LAST CURTSEY

by Fiona MacCarthy

Until 1958 the daughters of Britain's aristocracy would curtsey to the Queen, a rite of passage that formed the highlight of a season of society parties in an elaborate, strictly controlled mating game. Part memoir, part social history, this book interviews the surviving debutantes to show how this arcane, archaic ritual was finally swept away, opening up their lives in new and unexpected directions.

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Memoir, Biography, Historical, Research, British Literature

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 2006

About the author

Fiona MacCarthy was an English biographer and cultural historian best known for her studies of 19th- and 20th-Century art and design.

MacCarthy began her career on The Guardian in 1963 initially as an assistant to the women's editor Mary Stott. She was appointed as the newspaper's design correspondent, working as a features writer and columnist, sometimes using a pseudonymous byline to avoid two articles appearing in the same issue. She left The Guardian in 1969, briefly becoming women's editor of the London Evening Standard before settling in Sheffield.

She later became a biographer and critic. She came to wider attention as a biographer with a once-controversial study of the Roman Catholic craftsman and sculptor Eric Gill, first published in 1989. MacCarthy is known for her arts essays and reviews, which appeared in The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement and The New York Review of Books. She contributed to TV and radio arts programmes.

Reviews

[Emma Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this so much, and it had a lot more than I expected. The scope of this is much bigger than the title suggests - it's essentially a book about the decline and fall of high society (to almost borrow David Cannadine's title, I still need to procure and read his book) in the fifties. It's glorious if, like me, you're addicted to learning about the upper classes. It's got names, places and details that no other book has and for good reason as it's written by someone who actually lived through it. How wonderful to hear about the minuatiae of the season, about the hotels they danced at, what marriage meant and most of all how worried these privileged people were as they saw that their way of life was slowly changing. Throughout the book, I really felt as if I were right there with them. I'm convinced I'll end up rereading this in the next few years, if only to take copious amounts of notes. Wonderful read.

[kvazimodla · Rating 4 out of 5]

Going back to the world of Past Imperfect, to really delve into intricacies of The Season! The social aspect (for which the author keeps apologizing) be damned, I wanted to light-heartedly imagine myself in every detail of that world 😁
Photos really add to the thrill ❤️
Can't believe those girls in the photos are 17! They all look so much older, as do the mothers. And they all have the same hairstyle :)

This was great fun, with bonus commentary on the many social and economic changes going on in England at the time, and their impact on the aristocracy lifestyle. Enjoyed it.

[Joy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've had this book on my to-read list for a while, but it was just old enough to not have a Kindle option and I wasn't interested in buying it as a physical copy. When I was in the store a few weeks ago, there was a big stack of them for $6 apiece, and for that much I bought it to read and then give away.

The book was very interesting, and I found it to be totally worth the time to read. My knowledge of the London Season and the debutantes therein is limited to Regency-style romance novels, and I had never really thought about how the system had changed during the early part of the twentieth century or how it eventually ended. This book was a great description of the Season in 1958, as narrated by the author who was a debutante herself, with plenty of notes about how things had changed from her mother's time as well as how things were beginning to change socially. The young ladies who made their curtsies in 1958 had been trained to become debutantes and then to catch a husband, but were woefully unprepared for anything else. Much of their schooling was via private tutors or "finishing schools" which taught little beyond proper deportment and how to host a party, leaving those who had no interest or ability to land a properly titled husband adrift with few resources to fall back on.

While the majority of the book covers the Season itself and specifically the author's recollections and memories thereof, the end of the book lists some interesting information about what various debutantes ended up doing with their lives. There are several interesting stories there, including those who did find titled husbands and did quite a bit with their wealth and influence, as well as those who found influence and work elsewhere.

Overall this was an interesting book for me, full of descriptions and details and costs, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Those who aren't terribly interested in the subject probably shouldn't bother, of course, but if you're curious, take a look and see what you think.

[Helen · Rating 2 out of 5]

undecided about this book. Interesting subject but poorly executed. After a while the name-dropping just makes your head spin (although it shows the importance of names in this world). Sadly the most interesting part - the careers of the debs post-1958 is confined to a few end pages.

[Sevelyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting social history of the world of curtseys, sweet bands, and too-tight shoes. You could easily toss it off as a lightweight memoir but in fact it may end up being a valuable account of a now-lost world. Reading it, you quickly come to understand how the British upper classes valued a closed world where everyone knew exactly what to say and do. So enjoy the read and know that you don’t have to worry about what to pack for a run of parties in the middle of Scotland with your virginity in the spotlight. The book is a first-person account, so many of the dramatis personae are known to her. The author can hardly be faulted for talking about the people in her life. And she seems to have been able to transcend the path that was laid out for her early on: fecundity.

