Who Knew?

There is a Costa coffee upstairs in my local Waterstones, I'm fond of it for many reasons; it's where the Scottish one and I had our first date (he invited me for tea and buns which sounded entirely innocent and then swept me off my feet), it's dependably quiet when everywhere else in town is busy - possibly because there's no lift, it's only a ten minute walk from my flat, and of course there are books so it's an obvious place for Sunday hot chocolates and my hot tip for a peaceful bolt hole if you ever find yourself in Leicester.

Despite being flat broke I found myself in there yesterday having a coffee and a nice browse round with a friend when I came across this... Attracted by the name (E.F. Benson, not Night Terrors) I went to have a closer look, could this possibly be the same E.F. Benson of Mapp and Lucia? Well yes it could. I had no idea that he wrote ghost stories but it seems he did, there are over 50 of them here with terrifying titles like 'The Horror Horn', 'Spinach', 'The Bath Chair' and 'The Physical Mallards' (okay some of them are more terrifying than that but they don't amuse me as much).

This is a Wordsworth classic so it's only £2.99 which is remarkably cheap for any book, never mind one that's more than 700 pages, it has a couple of really enthusiastic reviews on amazon, and I couldn't go home without it. The cover is frankly awful but if that's the trade off for cheap I'm happy to take it.

This is exactly the kind of find that makes me love bookshops - and you really have to be in a shop to have that moment of serendipity. My new treasure might turn out to be a bit rubbish, though I doubt that it will - and either way it'll be interesting to read Benson in this form, but nothing will take away that happy moment of discovery.

Mrs Ames – E. F. Benson

‘Mrs Ames’ was another of my amazon acquisitions from last month (I’m working through that stack slowly but surely) and I actually read it a few weeks ago but other things have got in the way of writing about it – mostly ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’ which absorbed so much attention that it didn’t leave much room for anything else, and ‘Mrs Ames’ deserves proper attention.

I’m very attached to the Mapp and Lucia novels but have had mixed feelings about other Benson that’s come my way, generally I’ve found they lack the ‘classic’ quality which make the Mapp and Lucia books so special to me and many, many, others so I was curious about ‘Mrs Ames’ from the outset – would it be a disappointment, a curiosity, or a proper gem.

Cutting to the chase it’s a proper gem (but I’ll also be taking the scenic route as well). The Bloomsbury group titles continue to intrigue me, the first round of titles included a couple that I already knew and some that came highly recommended (Miss Hargreaves will always be synonymous with Simon stuck-in-a-book for me). This second round has been more of an unknown quantity and it’s also made me realise that I had certain preconceptions about the Bloomsbury titles. I assume they will be light, funny, period pieces – which they so far have been, but there’s so much more going on as well.

The back blurb gives the bones of the story but it doesn’t give away much else, so based on a description of Mrs Ames reigning over the social scene of Riseborough until the captivating Mrs Evans catches the eye of both her husband and son made me think this would be a prototype for ‘Mapp and Lucia’ which was enough to make me buy the book.

The first thing that struck me was how definitely pre (first world) war ‘Mrs Ames’ feels. Mapp and Lucia inhabit a busy world that indefinably belongs to the active middle aged; Mrs Ames and her circle are just as middle aged, almost as active and somehow all feel much more redundant – their days are spent in the same round of socialising and gossip but there’s a pervasive lack of purpose; it’s just a way of spending time. Mrs Evans flirtation with Major Ames which ends up threatening social ruin for herself and the destruction of two marriages is born of nothing more or less than boredom. She’s not a deep woman and strong feelings seem to have bypassed her, so the thrill of fancying herself in love – of actually feeling something – is too much for her to resist.

Mrs Ames herself is a fascinating character, short with a face like a toad and a social dictator to boot – yet still I couldn’t help but warm to her. Long past the first flush of youth she still touchingly believes that a bit of rejuvenation by way of a good moisturiser and some (entirely natural of course, and not a dye) hair restorer and some spur of the moment paddling will turn back the clock. Finding her husband has been blinded by the far more obvious attractions of Mrs Evans she casts round for something and finds the suffragette movement.

