Mapp and Lucia

Fiction ~ novel
Published September 1931
105,100 words
(First read 18/07/1992) 

Mapp and Lucia is the fourth in the Mapp and Lucia sequence of novels and (obviously) the first one in which our eponymous 'heroines' get together and lock horns.















THE CRITICS

In Mapp and Lucia, Mr E. F. Benson is in his gayest and most irresponsible mood. He has no story to tell, but his description of the deadly and long-drawn-out duel between Miss Mapp and Mrs Lucas for the social leadership of the pleasant but scandal-loving town of Tilling is replete with rich humour. Nobody with a sense of the ludicrous can fail to find excellent entertainment in a volume in which Mr Benson is at his best.

~The Western Morning News and Mercury, 14/09/1931

E. F. Benson, author of Miss Mapp and Queen Lucia, has achieved a great success by bringing these two entertaining characters together in his latest novel, Mapp and Lucia […]. With charming insincerity they almost fall on each other's necks, and in an equally charming manner they manoeuvre and skirmish in a 'war to the death' for struggle for leadership of a quiet old village.

~The Daily Mail [Hull], 26/09/1931

After [the effort of producing Ferdinand Magellan, The Inheritor and As We Were (1929-30)], Benson was able to relax with another frivolous adventure, bringing together his two outrageous heroines [in] Mapp and Lucia. [With this novel the two characters] reached the apogee of their absurdity [and] Benson, too, reached the summit of his powers. […] It was a bold stroke to risk the clash of Titans in Mapp and Lucia, effected in the simplest manner by having Mrs Lucas rent Miss Mapp's house in Tilling for a period of two months. No sooner is the redoubtable lady ensconced than, by 'showy little dinners and odious flatteries', she manages to supplant Mapp's position in the town, as a result of which the two women are locked in combat. Quaint Irene, with her 'dismal directness', observes the fun and remains the only character not to take these people seriously. It is much to Benson's credit that he contrives a preposterous climax without losing the reader's sympathy: a sudden flood sweeps Mapp and Lucia away on an upturned kitchen table! Fred read the scene aloud to [his friend] Steven Runciman on the evening of the day he wrote it, to test reaction. He was encouraged.

~Brian Masters in The Life of E. F. Benson, 1991

Miss Mapp

Fiction ~ novel
Published October 1922
78,400 words
(First read 16/07/1992) 

Miss Mapp is the second in the Mapp and Lucia series of novels and short stories, and is (fairly obviously) the first to feature Miss Elizabeth Mapp (later Mrs Elizabeth Mapp-Flint), and the first to be set in EFB's fictional version of Rye, i.e. Tilling.
I've read all these umpteen times and have long been a confirmed 'Mappite' rather than 'Luciaphile'.










THE CRITICS

Clever, amusing, E. F. Benson's new novel, Miss Mapp, is a chronicle of the doings of a group of women and men in a seaside township. Of this group, Miss Mapp is the dominating personality. Not too passe, she has set her mind on one day marrying one Major Flint, retired. The book is a great example of the versatility which enables the author to create new characters in new settings, all types of diverse human nature, and each in their own way delightful. The characterisation and dialogue are of Mr Benson's usual high order. The reader is carried along easily; it all makes entertaining reading, true to life as lived by the comfortably placed human beings in an English township.

~Western Daily Press, 14/10/1922

SMALL TOWN TABBIES

In her delineation of small-town life in Cranford Mrs Gaskell kept her eyes mainly on the sunny, lovable side of human character. Mr Benson does precisely the reverse. In this story of leisure, comfortably-placed elderly people in a little English seaside town he can see only the meanness and pettiness and scandal-loving natures of people in whose hands too much leisure is a curse. His central figure is Miss Mapp, a middle-aged spinster of independent means who lives in perpetual smiling warfare with her female neighbours. All of them are cats, but none of them have the claws so well sharpened or the Cheshire grin so prominent as she has. There is an unceasing interchange of feline amenities over rival tea-tables, dress designs and the like, particularly between Miss Mapp and her deadly rival, Mrs Plaistow, whom she addressed with acrimonious fondness as 'dear' or 'darling Diva'. Her cattish inclinations towards her own sex are aggravated by the proclivity Miss Mapp has for a member of the sterner sex, the old bachelor Major Flint. Not too passé, she has set her mind on marrying the retired Major, and how the latter ultimately falls a victim to her blandishments is matter for the purest comedy.

Mr Benson's study is clever, amusing, almost amazingly shrewd in its observation of human nature. But at times throughout the book one is inclined to wish that he would concern himself just a little less with the meanness and vanity of petty human beings. There is not one of the characters in this study who is not as vulgar and stupid, as jealous and curious as Miss Mapp herself. The tabbies are of both sexes, and the vicar at least among the men seems to favour the feminine side. Clever and amusing as Miss Mapp is, it palls at times in its exasperating emphasis on all that is most mean, stupid, and petty in middle-aged character.

~Aberdeen Journal, 16/10/1922

In Miss Mapp by E. F. Benson, we have a cleverly written account of life in a seaside township.

Miss Mapp is the dominating figure. The reader will find much enjoyment in following her little adventures in small town society.

A real true to life story with real human beings with all their little foibles and failings.