One sentence should have been cut: “In my debutante haze I was not of course aware of the extent of Southern Ireland’s social problems.”

[Anne]

This was heartily recommended by an instagram stranger, and I completely understand why. For those of us who want an in-depth and clear-eyed account of what it was to be a British debutante in the late 1950s, Last Curtsey delivers. MacCarthy's prose is that of a journalist -- spare, simple, at times a bit unwieldy -- so folks who like their social history flowery and descriptive should keep away. MacCarthy's accounts of stultified social class and time period that refused to educate its women or provide for their future beyond the vague idea of marriage to the "right sort of person" really struck home; it's amazing to think that we are barely one or two generations removed from this reality (and even more humbling to realize that, for some, they are still living it).

[Brian Gowthorpe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had been meaning to get round to this book for 9 years (my wife Cath bought it in hardback when it came out) and what a pleasure it has been. Social history, country houses, the sheer weirdness of the upper classes and a glimpse into the life of FM, who kicked over the traces, refused to deny her intelligence and became a Guardian columnist in 1963, 5 years after stolidly getting on with being presented in the final batch of debs to come before the Queen and pursuing the teas, dinners and parties of the 1958 season. She is proud of the independent and capable achievements of many of her contemporaries. All this is very well researched and written, as might be expected.

[Grace Hoffmann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not exactly what I was expecting -- short on style and long on people and place names. Still, I learned a lot and the historical perspective was interesting. I'd like to read more about Rose Dugdale.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it.

[Lezley]

Airmail

[Ann Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting read of a life that's home by

[Manny Villa]

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[M]

1343176

[Stephanie Patterson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“The Last Curtsey” was a really satisfying read. Ms. MacCarthy went into the 1958 presentation season knowing that there was a place for her at Oxford in her future.
She describes the history and customs surrounding being presented at court (though I still don’t know why women had to wear those peculiar looking feathers in their hair) and her experiences during the final season in 1958. Queen Elizabeth announced that presentations would cease. Rumor had it that Prince Philip was trying to make the monarchy more accessible to different classes of people and many felt that the standards on which being presented was based had withered away to nothing.
Ms. MacCarthy understands both the tradition and the need to move away from it. She talks about the sense of hurt girls felt because they felt so close to the royal family during the years of WWII. (The king and queen stayed at Buckingham Palace during the bombing of London and the Princess Elizabeth took part in the war effort). But the silliness and triviality of the season comes home to her during the Fouth of June events at Eton: “ . . .I became distinctly less pro-Eton after my experiences at the Fourth of June. I had gone in a small party, three recent old Etonians--Paul and Miles and Peter--with three debs as their companions. Our function was quite clear to me: to spend the day standing around admiring male sporting prowess, three debs like attendant maidens at a medieval joust. Vistas opened out of myself in years to come at cricket matches, polo matches, three day events, smiling, clapping, encouraging in endless, only slightly varied repetitions of this scene, the role in which Camilla Parker-Bowles would prove so adept, offering congratulations, holding out the silver cup. The crunch came when my escort, the sandy haired and dapper Old Etonian Miles Eastwood, not a man of great stature, physical or intellectual, referred to three of us as ‘the tiny girls.’ Tiny girls indeed! The incident was trivial but to me it had the force of revelation. On the Fourth of June at Eaton I became a feminist.”
The latter part of the book focuses on what I think of as the debs that got away: the women who were presented but did something more with their lives than attend social functions; one goes on goes on to become a heliocopter pilot, another becomes an ardent Marxist and Fiona MacCarthy herself gets a job at The Guardian
Her last chapter which discusses Princess Diana’s deb bona fides (little education and a good marriage) and suggests that her Panorama interview marked the true end of the English debutante is thought provoking. Readers who like this final chapter would enjoy reading Hillary Mantel’s full discussion of the royal family and how they are treated by press and public in the London Review of Books.

[^ · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a fascinating read; the last formal vestige of the “marriage market”; nowadays conducted with so very much more subtlety and informality; as indicated in Peter York & Ann Barr’s later Sloane Ranger Diary. Perhaps the most important change in the ‘marriage market’ is that since the invention of the contraceptive pill, families have not been required to worry about getting their ‘gals’ to the altar, unsullied. Who could have imagined the consequences to society of the discovery of that class of chemical compounds.

