{misc.} trains and buttered toast

John Betjeman Trains and Buttered Toast (2006)

(more info on the cover)

Trains and Buttered Toast is my current on-the-go non-fiction book. I haven't actually finished it, but last night I read a chapter that I can't resist mentioning here. The book is a collection of Betjeman's radio talks for the BBC mostly from the 1930s to 1950s. The talks cover a nice range of interests - modern architecture, urban planning, the pleasures of the seaside, churches, famous men and women, wartime life, and so on. It is a lovely book to dip in to, and quite funny in places (his views on modern town-planning are pretty snarky). 

But the chapter which caught my eye was the transcript of a talk called 'Yesterday's Fiction', delivered on the Home Service on Monday 21st August 1944:

Instead of telling you about the best of this week's latest books, because there are so very few being published just now, I am going to review some old favourites. I am going to review some Edwardian novelists - the sort of people who were very popular before the last war.

Of course my ears immediately pricked up at that!

The names I shall mention are probably to be found on the back of a book within three miles, possibly within three yards, of everyone listening this evening who lives in these islands. I shall choose authors who have never produced a wholly bad book and often produced a very good one. And while you are are going away to get a pencil to take down the new names I mention, I will indulge in a short background sketch of Edwardian novelists.

So who does Betjeman rate? First up is Anthony Hope ("top of my list... for consistent high standards") - I do indeed have him on my shelves within three yards (or close!), as I really rate his The Prisoner of Zenda as a classic tale of adventure and chivalry. I have also read the sequel Rupert of Hentzau (Rupert is a very naughty young man indeed), but the rest of Hope's novels have passed me by. Betjeman already notes that only these two seem to be still read, and recommends The King's Mirror and The Dolly Dialogues (the latter he suggests is a combination of Kipling and Wilde!).  

source

And then - another favourite I want to explore further - George Gissing. His The Odd Women is indeed as Betjeman describes, "a deeply agonizing book". He suggests Gissing's The House of Cobwebs (short-stories) as a taste of something different. 

Next? Someone I've not heard of, but surely some of you keen explorers of lost classics will know the name of the "lighter and totally forgotten author" Miss S. MacNaughton [sic - it is in fact MacNaughtan]. Betjeman tells us he was recommended her books by "Miss Elizabeth Bowen and Miss Rose Macaulay", which is a pretty good recommendation!

Miss MacNaughton specializes in good, kindly people in fairly easy circumstances and her novels have happy and probable endings.

(He suggests A Lame Dog's Diary, available free at project gutenberg; but the one which caught my eye was "The Fortune of Christina McNab, the story of a raw Scottish heiress let loose on smart London society" - that sounds just my cup of tea.) 

Who else?

...Conan Doyle, Booth Tarkington, Leonard Merrick (always good), E. F. Benson (nearly always), N. and A. M. Williamson, Rider Haggard, Stanley Weyman (according to taste), Seton Merriman (often good), 'Q', Somerville and Ross (to me, always good), H. A. Vachell, A. E. W. Mason and many, many more.

Of these, Conan Doyle will likely never be out of favour. I thought Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Amberson's was a good read (I reviewed it here). Benson still has plenty of fans (myself included). I've not read any Rider Haggard for what feels like a century, and really should revisit him. 'Q', of course, was reintroduced to a new generation by 84 Charing Cross Road. The only other one who rings a bell is Mason, with his The Four Feathers (and who knew there'd been what sounds like a ghastly Heath Ledger remake?).

Betjeman notes two other highly recommended reads: Erskine Childers' The Riddle of the Sands as a classic spy story (true: but too much messing about on boats, and anything involving reading maps or train timetables is always wasted on me! - "there has probably never been written so alluring an account of the delights of the amateur yachtsman"); and - unknown to me - Mary Cholmondeley's (I assume that's a "Chumly" pronunciation?) Red Pottage. He adds the rather telling comment that "autobiographical novels are often an author's - and in particular an authoress's - best novel": apparently Red Pottage is "a picture of rectory life and mental cruelty and frustration and stupidity therein among the lush, lovely and uncaring landscape of Shropshire." Oh dear... 

(the Cholmondeley cover is an Arthur Rackham drawing and you can buy it for a mere $1750)

This was a nice little essay, which gave me quite a few ideas for future reading, and I am happy to note that the next chapter is 'Wartime Tastes in Reading', which I hope to find just as useful.

