Watching the Watchers

As is true for many Canadians Al Jazeera is part of my normal cable package. I would not be surprised if many Canadians had up until the recent protests in the Middle East been unaware of the fact that their television package included this channel.

I first started watching Al Jazeera on a regular basis just after Christmas because I was frustrated at the limited coverage other news outlets were giving to the protests in the streets of cities across the Middle East. Although I wasn\’t sure what the real story was I was sure that asking a limited number of white, male, non-Arabic speaking pundits to explain things was not the shortest and surest way to find out.

I soon developed a mental catalog of the news channels available to me.

CNN was at its best a good conduit of the \’received wisdom\’ of the American elite. One quickly learned that the \’received wisdom\’ was not particularly wise if by that word one means \’full of insight as to what is actually happening on the ground and with a better than average ability to predict the fallout of current events.\’ What CNN gave me, when they bothered to cover the news from Tunisia or Egypt or Libya, was a clear enough picture of how the government/punditocracy of the United States thought about things that I could make fairly informed predictions as to how they would respond to the unfolding crisis.

Notice however, the phrase

when they bothered to cover the news from Tunisia or Egypt or Libya

since at what seemed to me rather inexplicable moments the news editors at that channel would decide to cover some other event.

The cynical part of me decided that the best way for Egyptians to make sure that the news of their government sending thugs into the streets to attack peaceful protesters to get banner coverage in the United States would be to threaten or hold hostage prominent American reporters. Sadly what happened when CNN did realize that some of their reporters were quite seriously in harm\’s way was that the story soon came to focus on the American reporters rather than the events they had come to report on.

I am not surprised that CNN is driven by / responsive to parochial concerns however I do feel that they should dial back on their self-satisfied gravitas given the fact they they seem now to be equal parts \’unofficial platform for the chattering classes / government\’ and \’tabloid television.\’

CBC/CTV Both the Canadian news channels had adequate coverage of the world shaking events happening. They did have reporters on the ground reporting things they actually witnessed as opposed to repeating things told to them by \’inside sources\’ however the scope and depth of the reportage was limited. I understand why so much of their concern was basically parochial (what is happening to Canadians in that part of the world / how will these events effect Canada) however I think that this was one of the times when the networks should have risen above short term parochialism in order to fulfill their greater parochial duty — to make sure that their Canadian audience was well educated about events around the world.

The BBC did a good job compared to CNN or the Canadian news channels. They had more people on the ground in the area than did the Canadian or American channels and they had more access to the intelligentsia of the Arab-speaking diaspora than did their North American counterparts. Still, there was an aspect of their coverage (outside of the usual criticisms lodged against them) I had a problem putting into words until events in other parts of the world (specifically the earthquake in New Zealand) clarified it to me. What happened in New Zealand was, without question, horrible and yet the amount of time the BBC devoted to it seemed disproportionate to the amount given to events happening elsewhere in the world. Now it isn\’t surprising that the BBC would give more coverage to an event that happened in a commonwealth country heavily populated by expatriates whose descendants speak (almost) the same language. The problem is that BBC \”sees\” and presents the world through occidental eyes. They don\’t just give disproportionate coverage to things that happen in their own political/cultural backyard — they have a specific and identifiable way of cataloging and evaluating world events. This is sometimes a subtle matter of line readings on the part of news readers or of the ordering of stories. It may be a matter of the implied lack of respect given to the people around the news reporter or the willingness to intrude on the private sorrow, grief and pain of those around them.

I started watching Al Jazeera because I wanted to see the pictures that weren\’t being carried on the Canadian or American channels and, if nothing else, I wanted to avoid the endless focus on cricket [1] on the BBC. (For those who haven\’t had a chance to watch Al Jareeza it streamed on the net both in Arabic and in English.) The coverage over the last few months has focused on the Middle East but they cover news from all over the world. They didn\’t ignore the earthquake in New Zealand, they carried news of the Super Bowl, they interviewed American political figures, they had a look-in at the Oscars. However, all of these stories are covered without the subtle occidental / western filtering and shading that I noticed at the BBC.

Would I make the claim that Al Jazeera is objective? Of course not. Neither is the BBC nor CNN nor the CBC. However I think it is vitally important at this moment in history for us in the \’western world\’ to be able to get news about the non-western world from a range of sources western and non-western. We need to stop seeing the non-occidental world only through occidental eyes.

Note to anyone who is thinking at this point \’what about Fox News?\” Given the sorry level of basic fact checking and the open support of individuals and parties involved in American politics I do not consider FOX a source of news. My only interest in it would be see how they were going to frame events or to check to see if they had even acknowledged the fact that something had happened.

And now – a special comment on CNN.

CNN, like many news channels, mediates and frames its news coverage. I am not sure that most of its watchers are aware of how deeply that impacts their understandings of what is happening in the world. More than once in the last few weeks I have been watching someone giving a speech in Tripoli or Cairo and I turned to CNN to find that the speech wasn\’t being shown. At best there might be a crawl across the bottom of the screen announcing, for example, that Gaddafi was speaking on Libyan state television. Then a commentator would appear and tell the audience members what to think about that speech.

I, like many of the people who were watching the BBC or Al Jazeera as Gaddafi spoke, understand no more than a few words in Arabic however I learned much by watching the Colonel speak. Of course, his words were being simultaneously translated, but I could also see and hear him. I could notice the times he seemed at a loss for words and also make note of how often when Libyan state television cut away from him he was silent. I could compare his body language with that of earlier televised appearances. None of this was possible when the coverage was not of him but of other people telling me about him.

CNN was standing between me and a news event. This is common on almost all American news channels. They do not show you the speech: they show you clips of the speech and then tell you how to understand it.

And because they do not show you the raw, unmediated event they deny you access to the data you need in order to answer some very important questions:

Do these people actually understand events better than do you?
Could you make equally good (or bad) predictions given the same information they have?
Could you make better predictions given the same information they have?

[1] Although, truth to told, Al Jazeera also covers cricket too much for my taste.

Book Review: High Rising

High Rising by Angela Thirkell (1933)

I found this book such a delight that I was torn as to how to read it. The writing and characterizations were so enjoyable that I didn’t want to put the volume down and yet I wanted to set it down every once in a while just to delay the moment when I arrived at the last line of the last page. Now having finished it I am seized with the desire to wave it under someone’s nose and declaim (loudly) this is the way to write a really good comedy of manners!

