LONDON LUXURY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13455, 6 April 1907, Page 5 (Supplement)

LONDON LUXURY.

ONE SCENT

li i.s midday. and sonic catiiagcs and motorbroughams draw up ju Savov Court. The .doors swing open silently, and through thorn into a great hall of cream and gold and scarlet pass women in gowns as beautiful as those worn by (he lovely Indies ot musical comedy (mine of them are tne same [gowns with the same ladies inside them), and men whoso blue blood oozes out of them, it »c may use a metaphor- at. every pore. j They are mostly young men, cleanshaven, or with little brown moustaches, which sometimes match their boots. .Sometimes, however, the moustaches are black and the boots of patent leather. Thev wear tight-fitting top-coats and other accessories which are perfectly correct according to the latest Blue-Book of M.ivfair. So they pass through the hall across * |mile us i' seems, of ml. carpeting, to the great room beyond, which is a harmony of red, white and gold and delicate green, with a soft, sunshine of lamps upon the little snow-white tablets. A string band is playing to a. tinkling accompaniment of plates and glasses, and the subdued ripple of women's laughter. It is it pleasant scene, not without beauty and a moral. ANOTHER SCFXE. j It is eleven o'clock at night, and in the great room downstairs the tallies are crowded with people supping after the thcatie, the women's white gowns and cream shoulders, the men's black clothes and white brestplute, giving a more pictorial effect to the saloon of scarlet and gold. In the hall and elsewhere page-boys are murmuring "344," "209." "136"' in a dreamy way. and sometimes finding the number personified by a woman who wears a tiara which does not look like paste, though you never can fell. Upstairs in the eight floors which are built round the quadrangle, with corridors that (seem endless, there i.s silence, but not less luxury. On each of the corridors there are dainty suppers being eaten in rooms as Iveautiful in miniature as those downstairs. A Russian rand Duke is entertaining a friend in his private suite, where the very bath-room is a picture in white marble. An Italian count is, we hope, saying his prayers before a bed with a coverlet beautifully embroidered, and then dreams of innocence in a roseate room, or one of mauve, or of pale gold. In each of these four hundred bedroooms, where those who live with luxury do not always sleep quite soundly, there arc bells and telephones by which almost anything in the world, from a gramophone to a tooth-pick, from a doctor to a hairdresser, may be ordered and obtained in the twinkling of an eye.