Miss Mapp lives in Tilling, a village every bit as concerned with keeping up appearances and being one step ahead of one’s neighbours as Riseholme is.  She observes the comings and goings of her friends and acquaintances through her opera glasses from the bay window of her perfectly positioned house and, though she is shrewd (particularly when it comes to schemes for outwitting her neighbours), she frequently misinterprets or misjudges what she sees.  Incidents include beating her friend to a new dress, trying to attract the attentions of two retired officers who are far more interested in golf, and attempting to see the king as he goes through Tilling on his train while pretending complete disinterest in his visit.

Although Miss Mapp and Lucia are the same type of character engaged in the same type of activity in the same type of setting, Benson manages to make them impressively different.  While Lucia is Riseholme’s undisputed ruler in spite of her flaws, Miss Mapp is on a much more even footing with the residents of Tilling.  Consequently, her scheming is more agressive and less good-natured because she has further to go to get ahead of people.  She reminds me more of Daisy than she does Lucia.  The way Benson ties together her physical appearance and her character is very well done, particularly the way he skirts round using the word ‘fat’:

In spite of her malignant curiosity and her cancerous suspicions about all her friends, in spite, too, of her restless activities, Miss Mapp was not, as might have been expected, a lady of lean and emaciated appearance.  She was tall and portly, with plump hands, a broad, benignant face and dimpled, well-nourished cheeks.  An acute observer might have detected a danger warning in the sidelong glances of her rather blugy eyes, and in a certain tightness at the corners of her expansive mouth, which boded ill for any who came within snapping distance, but to a more superficial view she was a rollicking, good-natured figure of a woman.

Quaint Irene is an excellent character and a thoroughly welcome addition to the mixture of characters who populate Tilling.  She stands out not only for her eccentricities, dressing in boyish clothing (including knickerbockers), displaying socialist tendencies and painting nude portraits of the local fishmonger, but also for her entirely different attitude.  Although she enjoys bridge just as much as the next resident of Tilling, unlike the rest she shows no interest in the petty one-upmanships in which they are constantly engaged.  She is level-headed and sensible, and her no-nonsense approach provides an effective counterpoint to the silly manoeuvrings and petty squabbles of her fellows.  I really hope that she comes to visit Riseholme as I’d love to see how she fits in there.

Although Miss Mapp is easily as entertaining as Queen Lucia and Lucia in London (which remains my favourite so far), it does feel a bit darker, or as dark as you can get within the spectrum of E. F. Benson novels anyway.  In Riseholme everyone gets on, for all their grumbles and complaints about each other, but in Tilling the characters will accuse each other of their actions rather than letting them slide.  At times it feels nasty rather than gossipy, which is a bit of a change.  There are also elements of out-and-out backstabbing between the characters (the incident with the applique dress springs to mind particularly) when they do things specifically to wound another person rather than for the sake of being head of the latest craze or connected to the most important people.  Additionally, the outside world intrudes into Miss Mapp more than it does in the previous two books.  Riseholme exists in a bubble, whereas in Tilling there are references to new taxes being imposed and to rationing on food and fuel.  Money is never an issue in Riseholme, but the population of Tilling are thrifty and worry about paying their bills.  It is still a comic novel and the tone is as light as always, but there are more serious undercurrents running through Miss Mapp which I hadn’t expected.

I’m really looking forward to seeing the clash of the titans which is coming up in the next book I have ahead of me, Mapp and Lucia.  I wonder who will win, or if the two of them will join forces?  If they did, they would be unstoppable!

Miss Mapp by E. F. Benson.  Published by Black Swan, 1984, pp. 267.  Originally published in 1922.

As the title suggests, in Lucia in London Lucia and Pepino inherit a house in London after his aunt dies.  Despite all her protestations of finding London  dull and unimaginative compared to Riseholme, it doesn’t take Lucia long to abandon the quiet village and move up to town where she is soon unashamedly engaged in worming her way into London society, assuming familiarity on the slightest of acquaintances and inviting herself to other people’s dinner parties.   However, Riseholme does not take kindly to being snubbed and retaliates with a flurry of activity in which Lucia is decidedly not involved.  Unused to such independence on behalf of her subjects, Lucia must try to maintain her soveriegnty in Riseholme while battling her way to the top in London.

I think the reason that I enjoyed this book so much more than the first one, despite it being much the same to all intents and purposes, is the fact that it is the second book.  A great deal of the fun and enjoyment of the Lucia books comes from knowing the characters and being able to predict exactly how they will behave in any given situation, then laughing at the inevitability of it all, and this sort of familiarity really needs more than one three hundred page book to be developed.  Like Olga and her friends in Lucia in London, I have become a Luciaphil, and thoroughly enjoy watching Benson engineer situations in which I know Lucia will behave in a rude, crass manner and equally I know that everyone else will pretend not to notice because a. they’re too polite and b. they’re having just as much fun observing Lucia brazen out awkward social situations as I am.  This obvious awareness of the silliness of events but genuine delight in them nonetheless is what makes this book so particularly enjoyable.

