Prince Harry

Source: Bigstock

European aristocracy ranks just below European royalty, although in Britain’s case, the aristocracy is far older than the Hanoverians who are now called Windsors. Until the last century, when British aristos came over to these shores and married rich American lassies, the aristocracy was a club closed to all except their own kind. Today aristocrats are out to marry anyone with money to spare, and if those anyones are celebrities, so much the better. Snobs like Evelyn Waugh, who wrote about madcap aristocrats and their follies, must be really turning over in their graves. Today’s Charles Ryder more resembles Rex Mottram in his search for an ideal wife, celebrity and money replacing blue blood and tradition.

Everyone, even a writer for The Spectator by the noble name of Harry Mount, has called this state of affairs marvelous: the fact that class barriers of the past have been replaced by barriers of money and fame, even beauty. I am not among them. When aristocrats ruled the roost, the world’s nouveaux riches tried to emulate them and aped their manners. Now that the new rich and famous have replaced the aristocracy, manners have gone down the toilet quicker than you can flush one during a diarrhea epidemic.

And another thing: Meghan Markle might be the choice du jour for the vulgar media and PC hypocrites, but I took a look at her mother and she don’t look so good, as they used to say in Brooklyn before the yuppies invaded. Prince Harry is not too shifty upstairs, and like his uncle Prince Andrew, who married a red-haired wench who was photographed having her toes licked by an American hustler while he was doing sea duty, he will, I’m afraid, live to regret it. But I hope not. At least he won’t be the first royal to divorce. Everyone in his immediate family is divorced except Prince Edward, the one everyone thought was gay, and his brother. Go figure, as they say in Windsor Castle.