Carla Carlisle: 'What do the Sussexes want? How does this saga end?'

Marriage and writing columns have this in common: you tend to repeat yourself. More than once in this publication, I have quoted the New Yorker’s legendary film critic Pauline Kael. After President Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 she wrote: ‘I live in a rather special world. I don’t personally know anyone who voted for Nixon.’

I also live in a rather special world. I don’t personally know anyone who has bought a book called Spare. I can go further. I have a small bookshop. Located in the old milking parlour, it is literary, personally curated and financially the most viable of our various farm diversifications. Readers will not find copies of Spare in my bookshop. Charlotte — who does the ordering — and I never even discussed it. Instead, we ordered 10 copies of Orwell on Truth and declined the opportunity to stock the ‘bestseller of all time’.

Which doesn’t mean that this farm — with its fields of wheat and barley, vineyard, restaurant, Shetland sheep, weekly farmers’ market and miles of beetle banks — is a veritable hamlet of censorship and sensibility. I ceaselessly plough the black-and-white world of print. I confess that I have now read thousands of inches of reviews of the Prince’s — and his creative ghostwriter J. R. Moehringer’s — memoir with a compulsion that embarrasses me to admit. I have been gripped by the sheer brilliance of some of the reviews (my list of the best includes Philip Hensher in The Spectator, Tina Brown (naturally) in the Sunday Times, Sarah Sands in the FT). I read with the gnawing guilt of a fugitive.

Any moral high ground I occupied for not watching the Netflix programmes was diminished when I succumbed to the ITV interview with Tom Bradby. It was exhausting, although I found Mr Bradby even-handed. I also thought Harry had been coached by a pro. He had his lines down pat.

"Consider what Elizabeth II understood in her bones: that the greatest courage is to be silent. And rewind the film of your wedding day. Understand that outpouring of gaiety and love and hope. Remember."

As I trawled through the reviews, I could hear my grandmother’s voice. If she saw me reading Seventeen/Glamour or, worse still, Cosmopolitan, she accused me of ‘going slumming’. She regularly snapped: ‘You aren’t obliged to read trash!’ and handed me Jane Austen or Willa Cather. Her reproofs have been long lasting. I never read or watch ‘trash’ without the itch of guilt. I also suspect that Pride and Prejudice led me to England. It may even have paved the path to my lucky tenancy at Country Life, where, back in May, 2018, I welcomed Meghan Markle into the sisterhood of American women married to Englishmen. It was a hopeful and happy time. The heart of the country was full.

Those days now feel like Once Upon a Time. I’m worn out from buckin’ and snortin’ with my fellow Americans who have watched The Crown (I didn’t) and Oprah and bought into the story that the English — and the Royal Family — were eaten up by their prejudice against the new royal bride. I’ll say it again: I may live in a rather special world, but I don’t personally know anyone who didn’t welcome the exciting new era of Harry and Meghan. And if one image of that wedding stands out above all others, it will forever be the heart-wrenching moment of the then Prince of Wales walking his son’s bride down the aisle.

We are now left with questions that feel like sifting sand: what do the Sussexes want? How does this painful saga end?

I have no idea what the Sussexes want, of course. Nobody does. My more cynical friends (English) believe the Duchess wants to be Michelle Obama and the Duke wants to be the brave Zelensky and bring about world peace by destroying his personal Putin: the UK tabloid press. Good luck with that. My sweet cousin (American) has a gentler take: ‘Now that they have spurted out all their unhappiness, I hope they will have the courage to be happy.’

It’s quite a thought: the courage to be happy. To the modern ear, it sounds a little too self-helpy, but I wish that there was someone to advise the Duke and Duchess that there is no future in a career of chewing over the bitterness of things. Bitterness and its twin, Hate, leads to a kind of madness. It corrodes reconciliation.

If I could give advice, would I try the modern mantra of ‘lighten up’? Unlikely. I hate to be told to lighten up. Would I tell them that happiness depends on the courage to forget, the courage to forgive? I don’t know. Although Oprah and I were born 50 miles apart and we both grew up in a world where inspirational verses were posted on church billboards, I emerged with a lifelong allergy to platitudes.

The best I could come up with are a few dos and don’ts. Don’t read the tabloids and stuff online because nobody in your rather special world does — at least no one you know personally and care about. Do look at what is going on in the world around you. It’s a cruel world and you have a reprieve, one that only money can buy. Do consider what Elizabeth II understood in her bones: that the greatest courage is to be silent. And rewind the film of your wedding day. Understand that outpouring of gaiety and love and hope. Remember.

Meanwhile, in honour of the grandmother who did her utmost to steer me away from trashy reading, I’m taking a break from writers writing on Spare, even the ones that begin ‘Spare me’. I’m reading another book she put in my hands, Edith Wharton’s novella The Last Asset. It has words of advice that have served me well:

‘There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there’s only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there’s no reason why you shouldn’t have a fairly good time.’

An open letter to Meghan Markle, from one transatlantic bride to another

Carla Carlisle welcomes Royal bride Meghan Markle to the Anglo-American Sisterhood.