Bookings by Occasion · Overnight companionship
The nightingale hours: an overnight in W1 from late supper to the breakfast tray
A song from 1940 put a nightingale in Berkeley Square, and Mayfair has smiled about it ever since, because nobody has reliably heard one there. The hours the song describes are real, though: the square after one in the morning, the traffic gone, the plane trees black against the lamps, the clubs letting out their last members. An overnight with the Society belongs to those hours. Ten of them, one companion, £3,000.
Hour for hour it is the gentlest figure on the rates page, and deliberately so. A night is something the Society prefers not to measure too closely.
At 20:00
The occasion
Arranged around the evening you describe, never around a menu of extras.
Who suits Overnights by the square
4 companions Cressida would propose first for an evening like this. Everyone else on the roster may be asked as well.
Evening first, then the night
Most overnights have two halves. The first is spent out: a drink, a dinner, perhaps a last glass at the bar of your hotel. The second belongs to the room, with a supper tray if dinner was light, a film if the conversation allows, and sleep eventually, which some guests are surprised to find is part of it. Her ten hours are counted from the moment she walks in, and a slow dinner never shortens breakfast.
The order is yours to decide. A guest coming off a banquet at Grosvenor House might begin at eleven and keep her company until nine; another might want the whole evening out and a lazy morning after it. Tell Cressida the hour, and the ten hours run from there.
Settled the day before
The Society asks for an overnight to be agreed the day before where possible. The reason is practical rather than ceremonial: a companion who knows by noon that she will be out until morning can clear her own calendar, and the one you had in mind is far more likely to be free. Late requests are not refused. Cressida simply tells you honestly which names can still say yes.
Park Lane, with the curtains open
Some of the best overnights the Society arranges are spent above Hyde Park. The rooms at the Four Seasons and the park-facing floors of The Dorchester and the London Hilton on Park Lane look out over the trees, and at two in the morning the only lights moving are the night buses on the Lane. Guests who prefer a house to a hotel are just as welcome anywhere in Mayfair, and the address is checked once, exactly as for a shorter call.
The quiet hours
The small hours are the least planned part of the night and often the most remembered: a conversation that wanders from films to families, the city silent beyond the glass, a pot of tea at three because neither of you is sleepy yet. Your companion is good company awake and undemanding company asleep, and nobody sets an alarm except for breakfast.
Companions for the small hours
Past two o'clock, what counts is an even temper and a sense of humour, in that order. Milena takes evenings and overnights at short notice, and her directness makes a first night unexpectedly easy. Patricia likes an unhurried night booked a day or two ahead and is the kind of company that makes breakfast worth staying for. Nora likes to know a day ahead and is especially good on a guest's first night in London. Stacy is relaxed about late requests and has a story for every hour after midnight. Milena, Patricia and Stacy are three of the statuesque companions on the roster.
Leaving at breakfast
The morning is handled as quietly as the arrival. Breakfast comes up on a tray, or is eaten downstairs in the hotel dining room if you are happy to be seen at breakfast together, and a walk across the park towards the Serpentine clears the head better than a second pot of coffee. She leaves at the minute agreed, as any guest leaves after breakfast, and the doorman sees exactly that.
The After Dark Notes point you to restaurants near Annabel's, a few steps from the square where the nightingale sang, and make the case for the three hour dinner as the right opening to a long night.
Overnights by the square, asked
Certainly. Plenty of overnights never leave the building: a drink in the bar, supper in the room, and the rest of the night as you please. The ten hours and the £3,000 are the same either way.
Yes. As far as the Society is concerned a private residence is no different from a hotel, provided it sits inside Zones 1 and 2, and Cressida checks the address once, in writing. Beyond Zone 2, the return cab is added to the figure.
Say so at the outset. Two consecutive nights with the same companion are easier to arrange together than one after the other, and anything that spans a weekend is quoted under weekends and the Season.
Only the hotel, the name and number of the room, and a word on whether dinner is out or in, so that she knows what to wear for the evening and what to bring for the morning.
Ten hours is the overnight. For a late evening that ends before dawn, three hours at £1,500 or a four hour booking at £1,800 may suit better, and Cressida will say which fits the hour you have in mind.
Notes for the occasion
- 5 min readThe dinner date at VIP level: every decision taken before the first glassAt the top of the market a dinner date is not bigger, only lighter. The table, the brief, the bill and the car are settled beforehand, so the evening itself asks nothing of you.
- 5 min readThe second venue: leaving after the main course, on purposeLeave the restaurant after the main course and take pudding and a last glass somewhere with deeper chairs. Where to go in W1, what to order, and how to leave without breaking the spell.
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Overnights by the square, arranged
Tell Cressida what the occasion is, what to wear and when it begins. She proposes companions who suit it and settles the rest in one thread.