{review} lucia on holiday

Guy Fraser-Sampson Lucia on Holiday (2012)

 

It is a brave writer indeed who would take up the challenge of adding to E. F. Benson's canonical 'Mapp & Lucia' series. Fraser-Sampson is up to the task - tonally he carries it off exceptionally well, and the element of over-the-top mayhem is never far from the scene. It is almost as cruel as the originals. As pastiche it is excellent. Fraser-Sampson's Georgie is a particular delight, but then Georgie has always been my favourite ("He crossed his legs and shot out his cuffs perfectly at the same time, and was disappointed that nobody appeared to notice"). 

Fraser-Sampson takes Lucia at co. to an Italian lake resort on the eve of the 1929 financial collapse. There is some nice use of near-contemporary events - the thoroughly irritating Gabriele d’Annunzio is beautifully done:

Amelia had no time for any of this and was prone to interject ‘Pah!’ or ‘Balderdash!’ into other people’s statements, and she seemed to have quite decided views on Italian politics which, while Lucia knew nothing of such matters, were clearly at variance with d’Annunzio’s. She was pro-Mussolini because he had made the trains run on time. D’Annunzio was anti-Mussolini because Mussolini had tried to kill him by throwing him out of a window. When this fact had been made clear, the party gathered around the dinner table in the saloon had fallen silent, clearly weighing the pros and cons of each position, and most siding mentally with Mussolini on the grounds of justifiable homicide.

There are some wonderful scenes involving hashish and Georgie's quite unwarranted reputation as a Lothario to either sex:

Francesco brought an ashtray over to the balcony table, and leant close to place it beside him, so close that Georgie could clearly smell his perfume. He wondered if it might be one of those new French colognes, and what it might be like to wear a daring cologne himself rather than just boring old toilet water.
‘I did enjoy your recital with Miss Bracely, sir,’ his valet murmured respectfully. ‘I had no idea you were such a talented pianist in addition to your painting skills.’
‘Thank you,’ Georgie replied awkwardly into Francesco’s shirt front. He found his heart was suddenly beating more quickly, doubtless as a result of his agitation.
‘Tell me, sir,’ Francesco enquired softly. ‘You are clearly such a sensitive gentleman. Do you possess any other particular ... artistic tastes?’
This at least was an easy question to answer. ‘Why, yes,’ Georgie said brightly. ‘How clever of you to guess. Actually, do you know, I’m very fond of needlepoint.’
Francesco moved away and said, ‘Indeed, sir’ as he gently closed the French window.

Rating: Decent entertainment. I love the originals and am deeply suspicious of sequels, but Lucia fans are in quite safe hands here.

 

{weekend words}

Francesco brought an ashtray over to the balcony table, and leant close to place it beside him, so close that Georgie could clearly smell his perfume. He wondered if it might be one of those new French colognes, and what it might be like to wear a daring cologne himself rather than just boring old toilet water.
‘I did enjoy your recital with Miss Bracely, sir,’ his valet murmured respectfully. ‘I had no idea you were such a talented pianist in addition to your painting skills.’
‘Thank you,’ Georgie replied awkwardly into Francesco’s shirt front. He found his heart was suddenly beating more quickly, doubtless as a result of his agitation.
‘Tell me, sir,’ Francesco enquired softly. ‘You are clearly such a sensitive gentleman. Do you possess any other particular ... artistic tastes?’
This at least was an easy question to answer. ‘Why, yes,’ Georgie said brightly. ‘How clever of you to guess. Actually, do you know, I’m very fond of needlepoint.’
Francesco moved away and said, ‘Indeed, sir’ as he gently closed the French window.

 Guy Fraser-Sampson 

Lucia on Holiday (2012)

{review} mrs ames

E. F. Benson Mrs Ames (1912 [2010])

The smaller a piece of news was, the more vivid was her perception of it, and the firmer her grip of it: large questions produced but a vague impression on her. [on Mrs Altham]

Ah, the familiar vicissitudes of village life. But Mrs Ames is no charming Mapp and Lucia prequel. As the novel opens, Mrs Ames has seen off all rivals and is the undisputed queen-bee of Riseborough. There is some wonder among their set about how she has accomplished this:

In appearance she was like a small, good-looking toad in half-mourning; or, to stated the comparison with greater precision, she was small for a woman, but good-looking for a toad.

Mrs Ames is now 55 years old; her husband ten years younger. Her character is neatly summed up:

She felt that there was no call on her to gratify any curiosity that might happen to be rampant. She also felt that the chief joy in the possession of a sense of humour lies in the fact that others do not suspect it.