High Rising is the second Angela Thirkell I have read and I read it immediately after reading Ankle Deep. Both books were published in 1933 (in the order in which I read them) and represent her first two novels although she had already written shorter fiction and published an autobiography. As a first time Thirkell reader it seemed reasonable to expect to see little change in writing style or tone between the two books and yet the differences were immense. I appreciated Ankle Deep but I thoroughly enjoyed High Rising. Although one might expect (for the reader who knew very little about Thirkell background) that High Rising would more prone to the dangers of the “authorial stand in” than Ankle Deep this seems not to be the case. The events that unfold over the course of the book are seen through the eyes of (and concerns of) Mrs. Morland. Laura Morland is a successful novelist who, the reader learns, specializes in murder mysteries that take place in the world of high fashion. Morland approaches her writing as a job and has no pretensions to being even a middle-brow writer. She took up writing in order to support her family of four sons after the death of her husband and clears sees it as a profession not a vocation.

Thirkell was clearly a woman of a particular class and education writing principally about other people of the same class, education and social mores. Morland’s attitudes about social place and education are not in advance of the social upheavals that a reader can see, armed with the prescience that comes from reading a book 80 years after it was published, looming in England’s future. Nor is Morland portrayed as one of those people who cling to “the old ways” as if they could, by doing so, will change away. Indeed it would be fair to say that for the most part Morland simply does not think about such things at all.

Thirkell does not situate Morland as an unreliable narrator although she does use the contrivance of having characters misunderstand situations, events or other characters. The book is written in the third person subjective/limited form in which the reader finds hirself seeing the world through the eyes/experiences of some, but not all, of the characters. The reader comes to learn/ is trained to understand that Laura believing something to be true does not necessarily mean that it is indeed true. What is true is that Laura actually feels those things which the narrative voice tells the reader she feels. To some extent the divide between those whose inner thoughts are shared with readers and those who are presented only from the outside is determined by social standing. The reader is privy both to the physical facts of Mrs. Morland’s interactions with Miss Grey and Mrs. Morland’s perceptions and understandings of those interactions. However the reader is never given a direct glimpse into the mind of Miss Grey herself. Because the actual interactions are well described the reader can fairly easily step back and consider for hirself the justice or value of Mrs. Morland’s interpretations of and reactions to people and events.

The care with which Thirkell lays out what Joe Friday would refer to as “just the facts” wedded to an interesting cast of characters and a lightly constructed and well-paced plot result in a book that is a good example of what a comedy of manners should be. Thirkell avoids the overreliance on coincidences which often mars books of this type and her characters are, from their first appearance, both true enough to stereotype that the reader has no trouble accepting their actions and attitudes and individual enough that the reader does not confuse them with different characters in this or other books.

In short this is an engaging and well written book. Additionally, this is a book that can be read in different ways—therefore:

Beyond here there lie spoilers.

High Rising is, among other things, an examination of the different choices that face educated “genteel” women in England in the years between the two world wars. The choices are not many but they are significantly more wide-ranging than those which were open to women of a similar class roughly a century earlier.

Amy Birkett is the wife of William Birkett, headmaster of Southbridge School. The reader sees little of her as a mother, quite a bit of her as a friend and a lot of her as person who organizes and administers the practical side of life at the boarding school just as her husband organizes and administers the academic life of the school. Mrs. Birkett does not have a career of her own but seems to share in large part that of her husband. She is not expected to retire to her parlour when important decisions are being made and one suspects that the school would suffer more from her absence than it would the absence of her husband.

Laura Morland was left, some number of years before High Rising opens, a widow with four sons. She turned to writing mysteries as way of making enough money to house and to educate them in the manner expected of members of her social class. She is not only successful as an author she is happy in her independence and liberty. It is made clear to the reader that Morland could have remarried (and indeed could still remarry) if that was her wish. She enjoys living a life answerable mainly to herself and yet she is not a social reformer or an advocate for changing the social structure of the England in which she lives. She is offended when those who she considers her social inferiors presume to act ‘above their station.’ The housekeeper who refers to Mrs. Morland only as ‘you’ is accepted as eccentric—largely due to the social chasm that lies between the two—but when Knox’s secretary acts outside the bounds of what Morland considers appropriate deference then offense is indeed taken.

Una Grey has chosen to make her living as a secretary and as High Risings opens has come to work for Morland’s neighbor and a fellow author George Knox. When Laura Morland first meets Miss Grey neither she, nor the reader, know much about Miss Grey’s background nor her reasons for working. She clearly wishes to make herself invaluable to Knox and even to marry him. Grey is educated, else she could not function as a literary secretary and shows organizational and research skills. However, she offends by not clearly accepting the unwritten rules as to “her place” and not treating Mrs. Morland in the precisely correct fashion. It is difficult for the modern reader to gauge how unacceptable Grey’s behaviour might be. This reader acknowledges that many of her offenses would have been invisible to me had not Mrs. Morland expressed her annoyance. The continual reminder that Grey is Irish suggests that some degree of anti-Irish feeling may lie behind her reception in the English countryside. It is notable, however, that no one in the book questions the appropriateness of Grey working to support herself nor do they argue that Grey marrying Knox would be a misalliance. The objections of Miss Knox, Miss Todd and Mrs. Morland to Miss Grey are primarily based on their dislike of her as a person.

Anne Todd is also a literary secretary. She works for Mrs. Morland and at the same time is able to maintain a friendship with her. Todd works partly for funds since she and her mother are living on a pension but more so because it is intellectually and socially satisfying for her to do so. There is no suggestion that working for a living impugns her class status. When she turns down a proposal of marriage neither the author nor the spurned suitor suggest it is unreasonable for a woman to prefer to be single and of limited financial means than be married to “the wrong person.” This is particularly notable because the man who she turns down is a nice person, she does not reject him because she thinks badly of him and the two remain friends.

Sibyl Knox is unmarried and in her early twenties. She has been living at home with her father and labouring under the pressure of his expectations of her. He is a respected author and imagines that his daughter will be a talented writer as well. When Sibyl finds out that she has no talent at all at writing she is overjoyed. This frees her to do what she wants to do, which is get married and have children.

What Thirkell has drawn for us is a group of women who have varying interests and talents but who all expect to have choices in life beyond that of simply of ‘picking the right husband.’ None are mocked for those desires. Sybil wants to be accepted and loved for the person she is just as Anne Todd would not accept a marriage proposal just for the sake of friendship and safety. Mrs. Morland does not languish in her widowhood she enjoys living a self-directed life. Indeed the reader is given the hint that even Miss Grey, the villain of the piece, may have a chance of finally achieving her desires.

Thirkell, like Austen before her, takes a small group of people living mostly in the English countryside and examines their interactions paying particular attention to matters of marriage. In comparing the two authors one can see how many more options ‘genteel’ English women had in 1930 than in 1810.

