I for one am vicariously thrilled about the upcoming marriage of Camilla Parker Bowles and Prince Charles.
I greatly admired the late Princess Diana for many reasons: her devotion to her children; her courage in dealing with the relentlessly vicious Palace infrastructure; her dedication to so many good works, especially her respectful treatment of hospital patients with AIDS.
Her cutting-edge, high style glamour, though, made her an inaccessible public personality, rather like a young Nancy Reagan, albeit one with a heart.
State dinners, sunbathing on remote beaches, jet-setting to the far corners of the British Empire seem more the stuff of a movie plot than an actual real person’s lifestyle.
On the other hand, Mrs. Parker Bowles is someone I can relate to, in spite of the chasm between our social classes. Perhaps because of some shared DNA with my English grandmother, Mae, I find Camilla’s hunting lady, tweedy look to be comfortable, familiar and thoroughly engaging.
This “classic Gloucestershire English country lady”, as described in today’s New York Times, reminds us in an understated, practical way that “Rich and well-bred Britons traditionally have been brought up in the country, not the city, on land handed down from their ancestors.”
To me, the descendant of an Englishwoman, that is the essence of romance, as is the happy culmination of a 30 year love affair between the Prince and his lady love.
God bless them!