The Grimaldis of Monaco, page 31
In a startling turn, Rainier teamed up with his old enemy Jean-Charles Rey, who had married Antoinette in a civil ceremony only a few months before, in a scheme that created 600,000 new shares in the S.B.M., to be controlled by the state, which thereby became the majority shareholder. It would seem that Rainier was now using his new brother-in-law’s conspiratorial talents to his own good. When Onassis was told about the proposed legislation (pointedly described by his staff as “loi gangster”), he thought Rainier was merely trying him. But the decree was drawn up and passed despite Onassis’s attempt to get the Supreme Court to rule the legislation unconstitutional. (If it had done so, Rainier could have vetoed the decision, anyway.)
Within a week the Christina lifted anchor and sailed out of Monte Carlo. Onassis was so grieved, and so certain that he would never return, that he did not remain on deck to watch the town, where he had once held so much power and that had been his primary home for ten years, slip into the distance and fade from view. In a final humiliation before his departure, Onassis had been sent a check by Rainier for 39,912,000 francs ($10 million) for the buy-out of his entire interest in the S.B.M., the figure arbitrarily set by Rey and the Council at considerably below its real value. A great percentage of the stock, at an advantageous price, he told his associates, would soon make its way into Rainier’s possession. Later he was to exclaim, “I was robbed!”
To Monégasques, Onassis’s departure held little personal meaning. He had never won their hearts and had always been looked upon as an outsider. Nor did they appear concerned about who had control of the S.B.M. as long as Monaco’s economy was on the upswing and their own finances improved. This soon occurred with the growing realization of Rainier’s plans for land reclamation, new construction and medium-priced housing. An added boon was the lowered price of international air fares and the advent of the jumbo jets which could accommodate many times the passengers of former overseas air transportation and required far less flight time. There was a huge boom in tourism, and Monte Carlo, with its superb climate and many distractions, quickly became the most popular resort on the Mediterranean.
Prices of the Principality’s limited available land soared, along with the cost of apartments and office space. Rainier was fast becoming one of the richest men in Europe. Monégasques, their rising earnings free of tax, had also benefited, and their new affluence not only raised their standard of living, it caused them to seek better jobs. Labor was difficult to find within the Principality and hundreds of foreign workers, mostly from Italy, were brought in. Space became an almost nonexistent luxury as new buildings were wedged into every possible gap. For the first time the Principality had to concern itself with environmental issues. Traffic was badly congested and a complicated system of one-way streets was inaugurated.
Through it all, the pampered beauty of Monte Carlo was miraculously preserved. England’s Edward VII would have easily recognized the square in the center of the town with its beautiful manicured gardens and its trio of belle époque buildings—the Casino, Hôtel de Paris and Café de Paris—although the café might have given him pause, for in 1962 gaming rooms, which were open night and day, had been added. To Rainier’s credit (and that of his planners and architects), nowhere in Monte Carlo had the elegant avenues and tree-lined streets been allowed to deteriorate.
The major part of the restoration and redecoration of the Palace was completed by the mid-sixties, along with the royal family’s private apartments (furnished by Grace with the help of American decorators in what was sometimes sniped at by critics as “California wide-screen casual” with its massive windows, huge potted palms, exotic plants and oversized, sandcolored couches, chairs and ottomans and beveled-glass cocktail tables). This enabled Rainier to open the public rooms for tours. Soon, most of the ground floors of the old buildings on the narrow, curving streets of the Rock were transformed into cafés and souvenir shops, leading to accusations that Rainier had become crassly commercial and, since he held the leases on most of the buildings, money hungry.
The family was completed when Grace gave birth to a second daughter, and third child, Stephanie-Marie-Elisabeth, on February 1, 1965, in the same room where her other children had been born. Grace’s easy pregnancy had given her the confidence to drive to Nice to meet Ma Kelly’s arriving plane. After their return to the Palace and lunch, Grace had gone into labor two weeks early. When the cannon shots announcing the royal birth stopped at twenty-one, seven-year-old Albert exclaimed proudly, “I got a hundred and one!”
