DIARY
PETRONELLA WYATT The last time I saw Diana, Princess of Wales was in the early summer. I had just written an article for the Daily Telegraph on the advantages of remaining single. To my surprise she mischievously berated me, opening her eyes, which were the shade of Anatolian waters, and saying, 'Marriage can be hell, and I speak from experience, you know, but you mustn't give up on the opposite sex. They're really not so bad.' When I assured the Princess that I had not quite embraced cynicism and had, indeed, been a little tongue-in-cheek, she remarked wistfully on how much she would like to meet a 'suitable' single man, adding, 'and not a divorced one, either. I always seem to meet divorced men — just my luck!' The colours of her hair, tawny streaks, strands of albino-blonde and yellow, caught the light and she giggled. I was reminded sud- denly of a story by Truman Capote about Marilyn Monroe: he called it 'A Beautiful Child'. Diana, too, was a beautiful slip of a child — a Freudian slip of a child, in fact.
Icannot help feeling that the word 'peo- ple', which has come so much into use, has unpleasant associations. An expression favoured by every modern dictator from Robespierre to Stalin, it deprives us of our right to think and feel as individual human beings and, in essence, runs directly counter to Judaeo-Christian teaching. I wish Mr Blair, who in other ways has behaved admirably, had not chosen to describe Diana as 'the people's Princess' as if she too was something factory-pro- duced, without a soul, that was elusive, nameless, placeless. In any case, 'the peo- ple do not make princesses, though they may make demagogues, charlatans and tyrants. To call her 'the people's Princess' is to miss the point. It was Diana's royal sta- tus that sent her into legend. Even the somewhat trite 'our Princess' would have been a preferable epitaph.
Funerals are an occasion for a serene spirit, an all-embracing tolerance; for com- fort, not choler. Was it really necessary for Earl Spencer to pledge protection to William and Harry as if they were modern- day Princes in the Tower, in immediate danger from their own family? Nor should the Earl have used that otherwise crys- talline occasion for a diatribe against the press. The Princess had good friends even in the tabloid world, including Richard Kay of the Daily Mail (she once told me, with- out irony, how much she cherished these relationships). If Diana was 'hunted', she sometimes informed pursuers of her where- abouts. That's an unusual sort of fox. Earl Spencer, incidentally, used to hunt with the hounds himself and made no secret of it indeed it was a case of tabloid-ho. One of the Earl's first jobs was as a reporter for Granada, after which he moved to NBC's Super Channel in America. Far from being the 'private man' it is now claimed, Lord Spencer was quite content to make use of his royal connections, even covering the wedding of Prince Andrew to Sarah Fergu- son, in the best tittle-tattle fashion.
For the past week or so I have felt a stranger in my own country — or if not a stranger then uncomprehending. When tragedy strikes there are two ways of deal- ing with it: we may go under entirely or we may decide to meet it with fortitude. The former method is understandable, but the latter is necessary sooner or later. It is modish to sneer at stoic self-control as cal- lousness. But it was only through stoicism that we survived such crises as the Blitz. Would this New Britain, I wonder, weather that storm now? If self-possession has become so alien we would all go to pieces after the first air raid. In a matter of days the Prime Minister would be viciously attacked for his 'indifference' to the feelings of the people in refusing to to come to terms with Hitler — who, in any case, was probably `misunderstood' and even 'victimised' by an ice-pack British establishment.
Furniture, books, clothes and letters belonging to the late Marlene Dietrich will be auctioned at Sotheby's in Beverly Hills on 1 November. One of the items included is a French cherrywood table given to her by Ernest Hemingway the day after they shared a dinner at her apartment eating off cardboard boxes. According to an elderly friend of mine who used to visit the god- dess-en-titre in Paris, Dietrich, under her maquillage, was an incorrigible Berlin hausfrau. She found servants woefully inad- equate and was thus often without a maid. She cleaned and polished herself. The staff shortage meant also that callers on the tele- phone would occasionally hear a treacle- thick Teutonic voice impersonating, uncon- vincingly, a Filipino servant. A few years before Dietrich died, a singing teacher (I was at school at the time) suggested that my voice, which was, and is, weirdly con- tralto, might be more suited to cabaret than Schubert. The aforementioned acquain- tance gave me Dietrich's telephone num- ber, suggesting that I ask her for phrasing tips. 'Of course,' he said, 'she will probably pick up the phone and say one of two things: either, 'You 'ave ze wrong number,' or, 'Miss Dietrich is in Switzerland — go avay!' One evening, fortified by these encouraging remarks, I dialled her num- ber.There was a deal of heavy breathing before an unmistakable voice that dipped and weaved like a dove murmured, "Alto.' `Could I speak to Miss Dietrich?' I asked. An angry grunt, then: 'You 'ave ze wrong number.' The voice then determinedly added, for good measure, 'Miss Dietrich is in Switzerland — go avay.' Miss Dietrich, apparently, never recognised the inconsis- tency involved in giving both those answers at the same time.
There is one area in which some of the tabloids are culpable. More than one pro- fessed a great, slobbering sympathy for the young Princes while at the same time demanding that they be wrested from Bal- moral to grieve publicly in London like wounded animals in a zoo. An editorial in the Daily Mail declared, 'There is much that Diana's life and death can teach about how to respond to the more compassionate mood of modern Britain.' If that was com- passion then I am Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. The recent bullying of the royal family in the name of 'the people's will' has been reminiscent of the early days of the French Revolution. 'The people's will' — in those day determined by the sansculottes as opposed to the Sun — com- pelled Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to attend a public mass celebrating the Revo- lution. Far from improving relations between the monarchy and the people, this caused irrevocable resentment leading to the flight to Varennes. I would not blame Prince William if he grew up more than a little suspicious of the so-called 'people's will'. Here is another example from French history. During the Fronde, a 17th-century equivalent of modern busybodies insisted on walking past the bed of the young Louis XIV, ostensibly to make sure that he was not being ill-treated by the royal family.This terrifying experience was to turn Louis into one of the most absolutist kings of France.
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