Her Ladyship's Guide to the British Season

One

WHAT IS THE SEASON?

Ah! - those wonderful parties in town, Season after Season, when we danced until dawn - those long summer afternoons, when we sauntered through the gardens of the great houses that entertained us in those days.

J B Priestley (1894-1984)

Her Ladyship will start by not beating about the bush. For many years - over 150 years, at a conservative estimate - the Season existed to give aristocratic young ladies the opportunity to ally themselves to suitable young men. Yes, girls were presented at court; yes, they went to balls and dinner dances, Royal Ascot and Goodwood; yes, they wore gorgeous dresses and partied till four in the morning, but really what they were doing was looking for husbands.

The idea of girls being presented to royalty to mark their 'coming out' into Society at the age of seventeen or eighteen was inaugurated in 1780, when George III gave a ball to celebrate the birthday of his wife, Queen Charlotte, and to raise funds for the London hospital to be founded in her name. (A descendant of that hospital still exists, and until quite recently blue-blooded women paid their respects to its royal benefactress by having their babies there.) By the early nineteenth century being presented at court was an established custom and the girls making their debut had become known as debutantes. 'Curtseying' - there was no need to specify to whom - was a part of every debutante's career until Queen Elizabeth II discontinued the practice in the increasingly egalitarian world of 1958.

Court presentations were surrounded by a code of etiquette as rigid as any whalebone corset. A girl being presented had to be sponsored by a lady, normally her mother, who had herself been presented. It was as simple and as unyielding as that. If the mother was deceased or (perish the thought) divorced, an aunt, grandmother or close friend could take her place. Such a system obviously made it very difficult for outsiders to gain access to it, and the extent to which the 'Upper Ten Thousand' of Society intermingled and intermarried only confirmed its exclusivity.

As the growth of industry and trade brought wealth to non-aristocrats, however, and inheritance tax or reckless extravagance took it away from those who had been born with it, money began to speak more loudly: a prosperous merchant's daughter could marry an impoverished peer and gain access to High Society, if not for herself then at least for her children. Call it broadening the gene pool, call it lowering the tone - either way, even in the nineteenth century, times were beginning to change.

By the twentieth century, a handful of Society matrons with an eye for the main chance supplemented their income by sponsoring the daughters of anyone who was willing to pay. This obviously brought the whole system to the brink of disrepute: as early as 1938 Vogue was describing 'yammering hordes of social "racketeers" [who] have introduced madness into method and turned a traditional practice into a flourishing industry'. So unexclusive had court presentations become by the 1950s that, in the much-quoted and possibly apocryphal words of the late Princess Margaret, 'We had to put a stop to it. Every tart in London was getting in.'

In the much-quoted and possibly apocryphal words of the late Princess Margaret, 'We had to put a stop to it. Every tart in London was getting in.'

QUEEN CHARLOTTE'S BALL

The ball that started it all off is famous for featuring a parade of hand-picked girls in wedding-dress white escorting an enormous birthday cake. It was traditionally held in May (Her Majesty's birthday was the 19th), though of recent years its organisers have chosen a date in the autumn.

Her Ladyship would at this point like to quash a popular misconception regarding Queen Charlotte's Ball, by referring her readers to the unchallenged doyenne of social commentators, Betty Kenward, who wrote 'Jennifer's Diary' for Tatler and later Harper's and Queen for almost 50 years. In her memoir she describes the chosen debutantes pulling the cake 'with white satin ribbons, right up to the dance floor to where the ball's President and guest of honour stood in long evening dresses and tiaras'. The guest of honour might be a member of the Royal Family, a visiting foreign royal or the wife of a member of the British peerage. Whoever it was, 'Jennifer' observes rather austerely, 'The Maids of Honour always curtseyed to the two ladies, never to the cake, as I have seen written so often.'

There are those who would say that there were many absurdities about the Social Season, but Her Ladyship is happy to record that curtseying to a cake is not one of them.

The Social year

Indispensable though it was, a girl's presentation was a small part of the Social Season. Originally linked to the movements of the Royal Family and the workings of Parliament, the Social calendar followed much the same pattern for well over a hundred years. Up to and including the first half of the twentieth century, anyone who was anyone was in London in the spring and early summer, with court presentations normally taking place in May: these few months constituted the Season. Towards the end of July High Society dispersed, initially to seaside resorts such as Brighton and later to the more reliable sunshine of the south of France (see box). Those who preferred tradition to sun-worshipping went next to Scotland for the shooting season that began on the 'Glorious 12th' of August. There might follow a few weeks back in London during the autumn - the 'Little Season' - after which everyone retired to their country estates for hunting, Christmas and to await the coming of spring. To quote J B Priestley's The Edwardians (1972), these people may have been known as the 'idle rich', but their Social obligations certainly kept them very busy:

It was a dreadful nuisance, of course, but a fellow would have to go down to Cowes for the first week in August, then go up North to shoot the grouse or stalk the deer. A woman invited for a weekend at one of the great houses would have to take several large trunks, and then would have to be changing clothes - and always looking her best - half-a-dozen times a day. A free-and-easy life in theory, in practice it was more highly disciplined that the life of a recruit in the Life Guards.

Priestley was writing as a sardonic outsider, but even those intimately involved in the Season would have had to admit that he was not far wrong.

A NOTE ON SUMMER HOLIDAYS

Fashions change in this area as they do in all other things. There were times - again in the early-to-mid-twentieth century - when members of Society would spend a few weeks every summer in Biarritz, St Tropez or Monte Carlo. Now that Society has been so much infiltrated by 'new money', these resorts have, in Her Ladyship's opinion, become places in which one would not choose to be seen dead. Cannes for the film festival, perhaps; otherwise, a lesser-known Greek island or somewhere in the Caribbean beginning with A (there is quite a choice and the wider world has not yet discovered all of them) would be more exclusive.

There were also times when the opulent luncheons, teas, dinners and suppers that had been eaten every day for months made it desirable to detox - although the word in its modern sense had not been invented - in Baden Baden or another of Europe's fashionable spas. Nowadays a day at the Sanctuary in Central London or a long weekend at one of the many health-spa hotels within easy distance of the M25 should give the jaded debutante all the relaxation she needs. Her Ladyship, with a lifetime of hard-earned experience behind her, assures her readers that detoxing is perfectly acceptable, even chic. It is when your thoughts turn to rehab that you may have been overdoing it.

Detoxing is perfectly acceptable, even chic. It is when your thoughts turn to rehab that you may have been overdoing it.

The Season itself

From March, then, to July, Society disported itself at an endless succession of balls, parties, concerts and sporting events - and there will be more detail about the sporting events later in the book. Many balls culminated in a hearty breakfast before the exhausted debutantes, their escorts and chaperones were allowed to go home to catch a few hours' sleep before the whole round began again later the same day. For debutantes it was not so much a question of 'I Could Have Danced All Night' as 'I Was Positively Obliged To'.

These debutantes formed the virginal, white- or pastel-clad core around which the whole Season revolved. Parents who didn't have a London residence often hired a house-with-ballroom for the Season; in either case they announced their arrival from the country with an advertisement in The Times. This subtly indicated to the initiated - and it was, of course, only the initiated who mattered - that their daughter, whose name was included in the advertisement, was available to receive invitations and would, in due course, be inviting her friends to her own 'coming out' ball.

The Season was a masterpiece of organisation for which mothers were largely responsible. Before the daughters were allowed out in public, their mothers...