I feel like I should know more about E.F. Benson than I do, but I found this collection in a free bookstore and it had six novels and seemed to have a long history and pedigree, so I picked it up. He’s apparently very well known for these novels, but also for writing ghost/horror stories as well.
Queen Lucia – 1920
The first novel in the series jumps right in and starts explaining to us about Ms Lucas, Lucia to every one around here — pronounced as we are to understand, in the Italian way as “Lew-Chee-uh.”
This affection is important to understand. We are in a rareified world here, a kind of small town full of rich people destined to want to spend their time doing nothing, calling it interesting, being separated from their money and their sense. In this small town, we are meant to understand that it’s more interesting than boring and stuffy London, where nothing happens. Think of this as a kind of Beverly Hills or Malibu to Los Angeles, or Westchester to New York City.
Anyway, Lucia fancies herself Queen of everything, in a kind of Queen Bee type of way, but not an expressly abusive or all that terrible. It’s not Desperate Housewives, but it’s….well, something.
The bulk of the novel centers around two main threads — someone has hired a yoga guru and then, a psychic rolls into town. Both events and series of correlated events are everything to this small town. The guru is teaching everyone the Eastern philosophy and art of yoga. He sees everyone’s “White Soul” and everyone wants to work with them. And the psychic, well that’s just as good.
The book is charming, and biting, and cutting, and very funny. It’s not as savage as it might get, but it’s not lovable in the ways of Wodehouse either.
Miss Mapp
Miss Mapp changes things up in the series, but it’s also quite similar to the previous entry. We meet Miss Mapp, but she does not interact with Queen Lucia just yet. They are similar in a lot of ways — meddling, imperious, self-serving. But they also have much different motivations guiding their self-serving actions.
The biggest difference is that Queen Lucia is a queen bee meddling and controlling her social group almost in terms of power in and of itself. Miss Mapp on the other hand, as the title indicates, is unmarried, and mostly wants to. So she spends her energies manipulating the pool of available bachelors in her respective town. So where the first focused quite heavily on the social scene, this is more about the motivations and interactions between middle-age men and women. It’s kind of like a more cynical version of Emma in a kind of way.
I enjoyed this one a little less, but still did. There’s especially a really funny thread involving a dress, but also dealing with the ways in which the various characters acted while drunk. The scope feels as decidedly small and petty.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Make-Way-Lucia-Impersonator-Worshipful/dp/0060156783/ref=pd_sbs_14_4/147-5632244-3227454?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0060156783&pd_rd_r=0685c38e-662a-11e9-b475-c358acaaf9b4&pd_rd_w=zN238&pd_rd_wg=Mq1LJ&pf_rd_p=588939de-d3f8-42f1-a3d8-d556eae5797d&pf_rd_r=29EP8VH4PPN9S2VTBDAN&psc=1&refRID=29EP8VH4PPN9S2VTBDAN)