I can’t tell you how much this excited me – for all my reading from the period I don’t come across much that deals specifically with the suffrage movement so Benson’s take on it in 1912 felt like gold dust. Mrs Ames takes up the movement by way of an autumn diversion not least because she knows it will annoy some of the neighbours. Her attempts at direct action are somewhat ill fated (and very funny) but what’s really noticeable is how the idea takes hold of her. It’s made explicitly clear that it’s the first time she’s really thought about anything – the results are even more intoxicating than Mrs Evans brush with love. Whatever the other results and embarrassments arising from this conversion Mrs Ames finds herself on terms of equality with a new (somewhat lower) spectrum of society. Trades people become people – my feeling is that Benson approved.

Sunday

This has been quite a day for me – I’ve become a god mother (which I’m really excited by), my god son is a paragon of every virtue (he didn’t cry once) and I’ve publicly renounced Satan and all his temptations – which I feel pretty good about. It has been a little bit distracting though so I’m not in the mood to write about E F Benson’s ‘Mrs Ames’ which was plan A, plan B is in a roundabout way about rearranging my kitchen.

Another (less momentous) landmark passed this week – my collection of virago books reached the 200 score. Since last month’s influx of books I’ve been trying to catch up rather than acquire, but good charity shop finds can’t be ignored and the 200 mark is one I was a little bit keen to pass. In for a penny in for a pound and all that – so when I saw the new Nigella book half price in Waterstone’s I couldn’t resist. I honestly meant to wait until Christmas for this one, but her books have almost totemic status in my kitchen and ‘Kitchen’ (Recipes from the heart of the home) is a more than worthy addition to the canon.

‘Kitchen’ has been my bedtime reading for the last couple of nights and the first thing it’s made me do is act on some long held but half formed plans to organise my own kitchen rather better. The Scottish one got to spend Saturday night in town helping me scrub down the top of the fridge and generally shift and carry, and this is the thing I most love about Nigella. On television I find it hard to warm to her, I don’t doubt that she’s a voluptuous and lovely woman (I saw her once at a book signing, I’ve never in my life seen such a long queue of bashful looking men – all clutching baking books) but I don’t see much of my own life in those programmes, that and they feel a bit over staged.

The books are a different thing altogether. I really like the woman in-between these pages, and perhaps more to the point I trust her (who could help but trust someone who confesses to having over 4000 cookbooks, I mean I thought my collection was getting out of control...) I love these cookbooks because they are precisely that – books full of ideas for people who like to cook, nothing chefy, nothing I feel like I couldn’t tackle, nothing I feel I can’t tinker with if I want to change it. These are things which matter to me – I’m an enthusiastic but not terribly skilled cook, the right guide gives me the confidence to try things I might otherwise avoid – which in turn gives me more skills. Cooking and sharing food is something that makes me happy, and I also share this sentiment entirely “a kitchen however inadequate or alien, has the ability to make you feel once you’ve cooked in it a few times, as though you’ve marked out some safe and reassuring place of your own.”

There are no shortage of days which make me feel like a safe and reassuring place is exactly where I want to be and my kitchen is for me just that place (even more so than under the duvet on a dark and stormy night), especially after my rearrange and now that I can see work surface again. It’s also really nice to read someone who’s serious about their food, but happy to have a trashy, kitschy element to it – Nigella never makes me feel judged for liking things I probably shouldn’t (like Fry’s Creams).

Mapp and Lucia

In the manner of a dog with a bone I’m sticking with E F Benson – just in case nobody picked up on how good I think he is... 'Mapp and Lucia' is probably my favourite from the series, its number four of six and everything about it (in my opinion) is perfect.

It’s all a question of balance - Lucia is an arch snob and social climber – a woman of extraordinary energy and determination with a passion for organising others (entirely for their own good of course), in short she’s a benevolent dictator as compared to Miss Mapp who is altogether less benevolent although every bit as dictatorial. The action opens with widowed Lucia beginning to come out of mourning and looking for new challenges. New challenges take her to Miss Mapp’s Tilling, indeed right into Miss Mapp’s house which she rents for the summer and where she proceeds to usurp Miss Mapp’s social crown. The battle lines are drawn.

