Love Among the Lions: A Matrimonial Experience
By F. Anstey
()
About this ebook
Read more from F. Anstey
Tourmalin's Time Cheques: "Could she possibly have guessed, and how much did she know?" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Bayard from Bengal - Being Some Account of the Magnificent and Spanking Career of Chunder Bindabun Bhosh Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Statement of Stella Maberly Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love Among the Lions: "What's the use of trying to make ourselves what we are not?" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPuppets at Large Scenes and Subjects from Mr Punch's Show Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Short Stories: Volume I Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Black Poodle & Other Tales: "This time at least I had not failed - there was a smoothered yell." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLyre and Lancet: A Story in Scenes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBaboo Jabberjee, B.A Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Brief Authority: "He never said a word about me - not a word." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsVice Versa; or, A Lesson to Fathers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMr Punch's Model Music Hall Songs and Dramas Collected, Improved and Re-arranged from Punch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Brass Bottle: "It's all right, so long as you didn't try to get the top off." Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLyre and Lancet: A Story in Scenes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMr Punch's Model Music Hall Songs and Dramas: Collected, Improved and Re-arranged from Punch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Fallen Idol Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Travelling Companions: A Story in Scenes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Love Among the Lions
Related ebooks
Love Among the Lions: A Matrimonial Experience Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lost Hunter A Tale of Early Times Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Corner of Harley Street: Being Some Familiar Correspondence of Peter Harding, M.D Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDavid Copperfield Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Sack of Monte Carlo: An Adventure of To-day Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Penrose Mystery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Witch of the Hills, v. 1-2 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tenant of Wildfell Hall Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDavid Copperfield (World Classics, Unabridged) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An American Girl in Munich: Impressions of a Music Student Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPhantastes Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDavid Copperfield (Mermaids Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Amber Witch Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Devil's Elixirs Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flute and Violin, and Other Kentucky Tales and Romances Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShort Stories: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, Old Christmas, The Voyage, An Old Soldier, Don Juan… Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWhen the World Shook Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 28, July, 1873 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAn Inland Voyage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe House in the Mist Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPassages from a Relinquished Work (From "Mosses from an Old Manse") Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRecollections Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLawrence Clavering Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJane Eyre Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Aspern Papers Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5David Copperfield (Dream Classics) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNo Hero Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe House in the Mist: “Though I have had no adventures, I feel capable of them.” Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
General Fiction For You
Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fellowship Of The Ring: Being the First Part of The Lord of the Rings Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The City of Dreaming Books Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Shantaram: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Priory of the Orange Tree Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Unhoneymooners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beyond Good and Evil Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ulysses: With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Labyrinth of Dreaming Books: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Meditations: Complete and Unabridged Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Cabin at the End of the World: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beartown: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Sister's Keeper: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything's Fine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Anonymous Sex Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Nettle & Bone Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Love Among the Lions
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Love Among the Lions - F. Anstey
F. Anstey
Love Among the Lions: A Matrimonial Experience
EAN 8596547164197
DigiCat, 2022
Contact: DigiCat@okpublishing.info
Table of Contents
Cover
Titlepage
PART I
PART II
PART I
Table of Contents
In the following pages will be found the only authentic account of an affair which provided London, and indeed all England, with material for speculation and excitement for a period of at least nine days.
So many inaccurate versions have been circulated, so many ill-natured and unjust aspersions have been freely cast, that it seemed advisable for the sake of those principally concerned to make a plain unvarnished statement of the actual facts. And when I mention that I who write this am the Theodore Blenkinsop whose name was, not long since, as familiar in the public mouth as household words, I venture to think that I shall at once recall the matter to the shortest memory, and establish my right to speak with authority on the subject.
At the time I refer to I was—and for the matter of that still am—employed at a lucrative salary as taster to a well-known firm of tea-merchants in the City. I occupied furnished apartments, a sitting-room and bedroom, over a dairy establishment in Tadmor Terrace, near Baalbec Road, in the pleasant and salubrious district of Highbury.
Arrived at the age of twenty-eight, I was still a bachelor and had felt no serious inclination to change my condition until the memorable afternoon on which the universe became transformed for me in the course of a quiet stroll round Canonbury Square.
For the information of those who may be unacquainted with it, I may state that Canonbury Square is in Islington; the houses, though undeniably dingy as to their exteriors, are highly respectable, and mostly tenanted by members of the medical, musical, or scholastic professions; some have balconies and verandahs which make it difficult to believe that one has not met them, like their occupiers, at some watering place in the summer.
The square is divided into two by a road on which frequent tramcars run to the City, and the two central enclosures are neatly laid out with gravelled paths and garden seats; in the one there is a dovecot, in the other there are large terra-cotta oil-jars, bringing recollections of the Arabian Nights and the devoted Morgiana.
All this, I know, is not strictly to the point, but I am anxious to make it clear that the locality, though not perhaps a chosen haunt of Rank and Fashion, possesses compensations of its own.
Strolling round Canonbury Square, then, I happened to glance at a certain ground floor window in which an art-pot, in the form of a chipped egg hanging in gilded chains and enamelled shrimp-pink, gave a note of femininity that softened the dusty severity of a wire blind.
The exquisite face looking out
over the wire blind.
Under the chipped egg, and above the top of the blind, gazing out with an air of listless disdain and utter weariness, was a lovely vivid face, which, with its hint of pent-up passion and tropical languor, I mentally likened to a pomegranate flower; not that I have ever seen a pomegranate flower, though I am more familiar with the fruit—which, to my palate, has too much the flavour of firewood to be wholly agreeable—but somehow it seemed the only appropriate comparison.
After that, few days passed on which I did not saunter at least once round the square, and several times I was rewarded by the sight of that same exquisite face, looking out over the wire blind, always with the same look of intense boredom and haughty resentment of her surroundings—a kind of modern Mariana, with an area to represent the moat.
Æneas Polkinghorne.
I was hopelessly in love from the very first; I thought of nothing but how to obtain admission to her presence; as time went on, I fancied that when I passed there was a gleam of recognition, of half-awakened interest in her long-lashed eyes, but it was difficult to be certain. On the railing by the door was a large brass plate, on which was engraved: Æneas Polkinghorne, Professor of Elocution. Prospectus within.
So I knew the name of my divinity. I can give no greater indication of the extent of my passion, even at this stage, than by saying that I found this surname musical, and lingered over each syllable with delight.
But that brought me no nearer to her, and at last a plan occurred to me by which the abyss of the area that separated us might possibly be bridged over. Nothing could be simpler than my device—and yet there was an audacity about it that rather startled me at first. It was this: the brass plate said Prospectus within.
Very well, all I had to do was