1939 Read online

  The infiltration of this new class was recognized by the honours system, another way of taking on the protective colouring of the aristocracy. Nancy Mitford made the point crisply in Noblesse Oblige:

  A lord does not have to be born to his position, and, indeed, can acquire it through political activities, or the sale of such unaristocratic merchandise as beer, but though he may not be a U-speaker* he becomes an aristocrat as soon as he receives his title. The Queen turns him from socialist leader, or middle-class businessman, into a nobleman, and his outlook from now on will be the outlook of an aristocrat.7

  The desire of the nouveaux riches to have their achievements validated by a title ensured that they would conform to the patterns of behaviour laid down by those they wished to join. During the twenty years between 1918 and 1938, eighty-one new titles were created, including six earls and viscounts. (This excludes the enormous number of knighthoods with which Lloyd George was thought to have debased the currency.) A majority of peerages went to former mps (ensuring their conformity to the prevailing party line) but industry, finance and commerce accounted for nearly as many. The peerage by now reflected a much wider element in Society than merely its landed interests. As well as helping the new rich to disappear into the ranks of the old after a couple of generations, this form of patronage also made sure that real power stayed concentrated in the hands of a very small number of like-minded people. Thus the grip of the old upper class upon the nation’s wealth was not threatened by the influx of a new upper class whose wealth was separate from, and independent of, theirs. The best way to secure this was for the two classes to intermarry. The old family conferred its status and traditions upon the new – or newish – family, receiving in return enough money to ensure that its privileged position would be upheld for future generations.

  This, then, was the purpose of the Season. Since arranged marriages could not be foisted upon young members of the upper class – a century before, perhaps, but not any longer – they needed an environment which offered the high probability that within it they would meet the kind of partners whom their parents would have chosen for them; and an environment which excluded all other kinds. ‘Never marry for money: love where money is’ mothers used to tell their daughters. It is a fine distinction ; but it preserves the illusion of freedom to make a romantic choice. And so the Season did not merely reflect or display the structure of the English upper classes – it actually controlled and renewed it.

  For the time being, those pretty, artless social butterflies, the debs of 1939, might flutter from dance floor to cloakroom, from Ascot to country house, sometimes in tears and sometimes in triumph. But the breeze that wafted them – although they are reluctant even now to admit as much – was a gale far more powerful than their youthful desire to have fun.

  Where, in this delicately strung social web, did the established (as opposed to the new) middle classes fit in, if at all? Surprisingly, perhaps, there were a few middle-class girls taking part in the Season, and an impression persists that some of them really did have fun. They were in a sense hors de combat. Neither rich nor securely ‘upper crust’, they were usually there because their mothers had been presented and had then married men who took them a notch or two down the social scale. In this way, a daughter of modest background might still have access to rich cousins and their cast-offs. If she were an engaging girl – pretty, unselfconscious, vivacious – her mother’s family might decide it was worth the girl doing a Season, ‘just for the experience, of course’. She would not be expected to make a ‘catch’, yet she did, at one remove, belong. A handful, a dozen of such girls could be found each year: ‘You could do the Season as cheaply or as expensively as you wished. I remember two sisters, poor as church mice, who had enormous fun.’ Or, in the words of an American popular song, ‘Nice people with nice manners, but they’ve got no money at all.’

  The Season began ‘officially’ on Friday, 28 April 1939, the day of the Private View of the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. The Times next day carried a long article describing the fashionable women who thronged the galleries, less to see the paintings (it was a mediocre year in any case) than to be seen to be there. Miss Valerie Cole was dressed in ‘powder blue, with a very full net veil trimming her large blue hat’; while Miss Sarah Dash wood wore ‘a raspberry red frock and a white straw hat trimmed with cherries’; and Miss Barbadee Knight was in two shades of brown.

