The Long March of the Prince of Wales
ALAN, RAY
Euro vista BY RAY ALAN The Long March of the Prince of Wales Whenever a Vice President of the United States is tempted to grumble that he is underemployed and that the fellow in the Oval...
...He aspires to a more enlightened image and, if possible, a more constructive role than those of most of his predecessors in royal society...
...the 20th-century Renaissance man who has done everything, been everywhere, met everyone that matters...
...Although most of it is merely curious—only a little is hostile—the reporting of royal affairs is becoming uninhibited, even voyeuristic...
...So what should he do...
...The royals are already under closer scrutiny than ever...
...If he is remembered in years to come it will probably be thanks to theengagingFrench film Entente cordiale, directed by Marcel L'Herbier in the 1930s, the best movie portrayal of a 20th-century British monarch Ihaveseen.EdwardVIII was above all egotistical, and the deference and flattery he received as Prince of Wales contributed to the weakness of character that led to his abdication in December 1936...
...He won't find it hard to outshine men like his great-uncle Edward VIII or Edward's father, King George V, who is remembered for his statement that "I was frightened of my father and I am damned well going to see that my children are frightened of me...
...In 1894, soon after the birth of the future Edward VIII, Keir Hardie, an outstanding Labor Party leader, told Parliament: "From his childhood, this boy will be surrounded by sycophants and flatterers and will be taught to believe himself a superior creation...
...At Eton William would meet in the 1990s boys who will be ministers in British Conservative governments in the second quarter of the 21st century, when, barring accidents, he will be King...
...As the eldest son of the British monarch, the sole purpose of his existence is to succeed to the throne...
...As its oil transfusion diminishes, the British economy could sink into a still deeper depression, provoking political extremism and awkward questions about the affluent idleness of most members and hangers-on of the royal family...
...but these are hardly sensational discoveries...
...Still, as the Economist observed recently, "since he left the Navy in 1976 he has had no real job...
...Scrutiny Charles will, all being well, be the first king of England with a university degree and an educated musical taste...
...He doesn't sit around reading medical magazines for a mere four years or so...
...They can't be resolved in a year or a decade, but they will have to be tackled one day...
...And it is sometimes suggested that the Queen should step down in his favor when she is 65 or 70...
...A Left-wing commentator has called him a member of the long-term unemployed...
...Edward VIII had to wait 22 of his adult years before reaching the throne...
...Deviousness and "bull" also seem to be essential to the system...
...In due course, Charles was accepted by a Cambridge college—despite protests that he had won only two high school diplomas (for history and French) instead of the three that reputable English universities usually insist on—and obtained a BA in history...
...He was already Duke of Cornwall and ownerof more than 130,000 acres of real estate, about 40 of them in central London...
...Philip has been honored with the presidency of the Wild Life Fund, whose aim is to protect wild animals, yet he is notoriously fond of massive shoots that wipe out hundreds, sometimes thousands, of birds in a day...
...and he appreciates Australians because, unlike most of the Brits he meets, "they react to you as a person" not because "you have a title and are a member of the upper classes...
...nonetheless, one meets despairing Social Democrats, liberals and other reformers who would like him to speak out on issues the major parties neglect or view through doctrinaire lenses— for example, the need to provide civilized educational opportunities for all and to move toward a more mobile, less fragmented society...
...Fine...
...George V reappeared unexpectedly in headlines in November when it was revealed that his doctor killed him with lethal injections of morphine and cocaine—and timed the King's death so that it would be reported first by the Times, whose editor the doctor tipped off, rather than by the scruffy evening papers read by the lower orders...
...Charles echoes Hahn on individual initiative, though when he uses the phrase it can sound like self-mockery...
...Charles could exert immense cultural and social influence without violating constitutional propriety...
...Royal visits to industrial plants are, perhaps, not quite so mindlessly superficial, but one can understand why the union men quoted above put them on the same level as schoolchildren's tours...
...Accordingto Anthony Holden, whose book Charles, Prince of Wales (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 1979) gives a clear gush-free account of Charles' early years, he was a plodder, of average intelligence, keen on history and French, baffled by math and Greek, and bored by cricket...
...British mediamen joked about Princess Diana "making AIDS fashionable" after it was announced that she would inaugurate an AIDS ward in a London hospital in the spring...
