Royally Royal: Way-Back-When-s-day

I like old newspapers and magazines. I like reading the articles, looking at the adds, and checking out the weather. I feel like a time traveler. So, Wednesdays will be our Way-Back-When-s-day. It's like throw-back-Thursday, but a day early. I'll feature an article from the archives of a newspaper or magazine. So we can all go back in time together!

This week we are going back to right after the engagement of Charles and Diana. Here is an article from The Chicago Tribune that ran on March 22, 1981. It's about how they met.

The schoolgirl met prince standing in a field

By William Mullen

London correspondent

L ONDON - A plowed field might

not seem to he the sort of romantic setting in which to start a love story that culminates with one of the most celebrated marriages of the century.

But a love story has to begin some- where, and that is where Britain's Prince Charles and his financee, Lady Diana Spencer, have chosen to pinpoint the start of their love affair - a plowed field.

Of course, it was the right sort of plowed field for the future King of Eng- land to meet his intended bride. The field belonged to Lady Diana's father, the Earl of Spencer, the multimillionaire head of one of Britain's oldest aristocratic fami- lies.

Charles happened to he out in the field that day, in the autumn of 1977, hunting deer with Diana's older sister, Lady Sarah, who Charles was courting at the time.

Charles was 29 and Duina 16, so any suggestion of love at first sight, at least on Charles' part, would have overtones of -robbing lechery. But the meeting made a definite impression on the young girl and the somewhat older young man. Last month, after their engagement was announced, Charles recalled the first meeting:

"I remember a very jolly and amusing 16-year-old. She was very attractive. She was great fun and full of life."

Lady Diana's recollection of her impre- ssion of the prince, already a witty, suave, man of the world, at this meeting is almost school-girl romantic.

"Pretty amazing," she said she thought of the prince.

IT TOOK ANOTIHEIt three years of growing up for Diana before the prince took notice of her again, but once lie took notice of her as a very pretty, demure, and marriageable 19-year-old, a very serious romance took flight.

The details of the are scarce. As the crown prince, Charles always has been discreet. Ile has had dozens of love affairs, but never has there heen a hint of scandal arising from them, because of the absolute secrecy he has maintained about his amorous pursuits.

Indeed, more one of his former flames was immediately stricken from his royal when they talked a little too much in public about their rela- tionships with Charles. That included Diana's older sister, Sarah, who told a reporter while she was dating the prince that if he asked her to marry, she would turn him down. Charles soil stopped her for .

Details of the courtship have , however, souse (l by the couple, others gleaned from their friends,

They give an account of a rather lonely man seeking out a young girl was sometimes nearly overwhelmed by pry- ing journalists who have made thie future king s love life their careers.

IN A SENSE, imana was the girl next door to Charles. She grew op) on her father s resilence, which adjoins thie roy- al family s estate at Sandringham, in eastern England.

"I was paired up with Prince Andrew," Diana saih, her childhood days playing Charles' brother, now 21.

When she went off to: an exclusive - vate boarding school for girls, ahl kept uti a four-yea' with An- drew, prompting her school friends tIn think she had a on . Thie girls sit the Iicluihinig Diana, to gossip 1 giggle about England's royal , code to . 1i;i''s w j, bi ov sl asi '.'us 1 '

name obviously coined from his rather prominent auditory appendages.

Diana was still a school girl when they met in the plowed field. She further daz- the prince a few a days after that meeting by giving him a free-spirited lesson in tap dancing on the terrace of her father s home.

The prince had a succession of girlfriends until last summer, when he seemed to crawl back into his lonely shell after a stormy breakup with a girl at a ball being given for his grandmother s 80th birthday.

THAT BREAKUP may have been for- . Charles' grandmother, tile Queen Mother, now is thought to have stepped in to be the matchmaker between tIle prince and Diana, who, by turning 19 in July, suddenly became a marriageable possi- bility.

The Queen Mother's best friend hap- pens to be Diana's grandmother, so Dia- na last August was invited to the royal family s castle at Balmoral in Scotland. Charles was there, and he and Diana became reacquainted as they hiked through the Hlghlands and discovered a mutual enjoyment of fly-fishing in icy Scottish .

Dateless Diana returned to London and soon was going out increasingly with a mysterious who was never in- troduced to her roommates. When they asked about him, Diana simply said his name was "Charles Renfrew."

A few weeks later, when London's zeal- ous journalistic Charles-watchers de- duced that Diana was the latest woman in the Prince's life, Diana's friends fig-

ured out the mystery. One of Charles' many royal titles is Lord Renfrew.

The seriousness of the affair began to become apparent when the royal family started showing unprecedented public anger over Diana's treatment by the press.

Photographers camped outside her door, following her right into her school as she went to work. She was deeply embarrassed and offended one day when, wearing a diaphanous skirt with no slip underneath, a photographer caught her in a pose with the sun at her back, reveal- ing her legs.

RAVENOUS FOR NEWS of the affair, at least one newspaper, the London Sun- day Mirror, published a story purporting to show that Diana spent two amorous nights aboard Charles' private train. That story so enraged Queen Elizabeth herself that she is threatening to sue.

The concern of the family is under- standable. They have been pressuring Charles for several years to marry, fear- ing he is growing too old to find a girl with a proper background and an un- blemished past. Charles, insisting that he would not be rushed, said he would mar- ry only for love.

As the romance deepened, the interest taken in the couple by newsmen began to take its toll.

"All of this has been something of a strain for her, you know," Charles told reporters in India last year while Diana remained at home, followed night and day by reporters. "At times, it has re- duced her to tears, but she has coped magnificently."

To have "coped magnificently" meant that she kept her composure in public.

Diana never, as so many of Charles'- girlfriends before, allowed the instant celebrity to go to her head, nor did she talk very openly with reporters, allowing them only a smile and a friendly greeting as she went from her door to her car. Hier friendly but cool reserve is said to have impressed Charles, convincing him that he had found a woman with the - ity to survive his goldfish-bowl existence.

CERTAINLY TIEftE-is more to their mutual attraction than Diana's ability:to cope with the press, but Charles and Diana prefer to keep their feelings private.

"They have the same sense of humor," said Lady Sarah, Diana's sister and Charles' ex-girlfriend. ',She is very gigg- ly, and he is giggly. She loves opera, ballet, and sport. He met Miss Right, and she met Mr. Right. They just clicked."

If there has been any sense at all of normal, human happiness and - tion growing out of their betrothal, it was only revealed by Diana's roommates, who described to reporters how Diana broke the news of tih engagement to them. Diana swore her friends to secrecy a few hours after Charles popped the question.

"Di just sat on the bed beside me one night and said she was going to marry Prince Charles," said Virginia Pitman, 21, a cooking student. "There was a big smile on her face. We started to squeal with excitement, and then we started to cry. "

Ch cago Tr b-no Pross Sorn:o

Here are some photo of that first meeting: