By CHARLOTTE and DENIS PLIMMER
One year ago, the princess and the commoner joined their lives "for better or worse"
i i y
and a
they've experienced plenty of both
Princess Margaret and Tony Armstrong Jones
were coming out of a London theater the other
night. Flash bulbs popped. The erstwhile photogra
pher who married intd the British royal family:
turned his face aside, grasped his wife's aim, and
hurried her into their waiting Rolls-Royce. : '
As the door slammed, the man who once pur- -sued
the great and glamorous with his own camera
was heard to mutter angrily to the Princess, "Why
do they keep following us around?"
Tony Armstrong Jones, of all people, is rapidly
becoming the most camera-shy person in Britain.
The man people thought might bring a new in
formality to Court circles has assumed an aloofness
that would make even Garbo seem chatty.
A- year ago, on the day the commoner marched
down the aisle at Westminster Abbey beside his
blue-blooded bride, a friend said to us, "It's not
going to be easy to look up to Mr. Jones, is it?"
Everywhere in pubs, in clubs, over counters in
shops, and over the teacups in fashionable Bel
gravia drawing rooms questions were being asked.
Would young Armstrong Jones (please, Tony
. asks, don't hyphenate that name) flout Palace
traditions? Would he introduce ail unsuitable circle
of friends? Would he put Princess Margaret into
tight Capri pants? Would he somehow embarrass
the Throne?
But as the months passed, viewers-wiuv-alarm
began to see that Tony Armstrong Jones, far from
flinging open the windows, has closed them tighter
than even the Queen herself would dream of doing.
More is known about the intimate side of Queen
Elizabeth's private life and known with approval
through normal Court sources than is known of
? Tony's working life.
In. February, after months of indecision during
which there were rumors that Jones would become
everything from a stockbroker to a theatrical pro
ducer (he sought no royal advice, received none) ,
he finally took an unpaid job with Britain's Coun-
ell of Industrial Design, a semipublic body dedi
cated to bringing greater beauty to everyday things.
The announcement was a prim, buttoned-up
affair: Mr. Jones would advise on visual aids and.
exhibitions, and would be associated with 'the
Council's educational program.
Since then, on Mr. Jones' own strict command,
an iron curtain has clamped down. He slips in and
out of a side entrance to the Council's offices and
family Weekly, April 30. mi
MARGARET AND
greets ail requests for information as though they
were personal affronts. ,
All this hush-hush is not in any sense the result
' of a ruling by the Queen. The Court itself is dis
, tressed about his astonishing unapproachability.
An intimate in Princess Margaret's household
said to us, "Of course, we want him to talk openly
about his work. After all, what is there to hide?
But I'd hate to tell you the language he uses when
people try to convince him to be more forthright!"
Life in a "Glass House"
Yet, before his marriage, Tony Armstrong Jones
was known as a happy extrovert. He used to call
up his friends at midnight, invite them around to
see some new photo prints he'd just made or to
try a recipe he'd dreamed up. His new-found
reticence must be torture. -..
Unlike his royal in-laws, who have had years of
training and who, as Princess Margaret herself
once put it, are "used to being stared at as though
we were animals in a zoo," Tony still hasn't learned
to accept constant ogling.
Another problem is that Tony is continuously
being analyzed as though he mere royal but criti
cized because he is not. '.
Their home clearly reflects the built-in contra
diction of a marriage which, even on the most in
formal occasions, sees the wife always introduced
as "Her Royal Highness the Princess Margaret" '
and her husband as plain "Mr. Jones."
' Although they live in a genuinely royal build
ing, Kensington Palace, they occupy only a tiny
portion of a wing remote from the state apartments.
Its drawing room is so tiny that the Princess'
beloved piano half fills it. Its dining room can ac
commodate only 10 people, which debars enter
taining on anything like a royal scale.
The Princess and this is something royal ladies
never do must share a bathroom with Tony.
There is no private garden, and passers-by in
the public park, Kensington Gardens, can watch
the comings and goings at the front door and look
up at the Princess' second-floor bedroom' windows
so the curtains are almost always drawn.
By contrast, the wing of the Palace occupied by
Margaret's aunt, the elegant Duchess of Kent, con
sists of large, well-proportioned rooms, comfortably
set back behind a broad private lawn.
