Yours For The Asking

I recently purchased an extra copy of one of my favorite books, E. F. Benson's "Mapp and Lucia", for a blog giveaway. If you'd like to enter, just send an email to [lborgnes@mac.com] with the subject line "Giveaway." The deadline is Thursday, April 9th at midnight PST. I'll use a random number generator and send it postage-paid to one of you wonderful people, regardless of whether you live in Ohio or Oman. Only one entry per person, please.

I recently blogged about the book here, so if you didn't read my post, find out why Noel Coward, Nancy Mitford and W. H. Auden famously decried, "We will do anything for Lucia books!"

As Lucia would say, "Buona fortuna, my caros!"

The Real Housewives of Riseholme and Tilling

Last night, I indulged in a bit of naughty television -- three back-to-back episodes of "The Real Housewives of New York City."  Naughty because I enjoy it for the most ungentlewomanly of reasons:  I can't take my eyes off those (mostly) desperate women and their constant jockeying for attention, status and camera time. I'm sure most people who watch it are the same as me. It's car-crash television. It's schadenfreude.  It's a cheap way to feel better about oneself, but when I turn it off, I am left with a slightly regretful aftertaste.

I'd like to suggest a thoroughly satisfying alternative -- the "Lucia" novels by E. F. Benson.  Ten years ago, my dear friend Alek turned me onto them and I am still trying to repay the favor.

 "We will do anything for Lucia books!" was the famous plea from Noel Coward, Nancy Mitford and W. H. Auden. Once you read them, you understand why. I love them so much that if I was an unbridled eccentric, I would make them a requirement for friendship.

Lucia and her mortal enemy, Miss Mapp, are not only as pretentious, spiteful and backstabbing as their modern-day Bravo counterparts, they are infinitely more so. The difference is that whereas Bravo wastes no opportunity in making its stars appear as pathetic as possible, Benson mocks the sin but not the sinner and so we end up loving Lucia and Miss Mapp in spite of everything.  

There's recently widowed Lucia, with her snobbery, her airs, and her supposed mastery of Italian, which just consists of adding "ino" to every other word. And there's the spinster Miss Mapp, overflowing with insincerity, always on the lookout for anyone who transgresses the bounds of her tightly controlled world of manners and exemplary behavior.  

  

The two women don't meet until the fourth book, but you can read it first if you like. From the moment they set eyes on each other, it's a feverish struggle for social dominance. Their battles take place in the rarefied worlds of garden parties, fetes and bridge evenings, and wit and wiles are their weapons.  

I promise, you'll laugh your derriere off, with no residue of guilt afterwards.

(My patron saint, E. F. Benson, 1867-1940)

Great 20th Century British Aesthetes

Stephen Tennant. Noel Coward. Dirk Bogarde. Osbert Sitwell. Cecil Beaton. Harold Acton (if anyone can ever find me a copy of "Memoirs of an Aesthete", I'll be indebted to them forever). Beverley Nichols. E.F. Benson. Ronald Firbank. Saki.

The next time you're in a good used bookstore, run to the shelves and hunt for some of their brilliant (and often brilliantly funny) works.

Then open a page and instantly elevate your afternoon.