I think my favourite incident in Lucia in London involves Lucia deciding to pretend to take a lover, having come to the conclusion that affairs are very fashionable following a celebrated divorce case.  However, because she cannot explain that she is going to pretend to be in love to the object of her feigned affections, because this would defeat the object:

But caution was necessary in the first steps, for it would be hard to explain to Stephen what the proposed relationship was, and she could not imagine herself saying ‘We are going to pretend to be lovers, but we aren’t’.  It would be quite dreadful if he misunderstood, and unexpectedly imprinted on her lips or even her hand a hot lascivious kiss, but up till now he certainly had not shown the smallest desire to do anything of the sort.  She would never be able to see him again if he did that, and the world would probably say that he had dropped her.  But she knew she couldn’t explain the proposed position to him and he would have to guess: she could only give hime a lead and must trust to his intelligence, and to the absence in him of any unsuspected amorous proclivites.  She would begin gently, anyhow, and have him to dinner every day that she was at home.  And really it would be very pleasant for him, for she was entertaining a great deal during this next week or two, and if he only did not yeild to one of those rash and turbulent impulses of the male, all would be well.  (p. 170)

Of course, Stephen is about as interested in women as Lucia’s former attendant Georgie, and so hilarity ensues as they each misconstrue the other’s actions.

Although much of the action takes place in London, Riseholme is not neglected.  I loved watching them scheming indignantly following Lucia’s mocking of Riseholme and the spread of gossip is a wonder to behold.  I felt like I got to know some of the Riseholmites better in this book, and I’m definitely looking forward to spending more time with them in the remaining four Lucia books.

Lucia in London by E. F. Benson.  Published by Black Swan, 1986, pp. 266.  Originally published in 1927.

“Oh, if you like those books, then you really should read the Mapp and Lucia books,” said the lovely man at the Winchester book stall, eyeing the pile of books in my arms.  I thanked him, paid for my stack of books and promptly hunted down the series, which conveniently turned up in my local charity shops all in the same lovely Black Swan editions, the cover images of which are just perfect for the books.  All, of course, except the first one which I couldn’t find anywhere.  Typical.  Eventually I gave in and ordered the first book from Amazon Marketplace and it arrived just before Christmas but I saved it as I thought that, with its comic tone and lightheartedness, it would be a great book to keep me sane through the first few days of going back to work in the new year.

Queen Lucia introduces the village of Riseholme, its inhabitants and, most importantly, Lucia Lucas who presides over Riseholme’s social scene as benevolent dictator.  In this first installment in the series, Lucia’s unspoken sovreignty comes under threat from an Indian guru, a Russian medium and a celebrated opera singer and we see how she deals with these attempts, whether intentional or not, to go against the status quo.

The appeal of Queen Lucia is explained rather well by Olga Bracely:

‘Oh, it’s all so delicious!’ she said.  ‘I never knew before how terribly interesting little thingswere.  It’s all wildly exciting, and there are fifty things going on just as exciting.  Is it all of you who take such a tremendous interest in them that makes them so absorbing, or is it that they are absorbing in themselves and ordinary dull people, not Riseholmites, don’t see how exciting they are?  (pp. 258-259)

It is a novel about little things that happen and are only made interesting by the way in which the entertaining cast of characters treat them.

Lucia reminded me of no one so much as Mrs Elton from Jane Austen’s Emma: she is shallow, snobbish, pretentious and completely convinced of her own importance.  In other words, she should be a rather unpleasant character but is absolutely delicious to read about as she lords it over her friends.  The only facet of her character which I didn’t particularly enjoy was her fondness for baby talk with the men in her life; self-importance and snobbery, while irritating traits in real life, can be made great fun to read about, but adults trying to sound like infants is something that I will always find annoying.

Riseholme’s other inhabitants are equally as obsessed with social climbing, though in different ways.  I enjoyed Daisy’s futile attempts to usurp Lucia’s prominence by launching the latest trend before Lucia can pick up on it and annex Daisy’s latest discovery, something which always ends in disaster.  Georgie’s delight at having a secret from Lucia which gives him some sort of power over her is amusing and infectious as the reader spends more time with him than with Lucia.  Although Benson’s writing is sharp and biting, it was without any particular malice.  I felt that, although he mocks these silly social situations he also loves them and thrives on them, and that he would be behaving exactly the same as the other villagers if he were to live in Riseholme and would love every minute of it.  He certainly has great fun writing about them.

To continue the Jane Austen comparison, there were times when this book felt like it needed a Mr Knightley.  It has the intrigue of people being manoeuvred into relationships, the fast-fading fashions for particular activities and the carefully considered, smiling social warfare between the characters, but I would have liked to see someone with sense and morality who wasn’t taken in by all of this nonsense to provide some much needed contrast.  While I know it’s a light, humorous novel and I enjoyed it for what it is, it felt a bit relentlessly shallow and breezy at times and I would have preferred an occasional change of tone.  Hermy and Ursy, Georgie’s irrepressibly robust sisters, would have done this perfectly but they remained fairly marginal characters in this first book.  I hope to see more of them in future volumes as I would love to see someone practical tell Riseholme to stop being so ridiculous.  Nevertheless, it is an enjoyable ridiculousness (ridiculousity?  I think I prefer ridiculousity) and I look forward to continuing the series.

Queen Lucia by E. F. Benson.  Published by Black Swan, 1986, pp. 266.  Originally published in 1920.