One final thought on Thirkell. I had almost finished the book when I came across my second Thirkell “George Eliot” moment. In Ankle Deep the words that Thirkell put into the mouth of one of her characters clarified for me the reason I responded as I did to Dorothea Brooke. Late in High Rising George Knox (a successful author) tells Laura Morland that he intends to turn from writing historical biographies and instead write books of a different type, “Awfully Dull Novels:”

\”Dull novels? But, George, why? Anyone can do that.\’

\”Laura, they cannot. It needs a power, an absorption, which few possess. If you write enough dull novels, excessively dull ones, Laura, you obtain an immense reputation. I have thought of one. Essentially the plot is, as you may say, nothing, a mere vulgar intrigue between an unhappily married man and a woman of great charm, also unhappily mated. Trite, banal, you will say.\”

As Laura did not say it, but sat staring at him, he proceeded.

\”But, Laura, and this is where success lies, there will be a strong philosophic vein running through the book. My hero shall be an ardent student of philosophy, a follower of Spinoza, Kant, Plato, a Transcendentalist, a Quietist, what do I know—one can read that up with the greatest of ease thanks to the appalling increase of cheap little books about philosophy edited by men with famous names who do not scruple to pander to this modern craze for education, which is, in sum, only a plan for helping people not to think for themselves. Now, mark me, Laura. What really interests novel readers? Seduction. I scruple to use the word in front of you, but art knows no bounds. Seduction; I say it again. Novel readers by thousands will read my book, each asking her, or in comparatively fewer cases, him, or his self: Will seduction take place? Well, I may tell you, Laura, that it will. But so philosophically that hundreds and thousands of readers will feel that they are improving their minds by reading philosophy, which is just as harsh and crabbed as the dull fools suppose, until it is made attractive by the lure of sex. [1] (308-309)

And that, to me, is a passingly good description of Middlemarch.

[1]Thirkell, Angela, 1966 An Angela Thirkell omnibus / with an introduction by Elizabeth Bowen Hamish Hamilton, London,

Article Review: "Middlemarch and Me," part 1: Middlemarch, Mead and Thirkell

A commenter (thank you Amaryllis) called to my attention the article \”Middlemarch and Me\” by Rebecca Mead in a recent issue of The New Yorker.[1] I had not had the time to write a review of the article before I, for the first time, read an Angela Thirkell book (also, thank you Amaryllis.) It is not surprising that coming to both of them on the recommendation of the same person I would find myself considering Mead’s article in light of my reading of Thirkell, and Thirkell in the light of my reading of Mead’s article. Nor is it surprising that I would find myself thinking (and rethinking) Middlemarch.

I had initially planned to write one long post about Mead’s article but decided that for purposes of clarity (and to avoid trespassing on the time of any readers) I should divide it into three parts: Mead’s contribution to the presumption/claim that Middlemarch is a great book / book to particularly value; Mead’s contribution to the ongoing debate of the relative “literary worth” of Austen versus Eliot; and the article’s utility / worth to someone who does not already value Middlemarch as a great, if not the greatest, English novel and Eliot as a great novelist.

The Mead article’s utility / worth to someone who does not already value “Middlemarch” as a great, if not the greatest, English novels and Eliot as a great novelist.

I begin by admitting that which before the eyes of many scholars is a mark of shame. I do not like Middlemarch. It is a book whose initial reading I remember as an experience of almost unrelieved drudgery. I read it before the point in my life when I decided that it wasn’t actually evil to not finish a book once I had begun reading it. One might think that any book first completed in such a fashion is unlikely to become a favourite upon a second reading yet it has been my experience that a bad “first time” is not an insuperable barrier to later enjoyment and appreciation. But this has not been the case for Middlemarch. At irregular intervals I return to the book, usually after someone whose taste in books I admire tells me that they have just reread or are currently rereading it. Buoyed up with their enthusiasm I crack the covers of my copy yet again and settle down to, if not enjoy then not actively dislike, what has been more than once described as the finest novel in the English language.

Each attempt leaves me further frustrated. “What is it,” I ask myself, “that I so dislike about this book.” I read other people writing about Middlemarch and fortified with their insights I open the book again. Yet each time I return to it I find it no more interesting, insightful or inspiring and so each time I finally give up and return the book to its place on the shelf near Gaskell (whose Cranford I love) and my Galsworthy collection (that needs rereading every several years) below my collection Austen’s novels (each of which is reread at least once a year) above Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time sequence and my well-thumbed Trollope novels. I gaze at the books ranged above it, beside it and below it and wonder—just why is I don’t like Middlemarch? It is obviously not because it is so long, nor because it is centered around the concerns of a small group of people in the English countryside, nor that issues of marriage loom so large for many of the characters.

My own frustration with reading Middlemarch leads me to welcome articles such as Mead’s—articles that seem to hold out the hope to me that finally I might achieve the ever elusive appreciation of the book. Alas, once again one of the book’s supporters fails to move me any closer to liking or even admiring the book. Indeed many of the things Mead finds most praiseworthy I feel are either commonplace achievements to be expected of any competently written novel or lie more in the intellect and imagination of the reader than in the book itself. Those (and more) I will write about in later postings.

However, one thing did strike me as I read Mead. Not for the first time I was taken aback at another reader’s identification and patience with Dorothea. Mead describes herself as identifying with Dorothea Brooke in “yearning for a significant existence.” Unlike Mead I neither identified nor empathized with a woman I found maddeningly obtuse. I, unlike Mead, did not fail to notice “a slight touch of stupidity” about Dorothea. Indeed I thought that Casaubon’s scholarly and intellectual shortcomings were writ so large that only a type of self-will toward martyrdom could explain Dorothea’s response to him. Increasingly over years it seemed more and more to me that faced with the perfectly unexceptional (in the Austen sense of the word) Sir James as a likely husband Dorothea turned to Casaubon as a way to avoid a life of ordinary pleasures and triumphs. I did not believe that Dorothea feared the stifling, aching banality of such a life as much as she feared finding out that such a life would not be stifling for it was she who was banal.