  There were other names too in The Times that day, also jostling for attention but less likely to get it. They were in the Personal column – German and Austrian Jews, desperate to find a sponsor who might offer them the chance to escape from Hitler: like the German-Jewish couple, ‘wife good housekeeper, husband perfect motorist, able to do any other work … offers to H.Reckerwell, Hamburg’; or the German Jew aged thirty-six, ‘well educated, best family, asks for opportunity to learn handicrafts … H.Knopf, Berlin’; or, most nakedly of all, ‘Jew, 66, educated, begs for permit. Singer, Vienna’. Under the Domestic Situations Required column there were eleven people wishing to be companions and governesses, six offering themselves as housekeepers and several seeking posts as ladies’ maids, like the German-Jewish girl ‘still in Berlin’. Their chances of being noticed were not nearly as good as the smart Society women’s whose fashions were described in detail, although for the Jews being noticed was a matter of life and death.

  The column headed In Memoriam, On Active Service, contained the names of four men who had died less than twenty-five years before. Douglas Amery Parkes, who died of wounds, remembered by his mother. Roy Bullen, of the King’s Royal Rifles, who was killed in France on 29 April 1916. Major Hubert Dunsterville Harvey-Kelly, dso, (‘Baz’), of the Royal Flying Corps. And, finally, Frederick Leycester Barwell, also of the Royal Flying Corps, ‘killed in aerial combat when attacking five or six enemy aeroplanes single-handed’. He had been twenty-two years old. His proud and grieving parents quoted in the memorial notice an extract from the enemy report:

  The combat lasted a full half hour ; all the troops in the neighbourhood came out and watched this thrilling fight: the British airman persistently sought combat and half a dozen times appeared to be nose-diving to earth, but each time he flattened out and with admirable daring, attacked again: they were full of admiration for the courage of this pilot.

  He was buried by the enemy with full military honours. He was the eldest and dearly loved son of Leycester and Mabel Barwell. The Barwells are not listed in Who’s Who, so it is impossible to discover whether they had a granddaughter: but, if they had, she would have been just about the right age to be presented in 1939.

  Chapter Two

  I’ve Been to London to Look at the Queen

  The Season did not, of course, spring into being with all its events, manners and codes of speech fully formed. It evolved gradually over two or three hundred years, during which royalty, the aristocracy and social behaviour were constantly changing. It was always inspired, however, by the same three motives: the lure of the Court and the great offices of the state, from which honours, preferment and influence derived ; the magnetic pull exerted by the entertainments and fashion of London ; and the perennial ambition of the nobility to marry off its sons and daughters well.

  The boredom and monotony of country life must have weighed especially heavily upon women. Men were preoccupied by the demands of their estates, and found entertainment in country pursuits like hunting and fishing. But, in the days when a household’s circle of intimate friends was bounded by the radius of – at most – half a day’s journey by horse, carriage or post-chaise (say, fifteen miles), their wives and daughters must have longed for fresh faces to break the tedium and offer a wider choice of marriage partners. The London Season (although nobody called it that in the seventeenth century) arose naturally out of the isolation of people living in great country houses, albeit in large families served by a huge retinue of servants. For them, London was an opportunity and a diversion. For their men, it might herald promot
ion, which would make up for the expense and disruption of removing themselves and their families (and servants and livery and plate and linen and books and horses and carriages) up to town for a season – how easily the word leaps to mind: no wonder it came to be called that.

  Even those who already lived in London were attracted by Court life – like that engagingly typical social climber, Samuel Pepys. Here he is in December 1662, describing a ball at Court with all the wonder and envy of the arriviste:

  first to the Duke’s* chamber, where I saw him and the Duchess at supper, and thence into the room where the Ball was to be, crammed with fine ladies, the greatest of the Court. By and by comes the King and Queen, the Duke and Duchess, and all the great ones; and after seating themselves, the King takes out the Duchess of York, and the Duke the Duchess of Birmingham, the Duke of Monmouth my Lady Castlemayne, and so other ladies; and they danced the Bransle. After that, the King led a lady a single Coranto; and then the rest of the lords, one after another, other ladies. Very noble it was, and a great pleasure to see…. Having stayed here as long as I thought fit, to my infinite content, it being the greatest pleasure I could wish now to see at Court, I went out, leaving them dancing.1

