PENELOPE'S ENGLISH EXPERIENCES

Contents.

Part First--In Town.

I. The weekly bill.
II. The powdered footman smiles.
III. Eggs a la coque.
IV. The English sense of humour.
V. A Hyde Park Sunday.
VI. The English Park Lover.
VII. A ducal tea-party.
VIII. Tuppenny travels in London.
IX. A Table of Kindred and Affinity.
X. Apropos of advertisements.
XI. The ball on the opposite side.
XII. Patricia makes her debut.
XIII. A Penelope secret.
XIV. Love and lavender.

Part Second--In the Country.

XV. Penelope dreams.
XVI. The decay of Romance.
XVII. Short stops and long bills.
XVIII. I meet Mrs. Bobby.
XIX. The heart of the artist.
XX. A canticle to Jane.
XXI. I remember, I remember.
XXII. Comfort Cottage.
XXIII. Tea served here.
XXIV. An unlicensed victualler.
XXV. Et ego in Arcadia vixit.




Part First--In Town.



Chapter I. The weekly bill.


Smith's Hotel,

10 Dovermarle Street.

Here we are in London again,--Francesca, Salemina, and I. Salemina is
a philanthropist of the Boston philanthropists limited. I am an artist.
Francesca is-- It is very difficult to label Francesca. She is, at her
present stage of development, just a nice girl; that is about all: the
sense of humanity hasn't dawned upon her yet; she is even unaware that
personal responsibility for the universe has come into vogue, and so she
is happy.

Francesca is short of twenty years old, Salemina short of forty, I short
of thirty. Francesca is in love, Salemina never has been in love, I
never shall be in love. Francesca is rich, Salemina is well-to-do, I am
poor. There we are in a nutshell.

We are not only in London again, but we are again in Smith's private
hotel; one of those deliciously comfortable and ensnaring hostelries in
Mayfair which one enters as a solvent human being, and which one leaves
as a bankrupt, no matter what may be the number of ciphers on one's
letter of credit; since the greater one's apparent supply of wealth,
the greater the demand made upon it. I never stop long in London
without determining to give up my art for a private hotel. There must be
millions in it, but I fear I lack some of the essential qualifications
for success. I never could have the heart, for example, to charge a
struggling young genius eight shillings a week for two candles, and
then eight shillings the next week for the same two candles, which the
struggling young genius, by dint of vigorous economy, had managed to
preserve to a decent height. No, I could never do it, not even if I were
certain that she would squander the sixteen shillings in Bond Street
fripperies instead of laying them up against the rainy day.

It is Salemina who always unsnarls the weekly bill. Francesca spends an
evening or two with it, first of all, because, since she is so young,
we think it good mental-training for her, and not that she ever
accomplishes any results worth mentioning. She begins by making three
columns headed respectively F., S., and P. These initials stand for
Francesca, Salemina, and Penelope, but they resemble the signs for
pounds, shillings, and pence so perilously that they introduce an added
distraction.

She then places in each column the items in which we are all equal, such
as rooms, attendance, fires, and lights. Then come the extras, which are
different for each person: more ale for one, more hot baths for another;
more carriages for one, more lemon squashes for another. Francesca's
column is principally filled with carriages and lemon squashes. You
would fancy her whole time was spent in driving and drinking, if you
judged her merely by this weekly statement at the hotel.

When she has reached the point of dividing the whole bill into three
parts, so that each person may know what is her share, she adds the
three together, expecting, not unnaturally, to get the total amount of
the bill. Not at all. She never comes within thirty shillings of the
desired amount, and she is often three or four guineas to the good or to
the bad. One of her difficulties lies in her inability to remember
that in English money it makes a difference where you place a figure,
whether, in the pound, shilling, or pence column. Having been educated
on the theory that a six is a six the world over, she charged me with
sixty shillings' worth of Apollinaris in one week. I pounced on the
error, and found that she had jotted down each pint in the shilling
instead of in the pence column.