Doing Lunch With Their Lips Sealed

The Princess of Wales came to lunch Monday in a white wool dress and a confident smile.

“Please say that I was relaxed and in high spirits . . .,” said Diana, a twinkle leading to the punch line. “And that I was remarkably stable.”

Warring with the British press and the royal household, the maverick princess who will never be queen bantered for more than two hours over lunch with 70 American and Canadian correspondents--70 journalists who accepted an invitation to ask questions of one of the world’s most controversial women on the condition that they would not quote her answers, which led to a lot of observation of what the princess wears and eats.

At the head table with eight senior bureau chiefs, Diana preferred mineral water to French wine and ate all of her Scottish salmon appetizer. During the main course, she nibbled at the roast pheasant and ate all the vegetables. She enjoyed the dessert lemon tart, but left the crust.

Monday’s lunch was a riposte by Diana to a recent round of reports that she is increasingly reliant on her feminist psychotherapist amid stressful negotiations for her divorce from Prince Charles. Diana made no formal remarks but answered questions easily and with apparent frankness.

Outside in gray and bitter cold, almost 50 British reporters and photographers waited for hours on a three-level rank of ladders behind police barriers for a brief glimpse of the 34-year-old princess.

Diana mingled with small groups of correspondents for an hour before lunch, then chatted with table companions for another 90 minutes in a conversation that ricocheted from divorce to Bosnia to Argentina to Britain’s national lottery. Some of her replies were standard politician-athlete-movie star sound bites, but many were thoughtful, even self-deprecating.

On the lighter side, one television reporter wanted to know if Diana does her own makeup and hair. Another correspondent asked if it wasn’t hard for any mother to send two young sons away to boarding school. And what do Princes William and Harry call their grandmother the queen in a country where all grandmothers are “granny?”

Sometimes laughing at her own expense, Diana seemed at ease and relieved to be among journalists for whom she is not daily prey.

When a reporter asked if off-the-record restrictions could be bent far enough for him to describe what she was wearing, Diana teased: “Sure. What am I wearing?”

She wore a shift dress of winter white cut an inch or two above the knee, black stockings and black high-heeled shoes that left her close to six feet tall. Accessories included a large pearl necklace and matching earrings, a gold watch and a black leather handbag that spoke either Italian or French as a first language. She wore her sapphire and diamond engagement ring and her gold wedding ring.

The defiant Diana is a controversial magnet and almost daily headline for Britain’s mass circulation tabloid newspapers in a country where everybody has a strong opinion of her. Some praise her courage in breaking away from an unhappy marriage and life under the thumb and strictures of the royal family. Others, accepting press reports, see her as vindictive and unstable. She replies publicly that she is a strong woman and that many people have trouble accommodating a strong woman in high places.

Diana’s press secretary resigned in November after the princess failed to inform him of an unprecedented television interview in which she acknowledged that she had had an affair and wondered aloud if Charles, now 48, would ever be king. Subsequently, the queen commanded Charles and Diana to divorce.

Last week, new controversy swirled around Diana when one tabloid claimed she had falsely implied that her sons’ nanny had had an abortion. According to the Sun, quoting “royal sources,” Diana said, “So sorry to hear about the baby,” reducing 30-year-old Tiggy Legge-Burke to tears at a Christmas party.

The nanny’s lawyers reportedly wrote to Diana demanding a retraction and newspapers reported receiving a letter from a libel lawyer warning against “a series of malicious lies . . . without the very slightest foundation.”

As the continuing saga of the unraveling royals unfolds, there has apparently been no apology from Diana and her loyalists portray the incident as one more attempt by “the palace” to insinuate that she is emotionally unstable.

While that incident remains cloudy and unresolved, Diana is working to flesh out her staff: Her private secretary, Patrick Jephson, who had worked closely with her for eight years, resigned suddenly last week, followed by another secretary in Diana’s office. Tabloids say Diana insulted Jephson, which her supporters deny.

Diana does three or four official and social functions each week in England, where centuries have taught people how to behave around royalty.

Americans are less practiced, and for their encounter with her Monday, reporters were advised that protocol demanded that Diana be addressed as “Your Royal Highness” in the first reference and thereafter as “Ma’am.” Whether that should rhyme with “jam,” or the first syllable of “marm-alade” was never satisfactorily resolved, and in the event most correspondents simply said, “Hello.”

Some also ventured the slight bow, said to be in order from the men, but the suggestion of curtsies from the women did not prosper at lunch Monday. “Americans don’t curtsy--particularly to British royalty,” said one woman bureau chief.

But, there will always be an England. Determined to find a way in from the cold, a British tabloid reporter later called an American correspondent to ask how the lunch had gone. Told the session was off-the-record, the British reporter said he would settle for an off-the-record-briefing of the off-the-record encounter.