Diana in Search of Herself (9 page)

Children normally worship their parents without recognition of their quirks and flaws until adolescence or adulthood. A natural reaction for a girl in Diana’s situation would be to fault her own inadequacies for her mother’s departure. “
She never felt good enough as a child, blaming herself for her mother’s leaving and subsequently living with a stark sense that those she loved would abandon her,” wrote Diana’s astrologer Debbie Frank. Only later, when she was in her twenties and thirties, did Diana shift the blame for her misfortunes. “
Diana said her mother was not there when she needed her,” said her friend Roberto Devorik, echoing other friends to whom Diana had made the same complaint.

As a child, Diana didn’t talk about her guilt, but an incident she recounted to Andrew Morton showed how burdened she had been. At age nine, she was asked to be a bridesmaid in a cousin’s wedding, and she had to choose between dresses given to her by her father and mother. Although she couldn’t recall which dress she wore, she did remember feeling “
totally traumatized” that her choice might signal that she favored one parent over
the other. The impulse to inflate such small dilemmas into full-blown crises became more powerful as Diana grew older.

The push and pull between Johnnie and Frances meant that they often placated Diana when they should have set limits. “She learned how to manipulate her parents by playing one off against the other,” explained one of her close friends. “They both wanted her attention, so they indulged her.” Diana boasted that she was her “
father’s favorite” and freely admitted she could “get away with murder.” Combined with her numerous insecurities, this kind of power allowed Diana to expect people to accept her terms, establishing behavior patterns that would lead to trouble later in life. “
The problem was,” said her cousin Robert Spencer, “few people had said no to her.”

The ultimate effect of Diana’s turbulent childhood was her sense that she could not depend on either of her parents. A feeling of healthy dependence—the certainty that parents are “there” for a child—is the usual path to security and confidence in later life. In her insecurity, Diana eventually became obsessively dependent in her search for a provider of the continuous love and understanding she needed.

Chapter 4

A
few years after the divorce, Diana’s father decided to send her to boarding school, which, under ordinary circumstances, probably would have caused scarcely a ripple. In the English upper class, boarding school was a time-honored ritual: Boys tended to go off at age eight; most girls left several years later. For boys, boarding school marked the start of a rigorous education. For girls, with the exception of a handful of demanding “public” (in fact, private) schools such as Cheltenham and Roedean, the aim was more social than academic. Girls learned the basics of English, math, language, history, and science, but boarding schools primarily taught them how to live together and develop habits of responsibility, good manners, neatness, discipline, and tolerance. Johnnie and Frances had both gone away to school, so it was natural that their children should do the same.

Diana was only nine when her father decided to send her to Riddlesworth Hall, two hours’ drive from Park House. She had done reasonably well at the local day school, Silfield, where she had been enrolled since January 1968, following the chaotic autumn of separations and quarrels. On Diana’s arrival at Silfield, a teacher had noted she was “
beginning to gain confidence in her work.” Two years later, she was “very good but she must be careful where she puts capital letters!” Shortly afterward, the assessment caught some emerging problems: “Unfortunately, Diana has a defeatist attitude where her weaknesses are concerned which must change if she is to achieve an overall improvement.”

By one journalist’s description, Diana’s classroom demeanor was “
bright and chatty,” while another called her “
quiet and shy.” In all likelihood, she showed both sides of her personality. Diana recalled feeling uncomfortable at Silfield because she was the only student with divorced
parents, which made her believe that she was “
horribly different.”
The school staff waited for Diana’s cheerful demeanor to crack, and when it didn’t, they concluded that she had a strong core of resilience.

With 120 students between the ages of seven and thirteen, Riddlesworth offered a nurturing environment and a student body that included other girls from divorced families. One cousin and several friends were already there, so Diana would be in familiar company from the beginning. The headmistress was Elizabeth Ridsdale, a warm and wise woman the girls called “Riddy.” The philosophy of the school seemed ideal for Diana’s emotional and academic needs: “
a stable family atmosphere in which a child can develop naturally and happily, where individual freedom and the discipline of a community are in easy balance, a sense of security can be achieved, and every child will have the opportunity to be good at something.”

