The Princely Pauper

The student is in his third year at Gordonstoun School in northern Scotland, and he seems to be standing up well enough to the Spartan regime that begins at 6:45 a.m. with a brisk run on a gravel road followed by hot and cold showers. Though neither an outstanding student nor athlete, he mixes well, and his public image is that of a healthy boy with a mop of hair that defies comb and brush. When it was suggested that he has a Beatle's haircut, His Royal Highness Charles Philip Arthur George, heir apparent to the British throne, grinned and said, "You mean the Beatles have a Prince Charles cut."

One thing Charles consistently shares with his classmates is an inability to make do on his allowance, which runs to about $8.50 per term (twelve weeks), and last week the prince's pauperized condition brought him considerable notoriety.

Broken English. At an earlier school, he had made rather a good thing of selling his autograph to all comers at 35-c-, until officials put a stop to it and returned the money. According to newspaper reports, when Prince Charles ran short last December, he sold his composition book containing four school-assigned essays to a classmate for $4. Gordonstoun's Headmaster Robert Chew says there is "absolutely no truth" to the report. But the classmate did get the copybook and sold it for $20 to a Gordonstoun alumnus who did even better by selling it to an Aberdeen journalist for $280, who then joined forces with a press-agent named Terence Smith.

Among others, Smith conferred with a photographer friend as to the best means of making big money from the princely essays. British publications were out because of an unwritten agreement with the crown to ignore the private lives of the royal children. Smith sent cables to U.S. and European publications. He got a quick telephone response from two men speaking broken English who claimed to be representatives of France's Le Figaro. Smith met with them at a lonely spot outside London, and when he showed them the royal jottings, the two identified themselves as Scotland Yard detectives and confiscated the book. They did not know that Smith's photographer friend had made a photocopy just in case.

Deplored Habit. Ultimately the Smith syndicate made a deal with the German magazine Der Stern, which obtained first publication rights for some $3,500, and other sales abroad brought the total above $12,000. Der Stern last week published excerpts from the essays, which sounded pretty much like the sort of thing most fond parents of teen-agers are familiar with. But there was a special approach to some subject matter. Writing on democracy, the prince noted a little uneasily that it means giving "equal voting power to people haying unequal ability to think." He also deplored the habit of voting "for a particular party and not for the individual." Mere opposition to abolishing private schools or nationalizing industry might induce people to vote for a Conservative candidate, though personally he might be "one of the naughtiest people you know."

In a summary of class consciousness, young Charles got into some deep waters: "By entrusting the management of affairs chiefly to the upper classes, the country is at least saved from some of the evils that may be produced in the lower classes by corruption, although the upper classes may be lacking in intelligence, biased by class interest, and guilty of great corruption in political appointments. The honor of the class at least secures it from the great corruptions, and its members are permanently connected with the well-being of the country." In the margin, his teacher had noted succinctly: "This makes no sense."

Oh, well. The boy may be no great shakes as a writer, and it seems clear he was not much of a businessman, but he is a prince.

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