The Washington Post

Saturday Conversation: The Marchioness of Worcester
By Monica Hesse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, March 11, 2011

This afternoon, the marchioness is dressed in a woolly sweater and an embroidered fleece coat. She is a Sherpa-chic sort of marchioness, a slender sliver of a marchioness with curly hair and a low sigh of a voice, which she is now using to discuss pig poop.

“In the pig industry,” sighs the marchioness, “you’ve got tons of pigs in the shed, defecating, and it’s running into the water – the stench that comes out of this biodegrading feces is just unbelievable – “

Enter a WAITER.

Waiter: “Have you decided what you’ll be ordering?”

Marchioness: “Do you have anything with pork in it?”

One assumes there are many important moments in the life of a marchioness, which is the British aristocratic title that comes after duchess. This one, legally named Tracy Worcester – she insists on “Tracy” unless her lunch companion finds her title amusing – is currently having such a moment.

It involves saving your food.

Worcester is in Washington to present her anti-factory-farming documentary on Capitol Hill. The evening before this lunch, it made its American debut to a packed audience containing congressmen, activists and Robert Kennedy Jr. The documentary, which has already aired on British television, is called “Pig Business.” It outlines Worcester’s four-year, international crusade against the ham giant Smithfield, headquartered in Virginia.

Now we are sitting at Equinox restaurant near Dupont Circle, which I selected for its locavore, lavishly pampered cuisine, and for the fact that every menu is stamped with a label reading “Certified Humane®.”

Animal cruelty [in farming] is usually to do with chickens, but in England, the cruelty to chickens is already being fought,” Worcester explains. “And yet you’ve got pigs, who are far more intelligent than dogs, these gorgeous animals and your heart just goes out to them.”

Not enough to stop eating them – she thinks that demanding vegetarianism is an alienating message – but enough to want to make sure that the ones she eats have led happy, fulfilled lives.

She orders the grilled rockfish, preceded by a chopped salad with house-smoked bacon.

Then she explains what brought her here, to this title, to this table, to the pigs.

“Basically, I became a marchioness because I married a marquis,” she says patiently, “and a marquis is the son of a duke.”

Her father-in-law is the Duke of Beaufort; when he dies and her husband inherits the title, Worcester will become the Duchess of Beaufort. She will live at Badminton House, which is where the game of badminton acquired its name.

Are there any famous badminton courts on the grounds, like at Wimbledon?

“There’s only an enormous hall, which is where the women played it. It was an indoor sport.”

Ah.

Before she married her husband, she was an actress. She starred in “C.A.T.S. Eyes,” a sort of British “Charlie’s Angels” that she describes as “three women who are controlled by a man and solve crimes.”

Before that, she was a girl growing up in the countryside, English pastoral with lots of family farms. “I don’t want to see the eradication of farming,” she says. “The life of a farmer is very rich.”

When she married and decided to quit acting, she took up advocacy work that would promote those ideals.

Quality-wise, “Pig Business” is more passion than production values, but it is affecting – a film best seen on an empty stomach and through squinched eyes. And it has attracted the right kinds of fans. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) secured space in the Capitol Visitor Center for the screening and volunteered to introduce the film.

“In Europe he’s unbelievably famous,” Worcester says, delighted.

Dennis Kucinich?

To a certain set, at least. A certain set of environmentally minded Brits simply adore Dennis Kucinich. At the screening, Worcester met his wife, Elizabeth. Elizabeth is going to help Worcester get meetings with the right kinds of lawmakers to promote her cause. They had drinks together at Equinox before lunch and got swept up in talking “about how I would change the world.” La, the life of a marchioness/activist/filmmaker/mother of three/former television star.

Pigs are, when one thinks about it, rather aristocratic animals. Please note Empress of Blandings, the enormous prized sow that populates P.G. Wodehouse’s novels. Please note that the smallest breed of miniature domesticated pig is named the “Royal Dandy.” Please note that American nobility Paris Hilton and Megan Fox and Jessica Simpson have all owned pigs.

They are also rather a humble cause, especially for the type of aristocrat who finds it important to maintain how unimpressive and tiresome it is to be an aristocrat.

“I don’t go to expensive restaurants, ever,” she says, gesturing to the surroundings. “I eat at home.” This lunch is, she assures, a treat, especially since she was absolutely starving.

Having finished her rockfish, Worcester scrapes the last bit of salad off of her plate.

How was the bacon?

“Delicious.”

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