Long live the republic - Andrew Stephen, our Washington editor, reports that Americans, far from esteeming royalty, see the Queen as a relic in white gloves
When the Queen last came to the United States, in 1991, I attended a British Embassy garden party on a swelteringly humid afternoon. While a military band (even hotter in their uniforms than the rest of us) oompahed away and we helped ourselves to egg-and-cress sandwiches and Pimms, her powdered-doll face suddenly materialised among the seething Washington socialite hordes.
Ringed by tropically uniformed guardsmen, she progressed with surreal, unhurried slowness. The powdered face seemed strangely detached from what was going on around her. Tossing aside any British notions of protocol, ambitious Washington matrons pushed and shoved their way to thrust out hands in enthusiastic greeting. The ring of soldiers let a limited number get close, and the jostling Washington ladies were rewarded with a hint of acknowledgement and a white glove dutifully extended towards them.
It was a scene that, to any short-term British visitor, confirmed all prevailing myths about Americans and their attitude towards Britain and its icons. Just as Britons in the US expect every American to gush enthusiastically about their accent, so there is a British assumption that Americans just can't get enough of our royalty. In the immortal words of the Daily Express: "Americans eat up royalty like pizza."
Didn't People magazine sell more copies every time it put Princess Diana on the cover? Don't American tourists visit Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle in droves?
Well, yes and no. If you read anywhere that America is now awash in Queen Mom fever (and you probably will), disregard it; I suspect that the vast majority of Americans don't have a clue who she is. In the vast sea of myths about Anglo-British relations, the we-just-love-your-royalty canard is perhaps the most pervasive. If the Daily Express sees it one way, the Los Angeles Times has a crucially different perspective. "Here we go again - genuflecting, curtsying and shamelessly salivating," it despaired when the Queen visited LA.
Should we have any doubts that Americans are ambivalent about our royalty, we have only to turn to the Washington Post after that garden party. "This fusty cartoon, the upholstered relic in white gloves, this corgi-bitten defender of an ill-kept faith, this walking logo for a country that looks like a theme park with riots, this highness, this majesty drove across the Potomac River," wrote the paper's star feature writer (or overwrote, might I suggest?).
This shows that only the fulsomeness and enthusiasm of Americans towards Britain and its royalty is reflected back in the British media: never conveyed is the barely suppressed contempt for British institutions that so many Americans, such as this wretched Washington Post man, actually feel. But the truth is that Americans are often simultaneously repelled and fascinated by British royalty; if you go a little deeper, this is not as contradictory as it sounds.
First, however, there is always a band of Anglo-Americans who tend to adopt what they perceive to be British upper-class ways and mannerisms - rushing to buy Swaine Adeney Brigg umbrellas, coveting Buckingham Palace garden party or polo invitations, poring over Anthony Powell's diaries to see if they rate a mention, and so on. They genuflect and curtsy to British royalty in much the same way that a segment of the British population does. But these constitute a tiny section of the nation, often intermarried with similarly self-regarding Brits, and attracted to notions of British class superiority. I am not writing about them, but about the mass of Americans.
These masses follow the sagas and soap operas of royalty in the same way that many Britons enjoy hearing about the adventures of Bill'n'Monica - a vicarious enjoyment unhindered by personal involvement, concern or self-examination. Indeed, to most Americans, the concept of royalty is proof that Britain is not a democracy and that America rid itself, in a bloody way, of British ties and monarchical rule precisely in order to become a democracy. Put simply, Americans abhor the principle of royalty; it is the epitome of un-Americanness.
But that is not why Americans enjoy their titillation about the royals, nor is it why People magazine did so well out of Diana. The notion that these poor Yanks would so love our pageantry and our royals for themselves, if only they could have them, positively screams the kind of British condescension that Americans reject. To most Americans, British royals are simply the kind of people they can read about in a sleazy magazine they might pick up at a supermarket checkout. They might choose to read about the marriage and glamorous lifestyle of Brad Pitt, or they might be in the mood for some scurrilous stuff about, say, Prince William.
The brutal truth is that, nowadays, Britain produces precious few international big names: no Beatles, no Rolling Stones, no showbiz or athletic megastars in 2000. So what rivals do the royals have for that seductive concoction of glam lifestyles, whispers about drugs, affairs, broken marriages, and so on, that sells magazines and boosts TV audiences? Tim Henman? Robin Cook? Tony Blair may fancy himself as a glamorous international statesman, but few of the American proletariat, I wager, have heard of him. Celebrity fever is a peculiarly American phenomenon, and the current British royals owe their popularity in America, such as it is, to that American need to see, feel and touch those blessed by fame. A network newscaster cannot walk down an American street without being mobbed; if Prince William were recognised, it would be the same for him. In the US, both are similarly endowed with that magical celebrity status.
Hence the clamour to get close to the Queen at that British Embassy garden party. But youth and glamour go inseparably together, and the Queen's shelf-life as a celebrity is coming perilously near its sell-by date. As for the Queen Mother, the American media are confining themselves to the what-a-quaint-old-theme-park- little-old-Britain-is type of small news story - in much the same way that, on a slow news day, it will dust off old features from Britain about bowler hats, village cricket or the ladies of the WI stripping off. With the American hunger for vitality and youth, Prince William should be good for a few People covers in the coming years - although he will have to compete with the likes of Brad Pitt or Heath Ledger, the new Australian heart-throb actor who was so beastly to the Brits in The Patriot.
I am sorry to lay to rest the long-held British notion that Americans just love our royalty. True, if the Queen returned to the British Embassy this week, there would be similar scenes to those I witnessed in 1991; she is not entirely finished as a celebrity commodity yet. If Prince William visits, teenage girls will scream - just as they did with the Beatles and do with Heath Ledger. And American tourists will continue to throng Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle just as, at home, they flock to Disneyworld.
But most Americans, while they like to snigger at the royals and even enjoy them - vicariously, at a safe distance - do not hold them in the respect, esteem and affection that the Brits, on the other side of the Atlantic, so fondly imagine.
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