Having finished the article and still feeling shortchanged of insight into the attraction of Middlemarch I picked up the Angela Thirkell ominbus that I had just brought home from the library. The volume includes Ankle Deep, High Rising and Wild Strawberries all of which were written quite early in her career as a novelist. Elizabeth Bowen, in her introduction to the collected works, says of Ankle Deep, the earliest published of the three, that it is:

the least pleasing . . . . Mrs. Thirkell just gets away with her plaintive heroine—only just though. Aurea is a temperature-lowerer, if there was one. That the full-blooded Valentine, her lover in name and would-be lover in fact, puts up with her whimsical dilly-dallying is amazing . [2] (viii)

Not the most promising of descriptions but having decided to read one of Thirkell’s early works I plunged into Ankle Deep. I have much to say about the book, most of which I will save for a separate review, but one of the things that struck me most on this first reading is how the book managed to make the internal life of unexceptional people interesting. Each of the main characters in the novels is offered the opportunity to recognize an occasion calling for moral strength though not all are aware that that has happened. Each of them must make decisions that will have repercussions throughout the rest of their lives and yet, again, they are not universally aware of the fact that that has happened. Most of the characters are simply living their lives, as do most people, each seeing themselves at the centre of their own drama and each treating others, even others that they are in love with, as surfaces in which they can catch a glimpse of their own reflections.

Thirkell describes well the casual egotism that is an element of most of us. She does not rail at it even as she makes the reader aware of the ramifications of its attendant misreading for others. Thus I disagree with Bowen’s characterizations of both Aurea and Valentine. The latter is not noticeably more full-blooded than others. Even in the deepest throes of love Valentine remains essentially himself. The reader sees within the character in the now the older man he will grow to be. He is a man of his class, education and time and though he may venture occasionally to the margins of what is expected of him from his social circle he, both the reader and Aurea come to realize, is never seriously tempted to step across them.

I also disagree with Bowen’s characterization of Aurea as plaintive. Thirkell puts in the mouth of one of her characters a much better insight into the nature of Aurea’s character. Vanna tells Aurea that she has “an inward eye” and then goes on to explain exactly what she means by that:

\’Aurea can’t see very far in front of her, and what she sees doesn’t really exist,’ said Vanna comprehensively. ‘She couldn’t as a girl, and she can’t now. She lets ideas fill up the foreground, and spends her time pretending that facts are like ideas, which they aren’t. She can only see what is inside her own imagination. When you met her again the other day, Arthur, you told me that she hadn’t grown up very much, and that’s why. When she meets facts she runs away from them mentally, or winds them up in a cocoon of imaginings. She lives, I should say, largely in an idealized past, or an imaginary future. You can’t change her, Arthur, so don’t try.’ [2] (86.)

It was after reading that passage that I realized that Thirkell had explained to me what it was that I disliked about Dorothea Brooke. Aurea had an inward eye and so did Dorothea. I dislike the fact that Eliot ascribes philosophical meaning and intensity to the very shortcoming that Thirkell describes as a character flaw that is neither grand, nor tragic it is pedestrian. Aurea herself comes to see that:

Aurea came back and hugged her mother tightly. Then she went upstairs to bed. Her story has no end. Only, in time, she will be able to look back steadfastly on those few weeks, acknowledge her own folly without blenching, and laugh not unkindly, at her own pitiful inexperience. What she will think of Valentine by then is another question; but compassion will never be wanting.” [2] (159)

To return to the initial paragraph of this posting I was surprised that what light Mead shone on my struggles with Eliot, Middlemarch and Dorothea Brooke was due to my disagreements with Mead’s understanding and appreciation of all three. On the other hand I was surprised and charmed by the insight that Thirkell gave me into my own responses to all three. I don’t know if these reflections will lead me to another reading of Middlemarch but I do know that I am looking forward to the unread Thirkell novels awaiting me in the omnibus by my side.

[1] The New Yorker 14 Feb. 2011: 76.

[2] Thirkell, Angela, 1966 An Angela Thirkell omnibus / with an introduction by Elizabeth Bowen Hamish Hamilton, London,

Democracy, Health Care and Unions

The other day I wrote that I felt that adequate health care and healthy trade unions were vital in order to keep democracy from withering in the United States. Apparently those who are, in my opinion, among the most hostile to real democracy in the United States agree with me on their importance since they are now waging on all out assault on both.

How vigorous is this assault? So great is it that it is being noticed even in The New York Times and The Washington Post.[1]

Consider Bob Herbert\’s opinion piece Absorbing the Pain in which Herbert talks with and about people who are under- or un- employed and who are facing life without health care, without homes and ultimately without hope. He specifically addresses the current attempts to limit the right of public employees to collectively bargain:

As important as that issue is, it’s just one skirmish in what’s shaping up as a long, bitter campaign to keep ordinary workers, whether union members or not, from being completely overwhelmed by the forces of unrestrained greed in this society.

The predators at the top, billionaires and millionaires, are pitting ordinary workers against one another. So we’re left with the bizarre situation of unionized workers with a pension being resented by nonunion workers without one. The swells are in the background, having a good laugh.

What seldom gets recognized or written about by the writers in newspapers such as The Times is the way in which a union\’s impact on wages is framed. When editorialists and opinion-writers ask the question \”is it true that unionized workers make more than do those who are not\” they are suggesting that if it were true then appropriate wage scales are being distorted and that the way to fix them is to lower the wages of the unionized workers. What seldom (if ever) is suggested is that the wages of the nonunionized workers be increased to rectify this distortion. Similarly it seldom, if ever, is suggested that way to deal with budget crises is to increase revenue through the tax code. I point this out because if public service workers are truly being paid too highly it might be better to clawback those wages through taxation that to break the workers union.

We know, of course, why that will never be suggested as a solution to the budget problem. Higher taxes will hit employers and employees alike. Breaking unions will hit employees and benefit employers. And make no mistake it will benefit every employer in the state since without unions all wages and benefits will spiral even further downward.

However we should not think that all these proposals to cut the budget through the destruction of the middle-class are driven purely for the purposes of financial gain. If that were so government programs that benefited the overall health the country (and paid off fiscally in the long run) would not be under attack.

Charles M. Blow in a another Times Op-Ed piece The G.O.P.\’s Abandoned Babies discusses the impact that budget decisions/cutbacks on the health of American babies. The United States, he reminds his readers, has the highest rate of infant mortality among the 33 countries the International Monetary Fund identifies as \”advanced economies.\” Many of these infants deaths can be attributed to the high rate of premature births. That high rate was beginning to be whittled down in the last few years. The new budget cuts will eliminate or underfund the very agencies that have been distributing finds and care for pregnant women or researching ways to provide better care. As Blow points out:

It is savagely immoral and profoundly inconsistent to insist that women endure unwanted — and in some cases dangerous — pregnancies for the sake of “unborn children,” then eliminate financing designed to prevent those children from being delivered prematurely, rendering them the most fragile and vulnerable of newborns.

