The Girls of London

London, said Disraeli a century ago, "is a nation, not a city, with a population greater than some kingdoms, and districts as different as if they were under different governments and spoke different languages." Today, as the second largest of the world's metropolises, the capital of England and the British Isles, and the axis of a commonwealth girdling the globe from Singapore to Saskatchewan, the sprawling city on the Thames is more of a nation than ever. Encompassing 693 square miles of Roman ruins, Norman citadels, Elizabethan alehouses, Tudor palaces, Renaissance basilicas, Edwardian mews, Regency malls, Georgian town houses, Swedish-modern office buildings and chromium luncheonettes—a capsule history of its 2000-year evolution in architectural microcosm—modern London is unique among the world's capital cities as the nucleus of nearly every major social, economic and cultural institution in its far-flung domain: art, music, letters, show business, communications, advertising, industry, high fashion, high finance, high society—and girls.

Whatever their métiers and motivations—fame, fortune, authority or adventure—girls from every corner of the kingdom stream to the city like Dick Whittington's legendary cat: pink-cheeked, full-bodied maidens from the agrarian north; fine-boned thoroughbreds from the pasturelands of southern England; black-haired, green-eyed colleens from Belfast and Limerick; brown-eyed, white-skinned Welsh rarebits from Swansea and Cardiff; auburn-tressed, azure-eyed lassies from Aberdeen and Glasgow; (text continued on page 118) bronzed, blonde sportswomen from Australia and New Zealand; cleanlimbed, kinetic creatures from Canada and South Africa.

Emphatically exploding the stereotype of the British female—angular, tweedy, tea-sipping, bird-watching, sensibly shod, generally flat-chested, somewhat long in the tooth—these attractively admixtured misses are as infinitely varied in psyche and physique as their multifarious bloods; and no less fashionably attired than their Stateside and Continental counterparts. Adorned with a tasteful scarcity of jewelry and makeup, accoutered in the incomparable tweeds, cashmeres and woolens of Yorkshire, Harris and the Hebrides—tailored with a dash of Roman or Parisian flair—they strive for chicness without show, understatement without anonymity. The majority succeed with style—to such an extent that the most seasoned statusticians find it difficult to distinguish between the U's and the non-U's as they mingle in Mayfair, Piccadilly or Park Lane.

Despite sartorial similarities, however, the debutantes of London's haut monde are set apart from their sisters—though not from upward-mobile male visitors with an inside friend to open the right doors—by a seldom-spanned social gulf. An august alliance of the ranking aristocracy, the landed gentry and the café-society set, this insular and inbred elite set a standard of tradition-bound gentility unpeered even by the upper crust of Back Bay Boston. As heiresses-apparent to the proprieties as well as the perquisites of Britain's erstwhile ruling class, they lead a town-and-country life no less regimented than that of the thoroughbred sorrels stabled behind their mansions. As 18-yearlings, they join the horsey set at lavish coming-out cotillions; go to the post in April with Queen Charlotte's Ball; parade around the enclosure with bewhiskered subalterns and bevested undergraduates for three continuous months of soignée soirees, culminating in June with high society's steeplechase classics, the Oxford and Cambridge balls; after which they are turned out to pasture on their off-season estates in Sussex and Surrey—to be tutored, groomed and curried for the following spring and, hopefully, for eventual mating with an eligible sire of equally blue bloodline.

Bred for the turf and not for toil, they ripen quickly into gentlewomen who idle away their days with coiffeur and couturier; browsing for baubles at Harrods and Woollands, London's most elegant emporiums; dining sedately on Scotch grouse at the Ritz; organizing weddings for affianced friends; fox-trotting formally at Hunt balls (where the debs temporarily replace the foxes as a quarry for sporting young squires); and serving lemonade and tea biscuits at charity bazaars on the rolled lawns of Belgravia—a parklike purlieu adjoining Buckingham Palace—occupied almost exclusively by the ancestral homes of Britain's squirearchy.

