The royals - Kitty Kelley [31]
Philip was attracted the minute he saw the stunning young woman sitting in Harry’s Bar in Venice with her mother and an Italian Countess. He was struck by her blinding good looks. She had none of the stony haughtiness of his royal European female cousins and looked more beguiling than the snooty young women of the aristocracy who were pursuing him so aggressively. This young woman combined the sunny insouciance of California beaches with the sleek sophistication of Manhattan nightclubs. Blond, lithe, and graceful, she was as bright and shiny as a new American penny. Her long, lean, leggy beauty matched his own. He immediately left his cousin, Princess Alexandra, and strode across the room to Cobina’s table, where he nonchalantly accepted the curtsies of the two older women, who jumped up as he approached. They had recognized him at once and were enthralled to be in his presence. Young Cobina did not know who he was, but she stood up anyway and started to curtsy like her mother. Philip quickly extended his foot as if to trip her.
“Don’t you dare,” he said. “I’m just a discredited Balkan prince of no particular merit or distinction. My name is Philip of Greece.”
“Just Philip of Greece? No last name?” she asked.
“Just Philip of Greece,” he said.
Little Cobina was intrigued as Philip tried to explain that, traditionally, royal princes did not have last names because everyone in the land was supposed to know who they were. Only the lower orders needed last names for identification. “Because there are so many of them,” said Philip, smiling, “and so few of us.”
He told her how he always crossed out “Mr.” at the top of the Admiralty forms and wrote in “Philip, Prince of Greece.” Somehow he managed to sound almost democratic and down-to-earth as he described the imperial prerogatives that separated royals from commoners. He dismissed the ceremonial rights as bothersome, and Cobina was charmed. Philip was so entranced that he stayed in Venice for the next three weeks to be her escort. They accepted every party invitation her mother engineered, dancing and dining and drinking other people’s champagne. Later, Cobina Sr. said the couple spent “passionate” evenings in gondolas on the Grand Canal. “Afterward Philip followed me to London,” confided her daughter.
Ignoring the marriage that awaited him with Princess Elizabeth, Philip gave his heart to the American beauty. He proposed to her, insisted they consider themselves engaged, and looked upon Cobina Sr. as his future mother-in-law. He even inscribed a photograph of himself: “To my dear Madre, from Philip.” He vowed to pursue her daughter to the United States.
“I shall come to America and get a job,” he said, “and take the name of Augustus Jenks.”
Cobina Sr. was ecstatic that a prince was proposing marriage to her daughter. That he sprang from one of Europe’s most discredited royal families and lived on charity was only a slight concern. “A prince without a principality” was how she described the handsome young Viking. With or without money, he was still royalty. So she was determined to encourage his affair with her daughter. She gleefully accepted his suggestion that he leave Venice to follow them to London, and she was flattered when he invited himself to share their invitation from British actress Bea Lillie for a weekend at her country home.
“Philip gave me an impression at the time of a huge, hungry dog,” said his cousin Alexandra, “rather like a friendly collie who had never had a kennel of his own and responded to every overture with eager tail wagging.”
After three weeks in Venice, Cobina and Philip spent another week in England, dining, dancing, and walking London’s streets, hand in hand. They cried as they watched the French film Mayerling, a sad romance starring Charles Boyer and Danielle Darrieux. The night before Cobina and her mother sailed for America, Philip went to the Claridge Hotel to say good-bye. He