The Grimaldis of Monaco, page 33
Rainier did not approve of Grace’s driving a car. Her eyesight had grown weaker over the years, and he did not think she was a good driver to begin with. There was, in fact, little necessity for her ever to get behind the wheel of a car, for she had her own chauffeur, and if he was not available there was always someone on the Palace or her personal staff who could take his place. She also claimed that she hated driving. Nonetheless, from time to time she would set out alone in one of their cars, always with the explanation that it was less bother and more convenient at that moment. In truth, much as she disliked driving, it offered one of the few times that she could be by herself.
She owned a series of curious vehicles for a princess. During the late seventies her favorite private mode of transportation was a converted black London taxi that was big and commodious in the passenger compartment but had room only for the driver up front. She disposed of it when it was severely damaged after she hit another car broadside at the intersection that led up the hill to the Palace. No one was hurt but the accident unnerved her. “I’ll never drive again,” she told friends. “That should make Rainier very happy.”
A used 1971 metallic-green Land Rover (similar to a jeep) replaced the London taxi. From the time of the collision, Grace did not drive except on the vast private property at Marchais or Roc Agel. This gave many friends and members of the press the false impression that she had allowed her license to lapse and that she no longer ever drove a car, which would later create much confusion in the press.
On the morning of Friday, September 10, 1982, Stephanie returned to Monaco from a vacation in Antigua where she had suffered a serious water-skiing accident that had required fifteen stitches in her head. The chauffeur brought her up to Roc Agel from Nice Airport, and Grace immediately began hovering over her. Although Stephanie insisted she was all right, Grace wanted further X rays to be taken.
The weekend proved to be stressful. Business detained Rainier at the Palace on Saturday. Grace was preparing for a trip in ten days to England and then to the United States, where she would embark on a three-week tour of poetry readings (Irish poets mainly, with some of Shakespeare’s sonnets included), her newest involvement, the proceeds to go to charity. The project was finally approved by Rainier after several weeks of trying to get Grace to change her mind, his objection being more to the difficulties of such a trip in terms of security and of Grace’s comfort than to the project itself.
Albert was in Italy for a soccer match and would not return until late Sunday night. Caroline was departing for London on Sunday and Stephanie for Paris on Monday night to start her school term that following Wednesday. Grace was to accompany her, but with the news of Stephanie’s accident it was feared that the paparazzi would be out in full force and there would be no peace on the Avenue Foch. Arrangements had been made for them to stay for two nights at the Hotel Meurice in Paris to outwit the press. The plan would make things easier in one way, more complicated in another. Extra clothes had to be taken because the press would be watching the house on the Avenue Foch to see if anyone came in or out who might give a clue to where Grace and Stephanie might be.
But Grace’s main concern was Stephanie’s well-being. She remained adamant in her wish to have further X rays taken, and she was not at all sure that it was advisable for Stephanie to fly to Paris or to begin school so soon after the accident. At ten A.M. on Monday morning, September 13, the chauffeur drove the Land Rover from the garage to the front of the house. Although not yet old enough to have a license, Stephanie was permitted to drive through the grounds of Roc Agel. Normally she would have brought the car around, but because of her head wound, Grace did not think it was wise for her to do so. And Rainier, who was spending a few short hours at Roc Agel on Monday to relax, agreed.
The plan was for the chauffeur to drive them down to the Palace and then later to a doctor’s office for X rays. But after Grace had placed all the additional clothes they needed across the backseat of the Land Rover, she decided it would make matters simpler, since the car ride took only about fifteen minutes, if she drove. The chauffeur suggested he take them and then return for the clothes, but Grace insisted that she and Stephanie go alone and then he could bring Rainier down later. Grace’s insistence indicated that she might want some time alone with Stephanie to discuss something personal. Mother and daughter set off a few moments later, Princesse Grace, wearing her glasses, behind the wheel of the car.