Down one social stratum—though their families often enjoy greater wealth than some of the aristocracy—the well-bred daughters of London's more prosperous professional men and prominent literati lead an equally decorous but far less decorative life in the 18th Century town houses of Chelsea, the city's ancient artists' quarter on the Thames Embankment; and in the 20th Century pent-houses of the fashionable northwestern suburbs. Unlike the socialite set, for whom advanced education has long been considered an unnecessary adornment, these cultivated creatures customarily blossom at 15 or 16 from private school-girls into precocious coeds at local universities and business colleges, where they accumulate credits for postgraduate, premarital employment in a variety of fields befitting their aptitudes, inclinations and economic echelon. Some qualify for coveted secretarial posts in the Foreign Office or Civil Service—both prime hunting grounds for up-and-coming career men with spotless back-grounds and promising prospects. A few incorrigible romantics even run the gantlet of government security for the privilege of toiling as typists and stenographers in Her Majesty's Secret Service, where they reconnoiter the premises—all too often in vain—for flesh-and-blood facsimiles of Ian Fleming's urbane undercover agent, the indestructible James Bond. Others adapt their aspirations of a painting career to the realities of free-lance commercial illustration or graphic design for a Blooms-bury ad agency. Still others pursue dreams of first-magnitude stardom—and occasionally fulfill them, after years of exacting tutelage—as premières danseuses with the Royal Ballet or operatic prima donnas at Covent Garden; as dramatic actresses on the sound stages of Britain's film industry, headquartered in non-Hollywoodian Ealing, a sedate western suburb; or in the thriving West End world of legitimate theater.

Nurturing similar ambitions, but lacking either the ability or the assiduity prerequisite to an acting career, a select few possess the aquiline features, statuesque bearing and gentle breeding which permit them to sublimate their histrionic hopes as mannequins about town in the smarter fashion magazines and Mayfair salons. Graduates in journalism and English Literature seek out slots as proof-readers and editorial researchers with old-line book publishers and such prestigious periodicals as Punch, Tatler, Lilli-put, Queen and Vogue Export, the London version of Gotham's high-fashion bible; or vie for tryouts as cub reporters with the unimpeachable London Times or, failing that, the Manchester Guardian or, as a last resort, one of the splashier dailies on Fleet Street. Those with a wanderlust for life abroad—plus a passion for liberation both from parental constraints and from the emotional temperance of London's polite society—take to the skies as stewardesses on B.O.A.C. and B.E.A. jets between Britain and America, Europe, Africa and the Orient. But the brainiest and most beauteous girls are drawn into the vortex of mass communications, where many attractively unbend the slightly stuffy decorum of the B.B.C. as script girls, production assistants, story editors and executive secretaries.

On a middle-income level, city-dwelling daughters are encouraged by their families to begin assuming responsibility for their own expenses in their mid-teens—with the natural consequence, in many cases, of a residential as well as an economic declaration of independence. And for the rest of the city's distaff middle class—a sizable contingent of émigré's who hie themselves to London in search of social and vocational self-enlargement—bachelor-girl digs are a necessary and pleasant premise of their new lives. Indigenous and imported, most settle happily for less quaint and costly quarters in the verdant environs of Hyde Park, where the mansions and town houses of once-patrician Kensington, Notting Hill and Earl's Court have been subdivided into studio apartments.

Though they lack the status, the sterling and the schooling to qualify for skilled jobs in the inner spheres of art, fashion, communications and government, London's middle-income misses can pluck their plums from an array of equally enjoyable, if somewhat less prestigious, positions in the vast and sprawling complex of London's far-flung business and professional worlds. Many work as cashiers and soft-sell salesgirls in the clamorous department stores, chic boutiques and oak-paneled haberdasheries of Piccadilly, Knightsbridge, Savile Row, Bond and Oxford streets. And a few rebels without causes or capital don ponchos, mukluks and ebony eye shadow, take up residence in the cold-water garrets and basements of Bohemian Soho, and proceed to plumb the mysteries of Zen, pot, Kerouac and action painting—or come to terms with society via part-time jobs as waitresses and folk singers in neighborhood espresso bars — a current craze. But most of London's middle-class girls toil as typists, stenographers, file clerks and switchboard operators for the ad agencies, public relations firms and manufacturers of northwestern London; or enlist in the vast clerical army which performs the paper work of the shipping companies, underwriters, barristers, bankers and brokers clustered on Cheapside, Lombard and Leadenhall streets, Britain's nerve center of high finance.

But for anatomically uncommon commoners—uncomplainingly inured to their modest lot, yet striving for self-betterment—the prospect of a career in modeling beckons most bewitchingly. Proffering the promise of a social-climbing shortcut to showbiz fame and fortune (a route successfully completed by such living-bra testimonials as Sabrina and June Wilkinson), modeling in London encompasses a number of novel British variations—and for some, a multitude of sins. Unencumbered by self-consciousness about the propriety of sharing their natural wonders with the world at large, many of these buxom Britons customarily debut in public—and in the altogether—on the pages of pocket-size nudist and figure photography magazines which festoon the newsstands of the worldly West End. Others, blessed with good business heads and bodies to match, own and operate fully equipped photo studios where amateur shutterbugs are invited (at a modest hourly rate) to focus their attention on prize-winning subjects: their genial hostesses with the mostest on display en déshabillé.

