Charles & Anne & David & Julie & Tricia

The prince was indeed charming and the princess was--well, at best, tired. Washington, betraying its social insecurity, was thrown into a tremulous tizzy by the three-day visit of Britain's Charles and Anne. As newsmen pursued the young royal pair through a wearing round of sightseeing, cruising, picnicking and dancing, the prince's equerry, David Checketts, at one point demanded: "Let's have a little dignity." He posted the princess' lady-in-waiting in a doorway to block reporters. After a hectic day, the shapely Anne was asked how she and her brother had liked their first glimpse of the U.S. "I don't give interviews," she replied. Reporters turned to David Eisenhower, who, with his wife Julie and Tricia Nixon, was the eager host. "The prince," David said, "is having a grand time."

So he was. Wearing a blue shirt and chinos for an outing with 18 young friends of Tricia, David and Julie at Camp David, where there was no pomp amid rustic circumstance, Charles expertly potted three doubles in a row at skeet. "He's great," said the admiring David. Atop the 555-ft. Washington Monument, Charles was exhilarated by the view of the capital under a full summer moon and impulsively suggested: "Let's walk down." While Anne determinedly led Tricia and Julie toward the elevator, the prince, one hand tucked jauntily in a pocket, paced David down the 898 steps. At the Lincoln Memorial, Charles stopped to talk to an English couple in a crowd, asked puckishly: "Do the Americans treat you well?" He was fascinated at the Smithsonian Institution by Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis, and mused, like thousands of nonroyal tourists before him: "That's strange --he just had that tiny window."

Flag Gaffe. While Charles retained his princely cool, a personable, polished blend of animation and decorum, Anne was alternately aloof, bored, alert and quizzical, as befits her highly independent character. Aboard the sluggish presidential yacht Sequoia, which can do only nine knots--and whose crew made the colossal gaffe of flying the Union Jack upside down--she asked to transfer to a 60-m.p.h. Coast Guard launch for the Potomac cruise to Mount Vernon. At the Smithsonian, she was intrigued by the astronaut space suits, and asked U.S. Moonman Neil Armstrong: "Is there a danger of a rip?" Replied the relaxed Armstrong: "The difference between eternity and life is about one one-hundredth of an inch of rubber."

On a tour of Capitol Hill, Senator Hugh Scott reminded Charles that a Dolley Madison mirror hanging in Vice President Spiro Agnew's ceremonial office was from the days "when your ancestors burned the White House," and South Carolina's Strom Thurmond gave the prince his senatorial calling card. Anne perked up briefly to offer the undiplomatic, yet reasonable observation that the bald eagle was "rather a bad choice" as the American national symbol. The royal pair asked why it had been selected, and none of their escorts, who included House Speaker John McCormack and House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, could offer an explanation.* The three girls later slipped away, at Anne's request, for an unscheduled trip to Washington's ghetto area.

Various Partners. The apogee of the visit came as a dazzling moon set the South Lawn ashimmer for 564 young people, who danced on a 40-ft. by 40-ft. floor and sat ten at a table to dine. The guests, all between the ages of 21 and 30, were almost entirely the offspring of politicians and diplomats. To the strains of Stars Fell on Alabama, the future King led Tricia onto the floor for one of several sedate rounds. The beat alternated between the pedestrian smoothness of the Marine Band and the jolting rock of The Guess Who, a Canadian group that has made a hit out of their antiwar, anti-U.S. song, American Woman. Anne and Tricia danced on with various partners well past the 2:15 a.m. departure of David, Julie and Charles. Earlier, unnoticed and in keeping with his welcoming promise that he would "get out of sight so you will feel completely at home," President Nixon sat proudly with Pat on a darkened balcony and watched the youngsters twitter and whirl in the fairyland setting below.

*Long a military emblem, the eagle was adopted by Congress in 1782, partly at the urging of George Washington, who admired its association with courage, freedom, power and immortality. It was opposed by Benjamin Franklin, who complained that the eagle is "a bird of bad moral character; like those among men who live by sharping and robbing. He is generally poor and often very lousy." Franklin preferred the turkey.

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