The royals - Kitty Kelley [94]
When he was sixteen he contracted polio. After hospitalization and several months in leg braces, he rehabilitated himself by designing a pair of skis with which he exercised to strengthen his leg muscles. He eventually developed a bouncy walk to hide his limp. Still, he identified with the handicapped and showed compassion for them. In later years he served on charity committees to raise money for medical research into disability. He also invented a wheelchair on a motorized platform to allow the incapacitated to move easily from room to room.
Tony’s uncle was the theatrical designer Oliver Messel, who was a close friend to Cecil Beaton and Noel Coward. They encouraged the late court photographer Baron, who specialized in royalty and society, to take on Tony as an apprentice. After working for Baron for several months, Tony opened his own photography studio in the Pimlico section of London, and with immense charm and ambition he began pursuing his own royal assignments. He photographed the young Duke of Kent and, after that sitting, photographed the children of the Queen’s equerry. The Queen then asked him to come to Buckingham Palace to photograph Prince Charles and Princess Anne.
A few months later the photographer met Princess Margaret at the home of Lady Elizabeth Cavendish. The Princess, normally imperious, allowed herself to be approachable that evening, although she insisted that Tony address her as “ma’am,” something she demanded of everyone because, as she said, it was her due as royalty. (A close friend, when asked what the Princess was like, said, “She needs to hear the crack of a knee at least three times before breakfast.”) Tony cleverly appealed to her vanity by asking her advice about a fashion shoot he was doing for Vogue magazine. He later invited her to his apartment—and she accepted.
Although they came from far different backgrounds, the Princess and the photographer shared similar temperaments. Clever, witty, and sharp-tongued, both were petite rebels who chain-smoked cigarettes and slavered over pornographic movies. The photographer, barely five feet seven, longed to escape his class-enforced position, and the Princess, five feet tall in her platform heels, enjoyed flouting the strictures of society. Together they began a most unconventional love affair under the amused gaze of the Queen Mother. The Princess, disguised in a scarf and sunglasses, frequently sneaked out of Clarence House and was driven to the photographer’s apartment in Pimlico, where he entertained her in his bedroom, which he had painted purple. Thriving on the glamour of show business, they socialized with the trendy celebrities of the day like Mick Jagger, David Frost, Peter Sellers, and the Beatles.
“Tone and Pet—their nicknames for each other—enjoyed exploring taboos—the strange, the dark, the bizarre—fetishes, that sort of thing,” said a friend, who related how the couple dressed up in each other’s clothes and posed for pictures.
As a little boy, Tony occasionally dressed up in women’s clothes. One evening, with the encouragement of his stepmother, an actress, he dressed up as a parlor maid to serve dinner to his father and grandfather. He later attended parties in drag, and two years before his engagement, he entered the field of dress design. During his courtship he shocked Princess Margaret’s footman by wearing her makeup and dressing up in her elaborate party dresses and veiled hats. “I gaped with astonishment,” recalled the footman, “but Margaret’s sides were splitting from laughter at the sight of Tony’s bare legs with such spindly calves which showed out from underneath the Princess’s maroon pleated