Grace: Her Lives - Her Loves (60 page)

Read Grace: Her Lives - Her Loves Online

Authors: Robert Lacey

Tags: #Memoir

The despot himself has no apologies to make. The 5,000 native Monégasques and 24,000 foreign tax exiles like things the way they are, and there is little more to say on the matter. At seventy-one, the builder prince puts in as many hours as ever in his office in the palace, looking at plans and models, studying traffic flows. He is half a head of state, half the mayor of Toytown, toiling away at the minutiae of his subjects’ lives. It is pretty solid drudgery, and when Monseigneur does take a break, it is often at his typewriter, pecking out his long, flowing letters to his friends, full of eloquence and typing errors.

From time to time Rainier gets onto one of his favorite subjects—circus clowns. When he signs his letters, he often draws a little picture of a clown’s face—the painted smile that is camouflage for melancholy. It is strange that the greatest clown ever went by the name of Grimaldi. Since 1974 one of the highlights of the prince’s year has been Monaco’s Circus Festival, which was his idea. The best circus acts travel from around the world to compete, and Rainier sneaks out of the office to watch the rehearsals. At the end of the festival he invites the best performers up to the palace and they sit around the dinner table telling jokes, the prince venturing out of himself in the company of the vaudevillians. In his garage, Rainier has confided to friends, he has stored a huge, caravan-style camper-bus, a princely RV that he has designed to his own specifications. In it he can be totally self-sufficient, and it is his intention, he says, when he has finally retired, to go driving off in it, and to follow the circus.

It is a sunny May morning in Monaco. A little band in blue uniform and white spats is playing beneath the pine trees. They are the musicians of Prince Rainier’s palace guard, and they perform the hybrid selections beloved of military bandmasters—
”Marches de I’Empire,”
and “Compilation Beades”—somehow making all the tunes sound just the same. The clash of cymbals and the oomp-pa-pa float up beside the ramparts of the pink palace. In the background is the sea.

It is the operetta scene that first drew Grace to Monaco. She believed in it. She became a part of it, and through her belief she made it more real. It has not been the same without her, and the antics of her children have made it worse. Monaco has reverted to its traditional shadiness, but Grace’s presence rendered it magical—dignified, even—for a season:

Never by many are marvels wrought,

By one or two are the dreams first caught. . .

The dreamer must toil when the odds are great,

Must stand to failure and work and wait. . .

Must keep his faith though he stand alone,

Until the truth of his dream is known.

She stayed true to her coach’s teaching. She was always someone who tried to do better, and it is this element of aspiration that keeps her memory alive today. A few hundred yards down cobbled alleys from the bandstand by the palace is Monaco’s cathedral, where millions shared in Grace’s marriage nearly four decades ago. Now she is buried there, and the tourists file past her gravestone reverently—thirty a minute, eighteen hundred an hour, more than nine thousand a day on a busy weekend.

The cathedral is hushed and shadowy, the stained-glass windows filtering the Mediterranean light. Around the high altar shuffle the pilgrims—modern, camera-slung folk awed to silence by the mystery. Grace lies in the great semicircle of the princes, her gravestone marked by a small vase of flowers. The visitors light their candles. The devout cross themselves and pray, GRATIA PATRICIA PRINCIPIS RAINIERII III UXOR — ‘Grace Patricia, Wife of Prince Rainier III’. It could be the resting place of some medieval saint. She dreamed so hard. She earned her glory.”

Photographs

Scene from To Catch a Thief

Grace Kelly as Frances Stevens, and Cary Grant as John Robie on the set of the 1955 film To Catch a Thief.

Monaco Wedding of 1956

Prince Rainier III (1923-), of Monaco marries the American actress, Grace Kelly (1929-1982), in Monaco Cathedral in April 1956. The Catholic ceremony was conducted by Monseigneur Barthe, the Bishop of Monaco.

Flickr Collection

Especially for this Apostrophe Books edition, author Robert Lacey has curated a stunning collection of photographs of Grace Kelly:

http://www.apostrophebooks.com/gracephotographs

Newsreel footage

The British Pathé archive is the world’s finest digital news collection. All 85,000 films are viewable online via their YouTube channel and website:
www.britishpathe.com
.

With their kind permission, we invite you to view a wonderful collection of newsreel footage featuring Grace Kelly.

Here are some highlights: