PORTRAIT

In Kensington Gardens

By BRYAN ROBERTSON

ir HAVE a passion for the truth and for the fictions which it authorises,' wrote Jules Renard: a charming and permissible sentiment for a poet and a fantasist. It is less amusing when unauthorised fictions obscure the reality of a semi-public life, springing as they do from mass wish-fulfilment or the calculated fantasies of the popular press rather than from any passion for the truth of that life, or concern for its realities. Some hopefully swinging journalism in a British glossy on the marriages of Princess Margaret and her cousin Alexandra to commoners ('practical men of affairs' possibly slightly up against it in a constricting context was the partial theme) both amused and mildly vexed the Princess, whose average weekly work-and-travel schedule is severe.

Princess Margaret's line on the press is amiable, like the rest of her family, understand- ing, and tinged only by frequent hilarity and self-mockery at published photographs of her- self. She is conditioned to extremes of reporting which fluctuate violently from inventively cosy accounts of a Crawfie-and-the-dogs way of life to those trenchant, fearless attacks on the mon- archy in general, so wittily directed at unretaliat- ory targets.

But the ill-informed raking over which some sections of our national broadsheets gave to the repairs and supposed 'redecoration' of Ken- sington Palace, hurt her, just after her marriage.

A home in London had to be found for com- plex needs. Money for the necessary rescue work at Kensington Palace had by law to be voted by Parliament and publicly debated. The figure in- volved was less than that spent at the time by the National Trust on reparations, made without public discussion, to architecturally inferior houses in the country; and far less than indul- gences over less interesting properties which take the whim of comfortably-off private citizens.

It was perhaps insufficiently appreciated at the time that Kensington Palace is a Wren building. This architect, with Purcell and Dryden for in- stance, is usually regarded as one of the great creative figures in English history. He built St. Paul's. Kensington Palace was on 'the verge of becoming a ruin. It's now saved, fully inhabited (the normal purpose of buildings) and deployed up to the hilt. There is an agree- able set of private rooms: one large sitting- room,• a very small dining-room, Lord Snow- don's study, and a slightly distrait room, never quite finished, opening on to the garden, which is usually filled with a pram, a tricycle, toys, a few deck-chairs and odd bits of equipment which Snowdon needs and works on. There are bedrooms and bathrooms on a cheerful

but far less sumptuous scale than those enjoyed by quite a number of movie or TV person- ages. Apart from this living space, the house is filled with a working atmosphere: Princess Margaret's offices, run by herself and a staff of three, are across a small courtyard. (A sizeable proportion of private royal money was also spent on the wrecked building. There's less

of this available than is commonly supposed:

for a•democracy properly ensures that royal in- come is granted with one hand and largely recovered with the other.) The embarrassment of the Princess in those early days at some slanted press accounts of the new residence, which gave the vague illusion of a grandiose folly for self- indulgent sybarites, was perhaps understandable. A more frivolous and recurrent source of irate, if amused, reaction from Princess Margaret is the pop legend of the 'tiny, little, fragile, Dresden china fairy princess'—her own caustic description of an identity which she knows quite well may give pleasure. Vanity doesn't condition her re- action to this myth so much •as a sharp sense of reality. The demands of most weekly itiner- aries clearly demonstrate a tough resilience, involving journeys by plane, car or train all over the country in order to give some inti- mation to people in schools, churches, univer- sities, museums, hospitals, civic centres, regiments and dozens of other institutions that their efforts do not pass unnoticed in London. This work is done without fuss, with an amazing degree of straightforward curiosity.

An element of acerbity creeps into her obser- vations of the behaviour of certain dignitaries, on occasion. She finds the endeavours of some churchmen to be 'with it' (jazz in the service) faintly ludicrous, as well as the enthusiastic attempts of academics to be 'with' the younger generation. She thinks that younger people don't want `embarrassing competition' of this kind from their elders and might welcome alternatives to their own hesitant values, however sharp their style. The Princess is an intent conversationalist, but nonplussed when asked questions about her- self. Not from evasion but because, unlike most professional people who talk relentlessly about themselves at the drop of a hat, the Princess has grown up with the principle that it is bad form, conceivably arrogant, to allow any conversation to centre too much on herself. Reactions to con- crete issues, on the other hand, are swift, and clearly defined. Her manner combines an attitude to others that is sometimes exigent, though not humourless, with a general approach to life that is entirely undemanding.

With her own children she is warm but brisk. Joint exchanges are curiously adult and ex- plicit: painstakingly, if dryly, explanatory, and typical of any parent these days with a profes- sional life, to cope with as well as a family. 'It's to look at, prowl around, and explore in your mind, like an adventure,' she said to her son when questioned as to the practical uses of a large coloured abstract sculpture--which any child might well confuse with an intriguing piece of agricultural machinery. -

Her `pfofessional' life is mainly enjoyable, if arduous; but photographs of a beaming princess festooned with tiara, jewels and brocade evening gown emerging from a gleaming limousine to enter a theatre sometimes fatigue her more than the event itself. Because although she loves the theatre, and many other evening jaunts, only a• few are private. Some play-going or banqueting in 'Actually, I came down to complain about the noise.' full regalia is because an ambassador has ex- pressed a wish to see a play which the Princess has

avoided for months, with good reason; the ban- quets speak for themselves, invariably celebrating worthwhile occasions or useful causes, but the most amusing people are sometimes at the other end of the table. All this might come at the end of a day spent in Liverpool, for example (plane there and back : the working day beginning at 7 a.m. and finishing around 7 p.m.),' meeting students, teachers, clerics, local officials, alder- men and councils, lunch at one institution, tea at another, asking appropriate questions, offering tentative advice, commenting on problems, re- cording and remembering everyone's names in advance, and so on. Next morning, we see that newspaper photo Of Princess Margaret caught in the midst of yet another whirl of gaiety.

