The Royal Couple Drops In

By Richard Stengel

England and America, George Bernard Shaw once wryly observed, are two lands divided by a common language. But if that dyspeptic Irishman had been around to witness the visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales to Washington last week, he might have noted that the U.S. and Britain are two countries united by an uncommon love of royalty.

After weeks of feverish anticipation and frenzied publicity, the world's most glamorous and relentlessly observed twosome arrived in the capital of what was once their kingdom's richest possession. By the time they stepped off their plane on Saturday morning at Andrews Air Force Base, all the RSVPs had been sent out, thank you, and the A list firmly separated from the B. Washington had settled in to gawk and gossip about the royal heroic couplet.

The three-day trip to the nation's capital was the penultimate stop on a 19-day gallivant that has already taken them to Australia and, on a brief stopover, to Hawaii, where the Prince went bodysurfing and the Princess received a brilliantly colorful lei ("Oh, how sweet they smell," she said). After Washington, they were set to jet down to Palm Beach, Fla., for a brisk game of polo and a glittering charity ball for the United World College of the American West.

Charles and Diana, the First Couple of British public relations, are not in Washington on a state visit. They are patrons of the National Gallery of Art's sumptuous show, "The Treasure Houses of Britain" (to which Charles has lent the painting The Shooting Party, by John Wootton). They are also paying a call to a suburban JCPenney to give the royal seal of approval to the store's "Best of Britain" merchandising campaign.

Their Royal Highnesses are the souls of punctuality, and their Royal Australian Air Force jet touched down at Andrews right on time, at 8:40 a.m. When Diana and Charles stepped out of the plane into sparkling sunshine, the crowd of 4,000 royalty oglers let out a deferentially reserved hurrah. Diana, dressed in a radiant red suit with a white shawl collar and wearing an oversize red fez, was clearly the cynosure.

The royal couple spent nearly 20 minutes with the crowd, with Diana paying special attention to a group of handicapped children. One of them, 16-year-old Jonathan Lollar of Ocean Springs, Miss., got his dearest wish. Blind and suffering from an inoperable tumor, Lollar was enabled by the Make-a-Wish Foundation of America to come to Washington to meet the Princess. He was not disappointed. Diana was offered flowers and gifts, which she, like a practiced quarterback, deftly handed off to a lady-in-waiting behind her.

After a brief stop at the British embassy, where the couple is staying, Charles and Diana entered the ambassador's silver Rolls-Royce bearing Charles' standard and were whisked off to the White House for what was billed as "morning coffee" with the Reagans. The President and First Lady, she in a subdued beige dress and he in a natty blue-and-green plaid blazer, shook hands with the royal couple when they emerged from the car. Nancy dotes on Charles and Diana; they could be her dream children. Inside, over tea, coffee and cinnamon toast, the two couples, surely the most famous foursome in the world, made polite chitchat about Charles and Diana's recent travels.

After a tree-planting ceremony at the embassy followed by a brief lunch with Sir Oliver and Lady Wright, the Ambassador and his wife, who are the official hosts of the royal couple, Charles and Diana went their separate ways. He went to the American Institute of Architects and she, accompanied by Barbara Bush, visit ed the Washington Home, a residence for the elderly and infirm. Inside the striking cement-and-glass A.I. A. headquarters, Charles heard about one of his pet subjects, the revitalization of urban areas. After the round-table discussion, the Prince strolled over to the Octagon House, built in 1801, to peruse the two-page Treaty of Ghent ("Quite a long one, too," he said smilingly), which ended the War of 1812 between Great Britain and the U.S.

At the Washington Home, a last stopping place for the sick and the elderly, Diana stopped to chat with about 40 of the wheelchair-bound residents. She patted spotted hands and spoke directly into hard-of-hearing ears. It was old hat to 95-year-old British-born Letitia Whitty: "When I was 6 1/2, my father took me to the streets to see Queen Victoria passing by. I wouldn't wave at that ugly old woman." She did, however, talk animatedly with a pretty young one about English gardens. For nearly an hour, these faltering men and women in the shadow of life became Washington's brightest social elite, the recipients of a Princess's interest.

After a brief hobnob with journalists at the British embassy, they headed upstairs to their cozy three-room suite to rest up for the gala White House dinner Saturday evening. The swanky soiree for only 79 guests, certainly the hottest ticket in town, was a mixture of glitz and ritz, power and talent. The guests included Actors Clint Eastwood, Tom Selleck and John Travolta, Dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov (who was seated at Diana's right), Architect I.M. Pei, Explorer Jacques Cousteau, Artists Helen Frankenthaler and David Hockney, and Nancy's cat pack, Jerry Zipkin and Betsy Bloomingdale. The menu, in keeping with royal preferences, was light: lobster mousseline with Maryland crab followed by glazed chicken capsicum and a dessert of peach sorbet. The President and the Prince each was to give a toast; but the Prince, complaining of jet lag, sat down without actually offering one. He then stood up, saying sheepishly, "Excuse me, I've forgotten the toast."

Charles and Diana ("She's a bag of energy," said Royal Press Secretary Michael Shea) rose early the next morning to attend a service at the Washington Cathedral. Charles read Chapter 35 from Isaiah ("Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not") and was given a kneeling pillow at his pew that was hand needlepointed by his grandmother the Queen Mum and donated to the cathedral as a war memorial.

Afterward, the couple was to take a tour of "The Treasure Houses of Britain," guided by the gallery's ubiquitous director J. Carter Brown (the only man to be invited to all the black-tie occasions) and Gervase Jackson-Stops, the show's curator. Like dutiful dons, the two men planned to give special emphasis to objects and pictures relating to the Tudor dynasty.

Next stop: lunch at the splendiferous Virginia Hunt Country estate of Philanthropist Paul Mellon, whose father was once Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. Mellon's lunch is the smallest of all the charmed circles: fewer than two dozen guests. Later that night the couple's schedule called for a dinner at the British embassy. On Monday the couple was to make their obligatory tour of JCPenney.

In the afternoon Charles was scheduled to take a spin around the Library of Congress with the noted scholar and Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin, who would show the Prince some original manuscripts relating to the Constitution. Diana, meanwhile, planned to accompany Nancy to Straight, a drug-rehabilitation center in Springfield, Va. Like stylish clothes and a penchant for being elegantly thin, concern about drug abuse is something the two women have in common.

That night, a gala dinner for the royal couple was planned for the National Gallery, where guests included various Washington luminaries, such as Treasury Secretary James Baker, and a coterie of well-heeled benefactors of the gallery. Charles and Diana were to depart the next morning for Palm Beach to go directly to the Palm Beach Polo and Country Club. Charles, who has brought along his own equipment for his favorite sport, will engage in a friendly match. Plans for the pregame festivities, rife with quirky Americana, included appearances by Disney World's Minnie and Mickey Mouse, a kind of cartoon royal couple.

After the match, Charles and Diana planned to relax until the evening's ball at the Breakers Hotel, given in honor of one of the Prince's favorite causes, the United World College Fund. Only then, after their last dinner, their last handclasp, their last quip and thank-you, only then would the tired, probably overfed and over-fawned-upon royal couple fly back to London. They would get home just in time to celebrate the Prince's 37th birthday with William and Harry and for Diana to tell her boys bedtime stories about her whirlwind trip to the colonies and how pretty the monuments looked against Washington's autumnal foliage. --By Richard Stengel. Reported by Mary Cronin and Alessandra Stanley/Washington

With reporting by Reported by Mary Cronin, Alessandra Stanley/Washington