A different kind of debut

Published on Monday 10 July 2006 00:20

ON THE evening of 11 May 1938 Rosemary Hodson sat in her car which was making its way up The Mall to Buckingham Palace and smiled as passers-by peered in to get a glimpse of her in her white ballgown. This was her big night, when she would be presented to the King and Queen and, with a curtsey, become a fully fledged member of British high society, an eligible match for any young aristocratic considered a 'good catch'.

Three years later, life was very different. Hodson was living in a small house in York, where electricity was considered a luxury and she was forced to rely on donations from a local butcher to feed her small daughter.

She hadn't disowned her family, or fallen on hard times. Hodson was a debutante, one of the most privileged bright young things of her day, whose cushioned existence gave way to the harsher realities of life when Britain went to war in 1939. Instead of existing in the social whirl of balls, parties and polo matches for which they had been groomed, these blue-bloods found themselves decoding messages at the famous Bletchley Park, or working on a factory assembly line where they made friends with working-class women who would never otherwise have entered their social sphere. And once they had enjoyed a taste of freedom outside the limited circles in which they grew up, for many there was no going back to the cocooned existence of childhood.

"When war broke out, often to the horror of their parents these young women rushed to join up," says Anne de Courcy, author of Debs at War, a book which chronicles the whirlwind of dinner parties and dances that was the debutante season, as well as the hardships, losses and challenges these young women experienced during the war.

"Their lives would have been very different if the war hadn't happened, as their fate was simply to marry one of the leading political or social figures of that time. However, the realities of war and the accompanying culture shock liberated many from the innocence and constraints of their upbringing, giving them the confidence that comes from successfully coping with challenges on one's own."

The recollections of De Courcy's interviewees form a fascinating social document; an insight into how the most privileged sections of society coped with the war and the breakdown of the country's social strata that went with it. "They were the forerunners of female emancipation," says De Courcy. "And, though their voices are those of a minority, they made a significant contribution to the events that transformed Britain into the nation in which we live today."

We met two debs who went to war, to hear more of this inspiring story of social revolution.

DAME FRANCES CAMPBELL-PRESTON (NE GRENFELL)

"I WAS a debutante in 1936 - the year George V died," says Frances of the day she attended the Queen Charlotte's Ball, pictured right. "The ball was the highlight of the debutante calendar and we all had to curtsey to the Queen. This meant you could get your grown-up ticket to social events but, in reality, it was just an upper-class marriage market."

Although she was under no illusion as to the reason behind the debutante season, 17-year-old Frances embraced it. "I wanted to do it for the sheer fun of it," she says. "There were so many parties. I was never out of love and I was always dancing."

When her first season was over, Frances was sent to stay with the governor general of Canada - a family friend. "In those days one wasn't trained to do anything useful, so my parents thought I should travel," she says. "I didn't even think about getting a job - it was just a way of getting me off my father's hands, to meet someone suitable and get married."

In that sense, things went according to plan and at Government House in Ontario she met her future husband, Patrick Campbell-Preston, the governor's aide-de-camp and an officer in the Black Watch regiment. With war brewing, the couple returned home in December 1938 to marry and set up home at a military base in Dover, where their daughter, Mary-Ann, was born. When war was declared, Patrick was sent to fight in France. He was captured in 1940 and held as a prisoner of war for five years.

Back home, however, there was no time for Frances to pine for the husband with whom she had spent so little time. Keen to avoid the bombing in London, she moved to Ardchattan, near Oban, to live with her mother-in-law. But life was not the one of leisurely days of high tea and social receptions she had enjoyed during her London upbringing and in pre-war Canada. Instead she joined the Wrens, and began working in an office. In 1943 she was posted to Reading to work in a biscuit factory.

For someone who never expected to cook and clean for herself, Frances found factory work a culture shock. But she took it all in her stride.

"Everything happened so quickly," she recalls. "We had a normal life and then suddenly he [Patrick] was gone and I was working. It was physically demanding, because you'd be standing from 8am until 6pm packing biscuits, which was also terribly boring. But it was fascinating to experience life on a factory floor.

"What struck me most about the other girls was how awfully nice they were and how brave," she adds. "My friends and I weren't mocked because of our voices - they took the attitude that it was awfully nice of us to go and do the work and were frightfully kind to us. The thing is, we were all on the same side."

Frances spent the remainder of the war in Reading, until Patrick, who had been captured by the Germans, was released from Colditz and she was finally able to take up the role of army wife, eventually settling back at the family home in Scotland.

"It was very odd to finally get my husband back," she recalls. "I was a much more independent, capable woman than the one he had left. I'd had been through this huge, socially enriching experience - everyone had. Looking back, it was a very difficult time but there was no choice other thant to cope. One just adjusted to the changes as best as one could."

• Dame Frances Campbell-Preston's memoirs, The Rich Spoils of Time, will be published by The Dovecote Press in October.

LADY CHRISTIAN BOWMAN (NE GRANT)

GROWING up on her family's estate in Monymusk, Aberdeenshire, Christian Grant's upbringing was one in which she spent more time with her nanny and governess than her parents.

"My mother and father weren't really interested in children, so we had a rather distant relationship," she says. "All I had to do was grow up, become a deb and get married."

Wearing a pink brocade dress, Christian was presented as a debutante on 11 May 1939. That night signalled the start of a heady summer. "I'd been brought up to believe that it was wrong to think one was pretty or attractive, or that anyone would take notice of one," she says. "And then this door opened and there were young men falling in love with me. It was wonderful, like the doors of paradise opening, to realise that one wasn't, as one had always thought, stupid and boring.

"We would drink an awful lot of champagne and I would dance with everyone. There were so many lovely men - it's sad when I think back on it, because most of them were later killed in the war."

More concerned with partying than politics, her sheltered upbringing rendered her unaware of the international tensions of the day. "The adults saw what was coming, but I wasn't conscious of the war looming at all," she says. "I doubt if I even read the paper - probably only the engagements column in the Times."

Her life of frivolity came to an abrupt end when she returned to Scotland after her season in London. "I remember being on my own in the old nursery at home and listening to Chamberlain declare war. It was shattering. I didn't know it would last for so long, but clearly it was the end of life as I knew it."

Despite her privileged upbringing, she had no hesitation in doing her duty for her country. Christian "went straight to London to get a war job" and promptly found herself at the Handley Page Aircraft Factory in north London. "It was hard physical labour: six days a week on the assembly line, putting aircraft parts together," she says. "I would work 12-hour shifts but, because it was dusty and smoky and all the windows were painted black, you didn't know whether it was day or night."

In 1942 she met her husband, a captain in the Grenadier Guards, and moved to London where they subsequently had two children. "One carried on working even when one had children, because [of being] so passionately dedicated to the war effort," she says. "I got a job in an office in London that dealt with Radar research. It was so secret I didn't even tell my husband where I was working."

After the war, the skills and confidence that work had fostered in her enabled Frances to take sole charge of her life.

"My marriage was an unhappy one, so in the late 1940s I left him, which was quite rare in those days," she says. "I found myself a tiny house in Chelsea and got a PR job for a hotel. With two little girls it was hard but, like many women at the time, I had become a determined young lady and wanted to make a go of it."

• A Childhood in Scotland, by Christian Miller (formerly Christian Grant), published by Canongate, is out now.