The debutante balls of today are just posh versions of Love Island
Imagine curtsying to a cake. It wouldn’t be how I’d choose to spend my Saturday evening, but last weekend, a gaggle of young women bobbed to the carpet at a venue in Westminster more often used for corporate award ceremonies and office Christmas parties. They were dressed in frou-frou wedding dresses, paired with white gloves and jewels borrowed from Harrods. This was the Queen Charlotte’s Ball and they were this year’s crop of debutantes, poor things.
It was in 1958 that the Queen put an end to the practice of posh girls being trotted out in front of her as if in the Ascot paddock. Princess Margaret, with her usual tact and diplomacy, declared they had to abolish court presentations because “every tart in London was getting in”. My grandmother had squeaked past Her Majesty just six years before.
If a tradition was too embarrassing even for the Royal family, you might think it would be abandoned. Not in this case. The baton of debutante arbitrator fell to Peter Townend, Tatler’s dapper social editor, who presided over the show until he died in 2001. He was just the man for the job: born in Leeds to a mother who was a keen observer of the Royal family and the aristocracy, Townend first worked for Burke’s (as in Burke’s Peerage), then for Tatler, and developed a knowledge of the upper classes that might have impressed even Princess Margaret. Legend has it that, while serving in the Navy during the Second World War, he hurried back to his cabin to collect his favourite book as his ship went down. “Where the devil do you think you’re going?” the captain barked. “I’m just popping back for my Almanach de Gotha, sir,” came the reply.
The parties were very jolly during his reign, by all accounts. My mother tells me about one chap of her generation, now a noble member of the House of Lords, who stuck a pink washing-up glove through his flies at the Queen Charlotte’s Ball, only for one of the matronly organisers to spot this prank and thwack it with her programme.
But after Townend died, surely this archaic system was forgotten? Wrong again. He had nominated two former debutantes to take over as “custodians” of the circus, which meant that, not long before I left school in 2003, whispers started about who was going to be a “deb” in our year. Four girls ended up doing “the season”, such as it was then, which essentially meant a few organised parties in London and being photographed in Hello! “At least no bloody ostrich feathers or a veil,” one of these friends says when I quiz her, referring to the old habit of debs sticking three feathers in their hair to denote purity. She makes me promise not to name her.
And yet on it continues, albeit more often attended by the daughters of Chinese billionaires and Kazakh mining moguls. Last weekend’s ball was organised by Jennie Hallam-Peel and Patricia Woodall, the custodians named by Townend as his successors, who run it as a business called the London Season Academy “in partnership with Harrods”. The official website says it’s invitation only, but, confusingly, there’s an application form if you’re up for it. You have to email a photo, and fill in a form asking what school you went to and what your parents do. Madness, really, that a ritual originally devised to marry women off like prize heifers still exists. On the other hand, you could argue it’s simply a posh version of Love Island.
With this ring, I tree wed: matrimony branches out
Talking of suitable matches, I’m getting married. He’s very tall, quite weather-beaten, but dependable and solid. He’s also a tree. Only joking, but this is presumably the conversation that 70 women from Bristol had with their families before marrying dozens of trees last weekend to protest against a proposed housing development. There was a celebrant, and the brides wore wedding frocks and held bouquets. Ringleader Siobhan Kierans said she hoped the service showed that trees were their “partners for life”. Bristol city council’s sober response? It was “unable to comment”, owing to the planning application. Congratulations to the tree-huggers and I hope they’ll be very happy. Their new husbands will be rubbish at taking the bins out but at least they won’t leave the loo seat up.
A show of arms by the man with the biggest Schoffel closet
You’re a Sunday Telegraph reader, so you may already know what a Schoffel is. If not, it’s a fleece gilet sported by Sloaney men between the months of January and December, usually flecked with gravy/mustard/a dribble of red wine/better not to ask. I’ve recently returned from a holiday in Devon, where the host, my friend Jez, brought four of the things with him and wore one daily, usually paired with Vilebrequin trunks and a flat cap; St Tropez rake meets West Country farmer. But I did once interview a student at Cirencester’s Royal Agricultural College who boasted he had 13 of them hanging in his wardrobe. Can any reader top that? (If you’re into this sort of thing, there’s a very funny, satirical Instagram account called “Schoffelspotted” which posts sightings of the gilets in the wild. Well worth a follow.)
