Fiction ~ short story
First published in The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories, 1920
Approx. 4,600 words
(First read 30/05/2014)
A jolly little story. Our hero is a decided Georgie Type, aged 30, who lives with his sister, a decided Hermie/Ursie Type ~ while he sits and does his woolwork of an evening, she tinkers at her lathe. Tiring of his indoor and rather lonely existence, Oliver starts taking walks through the streets of London, building stories out of the shop window displays. Everything is okay to begin with: he's more cheerful and the exercise does him good. Okay, so he's living entirely in his imagination and has fallen in love with a shop mannequin (yes), which after a few weeks disappears leaving him desperate ... Eventually he ends up virtually inhabiting a certain department store where one day ...
I won't give this one away: the ending made me laugh out loud. It can be read online here.
Fiction ~ short story
Published 5th March 1924
Approx. 2,400 words
(First read 25/12/1994)
Mr Jocelyn Carew is a bit of a rara avis in EFB's output: a social-climbing man, kind of a cross between Lucia Lucas and Georgie Pillson. Benson neatly sums him up in one sentence (and in a joke which I'm pretty sure he used more than once):
It had been said of him that his age varied in inverse proportion to the number of countesses present.
Brilliant. Anyway, Mr C arrives in 'the country' (in fact only Richmond ... or somewhere like that) for a house party while the rest of the mob are out at Henley, having been asked to entertain the Duchess of Whitby, who he's never met, until their return. Wandering about the garden he comes upon an elderly lady he takes to be the said Duchess: "In addition to being a duchess, she had everything a duchess ought to have ~ height, distinction, charm of manner, and above all, this delightful friendliness." The two embark on a lengthy and rather hot game of croquet, which is briefly interrupted by 'a rather shabby-looking little lady. Mr Carew quickly settled that she did not matter.' I don't need to say any more, do I? The story is available in Fine Feathers and Other Stories (1994) and is a hoot.
If (comme on dit) you enjoyed this story, you're sure to like The Sister of the Baroness (1910) by Katherine Mansfield.
Fiction ~ short story
First published in The Windsor Magazine, August 1926
First collected in The Funny Bone (1928); re-collected in Desirable Residences and Other Stories (1991)
Approx. 2,800 words
(First read 15/05/1992)
In this writer's opinion Aunts and Pianos is the perfect EFB comic short story, an unalloyed delight: it's brief and it's simple; every word is juste; the characters are very funny; the climax, though visible from Saturn, is a hoot; and it pulls off the trick of being both comical and (mildly) satirical. What more could you want?
Our hero Bobby is ... well, sublimely summed up in the first Quotable below. His life revolves around his 'aunts' (and a 'cousin'), genteel ladies all, each blessed with a piano at which Bob takes pleasure in entertaining them ...
QUOTABLES
The whole thing is eminently quotable but here are just a few of my favourite moments, starting with the opening sentence:
Bobby Deacon at the age of fifty-five was a very busy young man; no one had so many engagements to little lunch-parties and tea-parties and dinner-parties.
Echoes of Lucia and Georgie here ~ 'Aunt Judy' is one of Bobby's favoured old ladies:
Aunt Judy, as usual gave him a remarkably good dinner, and Bobby, who was greedy, liked that. A crossword puzzle succeeded, and as he had done a little work at it already (though it was not necessary to mention that), he was very brilliant about it.
Bobby is not above the odd base thought:
[Aunt Fanny] was the most devoted of all his aunts, and the richest and the least robust, and sometimes Bobby when he was not thinking what he was thinking about allowed himself to think about Aunt Fanny's entire lack of relations ...
Aunt Judy is the larger Hermie-and-Ursie style of female person; Aunt Fanny, by contrast,
... was very small and all the furniture with the exception of her grand piano was small and fragile, and Bobby trembled to think how awful would have been the crash if Aunt Judy had sunk exhausted on that chair, or indeed anywhere in Aunt Fanny's house except on the floor.
This speaks for itself. Bobby is at Fanny's piano [wow that sounded smutty!]:
Bobby slid into a fluid little morsel by Debussy, which was a favourite of Aunt Fanny's, though Aunt Judy declared that it sounded to her like a child whimpering next door. It made Aunt Fanny feel ill and unhappy, which she liked, for one of the greatest joys of her life was feeling ill and thinking she was going to die.
For health reasons Aunt Fanny has decided to go south for the winter:
She talked about her journey a little more, as if it had been the conveyance of a corpse to its final resting-place.
I could go on, but won't.