The children were being raised to be bilingual in French and English—as Rainier had been—by an English nanny, a highspirited, hefty lady from the Midlands, Maureen King, who established a rigid rule that only one language could be spoken at a time. Grace almost always communicated with the children in English, and it was due to this that they had a distinct American accent which, because it appeared to please their mother, was never discouraged. The wide age difference between the two oldest and Stephanie bonded the youngest child closer to her mother.
Caroline bore an uncanny resemblance to Princesse Charlotte in both appearance and character. With her vivid Prussian-blue eyes, brown hair and olive complexion, she was a commanding presence even as a toddler. Uninhibited, precocious, garrulous and bossy, she quickly gained the upper hand in the nursery. Albert, whom the family called Albie, was the most like his mother, with fair hair, finely chiseled features and the same myopic eyes. They also shared similar temperaments. Albie was shy, slow to accept new adults or peers, fiercely loyal once he did and tremendously sensitive to those close to him. Although he followed his father’s lead in sports, he had a talent for art and shared his mother’s love of the theater and ballet. Both the older children were aware at a very young age of their position and accepted the rigors it demanded: the public exposure, the control, the recognition that they were not as free as most children to be themselves and that, except for each other, their contemporaries in Monaco would view them with mixed awe and reserve.
Stephanie was the maverick. Unable to diminish the age gap between herself and her two siblings, to wedge herself into becoming a part of their close relationship or to compete with them on any level other than for parental attention, she was a disciplinary problem from the age of two, willful, stubborn, and with a temper that could erupt unexpectedly. “I could have beaten her like a gong without making her give way,” her mother would later say. Yet Stephanie’s recalcitrant personality created a tighter bond between the two. For Grace refused to accept the notion that she might not be able to bring her younger daughter into line and spent more time with Stephanie than she had with Albert or Caroline. Then, too, Stephanie, her coloring so darkly striking and her personality so outgoing, also possessed a great vulnerability and was the most openly affectionate of the three children.
Albert struggled to overcome his difficult position as the middle child caught between the strong personalities of his two sisters. As hereditary prince, he found that more was demanded of him than of his siblings. He desperately wanted to please his father, who expected him one day to be as great a sailor as his namesake, Albert I, but as a child, Albie had a fear of the water and a tendency toward a queasy stomach. He endured much to overcome these shortcomings. Tortuous hours were spent in the new, Italianate marble pool at the Palace practicing swimming, placing his head under water for as long as he could manage. During boating trips with his father he had to fight to control his nausea for he was inclined to uncomfortable seizures of seasickness. By the time he was nine he had a serious stutter and was immensely self-conscious, but he had succeeded in conquering his phobias.
Her royal obligations, her children, the running of a complicated household and the well-being of her husband filled Grace’s life, but still there was something lacking. She had intensely wanted to play the Tzarina Alexandra in the film adaptation of Robert Massie’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Nicholas and Alexandra, but Rainier was adamant that she never return to the screen. By the early 1970s, his plans for developing Monaco were being put into action, and the royal couple were rarely together because the demands of his enterprise consumed much of his time. After her primary education on the Rock, Caroline was sent to St. Mary’s, a strict convent school near Ascot in England. Although Albie attended school in Monaco, he went for the summer, at the request of his mother, to a camp in New Hampshire with some of his Kelly cousins. Family was something Grace believed in and in Rainier’s family there were no children Albie’s age.
Her yearly pilgrimages to Philadelphia continued, but after Jack’s death, and despite her attempts to remain close, nothing ever seemed the same. Ma grew more difficult with the years and her sisters seemed to have become envious and to expect more from her than she felt they gave in return. Her family became a sore point between Rainier and her, for he felt they took advantage of her and treated her in a demeaning manner, never acknowledging her royal status. Her faith had come to mean more to her since the birth of the children, although she was never obsessive about it. But she liked to go alone to the small private chapel at the Palace, where she would sit totally absorbed for an hour or more, in silent contemplation. She would walk by herself in flat shoes on the grounds of Roc Agel, or in the Palace gardens overlooking the sea, a scarf on her head; a lonely figure, her step hesitant.
