Thinking of King Charles III's Adventures in Palm Beach
A polo fright, and dazzling with Diana
Sally Bedell Smith
March 21, 2023
I landed in Palm Beach, Florida this morning to give a talk at the Society of the Four Arts about George VI and Elizabeth: The Marriage That Saved the Monarchy. But as the plane touched down, my thoughts turned to King Charles III, and his adventures in this opulent city when he was Prince of Wales.
I thought you might like to hear about his visits in one of my occasional mid-week posts that will supplement my regular Saturday features.
A passion for polo
At age thirty-one, Charles made his first visit in the spring of 1980 after an official tour of Canada. He was accompanied by Oliver Everett, his thirty-seven-year-old assistant private secretary. The soft-spoken and sophisticated veteran of the Foreign Office had joined the prince’s staff two years earlier on the recommendation of Lord Louis (“Dickie”) Mountbatten, the great-uncle Charles revered. Everett also played polo, a rarity in the diplomatic service. Polo in those days was the prince’s particular passion.
Charles arrived the day before he was scheduled to play in a polo match. He had scarcely acclimated from the wintry temperatures of Canada to Florida’s humid 90 degree weather. He spent the next morning practicing and sunbathing—but carelessly neglected to replenish himself by drinking enough water.
A collapse and dash to the hospital
During the afternoon match, he looked exhausted and flushed. He was between chukkas (playing periods in polo ), when “he got off his horse and promptly fell down,” Oliver Everett told me. “He was shaking and his eyes were rolling. It was very serious.”
“Help me, I think I’m going to die,” he whispered to Everett. “I stayed with him until the ambulance came,” Everett recalled. “They immediately gave him salts with an IV and rushed him to the hospital.”
In the emergency room, Charles was diagnosed with heat stroke and dehydration, continued the saline drip, and was placed under observation for eighteen hours. The next morning he strode out of the hospital, fit enough to drive himself back to the polo club grounds in a red Mercedes convertible, tooting his horn as he left.
Tea with Donald Trump
Charles played polo in Palm Beach several more times in the following years. During a 1988 visit, the prince even took up Donald Trump’s invitation to tea at the real estate developer’s mansion, Mar-a-Lago. But Charles made his biggest Palm Beach splash when he appeared with Diana in the autumn of 1985 after their celebrated visit to Washington as guests of Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
The royal couple headlined a gala at the famous Breakers Hotel to benefit United World Colleges, a global network of schools started by Kurt Hahn, who also founded Gordonstoun, Charles’s Scottish boarding school. UWC promoted cross-cultural understanding, which chimed perfectly with Charles’s beliefs. Dickie Mountbatten had also championed UWC, and when he stepped down as its president in 1978, Charles took his place.
The prime benefactor of the Palm Beach gala was Armand Hammer, the eighty-seven-year old chairman of Occidental Petroleum who had stirred up controversy with Libyan oil deals and his cozy relations with the Soviet Union. Several well-known local socialites were so miffed by his involvement that they left town in a snit.
An “eye wander” problem
The gala was a smash hit anyway, raising $4 million from four hundred guests who paid a minimum of $10,000. The crowd included international socialites as well as show business icons Bob Hope, Cary Grant, and Gregory Peck. Diana, dressed in a shimmering hot pink gown, was the star of the evening, but Joan Collins came a close second in her black strapless dress and impressive diamond necklace. Charles later admitted to an “eye wander” problem as he gazed at her “unbelievable cleavage…all raised up and presented as if on a tray!”
Charles and Diana’s marriage was by then nearing the breaking point, but they put on a happy show, dancing to “This Could Be the Start of Something Big.” Charles was a more accomplished ballroom dancer than Diana (who preferred gyrating to the rock band Supertramp), and she seemed confused at first. But once they synchronized their moves, the guests pulled back from the dance floor to marvel at their spins and turns. They returned to England and eight more tumultuous years of marriage—but that’s a story for another day.
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