In another nude twist on the same theme, patrons of the anatomic and gastronomic arts can savor both in a spate (continued on page 142)Girls of London(continued from page 120) of Soho art studio-restaurants where the bill of fair is headed by appetizing à la carte confections. Hearkening to the sound of different drumbeaters, many of London's more prodigiously proportioned girls join the renowned Windmill Theater, an enduring bastion of old-fashioned burlesque which weathered the blitzkriegs of World War II without missing a single bump or grind.

Many of their bosom companions—thanks to a loophole in local blue laws which forbid damsels to disrobe on public premises—put their body English to good use as "interpretive dancers" in one of the 150 new theater clubs that have recently mushroomed throughout Soho: actually glorified stripterias with membership requirements, where card-carrying males (mercifully unaccosted by drink-hustling B-girls) can quaff a pint and glom the peelers' expertease in legally sanctioned privacy. Adhering at first to a strict policy of nonfraternization with the clientele, many of these girls soon begin consenting to lunch dates, then dinner invitations, then nightcaps and finally weekend holidays. Inevitably, some succumb to the temptation to augment their incomes with tangible tokens of esteem from their various admirers—even to the extent of establishing a sliding scale of donations according to the duration of delights desired (ranging ordinarily from 5 pounds for a hasty hay roll to 20 for an evening's unhurried view of erotica).

Several thousand of their confreres, according to a recent estimate, are fulltime prostitutes. Until recent years, the city's flourishing strumpet population thronged the streets so thickly that male guests in the West End's most venerable hostelries could seldom take a hundred paces from the porte cochere before being outflanked and overrun by a phalanx of filles de joie. With the passage of legislation that illegalized soliciting—but left the red light burning brightly for prostitution per se—London's massive volume of trollops has largely abandoned the boulevards and retreated resourcefully indoors—supported by saturation ad campaigns. Both boarding and bundling in the sedentary comfort of fashionable flats in Mayfair, Soho, Bayswater, Knightsbridge and Piccadilly, many employ an effective point-of-sale approach with neatly stenciled first-nameplates posted at their street doors; and a few utilize the selective-market method of supplying their telephone numbers to a limited list of potential accounts in the proper economic bracket. But most, endorsing standard direct-male techniques, systematically blanket the bulletin boards of neighborhood pubs, tobacconists, bookstalls and news dealers with small display cards listing their correct numbers, improbable names, impossible statistics and purported proclivities—under such unlikely headings as "Ballroom, Instruction," "Individual French Tuition," "Experienced Governess," "Leather Goods and Raincoats," and most intriguingly. "Strict Discipline"—administered by such taskmistresses as "Miss Birch." "Miss Whiplash" and "the Marquise de Sade." Until about two years ago, these same sales pitches, hypoed with pinup photos, were all available to the prowling male in The Ladies' Directory, a unique index of unorthodoxies for every known erotic taste—until the authorities took its intrepid editor into custody, confiscated all copies, and placed love for sale back on a free-lance basis, where it has since thrived lustily.

Most discriminating travelers, however, prefer the challenge of the chase—which the infinitely varied girls of London manage to make a merry one indeed, though the final capture is seldom in doubt. It can end in bower or bracken, but it often begins amid the lakes and lanes of London's rolling parklands—once private game preserves echoing to the horns and tallyhos of crimson-coated squires. Though the boars and foxes have long since left in search of less populous pastures, these verdant heaths and commons—larger in total acreage than the land occupied by all the buildings in Manhattan—remain prime hunting grounds for visiting or indigenous males in search of brief encounters. Seeking sanctuary from their city of stone, London's loveliest can be found idylling everywhere on its green oases—from the tidy bridle paths and cricket fields of Blackheath to the neonspangled fun fairs and pleasure gardens of Battersea Park. With a modicum of horsemanship, the pelf-assured outdoor man about Londontown can take his pick of the crop along Hyde Park's Rotten Row—an elegantly equestrian Fifth Avenue in the heart of London—where tweedy, jodhpurred gentlewomen are wont to canter and banter on Sunday afternoons. Strolling along the nearby banks of the Serpentine, a lagoonlike lake well stocked with schools of distaff dippers, he may be inspired to take the plunge in a less patrician social swim. Or he can find a place in the summer sun of Regent's Park or Hampstead Heath, lounging on the greensward beside a pretty picnicker who, after the introductory amenities, may spend the afternoon with him and a later interlude in one of the Lucullan temples of the night-swinging West End.