...And yet...
...The IB is accepted by leading universities in the United States as well as in the UK and continental Europe...
...Edward VII was shrewd and had a talent for diplomacy but, except for his contribution to the AngloFrench alliance, he had little to occupy him other than boudoir intrigues...
...More serious than this, though(foritdoesn'tmatter whether royal visitors understand how widgets are made or realize that soldiers are not normally fed on iced cake), is the fact that superficiality at the top of the heap is taken as an example by a lot of people lower down...
...That prince is an ultraveep...
...but abdication is still a dirty word in Buckingham Palace...
...He rarely goes beyond statements of the obvious, and he has yet to demonstrate that he understands why British society is bogged down and why so many of its citizens are sycophantic or (in reacting against the system) antisocial...
...The media were simply told that his parents wanted him brought up "as much like other boys as possible...
...He praises American society for its entrepreneurial dynamism, and seems to deplore the "completely different culture" that hampers enterprise in the UK...
...the country will be called upon to pay the bill...
...And he can't back out and run for Governor of the Royal Kennels instead...
...Euro vista BY RAY ALAN The Long March of the Prince of Wales Whenever a Vice President of the United States is tempted to grumble that he is underemployed and that the fellow in the Oval Office won't even share the jellybeans, he should console himself with the thought that he is not the Prince of Wales...
...Prince Charles, now 38, has so far spent 20 adult years in the job—if it can be called a job...
...He is said to be mildly envious of the independent businessmen and writers he sometimes meets...
...Edwards VII and VIII both withered mentally and morally while they awaited their turn...
...Hahn considered an individual crippled if he was not qualified by education to cultivate personal distinction, serve the community, and resist urban pressures and massification...
...Some British observers of royal mores have their doubts...
...Most important of all, he has ensured the succession by fathering two sons...
...The royal person was to visit the troops' snack-bar, normally squalid and crowded, so that was spruced up, a dozen neatly-dressed soldiers were detailed to group casuallynearthebar, and a magnificent iced cake was put on display...
...The Tory Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli advised Matthew Arnold more than a century ago: "When you come to Royalty you must lay flattery on with a trowel...
...His interest in education has already led him to urge British high schools to adopt the International Baccalauréat (IB), a diploma based on a broad curriculum similar to that of French lycées and pre-1970 English grammar schools...
...This makes political sense...
...What Shakespeare called "the monarch's plague" has preoccupied generations of thoughtful Britons...
...Call back in a decade or two...
...He is reported to dislike big labor unions, and he is not at ease with workers...
...At the age of eight, in the harsh upperclass English tradition, Charles was packedoffasaboardertoaprivate"prep" school in Hampshire...
...Gossip columnists hint that Charles has found Diana and her "Sloane Ranger" friends dull: He is inclined, they say, to " sneak away early" from the kind of parties Diana enjoys, and he frowns on her reading trashy pulp "romances" in bed...
...The following description of Charles, from a magazine for lower-middle class housewives, is a fair sample of the hype churned out for the modern mass market: "His prodigious talents in the arts, in sport, in academic life, make him perhaps the most accomplished young man in Britain...
...There, in the headmaster's study, when he was nine he was given the titles Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester and Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter— not the sort of thing that happens to "other boys...
...An Army officer told me of a visit by a senior royal person to a camp in southern England in which he was stationed a few years ago...
...Since the royal family is the apex of the aristocracy that sets the social values and attitudes which the upper-middle classes aspire to and the lower classes ape (more or less grotesquely) or despise, it would be appropriate if Charles, the best-informed member of the royal circle, were to encourage discussion of Britain's entangled social and educational problems...
...Shoot more birds, cynics say, preferably the pigeons that befoul central London, after putting them to sleep with his bromides...
...But while he has been raising the cultural level of the monarchy, the kingdom he is to rule —despite its North Sea oil bonanza— has sunk to 19th place in the world prosperity table, with a GNP per head that is less than half those of Switzerland, Japan and the U.S., and well below those of West Germany, France and Sweden...
...Soon, Prince Charles will have to decide how his infant son William should be educated in order to help him cope with the eyewash, flattery, tedium and temptations that await him...
...He has been rebuked by the Vatican for mildly criticizing its refusal to allow a divorced woman to marry in church...