One cannot even argue that this budget cuts are good faith attempts to address the United States\’ economic woes because as Blow notes:

[R]educing the number of premature births by just 10 percent would save thousands of babies and $2.6 billion — more than the proposed cuts to the programs listed, programs that also provide a wide variety of other services.

When columnists and editorial writers who work at / publish newspapers that are firmly part of the political mainstream of the nation notice the deeply undemocratic nature of American policies the attacks on democracy have moved from being covert to overt.

The next question may not be will the average American do anything about these attacks on American government rather can they?

[1]It is a truism among the right that these two papers are bastions of the left. That placement has been achieved by moving, by magical sleight of hand, the \”acknowledged center\”[2] of American political life significantly to the right of the average American.

[2] Acknowledged, that is, by the chattering classes. It was members of that class who declared that the \”single payer option was off the table\” before the health insurance debate even began.

Book Review: Mapp and Lucia

Mapp and Lucia by E F Benson (1931)

In this, the fourth book of the Mapp and Lucia series, Benson finally deploys both women on the same stage at the same time. In order to do this, since each had long lived in a different community, Benson had to relocate at least one of them. This he does with the use of fairly obvious contrivances in addition to a succession of increasingly improbably coincidences. Yet most readers will forgive the author the occasional (or frequent) obviously forced movements of the players because the outcome of these movements is so delicious.

Having Mapp and Lucia share the same social milieu and same geographical environs solves a number of ‘writerly’ problems that grew out of the very success of Benson’s characterizations of Emmeline Lucas [in Lucia in London and especially Queen Lucia] and Elizabeth Mapp [in Miss Mapp.] Each woman was so clearly the dominant character within her social circle that few readers would believe that any of the other residents of their social circles could truly challenge their preeminence. While watching Mapp or Lucia use trickery and sheer force of character is interesting without a strong challenger each lady teeters on the edge of becoming an unsympathetic character who bullies and/or manipulates those around her unmercifully. By placing them into the same venue Benson gives each woman the other as a truly worthy opponent. The reader, like the inhabitants of Tilling, can stand back and enjoy a competition between equally handicapped players—rooting first for one and then the other and, more than anything, rooting for the vanquished player to get up off the mat and return to the game.

Had Benson been somehow able to move one town to sit next to the other he might have been able to explore the differences and the similarities between two groups of “gentry” in the decades between the two world wars. Riseholme, as it was presented to the reader in Queen Lucia is a “new” village. The gentry who reside there are not longtime inhabitants but rather people who have retired to the country and a least partially made over an existing village in order to establish a place for their “society.” Lucia and those in her social circle work hard at making themselves appear to have deep roots where in fact none exist. The Lucases bought the cottages that they refurbished into looking old. Georgie himself bought some of the “heirlooms” he gave pride of place in his drawing room. This is not a settled society allowing change to creep in: It is a developing society trying to mask change with a settled appearance.

In Mapp and Lucia Benson rather than moving the two places together moves the leading figure from one venue into another as a way of contrasting the older fixed society and the newer society that strives to appear fixed. On first reading this may not be so clear but on rereading the book it becomes more evident that Lucia would not be able to storm the comparatively settled society of Tilling were she not a wealthy woman. Nor is Lucia the first who had done so. In Miss Mapp readers come to realize to what degree the Poppits attempted to buy their way into Tilling society. Lucia’s efforts are both more and less straightforward than were those of Mrs. Poppit. She does not say outright that she thinks that Tilling society needs to change nor does she refuse to change in order to become part of Tilling society.

Beyond here there lie spoilers.

It seems to this reader that the first challenge that Benson faced in writing this book was dealing with some structural problems that had arisen in both his created worlds of Tilling and Riseholme. As mentioned earlier in this review, both Elizabeth Mapp and Emmeline Lucas had no challengers in their social circles who were up to their fighting weight. Benson needed to provide each woman with a worthy opponent and solved the problem for both at the same time when he moved Lucia from Riseholme to Tilling.

The public motivation provided Lucia for making this move, that some of the sparkle of life in Riseholme was gone after the death of her husband, allowed Benson to deal with two other structural details. The reader gains the most enjoyment from the machinations of Lucia and Mapp when the reader had some insight into how and why each lady was undertaking her campaign. In Tilling Mapp was surrounded with old acquaintances who were ‘onto’ her to some degree and thus the reader could see her actions both through her eyes and the eyes of watchful and sometimes critical others. However in Riseholme no one was really \”on to\” Lucia. Her husband was a near non-entity whose main purpose appears to have supplied her with the funds necessary for her to live as she wished to live. They interacted so seldom and on such a superficial level that his non-presence in Mapp and Lucia is barely noticeable. Georgie Pillson was admirer more than a critic. He was almost her official court swain when Queen Lucia opened, but he waivered in loyalty between Lucia and Olga Braceley after the latter moved to the village. Killing off Mr. Lucas give Lucia a reason to move to Tilling where she will meet with a worthy opponent. Relocating Georgie to Tilling placed him clearly (although not permanently) into Lucia’s camp with no divided loyalties.

Mr. Lucas is removed from the series by dying ‘off-screen’ between books. The last the reader saw of Lucia in the Lucia in London she had decided to quit London society and return to Riseholme due to the strain of city life or her husband’s health. As the next book opens it is almost a year since that death and Lucia is considering how best to gently reinsert herself in the social life of Risholme. This beginning is quite jarring for the reader who finished Lucia in London and immediately picked up Mapp and Lucia. Indeed, one of the ‘benefits’ of reversing the order of the second and third books is that the reader experiences an entire book between Philip Lucas and his widow’s drawing her mourning to a close.

Benson provides Lucia for more than one reason for wanting to leave Riseholme. Given the relatively minor role Mr. Lucas played in Lucia’s dominance of Riseholme society his passing would not alone adequately explain her move to another venue. What does ring true is that Lucia feels a certain staleness to life in Riseholme. None of the true Riseholmites were ever able to effectively challenge her preeminence in that village. Daisy Quantock might occasionally plot to undermine Lucia’s social dominance but she is, the reader quickly realizes, doomed always to fail. It is Olga Braceley, an outsider, who is able, without consciously wishing to do so, to undermine Lucia’s control but Olga is herself is an interloper and at best part time inhabitant of Riseholme. No wonder Lucia finds that the taste has gone out of life. Daisy can never be a serious rival and the only serious rival she has encountered for years is seldom present in Risholme and seldom intentionally acts to undermine her.

