Penelope's English Experiences: Being Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope HamiltonWiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
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Penelope's English Experiences: Being Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton
Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
Americans -- England -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction
The English Park Lover, loving his love on a green bench in Kensington
Gardens or Regent's Park, or indeed in any spot where there is a green
bench, so long as it is within full view of the passer-by,--this English
public lover, male or female, is a most interesting study, for we have
not his exact counterpart in America. He is thoroughly respectable, I
should think, my urban Colin. He does not have the air of a gay deceiver
roving from flower to flower, stealing honey as he goes; he looks, on
the contrary, as if it were his intention to lead Phoebe to the altar
on the next bank holiday; there is a dead calm in his actions which
bespeaks no other course. If Colin were a Don Juan, surely he would be
a trifle more ardent, for there is no tropical fervour in his
matter-of-fact caresses. He does not embrace Phoebe in the park,
apparently, because he adores her to madness; because her smile is
like fire in his veins, melting down all his defences; because the
intoxication of her nearness is irresistible; because, in fine, he
cannot wait until he finds a more secluded spot: nay, verily, he
embraces her because--tell me, infatuated fruiterers, poulterers,
soldiers, haberdashers (limited), what is your reason? For it does not
appear to the casual eye. Stormy weather does not vex the calm of the
Park Lover, for 'the rains of Marly do not wet' when one is in love.
By a clever manipulation of four arms and four hands they can manage
an umbrella and enfold each other at the same time, though a feminine
macintosh is well known to be ill adapted to the purpose, and a
continuous drizzle would dampen almost any other lover in the universe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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