On a wet afternoon in 1972 at Windsor
Great Park, an
extroverted
Chelsea debutante called Camilla Shand waded across a polo field in a pair
of Wellington boots to be introduced to the 25-year-old Prince of Wales.
Milla Shand was of aristocratic lineage and well liked by the Queen
Mother. She boasted a unique link to the Windsors: her great-grandmother,
Alice Keppel, had been mistress to Edward VII. That afternoon, finding
herself alone with the Prince, the young Camilla told the story of her
naughty Aunt Alice. Smiling, she added: “Our ancestors were lovers. So how
about it?”
Her romance with the Prince was to last 27 years. It caused the end of both their marriages, and brought derision on the Royal family. Now aged 52, there is speculation that Camilla Parker Bowles is being groomed to become the Prince of Wales’s second wife and perhaps the next queen.
Camilla Parker Bowles was born Camilla Shand in London on July 17, 1947. Her father, Major Bruce Shand, was Vice Lord Lieutenant of East Sussex, Master of Foxhounds and an established wine merchant. Her mother, Rosalind Cubitt, was the daughter of the building heir Lord Ashcombe, whose forebear built Belgravia. Camilla grew up with two younger siblings on a large country estate in Plumpton, Sussex, hunting in Royal circles from an early age. At five, she was sent to the Dickensian Drumbells School for Infants. The harrowing experience of ice-cold morning baths was something she would later have in common with the heir to the throne.
Aged 10, Camilla began at the fashionable Queen’s Gate School in South Kensington, which aimed to “provide wives for the Foreign Office and most of the nobility”. She was taught flower arranging, cookery and how to write cheques. At 16, she attended finishing schools in Switzerland and France. Then in 1965, she staged her grand entry into society with a famous cocktail party at Number 30, Pavilion Road, Knightsbridge. One guest later observed that Milla Shand was neither pretty nor intellectual, but she was outgoing with a good sense of humour. She liked parties and cared little for convention. At Henley Regatta or Royal Ascot, if she spotted a young man she liked, she would openly approach his partner and ask: “What are you doing with my boyfriend?” Male contemporaries spoke of her incredible magnetism.
During this time, Camilla often bragged about her great-grandmother’s relationship with King Edward. She would quote her ancestor’s famous motto “Curtsey first – jump into bed later”, then dissolve into laughter. Friends say it became a talisman, something she wanted to equal if not better.
On the polo field in 1972, her chance finally came. The shy and rather awkward Prince of Wales was taken by Miss Shand’s self-confidence. She had a puerile sense of humour that matched his own. Camilla was down-to-earth and relaxed, and onlookers noticed an obvious rapport. Soon after, Charles and Camilla began to court. They regularly spent time alone in the Prince’s apartments in Buckingham Palace.
Close friends maintain that the Prince was in love with Camilla from the start, and yet he never told her. Eight months into their relationship, Charles left for six months’ naval service on HMS Minerva and the couple vowed to stay in touch. But within weeks, the Times carried the announcement of Camilla Shand’s engagement to a cavalry officer, Andrew Parker Bowles. Charles was devastated, writing from sea: “I suppose the feeling of emptiness will pass eventually.”
Camilla’s decision to marry revealed her practical, no-nonsense nature. She knew that the Prince would not propose to her. Camilla was six months Charles’s senior. Far from the unblemished romantic track record that the virginal Lady Diana Spencer would bring to her marriage, Camilla already had a “history” among the Chelsea social set. So she decided to accept a more sensible proposal. Andrew Parker Bowles was director of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, Silver Stick in Waiting to the Queen, and a former boyfriend of Princess Anne. He liked Camilla for her lack of pretension.
Much to the Prince of Wales’s frustration, his physical relationship with the young huntswoman would be put on hold for six years. But they were to remain close. When Camilla gave birth to her first son Thomas in 1975, Charles was made godfather. Then, after the birth of her daughter Laura in 1979, the Parker Bowles’s marriage became somewhat open. Andrew insisted on a veneer of respectability, nothing more. He spent much of the week in London, openly escorting other women.
Camilla stayed at the couple’s 500-acre estate in Wiltshire, just 15 miles from Charles’s home. There, the Prince asked her to hand-pick his future queen. Camilla diligently set about her task, and in the spring of 1981 Charles proposed to Lady Diana Spencer in the cabbage patch of Bodehyde Manor, the Parker Bowles’s 17th-century mansion. It is reported that when the Prince walked back to the drawing room to tell Camilla the news, she congratulated him warmly. Privately, she referred to the 19-year-old Diana as “that ridiculous creature”. Diana later called her “the rottweiler”.
