Seasonal changes

Society: In March 1958, Fiona MacCarthy along with more than 1,000 other well bred young English girls from aristocratic families lined up outside Buckingham Palace, "in flimsy finery", to be presented to the Queen. Their curtsies were the last in a tradition that went back over 200 years. Today "coming out" and "debs" have entirely different meanings and associations, a far cry from what was known then as "the Season", a rite of passage for virginal young females marking their emergence into society at the marriageable age of l7.

Behind them, like generals plotting strategic campaigns, mothers played a pivotal role masterminding the movements of these compliant, subservient armies. The desired outcome, a satisfactory marriage treaty, could set the course of a daughter's life to wealth, power and influence.

The Last Curtsey is MacCarthy's spirited and engaging memoir of this marriage market as she experienced it in London, Scotland and Ireland, the endless round of cocktail parties, the London dances, the Scottish balls, the Dublin Horse Show and her own party held at the Dorchester, the Hyde Park hotel built by her great-grandfather, Sir Robert "Concrete Bob" McAlpine. Her father, a colonel in the Royal Artillery, was from a family of Cork extraction. A Guardian journalist and award-winning biographer, she admits that for many years she regarded her debutante background as a liability, an embarrassing secret history and a taboo subject.

Now in her 60s, she argues au contraire that it has an historic and sociological importance, worth recording as part of the story of England in a period of enormous upheaval. Her account of the intricate hoops and hurdles young women had to face in the pursuit of eligible men in the entrenched stratification of British society is witty and shrewd. But as breeding gave way in importance to money and success, the arrivistes, daughters of families whose fortunes had been made in industry and commerce, were knocking at the door, one of the reasons why the Season was eventually brought to an end. "We had to put a stop to it. Every tart in London was getting in," sniffed Princess Margaret.

Preparations for the season left nothing to chance. The "gels" learned how to curtsey from the highly powdered Madame Vacani: "Now darlings throw out your little chests and burst your little dresses." There were rules for everything, the right clothes and the wrong clothes in a milieu in which social ineptitude and those who did not understand the unwritten rules were always ridiculed. It was a minefield for the uninitiated. Teenage girls dressed and behaved like middle-aged women and the Sketch dutifully recorded their comings and goings, with a contest for Top Deb each season, one of whom, Miranda Smiley, later became the Countess of Iveagh.

"Fathers wisely kept to the outer reaches". Mothers, however, were central to a girl's success. The story of the "intrepidly ambitious" Mrs Croker Poole, resolutely determined to keep at bay any competitors that might threaten her daughter's chances, was a case in point. In l958, Sally Croker Poole won the contest for Top Deb and, to the triumphant satisfaction of her mother, eventually married the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of 20 million Ismaili Muslims, a man of colossal wealth. "Wallflowerdom" was a misfortune worse than death. Holding on to one's virginity "was an article of faith". Scottish country dances certainly put that to the test.

In Dublin, she remembers the public balls during Horse Show week linked to the Irish hunts as "semi orgiastic", while the most glamorous ball of all was at Luttrellstown Castle, where Aileen Guinness, in emerald and diamond jewellery, entertained royalty, movie stars, the Maharajah of Jaipur and the very rich in the grandest post-war manner imaginable.

As the era of the deb inexorably drew to an end, its mystique and outdated mores were ridiculed in popular novels and plays satirising the Season. Even fashion reflected the change as the 1960s swept in with its mini-skirts, bouffant hairstyles and waif-like models making the stiff and formal dressing of the 1950s suddenly very dated and passé.

Quite a proportion of upper class young girls began a process of reinvention, and successfully discarded old images of frivolity. Teresa Hayter, a bridesmaid at MacCarthy's wedding and author of Hayter of the Bourgeoisie, joined the International Marxists and turned her back on her family. Rose Dugdale, another childhood friend, who, like Hayter, had been radicalised by the student protests of l968, described her own coming-out ball as "pornographic" in its excess. Stylishly written, intelligent and witty, this book is a revealing portrait of that social world written by one, who driven and empowered by greater ambitions, escaped and took the future into her own hands.

Deirdre McQuillan is fashion editor of The Irish Times and a freelance feature writer

Last Curtsey: The End of the Debutantes By Fiona MacCarthy Faber & Faber, 305pp. £20