Early days at London Embassy

The layers of civility, gradations of social standing, wildly complex and deep-running political life, wonderful music and theatre, stunning public and private collections of silver, paintings, porcelain, furniture, books, everything that almost a thousand years of history could produce were scattered everywhere. Up near Oxford, in Newbridge, at The Rose Revived Inn, a dozen dining tables set with white linen and sparkling silver, fresh flowers, stood on the grassy banks a dozen feet from the smooth flowing Isis river. The garden was about four hundred feet deep and a very long block, long, with great stands of enormous trees, bushes shielding the garden from vulgar gaze, beds of roses, grassy clearings for the children, benches in the shade or sun, graveled paths.