Word: cygnet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Dine by Candlelight. A Cygnet's life is ascetic: she may not smoke, wear trousers or enter a nightclub, and her few, heavily supervised dates are with escorts certified by her family. At the end of a gruelingly elegant day, Cygnets must dress ("looking as if they have washed too") to dine by candlelight at small tables rich with silver. Examinations test the sheen of the polish; this week the girls will be grilled on "table manners" or "arrangements and care of flowers as an indoor decoration," and "Why is it important for a magazine story to have...
...long, hardly conventional weekend from college, the Aga Khan, Harvard senior, flew to London, stopped at The Cygnet's House finishing school to call for 17-year-old Sylvia Casablancas, daughter of a Mexican businessman. Driving on to Woburn Abbey, the Aga and his possible Begum quietly visited his aunt, the Duchess of Bedford...
...crestfallen mourners were the battalion of aristocratic British gentlewomen in reduced circumstances who for years have eked out their meager pensions by sponsoring (for fees running as high as ?1,000) the daughters of better-heeled but less nobly born parents. Said Mrs. Rennie O'Mahony, headmistress of Cygnet House, which accepts a fee to train prospective debutantes in the niceties of curtsies and court behavior: "My little fledglings are quite excited that they will be the last to be anointed. But I am very...