You never know the quality you may encounter at a soiree.

Excuse me, my dear Vicomte, but this unfortunate soiree at the Ambassador's deprives me of the pleasure to hear you out.

I really miss that era, you know, where you could go around for a soiree and see a mechanical computer get demonstrated to you.

He was a very wealthy man, and a sort of, part of the aristocracy of Britain, and on a Saturday night in Marylebone, were you part of the intelligentsia of that period, you would have been invited round to his house for a soiree and he invited everybody kings, the Duke of Wellington, many, many famous people and he would have shown you one of his mechanical machines.