The Sleeping Princess

In countless British homes last week there was a gasp of disbelief. In London newspaper offices, gossip columnists hung their ignorant little heads in shame. To a few titled socialites the event was shocking. But to most everyone, once they got used to it, the news was splendid.

It was certainly the best-kept secret of the year. From Clarence House, the home of the Queen Mother, a court circular announced the "betrothal of her beloved daughter the Princess Margaret to Mr. Antony Charles Robert Armstrong-Jones." Who, asked nearly everybody, is Antony Armstrong-Jones?

Lucky Working Lad. He is, to begin with, a commoner, the son of Welsh Barrister Ronald Armstrong-Jones, 60, and his first wife, Anne, a sister of Stage Designer Oliver Messel. Young Tony is also a hard-working and extremely able photographer. The Laborite Daily Herald gushed: "Good wishes to Margaret and the lucky working lad she is to marry."

Though a working lad, Tony is no hornyhanded proletarian. A graduate of Eton and Cambridge, where he won his blue as coxswain of the 1950 crew, Tony served his apprenticeship under the late society photographer known as Baron, a close friend of Prince Philip. On assignment from the Tatler, Tony managed to inject into his pictures of society dowagers and hunt balls a touch of lightheartedness. His first commission for the royal family, in 1956, was a 21st birthday picture of the Duke of Kent, which helped bring the era of stiff, formal pictures of royalty to an end. Tony's childhood studies of young Prince Charles and Princess Anne, and his coolly beautiful portrait of Margaret on her 29th birthday, made his reputation as a "society photographer." It is a label he disliked, and Tony prowled London streets for odd and amusing shots, and covered fascist rallies and anti-A-bomb parades.

At 29 (he is five months older than Margaret), Tony Armstrong-Jones is slender, volatile, charming in manner, and not very much taller than his bride-to-be (5 ft. 2 in.). He is not stuffy, and not particularly intellectual either. His flat in unfashionable Pimlico has a laundry on one side and an antique shop on the other, and his friends come chiefly from bohemian Chelsea, Fleet Street, and the theater and fashion world. For two years Tony's great and good friend was a sloe-eyed Chinese model named Jackie Chan (now playing a "yum-yum girl" prostitute in the London production of The World of Suzie Wong), and last year they holidayed together in Switzerland.

Drainpipe Trousers. Unlike Margaret, he does not enjoy dancing, because of a childhood polio attack which has left him with a stiffened leg, but he is happy to play the clown at parties. Wearing drainpipe trousers and suede jacket, he serves friends his own well-spiced cooking.

How had the romance burgeoned without anyone outside the royal family being the wiser? Only last month the London Sunday Express solemnly intoned that it was "by no means certain" that Margaret would ever marry. When he went to stay with the royal family at Balmoral last summer and at Sandringham this winter, everyone concluded it was just a case of "Tony's taking some more of his pictures." In contrast with Group Captain Peter Townsend, whom Margaret renounced in 1955 because he was a divorced man, Tony Armstrong-Jones maintained total secrecy about his courtship.

It was the memory of her unhappy 1955 announcement that she "would like it to be known" that she was not marrying Townsend, and the subsequent fear that she might become the unmarried daughter who stayed at home with mother, that made everyone pleased by the news. The Archbishop of Canterbury had no objections this time. Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip were reported "delighted" because it was "such an obviously happy match." A plainer reaction everywhere was "Thank heaven, Margaret's not going to marry some aristocratic chinless wonder."

The In-Laws. In getting Tony, Princess Margaret will also inherit a bewildering set of in-laws: his mother Anne is now an Irish countess by her marriage to the sixth Earl of Rosse, vice chancellor of Dublin's Trinity College. His father, a Queen's Counsel, after the divorce from Tony's mother married Actress Carol Coombe, and only a few weeks ago took his third wife: a former airline stewardess, Jenifer Unite, who is a year older than her royal daughter-in-law-to-be.

At week's end a happy and titillated Britain was speculating on what Princess Margaret will be called after her wedding. One solution would be for the Queen to ennoble Tony, but short of this, precedent dating back to 1503 (when Cecily, daughter of King Edward IV, married Commoner Thomas Kymbe) would seem to offer but two alternatives to the bride: she can either call herself Lady Margaret Armstrong-Jones, or H.R.H. Princess Margaret, Mrs. Armstrong-Jones. As for Tony, he would then remain plain Mister, and their children would grow up titleless.

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