...To many of them his factory tours appear pointless since, as one union leader put it, "he only visits the better firms, after weeks of preparation, and learns no more about industrial problems than the kids who visit factories in school parties...
...Periodically he delivers messages commending enterprise to business conferences, where he sounds like an African advising Eskimos to use sleds: The gathering applauds politely and moves on to serious matters...
...Or might Diana prefer Eton...
...They are intended to fool the star as well as whatever media audience the organizers of a royal show may have in mind...
...he is actor, sportsman, pilot, musician, artist, orator, academic, wit, sailor and future King...
...Will the mixture be the same as before—"prep" school at eight, followed by Gordonstoun at 13...
...That would give an unprecedented boost to the normal schools that educate 94 per cent of British children...
...he will be sent on a tour round the world, and probably rumors of a morganatic marriage will follow, and...
...The mass-circulation Sunday Express recently frontpaged an attack on Prince Philip, the Queen's husband, by a leading anti-blood-sport campaigner who called him a "clown prince," a hypocrite and a "royal skinhead...
...he has surprised serious historians by defending George III...
...he may have to devote decades to it if his royal parent is inconsiderately healthy...
...As might be expected, he is instinctively conservative, though he likes some Social Democratic policies and blames bad management for the sour state of British labor relations...
...There has been talk of transporting him to Australia as governor-general...
...He added prophetically: "In due course...
...After Cambridge, the Prince learned to pilot an aircraft and to captain a ship...
...Shy and lonely, Charles was at first unhappy at both schools...
...I owe this quotation to Anthony Holden...
...The legitimacy—even respectability—of bluff and bluster is confirmed...
...As the camp was muddy, paths along the royal route were improved and some huts were cleaned up externally...
...When AIDS killed a former valet of Charles, British tabloids brayed the news in banner headlines and alleged that three or four other Palace officials might have been infected...
...but Gordonstoun added music to his interests and won him to its Platonic approach to education...
...Last October he was dubbed a " wally" (a lout of the kind that has earned Brits a bad name in some Spanish resorts) when he came near to bollixing up the Queen's goodwill mission to China by behaving boorishly, describing Peking as "ghastly" and warning British students not to stay in China long lest they become "slitty-eyed...
...Or will William be sent to free schools in the tax-financed sector, like the Spanish king's children...
...Edward VII was Prince of Wales for 40 years of his adult life before taking over from his mother, Queen Victoria...
...After the visit the cake was taken to the officers' mess...
...Prince Charles dislikes boorishness and philistinism...
...Is Charles big enough, bold enough...
...Since then, he has traveled around the globe, toured factories, shot hundreds of birds, made bromide-sprinkled speeches, and played polo in England, America and France (as a member of the Deauville team Les Diables Bleus, a daring affiliation for a man who will one day head a church...
...The present royal family are said to despise and, in private, to make fun of flatterers—butthismayjust be flattery...
...Plague Smarmtness and sycophancy may be inevitable in sleazy sectors of society, but should they be normal currency in the public life of a distinguished democracy...
...If they do despise them, why don't they make the fact known...
...By his own example, and his influence on both the Establishment and public opinion, Charles could help to guide his future subjects toward amore open, more educated society...
...Haunted by the memory of Edward's downfall, the royal family decided to give the present Princeof Wales, Charles, an education that might strengthen him against occupational hazards...
...The misnamed General Certificate of Education, for which most UK high schools prepare pupils, is anti-educational in that it leads to early, and very narrow, specialization...
...Appalled by Britain's dingy inner cities, Charles is careful not to raise false hopes...
...What could the royal person, however decent and earnest, learn from such a visit about efficiency, morale or anything else in that military unit...
...He might thus earn a degree of distinction comparable to that of King Juan Carlos of Spain who, in 11 years, has civilized the Spanish monarchy and integrated it into a democratic regime...
...Rich, handsome, intelligent...
...He can lobby for genteel environmental causes but must not rock the socio-political boat...
...When he was 13 he was sent to Gordonstoun, a private high school in Scotland founded by the German-Jewish educator Kurt Hahn (who settled there after escaping from the Nazis with the help of the wife and son of the first director of the British Secret Intelligence Service...
...See "EuroVista," NL, December 16,1985...
Vol. 70 • January 1987 • No. 1
