Thursday, February 14, 2013

Love is in the…




Window.
Actually, essere amato amando was in the window.
Those words were etched into the glass of Penrhyn Castle in North Wales.
They had been there for over 130 years, but no one knew why.
Heck, nobody even knew what they meant.
For decades tourists marveled over them…
Castle guides shrugged….
And experts dismissed them as a bunch of Latin gibberish.
End of story, right?
Most thought so until October of 2012.
That’s when Resi Tomat joined the castle staff.
Resi, who just so happened to be a native Italian speaker, took one look at those etched words and sighed (in that romantic way that can only be described as…. well, Italian).
"To be loved while loving," she said.
Well, that got the experts’ attention.

They actually got off their rears and did a bit of research…

and found a story.

Apparently, back in 1880 the window’s room had been occupied by Lady Alice Douglas-Pennant, an upper crust teen who had fallen madly in love…

with the gardener.

And when her lordly father learned of this amorous abomination, he banished her to the castle tower.

Yeah.

I’ll bet you thought that sort of stuff only happened in fairy tales.


Ah, love… 

what a pane.

PROMPT:  They say that Lady Alice eventually ran off to London and became an artist. She died there at the age of 76… a spinster, they say. What do you say?

2 comments:

  1. I say I wish that was a book! I'm a sucker for love stories of that variety. Thanks for sharing Barb!

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    1. I'm thinking you should write it, Kjersten! Then it would be first on my "to read" list -- I'm a love story sucker as well.

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