In moving Lucia to Tilling Benson provides her with a worthy opponent at exactly the moment when her life has become stale and empty. Elizabeth Mapp, like Lucia herself, had considered herself the leading figure in her own community. However, unlike Lucia, Mapp is situated in a much more richly populated environment. There was scarcely a resident of Riseholme, other than Daisy Quantock, who showed themselves willing to take on Lucia. None of them can vie with Lucia’s wealth, none of them carry their own weight in social status and most of them are reducible to a few salient characteristics. Mrs. Watson (later Mrs. Boucher) makes her way around the village in a bath chair. Colonel Boucher has bulldogs. Mrs. Antrobus uses an ear trumpet. The Misses Antrobus gambol and giggle. Robert Quantock complains about dinner. The reader does not know much about these characters save for the fact than none is able to put up much resistance to Lucia’s domination of their society.

The gentry of Tilling, on the other hand, might be dominated by Miss Mapp but not for lack of vigorous attempts to topple her. Mapp herself acknowledges that Mr. Wyse wields a great deal of influence over the gentry of Tilling. Irene Cole openly mocks Miss Mapp. Diva Plaistow not only actively plots to make Miss Mapp look ridiculous she is sometimes successful in her attempts. It is not surprising that this cast of characters would initially welcome Lucia’s challenge to Mapp’s suzerainty and later resent and challenge Lucia’s.

Benson had already established the fact that a Riseholme existed in the England of Tilling. In Miss Mapp the village is mentioned in passing. It was there that Mapp first heard the phrase “au reservoir.” This makes Lucia’s decision to go to Tilling and see in person the house she saw advertised in The Times less random since it is plausible that Lucia would remember the name Mapp and Georgie remember the woman herself in some detail.

The reader has been made aware in the first two Lucia books that Emmeline Lucas is quite well off and has also been made aware in the first Mapp book and Elizabeth Mapp while clearly a member of the middle class needs to make strategic economies in order to maintain the style of life she finds appropriate to her perceived status. Thus the reader is not surprised that Mapp regularly rents out her house, Mallards, nor that Lucia can afford to rent it.

Mapp and Lucia has little overarching plot and much contrivance. Lucia needs to venture forth from the world of Riseholme and so one day she sees an ad in the newspaper. Lucia is fortuitously offered a chance to let her own home in Riseholme for an extended period of time and finally her tenant so falls in love with Riseholme that Lucia is offered a handsome amount of money to sell her home there. The way must be opened for Georgie to come to Tilling with Lucia. Olga Braceley is sent off on a world tour. The house across from Mallards (Mapps house and Lucia’s holiday rental) is also for rent. The sibling of Lucia’s tenant wants to rent Georgie’s home in Riseholme for an extended period of time. Georgie’s tenant also falls in love with Riseholme and offers Georgie a handsome amount of money for the house he is now renting.

By the end of the book Lucia has become part of the life of Tilling. She and Miss Mapp have shared an adventure and have clearly demonstrated that they are worthy adversaries. And they play off each other very well. Miss Mapp has few redeeming features. She is not a good friend. She is not a philanthropist. Save painting, she cultivates no arts. She appears to read few books and to think about little else except for her place in her society. Lucia is more likable than Miss Mapp because she is not limited to diminishing those around her. She is shown as being quite a good friend and willing to part with some of her money for a good cause as long, of course, as others know that she is doing so. She isn’t a deep reader but she does feel that people should appear to read. She is a limited musician but, again, believes that being a musician has a value. Miss Mapp’s horizon is limited by the scope and nature of her ambition. She wants to dominate the social life of Tilling and does so primarily by cutting down those around her. Lucia also wants to dominate the social life of Tilling but not because it is Tilling, simply because she wants to dominate the social life anywhere she is. Because she desires to be important and central everywhere she wants to appear to have the skills, interests and talents valued in the various spheres she wishes to dominate. Lucia’s behaviour seems more loveable and less overbearing in Tilling where she is not simply mowing down upstarts who have no chance of taking her on

With all this in place Benson tackles, in the next book, the question of money and its power and influence in the England that he is writing about.

Democracy and Health Care

A commentator on an earlier post asked the very good question:

the question then becomes what the heck do we do?

I cannot claim to have a prescription \”for what ails\” the United States. I am not a politician* and even if I was I hope I would have the wisdom to recognize the limitations of my knowledge and my expertise.

What follows are a few tentative suggestions.

First, become involved in politics at a local level. Running for office in the United States even at the state level, is ruinously expensive for anyone not personally wealthy or who does not have the support of the monied. That fact makes it difficult for anyone who does not support laws and regulations (or the repeal of laws and regulations) that favour the wealthy to run for most political offices. However it costs little to run for office in local elections.+ And fortunately it costs nothing to volunteer to work in local elections since one does not need to worry about travel or lodging expenses.

Take the time to observe the way in which \”Tea Party\” supporters have managed to insert themselves into the political life of the country through seats on local boards of eduction and other \”lesser\” organs of representative democracy. Americans elect individuals to jobs that have a wide range of responsibility and oversight including judges, sheriffs, members of the library board, members of the parole board and regents of the state universities. It is at this level of political involvement that it is easiest and perhaps most important to get involved.

Second, narrow the things you are going to fight for. By this I don\’t mean that you should give up caring about all but a few issues but rather than you should pick a few key places to make your stand. I personally would suggest two areas focus: health care and unions.

Why? Because my overwhelming concern right now now is for the large and growing number of marginalized Americans. The list includes (but is not limited to) the poor, women and QUILTBAGS.ǂ Strengthening health care and unions would do much to protecting their rights.

Unions:

The most marginalized and those who are the most at risk are those who are least able to protect existing rights or gain additional rights through the process of negotiations. Those who are in power, the kyriarchy, have all the cards. The marginalized have few or none. The powerful can \’wait out\’ those without power. The poor parent who has children to feed at home will take a job cut rather than lose hir job. The QUILTBAG will hesitate to \”make noise\” in the workplace since they are the least likely to have solid support from those around them. And women, living in a political and cultural environment that is threatening rights so recently won are unlikely= to \”make noise\” for fear that the kyriarchy will set one group of women against another while suggesting to men that all the rights women have won have come at the cost of their own.

Health care:
Because health care is generally in the United States tied to employment someone who has \”preexisting conditions\” or who has children (with or without preexisting conditions) is little more than an indentured servant. They could leave their place of work but only at great risk to their family\’s economic and physical health. Parents would not be forced to stay at bad jobs for the sake of the health of their children. And more employees would be willing to face down bad employers if losing a job did not mean losing affordable access to the health care system.

