The Grimaldis of Monaco, page 32
Day and night found the paparazzi positioned outside the house on the Avenue Foch, waiting to flash their cameras as Caroline left or returned. She began to feel hounded, with good reason, for the press’s relentlessness in stalking her every move and the wild speculations that were printed about her were certainly excessive. “Why do I have to be a princess? I hate it!” she would exclaim to the staff and security guard, whom she called her “keepers.” She was a competent pianist, an avid reader, and an excellent linguist, but she had no idea what she could or would be allowed to do with her life.
Rainier was a devoted father, albeit often an absent one. He had also suffered greatly as a youngster growing up royal. But he knew even less of the real world than his children and he counted on the strength of his marriage and on Grace to assure the well-being and stability of their daughters. Albert was more his concern. For, after all, it was his son who would, like himself, one day be Prince de Monaco.
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SMALL THOUGH IT WAS, Monaco demanded far more of its sovereign than Great Britain did of the Queen, who made no major decisions and had little to do with the economics, or for that matter with the political machinations, of her domain. In contrast, Rainier had the final word on almost everything of a public nature that went on within the boundaries of his realm. For, although Monaco had a Constitution, the Prince de Monaco had the right to override any article within the document or to suspend it, as he had already once done. He was an absolute monarch who, in essence, had simply given his subjects a forum to discuss and suggest changes or additions to his plans for the Principality and its budget. But his was the final word.
Prince Pierre, Rainier’s father, had died in 1965, leaving him without a trusted confidant during a time of mounting economic complexities caused by the landfill project and the enormous cost of engineering and construction attached to it. Associates now found him a good deal tougher in business matters than he had previously been and they appeared to be right, for the contracts he negotiated with lessees were far more favorable to him than previously. And although he had legal representation, he made all decisions. There were members of his staff who felt he was driven by a passion to become one of the richest men in Europe (a goal which he was fast approaching). He leaned less on Grace, seldom involving her as he once had in the problems of the Principality. He had begun to look middle-aged, a paunch about the middle, his dark hair washed with gray, a noticeable double chin. But he had not lost his ability to joke, and the boyish smile that had been so beguiling could occasionally alter the growing seriousness of his expression.
He remained strongly attached to his children, took great pride in any of Albert’s accomplishments and was, by turns, both protective and overly permissive with his daughters, who he believed because of their sex should be under the control of their mother and not himself. This attitude became even more apparent as the sixties segued into the seventies and Caroline into a headstrong teenager. Grace had found it difficult to face her fortieth birthday on November 12, 1969, but she was, if more mature and a bit heavier, as strikingly beautiful as ever. Rainier and Grace were now frequently apart, for he remained in Monaco when she was in Paris with Stephanie. Unfounded rumors abounded in the gossip columns of the more abandoned press, and pictures were printed in tabloids of Rainier seated next to one beautiful lady or another at Monaco festivities (the photograph often touched up, cropped or intentionally made to create a false impression by narrowing the distance between Rainier and a dinner partner).
Rainier’s interest to the world was due to his position, not his influence on international affairs. Rainier was one of a select few remaining hereditary monarchs. Of course, Queen Elizabeth still occupied Buckingham Palace; Queen Juliana remained on the throne in the Netherlands; and King Baudouin held his country together, despite Belgium’s recent division into three regions with their own languages.
But as a monarch, Rainier’s situation was unique. Although his power was absolute with Monaco, he was not a world-class leader. What occurred in the Principality had no bearing on European affairs, even those of the countries that bordered his. Monaco had no land, no great seaport, no oil, no products needed by other nations, nor was it an aggressive country that might pose the threat of a war. And since France was now satisfied that its citizens could not evade paying taxes by being resident in the Principality, it was content to leave Monaco to its own devices. Rainier and Monaco existed in a time warp; it was an old-fashioned princedom in a modern world, and it ironically exemplified the fast-growing materialism of the last half of the twentieth century.
His mother, Princesse Charlotte, died on November 16, 1977. Rainier had never been able to forgive his mother for her treatment of his father and had not approved of the eccentric manner in which she had lived. She had been rude to Grace (but, perhaps, even more unpleasant to her own daughter). She had continued to maintain a fairly vicious troop of dogs, nine at the time of her death, which discouraged visits from her children and grandchildren. Marchais belonged to Rainier, and with his mother’s death, he and his family visited the estate more frequently. But for country gatherings, Grace—who was suffering occasional bouts of depression that had begun during the past year—preferred the ease and informality of life at Roc Agel. “There are times, you know, when the Princesse is a little melancholic—which I quite understand—about having performed a form of art very successfully, only to be cut away from it completely,” Rainier had told his biographer, Peter Hawkins. He described her moods as her “nostalgia for acting.”
Grace’s periods of melancholy could not be brushed aside with such a casual phrase. Rainier cared deeply for his wife, and her unhappiness weighed heavily upon him. She had never found in Monaco the devoted friends she had surrounded herself with before her marriage. Her relationship with Antoinette had always been cool and she infrequently saw her own sisters and their families. Her position in the Principality forbade the kind of spontaneity she so much enjoyed. And so, with both Caroline and Stephanie in Parisian schools, she spent most of the school year in Paris at their home on the Avenue Foch. In September 1976, Albert would depart for Amherst College in Massachusetts.
