In August 1967, Cyril Connolly was given a second chance to impress the Princess, having been invited to a house party on Sardinia by Ann Charteris, who in a previous incarnation had been Lady Rothermere, but after a divorce, a marriage and a death was now Ann Fleming, the wealthy widow of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond.
Ann Fleming described the comings and goings in a letter to the Duchess of Devonshire. Roy Jenkins had left a few days before, his departure followed by ‘a temporary lull shattered by the arrival of M. Bowra and further shattered by C. Connolly’.
Connolly, it emerged, had been distracted by the presence in the sea below of ‘a flotilla anchored below our windows, the Snowdons and the Aga’,* a spectacle which was, observed Fleming, ‘better than the Derby through the field glasses’. Knowing that Princess Margaret was so near, Connolly found himself unable to relax. ‘Cyril made fearfully restless by vicinity of Snowdons, saying not to meet them was like being in Garden of Eden without seeing God!’
A man she described as a ‘local tycoon’, but failed to name, then phoned to invite Ann Fleming, and Ann Fleming alone, to dine with ‘Margaret and Tony’, as he breezily called them. When she told Cyril of her destination, he was ‘distraught’ at the idea of missing out, so she kindly engineered an invitation for him, and for Maurice Bowra too.
This dinner proved a huge success. As she was leaving, Princess Margaret happened to mention that she and Tony had no plans for the next day. Ann Fleming noticed that this sent the tycoon into a state of apoplexy, as ‘the poor brute was lunching with me’, but she niftily solved the problem by inviting the Snowdons along too. ‘Cyril beams,’ she reported.
Next morning Cyril rises at 11.30 and asks what I have ordered special for lunch, I say nothing since I can only communicate with Italians in deaf and dumb language.
He scowls, and says did I notice what the Princess drank last night, I say no, he says it was white wine and martinis and may he go to hotel for the right stuff. I say yes, and have to pay enormous bill. Illustrious guests arrive, and since it is buffet I am the parlour maid; they stay till 3.30 and ask if they may return at 6.30 to record Maurice singing 1914 songs, I go to bed, they return at 5.30 from the sea and walk straight into my bedroom while I am struggling into skirt, then they have acrimonious discussion because she does not want to be alone while he water skis, finally he departs and we all talk daintily, then repair to her hotel swimming pool.
Princess Margaret was, she continued, ‘marooned by the Aga who is gone to collect a new yacht’.
From the side of the pool, Bowra and Fleming watched Lord Snowdon water-skiing in the distance, and ‘best of all princess and Cyril in pool, Cyril looking like a blissful hippo!’
But once out of the pool, Connolly continued to disturb the equilibrium: ‘It would be OK without Cyril who complains of mosquitoes, food and climate, and only wants royalty and money; now he has met the Snowdons he dreams of being invited on the Aga’s yacht saying wistfully, “but if I was, I might be expected to act charades on water skis”!’
For Maurice Bowra, the Sardinian jaunt proved most unsatisfactory. His final verdict on Princess Margaret was unequivocal. She was, he said, ‘a tremendous blood-sucker, and, like her sister, a bit of a sour puss’. Contemplating the advance of old age, he consoled himself with a list of things he need never do again: ‘Sardinia heads the list. Royalty comes jolly nearly as high.’ To Noel Annan, he even complained that the Princess had given him mumps.
As for Sardinia, he thought it ‘a horrible place. Very ugly. No mountains, no olive trees, no cypresses, but lumps of rock and scrub. On this is planted a top bogus town, which would just do as the stage setting for Carmen in Costa Rica.’ It was populated, he complained, by ‘the English rich – Princess Margaret, American queens, lots of Austrians with Australian passports, Roman duchesses complaining about the disappearance of the British Empire. Not again.’
The ‘American queens’ to whom he referred were, it transpires, the caustic novelist and essayist Gore Vidal and his boyfriend Howard Austen, who happened to be staying next door with Diana Phipps.
All in all, Vidal didn’t enjoy his time there either, describing it as ‘a terrible place, made worse by the quarrelling Snowdons’. In a nightclub on her birthday, the Princess and Snowdon had what Vidal described as ‘a splendid row … they’re both nice separately but together hell’. Snowdon had spent his time pursuing his old hobby of flicking lit cigarettes at his wife, before going off to dance with Diana Phipps, leaving Margaret with Vidal.
‘Margaret said, “Let’s dance.” I said, “I don’t dance.”’
The next day their paths crossed again, over lunch with Ann Fleming, who Vidal felt was ‘a witty, rather nasty woman’.
Princess Margaret said, ‘I want to apologize to you for our behaviour last night. It was intolerable and I’ve been trying to write a letter of apology all day. Thank God we met at lunch and I can say it.’ Vidal accepted her apology. ‘She’s well brought up,’ he concluded. Shortly afterwards, reading the diaries of the duc de Saint-Simon, it occurred to him that ‘only the French master of social cynicism could have done the royal bickering justice’.
* Not the costly cast-iron cooker, but His Royal Highness the Aga Khan.