~The Courier [Dundee], 09/11/1922

Gentle social comedy such as English villages exist to provide.

~The Bookman's Guide to Fiction, 03/1923

[…] I picked up Queen Lucia, by E. F. Benson. I really liked David Blaize, and the Mapp and Lucia books are supposed to be Benson’s best work, but I have a hard time seeing why one would enjoy these books, unless one likes really hateful characters.

That said, I’m still reading them. I’m halfway through Miss Mapp, which is book two, and apparently Mapp and Lucia don’t meet up until book four. I’m not sure I’ll last that long. It’s not much fun to spend time with  characters who hate each other, and Miss Mapp is an even worse offender on that front than Queen Lucia is.

 
~'Melody' at Redeeming Qualities, 04/10/2010

The Male Impersonator

Fiction ~ short story
Published 1929
5,575 words
(First read 16/07/1992)

Lucia in London

Fiction ~ novel
Published 1927
85,300 words
(First read 28/06/1992)

THE CRITICS

 

The most important character in Mr. Benson's latest novel is Lucia Lucas, a social climber, a hypocrite of the first order, a poseuse of infinite variety—and a success in whatever she undertakes. Coming into the estate of an unwept-for aunt, Lucia and her husband (he lives in total eclipse) find themselves with a London house on their hands; Lucia sees her opportunity to rise above her rural triumphs in Riseholme and share space in the newspapers with Duchesses and (God being good) a Princess or two. Lucia plays London conquests against Riseholme victories; both places apprehensively watch her progress and suffer from her manipulations. She is a notable character as Mr. Benson draws her, for she possesses the blindness, the singleness of purpose, the unscrupulous egoism, and the force of the great mischief-makers. Given a place in a novel of unusual stature, she might well live as long as Pamela or Becky Sharp. Even in her present situation she is well worth knowing. We also meet Georgie Pillson; he is a handmaiden of Lucia's in Riseholme, an individual bom to say 'yes,' and altogether too much of a perfect lady for us to feel comfortable in his presence. Then there is Stephen Merriall, another perfect lady; this one writes, over the signature of Hermione, a sweet column of daily gossip about Mayfair. There are two choruses to this main trio: the first is made up of the rustics and semi-rustics of Riseholme, whose general methods and manners remind us of George A. Birmingham's amiable Irish rascals; the other is a slightly caricatured London high life. Both contain grotesques and drolls, and little of common humanity.

As a result of Mr. Benson's taste in character, the novel becomes partly satirical, partly farcical, and never wholly sure of itself or its progress towards a goal. We are unable to give Lucia in London high praise. The plot, largely episodic, lacks continuity and logical development; therefore the success of the novel depends entirely upon character and local color. Although it is only in the central character that we have real vitality, the strength in that place is sufficiently pronounced to be memorable. If only Lucia had been placed in a novel conceived and carried out in her own grand manner! Then we should have had something worth shouting about.

~Amy Loveman in The Saturday Review, 21/04/1928

[Lucia in London] in which one of E. F. Benson's most entertaining characters re-appears, is none the less a shrewd study of a woman because it happens to be sheer farce. Lucia—tyrant, poseuse, and social climber—is a gorgeous invention, and one shares the feeling of her country neighbors, who watch resentfully her dizzy successes in London, that Lucia may be insufferable but that she does make life exciting. Throughout this pleasant piece of foolery Mr. Benson never allows one to tire of the formula.

~Edith Walton in The Bookman, 05/1928

Most readers will find Mr E F Benson's Lucia in London […] as entertaining a book as his admirable Miss Mapp, with which it has a good many points in common. To begin with, we have Lucia as the dominating leader of the select, well-to-do society of a village, with the amusing comedy of its social jealousies and competitions. Then Lucia falls into a fortune and goes to London, where she becomes a social climber. The narrative of her whole-hearted efforts to climb into high society is pure comedy. There can never have been in real life such a climber as Lucia, and if Lucia in London is not so good a book as Miss Mapp, it is just because of this exaggeration. But it is quite amusing.

~The Courier and Advertiser [Dundee], 22/09/1927

The Return of Frank Hampden

Fiction ~ short story (spook)
First published as The Case of Frank Hampden in The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other stories, 1912.  Subsequently published under its new title in Pearson's magazine, December 1915
Approx. 6,500 words
(First read 15/06/1992)

'Through'

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.

The China Bowl

Fiction ~ short story
Published December 1916
3,485 words
(First read 10/06/1992)

A spook story in which our intrepid heroes [EFB?] and Hugh Grainger solve the mystery of the revenant ghost infesting the spare bedroom of the former's new house in Barrett's Square, London.  To my mind a very routine and somewhat humdrum supernatural/crime yarn.  I marked this in it because it struck me as odd (the bolding is mine):

I was expecting the arrival of my friend Hugh Grainger the next week, to stay a night or two with me, and since the front spare room, which I proposed to give him, had not at present been slept in, I gave orders that a bed should be made up there the next night for me, so that I could test with my own vile body whether a guest would be comfortable there.

As it turns out, [EFB?] and pal Hughie end up sharing the room to do their ghost-hunting.  But why 'my own vile body'? ~ very curious.  The story is available online here.