Lucia is one of the great comic characters in English literature. Outrageously pretentious, hypocritical and snobbish, Queen Lucia, as by right divine rules over the toy kingdom of Riseholme based on the Cotswold village of Broadway. Her long-suffering husband Pepino is her prince-consort, the outrageously camp Georgie is her gentleman-in-waiting, the village green is her parliament, and her subjects, such as Daisy Quantock, are hapless would-be Bolsheviks. In Lucia in London, the prudish, manically ambitious Lucia launches herself into the louche world of London society. Her earnest determination to learn all about modern movements makes her the perfect comic vehicle for Benson s free-wheeling satire of salon society, and of the dominant fads and movements of the 1920s, including vegetarianism, yoga, palmistry, Freudianism, séances, Post-Impressionist art and Christian Science. Meanwhile in Tilling, clearly modelled on Benson s home town of Rye, Miss Mapp consumed by chronic rage and curiosity sits at her window, armed with her light-opera glasses keeping baleful watch on her neighbours. Anger and the gravest suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil : and Benson transmutes her boiling into a series of small humiliations in his witty, malicious comedy. In his insightful Introduction Keith Carabine shows that these books are excruciatingly funny because Benson, like Jane Austen, invites the reader to view the world through the self-deluded fabrications and day-dreams of Lucia and the self-deluded chronic anger and jaundiced suspicions of Elisabeth. Carabine also concentrates on the novels disturbing, bitchy, camp humour whenever that horrid thing which Freud calls sex is raised.The last three wonderful comic novels drolly record the battle between Lucia and Elisabeth Mapp for social and cultural supremacy in the village of Tilling (based on Rye). Their constant skirmishes ensure that every game of bridge, tea or dinner-party, church service, council meeting or art exhibition are thrilling encounters that ensure Tilling is always on a very agreeable rack of suspense . Both Elisabeth and Lucia are gross hypocrites, snobs and bullies, the huge differences in temperament and style ensure the battle is usually unequal. Elisabeth is incurably mean-spirited and Lucia suffers from splendid delusions of grandeur and personal prestige. Driven by demons of revenge, Elisabeth always acts impulsively, and therefore every revelation of her meanness allows Lucia, the consummate actress, to kill her ally with a sickening kindness. In his insightful Introduction Keith Carabine shows that these books are excruciatingly funny because Benson, like Jane Austen, invites the reader to view the world through the self-deluded chronic anger and jaundiced suspicions of Elisabeth and through the self-deluded fabrications and day-dreams of Lucia. Carabine also concentrates on the novels disturbing, bitchy, camp humour whenever that horrid thing which Freud calls sex is raised.
Read online
