No More Debutantes

For months the battle has raged indecisively between the partisans of a pompous past and the champions of a folksier future. With such rebels as Malcolm Muggeridge and Lord Altrincham on the one side demanding that Britain's monarchy bring itself democratically up to date, and the outraged ranks of the old guard on the other demanding that the Queen's critics be drawn and quartered, it has long been obvious that something must give. Last week, a terse, two-sentence announcement from Buckingham Palace tolled the knell of doom for the first innocent victims of the battle--the 800-odd young maidens who each year are ritually presented to the Queen and thereby officially emerge into the best society as debutantes.

"There will be no presentation parties after 1958," said the palace bulletin that put the signature on their death warrant. "The Queen proposes to hold additional garden parties in order that larger numbers may be invited to Buckingham Palace." "A deb," said Palace Press Secretary Richard Colville, by way of fuller explanation, "can no longer apply to meet the Queen. There is no one she can apply to. In fact, there will be no debs. They are finished."

"Goodby, darling," trilled Lord Beaver-brook's Daily Express. "We're going to miss you," echoed the Daily Mail. But Lord Shrewsbury, Premier Earl of England and the father of four daughters (one out last year, one coming out in the last batch of debs for this year, and two now doomed to stay "in" forever), admitted: "Candidly, it will be a financial boon." The only truly crestfallen mourners were the battalion of aristocratic British gentlewomen in reduced circumstances who for years have eked out their meager pensions by sponsoring (for fees running as high as -L-1,000) the daughters of better-heeled but less nobly born parents. Said Mrs. Rennie O'Mahony, headmistress of Cygnet House, which accepts a fee to train prospective debutantes in the niceties of curtsies and court behavior: "My little fledglings are quite excited that they will be the last to be anointed. But I am very sad."

For the thwarted debs, no garden party could make up their loss. Only a handful of the carefully sifted thousands who munch dainty sandwiches on the Buckingham Palace lawn get even a good view of the royalty present. The majority can only tell their children that they once walked on the same grass as the Queen and saw quite clearly the outside of the tent in which she took her tea.

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