THE SUNLIT UPLAND
A mong the intriguing historical what-ifs — suppose Archduke Franz Ferdinand had decided to bypass Sarajevo that day? Suppose Hitler’s early watercolours had received such praise that he’d opted for the quiet life as a Sunday painter? — one is especially diverting: what if Prince Rainier III of Monaco had won the hand of Marilyn Monroe instead of Grace Kelly?
The idea of Princess Marilyn isn’t as fanciful as it seems. It was Aristotle Onassis, keen to invest in the principality, who first had the idea that Rainier should improve Monaco’s image by marrying an American film star. Monroe was informed, but declared herself nonplussed. “Give me two days alone with him and of course he’ll want to marry me,” she said, but her demurral was perhaps coloured by her misapprehension that Monaco was in Africa. It left the way clear for Kelly. She’d fallen for the Côte d’Azur while filming Hitchcock’s with Cary Grant in 1954, so when she turned up the following year for a photo session at Rainier’s salmon-coloured palace, perched atop Monaco’s mountain known as the Rock, she was predisposed to fall for the man who lavished attention on her, initiated a fervent correspondence, and cajoled his Irish-American chaplain, one Father Tucker, to write to her: “I want
