Free Diana in Search of Herself by Sally Bedell Smith

knew both sisters. “They had remarkably similar voices, but characterwise, they were fairly different.”
    Of the four siblings, Diana was the least self-assured. “She felt … her opinion didn’t count,” said a close friend of Diana. When Diana was feeling good about herself and her abilities—particularly in swimming and dancing—she was genuinely exuberant, “confident about her gracefulness,” said Charles Spencer. “She loved to show off what an excellent swimmer she was,” recalled nanny Mary Clarke. “She would shout, ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ ”
    The years after the divorce were difficult for Diana’s father. One of Johnnie’s childhood friends visited him in Norfolk in the early seventies and found him “rather sad. His clothes looked as if he needed a wife.” It was obvious that he still loved Frances. “For five or six years, he was very crestfallen,” said Fiona Fraser. “He gradually got his confidence back.”
    In accounts of Diana’s life,it has often been said that Ruth Fermoy stepped into the maternal breach, visiting Park House frequently. But Ruth’s manner was aloof, not nurturing, and she had little tolerance forbrooding. Her advice to Diana’s elder sisters on handling the family crisis was “Cheer up and grin and bear, because worse things happen at sea, my little sailors.” Ruth also had a life of her own, and her all-important royal connections. According to a Spencer relative, the Spencer children saw Ruth Fermoy as “a background figure”; she visited only four or five times a year, although she lived nearby in Norfolk. She spent much of her time in an apartment in London’s Eaton Square.
    Johnnie was a conscientious parent who treated his children with kindness. Jean Lowe, headmistress of the nearby Silfield School that Diana and Charles attended, said that Johnnie “was a wonderful father. He used to see that they’d got their wellies and they’d got their homework. He used to do the school run when he was able to.” When Diana turned seven, Johnnie hired a camel for a surprise birthday party, a treat intended to reward her for working hard at school. Johnnie was a stickler for manners, so much so that Diana later said she would go into a “panic” if she hadn’t written a thank-you note within twenty-four hours. Each day, Johnnie made an effort to have tea with his two younger children, a ritual he savored. “He was never happier than when he was eating marmite [a sticky brown spread believed to promote good health] sandwiches and drinking glasses of milk in the nursery,” said a neighbor. Whenever there was an important event in Diana’s life—“every step she took,” he once said—Johnnie recorded it with his camera.
    Diana and her brother appreciated the example Johnnie set and the values he taught. “My father always said, ‘Treat everybody as an individual and never throw your weight around,’ ” Diana said. Somewhat more poignantly, Charles considered “one of [Johnnie’s] greatest achievements as a father … [was] that never, ever did he say anything against my mother in front of his children.” Johnnie also made an effort to know his children’s friends, and he could recall, with surprising clarity, details of the friends’ school courses and sports, as well as particulars about their families.
    But as a reserved English gentleman, Johnnie’s inbred formality and diffident temperament limited his effectiveness as a parent. “He was of a generation that didn’t kiss and cuddle the children,” explained Jean Lowe of Silfield School. “Diana wanted … physical touch. When she used to come up and read to me, she would lean on me, and she obviously wanted that, and that, I suppose, was what was missing.” Mary Clarke, who observed Johnnie daily during the two years she worked at Park House, considered him a “very kind, understanding man who was very anxious to do his best for the children, even though he was not quite