Rainier was closer to his children than most of his predecessors had been to theirs. He was determined to prepare his son for his job as the next Prince de Monaco and kept him as informed of Monaco’s affairs as Albert’s age and ability permitted. He was concerned about Caroline, who was now of eligible age and was dating men of whom he did not approve. In fact, she was being portrayed as a disco habituée and the paparazzi continued to stake out the Paris town house day and night and trail her relentlessly.
“I really would shoot these people if I had my way,” Rainier was quoted as saying after he observed the deleterious effect this harassment was having on his daughter, who seemed to be going out of control, maintaining late hours, smoking heavily, drinking more than he believed was becoming and doing so in public places. The constant vigilance of the press hounds only drove Caroline to invent ways to outwit them. Her friends were mostly from the disco set. She was photographed nuzzling, drinking and smoking in public, and even her lenient father was alarmed. He blamed the fish-tank life she was forced to live and threatened legal suits against the more persistent newsmen and photographers who beleaguered her. When this tactic failed, he surrounded her with bodyguards, which only added to her sense of a loss of privacy. In the winter of 1977, while she was working to obtain a bachelor’s degree in psychology at the Sorbonne, Caroline announced to her parents that she wanted to marry Philippe Junot, an investment broker seventeen years her senior, who was well known in Parisian café and disco society as a playboy and ladies’ man.
Despite her parents’ strong objections, Caroline insisted that she loved and wished to marry Junot. Grace is reported to have said to Rainier, “Well, perhaps it’s for the better. This way she’ll have a successful second marriage.” Such an attitude seems at odds with Grace’s Catholic views on marriage. But her philosophy did encapsulate two creeds—one for herself (marriage was for life), the other (an unhappy marriage should be dissolved) for the rest of the married world. She had also recently told the Comtesse Elizabeth “Lisette” Prince de Ramel, who was caught in a difficult and distressing marriage, “Divorce [the Comte] before he wrecks your life.”
Lisette was an American heiress, a child of divorce, brought up in Europe and the United States. She had been a successful photographer before her marriage to Comte Régis de Ramel. She lived part of the year in the Comte’s family château in France and the rest of the time in a house in Monte Carlo. A warm, ebullient, intelligent young woman, although about twenty years younger than Grace, she became her friend. Grace insisted Lisette join the exclusive Monte Carlo Garden Club (Grace’s favorite organization and the only one in Monaco that required royal patronage for membership) and enlisted her as the official photographer on the Garden Club’s excursions to England and Denmark, so that they could travel together.
They had met when their mutual friend Jeanne Kelly Van Remoortel, whose husband was the conductor of the Monte Carlo Symphony Orchestra, had brought Grace to Lisette’s house. It was not an official occasion, just three American women gathering for a few hours of casual conversation over lunch. Albert had also come along, and Lisette’s Asian housekeeper, Chang, was making Chinese food, which was one of Grace’s favorites. At one point Chang came in much concerned. “I didn’t know I would have to cook for all those bodyguards,” she said, worried that perhaps she had not made enough food. Grace had not known that the Palace had sent four men along as security. Albert explained that there had been a threat to his life but that Prince Rainier had not wanted Grace to be frightened by it. When she had been convinced that Albert was not in any serious danger, she told Chang, “Certainly don’t feed the guards. They apparently got here on their own and they can find their own lunch,” adding that one of them could go out and buy lunch for the others.
Lisette found Grace “someone used to making other people comfortable.” To twist an adage a bit: You could take the girl out of America, but not America out of the girl. With Lisette and Jeanne Kelly and some of her other American friends, Grace would revert to the kind of friendships that had meant so much to her before she became Princesse de Monaco. She chose the few available women in Monaco who shared similar backgrounds and tastes and who could laugh over small, silly things. What she responded to in her companions was their ability to accept her on her own merit and yet respect her position—not an easy mix. Nature, the environment, food, children, ballet, theater and her newly developed passion for forming pictures from pressed flowers were some of her interests. She loved “a good gossip” and freely gave advice. More of a disciplinarian than Rainier, she was stricter with Stephanie than she had been with Caroline, hoping to avoid the problems she was now having with her elder daughter. Until Albert’s departure for Amherst, she saw as much of him as was possible in the six months or so that she was in Monaco, and mother and son had a close rapport that continued in the form of frequent letters and telephone calls once he was away at college.
The only times Lisette recalled Grace displaying any ill feelings (“flushing red with anger”) were when she related stories about how she had felt belittled by members of the English royal family. Princess Margaret had once looked her up and down in icy appraisal and said rudely, “Well, you don’t look like a movie star.”
“Well, I wasn’t born a movie star,” Grace had hotly replied. Another time she had overheard one of the British royals referring to her as “definitely not one of us.”