The health care paradox:
Unfortunately achieving universal and affordable health care in the United States is almost impossible if the country does not first achieve universal and affordable health care. By that I mean that universal health care is not just an end it is also a means. When one lives in a country with universal health care then, in some sense, every person in that country is a member of one\’s own tribe. Preventive care becomes doubly important: one wants all the members of one\’s tribe to be maximally healthy and it is cost-efficient to prevent disease and ill health.

If one grows up with the idea that paying for the health of the child who lives down the block is little different that paying for the health of one\’s nephew — then one also tends to feel that wrongs done to the adult who lives down the block are wrongs done to a member of one\’s family. Unless one sees one\’s fellow citizens as members of the same tribe one tends to resent paying for their well being. Universal health care is not the only way to achieve \”national tribalism\” but once one has achieved \”national tribalism\” universal health care is both logical and necessary.

So my suggestion to Americans who want to \”make a difference\” is to begin small and to work at achieving those things that lower the barriers between Americans.

*Unfortunately all too many politicians are not aware of their own limitations. It is unreasonable to expect any human being to be well versed in all areas of knowledge. It is not unreasonable to expect other human beings to be cognizant of their own limitations.

+There are obviously exceptions to this general rule. Running for election as a congressional representative in New York City or in Los Angeles can be extremely expensive.

ǂThe named groups are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive.

The to-read list

This is a selection of the books which I plan to read or (reread) in the near future.

This list is made up almost exclusively of mystery/detective books written between 1890 and 1940. I am currently in the process of expanding it to include books that might best be described as \”comedies of manners.\” Suggestions and feedback are welcome.

Tracks in the Snow    Godfrey R. Benson (Lord Charnworth)
The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont    Robert Barr
The Thinking Machine    Jacques Futrelle
The Man Who Was Thursday    G. K. Chesterton
The Circular Staircase    Mary Roberts Rineheart
The Gentle Grafter    O. Henry
Through the Wall    Cleveland Moffett
The Old Man in the Corner    Baroness Orczy
At the Villa Rose    A. E. W. Mason
The Innocence of Father Brown    G. K. Chesterton
The Singing Bone    R. Austin Freeman
The Mysterious Affair at Styles     Agatha Christie
Call Mr. Fortune    H. C. Bailey
The Secret Adversary     Agatha Christie
The Murder on the Links     Agatha Christie
The House of the Arrow    A. E. W. Mason
The Man in the Brown Suit     Agatha Christie
The Secret of Chimneys     Agatha Christie
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd     Agatha Christie
The Benson Murder Case    S. S. Van Dine
The Big Four     Agatha Christie
The Canary Murder Case    S. S. Van Dine
Unnatural Death [Wimsey 3]    Dorothy Sayers
The Greene Murder Case    S. S. Van Dine
The Mystery of the Blue Train     Agatha Christie
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club [Wimsey 4]    Dorothy Sayers

The Roman Hat Mystery    Ellery Queen
The Seven Dials Mystery     Agatha Christie
The Bishop Murder Case    S. S. Van Dine
The Crime at the Black Dudley (Campion 1)    Margery Allingham
The Poisoned Chocolates Case    Anthony Berkeley
The French Powder Mystery    Ellery Queen
The Maltese Falcon    Dashiell Hammett
Mystery Mile (Campion 2)    Margery Allingham
The Murder at the Vicarage     Agatha Christie
The Scarab Murder Case    S. S. Van Dine
Strong Poison [Wimsey 5]    Dorothy Sayers
Malice Aforethought    Frances Iles
Maigret and the Enigmatic Lett – The Strange Case of Peter the Lett    Georges Simenon
Maigret Meets a Milord – The Crime at Lock 14    Georges Simenon
Maigret Stonewalled – The Death of Monsieur Gallet    Georges Simenon
\”Maigret and the Hundred Gibbets – The Crime of Inspector Maigret
\”    Georges Simenon
The Sittaford Mystery    Agatha Christie
Maigret\’s War of Nerves    Georges Simenon
Maigret and the Concarneau Murders – Maigret and the Yellow Dog    Georges Simenon
Maigret at the Crossroads    Georges Simenon
A Crime in Holland – Maigret in Holland    Georges Simenon
The Sailor\’s Rendezvous – Maigret Answers a Plea    Georges Simenon
Maigret at the Gai Moulin    Georges Simenon
The Dutch Shoe Mystery    Ellery Queen
Look to the Lady (U.S. title: The Gyrth Chalice Mystery)    Margery Allingham
Police at the Funeral    Margery Allingham
Five Red Herrings [Wimsey 6]    Dorothy Sayers
Mr. Fortune Explains    H. C. Bailey
Footsteps in the Dark    Georgette Heyer
Maigret and the Tavern by the Seine – Maigret to the Rescue    Georges Simenon
Maigret Mystified    Georges Simenon
Maigret and the Countess – Maigret Goes Home – Maigret on Home Ground    Georges Simenon
Maigret and the Flemish Shop    Georges Simenon
Death of a Harbour Master – Maigret and the Death of a Harbor Master    Georges Simenon
The Madman of Bergerac    Georges Simenon
The Greek Coffin Mystery    Ellery Queen
Liberty Bar – Maigret on the Riviera    Georges Simenon
Peril at End House     Agatha Christie
Before the Fact    Frances Iles
The Egyptian Cross Mystery    Ellery Queen
Have His Carcase    Dorothy Sayers
The Kennel Murder Case    S. S. Van Dine
The Lock at Charenton – Maigret Sits It Out – Lock No. 1    Georges Simenon
Sweet Danger (U.S. title: Kingdom of Death or The Fear Sign)    Margery Allingham
Lord Edgware Dies, also Thirteen at Dinner     Agatha Christie
Why Shoot a Butler?    Georgette Heyer
The American Gun Mystery     Ellery Queen
The Siamese Twin Mystery    Ellery Queen
Murder Must Advertise [Wimsey 6]    Dorothy Sayers
Dead Mrs. Stratton (Jumping Jenny)    Anthony Berkeley
A Man Lay Dead    Ngaio Marsh
Fer-de-Lance    Rex Stout
Murder on the Orient Express, also Murder in the Calais Coach     Agatha Christie
The Dragon Murder Case    S. S. Van Dine
Why Didn\’t They Ask Evans?, also the Boomerang Clue    Agatha Christie
The Unfinished Clue    Georgette Heyer
The Casino Murder Case    S. S. Van Dine
The Chinese Orange Mystery    Ellery Queen
The Murder of My Aunt    Richard Hull
Death of a Ghost    Margery Allingham
The Nine Tailors [Wimsey 7]    Dorothy Sayers
The League of Frightened Men    Rex Stout
Death in the Stocks    Georgette Heyer
Enter a Murderer    Ngaio Marsh
Three Act Tragedy, Murder in Three Acts    Agatha Christie
The Nursing Home Murder    Ngaio Marsh

Not with bang but a whimper

I woke up today to news of Libya. People are demonstrating in the streets of that country just as a few weeks ago they risked their lives on the streets of Cairo and Alexandria. Earlier people had laid their lives on the line to topple the government of Tunisia. In Bahrain and Yemen governments have unleashed the military or thugs (or both) on protesters. Doctors and nurses attempting to care for the injured have been assaulted for doing so. Libyan officials in other countries are resigning their positions. Members of the Libyan military have defected.

