On Saturday the Societe des Lumieres held our inaugural event: a Bastille Day picnic. It was beyond lovely! We gathered at a historic cemetary in Oakland (the Mountain View cemetary in Piedmont) — or the grounds of my chateau, if you will. Myself (the Comtesse de La Valliere), Sarah (Lady Cecily Fiennes-Clinton), and Trystan (Lady Mourdaunt) arrived early; my husband Michael (the manservant) helped us set up and then stayed to take a bazillion pictures with his fancy new camera. We were joined a few hours later by other members of the group (the Marquise de Montesson, Madame de La Forte and the Raja of Kafiristan, Miss Laurie and Mrs. Morton, and the Comtesse d’Hivernage and Monsieur Chamfort), so there’s only a few pictures of them (the manservant only stayed for an hour or so).
We had champagne cocktails, bread and cheese, tomatoes and fresh basil, and truffles and a fruit galette. We gossiped, debated whether we should travel to India to purchase cotton print fabric, read a scene from The School for Scandal, took turns about the park, and called “BONJOUR!” in silly French accents whenever peasants wandered by. All in all, fabulous!
Et voila: the sketches done very very quickly by my Monsieur Fleming, the very talented portrait artist. AND because we are very silly, and because we are sheep and various LiveJournal costumers have started this, we took some videos (mine and Sarah’s).