The sun was glaring, making the precipitous road difficult to navigate. Stephanie later told doctors that about five minutes down the steep incline from Roc Agel her mother complained of a sudden pain in her head and then slumped over the wheel of the car just as she was about to negotiate a particularly sharp, steep hairpin turn which, Stephanie said, required her “to brake very hard and fight with the steering wheel to follow the road 150 degrees to the right.” Stephanie, seeing Grace was not in control, tried to apply the hand brake but was unable to do so. The car careened straight toward the edge of the cliff where a small safety barrier about a foot high separated the road from a sheer drop of 120 feet. The Land Rover crashed through the barrier and plunged over the side of the mountain.
The car came to rest in the field of a farm at the foot of the cliff. Neither Grace nor Stephanie had fastened her seat belt. In the downhill fall Grace had been thrown into the backseat, Stephanie onto the floor under the glove compartment of the front seat. She managed to get the door open by kicking at it with both her legs. Already half off its hinges, it fell to the ground and Stephanie stumbled out on the passenger side. Smoke was coming from the car. A woman who lived on the property was standing nearby, too stunned to move. “Please get help! Call the Palace! I’m Princesse Stephanie, call my father and get help,” Stephanie screamed. “My mother’s in the car! Call my father!” The farmer who owned the property had now joined her and asked who her father was. Stephanie explained and began to sob, “Call my father at the Palace.”
The woman ran back into the house to call an ambulance and the fire department while the man led Stephanie away from the Land Rover, which all of them feared was about to blow up. Before the ambulance came to take them to Princesse Grace Hospital, Stephanie collapsed. Her head wound had opened and she had suffered spinal injuries. Stephanie had either been too upset to remember or had not known that her father had remained at Roc Agel, and by the time he was notified, Grace and Stephanie were on their way to the hospital, where he arrived not long after.
The Princesse Grace Hospital had recently undergone minor refurbishment and the installation of new equipment. Even so, it was not up to the standard of a modern institution. Not long before, Lisette de Ramel had been scheduled to have her twin sons in the hospital and had gone to look at the facilities. “It was so dirty and ill-kept that I decided I would do anything rather than have my children there,” she says. “After they were born, I told [Princesse Grace] that I had gone to a small Communist town in France to have the twins because I would not go to her hospital. ‘Well, we’re taking care of that right now,’ she assured me, and I knew she really cared and work had begun.”
Grace was brought into the emergency department unconscious, a thin trickle of blood seeping from her mouth—the ominous sign of a brain hemorrhage. While a team of two assistant surgeons, a radiologist, a neurologist and four nurses attended to her wounds, the doctor in charge, Professor Charles Chatelin, telephoned one of France’s leading neurosurgeons, Professor Jean Duplay, at Pasteur Hospital in Nice. Duplay arrived by helicopter half an hour later. He instantly requested that a brain scan be done to ascertain the extent of the damage—but Princesse Grace Hospital did not have the equipment, and the only brain scanner in Monaco was in the private clinic of Dr. Michael Moreau.
In deep shock, Grace could have died if she was moved. The doctors agreed that first her general condition had to be stabilized. Eight hours later the short ambulance journey was undertaken. The diagnosis following the scan was that her brain response was totally and irreparably damaged. The first reports of the tragic accident did not reveal the gravity of Princesse Grace’s condition. Until the brain scan could be conducted, the medical team that attended her could not be sure how badly her brain had been damaged. However, they did know that she was in far more critical condition than was reported. Members of the Palace staff say the secrecy was necessary because Princess Caroline, who was on her way back to Monaco from England, had to be told first.
The following evening Caroline, Rainier and Albert were at Grace’s bedside in the hospital where she had been returned after the scan. They had been told that her brain had ceased to function. The family had gathered earlier in Stephanie’s hospital room and Rainier and the three children “agreed that there was no point in continuing life artificially.” Grace was moved to a white-walled room filled with flowers; and at 10:10 P.M., September 14, 1982, each member of the family having said a last farewell, the life-support system was switched off.
22
WHEN RAINIER had inherited the throne thirty-three years earlier, Monaco was viewed by many as “an exotic backwater of stucco villas, multimillionaires, of Aristotle Onassis, of fortunes made and thrown away on the gambling tables.” In looking back, Monégasques could date the Principality’s history in the twentieth century as Before Grace and After Grace. Her marriage to Rainier had been the turning point in Monaco’s esteem. She had brought dignity and international celebrity to the Principality, givings it a recognition factor apart from the gaming tables at Monte Carlo.
