MRS. AMES

Another one of the fab Bloomsbury Group vintage reprints, and this one by E.F. Benson, author of the fab Mapp & Lucia series. A match made in heaven? I think so! Mrs. Ames starts out seeming very familiar, set as it is in the small town of Riseborough, which the reader may be forgiven for confusing with Riseholme, the setting of the first two Lucia books. In Riseborough, as in Riseholme and Tilling, dwell a great many upper-middle-class people with too much time on their hands, and thus nothing better to do than to pry into the business of their neighbors and endlessly jockey for social supremacy. As always, Benson documents their infighting with affectionate but wicked wit; here’s my favorite line, the initial description of Mrs. Ames herself, the town’s queen bee:

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

In grand Luciaesque fashion, Mrs. Ames soon faces a contender to her throne, her younger, new-to-town cousin Mrs. Evans, and a series of competitive parties and other social maneuvers ensues. But in the Mapp & Lucia books, feelings (except perhaps jealousy and pride) rarely run very deeply, with romantic relationships absent, irrelevant, or considered downright gauche. Mrs. Ames ventures into more emotional territory when Mr. Ames becomes increasingly infatuated with Mrs. Evans, and Mrs. Ames finds she minds this very much. At first, the situation seems comical and harmless, as Mr. Ames makes a mild fool of himself and Mrs. Ames makes failed attempts to recapture his attention by dying her hair and using anti-wrinkle creams; there is nothing Benson does better than exploit the foibles of his characters to hilarious if uncomfortable effect, like an early-1900s version of The Office. But as the relationship between Mr. Ames and Mrs. Evans (who is bored and unfulfilled, “an unexploded shell, liable to blow to bits both itself and any who handled her”) grows more serious, Mrs. Ames finds herself reassessing both her marriage and her life. All comes right in the end, but there’s much more poignancy and self-discovery in this story (as well as an interesting semi-sympathetic, but occasionally derisive portrayal of the women’s suffrage movement) than the cover blurb led me to expect. (“A clever, laughable little satire in the author’s lightest and happiest mood,” said the Time Literary Supplement on its publication in 1912, which is either a severe case of missing the point completely or a reflection of the fact that Benson was best known for writing ghost stories, in comparison to which this is no doubt light and happy, before he started the Mapp & Lucia series 10 years later.)

There is more pathos and a sharper edge to the humor here, and I found the story moving, even sad. It’s not as charming and lovable as Mapp & Lucia, but it’s just as clever and entertaining, and a good demonstration of Benson’s range as a writer. I just wish I could find more books by him! My library only has some collections of his ghost stories, a few of his nonfiction works, and Dodo, the book that apparently first made him a sensation (it seems to be a darker satire about a ruthless social climber). I may have to check out Dodo by default, though I’d prefer something more cheerful.