Lux Lotus

Postcard From Paris

Have only arrived a few minutes ago, chilled champagne waiting a very pleasant touch. Just got an ecstatic email from my sister noting that Claridge's is the subject of a ten-page spread in Town & Country, how nice that we've been. And then another message that made me miss London even more: 'I only wish I had photographed you descending those stairs, glittering darkly ...' Sigh. Off to the marché, and the fromagerie, and the chocolaterie, for life's essentials, and out with my dear Lauren Elkin tonight.

Postcard From London

The best last night: dinner, then cigars on the library terrace with some gentlemen ('do be careful on the terrace,' 'why? it's not any more dangerous than climbing on the roof' [incredulous stares, followed by uproarious laughter]), swaddled in fur, and port so rare it was an honor when I spilled it on my dress, '50s Givenchy and all the rage when I reappeared downstairs to promise I'll be back for an event in April...there's no where else I'd rather be...

Letter From London, No. 7

I wasn't planning on writing again, until I got a note from one of my nearest and dearest in New York, Madame X, requesting more dispatches. I had written her last night, a few lines about various topics and was stunned not to have a reply this morning, but as it turns out she wrote later to say, ' I was thinking of you last night -- I must've conjured you up! -- because it was, of course, Preview Night at the Winter Antiques Show.' While she's gone all her life, the year I accompanied her was apparently particularly memorable; at one point we ran past antiquities and hid among some carpets, in stilettos, with toffee-sticky fingers.

It's my last night in London and I feel plainly bereft. I've been happier here than I remember being in years. It does have something to do with not being on the clock (even though I've done some work), although I would say it's something more, indefinable, a distinct difference from life in New York, where I often feel theatrically overdressed and underwhelmed, and bored out of my mind. That's why I work so much. Just to pass the time. Here everything is new and unknown and there are so many rules I am breaking that I hardly have time to learn them all before it's time to dress for another meal. And everything is suitably grand.

Last night I had dinner with friends, charming writers who have been together twenty-five years and one casual remark truly struck me: the quality that distinguishes love that lasts forever, versus infatuation... who knows what it is, or why? I loved that so much. There is so much mystery in life... another world beyond language, or even what we're capable of comprehending. And yet somehow, it works in the ways that it needs to, most of the time. For me, it illustrates the importance of deftly pulling back from the digital whorl and revelling in more truly human interaction.

Today I went on a stroll around Mayfair, up along the parks and over towards Marble Arch and across Grosvenor Square, genteel and refined, and then Marylebone High Street, where I did a little shopping at Apartment C, a locale 'about hanging out in your knickers, drinking gin out of a teacup, and reading the Last Tango in Paris out loud.' Ms. Lola is Beauty came by the club for lunch and we retired to the library, sipping tea and nibbling biscuits and giggling while whispering crucial observations by the fire.

Paris in the morning. But, first: tonight. If you need me, I'll probably be enjoying my pretty view of the former home of the Duke of Marlborough; with a bow, it all comes back to Consuelo.

Postcard From London

Spent my afternoon just as you assumed I would: curled up by a roaring fire, with a tray piled high with silver and porcelain, tea, biscuits and cucumber sandwiches, thumbing through Debrett's.

Letter From London, No. 6

Went to the City, which is what the financial district is called, to have lunch with some friends (charming Brits I met in the Pacific Northwest). Social calls are the best way to experience a place; how else would you learn that all swans belong to the Queen? Or that it's always a White Christmas in the Highlands? And that, I, personally, must go to Monaco. The man who suggested it has only been by jet to Nice and then helicopter into town during the Grand Prix, but he was sure that there are other ways and other times of year to visit. I entertained them with my story of how I was whisked into the kitchen for a grand tour last night. My companion at the time, everyone's favorite venture capitalist, was, as ever, amused, if, characteristically, unflappably so. I loved it.

Postcard TO London (Received, Mayfair 3pm)

'Can't stand it. Who took you out to Claridge's? Who's taking you to Gordon Ramsay?'

Postcard From London

Off to Clerkenwell to meet the editor of PORT, 'the new intelligent style magazine for men,' launching this spring. Then I shall find some way to while away the hours, swanning about in my white faux fur hat, seemingly, precariously, just the right side of over-the-top, quoting Nabokov's Speak, Memory... 'As a company of traveling players carry with them everywhere, while they still remember their lines, a windy heath, a misty castle, an enchanted island, so she had with her all that her soul had stored.' Later on: Gordon Ramsay at Claridge's, 8 o'clock, table for two.  

Letter From London, No. 5

Tea and a scone at Rose Bakery in Dover Street Market, bigger than the one in Tokyo with more or less the same dazzling assemblage. The only thing that truly tempted me was an enormous pearl ring, 595 pounds, an echo of the one in The Bolter, although what's the point of acquisition if you don't, I think the expression was, 'wheedle it... as only I could do...' Meeting at the Tate Britain this afternoon, then dinner at Le Caprice. Learned a new expression from the Telegraph today: jeunesse dorée, French, for 'gilded youth.' Sort of like the man, a perfect stranger, who otherwise coolly remarked, as I crossed the street this morning, 'you're a very lucky lady, with that face.' Indeed.

Postcard From London

Whiled away a deeply lovely evening with a man I hadn't seen in four years, who reminded me that, the last time we went out, the tab was more than four hundred dollars. Ever the diplomat, and in the interest of American-British relations, I suggested the bar at Claridge's tonight, to, you know, give his wallet a break.

Postcard From London

A London cab is well worth the expense to travel in style on a rainy winter day, as night falls swiftly, with a driver who says: When you find love, I hope it lasts forever.