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Tea with a Prince

On April 27, 2013, I had the honour of being invited by Prince Philip to share a private tea with him at the Fairmont Royal York. Ironically, it was in the Royal Suite, the very same room where I had occasionally met up with Pierre Trudeau back in the seventies. Prince Philip’s short, twenty-four-hour visit to Toronto was to commemorate the two-hundredth anniversary of the Battle of York. It seemed I was the only person invited to tea, so I chose my killer beige high heels and a pretty Holly Harp dress, and I hoped my hair would behave itself. I carried a matching shawl made from the same silk fabric and wore a stylish black suede coat, lined in pink silk, with rose and green brocade on the front. The Prince’s equerry, Dale White, escorted me into the suite, where Prince Philip greeted me, a big smile lighting up his face as he warmly shook my hand. I noticed a dark purple bruise on his right eye and cheek, and when I expressed concern he told me his mother always had the same in her senior years; the stain apparently just appears at random then fades away. Perhaps it is a special manifestation of that blue blood that runs in the royal veins!

As we exchanged pleasantries about his visit, two staff members laid out a flowery china tea set and served our choices of Earl Grey for HRH and English breakfast for me. The waiter told us that the honey was produced from beehives kept on the roof of the hotel. I was pleased to learn that Prince Philip no longer drinks as much tea as he used to and tries to forgo the obligatory British biscuits or, as we call them, cookies. Earlier in the day he had spent time with our Lieutenant-Governor and his wife, David and Ruth Ann Onley, then attended a ceremony for the battalion at Fort York and a reception at the hotel prior to meeting me. Following our tea time rendezvous he was going to be picked up and driven straight to the airport to fly home to England.

Prince Philip impressed me with his knowledge of history, explaining a little about the war of 1812, how the Canadians had fought off the Americans and blown up a store of gunpowder, which exploded and killed the leader.

I let him hear my patriotic song, “Canada, My Canada” using a small speaker called an X-mini, the likes of which he had never seen and which seemed to fascinate him. He expressed admiration for my accomplishment of persuading so many well-known singers to participate.

“Do you have any idea of what I should use for the cover of my new album?” I questioned.

Prince Philip chuckled mischievously and suggested I wear three maple leaves and nothing else! We both laughed at his original idea, but I told him it might be more prudent to choose a typical Canadian scene with a lake and a canoe.

Earlier that afternoon Governor General David Johnston had admitted Prince Philip as a Companion of the Order of Canada and appointed him a Commander of the Order of Military Merit. Both honours had come as a complete surprise to him, and Prince Philip expressed how much he liked the look of these medals. Normally the Order of Canada is only presented to Canadians, but for Prince Philip they simply changed the rules.

My royal companion asked about my house in Palm Beach and he told me that all he remembered when last there were blue-haired old ladies wearing white fox stoles! I explained that, yes, Palm Beach has a fair number of rich, elderly widows, but there are also many young people living there these days, and a visitor’s impressions depend upon which events they attend. He remembered the beauty of the town and how much he had enjoyed swimming in a huge infinity pool facing the ocean.

Knowing I was to have tea with my royal friend, I had, a few days before, written a humorous little poem in order to entertain him. It was to be his advance birthday present, I explained. Wordsworth it certainly wasn’t, but it was never intended to be anything more than some rhyming memories. He smiled, looking bemused as I recited it. I acted out some of the verses, and he nodded as he recognized our different encounters over the years. What would my drama teacher from Sydenham County Girls School have made of my performance? What would my English mistress, Miss Kibblewhite, have thought of her favourite student, with whom at eleven she had walked around the playground quoting Tennyson and Longfellow? What a nerve I had to write such a poem to the Queen of England’s husband! But the truth is that I had grown to love this special, unattainable prince of a man, whose kind words had brought much pleasure to my often solitary life.

A gentle tap on the door signalled that our allotted hour had run its course. Dale White entered and agreed to snap a photo of us, for which Prince Philip let me take a rose from the bouquet on the coffee table. I asked if I could give His Royal Highness a goodbye hug as who knew if we might ever see each other again. He chuckled, shaking his head, but with that familiar twinkle in his eye, he took my shoulders and gave me a brief kiss on each cheek. Thus, I said goodbye to my prince as one of the RCMP men held open my coat. I explained that it had been seventeen years since we last met and that I had played several times for him and the Queen. “We all love your music,” the officer told me, before escorting me back along the corridor to the hotel lobby. Even though our friendship had never been romantic, this meeting definitely had nostalgic echoes of my days with Pierre and the RCMP. But would I ever see my prince again? As I travelled home in a Toronto taxi, I felt a lump in my throat and was unable to suppress the tears in my eyes as I imagined that this afternoon tea might actually have been our very last encounter.