| NOTHING could be more significant than that the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles will be a private occasion for family and friends. Prince Charles may have had no choice but to live in the goldfish bowl of public life, but that is not Mrs Parker Bowles’s way. Much as she has adjusted over the past five years to being the Prince’s consort, she has quietly avoided developing any more of a public profile than that based on occasional photographs. This is not merely because she values privacy, but because she simply doesn’t have the kind of ego that needs public verification. This is no new strategy. It is simply a reflection of who the woman is, and it is telling that she has long-standing friends who support her. One journalist recalls how she was sent to Italy to interview Camilla on her return from a holiday with Emily Van Cutsen some 12 years ago — after Charles and Diana had announced that they were separating, but before Charles had publicly admitted to Jonathan Dimbleby that he had been unfaithful. The journalist approached Camilla in the departure lounge at Pisa airport and introduced herself. Camilla looked at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You must have made a mistake.” Emily Van Cutsen confirmed that a mistake had been made. The request was repeated on the plane and a third time, bizarrely, around the luggage carousel at Heathrow. Again Camilla denied that she was Mrs Parker Bowles. And then she started laughing. So nothing had been said, yet, it was clear, here was someone who was good fun, a good sort, someone you would like to know even if she would rather you didn’t. It is easy to see how this desire to make neither personal nor public capital from being a public figure would appeal to the heir to the throne. She is not threatening to him, she doesn’t seek power, she doesn’t want to possess him, and her lack of pomposity and her infamous sense of humour must be refreshing in royal households where formality is legion. At home at Raymill House in Wiltshire, she is said to be prodigiously untidy: one acquaintance remembers the first time they met, early one morning, Camilla in holey tights, smoking and with smudged mascara. “The pictures and furniture are very good but nobody cares about the holes in the carpet or muddy wellingtons in the hall,” said another visitor. Those who have met her at functions say, without exception, that she is “nice”, “normal” and “natural”. She is warm and relaxed and has the requisite skill of talking to people who have shared none of her privi-leges with sincerity, with kindness that doesn’t patronise, and at the same time she manages to transmit that she is genuinely interested in their lives. Neither is she above signing autographs for children. Clearly maturity helps — she is 57 — but this isn’t the life she was bred for. Rather it is a role that she has taken on because it is part of the package of loving and supporting the heir to the throne. Only by becoming the patron of the National Osteoporosis Society has she ever put her head above the parapet, and that was because she had watched her mother die of the disease and recognised that a small charity would benefit from her support. To understand the influences on her it is worth considering her background. The oldest child of Major Bruce Shand, a wine merchant, and Rosalind Cubitt, she had a conventional upbringing by the standards of the upper-middle class and she left Queen’s Gate in South Kensington with one O level, an ability to fence and a forthcoming inheritance of £500,000 from the Cubbitt family. She came out in 1965, presented at court where her family had friends, and first met her soulmate at a polo match in 1970 where she introduced herself with the words: “My great-grandmother was the mistress of your great-grandfather — so how about it?” Charles, surrounded by deference, was smitten by the directness of her reference to Edward VII and his mistress Alice Keppel. But, famously, he dithered, agonising over whether he could marry a girl with a past, and she married a cavalry officer called Andrew Parker Bowles in 1973. Charles and Diana married in 1981 and Diana would later maintain that Charles had never ended his affair. Diana was furious to discover that the cufflinks he wore on his weddding day were inscribed with “CC” and were a present from Camilla. But when both marriages collapsed and Diana, always one to make a public statement — remember her solitary pose in front of the Taj Mahal — chose to taunt Camilla by posing for photographs — most notably in a leopard skin swimsuit the day before Camilla’s 50th birthday — Camilla resumed her role as the unseen mistress. She may have been revealed by the earthy, affectionate and intimate Camillagate tape made public in 1992 but, however embarrassing that was, it showed that her relationship with Charles was easy — and highly sexed. By then they had known each other for a couple of decades, yet they were both touchingly reluctant to hang up the phone. Since Diana’s death in 1997 Camilla has been quietly rehabilitated as the partner and consort rather than the mistress. Each of the steps towards marriage has been small, and immaculately choreographed, a campaign that would make Charles more popular and Camilla more acceptable. In 1999 she made her first public appearance at Charles’s side on the steps of the Ritz Hotel in London where they were attending a 50th birthday party. The following year the Queen recognised the relationship by attending a birthday lunch for King Constantine at which Camilla was present. Camilla’s first public engagement was in Edinburgh in 2002 and last year she appeared for the first time in Charles’s official accounts, confirming that she has an office at Clarence House. She is also known to have been involved in his regular planning meetings, and she is even said to have cut back — not without difficulty — on her smoking. Such details are all part of the slow shift in public perception that has led to the announcement of the marriage. The older woman — by 16 months — who was once reviled for having no dress sense, has now allowed herself to be groomed to the appropriate standard — but remarkably she has done so without losing her reputation for being unpretentious. Photographs marking arrivals at functions have put the point across — and shown that the woman better known for looking unkempt scrubs up very well indeed — but what we see is a neat and skilful balancing act rather than a transformation. She has become indispensible because where he is formal and fastidious, she is relaxed, but most of all because she is there for him. This is not to underestimate her presence. Friends will tell you that she is not a pushy person, but this does not make her weak. When Diana left Highgrove Charles erased all trace of her, and a new designer, Robert Kime, was hired at Camilla’s suggestion. Coming from a stable and close family background, she matches his indeciveness with steadiness, and she brings him a shared love of sport, horses and hunting, and the sense of normality that comes from going to Marks & Spencer when it has not been closed specially to accomodate your visit. It is the relaxed relationship he has always needed, and one she has the generosity of spirit to provide. Not that she takes him too seriously, says one friend. “She doesn’t share a great many of his artistic tastes. She’ll say at a Highgrove dinner: ‘This isn’t going to be one of those bloody musical evenings, is it?’ “When he goes hunting she’ll go out in a car with the sandwiches. She’s probably the best therapist he’s got.” Four years ago Charles paid about £25,000 at Sotheby’s for a diamond, ruby and red tourmaline snake brooch that once belonged to Alice Keppel. This is not the first piece that he has acquired from the Keppel collection — he came across a black pearl brooch at a country house auction, and he has also bought her a tiara which he had remodelled into a necklace. Romantic gestures certainly, and in future, modest as Camilla may be in her private tastes, there can be no reason why these gifts are not seen in public. Englishman. |
