A Private Chronology
The House has kept, since 1892, a single ledger of consequential events. What follows is drawn from it, in the language of its authors.
The Charter of MDCCCXCII
“Let there be, for as long as these Houses stand, no fewer than four and no more than five, each of no more than twenty-four apartments; and let the standard within them be, in perpetuity, that of the household in which the guest was born.”
The four founding families signed the charter in the drawing room of Le Palais on the fourteenth of March. The document was placed in the Bureau safe on the fifteenth. It has been consulted eleven times since. It has never been amended.
One Hundred and Thirty-Two Years
- MDCCCXCIIAnno 1892The Founding Charter
Signed at 14 Place Vendôme by four private families. Its opening article — that no House shall exceed twenty-four apartments — remains unrevised.
- MCMIVAnno 1904The Wetherby, London
The second House, taken into the register under the reign of Edward VII. Received the first royal warrant in 1907.
- MCMXIAnno 1911Hofburg Residenz
Entrusted to the House by imperial decree; administered without interruption through two wars and one dissolution of empire.
- MCMXXIXAnno 1929Casa del Faro, Havana
Consecrated in the year of the crash. The founding tradition of the sea-wall breakfast begins the following spring.
- MCMLVIAnno 1956Ryōgetsu, Kyoto
The fifth and, to date, final House. Entered into the register on the vernal equinox.
- MMIVAnno 2004The Havana Restoration
A restoration of forty-two years is quietly declared complete. The Bureau records no ceremony.
- MMXXIVAnno 2024The Present Custodianship
The House enters its one hundred and thirty-second year in the hands of the fourth generation of the founding families.
“What we inherited, we intend to hand on undiminished.”