Merrie, Merrie England

It was almost like the good old days again, when everybody but the poor was rich, when King George V sat respectably on his throne, and his dashing son the Prince of Wales (now Duke of Windsor) toppled off horses from Aldershot to Dockenfield. Mayfair was afire with the glitter of bright lights, seductive scents hung heavy on the air, and the stillness of spring nights was shattered by the popping of champagne corks. Despite repeated government warnings to tighten all belts, London last week was in the giddy midst of the most extravagant social season since 1938. "The British upper class," wrote the doggedly proletarian New Statesman and Nation, "has got the bit between its teeth. Not since the '30s has it consumed so much bad champagne and dubious caviar, trampled so much broken glass underfoot, and driven so many village dressmakers to profitable distraction. Society is scrambling shakily to its feet again and cocking a tentative snoot at the masses."*

In the Drink. At party after party, lean young lordlings were kicking up their heels with the debutante daughters of wealthy tradesmen. It was all high spirits and higher expense accounts. For the showiest party of all, an army of some 60 technicians was called in to transform the ballroom at Claridge's into a moonlit garden so that young Countess "Bunny" Esterhazy and "Flockie" Harcourt-Smith could meet society in proper style. Their parent-step-parents, Hungarian-born Banker Arpad Plesch and his four-times-married wife, laid out an estimated $25,000 to make the evening a success. At another party, given at the Monkey Club, an exclusive shelter and society finishing school for young ladies, a silver fountain gushed red wine all evening. "We wanted to have something original," explained the father of Debutante Christine Thorowgood. "Besides it's good wine."

At a rousing Mayfair soiree attended by the Earl of Suffolk, the impulsive guests abandoned all formal arrangements to shed their shoes and dance in the streets to the blaring music of motorcar radios. A prominent guest at many of the parties was the 20-year-old Duke of Kent, Queen Elizabeth's first cousin and the seventh in line to Britain's throne. Wherever young Kent went--and his evenings were invariably full--the action was brisk. One party he attended was held on a yacht and ended only when sea scouts and river police turned up to fish two debonair young Guards officers out of the muddy waters of the Thames. Another reached its climax when some of the duke's young friends decided to scale a perilous parapet and sprinkle innocent passers-by in the street below with champagne.

Such high jinks in high circles earned inevitable clucks of disapproval from Mrs. Grundys all over the nation. In Parliament an outraged Laborite backbencher rose to demand assurances from the government that "breaches of the peace are treated by the police as breaches of the peace and not simply as acts of high spirits because they happen to occur among the rich and influential." The question, though it named no names, brought a prompt and unprecedented reply from Kensington Palace. The Duke of Kent, said a palace statement, was indeed at the parties referred to but was "in no way involved" in their fruitier moments.

In the Dumps. Not everyone, however, was so disapproving of the avalanche of expensive gaiety as Mrs. Grundy and Laborite George Thomson. Hotel managers purred happily as they scanned supper-room bookings, filled up solidly to Christmas. A wholesale caviar merchant reported "our best year ever." Dance pianists, even not very good ones, were demanding and getting as much as -L-30 for an evening's work. In the midst of the merriment, many a Londoner was cast into the dumps at news that what might well have been the biggest and best party of all was canceled. It was to have been given by irrepressible Norah Docker, the blonde and lively wife of Daimler's Board Chairman Sir Bernard Docker, in honor of her 50th birthday.

Nobody in Britain could throw a better binge than Lady Docker, whose democratic ways and goldplated, zebra-lined Daimler motorcars have long been the solid staples of London's gossip columns. Unfortunately for London partygoers, however, just as Norah's plans were crystallizing last week, the Daimler people fired her husband (see BUSINESS), and Norah moodily canceled her party. "How could they do it?" she said of her husband's employers, a question that echoed the sentiments of many a party girl toward Britain's spoilsports. As Debutante Felicity Drew, guest of honor at the Thames yacht party put it: "Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, so it can't have been all bad."

-The conservative Daily Telegraph stiffly noted that "the New Pecksniff and Nation" recently observed its silver anniversary by serving "champagne by the bucket" to a "seething, shrieking mass" of left-wing politicians and "statesmenlike women. Not the 'people at the top' perhaps; but where is the top now?"

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