But what happens to the luminous beauties photographed with magnificent backdrops of country estates, favourite Labradors or horses, for the frontispiece of Country Life? Their portraits adorn the first editorial page of the magazine, with a brief description about their impending engagement or marriage to an equally well-connected young man, or, increasingly, with a snapshot of their academic achievements and career or business plans as a discreet curriculum vitae.
A new BBC 2 documentary, High Society Brides, takes a look at fifty years of girls in pearls and chronicles the fortunes of five women, who have featured as girls in pearls in Country Life. The programme reveals how eligible men, family fortunes and country estates do not necessarily make for happy ever after.
Mark Hedges, editor of Country Life, said: “The majority of girls still want to marry and live a happy life and this explains the enduring appeal of becoming one of the girls in pearls. The frontispiece has always had tremendous social cachet and our readers love it. The programme is a fascinating glimpse at the complex, sometimes unhappy lives that unfolded in the years that followed the glamorous society portrait in Country Life.”
Sally Cochrane appeared in Country Life in 1970 “with the expectation to find a good husband and get married” and after being “sent off to Lucy Clayton to be tidied up and taught how to get in and out of a sports car without showing my knickers.” She married a man who appeared to have all the right attributes but his alcoholism wrecked the marriage. Arabella Romilly, daughter of the Marchioness of Ailesbury, appeared in Country Life in January 1990, married a lawyer and then the marriage hit the rocks. She is now living in a small cottage and hoping to find Mr Right through online dating and friends’ introductions.
Society beauty Henrietta Tiarks was one of the leading debutantes of her day, the daughter of a banker and an actress, who appeared in Country Life in October 1960, “the girls for sale page” as she described it, and subsequently married the Marquess of Tavistock, later to inherit the title of the 14th Duke of Bedford. The Duchess of Bedford talks candidly about how her role of wife was to help run Woburn Abbey, the stately home. “A wife’s role is to support her husband,” she says and recalls the vast responsibilities involved in running the estate and house that “never felt like home and, of course, it wasn’t my home.” Their son, Andrew, 15th Duke of Bedford, now runs the estate following the death of his father in 2003.
Conversely,The Hon Catherine Sackville-West grew up at Knole, the family seat in Sevenoaks, Kent,one of the largest stately homes in England, and appeared in Country Life in August 1980 and had a short-lived marriage to someone who was impressed by her family home and status. She has left her privileged lifestyle and pursued a career in opera casting, lives in a modest house in West London and has no desire to return to her childhood home.
Embodying 2010 style, Polly Sherrard features in the programme after appearing in the girls in pearls page in May this year, photographed wrapped in a fur rug on a Cornish beach. She was filmed preparing for her forthcoming wedding and announcing that she would not agree to obey in her marriage vows.
High Society Brides will be shown on BBC2 at 9pm on 20 October.
