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buxom

az09

Senior Member
Chinese
Could someone please clarify for me the meanings of the phrase "buxom sympathy" in following sentences:

I had also to be careful in regard to a Mrs. Holigan, a charwoman and cook of sorts whom I had inherited with the vacuum cleaner from the previous tenants. Dolly got lunch at school, so that this was no trouble, and I had become adept at providing her with a big breakfast and warming up the dinner that Mrs. Holigan prepared before leaving. That kindly and harmless woman had, thank God, a rather bleary eye that missed details, and I had become a great expert in bedmaking; but still I was continuously obsessed by the feeling that some fatal stain had been left somewhere, or that, on the rare occasions where Holigan’s presence happened to coincide with Lo’s, simple Lo might succumb to buxom sympathy in the course of a cozy kitchen chat.

(Lolita by Nabokov)

Thank you so much.
I think he means that he was afraid Lo might confide in the charwoman. Buxom here more or less means "womanly," and Hubert is afraid Lo might be affected by this womanly sympathy.
Thank you, but I can't understand your point even though I agree with the meaning that he was afraid Lo might confide in the charwoman. I'm confusing about the word of "buxom". Does it mean about the charwoman, who having a large bosom and pleasing curves?
A large motherly bosom, probably rather shapeless. There is the idea of her taking Lo in her arms and the child maybe resting her head on the woman's large bosom and confiding in her.

A rather loose reading, but it's how I imagine it.
I agree with Velisarius. Buxom does ordinarily mean "pleasing curves," but here it really just means "womanly" or by extension "motherly." She is shaped like a mother or a grandmother, and Hubert fears that because she looks motherly, Lo might be encouraged to confide in this motherly woman.
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