Edwardian high society saw the idle rich languishing in luxury

Posted in Historical articles, History, Leisure, London, Royalty on Thursday, 6 March 2014

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This edited article about the Edwardians first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 582 published on 10 March 1973.

Royal Henley,  picture, image, illustration

Debutantes 'coming out' at Royal Henley when the river was packed with punts by Richard Hook

Let’s take a look at Edwardian ‘High Society,’ those so-called ‘idle rich,’ whose life, far from being idle, was truly more exhausting, nerve-wracked and fraught with anxiety than that of Mr Average – say, a schoolmaster jogging comfortably along on £350 a year, or even a skilled artisan who managed to keep up appearances and the wolf-from-the-door on a few pounds a week.

‘High Society,’ had, as its figurehead, the jovial King himself, and it was as different from the rather stuffily restrained upper-crust of Queen Victoria’s long reign as might be the spirit of champagne from that of heavy and befuddling port. It was as though most of the 19th Century had been blotted out and the flavour of Charles the Second or the Prince Regent put in its place. It was to be a short life, this Edwardian decade, and, for the socialites, one devoted to an unrelenting pursuit of so-called pleasure. Pleasure-seeking was hard work!

The “London Season” was the starting point for each new year of the social grind, and King Edward in his newly gilded, marbled and chandeliered Buckingham Palace fired, as it were, the “starting gun” by the introduction of “Courts,” at which the daughters of “High Society” who had, as they said at the time, “let down their dresses and put up their hair” were in an atmosphere of daunting splendour and formality “presented” to their Sovereign and his Queen Alexandra. And what an ordeal this was for all concerned, most of all for the debutante, the girl who was “coming out,” in society and whose “presentation” by some titled lady already acknowledged by the Lord Chamberlain as one fitted to “present” was the launching-pad of her mother’s aim to get her successfully married.

Either just before, or just after, the presentation was the visit, in court dress, to the Court Photographer. A Mr Bassano was the prince of Court Photographers, and very expensive he was. Expensive, too, was the debutante’s presentation dress – three ostrich plumes on the head, fan or flower-posy, flowing gown of silk or satin, wasp-waisted, making the young lady stick out like a pouter pigeon in front and like the hindquarters of a pony behind. All down the Mall, leading to Buckingham Palace, the carriages of these nervous young ladies and their ‘presenters’ waited in line, glassed in like tropical fish in bowls, to be gawked at – and often jeered at – by the common people.

At long, long last, after she had queued in corridor after corridor with others like herself, came the great moment – some thirty seconds of it, as, surrounded by satin-breeched court officials and braided flunkeys, she made her deep curtsy to Their Majesties, and prayed to heaven that she would not catch her shoe in her train and fall.

For the mammas of these young girls every moment of the long day’s ordeal had been worth it. The girls had “come out” and the marriage-market was launched – London “coming out balls,” packed with eligible young men; fruit-and-flowered hats at Royal Ascot; Royal Henley when the river was packed from booms to bank with punts and launches; chickens’ wings and champagne; the fashion parade of Henley’s famous Phyllis Court – what a world! Then came Goodwood Races, slightly less formal than Ascot, and finally; Cowes, with the Royal Yacht,’Victoria and Albert’, dressed overall, and very possibly the Kaiser’s yacht as well.

Some of it still goes on, but it is not the same as the twittering splendour of Edwardian upper-class Britain. It had, apparently, not a care in the world, but at heart it was afraid. There was the sense that this butterfly dance was to be the last.

The landed gentry, the ancient families with their stately homes, had, of course, their town-houses as well. As the London Season ended, so the dust-sheets went up, the blinds came down and the return to the great country houses began. This was invariably undertaken by train – masses of luggage and servants. If, in very exalted cases, the station-master with frock coat and top hat was not on parade, there was trouble in store.

The time of that typically Edwardian institution, the country house-party week-end had arrived. Nowadays, as well you probably know, most owners of stately homes live in one small corner of them – if at all – and summer-long fill the splendours of their great rooms with tourists at 25p per head, and their parklands and lakes with lions, baboons and hippopotami to be driven past at £1 a car. In “Good Old Teddy’s” golden days these great country houses were really used, and invariably packed with well-chosen guests every week-end from lunchtime on Saturday until breakfast on Monday.

“Below stairs” a great army of servants awaited the arrival of the invited socialites – butler, housekeeper, footmen, cooks, ladies’ maids, housemaids, pages and, in the greatest of houses a “groom of the chambers”. Many of the guests brought their own personal servants to swell the underworld whose rules of protocol were even more snobbish than that of the jewel-encrusted upper crust aloft.

The Edwardian house-party visitor brought at the very least six changes of clothes for the day-and-a-half of his, or her, visit – cigarette-cases were by the Russian Court jeweller, Carl Faberge, jewels from Cartier, gowns from Paris, suits, day-formal, evening-formal, and sporting, were from Savile row. Seldom before or since has the world witnessed such scenes of sheer vulgar ostentation as those of the Edwardian house-party, where all talk was trivial.

And how they all ate, thirty or more of them, starting with tea and biscuits in their bedrooms and then descending to the Edwardian breakfast-table between nine and ten o’clock. The long sideboards groaned under their weight of silver dishes, heated with spirit flames – eggs poached, fried, scrambled, coddled; bacon, sausages, haddock and kedgeree; devilled kidneys and chicken bones; cold pheasant, ham, tongue and inevitably, that delicate little bird of the high places – ptarmigan. Ptarmigan there just had to be. There were two teas – Indian and China – coffee and chocolate, and, on the table, toast, scones, muffins, marmalade and honey. In season there were peaches, strawberries, raspberries, hot-house melons and nectarines. Just a little snack to start the day, and feel fortified for the descent on the Parish Church – suitably dressed.

All day long the tittle-tattle and small talk twittered – it was not done to speak of serious things, such as politics, religion or the arts. Anything but the arts! Traditionally, we are told, it was at luncheon that the hostess was expected to stir up the small talk at its most trivial, and everyone, of course, had changed for lunch, all six courses of it. The Monarch, “Good old Teddy,” was a great lover of the house-party, and to collar the King was every high-up hostess’s ambition. If she did succeed, then she had to remember Edward’s addiction to lobster salad for tea! Also his favourite bath-salts and ginger biscuits obtainable only at Biarritz.

There was never a dull moment, what with carriage drives, croquet, maybe a trip in Colonel Trashby’s new-fangled motor-car, possibly a little archery and, for the unenergetic, interminable bridge.

Dinner, with everyone in silks, satins, jewels and boiled shirts, was a mammoth repast and not quite such a strained prattle as at luncheon. After they had swallowed their last grape, nectarine or peach the ladies swept from the room, leaving the gentlemen to their port and nuts.

And so to bed, where there were mineral waters by the bedside, biscuits, and, just in case the guest felt peckish during the night, a covered dish of chicken or pheasant sandwiches.

Yes, life was like that for the peacocks and butterflies of Edwardian “High Society,” a series of extravagant and shallow occasions.

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