In a row of elegant houses along London's Pont Street, one door remains unlocked far into the night. Every once in a while, a chic miss walks in, nods to the matron sitting in the hall, then hurries up to bed. To Londoners, these girls are known as Monkeys—members of what is commonly called the Monkey Club. But such titles are misleading: the girls happen to be students at the most famous and fashionable finishing school in Britain.
By all the laws of economics, the Club of the Three Wise Monkeys should be on its uppers these days. Few families can still afford such expensive education—330 guineas a year ($970). But for British finishing schools, the postwar currency laws have worked wonders by all but stopping the annual export of debutantes to the once-popular Continental schools. Last week the Monkey Club could honestly boast that business is booming.
Golden Mean. Just 30 years have passed since Miss Marian Ellison, a onetime free-lance tutor to girls, got the idea for her club. "I had always thought," says she, "that there must be some mean between the bluestockings at the universities and the empty-headed young things of the season." The Ellison mean soon proved to be golden. By 1939 the club had three Pont Street houses, a country branch, and a roster of parents with such proud names as Major John Spencer-Churchill, Lord Wavell, and Sir Francis McClean.
Today's 60 Monkeys live much as they always have. Each maintains her own flat in the Pont Street houses, and each is free to follow her own social schedule. She may cook her own meals if she likes, or she may dress in evening clothes and be served in the club dining hall by butlers and maids. But when she goes out at night, she must always have a chaperone—unless Miss Ellison decrees otherwise.
During the day, of course, there is school work to be done, for it is not every Monkey who is preparing herself only for "the season." Some will spend a year or two as secretaries or receptionists; many are out for careers; almost all want a smattering of culture. So in addition to the social graces, the club offers French, homemaking and stenography. If a girl is particularly ambitious, she may—unless Miss Ellison rules to the contrary—take interior decorating, philosophy, dressmaking, mathematics, art, Latin. She will also get such extracurricular broadening as a visit to Fleet Street, a day at the Derby, a tour of a factory, watching the ceremony of Trooping the Color. She may also sell programs at charity bazaars, learn to care for her skin, study the art of conversation.
Layered Crust. Though all Monkeys are definitely uppercrust, the crust seems to come in layers. One alumna explains of the Pont Street houses: "We used to call them by their generic names. One was the Commercial House, where all the big-business daughters went. Then there was the Sporting House, where all the girls' fathers owned race horses. Finally, there was the Indian Colonels House, full of rather pale girls who had been brought up in foreign climes."