But when Johnnie described his Riddlesworth plan to Diana, she recalled feeling rejected. Having become accustomed to looking after her father, she tried to dissuade him from sending her off. “
I used to make threats,” she said, “like, ‘If you love me, you won’t leave me’ ”—the same sort of entreaty she used with Prince Charles when she didn’t want him to go away.

She enrolled in Riddlesworth, nevertheless, in the fall of 1970. After some initial homesickness, she adjusted well in the school’s friendly atmosphere. When Mary Clarke first arrived at Park House several months later, she was sent to retrieve Diana for a visit home. Diana greeted her with “
those downcast eyes” that she had “whenever she met anybody new,” recalled Clarke; but “the longer Diana spent at Riddlesworth, the more settled and happy she became. She made lots of friends, I think because she posed no threat to anyone. She was generous-natured, openhearted, imaginative.”

Diana later said she “
adored” Riddlesworth, where her talents and attributes were reinforced. She won a trophy for swimming, took extra dancing lessons, received an award for the best guinea pig, and earned the Legatt Cup, the school’s prize for “helpfulness.” “
She was overtaken by the busyness of the place,” wrote Penny Junor, “… alive and full of go, always wanting to dash on to the next thing…. She was happy to fit in…. Not the sort of girl the others looked up to, but the sort they liked to have around. She was a girl who wanted to be liked.”

Junor also reported that Diana was “
a teacher’s dream: well-mannered, eager to please, friendly, pleasant, even-tempered and always cooperative.” That assessment doesn’t quite square with Diana’s own recollection: “
I was very naughty in the sense of always wanting to laugh and muck about rather than sit tight looking at the four walls of the schoolroom.” At least in
part because of her inattention, Diana was only an average student. Riddy’s evaluation at the end of Diana’s third year was typically mixed: “
Diana has been outstandingly helpful this term. She has proved herself efficient and a good organizer. If only she would put the same enthusiasm into her work, she could move mountains. There are occasional lapses when she becomes rather quarrelsome, but these are much fewer than in the past.”

After three years at Riddlesworth, Diana was accepted at West Heath, the boarding school for older girls that Sarah and Jane had attended. The only requirement for admission was neat handwriting. Located an hour outside London in Kent, West Heath was an ideal safe harbor for a girl trying to navigate adolescence under difficult circumstances. In some ways, the school was so comforting that it mitigated the mood shifts, turbulent relationships, identity crises, and challenges to authority that make up the normal developmental challenges faced by a teenager.

“It was a very unsophisticated place, and we weren’t encouraged to be sophisticated,” said a woman who went to West Heath with Diana. “We used to get cross about it, and complain that we were cocooned. London schools were allowed to do things we weren’t allowed to do. We never met boys at the end of the drive. Several schools allowed girls to smoke and drink in the sixth form [the final year]. But West Heath was old-fashioned. We didn’t grow up very quickly. It was very small, one hundred twenty [students] total. There were very small classes. Everyone came out confident and happy, and there was very little angst. Maybe Diana was miserable, but I wasn’t aware. It was a relaxed place.”

Diana was twelve when she entered West Heath in the fall of 1973. Her sixteen-year-old sister Jane was a school leader and stellar student, having passed eleven O-level exams. Now called GCSEs, these tests are administered to British students prior to their final two years of high school. Based on the results of these tests, students focus their studies to prepare for the A levels, which are required for admission to college.

Sarah fared less well. She had been successful at West Heath, playing lacrosse, netball, tennis, and cricket, appearing in school plays, winning prizes in diving, and passing six O-level exams. But despite her obvious aptitude, Sarah decided “
I wasn’t university material” and opted for rebellion instead. “I used to drink because I was bored,” she recalled. “I would drink anything: whiskey, Cointreau, gin, sherry or, most often, vodka, because the staff couldn’t smell that.” One day in 1971 when she was drunk, she got caught, and was expelled from school.