An unsettling feeling of displacement had begun to overtake her. She felt more American than when she had left home. The French and Monégasque women, wives of Rainier’s friends and associates, had never opened themselves to her, and feminine bonding, which had been so much a part of her life before coming to Monaco, remained important to her and greatly missed. Her closest companions were the American author Paul Gallico and his wife, Virginia; another American, Jeanne Kelly (who, although not related, shared many of Grace’s roots); and a few of the women on either her own or the S.B.M.’s staff—with whom, however, as their employer and as Princesse de Monaco, she could never truly be herself.
She became fluent in French and Italian, although her American accent was much in evidence (and often privately mocked by courtiers). Her hands were always active: with needlework, painting, modeling with clay. She never lost contact with her old friends and former bridesmaids and kept up a lively correspondence with the former Judith Kanter, who had divorced her agent husband, had married and divorced actor Tony Franciosa and was now married to Don Quine, a professional karate expert. She subscribed to The International Herald Tribune, The New Yorker, Architectural Digest and the Book of the Month Club. A week seldom passed in which she did not see a current or favorite Hollywood film in the Palace’s private theater.
She remained close to Cary Grant and nurtured a special camaraderie with Frank Sinatra, and perhaps a small flirtation. Rainier was observed by his nephew Christian to be “often short-tempered with Grace, too frequently in the presence of others . . . she never contradicted . . . nor called him on his tone. Grace was always deeply hurt [after such a display] . . . but her brave silences seemed only to exacerbate and prolong the discomfort and embarrassment of such moments.”
In Rainier’s defense, he was under considerable pressure. What he had called “ocean-stealing,” reclaiming land from the sea, had added nearly an entire square mile to his realm. He had been determined that Monaco would overcome its reputation for living off the Casino. Wise enough to know that a sizable portion of its livelihood (and his own) was dependent on its remaining a popular tourist resort, he had begun an active policy of economic development that balanced hotels and high-rise apartments with industrial expansion.
To achieve the proper equilibrium, Monaco was divided into three distinct areas, with the Rock (site of the old town and of the Palace) in the center separating the more aristocratic Monte Carlo from Fontvieille, where the reclaimed land was used to provide space for lower-income housing and for industrial and commercial premises. With its paucity of land, Monaco stood little chance of ever evolving into a major hub for heavy manufacturing. Nonetheless, Rainier lured cosmetic, pharmaceutical and plastics companies to his country. Unemployment became almost nonexistent and the per capita income of its thirty thousand residents one of the highest in the world. This did not satisfy his detractors, who deplored the plethora of high-rise condominiums that filled in almost every space along the roads that wound through and above Monte Carlo, calling the area a “vulgar concrete slum for arrivistes.”
Jet-setting visitors continued to throng the Casino, the Grand Prix, the tennis and golf tournaments and many social galas. From the time of the wedding of the century, Grace’s presence had given the Principality a renewed aura of grandeur, of a time lost in history, and a fairy-tale mystique that appealed equally to the blue-blooded and the nouveaux riches.
Rainier’s critics condemned him for pushing “into France [meaning over the border from Fontvieille] everything that isn’t profitable or attractive—warehouses, cemeteries, utilities . . . and the old people’s rest home.” Questions were being asked publicly about the true names and nationalities of the companies that were being registered in Monaco, “subletting apartments as ‘headquarters,’ but never showing up, let alone doing business or constructing plants? Who [a French editorial inquired] own many of these high rises?”
Such innuendos threatened, or at least seemed to threaten, the Principality’s future stability and good name. In the 1930s Somerset Maugham had labeled Monaco “a sunny place for shady people.” Unquestionably, the small country’s spectacular commercial growth had brought with it promoters and financial corruption. Companies had been set up as fronts for less ethical operations than they professed. Arms were being trafficked in plush offices on the Boulevard des Moulins. Scandalous press allegations were published almost weekly in France.
