it, Charles,” he said, “or there won’t be anyone left.”
Charles celebrated his thirtieth birthday on November 15, 1978, with a grand ball at Buckingham Palace attended by more than