A GUINEA A TIME.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVIII, Issue 200, 24 August 1937, Page 12

A GUINEA A TIME.

POSERS IN ETIQUETTE. j A SOCIETY ADVISER. 1 (Special.—By Air Mail.) , LONDON, August 7. Many of the Dominion and colonial debutantes, who played such a prominent part in the Coronation season which has just ended in London, owe their success to the discreet services of "society advisers" and agents. Some secrets of the season were revealed this week by one of the best known of these intermediaries, Mrs. Horace Farquharson. She runs a regular office and spends much of her time sitting at the end of the telephone answering the urgent calls of young society women and others anxious to avoid social blunders. Since March hundreds of women have passed through her motherly hands on the way to social success. When not answering inquiries at a guinea a time, Mrs. Farquharson organises important wedding receptions and balls, estimated at about a guinea a head, and introduces would-be debutantes to impoverished peeresses willing to cli a per one them through the London season. This may cost the young girl's father as much as £4000, but for the girl it moans Eanelagh, Ascot, Wimbledon, Lord's, four months of first nights and parties, and possibly presentation at Court. '"This year_'s London season has been wonderful for Dominions girls, who have had an entree into society as never before," said Mrs. Farquharson. "But they have needed hours of tuition to prepare them for the season. With the best will in the world, they find it difficult to remember all our social taboos. Mothers of colonial debutantes have been telephoning me to ask what their daughters should do with cherry stones and asparagus. When they entertain they find the rules for social precedence difficult to understand."