Meghan: A Hollywood Princess(53)
Not that Kensington Palace was a home away from home. It was a culture shock. Not just the security but the rather utilitarian way the royals lived. Take, for example, food. As a rule, the royal family eat to live rather than live to eat, watching their diets so that they remain the same shape and weight. “Bloody organic,” said Prince Philip to palace chef Darren O’Grady one day when confronted with a basket of his eldest son’s homegrown produce.
When Harry was growing up a treat was to be taken to McDonald’s for a hamburger by his mother. For the most part, he was brought up on institutional food at his boarding schools and then, during his Army career, fed with whatever was available, especially when he was based in Afghanistan. Even on formal occasions, when palace chefs pull out the culinary stops, he was raised in a family where traditionally everyone stopped eating once the Queen finished. When she put down her cutlery it was a signal for all the plates to be cleared away. Hardly the recipe for a calm digestion.
Though all members of the royal family have their dietary quirks, none seemingly enjoy the act of cooking—though Prince Philip does like to barbecue when in Balmoral. Meghan, though, comes from the other end of the foodie chain: she loves cooking, exploring new foods, and experimenting with fresh flavors. During the first few months of their romance, Meghan’s blog, The Tig, enthused over recipes for pumpkin fondue, spiced broccoli and hempseed stew, poached pear in orange, spelt Anzac biscuits, and red wine hot chocolate. As she likes to sample her recommendations, Harry will have been the royal guinea pig.
Meghan extolled the virtues of a “holistic plant-based food delivery service” complete with brand ambassadors who were “experts, influencers and leaders in the wellness world.” Maybe it was wise to have kept Prince Philip out of the loop on that one.
Just as Meghan encouraged a helping of culinary adventure, so she dramatically changed the contents of his fridge. Meghan never leaves home unless she has hummus, carrots, green juice, almonds, and chia seed pudding in the fridge. When California met Kensington, there was only going to be one victor in the dietary smackdown. As one observer noted: “Americans like to change their men in many small ways.”
They were, however, hardly prisoners of the palace. As Harry doubtless told himself, if his mother could keep her longtime romance with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan a secret, then he could do the same with Meghan. They enjoyed a quiet trip to see the musical The Lion King and visited Princess Eugenie, the Duchess of York’s daughter, and her soon-to-be fiancé Jack Brookbank at her apartment at St. James’s Palace.
“Eugenie and Meghan have become firm friends, bonding over a shared love of art, dogs, and late-night macaroni suppers,” one friend of the couple later revealed. “Eugenie loves Meghan to bits and believes she is perfect for Harry.” The prince also carefully introduced her to his closest friends, notably Hugh van Cutsem and Rose Astor, and his school friend Tom “Skippy” Inskip and his wife, flame-haired literary agent Lara Hughes-Young. One of the first to run the rule over his brother’s latest was Prince William, the couple frequently visiting the Duke and Duchess and their children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, at their Kensington Palace home.
They also visited the gastropub Sands End in South West London, which is owned by Harry’s “second dad” and mentor Mark Dyer. Dyer was utterly delighted that Harry had found a “good sort” after so many years of drifting and occasional debauchery. It helped that Mark is married to Texan heiress Amanda Kline, who was able to give Meghan recommendations for mundane but vital matters, such as hairdressers, nail bars, and beauty salons.
“Meghan loved her from the start,” observed a friend of the Dyers. “She is a compatriot and terribly kind and jolly—and Harry trusts the Dyers implicitly.”
One weekend they headed to the Cotswolds, staying at the Oxfordshire farmhouse run by Soho House. It is a seriously stylish hang out for metropolitan hipsters who want to road test their designer wellies. Every night a cocktail cart visits the various rooms and wooden cabins, dispensing martinis and, in Harry’s case, aged Scotch whiskey. While staying at Soho Farmhouse, the club’s founder, Nick Jones, introduced Meghan to musician Richard Jones, husband of singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor, whom Meghan had met at the opening of Soho House in Istanbul in 2015. A keen amateur pilot, he said to Meghan, “Let me show you how to fly a plane.” As he later recalled, “She jumped at it. I took her up with me and she loved it. She was great, a natural, and we flew over the Cotswolds.”
On October 11 she boarded a rather larger conveyance than Richard Jones’s single prop and flew from London to Atlanta, Georgia, where she was a guest speaker at a blogging conference aimed specifically at millennial women who want to network and learn how best to use digital space. In a thirty-five-minute discussion on stage with Create and Cultivate founder Jaclyn Johnson, she passed on her own pearls of internet wisdom and made it clear that she planned to expand The Tig. By now her baby had grown into a toddler that needed constant feeding. Her brand, which she described as “aspirational girl next door,” needed help, someone who could instinctively know how to channel Meghan and continue to feed The Tig. She clearly wanted to be able to balance her site with her private life, but she had not yet given serious attention or thought to how her royal romance could impact the life of her social media baby. During the taped conversation she also gave her adoring audience a window into the whirlwind that was her world, admitting that she had arrived from London the previous night and after the conference was flying to Toronto to film three episodes of Suits for the show’s sixth season. Her talk left the audience impressed by her candor and smarts. “Charming, intelligent and unafraid to let her guard down, Meghan is the definition of the modern woman,” noted Jaclyn Johnson.