And this, one might suggest, will be Mrs Ames' downfall, for trouble looms on the horizon with the new doctor's wife Mrs Evans - "the fortunate possessor of that type of looks which wears well": "To fire the word 'flirt' at her, point-blank, would have been a brutality that would have astounded her." But, flirt she does, and a slowly drawn out version of chaos - and scandal - is the result as she attempts to capture a new male interest in her honeyed traps.

Unfortunately, her main target - the handsomest man in Riseborough - is Major Ames: "Merely an Odysseus who had never voyaged wondered what voyaging was like."

Major Ames was not really an untruthful man, but many men who are not really untruthful get through a wonderful lot of misrepresentation.

How will Mrs Ames extricate her husband from Mrs Evan's coils? And what role do the suffragettes have to play in the denouement? The suffragettes, incidentally, give Benson an excuse for a long rant on the topic, not all as positive in tone as this little bit:

Most of the members were women, whose lives had been passed in continuous self-repression, who had been frozen over by the narcotic ice of a completely conventional and humdrum existence.

E. F. Benson has the art of the vicious caricature down pat and I found the misogyny of Mrs Ames a bit hard to take in places (yes, yes, of the times, but I still don't have to like it). This is quite a mournful little tale all in all.

Rating: 7/10.

If you liked this: the Mapp and Lucia series - tonally more irresistible.

{weekend words}

Henry, I have a good mind to treat Mrs Ames as if she had not been so insulting to me that day (and after all that is only Christian conduct) and to take round to her after lunch tomorrow the book she said she wanted to see last July. I am sure I have forgotten what it was, but any book will do, since she only wants it to be thought that she reads.

E. F. Benson (1912)

Mrs Ames

{not so much review as quick thought-gathering}

What have I been reading lately? 

Well... I've completely fallen behind with all my (on the whole, pretty tenuous and crazily laid-back) reading 'plans' and have about 30 things on my 'active' list that I am either reading or about to read or started to read so long ago that I really should just start them again as Heaven knows what they were about. There is no question that I am prey to complete book sluttiness and a lack of impulse control. I also seem to have been neglecting non-fiction of late and I think this is because I am meant (er... overdue) to be reviewing some classical studies books for a journal and the non-fiction bit of my mind is occupied there. 

That said... Danielle (whose enticing blog A Work in Progress offers me far too many distractions!) asked what non-fiction books we've been enjoying and I have to say that Caitlin Moran's How to Be a Woman is my Personal Non-Fiction Book of The Year. Brilliantly funny. I don't often laugh aloud when reading (except when reading E. F. Benson), but she is hysterical. And there are important and very sensible messages for women who are feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to embrace, e.g., Brazilian waxes and dodgy undies. Loved this book.

Because I find it difficult to begin a series and just read one book, I derailed my reading plans on Charlaine Harris' 'Sookie Stackhouse' series. The first couple were good fun {REVIEW}, then there was a slumpy decline in the middle (one book in particular not only omitted a big chunk of background which was essential for the book - it had appeared somewhere in a short story, apparently - but suffered from dodgy editing which had failed to correct continuity problems) but the last couple sort of picked up the pace again, though I had lost my enthusiasm by then. I don't think I really like the supernatural that much, but Southern food sounds great. I've got one more to go; not sure I'll bother. 

I was reading Kerrie's post at Mysteries in Paradise (a local, Adelaide blog which I really enjoy) on whether one can view series vs. stand-alone-book in terms of a dichotomy between character development (series) and plot (stand-alone). Certainly in the Sookie Stackhouse series it is clear that the reader can have both but as the series progresses there is the problem of bringing the reader up to speed on the characters. This is tricky: how much background is sufficient?

And then there's the interesting case of an author who has gone backwards in a much-loved series and provided her readers with another take on an earlier book. This would count as a fleshing-out of the characters, as the plot has already appeared. Laurie R. King's Beekeeping for Beginners is a short story (available only, I think, as an e-book) which  takes the reader back to the meeting between Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes in The Beekeeper's Apprentice. This time around, the meeting and subsequent events are presented from Holmes' perspective. I thought this was an interesting idea and one which had a lot to offer fans of the series. It made me - as I presume was intended - want to go back and read all of the Mary Russell series again (I am only up to The Language of Bees, so I should still be going forward, not backwards).   

