The Peerage Cure

Fiction ~ short story
Published in The Windsor Magazine, July 1926
Collected in Desirable Residences and Other Stories, 1991
Approx. 2,900 words
(First read 01/05/1992) 

Another story starring that most blatant of social climbers, Mrs Amy Bondham.  Mrs B is having a break from her 'literary, artistic and histrionic friends' (see Entomology and others) and is concentrating on blue-bloods.  Through sheer persistence she's finally managed to bag herself an invitation to the Duchess of Whitby's 'magnificent Norman pile'.  Unfortunately she overdoes it on the ice-skating rink at Doncaster Castle, but is quite happy to come home and develop pleurisy followed by pleuro-pneumonia: it was worth it.  Her devoted (and really rather nice) husband ~ 'Christophero mio': ring any bells? ~ tries to bring her back from the delirium in which her mind wanders constantly over her recent triumph, until finally he hits on the ideal thing: he reads to her out of Burke's Peerage.  That's it: it doesn't sound like much because it isn't much ~ but it's great fun, as are all the Amy Bondham stories.

The Witch-ball

Fiction ~ short story
Published in Woman's Journal, December 1928
(First read 01/05/1992)

The Guardian Angel

Fiction ~ short story
Published in Woman, April 1928
Collected in Desirable Residences and Other Stories (1991)
Approx. 3,800 words
(First read 01/05/1992) 

Another mildly diverting bit of Society froth from the late 20s.  Mrs Attwood is another in EFB's long line of widow-women living in 'poverty', which is to say in a delightful little house in Mayfair with a full retinue of servants.  In exchange for free lunches, dinners, and holidays on the Riviera, she makes it her business to act as guardian angel ~ and matchmaker ~ to her friends, such as that 'dear kind thing' Peggy, Lady Rye.  But this episode in her 'busy' life involves another pal Julia Soningsby who, unhappily married to a man she adores, has agreed to divorce him provided that he names himself as the guilty party.  Mrs A, having rented her house out for the Spring, goes for a holiday to Brighton where an entirely predictable (and credibility-stretching) misunderstanding ensues.  Needless to say, it all ends as prettily as you'd expect, and Adultery pops its head back below the parapet.


QUOTABLES
Mrs Attwood has gone to have dinner with her chum Julia.  Notice how Benson has a dig at flappers ... without being in the least bit insulting about it:

Julia came downstairs some ten minutes after G[uardian] A[ngel] had arrived at her house, looking like a handsome boy who had chosen to cut his hair shorter than usual, and to wear a sapphire-coloured sack which very nearly came to his knees.  [...] Julia always made Mrs Attwood feel Victorian: she felt even more so as the meal, which consisted chiefly of caviare and cocktails, proceeded.

Queen Lucia

Fiction ~ novel
Published 1920
86,300 words
(First read 09/01/1990)

Lucia's Progress

Fiction ~ novel
Published 1935
84,300 words
(First read 19/08/1989) 




THE CRITICS

 

Since 1893, when Dodo agitated the literary communities of Britain, Mr E F Benson's delicate satire has amused and charmed again and again.

His latest novel is as witty and as entertaining as any of the many volumes he has written dealing with the day-to-day lives and ongoings of the irrepressible Emmeline Lucas ('Lucia'), her middle-aged butterfly friend, Georgie Pillson, the professional jeune premier of their select circle, and their coterie of diversified acquaintances in the little seaside town of Tilling.

Lucia's birth certificate demonstrates that she has now reached the half-century mark, but you would never guess. Georgie has adopted a beard, which is viewed with differing feelings by the social set of Tilling.

Perhaps the nastiest bit of criticism emanates from Elizabeth Mapp-Flint, who admires Georgie's beard, “except for that odd sort of sheen on it, like the colours on cold boiled beef!”

Lucia's innumerable lovers will be intensely interested in her matrimonial and municipal progress.

 

~The Courier and Advertiser [Dundee], 02/05/1935

Lady Massington's Resurrection

Volume of short stories

Published (?) 1895

Well, here's a mystery.

In early 1895 the publishers Methuen & Co. announced the appearance of a new work by EFB: Lady Massington's Resurrection, and Other Stories (crown 8vo. 6s.) ~ mentions found in the end papers of a book titled Battles of English History by H. B. George (dated 01/1895), and in the Pall Mall Gazette's 'Literary Notes' of 16/02/1895.

A Mrs Massington appears in one of the novels ~ I don't know which and am too lazy to go hunting for it.

And I've found this mention in the EFB papers held by UCLA:

Box 5, Folder 64

Lady Massington's redemption.

Physical Description: 57pp., 26 cm, typescript, holograph corrections.

Scope and Content Note

Typescript title Lady Massington's resurrection, the last word crossed out and redemtion written by hand.

Text begins, The tide of carriages in St. James' Street had just turned...

But apart from that ~

nothing.

"Books That Have Helped Great Men": E F Benson's Selection

My favourite film Heathcliff (Timothy Dalton)

On 22nd October 1927 The Spectator asked some 'great men' to name the books that had most influenced them:

Mr. E. F. Benson adds a philosophical aside to his selection : "No book that is worth reading ever had anything but a bad influence on any author. What he invariably picks up (if he picks up anything) is its defects. Its merits are always the incommunicable secret of the individual writer. But usually he picks up nothing. The three books that have thus most influenced me are: (1) Le Livre de la pitié et de la mort, by Pierre Loti. I derived from it a poisonous streak of sentimentality. (2) Othmai, by Ouida, from which I caught an adolescent habit of 'rich' description. (3) Wuthering Heights, by Emily Brontë, from which I learned clumsy mechanism."

 Just thought I'd mention it. 

Ouida (Louisa de la Ramée)