This embarrassing situation will be remedied
Are They Living Happily
sometime next year, however, when Tony and Mar
garet move to an appartment comparable to the
Duchess'. The new quarters, No. 1-A, have 20 large
rooms and are being renovated at a cost of $196,000.
They were last occupied in 1939 by the late Princess .
Louise.
However, the Kent family still has a big ad
vantage that the Jones family lacks: its dignified
country estate, Coppins, in Buckinghamshire.
Country weekends are a staple of upper-class
British life. Many of the Joneses' friends enjoy
ancestral castles or manor houses. .
But Margaret simply can't afford that sort of
thing. The result is that, though the Princess and
Tony are eager weekenders, they are in the humili
ating position of having no place of their own in
which to return hospitality.
Most of what they do have is clearly labeled
"Hers," not "His." The house was loaned to the
Princess by her sister, the Queen. It is run on
Margaret's money, largely furnished with furniture
she had previously owned, and is staffed through
the office of her sister's Lord Chamberlain.
The now-famous "perfect butler," Cronin, whose
willingness to trade "intimate revelations" for hard '
cash shocked even the most cynical of Britons,
came to the Lord Chamberlain with the warm
recommendation of an unimpeachable previous em
ployer, John Hay "Jock" Whitney, then U.S. am
bassador to the Court of St. James's. Wrote Whitney:
"He is industrious, with a fine and pleasant per
sonality ... He is loyal ..." .
Embarrassment for Breakfast
The "loyal" major-domo showed his "industry"
by writing a series of six articles for one of Britain's
largest-circulation Sunday papers. On leaving the
Princess' employ, he had refused to sign the usual
form in which royal servants promise not to reveal
any intimacies about their former employers. He
reportedly said, "I don't need the Official Secrets
Act to remind me of my professional bond."
In the series, Cronin, who later said, "I just
wanted to slap down Mr. Armstrong Jones," re
corded such items as the fact that Princess Mar- ,
garet's umbrella once leaked rain all over the
Queen, that Jones liked to eat in his shirt sleeves,
and that the young groom, inexperienced in Palace
ways, took personal charge of the keys to the wine
cellar and the family silver.
TONY
For six Sundays, Tony and Princess Margaret
faced the. butler's printed "revelations" over the
. breakfast table and fumed helplessly.
On the other hand, Tony gets along well with his
wife's family (after all, they chose him as their
photographer and liked him long before Margaret
loved him), has gratefully allowed Prince Philip
to teach him to shoot, and is making a genuine, if
not conspicuously successful, attempt to share the
family's passion for horseflesh.
Tony's real problem is his own ambiguous social
position. The Queen has no intention of straight
ening this out (at least not in the foreseeable
future) by creating a peerage for him.
Even so, he does come in for a certain amount of
deference. At banquets where the Princess is the
guest of honor, he sits beside the hostess, Margaret
beside the host. But he has, naturally, no position
whatsoever in that whalebone girdle of protocol.
Tony Must Earn Acceptance
Since her marriage, the Princess has taken on no
really big jobs, such as opening a Commonwealth
parliament, in which she acts directly for the
Queen. If and when she does, the question will be
whether Jones, too, is to be accorded royal honors.
Margaret wants Tony given the full treatment, and
until it is certain that he's going to get it, it is
believed she will continue her unofficial boycott.
Tony, of course, has limitless opportunities to
win esteem in his own right in the eyes of the nation
and the British Commonwealth. Though Prince
Philip, through the accident of having been born
royal, had a head start on his young brother-in-law
long before he even married into the royal family,
he still had to work his passage. And work he did
for science, industry, education, and youth in
venting his own jobs as he went along. Tony, too,
will have to prove himself a'self-starter.
Despite the 12 months that Margaret and Tony
have spent dodging the brickbats that are always
thrown at the brightest-lighted windows, one
salient fact emerges: they. are in love.
That was evident to one of Margaret's most inti
mate staff members, who recently said:
"I used to be terrified to telephone her. I never
knew what mood she'd be in. It was torture to ask
her a question. But it's a different story now. She's
cheerful and buoyant. She's a changed woman if
ever I saw one!"
Ever Af ter?
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