The royals - Kitty Kelley [95]
The footman, David John Payne, wrote about this incident of cross-dressing in a book that angered the Queen Mother, who sued to prevent publication in England. She did not want the royal family embarrassed by the footman, particularly his allegation of having been the object of a sexual overture from Antony Armstrong-Jones. The British court issued an injunction in the United Kingdom, but the book was published in Paris, where readers of France Dimanche learned what were presented as intimate details of Margaret’s courtship.
The footman, who resigned his position before the royal wedding, described an incident that he said left him shaken. He recalled leaving Royal Lodge at Windsor where he had been helping the Princess select records to take to London:
I got up and left while she remained seated on the floor. I was halfway through the door when it burst open and Tony Armstrong-Jones came into the room. Seeing me, he exclaimed: “John, I’ve looked for you everywhere. Have a seat, darling.”
My heart stopped. Obviously, Tony hadn’t noticed the Princess on the floor behind the sofa, which accounted for his familiar tone with me. He was interrupted by the sudden rustle sounds of her skirt as she hastened to get up.
She looked at him, her face livid with anger. “ ‘John, sit down, darling’? What does that mean? To whom are you speaking?”
Tony was totally caught off guard by these questions in a glacial tone. He blushed and began to sway from one foot to the other.
“Oh, madame,” said Tony. “I didn’t know… I didn’t see you. I was looking for John.”
“And what do you mean by ‘darling’?” asked Margaret in a fierce voice.
“It’s an expression used all the time in the theater, madame,” he stammered.
Margaret said nothing to him, turned towards me, and in her most majestic voice said, “You may retire.”
I left her still looking at Tony, who was nonplussed; she continued to look shocked. Then I left, and having closed the door, I realized I was soaked in perspiration.
Obviously unamused by her fiancé’s familiarity with her footman, the Princess was relaxed about the dress-up games that Antony Armstrong-Jones liked to play. She joined him and assumed the male role by wearing suits and ties. They took turns photographing each other. She took a picture of him dressed as a child; he took a picture of her posing in his tuxedo, holding a cigar. Already they epitomized the swinging new decade of the sixties, in which the lines of sexual identity were blurred.
Because his mother was a countess, Antony Armstrong-Jones was considered privileged, but to aristocrats he was still a commoner who was now marrying above himself. This bold social leap, coupled with his artistic pursuits, subjected him to a certain amount of sniping in the press. Shortly before his marriage, Newsweek described him suggestively as “the uncommon commoner who once was set upon and de-trousered at a country house party by high-spirited male guests who saw him strolling with a camera round his neck. He weathered that indignity, chin up, just as he is making no apologies for his Bohemian cool-cat friends and showing no embarrassment in the unprecedented wave of pub and club innuendoes about his private life.”
The bizarre sexual implications annoyed some of his friends, who emphasized that all-male dining societies are a tradition at certain English schools. “At some of the Oxford debauches, men regularly dress up as women in strapless gowns and high heels,” explained one man. “The most notorious all-male dining society there is is the Piers Gaveston Society, named for King Edward II’s catamite, who, by dictionary definition, is a boy kept for unnatural purposes. According to legend, the King’s catamite was killed by being sodomized with a hot poker. So, in comparison, the little escapade of Antony Armstrong-Jones getting de-trousered is quite tame.”
Without addressing the issue of sexuality head on, the press made snide insinuations about Tony’s circle of male friends,