Although sentimentalised by journalists, a con- sistent source of real pleasure to her is the odd trip to Scotland for a rest—and refuge. She was born at Glamis Castle, grew up in that district, and has a deep affection for the people, the land- scape, the brilliant quality of light, the freshness of the woods and fields, and the smell: 'Leaves, mould, mushrooms, mosses—very erotic.'

Her marriage is the centre of her life, art immense help, but not without problems. She is fascinated by her husband's work, and con- structive about it, but sometimes perplexed when his own free patches of time don't always fit in with her own: they work on different schedules that only intermittently coincide. She feels that if there is any public notion of Snowdon's life being circumscribed by marriage, then his hori- f zons have undeniably expanded since his bachelor days. This happens anyway as you get older: but the interests in design. architecture and materials that Snowdon always had and which grew, in- creasingly, out of his work, as a photographer, have found extremely practical outlets since his marriage. Princess Margaret has encouraged them.

Her exposure to the rough-and tumble of every- day life is more extensive than might be imagined. At one or two extremely informal parties at the Whitechapel Gallery, for instance, hemmed in by the ranks of a highly unconventional assembly, with drinks spilt on her shoes, and jostled bY energetic youngsters oblivious of her presence, the Princess has taken part in freewheeling exchanges of a nature that would astonish most members of other royal families. Asked by. David Hockney at one of those parties how she liked his peroxided hair, she expressed approval and asked in return, as a matter of interest, how he dyed it. She was told that this gesture to artifice took place regularly in the bath and had trans- t formed his life. When offered an identical service with the same 'facilities for her own hair, her replY was courteous, unquotable and funny.

Princess Margaret and her husband have made between them the first real contact between the royal family and what might be considered the avant-garde art of our day and its practitioners, The Queen's detailed knowledge of works of art in the royal collections is devastating (not front any acquisitive angle but from real interest and responsibility, and artists are not unknown In her home). The Snowdons, however, have more evidently gone out of their way to visit e?‘' hibitions of modern art, and to contrive time In which to talk at length with artists. They ignore fashion in what they collect: it would be simPle, for them to acquire an impressively 'advanced. collectionof modern art if they had any interest, 111, projecting a smart image. The paintings hangitit in Kensington Palace include abstractions. but several are by friends and others were painted bY promising young art students. Like the rest of tier family, the Princess dis- likes professional segregation and takes care to invite other friends when artists are entertained, in strength, at her home. (She's bothered, like most of us, by the apparent isolation of artists from a larger society.) Two years ago an early experiment in this direction involved about twenty young artists with wives and girl friends who were invited back to Kensington Palace for supper after an earlier party : there was much to celebrate—the award of travelling scholar- ships among other agreeable accolades. The Princess by chance overheard one young painter ask a colleague who the other guests were—some of the Snowdons' other friends, in fact. 'They're courtiers,' she heard, and fled from that discon- certing impasse, astonished and touched by this sign of a young visitor's idea of royal life. About a hundred people, mostly artists, were invited to supper last month by the Princess and her husband. Typically, other friends were present including Jonathan Miller, Cyril Connolly, Ken- neth Tynan, Irene Worth and others. Everyone mixed together, there was no question of patron- age, condescension, or 'performing.' In the garden several vast Caro sculptures blazed away, flood- lit for the occasion, against the darkness. This gathering was the opposite of what happened at the White House during the Kennedy adminis- tration, when culture was invoked more con- sciously. (Faulkner once declined an invitation on the genuine grounds of ill-health but later said wryly to a guest: 'Well, anyway, who the hell wants to have dinner with Pearl Buck . . . Princess Margaret and her husband have a more direct and sponeaneous curiosity, which artists, used to working in an underground movement, find distinctly encouraging. A source of occasional discomfiture for the Princess is what she considers her inadequate edu- cation. She is, of course, well educated, up to and rather beyond the usual levels. But if Dietrich or Chaplin sometimes find themselves at Kensington Palace, then Buckminster Fuller, the inventor of the Geodesiac Dome, Harold Acton or Anthony Powell are also likely to be found there, with other Men of equivalent intellectual calibre. There are times when she feels ill-equipped for these gatherings. Quick changes of tack in conversa- tion don't spring from a lightweight mind (though she's certainly no blue-stocking and hasn't any ambition in that direction) or in- capacity to concentrate so much as an under- lYing anxiety, through training and upbringing, not to 'be a bore,' to try to help everyone present to feel part of the context. Bearing all this in mind, a recent encounter With an equally recent (but pompous) politician Was unfortunate. The Princess was reduced to bemused hysteria. The sequence of events, in order, had all the ingredients. She had been talk- ing to an expert in TV techniques and said that she'd always wanted the medium used more elab- orately and imaginatively for education. The poli- tician moved up at that point and congratulated her on her extreme intelligence and 'very high itQ.. He Went on rumbling. Rescued later by the

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'1.0slands, whom the Princess likes, she was inter- rupted again bjt the same self-appointed quiz- ,nlaster and told that she should meet Frank Cousins, who was a good man but suffered froin tile same disadvantage as the Princess--lack of education.' They had this in common, she heard io her delight : including 'beautiful blue eyes.' eunle in the public eye are usually the most ?scured by imposed misconception. Princess 471_argaret is recognised as a lively and indepen- dent Young woman, but her terms of reference are still unknown.