M.O.M.

Fiction ~ short story
Published December 1915
Approx. 3,600 words
(First read 26/12/1994)

M.O.M. bears a passing resemblance to Saki's earlier Filboid Studge (1910): it tells the tale of a young chap who invents a wonder drug ('My Own Mixture') which, he claims, will cure everything from gout to intemperance, in spite ~ or more likely because ~ of its vile taste.  And lo! he makes a killing with it.  That's all there is to it, really.  Benson seems to have had a particular interest in, and slightly ambiguous attitude toward, the plethora of fads that were apparently the order of the day in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain ~ just think Lucia'n'Daisy with their gurus, their callisthenics and all the rest of it.  Sadly only available in Fine Feathers and Other Stories (1994).  Well, perhaps not all that sadly ~ it's not really up to much.

Mr Carew's Game of Croquet

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.

Aunts and Pianos

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. 

 

Doggies

Fiction ~ short story
Published in The Windsor Magazine, January 1928; collected in Desirable Residences (1991)
Approx. 3,700 words
(First read 09/05/1992) 

Alas! this is the last of the Amy Bondham stories¹.  In this one she's come into a vast sum of money from an eccentric uncle and is determined to put it to best use to advance her 'career'.  Devoted husband Christopher longs for a yacht and has a stab at persuading his seasickness-suffering better half of the advantages that would accrue from swanning about

the Med between Monte Carlo and Naples.  Obviously, though, Mrs B has a better idea, that of taking a house in the country for the winter so she can keep in with her County friends.

'But I should be expected to hunt,' said Christopher in some dismay.  'So would you.'

'Well, I don't see why you shouldn't hunt,' said she.  'Anyhow you can see what it's like first, and then if you feel you can't manage it, you can easily get out of it.  If there's a meeting of the hunt ~ don't they call it a meeting? ~ anywhere close, you can have a cold or be obliged to go up to London.  As for me, I shall certainly say that I don't hunt, but why should that cut me off from all my friends?

And so it comes to pass.  Christopher spends a large part of the winter on the train back and forth between Leicestershire and London while The Good Lady tries to inveigle herself into hunting circles.  Alas!² Amy Bondham is, like her more famous cousin Lucia, a hilarious blend of the deeply cunning and the woefully ignorant and ... horrors! she blows it!  I won't say any more as the whole thing is a hoot I'll leave you to discover (if you haven't already read it).  Available in Desirable Residences and Other Stories (1991).


¹ I mean "the last one I've revisited recently" rather than the last chronologically, though it 's that too.
² Oops, must stop saying that.