For the rest of the Tillingates life has never been as exciting – a whirl of competing social events and withering put downs as Mapp sinks to new lows in her attempts to exact revenge and Lucia pushes her luck as she tries to organise the town to within an inch of its life. Mapp is horrendous but human – in our less pleasant moments we must all have a little Miss Mapp in us so it’s possible to sympathise with her, especially as Lucia frustrates her again and again.

As for Lucia she’s a wonderful creation but even better compared to Miss Mapp – it throws into relief her better qualities without entirely hiding her less endearing foibles. Like the Tillingates I want Lucia to win, but not without a battle - without Mapp to take up some of her energies who knows what she might have organised the community into. Fortunately she’s distracted by the need to outmanoeuvre her nemesis who tries everything to catch Lucia out – the light aluminium opera glasses are taken to the top of the church tower for a little surveillance, desirable recipe’s are purloined, tables are set sail on, and one poor soul is entrapped into marriage. In short it’s all go.

I’m impressed that Benson rights women so well – and intrigued at how marginal the men are to the action. In truth men are peripheral to ‘Society’ it’s wives and womenfolk who run it, deciding who’s acceptable and who’s not quite ‘quite’, men can escape to the golf course or the club (or the pub) but tea parties, bridge evenings, dinner parties, lunches and suppers are the preserve of the ladies in this leisured world. Even so the men here could almost not exist at all – it makes me curious about Benson’s background in a half heartedly Freudian way – specifically I would love to know more about the important/influential women in his life.

Vague psychological speculations aside this is a polished jewel of a book – it’s not a bad place to start with the Mapp and Lucia books, It’s the one I would most want to rescue in a fire and is about to be added to my list of books I wish everyone would read. I think it can easily stand alone and if you fall for it you can work back through the first three than forward for the last two (as a matter of interest who minds where they start in a series – do you have to begin at the beginning or are you happy to jump in wherever?).

Miss Mapp

Reading comments here and in my online reading group it seems that the world is cleanly divided in to those who have read E.F Benson’s greatest creations and those who haven’t. Honestly it slightly surprised me that Benson had managed to slip under the radar of so many likeminded readers until I tried to remember how I came across him.

This was a process of elimination rather than a feat of memory – I know I read all the Mapp and Lucia books when I was about sixteen so I was either attracted by the covers on a bookshop foray or found one amongst my stepmothers books (she and a partner ran a small hotel at the time – their combined books for public consumption formed a fairly eclectic mix with lots of gems and lots of oddities). It’s also a process that reminds me that there are classics and then there are Classics. My Bensons are the Black Swan imprints from the late eighties – basically when I started reading them so I guess I was lucky to pick them up when they were easily available – a happy serendipity.

Because (I thought) I had the whole series at my disposal I seldom gave it much thought that Benson had all but disappeared from high street bookshops, my process of discovery followed by instant reading gratification after a quick visit to the high street isn’t currently possible which makes me curious as to why Benson is out of favour. He’s still in print after a fashion and with any luck The Bloomsbury Groups reprint of 'Mrs Ames'’ later this year will rekindle interest, but I still don’t understand why interest in classic Benson waned when he’s every bit as wonderful as writers who have remained available on the shelves of all good bookshops.

So – ‘Miss Mapp’, for those of you who don’t yet know one of the most brilliant villainesses in literature; a mean, conniving, spiteful, bullying, gossip obsessed social dictator who rules her social circle with an iron fist in a velvet glove. Frequently the glove comes off as she puts down any attempts to rest the crown from her head but its velvet all the way when she’s found out in some social misdemeanour. I love Mapp for the same reason friends can’t do without her; she’s maddening but she does make life more interesting.