Copiously illustrated with b/w photographs (264); “Last Curtsey” is a book whose market is probably largely limited to the British. So three cheers for Faber & Faber taking the decision to publish it (in 2006). If nothing else, for its importance to social history, I imagine it being shelved by a majority of public and academic libraries in Britain.

I enjoyed reading this book; finding it touching, witty, extraordinary, and reflective. Yes, to have been a lesser ranking debutante must have been to experience fun and fear in equal measure. Some flew, some crashed. But what has changed since? Only that the gettings-up-to of debutantes no longer appear in print and online in our newspapers; replaced instead by the goings-on so-called ‘celebrities’; most (but not all) of whom have achieved little of note in public life other than an ability to extract money for little substance, coupled with a certain photogenicity. Plus ça change. At least the 19th & early 20th century British upper classes largely tended to pull communities together. But there again, Royal Garden Parties today are much more egalitarian, and perhaps more interesting events for that.

This book reminds us that as human beings we not only need boundaries; but that every one of us is different, and we can never accurately fully anticipate the consequences of our actions. Read it and ponder upon it.

Price new: £20.00

[Caroline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book a lot more interesting than I'd anticipated. It's effectively about the end of an era, the end of the Season, the final débutantes to be presented to the Queen, the changing mores and attitudes of the aristocracy. The death-knell for the aristocracy was effectively cast by the First World War, but its death-throes lingered well into the 50s. In a way, the world painted in this book is more redolent of the pre-WW1 era than the 1950s.

MacCarthy herself was one of the last débutantes to be presented to the Queen, and in this book she traces both the history of the custom and what happened to those women in 1958, what futures they carved out for themselves. So many of them broke out of the stranglehold their society had on them, strengthened by the changing world of the 1960s. Many forged their own businesses, one became the Begum Aga Khan, another joined the IRA!

It's fascinating to read about this kind of life - a life so alien to the majority of us today. Daughters were then, as always, considered little more than marriage prospects: education wasn't valued and the whole point of the Season was pretty much to find a husband. The amount of time and energy focused on the dresses, the dinner dances, the cocktail parties, afternoon teas at Henley and Eton, Royal Asoct, the columns in Tatler and Queen - it all seems so out-dated and quaint.

[Kate Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating to read about the debutants and their family lifestyles as it is so different to the society now and my family.

However, I felt this book didn't really know what it wanted to be. Was it Fiona MacCarthy's autobiography, was it is a review of the debutants in 1958 or was it a social history of debutants. It also got confusing at times as lots of names were mentioned that meant nothing to me so it was difficult to keep track of everyone.

I enjoyed the book and learnt a lot about the some of UK history, but I would have preferred if it had been written in a clear style. But saying that, I have already recommended it to my mother in law.

[Erica Chambers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. It is the first book of Fiona MacCarthy's that I have read and I wanted to start with something slim before I took on the bag breaking tomes of William Morris and Byron. I discovered that she has a very accessible writing style.

MacCarthy went through the last official Season in 1958. She justifies the existence of the phenomenon whilst still sighing at the "silliness" of all the behaviours. She has led a pretty privileged lifestyle; but at no point does she seem to think she was entitled to this; unlike other contemporaries of her time.

I would highly recommend this book.

[Lotte · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyable read. Not especially in depth examination of the role of debs in history, but a clear sense of the tedium of the season. Would have liked more about the pre 20th C, the establishment of this glorified cattle market etc.
It is not short of references though (c. 45% of the book is source material references and indexing) so I might find some deeper analysis amongst the books listed in there.
I like her writing voice, it's rather like being taught history by Joyce Grenfell (appropriately a Deb of some years prior)

[Veronica · Rating 3 out of 5]

After visitng Kensington Palace and seeing the debutante exhibition - I really looked forward to reading this book. It was enjoyable to read, giving a debutante's view of the last curtsey. However, I did find it a bit too factual at times - lots of name dropping of people who I didn't know and at times it became confusing.

[E · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not worth reading. I bought it in Scotland, hoping for a social history, meaty analysis. Nope, it was overly precious, self-aggrandizing, and awful. Reinforced debutante stereotypes.

[Hannah · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting and entertaining read!

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

British social history and the changes to the aristocracy after the second world war. An enjoyable read.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A memoir by a member of the last group of young women to be presented at court, in 1958.

[Arlan Wise · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting look at a piece of social history. It clarifies what life as a debutante was like. It is well written,

[Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting history.