While Grace gave her adopted country a sense of pride, Rainier had turned Monaco into a thriving business concern, reclaiming land from the sea and creating an all-season international conference center and playground, “not only for the wealthy but for the not-so-rich, though far from impoverished tourist.” In truth, his accomplishments far outstripped hers. He had managed to keep out the vultures—the cutthroat gamblers and building contractors, the mass tourist industry and the mafia. He had emerged somewhat bruised in 1963 from his encounter with President Charles de Gaulle, but he had won in his power struggle with Onassis. But it had still been Grace who held the Principality together as a community. The doyens of Monégasque society (those women who had inherited, or who married men who had inherited, the fortunes that had been made in Monte Carlo during the golden years at the turn of the century, or who were members of European aristocracy resident there since that time), had not made life easy for her. Despite her status, they had been snobbish toward her and Grace had felt that they constantly stood in judgment of her, criticizing the way she spoke French, decorated her apartments in the Palace, her family’s lace-curtain Irish background, and her own career as a film star.
But upon her death it was plain to see that the people had held her in very special regard. She was mourned as no reigning monarch in Monaco’s recent history had been. When the bulletin saying she had died was released on Radio Monte Carlo, many Monégasques and residents pulled their cars to the side of the road and could be seen crying, and people on the street openly wept. The years of Grace’s reign as Princesse de Monaco had brought pride to the average Monégasque for her elegance, beauty and charm and they had loved her because of her compassion for the elderly, the young and the ill. She had helped set up senior-citizen groups, convalescent homes and a ballet school for children. She was only fifty-three years old at the time of her death, and without a history of any serious illness; no one was prepared for the suddenness of it.
They looked to Rainier for strength and leadership, but for many weeks after Grace’s death he appeared a broken man. Their fears mounted. A deep rift existed between President Mitterrand’s Socialist France and the anachronistic Principality of Monaco, and some old-timers still feared a French takeover, prompted by resentment of tax-free millionaires living on their back doorstep.
There was also concern that the Princesse de Monaco’s death would cause the stream of transatlantic visitors she attracted to Monaco, and upon whom the Monégasques largely relied for their prosperity, to dry up. To add to their consternation, the press published an unsubstantiated story that Rainier’s grief was so overwhelming that he was contemplating abdicating in favor of Albert, whom everyone believed to be too young and inexperienced for the job of Prince de Monaco.
The royal funeral service was held on Saturday, September 18, in the Byzantine Cathedral where Grace and Rainier had been married twenty-six years earlier. On a dais by the altar, under the glare of television lights, Rainier, dazed and unable to control his grief, sat slumped in a chair between Caroline (swathed in black, a mantilla covering her face) and Albert (Stephanie remained hospitalized with her injuries), and directly behind them sat Grace’s brother Kell and her sisters, Lizanne and Peggy. Grace’s coffin, draped in the red and white Monégasque flag, was close by.
She was not snubbed in death as she believed she had been in life. The Princess of Wales was there to represent Great Britain; Madame Danielle Mitterrand, the wife of the French President, and Mrs. Nancy Reagan on behalf of the American government sat side by side in the front row of the congregation, along with King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola of Belgium, ex-Queen Anne Marie of Greece, Prince Philip of Liechtenstein, Prince Fuad of Egypt, Prince Albert of Belgium, Princess Feriad of Jordan, Prince Karim Aga Khan and Begum Salima, Princess Bénédicte of Denmark, Prince Bertil of Sweden, Prince Bernhardt of Holland, Princess Paola of Liège, Grand Duchess Joséphine-Charlotte of Luxembourg, ex-Empress Farah Diba of Iran, and Madame Claude Pompidou, widow of the former President of France.