I did wonder when I picked up ‘Miss Mapp’ what I would make of it after such a long time but as far as I can tell my response now is much the same as it was twenty years ago when I first discovered her – the jokes are funny because they’re repeated so many times, the fascination lies in watching a situation unfold and resolve. You could say that not a lot happens, but what actually happens is a form of everyday life and it’s packed full of scandal and interest as well as the more mundane matters of settling bills and saving money whilst keeping up appearances. I think it stays fresh because the situations are so recognisable. I loved the books when I was at school because heaven knows school is a carefully ordered social hierarchy – I love them now because the only thing that’s changed is that I’ve met more Mapps.

For all of you who said you had any of the Mapp and Lucia books but haven’t yet read them get them off the to be read pile dust them down and start reading without delay, you can thank me for the push later.

Au Reservoir...

What – Thursday already?

First off – apologies, I have been experimenting with the delights of internet in my own home via the wonders of mobile broadband. It basically works, but for some reason the connection I get, or my laptop, or some combination of both coupled with who knows what makes the whole set up very very unwilling to let me comment on either my blog or anybody else’s. I have typed out numerous witty, pithy, perfectly spelt and grammatically correct (possibly) comments only to have them rejected time and time again. It’s all very frustrating not being able to get a word in edgeways, and as comments here are every bit as exciting as postcards coming through the letter box I want to make it clear that they’re appreciated.

This week has been a bit of a blur, between getting up early at the start of the day and falling asleep early at the end of it nothing much seems to have been done. The few none working waking hours have been divided between the blond, the Scottish one, and E.F. Benson. Benson has had the lion’s share of my attention and I had meant to write about ‘Mapp and Lucia’ tonight but Simon King’s Shetland Diaries intervened and now time’s getting on and I’m more than half asleep again, essentially all I’m fit for is bed and more Benson so until tomorrow ‘Au Reservoir’.

Pure unadulterated Joy

Once upon a time I had all six of E.F. Benson’s Mapp and Lucia books and I loved them even if it was a long time since I read them. Last year when I started to catalogue my books I realised that at some point six had become three – there was a general wailing and gnashing of teeth. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the three that disappeared had been three that fitted nicely into one of the omnibuses, or if they were still generally in print, or if they came up regularly in second hand shops.

None of these things being the case and there always being a long list of unread (by me) books to acquire when I hit second hand sights coupled with a job that currently just about pays the mortgage and very little else I was beginning to think it would be a very very long time before all the Mapp and Lucia’s would be lined up, ducks in a row, on my bookshelf again. Then happy day I saw a copy of ‘Miss Mapp’ in the same black swan imprint as my remaining volumes for a meagre £1.50 in a charity shop. After I went home to check it was a missing one, and then went back before the shop opened the next day to stand on the doorstep in the freezing cold for quarter of an hour risking missing my work bus in the process I finally got the prize (and to work).

After a weekend battling with Sofia Tolstoy I couldn’t resist taking refuge in a bit of Benson and so started to read and haven’t wanted to stop since. I got through ‘Miss Mapp’ and have moved on to ‘Mapp and Lucia’. I think if I go without cups of tea at work for the rest of the month than I can safely order the final missing two without bouncing a single cheque so that’s what I’m going to do. (As an aside being poor is becoming really very tiresome – I would really like the chance to try something different now.)

I was trying to remember when I last read these books – I think I would have been about sixteen which seems young now to be reading about the social machinations of middle age ladies. I know I loved these books and at that age I tended to read and re read a book to death but somehow the Benson’s are in remarkably good shape and better yet I find I don’t remember much of the detail. Tilling is familiar but to all intents and purposes I could be reading these books for the first time – and happily it’s one of those meetings with a childhood friend where I find we still like each other and there are no awkward silences.

I think it’s probably common for anyone who collects books faster than they can read them to question if they have time to re read when there are so many new undiscovered things just waiting to be picked up. It never really occurred to me how much of a book I would forget after twenty years, probably because I’m only just now old enough (that’s how I would like to be thought of at any rate) to be finding out. Anyway I’m off to ponder that a bit more and to read more Mapp and Lucia - pure unadulterated joy...