Entomology

Fiction ~ short story
Published in The Windsor Magazine, August 1925
Approx. 3,900 words
(First read 05/05/1992) 

An Amy Bondham story.  In this one our social-climbing heroine, "whose career was to collect round her all who were famous for intelligence, artistic ability, social distinction, or even birth," sets her sights on the prophet of the Next Big Thing*, by name Mr Vincent Fleet who happens to be spending Easter at Slepe House in the town of Tillingham.  Foregoing her own usual Easter bash in Le Touquet, Mrs B takes herself off to Tillingham where she finally succeeds in bagging her man, or capturing her moth, to look at it another way.  But is her moth the right moth?  Highly recommended, to lovers of Mapp/Lucia and Benson's other Mapp-and-Lucia-y stuff.  Available in Desirable Residences and Other Stories (1991).

* 'New Psychology': it doesn't matter what it is.  

The Godmother

Fiction ~ short story
Published in Nash's Illustrated Weekly, 6th December 1919
Collected in Desirable Residences and Other Stories (1991)
Approx. 4,700 words
(First read 04/05/1992) 

Evie Shuttleworth seemingly has everything a 40-year old Benson widowlady could wish for: flawless and entirely natural good looks; a 'delicious doll's-house in Mayfair'; a flourishing hat shop; a talent for producing crayon portraits of her many friends ("Her women all looked thoughtful but dewy, and the men all looked like women"); a boy at Eton; and so on.  Naturally, though, she wants more: she wants ~ though EFB is never so vulgar as to put it in so few words¹ ~ more money, and she wants to hook herself a sound second husband.

E.S. picks V.J. up at the Ritz

With the first aim in mind she 'adopts' Violet Jordan, a stinking-rich widow recently arrived from Canada², and makes her her protégée, introducing her to everyone worth knowing, finding her a country house, etc.³  Unfortunately in doing so she inadvertently introduces Violet to the dull faceless diplomat she's set her 'heart' on as Hubbie No. 2.
The problem with The Godmother is that it's really all situation and no comedy: it toddles along fairly amiably, and not at too great a length, but isn't as funny as it might have been if Benson had been able to think up some plot for it. 


¹ In fact I'm just assuming this is her motive: I can't think of any other.
² Yes, Canada.
³ Benson reprised this theme in one of his 'Old London' novellas, Friend of the Rich (1937).










QUOTABLES
Evie decides to adopt Violet:

With an insincerity that was as characteristic of her as her beautiful bones, she put it to herself that here was this really charming little woman quite alone [...] in London where, as she so naïvely said, she did not know a soul.

Evie's obscure motives ~ this quote follows on directly from the last:

It was clearly, then, the part of any decent Christian to attempt to brighten so dreary a situation.  That there might conceivably be other lonely women in London, without the alleviation of the Ritz and rivers of diamonds, had not previously presented itself to Evie's mind nor roused the Christian spirit, but it was never too late to begin.  Besides (here sincerity popped out its head like a Jack-in-the-box), who knew what insidious people might get hold of Mrs Jordan [...]?

Evie apparently doesn't scruple to resort to bribery to get rid of the woman who would have been Violet's 'godmother' if she hadn't been delayed in Paris:

The companion from Paris, so luckily delayed in the first instance, proved to be no more than the widow of some perfectly unknown baronet, ... [who] after the briefest sojourn in town [...] returned to Paris with a suitable cheque, astonished to find how London had changed since her day. 

A Breath of Scandal

Fiction ~ short story
Published in The Storyteller, July 1932; collected in Desirable Residences and Other Stories (1991)
Approx. 4,600 words
(First read 04/05/1992) 

Set in the Dorset village/town of Aldwyn, A Breath of Scandal's protagonist is a perfect E. F. Benson creation.  The Revered Mrs Malden (or 'the Reverend Isabel', as one character calls her, though not to her face) is the archetypal busybody.  Benson's summing-up of her is a comic masterpiece:

Though she made no direct claim that the world was her parish, her husband's parish was certainly her world.  It was her spiritual garden far more than his, and in it she laboured unweariedly with comforts and consolations for those who ailed in body or soul, and, no less, with a copious supply of weed-killer, for the extirpation of evil was quite as important as the cultivation of virtue.  [...] She strongly encourage ill-treated wives to be separated from their husbands, even when they would have much preferred to take the thick with the thin, and muddle along somehow; and she got them situations where they could earn their bread in tranquillity and self-respect.  This was useful in times when domestic servants were so hard to obtain, and most of the houses round the Green had a parlour-maid or a house-maid or a cook whom Mrs Malden had torn from her home.

So, the ideal set-up for a social comedy.  Unfortunately that isn't what we get.  What we get is a pretty much 'straight' tale about a malicious gossiping busybody and daft social prejudices.  It's more Act in a Backwater than Mapp and Lucia.
A bit of an oddity.  Not bad, just a bit of an oddity.
It's available in Desirable Residences and Other Stories (1991).
 

When Greek Meets Greek

Fiction ~ short story
Published in The Windsor Magazine, December 1926
Approx. 2,700 words
(First read 02/05/1992) 

An Amy Bondham story.  In this one Amy's social-climbing rival bears the splendiferous name of Theodosia Foxinglove.  Having failed to wangle herself an invitation to Theo's 'Elizabethan Fair' (now where have we heard that before?), Amy resolves to get herself into it at any cost.  Meanwhile 'The Foxinglove' is panting to have a real-life princess (it's that trusty Princess Isabel again!) attend her bash.  La Bondham hatches the cunning plan to 'accidentally' send Theodosia a note she's written to the princess saying how delighted she is the royal personage will be able to attend for dinner on the night of Foxy's fayre.   Needless to say, this Machiavellucian ploy pays off and once again Amy scores the point.  Delightful fun.  Available in Desirable Residences and Other Stories (1991).

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.