One kind of eveningGuests 18+
A companion for the whole trip, not the evening at the end of it
Travel is the arrangement that needs the most notice and repays it the most. A companion who is with you for three days abroad is a different proposition entirely from one who arrives at eight and is gone by midnight, and the two are neither planned nor quoted the same way.
Two days or longer is quoted as a single sum once Delphine has your dates, your destination and the shape of the days. No hourly figure applies once you have left London, which is why the ladder at rates stops at the ten hour night.
Suited to it
Companions for away from london
Glamour and lifestyle photography · faces softened · no nudity
02
What Delphine needs before she can quote
The cities. The dates, including the return. Whether the days belong to you or to a company. And roughly how much of them you expect her to be present for, since a trip where you are working until seven each evening is a different sum from one where you are not. One figure comes back covering the whole of it, and it does not move afterwards.
03
Flights, rooms and the practical part
The flights and the room are yours to book, under your own name, exactly as they would be for any other invited guest. She travels as you have booked it and passes no remark either way. A single room with two beds is perfectly normal and several of the circle prefer it.
Her passport is her own affair and it is current. Before anything is booked she confirms that the destination presents her with no difficulty, because a companion turned back at a border is nobody's idea of a holiday.
04
The first day and the last
Most trips begin at the airport, where she meets you in the terminal rather than at your door, since a London address adds nothing to a morning flight. The first day is kept quiet on purpose: the journey, the room, a walk to find the nearest decent coffee, and dinner somewhere modest enough that nobody feels obliged to perform. The last morning is just as simple. She flies home on the ticket you booked for her, which need not be on your flight, and Delphine hears from her once she has landed.
05
How the days actually go
Better than most people expect, because the good company lives in the gaps rather than in the dinners. Breakfast taken slowly. An afternoon in a museum neither of you had planned on. A long silence in a car that nobody feels obliged to fill. A woman who travels well is one who reads a day correctly and understands precisely when not to speak.
06
Trips that suit a companion
A conference abroad with a dinner at the end of each day is the commonest, and the one where good company matters most by the third evening. A long weekend in a city you already know is another, since she brings a fresh eye to museums and restaurants you have long since stopped noticing. Journeys inside Britain are arranged in exactly the same way, whether that means a race meeting or a few days at a house with a garden.
07
The names who travel
Karolina walks a gallery at half the speed of everybody else and will find the one thing in a strange city worth standing in front of. Vanessa has a posture that never tightens and is comfortable wherever she is put. Samanta looks at buildings the way other people look at weather. Margo is well travelled and entirely unsentimental about it. Their pages are in the Salon.
08
London first, if you have not met
Delphine will not send anybody abroad with a guest she has never arranged an evening for, and she says so plainly rather than hedging around it. A dinner in Mayfair or an evening in Knightsbridge beforehand is not a formality but good sense on both sides, and it costs one evening rather than one trip to find out whether three days together would work.
09
When a trip falls away
Once flights stand in your name they are your affair and this house has no part in them. Where a trip is called off with a week or more in hand, nothing whatever is owed here. Nearer than that, Delphine will tell you at the time what stands, because a week held for one guest is a week nobody else could book.
Letters
Two letters on this
Before you write
Questions on this appointment
How much notice does a trip need?
A fortnight is comfortable for anything with a flight in it, and a week is usually workable. The destination, the dates and the return are what Delphine needs first; the rest can follow.
Does she need a room of her own?
Several of the circle prefer one and will say so plainly, and the rest are content either way. Tell Delphine what you have booked and she will propose somebody for whom it suits.
Can she join partway through, or leave early?
Yes. She travels on a ticket in her own name, booked by you, on whichever day the plan needs her, and the quote reflects only the days she is with you.
What does the sum cover?
Her time and her company for the days agreed, and nothing further. Flights, rooms and meals are yours to arrange, as they would be for any guest you invited to travel with you. The sum itself is handed to her in person on the first day.
Also taken
Other appointments
One message is enough
Send the district and the hour
Write where you are and when you would like her. A name and an arrival window come back, and the evening is arranged from there.
Guests are 18+ without exception. A fee is for time and companionship only, and the whole tariff is on the rates page.