The postage-stamp size of Monaco with its often crass displays of luxury and wealth, the presence of the Casino and the tax-free position of the Monégasques, invited contempt and suspicion from France, which by 1970 had suddenly found itself with an irritatingly rich neighbor when times were not that good at home, unemployment being high and the value of the franc deflated.
Along with the Principality’s brimming affluence came serious problems of pollution, caused by too many cars in so small an area, and crime. There had been more jewel robberies than ever before and drugs were beginning to become a problem. Rainier decided to drastically augment his police force and to detain and expel any person looking suspicious. These undemocratic practices were not well received by Grace, and became a matter of unpleasant argument at home. The Princesse de Monaco also fought to prohibit the destruction of some of the best examples of belle époque architecture. (“I will nail myself to the door [of one such structure] if they try to raze it,” she was quoted as saying in Le Monde.)
Yet Rainier’s love and attachment to his American princess remained evident to all those who were close to them. At public galas when restraint was dictated, he could be glimpsed reaching for her hand. At more casual gatherings his arm would fall quite naturally and protectively about her shoulders. He did not appear to comprehend why an expression of intense sadness would suddenly cloud her classically beautiful face. Whatever their differences, they shared a strong attachment to their children and a belief in the rightness of their faith. He admired her independent spirit even if he seldom gave in to her ideas (unless he had leaned toward them at the outset). The Monégasques had gone through periods of approving and of disapproving of their sovereign’s consort, but they did feel the marriage was built on a solid foundation and it gave them a deep, abiding sense of security. Rainier had much the same feelings, and it seemed that the curse of the Grimaldis, so often written about in the past, would never apply to Grace and him.
The twenty-fifth anniversary of Rainier’s reign (May 1974) was celebrated with a spectacular series of events that extended throughout April, May and June. Monaco was ablaze with flowers, red and white primulas decorating the bases of all the trees on the major boulevards. Special services were conducted in all the churches and cathedrals in the Principality. There was an extraordinary parade of flower floats and galas were held at the Monte Carlo Opera House; lavish dinners at the Hôtel de Paris (where additional crystal chandeliers were hung to add to the brilliant display) were attended by Prince Juan Carlos and Princess Sophie of Spain (Juan Carlos was designated heir to the Spanish throne, and would become King upon the death of the dictator Francisco Franco, which occurred that September) and the Begum Aga Khan, along with numerous Hollywood stars. The celebrations ended with a magnificent display of fireworks.
Albert, just turned sixteen, was co-host with his parents, the first time he had performed at an official function. He continued to spend the summers at camp in New Hampshire and with his Kelly cousins in their beach house in New Jersey, and he had become “very American in appearance, and his speech was so completely East Coast that no one could tell he had not grown up there,” his Grimaldi cousin, Christian de Massey, says, adding that “he continued to be slightly handicapped by his childhood stammer. . . . Bespectacled, reserved, and self-conscious, he acted out his part with great concentration, while Caroline played hers with more effortless and authentic relaxation.”
There was a majestic Te Deum for Louis II in the Cathedral, presided over by Cardinal Krol, Archbishop of Philadelphia, and the current Bishop of Monaco, Monsignor Abele, as well as by representatives from the Greek and Russian Orthodox churches and the Church of England. For the first time in many years the entire Grimaldi family were present and seated together (even Princesse Ghislaine attended), and appeared to do so in harmony. However, Rainier and his sister still exhibited great hostility toward each other within their Court and private circles and never saw one another except on public occasions.
Stephanie, still difficult and only nine years of age, required a good deal of her mother’s attention. Caroline, who had only recently passed the second part of her baccalauréat in Paris, was living in her parents’ magnificent recently acquired and refurbished home on the Avenue Foch. Nine years older than Stephanie, and a young beauty at eighteen, she was, perhaps, even more headstrong than as a child. She struggled to live what she thought was a real life, which meant spending her evenings whenever possible at a disco with an attractive escort. She was seldom alone, for a member of either her own or her mother’s staff was always in attendance and she never left the house without a detective at her side.
