THE MISANTHROPE'S CORNER

FLORENCE KING

WHEN Princess Diana made her televised confession in 1995, the press quoted an unidentified Palace official who said, ``In the old days we could have beheaded her.'' In the last few months, however, the real possibility arose that she could step on a land mine.

The once and former Merry England would have found it irresistible, reminiscent of those bizarre historical incidents, like Clarence drowning in a butt of malmsey, that provided material for ``Beyond the Fringe.'' It would have recalled Evelyn Waugh's novel about African missionaries that contains the line, ``Come quickly, the Bulanga have eaten Lady Tippett!'' Martyrdom to a noble cause on the one hand, while on the other a denouement in the Peter Sellers - Terry Thomas tradition of high farce.

But Diana died a People's death on Labor Day weekend and Merry England is now an oxymoron. I heard the news late Saturday night, just moments after I had finished writing the column that ran in the last issue. My first thought was to scrap it and write a new one on Diana, but to do that I needed to watch TV, so I made coffee and dug in. I stayed there the whole week, including two replays of the funeral, until they were down to interviewing the jeweler who made the ring. I'm now waiting for Barbara Walters to interview the flagpole and ask it, ``If you were an English flower, what kind would you be?''

The coverage mesmerized me because it illustrated everything I've been writing about in this space for the last six years: feminization, democratization, emotions run amok, rhetorical chaos, litter as love, familiarity as contempt, vulnerable role models, passive heroes, mass empathy, gimp chic — I felt as if I were leafing through back issues of NR. If Diana's life passed before her eyes last week, so did mine.

My saturation viewing helped me make a vital decision. For some time I had been thinking of emigrating to England to bring my nationality in line with my blood, but I have now abandoned the idea. There is no England, just this demi-realm, this scepter'd loony bin set in a sea of rotting flora, this U.K. of Utter Kitsch where the crud de la crud build teddybear temples to a gilded hysteric who was nothing more than Judy Garland with a title. If I must live in a country where people who once tipped their hats now tip the scales, I might as well stay home and save myself the trouble of learning to look right instead of left to avoid an oncoming hug. My hyphen, right or wrong.

So much for sharing my innermost self-doubts. Now to my predictions.

I knew Diana's burial site was a mistake when I read what one Mrs. Irene Randall, interviewed as she pushed her disabled daughter in a wheelchair, told a reporter: ``I don't like the idea of her being alone on that island.'' In 1950, four Scottish students stole the 450-pound Stone of Scone from under the Coronation chair in Westminster Abbey, took it back to Scotland, and kept it for four months. Count the graverobbers in Dickens.

Diana often pulled people up in mid-curtsy, so we can expect an official announcement soon that obeisance is ``optional.'' In democracies that means you don't dare do it.

Titles will be downplayed, something already underway to judge from the crowds of women who imperiously summoned ``William, William!'' to their sides and offered advice to ``Charles, Charles!'' First to go probably will be ``the Honourable'' for children of hereditary peers of the lower degree (e.g., the Hon. Nancy Mitford, daughter of a baron). Next to be shorn will be younger sons of dukes and marquesses (Lord Randolph Churchill, Lord Alfred Douglas). And so on and so forth — Tony Blair's version of Bill Clinton's creeping health care: start with the kids.

I also think Blair will try to put in place changes for the next reign modeled on the Bourbon restoration. As a sop to republicans, Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis-Philippe were all called ``King of the French'' instead of ``King of France.'' Blair no doubt prefers ``King of the British People.''

We can be sure that Diana would champion all of these innovations, both from her stated wish to modernize the monarchy and her demonstrated subconscious wish to destroy it. They will be her legacy in death, but what would have been her legacy in life? Suppose she had lived to old age?

ONE commentator cast her as Elizabeth of Austria, estranged from Franz Josef, wandering the world but returning from time to time to brighten her stodgy husband's life. True, Elizabeth was obsessed with staying slim, ate sand for colonic cleansing, and was attacked by an anarchist while exercising. But she was also an intellectual who traveled with a Greek tutor, a sexual iceberg, and a Wittlesbach, a family too far gone into making brain waves to produce a mere neurotic.

Time's Roger Rosenblatt foresaw a future Diana basking in serenity, ``the King's mother . . . the hair whiter, the skin a bit more lined,'' but it is impossible to visualize her aging gracefully. If you think the funeral coverage was excessive, imagine forty years of tummy tucks, skin peelings, the first face lift (``The New Di!''), the first nervous breakdown, the menopausal spiritual trek to Tibet (``At last I've found peace''), the second face lift, the ``Hairdresser Plot,'' two more nervous breakdowns, the lawsuit over the third face lift, the disappearance from the Swiss sanitarium, and the amnesia attack (``I adore Spokane'').

I foresaw her marrying Dodi Fayed (``At last I've found true love'') and producing a son. Women and their he-hen accomplices would get so caught up in tremulous analyses of What This Baby Means that they would miss the one thing it actually did mean: a pretender to the throne. Trouble for the monarchy, yes, but a dream come true for the London bag lady who told CNN that she came to Diana's funeral because ``I just want a bit of 'istory.''

'Ere it is, ducks: Bonnie Prince Mohammed.

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