As we have seen, Princess Margaret was drawn to the world of well-heeled bohemia: writers and musicians and actors and other fast-living artistic types who could nevertheless be relied upon to show a fair measure of deference. She liked the louche hours they kept, their smoking and drinking, their refusal to take responsibility or to do the right thing. In this she differed from her sister, who, given the choice, would make a beeline for trusty fresh-air types, in their wellingtons and their Land Rovers; sensible, unflashy men and women who would never let one down or poke fun at one behind one’s back, people in whose company one always knew where one stood.
From their point of view, the bohemians enjoyed the cachet – ironic, satirical, tongue-in-cheek, but cachet nonetheless – of having a royal on display, a real-life Princess to lend a bit of pageantry to things. It didn’t really matter that she could be difficult. In a way, it was her party piece. If she happened to round off an evening with a display of her famous hauteur, then so much the better.
As for Margaret, she never quite understood the stuff and nonsense to which she found herself drawn – or perhaps she understood the stuff, but not the nonsense. ‘What is a bohemian? What does it mean?’ she once asked a lady-in-waiting, in all innocence. ‘Well, Ma’am,’ came the reply, ‘with Tony it means he won’t always turn up to lunch when he says he will.’ Bohemians were, as she never quite appreciated, not entirely to be trusted: the moment you left the room they would start making their silly little remarks, and on returning home they were prone to penning catty little observations about you in their diaries.
Her introduction to la vie bohème coincided with the first reference to her in a literary diary as ‘the Royal Dwarf’. The author was the femme fatale Barbara Skelton; the entry was for 2 December 1951, when Princess Margaret was twenty-one.
That evening, Skelton and her first husband, the eminent man of letters Cyril Connolly, had been invited to a Tennessee Williams play, followed by a large party thrown by Lord and Lady Rothermere, at which, they had been promised, Cyril would be placed next to Princess Margaret. Cyril was almost giddy with anticipation, but Barbara remained defiantly unimpressed. ‘He had spent his day in preparation having nose-trims, haircuts and all his ear whiskers removed,’ she confided sniffily to her diary.
On their arrival at the Rothermeres’, the fractious couple were ushered into a drawing room, and then downstairs, where there was a parting of the ways, with some guests allowed into the dining room, and others cordoned off into a sort of holding area for the also-rans. Barbara made for the dining room, but ‘on reaching the room where the supper tables were laid, I have the folding doors shut in my face by a swarm of butlers. Find myself in an adjoining room which has been turned into a bar where about four well-heeled couples have gathered and are quietly sipping champagne. They look at me, as much as to say, we got it too, but we’re pretending to like it in here.’
A waiter offered her a bowl of soup. At that moment, Barbara spotted Cyril at the far end of the hall, ‘trying not to catch my eye’. Never one to nod things through, she rushed up to him and screamed, ‘It’s no good turning your back on me.’ But Cyril was already ‘being hustled away to the Royal Dwarf’s table by Diana Cooper’. With that, ‘he disappears through the magic doors and from the throwouts’ foyer I see him eating a hearty supper and beaming across at the Royal Dwarf’.
Skelton stood fuming in the corner. She had clearly had a bit to drink. The way she remembered it, everyone was doing their level best to avoid her. The up-and-coming painter Lucian Freud came in and followed suit, but she was determined, and ‘pushing my way through the huddle of throwouts’, attempted to engage him in conversation. Suddenly, Lady Rothermere, from her chair at the royal table, spotted his dilemma, and beckoned frantically. ‘“There’s a place for another GENTLEMAN here,” she shouted, and came over to drag him away.’
Stuck in her salon des refusés with no one to talk to, Skelton sat down with a glass and said out loud, to no one in particular, ‘There’s only one thing to do. Get drunk.’ She then pinioned Renée Fedden, wife of the diplomat and author Robin Fedden, and talked at her for a solid hour, after which, ‘with a look of desperation’, Mrs Fedden seized the opportunity to ask a man for a taxi fare before beetling off. Skelton asked this benefactor what on earth was the matter with her. ‘She doesn’t like you, my dear,’ he explained.
At last, the smart dinner in the other room came to an end, and ‘Cyril reappears well-supped and beaming, followed by the rest of the privileged suppers. They all emerge with a healthy tan, the acclaimed heroes of a Shackleton expedition, and mingle with the throwouts.’
Skelton judged that this was the perfect time to tell Cyril exactly what she thought of him, ‘but we are interrupted by Orson Welles, so I try to be offensive to him but he doesn’t notice’.
Sensing trouble, Connolly told Skelton that he was going home, and left. Making no bones about her drunkenness, Skelton was beginning to draw comment even from those paid not to notice such things: as a waiter passed by, she overheard him mutter, ‘Fill her up.’ Undeterred, she dragged her friend Mark Culme-Seymour upstairs for a quick dance, but within seconds of launching themselves on the dance floor, they were interrupted by ‘a fearful crash’. Looking over her shoulder, she noticed an enormous vase in pieces on the floor. Though her dance partner said he didn’t think it was their fault, she nevertheless decided that now was a good time to leave for home, until it dawned on her that she had no money for a taxi.
What Connolly never seems to have confessed to Barbara Skelton is that his own encounter with the young Princess that evening left much to be desired. The truth was to emerge twenty-three years later, following Connolly’s death. In an obituary of his old friend for the TLS, Stephen Spender recalled asking him what had happened on the night in question:
He said (as I noted in my diary): ‘When we were introduced I expected she would say: “What, THE Cyril Connolly!” Instead of which she didn’t even look at me, but hurried by, followed by a Lady-in-Waiting saying: “Temper! Temper!”’