High life
Improving with age
Taki
There was one guest — an academic I believe — who left early. He was heard to mutter something about being snubbed by Princess Michael of Kent, an obvious lie as the princess was dining with Taki of all people. (Plus a few others.) The irony is that the last time the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort gave a ball at Badminton back in 1973, give or take a year, it was also for their daughter Anne, but I didn't enjoy myself half as much. It's obvious that like a good wine, I'm improving as a ball-goer with age. I guess Proust was right when he said that verbalists, rather than doers, advance in the pecking order at parties, as back then I was a rather shy young man whom no one paid any attention to, while this time I noticed being noticed by some even while having a rest underneath the dining-room table.
The occasion for the ball was Anne Somerset's wedding to Matthew Carr, which took place in the small 17th-century church located rather conveniently in the courtyard of the house. And what a lovely wedding it was. The church is lined with memorial plaques of various Somerset family members, is light and airy and with wonderful acoustics. It was a brief and touching ceremony in intimate surround- ings. Everything that grand weddings nowadays ain't. What I particularly like about Church of England weddings is that they're all business, i.e. they get on with the business of getting people hitched, unlike the Greek Orthodox ones which last as long as three hours.
Because of Anne's wedding I had the earliest start since Pentonville. My friend of 31 years, Mickey Suffolk, Earl of Suffolk and Berkshire to the rest of you Brits, had invited me to stay at Charlton Park, his family house since the days of another Elizabeth Regina. The last time I had stayed with Mickey he was a bachelor and we managed to get into some trouble when someone had the bright idea of raiding a nearby house and switching all the furniture around. But before we began to move things around we ran into the master of the house furiously copulating with of all people his own wife. He wasn't best pleased to find five intruders in his bedroom — I remember Mickey was even commenting on the performance — and ushered us out by waving his shotgun towards us.
This time things were far more civilised. Linda Suffolk is as nice as she is hospitable, although I'm sure the Kents might think she's too hospitable once they realised who they were dining with. But everything was hunky-dory until ball time and then needless to say — things began to blur at the edges. (Suffolk had served a white Château Margaux that Jeff Bernard would give up vodka for, and the red was just as good. The problem is that such wines tend to make one drink more, and, well, you know the rest.) But I do remember stand- ing and talking to people like Jacob Roth- schild (someone came up and commented rather rudely that one can tell a successful ball when people like Jacob speak to people like Taki), Ernst of Hanover, Peter Saunders (I once tried to buy his daughter from him but he refused), Jonathan Guin- ness, plus another ten or 15 of that species, the new editor of Tatler, the ex-Sunday Telegraph social columnist, my Tuscan host Lord Lambton, and the girl I've had an eye on for a long time, Sophia Murphy, who got so bored with my psychobabble she left almost as early as the academic.
And speaking of academics, the father of the groom, Sir Raymond Carr, was cor- nered by yours truly and people tell me the old boy will never be the same again. Apparently I wanted to know what the meaning of life is, but he understood that I was asking him for the definition of fore- play, so he answered, '30 minutes of begging'.
Previous page
