【纽约时报】Prince Harry, in His Mother’s Footsteps

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Prince Harry, in His Mother’s Footsteps
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/nyregion/30prince.html

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL Published: May 29, 2009


Prince Harry planted a tree at the British Garden at Hanover Square, which memorializes Britons killed in the attack on the World Trade Center

It wasn’t exactly what the British press had flown 3,500 miles to see: Prince Harry upstaged by a tree.

But there was the seething mass of news people penned behind police barricades, there was the tree — a Magnolia “Elizabeth,” just planted in a downtown Manhattan memorial garden — and there was His Royal Highness, Princess Diana’s younger son, third in line to the throne and a veteran of the Afghanistan war, shoveling soil, half-hidden behind the leaves.

“Harry, we can’t see you!” voices brayed. “Come around front!”

The young prince obliged, happy no doubt to be making the kind of news that would not leave his family cringing.

Twenty years and four months after his mother enraptured New York with her own royal visit, Prince Harry, 24, arrived in a city fought over by his forebears, with a ginger toe-dipping in the waters of international relations, centering on acts of charity and a commemoration of the Sept. 11 attacks. It was a somber visit clearly designed to temper the prince’s tabloid reputation as a hearty partier with a penchant for gaffes, like making derogatory videos and wearing Nazi regalia to a costume party. Flag-waving crowds lined up to cheer him, with adoring young women particularly plentiful. One was Roseanne Krylowski, 25, a Rutgers University student, who waited in the financial district with a sign that said “NYC ♥ Prince Harry.”

“I’m hoping to have a detailed conversation that ends with him asking for a date,” she said.

Within hours of arriving from London on Friday on a commercial ticket that was privately paid for by his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, the strawberry blond prince, in a dark blue suit, blue-and-white striped shirt and the maroon-and-blue striped regimental tie of the Household Division, laid a wreath at the site of the World Trade Center.

He spoke to firefighters and relatives of 9/11 victims and looked over blueprints for the site’s reconstruction. “Big question,” he asked at one point. “When is this supposed to be finished?”

Then he dedicated the British Garden at Hanover Square, between Stone and Pearl Streets, which is a memorial to the 67 British people killed at the trade center. He planted the magnolia there and attended a private meeting with victims’ families.

The garden, paved in Scottish stone with markings to evoke the British Isles, is under the patronage of his father, Prince Charles, who visited in 2005. “So you’ll be able to tell him the progress,” said Camilla Hellman, president of the garden trust.

“Very, very well done,” said Harry, who spoke sparingly.

In the afternoon, accompanied by a British soldier, Joe Townsend, 21, who lost his legs in Afghanistan, Prince Harry, who is training to be a helicopter pilot like his elder brother, William, toured the Veterans Affairs Hospital on East 23rd Street.

He visited a prosthetics section, shaking the artificial hand of a gulf war veteran, Paul Yarbrough, and jokingly wincing at the strong grip: “Owww!”

He met behind closed doors with other wounded veterans, and afterward, John Loosen, the chief of prosthetics, said the prince spoke of their camaraderie. “He commented on how he felt people who didn’t do what they did don’t understand,” he said.

On Saturday morning, Harry is scheduled to visit the Harlem Children’s Zone with Prince Seeiso of Lesotho, a kingdom-enclave within South Africa, who is his co-patron in a charity called Sentebale.

And in the afternoon, the prince, an accomplished polo player, is to take part in a match on Governors Island sponsored by Veuve Clicquot, the Champagne label, with proceeds going to American Friends of Sentebale.

He plans to leave for home right after the match. The schedule left little time for personal amusement — which seemed to be the point.

Peter Brown, a British publicist in New York who once ran the Beatles’ management company and advised the Consulate on Princess Diana’s visit in February 1989, said it all sounded familiar. When he was helping to plan Harry’s mother’s trip, the directive was clear: “She must at no time look like she was enjoying herself.”

Diana managed to enthrall anyway, wowing an audience at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and attending a banquet at the World Financial Center. But she also toured the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side and cuddled children with AIDS — pointedly without donning gloves — in the pediatric unit at Harlem Hospital Center.

Her second son, who was 4 at the time of his mother’s visit, won high marks from some for his performance on Friday. “It’s easy to be rude to the royal family but they’ve been hugely supportive,” said Alex Clarke of London, who lost her 30-year-old daughter, Suria, an employee of Cantor Fitzgerald, in the trade center attack.

Suffering a twinge of disappointment was Ms. Krylowski, the Rutgers student, who was standing behind a barricade that Harry did not stop at. “I won’t be a princess after all,” she said.

Also keeping hope alive for some more reportable news were members of the British press.

“He’s got 24 hours to go,” said Jonathan Hunt, a British journalist at the Fox News Channel in New York. “He could still do anything.”

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