To instill the proper spree de corps for their sortie into nocturnal London—certainly among the best of all possible whirls—he may suggest a stop-off at one of the timbered grogshops which dot the winding side lanes of literary London. Duly fortified with a Pimm's Cup or a foaming tankard, they'll be set to celebrate their feteful meeting with a first-chair feast—perhaps in the plush and paneled confines of Rule's on historic Maiden Lane, where the hearty likes of bully beef, jugged hare and kidney pie have been served in the grand Edwardian manner since 1798. If her bent is less Britannic, she may suggest a spot in nearby Soho—the city's undisputed epicenter of exotic pleasures, gustatory and otherwise. Eschewing this nonsectarian milieu—except for an occasional slumming expedition—the socialite will expect her solvent suitor to surround her with bone china, chafing dishes and hovering sommeliers at such Continental tables prestigieuses as the Chez Parks, Mirabelle and Caprice.

After dinner they may want to visit the Old Vic, just across the Thames, or sample the extravagant gifts of Brendan, Bertolt, Sean and Shelagh. Couples craving the sound of music can hearken to Handel and Purcell as performed by one of London's five symphony orchestras; pay homage to Verdi and Wagner from a red-velvet box at the Royal Opera House; flow gently down the Third Stream with orbiting jazzmen at Ronnie Scott's or the Downbeat Club; or dig the decibels of the Johnny Dankworth Band at the Marquee on Oxford Street.

Exponents of the dance can run the gamut from Scheherazade at the Royal Ballet to well-spiced Salomes of fewer veils at Raymond's Revuebar in Soho. And the stag in search of syncopation can step lively into such teÈpsichorean tabernacles as the Astoria, Lyceum and Hammersmith Palais—stadium-sized, twinkly mirrored Wurlitzer-Versailles with vast dance floors girdley by tiny tables at which the spectator can sip a Scotch, survey the saturnalia, and tap the Twister of his choice from among a waiting army of teenage girls.

To ensure an uninterrupted flow of cheer after the city's pubs batten their hatches at 11:30, the celebrant and his spa-ing partner have but to try one of the posh private clubs which dominate the late-hour social scene. With a libational curfew of 2:30—and membership restrictions which melt magically on presentation of an American passport and a nominal emolument—these keyclubby cabarets offer divertisements ranging from sumptuous supping and sedate dancing to a hungry-i-ful of the latest hip Sahliloquizers.

If they've still got energy—and assets—to burn after all this merrymaking, the guy and his girl may stop off to seek their fortune in one of the gambling casinos which wheel and deal till dawn for the indoor sportsmen.

If her beau succeeds in arousing her gamboling instincts as well, she'll probably be no less game to take a chance on love—even if the odds are stacked against the probability of formalizing such Anglo-American relations. For beneath her city-bred veneer of studied reserve, the London girl is a creature of active and unabashed appetites, disarmingly direct in acknowledging her attractions. Liberated long ago from the legacy of Victorian mores—with their attendant emphasis on the importance of premarital virginity, technical and otherwise—she candidly prefers being chased to being chaste. Yet far from espousing the amoralities of hedonism in rebellious reaction, she makes of sex neither fetish nor phobia, accepting her impulses as a natural need and succumbing to them without self-consciousness. As a bedfellow, she may lack the ardent abandon of the Italian, the voluptuous inventiveness of the Japanese, and the erotic artistry of the French, but the English inamorata indulges her urges—and her paramour—with an enthusiasm and spontaneity which may come as a refreshing revelation to the wayfaring male.

Having learned early—usually at about 16 or 17, when the majority of misses from London's middle and upper classes emerges into the world of men from the chrysalis of all-girl boarding schools—that the joys of burgeoning womanhood need not be savored solely on the connubial couch, the London bachelor girl is seldom in a hurry to acquire the spouse, house and small fry so assiduously sought after by her American counterparts. Luxuriating in this climate of social independence, she's free to savor the satisfactions of a limited liaison—punting on the Thames, weekends on the beach at Brighton, soccer games at Wembley Stadium, clubhouse seats for the Grand National, intimate dinners à deux in her London flat—without a trace of unspoken pressure for commitment. And when her swain's sojourn is at an end, she'll greet it not with unseemly scenes and strings, but with shared regret and affectionate equanimity, almost always content to love in the present—which, in a metropolis prodigal with pleasures to enrich her everyday existence, is more than its own reward.