Showing posts with label
The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories.
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Showing posts with label
The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories.
Show all posts
Fiction ~ short story
First published in The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories, 1920
9,965 words
(First read 27/07/2014)
Very much in the same bracket as The Countess of Lowndes Square in that it's a tale of the blackmailer blackmailed. Arthur Whately is a fifty-something self-made millionaire, and a bit of a reprobate on the QT. Realizing one day that he's bored at having done and bought everything he ever wanted, he decides (like you do) to embark on a new career as a blackmailer. For his first victim he chooses his 'friend' and neighbour Lord Peebles. Unfortunately he doesn't know Lord P at all well, and E F Benson was feeling particularly bone-idle on this occasion, so he just assumes that if he writes to him saying "I know what you were doing between Aug. 2nd and Aug. 10th two years ago", Peebles will have been doing something to feel guilty about. And so it turns out ... and the rest is, as they say, as much bunkum as this would lead you to expect.
An amazingly daft story ~ not 'fun', just 'daft'. The tone is supposedly light but it's all told at such inordinate length (about twice the length of the average EFB story) that it feels like swimming through treacle. I'm not saying it's bad: just that it's woefully over-long, not in the least bit funny, and pretty dull.
It's available online here. Good luck.
Faction ~ sketch
Published in The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories, 1920
Approx. 4,500 words
(First read 14/04/2014)
As I said in my post on David Blaize and the Blue Door, it's a real shame EFB didn't write more stuff about animals as he always excelled himself in charm and ~ particularly here ~ humour when he did so. There Arose a King picks up where 'Puss-cat' finishes and recounts the formative years of his Persian cat Cyrus, king of the household from day one. As I say, it's very funny in parts ~ in large parts: it actually had me laughing out loud. I'll just give one example ~ this happens during a heatwave:
The heat also increased [Cyrus'] somnolence, and one morning, when he came up to breakfast with me, he fell asleep on the sofa before I had time to cut off the little offering of kidney which I had meant to be my homage. When I put it quite close to his nose he opened his mouth to receive it, but was again drowned in gulfs of sleep before he could masticate it. So it stuck out of the corner of his mouth like a cigarette. But eventually, I knew, he "would wake and remember and understand."
The story is available online here.
Fiction ~ short story
Published October 1910?
Approx. 5,000 words
(First read 17/05/2013)
Fiction ~ short story
Published September 1915
Approx. 3,200 words
(First read 26/12/1994)
Mrs Henry Andrews and her husband live in extreme happiness and comfort together at Oakley¹. Mrs is a chronic faddist: having worked her way through every diet in the book, she moves on to matters psychical. Cartomancy, Christian Science, astrology, palmistry, and (her husband having now joined her) finally they hit on automatic writing². Sadly, though they produce reams and reams, none of it is intelligible. Success arrives when they decide to hold a pencil together rather than one each. A 'control' by the name of Pocky quickly 'comes through' and makes himself useful, advising Mr A on his investments, etc. But what is this? ~ 'the German war' breaks out³, Pocky becomes 'patriotic and truculent', changes his name to Pocksky and throws his weight behind the Russians before the author administers the coup de grâce. A thoroughly fun read, Benson at his satirical best. Available online here (in The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories) and in Fine Feathers and Other Stories (1994).
¹ EFB's novel The Oakleyites appeared in the same year: it too featured a Mrs Andrews much like this one ...
² Psychography is the technical term, apparently.
³ The actual term EFB uses: luckily it never reached Capri. I know, I know, I'm unkind to him on this subject, and it's utterly uncalled-for.
Fiction ~ short story
First published in The Storyteller, July 1917
Subsequently collected in The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories, 1920
(First read 14/06/1992)
As with various other 'paranormal phenomena', EFB could never quite make up his mind whether or not he believed in mediums, séances, the living contacting the dead, etc. 'Through' is a good example of this dithering in action. The hero, Richard Waghorn¹, is a self-avowed mediumistic fraud: he and his sister use the full panoply of gadgetry and trickery to ply their trade. And yet, there are moments when he seems genuinely able to see inside the heads of his sitters. The story deals with one such occasion, when, in fact, he has his first genuine full-blown trance and his client's dead brother speaks 'through' him. Not a bad story ~ the pace is good and it doesn't outstay it's welcome. You can read it online here.
¹ Why EFB didn't go the whole hog and call him Richard Wagner is unclear. And immaterial.
