The royals - Kitty Kelley [93]
“Princess Margaret has announced her engagement to Tony Armstrong-Jones,” wrote Noel Coward in his diary on February 28, 1960. “Tony looks quite pretty, but whether or not the marriage is entirely suitable remains to be seen.” He recorded further disapproval from the Duchess of Kent and Princess Alexandra. “They are not pleased over [the] engagement,” he wrote. “There was a distinct froideur when I mentioned it.”
Ronald Armstrong-Jones was shocked that his son was considering such a marriage. “I wish in heaven’s name this hadn’t happened,” he said. “It will never work out. Tony’s a far too independent sort of fellow to be subjected to discipline. He won’t be prepared to play second fiddle to anyone. He will have to walk two steps behind his wife, and I fear for his future.”
Tony’s closest friends agreed. “I sent a telegram,” said classmate Jocelyn Stevens, a former magazine editor, “and said: ‘Never has there been a more ill-fated assignment.’ ”
The Times editorial page concurred. “There is no recent precedent for the marriage of one so near to the Throne outside the ranks of international royalty and the British peerage.”
Even the New Statesman, a liberal publication expected to be enthusiastic, withheld approval. The magazine said that the suitability of this particular commoner to become a member of the royal family must be judged “with a leniency which only a few years before would have been unthinkable.”
The Queen was the first sovereign in five hundred years to admit a commoner into her immediate family. She tried to remedy the situation by offering Mr. Armstrong-Jones a title, but he refused.* A year later, when his wife became pregnant, he decided he wanted his children to be titled, so he accepted the Queen’s offer to become the Earl of Snowdon, also Viscount Linley of Nymans. The Manchester Guardian expressed a “tinge of disappointment that the plain, honest Mr. Armstrong-Jones should have a title thrust upon him.” People said the newly minted peer had lost his appeal. “As the husband of the Queen’s sister, Tony Armstrong-Jones had one very big claim on the sympathy of the British people. He had no handle to his name. He was, in fact, one of us… now he has lost even that most precious asset which was his birthright.”
Those close to the Princess were concerned that she was marrying on the rebound. They knew that Peter Townsend had written to her on October 9, 1959, to say that he was marrying a beautiful young Belgian tobacco heiress, twenty years old, whom he had met in Brussels soon after he arrived in exile. “She might be rich,” said the Princess, trying to dismiss the news, “but she’s not royal.” Within hours of receiving that letter, Margaret had elicited a marriage proposal from Armstrong-Jones.
“It’s true,” Margaret admitted many years later. “I had received a letter from Peter in the morning, and that evening I decided to marry Tony. It was not a coincidence. I didn’t really want to marry at all. Why did I? Because he asked me! Really, though, he was such a nice person in those days. He understood my job and pushed me to do things. In a way he introduced me to a new world.” Margaret said she managed to keep Tony’s proposal a secret for several months “because no one believed he was interested in women.”
Described in the press as “artistic,” “campy,” and “theatrical,” Antony Armstrong-Jones, twenty-nine, was the only child of a lawyer. The father had long since divorced Tony’s mother and remarried an actress, whom he also divorced. When his son’s engagement was announced, Ronald Armstrong-Jones