Charles maintains that he was constant during the first two years of his marriage. But before the wedding, Camilla gave the Prince a pair of gold cufflinks inscribed with two Cs intertwined. He wore them throughout his honeymoon. Later, she would choose the nicknames Fred and Gladys for Charles and her, after characters from the 1950s comedy series The Goon Show. The pair would exchange flowers and gifts under their new names. Once, a confused Diana accidentally unwrapped a gold chain bracelet with a blue oval pendent, inscribed with the initials F and G. It was a gift for the Prince’s mistress.
By the third year of the Prince’s marriage, the affair resumed. Camilla was telephoning the Prince daily. When both Diana and Andrew Parker Bowles were away, she would play-act as Charles’s hostess at his marital home Highgrove, where the staff were instructed to call her M’Lady. Indeed, the couple lived as domestic a life together as two adulterers could. They dined together – a preferred meal was chicken salad, followed by strawberries and cream – and Camilla kept her favourite chestnut hunter Molly at Charles’s stables, while her two Jack Russell dogs, Tosca and Freddy, regularly boarded there.
In turn, staff at Camilla’s home knew Charles as the “Prince of Darkness”, as he never arrived in daylight. But Camilla always respected protocol. When they met in public, she curtseyed and called him sir. In private, she referred to the Prince as Charles.
It should be noted that Camilla’s relationship with Charles was well known to those in Royal circles and to the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Andrew Parker Bowles and inevitably Diana. This type of “unspoken arrangement” is commonplace among the upper classes. As long as the partners in these infidelities do nothing to provoke a public scandal by outraged wife or cuckolded husband, they can do more or less as they please. The overriding consideration is to prevent any exposure of misconduct to the lower classes.
But in 1993, grave misconduct was indeed revealed when the British press published transcripts of an alleged telephone conversation between Camilla Parker Bowles and the Prince. The conversation featured, among other intimate comments, the Prince’s declaration that, if only he were a tampon, he could be closer to Camilla. It was the ultimate humiliation. When, in June of the next year, Charles admitted his adultery on British national television, Andrew Parker Bowles’s role as the silent husband became untenable. The Parker Bowleses announced their divorce in January 1995. Within 18 months, the Prince and Princess of Wales had also divorced. Charles knew the press would encourage him to choose between Camilla and the throne. In early 1997, while Diana pursued her own friends and interests, he stated clearly that Camilla was a “non-negotiable” part of his life.
There is nothing in the British constitution to prevent Charles from becoming king if he marries Mrs Parker Bowles. But he is not willing to risk a public outcry. After his divorce, Charles maintained the right to the throne, but he will be the first divorced monarch in 280 years. Having grown up with the example of the Duke of Windsor, who abdicated to be with the divorced Wallis Simpson, Charles did not want to weaken the monarchy further. Constitutional experts warned that a morganatic marriage – in which Camilla would marry the Prince but not become queen – is not recognised under British law. The Prince of Wales had one option: to make his lover acceptable to the public.
This task was rendered almost impossible when the Princess of Wales died in August 1997. Camilla cancelled a public charity function she had planned to host in September and virtually disappeared from public view. Polls that year showed that 79 per cent of Britons felt she should never be queen.
But Camilla’s dignity following the death of the Princess of Wales was to transform the public’s view of her. In 1996, the Sun newspaper advised Charles to “bed her but don’t wed her”. But in June this year, the paper headlined “Marry her and be king”. Polls reveal that 59 per cent of Britons want Charles to marry and take the throne. Significantly, the Sun ran the story on the eve of Prince Edward’s wedding, to which Camilla had not been invited. The message to the Queen was clear. It was time to accept her eldest son’s mistress.
This year, Camilla has undergone a rigorous change of image at the palace’s request. It has not been easy. She has little interest in clothes or make-up, preferring to wear jodhpurs. Her house is largely given over to dogs, who sleep on furniture or in clothes baskets, leaving a trail of scent and hairs. She has been known to jump off a horse and into an evening dress without taking a bath. And yet in her first public photocall with Prince Charles, at her sister Annabel Elliot’s 50th birthday party at the Ritz in January, she was immaculately styled in a black suit and pearls. In the spring, she was photographed at a Paris fashion show by designer Stella McCartney. Later, when her 24-year-old son Tom was revealed in the press as a cocaine user, she quietly took the problem in hand. Recently she agreed to give up her own smoking habit.
For 27 years, Camilla has never spoken
publicly about the relationship. She has sacrificed her entire adult life
to Royal protocol. She once told the Prince that she felt inadequate, as
if she had not achieved anything in her lifetime. Charles replied: “Your
greatest achievement is loving me"
Article courtesy of
The Royal
Report