  By the following year, Pepys has gone so far as to engage a dancing master, having concluded that it will be a useful accomplishment: for him as well as for his wife:

  by and by the Dancing Master came; whom standing by seeing him instructing my wife, when he had done with her he would needs have me try the steps of a Coranto; and what with his desire and my wife’s importunity, I did begin, and then was obliged to give him entry money, 10s. – and am become his Scolar. The truth is, I think it is a thing very useful for any gentleman and sometimes I may have occasion of using it; and though it cost me, which I am heartily sorry it should … yet I will try it a little while; if I see it comes to any great inconvenience or charge, I will fling it off.2

  Pepys and his wife never had children, so an advantageous marriage could not have been his reason for wishing to ingratiate himself at Court, and, living in London as they did, its pleasures were all to hand. But for advancement in his career, influential friends were all-important – and Pepys made the most of his.

  Three years later, Lord Herbert was writing to his wife, still stuck in the country, about the Queen’s birthday ball which he had attended on 15 November 1666: ‘I never saw greater bravery: a hundred vests [i.e. robes, vestments] that at the least cost a hundred pounds. Some were adorned with jewels above a thousand … the ladies much richer than the men.’3 Poor lady – how she must have longed to be there!

  The Revolution of 1688 brought William and Mary to the throne, and after them a succession of dull or eccentric Hanoverian Courts. But the Revolution had also imposed limitations on the powers of the monarchy. The King was no longer the sole source of patronage, office and preferment: these were now dispensed by Parliament as well. Society was beginning to broaden out. Queen Anne and the German Georges reigned over an exciting time. The colonization of America and the opening up of new markets in the East created immense wealth, and led to a new class of successful merchants. The aristocracy, faced with the usual dilemma – could they demean themselves by marrying ‘trade’ ? – reached the usual pragmatic conclusion: yes, they could, providing it had enough money.

  By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the season was starting to be formalized as a Season. In 1709 Steele used the word in the Toiler in its modern sense (‘the Company was gone and the Season over’) although, heaven knows, the Court of Queen Anne cannot have offered much that was brilliant or vivacious. But by now more than half the great landed families had town houses as well, and their excesses made up for the domestic atmosphere at Court. Here, great hostesses entertained lavishly and the complicated merry-go-round of promotion and favours oscillated up and down. The Season lasted for as long as Parliament sat, from February until the end of July.

  In 1711 its first recognizably modern component was established, when Queen Anne’s passion for racing prompted her to found a racecourse on the ‘new heath’ at Ascot. She paid for a trophy worth 100 guineas known as Her Majesty’s Plate, and another worth 50 guineas. Ascot quickly became a fashionable event, with well-dressed ladies vying with the horses for attention. One of the Queen’s Ladies-in-Waiting, a Miss Forester, paraded in male riding costume. Jonathan Swift reported sourly to Stella, ‘She is a truly silly maid of honour, and I did not like her, although she be a toast.’4

  The role of women was still dictated by the convenience and the commands of men, and even the most spirited rarely defied their fathers or husbands. One who did refuse to submit was Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. She had been famous for her beauty at a young age, ever since her father’s friends at the Kit-Kat Club had toasted the length of the little girl’s amazing eyelashes. Not only that, she was intelligent, with an observant and questioning mind. She disliked the hypocrisy of London Society, yet conformed for as long as she could. When she could not bear it any more, she became one of the first of the great lady travellers, accompanying her husband to Turkey, and thence into virtual exile in France and Italy. Her letters reflect both her shrewdness and her contempt for the machinations needed to obtain political promotion and influence. Here she is in September 1714, still only twenty-five years old, yet already far wiser than the dim husband whom she is advising:

  I need not enlarge upon the advantages of money. Everything we see and everything we hear puts us in remembrance of it.… as the world is and will be, ’tis a sort of duty to be rich, that it may be in one’s power to do good, riches being another word for power.… The ministry is like a play at court. There’s a little door to get in, and a great crowd without, shoving and thrusting who shall be foremost; people that knock others with their elbows, disregard a little kick of the shins, and still thrust heartily forward, are sure of a good place.5

