Come as the light goes.
A private society in Toronto, where evenings are given to pleasure, in company worth keeping.
Vesper · From the Latin — Evening
The first star of the night, out as the light goes. The House keeps its hours.
The House of Vespers keeps a small, deliberately assembled circle.
Founders and artists. People who have made things and people who have crossed continents to see things. Professionals at the top of demanding fields. Those who arrived somewhere unusual by taking their own route there.
What they hold in common is not an industry or a type. It is a certain seriousness about pleasure, and the good fortune to have found people who take it as seriously as they do.
Our Confidants are in their twenties, thirties and forties. They are, without exception, interesting.
We are two people who have known each other more than a decade, and who kept finding that the evenings we wanted did not quite exist.
There were spaces that were beautiful but not thoughtful, and spaces that were thoughtful but not beautiful. Very few that were both, and fewer still where the people in the space were the reason to be there.
So we started having people over. It grew, as these things do.
We host every evening ourselves. You will meet us at the door.
— E. & J.
Dinners and long conversations. Music, sometimes a reading, occasionally someone demonstrating a thing they are unreasonably good at. Where new Confidants are received and where most friendships here begin.
Performance, and then the rest of the night. Held in private spaces, by invitation, for those the House already knows.
The House opens monthly. Nothing is announced publicly.
Fantasy, pursued with people who are equal to it.
But also: a table of people worth sitting at. Introductions that go somewhere. Friendships that outlast the evenings. Collaborators, confidants, and the particular ease of being among people you needn't explain yourself to.
Most arrive for one of these. Most stay for the others.
The House is small by design, and grows slowly.
Some Confidants are named by others already here. Some write to us themselves and we are glad they did — a good number of the people we value most arrived that way.
What we look for is not a profession or a photograph. It is judgement, warmth, and the sense that someone will make the space better for being in it.
We receive women, women in partnership together, and couples.
Come as the light goes.
Discretion is the whole of the rule.
What is said here goes no further. Every Confidant is admitted on that understanding alone, and it is the one thing we ask of everyone equally.
The House keeps very little about anyone. We recommend you do the same.
This is the part we care most about, and the part we will not be casual about.
The House is built so that women can arrive without bracing for anything. That is not a courtesy we extend — it is the condition on which everything else here rests, and every other rule follows from it.
Consent is explicit, spoken and ongoing. Not implied by attendance, by dress, by a previous evening, or by anything at all except a clear yes in the moment. It can be withdrawn at any point without explanation and without friction.
No means no, and so does hesitation. Confidants are expected to read a room, not test it.
Hosts are present all night. Emma and Jack, and stewards who are not participating and whose only role is the wellbeing of the space. They can be found easily and approached about anything, however small.
Anything raised is acted on. Quietly, immediately, and in favour of the person who raised it. There is no committee and no burden of proof to meet.
Confidants who cross a line do not return. We have no interest in second chances on this, and we would rather have a smaller House than a forgiving one.
No photography, no phones in the spaces, no accounts of the evening outside the House.
Everyone is welcome to observe, to decline, to leave early, or to spend the entire night in conversation with their clothes on. None of these require a reason.
Leave your name and we will write to you before the next evening. What you write here is read by the two of us and no one else, and is permanently deleted once we have spoken.
Received. You will hear from us.
— E. & J.