The Diary: The Gentleman’s Journal Summer Party at Mark’s Club

You know a party's good when people start pocketing the ashtrays. And by the end of the Gentleman's Journal Summer Party at Mark's Club on Tuesday night there was scarcely a single branded cendrier left behind. Spared from the oppressive heatwave of previous weeks, the conditions in the Charles Street club were pretty much perfect: balmy with a chance of blinis. Guests were met, once up that grand sweeping staircase, by a barrage of cold, smoky mezcal margaritas, while out on the expansive terrace the smoke was provided by a small forest of cigars, acquired, no doubt, from the club's impressive humidors. (They say the Olympic flame is never extinguished, its fire simply passed from one baton to the next. Guests on Tuesday night appeared to embody a similar philosophy.) It would not be a summer party of any merit, of course, without a smattering of live saxophone, and by the time things were in full swing — aided heartily, one should say, by the excellent work of Billecart-Salmon, Domaine Ott, Monte Carlo Beer, Sipsmith, Rosaluna and Three Cents — there was hardly a dry eye, or un-danced-upon banquette, in the house. Tuesdays are the new Fridays, it seems, and silly season is something to take very seriously indeed.

Guests included Mathias le Fèvre, Sam Way, Guy Sangster, Jack Carlson, Jemima Cadbury, Joe Kennedy, Kydd Boyle, Harrison Osterfield and Lady Eliza Manners