She traveled quite frequently during the late seventies. Ireland had become one of her favorite places to visit and she was researching her Kelly-Irish roots, the area that had once been home to Jack Kelly’s parents before they had emigrated to the United States and the distant relations who had remained behind. Irish literature also became a compelling interest. She had recently inaugurated the Princesse Grace Library on the Rock and was speedily building up a research center for Irish scholars, with many rare books and the manuscripts of James Joyce and several other famous Irish writers. And there were her trips to England and Denmark to open garden shows as guest of honor. Lisette accompanied her on these journeys, and the women spent time together in Paris as well as in Monaco.
“Did you take a good look at those books?” Grace once grinned when they were together in the library of the house on the Avenue Foch (which Grace described as “a retreat within a fortress”). Lisette stepped closer. One shelf held leather-covered books (blank inside) which were humorously inscribed with titles that applied to her good friends (e.g., The Perils of Jeanne for Jeanne Kelly Van Remoortel, who seemed always to be in and out of great dramas).
Caroline lived at the Paris house until her wedding to Junot. Since she could not be persuaded to wait or to break off with him, her parents (Rainier giving in first) had finally agreed to the marriage, fearing she might run off with him. (“When it comes to something Caroline wants badly enough, you just know her father will permit it,” Grace complained to Judith Balaban Quine, adding: “This man [Junot]. . . doesn’t do anything. Oh, he’s in investments or something, but it doesn’t sound very real to me. Mainly what he seems to do and Caroline does with him is go to nightclubs and parties. . . .”)
Although not the international extravaganza that her parents’ wedding had been, Caroline’s marriage to Philippe Junot in June 1978 was not a simple affair. Six hundred guests were to attend and all of the surviving Kelly relatives and close Philadelphia friends were included. Rainier still had a difficult time dealing with the Kelly family, and when Lisette asked Grace what she could do for the wedding celebrations, Grace suggested she host a dinner at her home for the American contingent—which she did, and at which neither Grace nor Rainier was present. (Jeanne Kelly Van Remoortel also gave a party for the American guests. This meant Rainier was spared two evenings of unwelcome confrontations.)
Caroline’s marriage to Junot began on an acrimonious note when he permitted a photographer to take pictures of them on their honeymoon in the South Pacific without first seeking Caroline’s agreement. This was followed by extravagant trips he arranged for them to take to the United States, the West Indies and England and Scotland. They did not return to Paris and the luxurious penthouse Rainier and Grace had taken for them on the Avenue Bosquet until November, having been traveling almost continuously for five months.
Caroline wanted to start a family, but Junot was not pleased with the idea. Before he had met Caroline, Junot had told friends that “staying single was the natural condition for a man and marriage was a social convention.” Within a matter of weeks of their return to Paris, Junot began the first of a series of extramarital affairs, conducted quite openly for he was photographed at parties, nightclubs and on a deserted beach with his lovers. This continued for eighteen months, Caroline’s attempts to make a go of the marriage finally failing completely after a photographer caught a picture of Junot dancing with Countess Agneta von Furstenberg, a woman friend from his premarital days, at Studio 54, a popular New York discotheque, when he had told his wife he was in Montreal on business.
Despite the problems with the Church that a divorce would cause, Grace and Rainier, who had never liked their son-in-law and had felt great anger at his ill-treatment of Caroline, did nothing to help reunite the couple once Caroline had ordered him to leave their Paris apartment. On August 8, 1980, Caroline issued a statement that the marriage was over and that she would file for divorce.
Monaco was the “family firm,” and when the Grimaldis were viewed badly by the press, it affected business. Caroline did not wait long after her separation from Junot to be seen with a parade of good-looking young men. The effect was to give the world the impression that at least one member of the Grimaldis cared little about her Catholic vows or her privileged position as a role model.
(Many years later Caroline would say: “When you’re young you make mistakes of course, but if you’re anybody else [other than a princess] you have time to sort it out for yourself. . . . I would rather have done things differently. I would rather have lived somewhere else and been left alone . . . . I’m fundamentally a lucky person without the littlest right to complain. But always in the back of my mind I had plans and other ideas. . . .”)
Feeling she had failed Caroline in some way, Grace now became almost obsessive in her tight control of Stephanie, who had blossomed into a beautiful fifteen-year-old. Stephanie and her mother were inseparable, a situation that was disturbing to Rainier who could see how terribly dependent the girl was upon Grace. Albert had grown into a handsome young man and was attending Amherst, where he had been very quickly accepted by his fellow students. But the press hounded him, and Albert was frequently photographed with different girls.
Rainier was known to be homophobic, and there are many reports of his sharp, disapproving comments about gay rights at dinner parties and social gatherings, and his rudeness to certain friends of Grace’s who were known to be homosexual. He was not entirely displeased that his son was attractive to and attracted by good-looking women. “He pushed Albert into sports and manly pastimes all through the boy’s youth,” one friend comments. But he was increasingly concerned that the public perception of his children could discourage the family tourist trade and investors and so affect the enterprising climate that had given the Principality the highest per capita income on the Continent.
