A Life of Near Misses

This was strangely true, and she did not again experience her early sense of erotic wonder in life until suddenly one day when she was nearly forty, an actress of moderate reputation married to a theatrical manager. It happened she was standing with a man whom she did not know very well outside a famous building in Rome, waiting for the rain to stop. She was surprised by a reawakening of that same buoyant and airy discovery of sex, a total sensation which it was impossible to say was physical or mental, only that it contained the lost and guileless delight of her eleventh year. She supposed herself to have fallen in love with the man, who might, she thought, have been moved towards her in his own way out of a world of his own, the associations of which were largely unknown to her. There was nothing whatever to be done about it, for Jenny had been contentedly married for sixteen years past; but the concise happening filled her with astonishment whenever it came to mind in later days, and with a sense of the hidden possibilities in all things.

Importance of Being Important

A postcard which arrived in today's mail has reminded me of an elderly Eastern European lady I knew many years ago in Rome. She was very proud of her family name and of the fact that she had once been lady-in-waiting to one of the seven sisters of King Zog of Albania when that country was a monarchy (from 1928 to 1946). She insisted on keeping her "incognito."
Click Here!

This lady-in-waiting, named Clémentine Klopstock (if my memory serves me) was walking up Via Condotti in Rome one day accompanied by a woman friend whose father had been an ambassador to Albania. Clémentine was altogether indistinguishable from any other elderly shop-gazer and few people by then had the slightest interest in, or even remembrance of, King Zog and his family of sisters.

On this occasion, Clémentine's friend happened to see an American man of her acquaintance coming toward them, and joyfully told Clémentine, "Oh, here comes someone I know."

Clémentine Klopstock grasped her friend's arm in panic. "Introduce me as Miss Smith," she whispered