The following year, Sarah rebounded at finishing school in Switzerland, where she became fluent in French; she then moved on to Vienna to study piano at a music conservatory and earn a diploma for German proficiency. On Sarah’s return to England in the spring of 1973, Johnnie gave
her a grand debutante party in Norfolk, and she came out during the London “Season.” By the time Diana settled in at West Heath, Sarah was eighteen and working in London at
Vogue
as an editorial assistant.

Presiding over West Heath was Ruth Rudge, a longtime Latin teacher turned principal. Flinty, astute, and sensible, Rudge, like Elizabeth Ridsdale, played to the strengths of her students. “The school gave a certain security to girls when they needed it,” said the mother of one of Diana’s schoolmates. “If they wanted to dance, they did. If they wanted to play music, they did.” Ruth Rudge’s initial assessment of Diana showed an awareness of her personality’s undercurrents, as well as the means to soothe them. When Diana came to West Heath, she was “
wary of adults, often prickly with her peers,” Rudge later observed. “She was lucky enough to find herself in a group of lively, talented, caring individuals, some of whom she already knew, and soon gained confidence in her new surroundings and found her niche socially.”

Rudge had spotted Diana’s streak of suspicion. “
She was wary of people until she trusted them,” Rudge said. “She had a number of knocks, particularly from adults.… Once she trusted you, it was fine.” Diana was tougher on herself in her Morton interviews: Her conduct at first was “ghastly,” she said. She became a “bully” because her sister Jane held a position of power as a prefect. But after some of the girls retaliated against Diana for her bossy behavior, she became “completely
calm and sorted out.”

Neither Rudge nor Violet Allen, the matron who supervised dormitory life and ran the infirmary, actually witnessed Diana’s bullying, although one school report admonished that “
she must try to be less emotional in her dealings with others.” Rudge was well aware of Diana’s feistiness: “
She was a very strong character. She went about getting what she wanted. She could verbally defend herself quite well.”

Diana also bragged to Morton about nearly being expelled from West Heath after sneaking out one night on a dare. She described the episode vividly, complete with police cars, the arrival of both her parents, and her mother’s tart expression of pride—“
I didn’t think you had it in you”—instead of a rebuke. Yet Ruth Rudge had no recollection of any such incident: “
I would have been involved,” said Rudge. “It doesn’t ring any bell at all.”

Diana’s schoolmate Carolyn Bartholomew recalled her friend as “
buoyant and noisy … full of life, a bubbly character,” while other students remembered her as more private and controlled, with her emotions well-hidden. In fact, depending on circumstances and her own level of confidence, Diana could be either. When Diana assessed her schoolgirl behavior for Andrew Morton, she was so contradictory that she seemed to be speaking in riddles. “
I was always looking for trouble,” she said, and in the
next breath, “I always knew how to behave. There was a time to be quiet and a time to be noisy. I could always tune in to which it should be.” Ruth Rudge understood these complexities, as she noted in a tribute written after Diana’s death: “
The compassion and caring, the stresses and harassments, her ease and friendliness as well as the swift retaliation for wrongs she felt done to her, all marked and recorded in her later life, were evident in her school days.”

Diana’s temper may have flared when schoolmates crossed her, but for the most part she maintained her agreeable facade and aimed to please. The school encouraged her to focus on what she did well, and rewarded her achievements. She found fulfillment in helping younger students as well as needy people in the community: the mentally handicapped at a local asylum, and an elderly woman she visited each week. Diana enjoyed learning to play the piano—her favorite piece was Dvorák’s
Slavonic Dance in G Minor
—but her technique, though energetic, didn’t match that of Jane or Sarah, much less her grandmother Ruth Fermoy, who had played professionally. Diana’s forte was dance, and she took lessons in ballet, tap, and ballroom. She practiced diligently, and in 1976, she won the school dance competition. She was equally proficient in swimming and diving, winning awards in each sport four years straight.