Seated behind the royals were four of Grace’s bridesmaids, Judith (Kanter) Quine, Maree Frisby, Rita Gam and Bettina Thompson Gray; Grace’s former Hollywood agent, Jay Kanter; Cary Grant and the many other Hollywood friends Grace had maintained from her former life. The mourners’ list gave strong proof of just how important Grace Kelly Grimaldi, Princesse de Monaco, had been to the rise in stature of her husband’s Principality.
The suddenness of her mother’s death, the shock of seeing her father—who had always seemed the strong member of the family—so visibly shaken, the sight of her usually exuberant sister in a deep state of depression brought out all of Caroline’s better instincts. Within a matter of weeks she appeared to have stepped—however lightly—into her mother’s shoes. “It was incredible,” one close observer noted. “Caroline seemed to carry herself differently—with undeniable regal bearing. She looked more mature. She spoke more confidently. Her sadness was evident but it was controlled.”
For many months to follow, Rainier was seldom seen in public without Caroline at his side. Occasionally, one could glimpse his hand touch hers as though to draw strength from her fortitude. And as time progressed, Caroline became Monaco’s official hostess, greeting important visitors and attending, sometimes with her father, sometimes alone, galas, dedications, inaugurations, always with regal bearing. But she could not help realizing that her position by her father’s side could only be temporary.
Eventually—and with Albert now of marriageable age it seemed sooner rather than later—Albert’s wife would supersede Caroline in position. Then there was always the possibility that Rainier would remarry. Her aunt Antoinette, who had divorced Jean-Charles Rey and married ballet dancer John Gilpin of the Royal Festival Ballet in London (who was to die of a heart attack just forty days later) was an example of what Caroline did not want her life to become—a royal appendage who did little worthwhile with her life, and was consumed by ambition and frustrated by envy and resentment. Caroline longed for a home and family of her own. She also tried her hand at writing, beginning with a series of articles for French magazines. In one, she gave a clear picture of the problem she thought was most felt by her father’s subjects—the invading army of visitors that occupied so much space in the tiny Principality.
“The rules are simple,” she wrote. “If you’re part of the jetset.. . you have dinner on your terrace of the Hôtel de Paris and fiddle with your caviar on your plate. The buses drive by endlessly. The people in them stare and point. . . . So on one hand there are groups who stagger out of hot, smelly buses. On the other there are people trying to be beautiful and desperately cool, swelling with pride at the mere thought of showing off. Where do the Monégasques fit into this social jigsaw? Quite frankly, I don’t think we do. . . .”
After Stephanie recovered from her injuries, she returned to school in Paris, and was soon spending most of her time away from Monaco, either in France or in California. She had some of her mother’s artistic leanings and, to Rainier’s disappointment (for he would rather have seen her embark on a less public vocation), only recently envisioned a stage career, preferably in music, although her pleasant voice was professionally untrained. She, perhaps even more than her siblings, missed her mother, and she turned to Caroline for the support that she had lost. But her life could never be the same. And, for a long time, she not only had to deal with constant false accusations in the press about her degree of culpability in the accident but with her own sense of failure in not turning the wheel or pulling the hand brake in time to avert the tragedy.
“There was a lot of pressure on me because everyone was saying that I had been driving the car. . . that I’d killed my mother. It’s not easy when you’re 17 to live with that,” she told her mother’s friend and biographer, Jeffrey Robinson. “After a while you can’t help feeling guilty. Everybody looks at you and you know they’re thinking, how come she’s still around and Grace is dead? . . . I needed my mother a lot when I lost her. And my dad was so lost without her. I felt so alone. I just went off and did my own thing.”
Within a year of her mother’s death Caroline married twenty-seven-year-old Stefano Casiraghi. A tall, blond, intelligent Milanese, the son of a wealthy Italian industrialist, Casiraghi was, according to one of his good friends, Mauro Ravenna, “arrogant but shy. A born manager, an indisputable professional [in business dealings and in his hobby of power-boat racing], demanding and always well prepared. [Racing] was a passion with him. . . . He had thousands of ideas for ventures—a sharp mind for business. . . .” Another friend called him “an intense, fervent kind of man.” There is no doubt that his electric personality had a strong effect on Caroline. Many of her former café society friends were dropped, and her life quickly revolved around Casiraghi.