   

 

Another Mary: one wonderful discovery for me - courtesy of mentions on so many other blogs - is Mary Stewart. I cannot imagine why I haven't read these before as they magically combine a fistful of ingredients that I find terribly appealing in a book (crime, mystery, romance, plucky heroines, nice frocks, wonderful scenery, travel, etc.). I have now read three set in Greece (I thought I'd start with familiar territory) - This Rough Magic [Corfu], My Brother Michael [Delphi], and The Moonspinners [Crete]. Wonderful. I can see that reading the rest of her enormous oeuvre is going to stuff up all my plans for the next few months, esp. given their reissue (ghastly covers, as above). This is a thought which fills me with complete contentment.

One last thought: every book above was read on my Kindle. It has taken over my life. It has solved my book storage problems. I can eat with two hands now when I read at dinner. I am an addict.

{review} fine feathers

E. F. Benson Fine Feathers, selected by Jack Adrian (1994).

 

'Dear Mrs Brick, she said. 'How perfectly delightful of you to dispense with the formality of an invitation and look in on us... You will find ever so many of your friends here.' ('Dodo and the Brick').

This is a collection of short stories by E. F. Benson, author of the Mapp and Lucia series of books. There is even a Mapp story in here ('The Male Impersonator'), which delivers the customary comeuppance to the social-climbing Miss Mapp. The collection is divided, sort of, into genres. I say 'sort of', since so many of the stories could really be classed as 'society stories', but we also get 'sardonic stories' (another classification which could apply overall), the whimsically entitled 'crank stories', some sporting stories ("playing golf with phenomenal inability... this ruiner of gutta-percha") and a few ghostly offerings. There is much to love here for Benson fans and it is hard to pick a favourite. I loved 'Professor Burnaby's Discovery' - about an Egyptologist taken for a ride by a canny hotelier with an eye for faking antiquities.

In 'Miss Maria's Romance', Benson's acute eye for the ridiculous runs riot:

Meantime, like the poet, Miss Jane had passed through the town and out of the street, in something resembling a tumult of soul. The sun of romance had shone on the red-brick house, she was invigorated by his rays; snails, a bicycle, ordering dinner, and washing up a set of Crown Derby had hitherto been provender sufficient for her psychine needs, but now her capacity for spiritual adventure had suddenly been enlarged.

Here Miss Mapp is painting:

She was intending to be very bold over this, following the method which Mr Sargent practised with such satisfactory results, namely of painting not what she knew was there but what her eye beheld, and there was no doubt whatever that the broad waters of the high tide, though actually grey and muddy, appeared to be as blue as the sky which they reflected. So, with a fierce glow of courage she filled her broad brush with the same strong solution of cobalt as she had used for the sky, and unhesitatingly applied it.

There are a number of stories based on certain types of mistaken identities causing social disaster (familiar to readers of the Mapp and Lucia stories) and other stories warning of the perils of daring to step out of your given social level and the perils of social climbing. The story in which Mrs Ames appears (the title story 'Fine Feathers') is one of these - a Mrs Altham gets her comeuppance (money can never buy class). Benson's description of Mrs Altham is one of my favourites (and a classical allusion to boot):

...Mrs Altham was of sterner stuff; there was something of the House of Atreus about her.

Benson is the master of the one-sentence summary which makes his characters shine:

He was a large man, pleasantly furnished with flesh, and filled a chair beautifully.

He had just gone through the Moral Sciences Tripos at Cambridge, in which he had taken a first. But his philosophy lay far deeper than this, for a Tripos may be only a sort of fungus-growth on a man...

There is no question that Benson is best known as the cruel bubble-burster of social climbers. At this he is arch and sardonic and quite brilliant. One story was quite different from the stereotypical Benson, namely 'My Friend the Murderer' about the relationship (?) between the narrator and the classically handsome Greco-Albanian fisherman Yanni. This story really demonstrates Benson's range and would certainly make me curious to track down some of his less 'social stories' material.

Favourite word: "chaffening".

Typo!: Alwyn for Aylwin, p.258

Rating: 8/10

If you liked this... I shall bump Benson's Mrs Ames up the TBR and start hunting down the first volume of short stories, Desirable Residences. Oh, and some more 'Dodo' stories.

 

{weekend words}

A significant number cropped up this week...

'All women ought to be painlessly put to death at the age of forty,' she said to herself...

From 'The Eavesdropper', in E.F.Benson's Fine Feathers.