  In that year, 1714, George I succeeded Queen Anne. He spoke practically no English, had no time for levées and drawing-rooms, and retreated whenever possible to his German palace. George II was not much better. When he succeeded to the throne in 1727, he was besieged by people anxious to get on the right side of him, in case he turned out to play a more active part than his father in disbursing favours. Lord Hervey’s Memoirs record the scene at Leicester Fields, where the new King had lived while he was heir apparent:

  The King and Queen were already arrived and receiving the compliments of every man of all degrees and all parties in the town. The square was thronged with multitudes of the meaner sort, and resounded with huzzas and acclamations, whilst every room in the house was filled with people of higher rank, crowding to kiss their hands and to make the earliest and warmest professions of zeal for the service…. On the 19th [June] the Court removed to Kensington, where the King, by the audiences that were asked and the offers that were made to him by the great men of all denominations, found himself set up at auction and everyone bidding for his favour at the expense of the public.6

  The following year, the King barred the beautiful and popular Duchess of Queensberry from court for what seems to have been a trifling misdemeanour ; the Duchess replied with a spirited letter in which she said she was:

  surprised and well pleased that the King hath given her so agreeable a command as to stay from Court, where she never came for diversion, but to bestow a great civility on the King and Queen; she hopes by such an unprecedented order as this, that the King will see as few as he wishes at his Court, particularly such as dare to think or speak truth.7

  It was not long before even the greedy and the sycophantic stayed away, and although the King dutifully held regular levées and even the occasional ball, he was indifferent to England and disagreeable to nearly everyone else. His dullness was enlivened only by his love of practical jokes.

  London Society cavorted regardless, generating its own scandals and diversions. It was one of those periods when people went mad for fancy dress. Masques and balls and fireworks became ever more la
vish and London burned with the same feverish passion for dressing up as it was to do two centuries later (when, coincidentally, George v’s Court was almost as dull as that of his ancestor George II). Horace Walpole wrote with scandalized glee:

  I must tell you how fine the masquerade of last night was. There were five hundred persons of the greatest variety of handsome and rich dresses I ever saw and all the jewels of London. There were to be seen Lady Conway as a charming Mary Stuart, their Graces of Richmond as Henry VIII and Jane Seymour – excessively rich and both so handsome – and all kinds of old pictures stepped from their frames.8

  Another night, at the opera,

  We had a great scuffle which interrupted it. Lord Lincoln was abused in the most shocking manner by a drunken officer, upon which he kicked him, and was drawing his sword but was prevented. I climbed over the front boxes and stepping over the shoulders of three ladies before I knew where I was, found that I had lighted in Lord Rockingham’s lap.9

  Yet he must have enjoyed it all, for in 1760 he wrote dolefully, ‘You cannot figure a duller Season, the weather bitter, no party… .’10

  The same year saw the first appearance in Society of an enchanting young woman whose early life epitomized many of the problems of women amid the licence and spectacle of that Hanoverian age. She was Lady Sarah Lennox, orphaned daughter of the late Duke of Richmond, whose elder sister presented her at Court when she was not quite fifteen. Dressed in the height of fashion, all feathers and furbelows, her hair piled high on her head, she found the event an ordeal. ‘Up I went,’ she recalled, ‘through three great staring rooms full of men into the Drawing Room.’ There, after she had made her curtsey, George II – who had known her as a small child – made her look foolish by trying to cuddle her on his lap as though she were still five years old. She was saved from utter embarrassment by the then Prince of Wales, George II’s twenty-year old grandson, ‘at that time a fine, pleasing-looking young man, of healthy, youthful-looking complexion, a look of happiness and good humour’,11 who came and made conversation with her until she had regained her equilibrium. There were weighty consequences. A few months later the young man succeeded to the throne as George in, and proposed marriage. Actually it was a very good choice. He had fallen much in love with her; she was fond of him; and with her bright, sociable personality and practical nature she might have saved him from some of his own excesses later on. But, naturally, it could not be allowed. His advisers were appalled. The King must make a better match, and lists of eligible if stodgy German princesses were waved before his eyes. Dutifully he chose one, and did his duty over and over again by producing fifteen children and holding two weekly drawing-rooms and two balls a year.