Everywhere people are demanding more rights and fighting to protect the rights they have.

Except, it seems, in the United States. In many other countries dictatorial governments are being opposed by protesters who are willing to put their lives on the line for sake of a better life for their fellow citizens. In the United States many citizens have stood by, grumbling perhaps but not really protesting, while their government has become more and more the protector of corporations, institutions and movements that are not friendly to interests of the average American.

The rights of women have been under attack in the United States for many years now. It matters little if a woman has the vote if she has no opportunity to vote someone who will represent her interests. The Republicans have seized upon the current economic conditions to find excuses to underfund and defund organizations and agencies that serve women. The Democrats seldom draw a line in the sand in response to such attempts.Women\’s rights are, apparently, always negotiable. Thus women\’s rights are by definition not rights at all but privileges since an inalienable right is not something that can be put up for compromise.

Republicans cannot get up and say \”we do not think women are really people\” and they cannot (yet) get up and say \”we don\’t think women should have the same rights as men.\” They can however strip legislative and fiscal support from every group that provides support for women. And the women cannot fight back even at the ballot box since the Democratic party will gladly take a woman\’s vote but will seldom support a woman where it might cost them the vote of a bigot or a sexist.

In an earlier post I wrote

If the powers that be wish to successfully to carve away at the rights of the public in general the best place to start is with the rights of women.

What seemed like an overstatement a short time ago now begins to look prescient for today when I woke up I saw that the governor of Wisconsin still plans to strip from citizens of his state their rights to collectively bargain. The governments of the United States do not fear the people in the streets. They do not worry about large numbers of protesters flooding the streets to protect their own rights. They worry little that a sufficient number Americans might take to the streets to support the rights of other Americans.

Democracy is struggling to be born in the streets of Egypt and Yeman and Tunisia and Bahrain and Libya.

Democratically elected representatives are negotiating away the rights of their constituents in the United States.

And this is the way American Democracy will end; not with a bang but a whimper.

Book Review: Lucia in London

Lucia in London by E F Benson (1927)

As I mentioned in my review of Miss Mapp Lucia in London was originally published 5 years after Miss Mapp and, were the modern day reader not guided by the order in which the books are placed in the Make Way For Lucia compendium, would be read as the third, rather than the second, of the Mapp and Lucia books. Indeed, from the point of view of publication order and such internal evidence as can be derived from the books themselves at the moment Lucia in London was published there was no such thing as a Mapp and Lucia series. Riseholme was mentioned only once in Miss Mapp and Emmeline Lucas never. Similarly neither Elizabeth Mapp, nor any of the other residents of Tilling nor indeed the village itself are mentioned in Lucia in London.

It would not be until 1931 that Benson would return to the village of Tilling or to Elizabeth Mapp as the focus of a book and it seems reasonable to this reader to consider that Mapp and Lucia is the first book of the ‘real’ Mapp and Lucia series with Miss Mapp, Queen Lucia and Lucia in London functioning as prequels to the series.

My first response to Lucia in London was to feel much as did her friends and acquaintances left in behind in Riseholme. The Lucia I glimpsed in London seemed to be strangely unlike the Lucia I had come to appreciate in Queen Lucia. This shingled short-skirted social climber seems more a caricature than a character study. As a reader I may suspect why Benson chose to move Lucia from the village where she so dominated social life to the larger world of London while feeling that the very conceit undermined so crucial aspects of what made the Lucia of Queen Lucia charming.

Benson may have chosen to move Lucia into a different social scene because he felt that she had no true rival in Riseholme since the only person who could truly have been a rival had been conveniently removed from the picture by authorial fiat. Although this reader does not begrudge Olga Braceley her worldly successes she wishes that Benson had been able to introduce a character to Riseholme who would have upset Lucia’s natural social dominance and who lived more continuously in that village.

The things that motivate Lucia in this book demonstrate how different the characters Mapp and Lucia actually are. If Miss Mapp, of the book of the same name, had ever been able to as completing dominate the world of Tilling as Lucia did the world of Riseholme one cannot imagine Mapp moving on a larger venue. This reader pictures her sitting at her garden window watching the world go by forever concerned about the minutiae of daily life. Miss Mapp does not did not need to do stunts to enliven her life in Tilling for each and every day of her life is devoted to the job of maintaining her social control over those with whom she would dine and who she would invite into her home. One might say that Mapp’s will to power was undiluted by any other pleasure or interest. She does not play an instrument nor does she even pretend to read books. Her only “cultured” pastime is that of painting but since everyone in her circle also paints her doing so is not an indication that she particularly enjoys the act of painting or the results of her labour. It is just an acceptable way of passing the time that also gives her opportunities to spy on others and to sit in judgment of others.

Lucia, on the other hand, seems to feel that she should feel things. The preformative Lucia, the Lucia that Emmeline Lucas wants others to think she is, would feel those things therefore Mrs. Lucas must appear to do so. However Mrs. Lucas’ the joy lies not in not in the music or the art but in having others watch her appearing to enjoy music or art.

Since Riseholme provides Lucia with little opportunity to contend with someone else with the same skill at and desire for social dominance, Benson must move her to another venue lest the story devolve into repetitive instances of Lucia triumphing over her hapless neighours. However in moving her activities to London Benson must also alter the nature of the activities themselves since London is full of people like Olga Braceley; people who actually create the art and music that Lucia pretends to enjoy. Thus Lucia apparently sets herself a new goal. Rather than dominating the social world of Riseholme Lucia now sets as her ambition entry into the inner circles of London society. Lucia will work as hard on social climbing in London as the Emmeline Lucas worked to prevent new blood from dethroning her in Riseholme.

Readers be warned—past here there lie spoilers.

Lucia in London begins with Emmeline Lucas and her husband inheriting a London house and a tidy sum of money from his elderly aunt. Instead of selling or renting the house and spending their extra money on life in Riseholme Lucia decides to keep the house and live part of the year in London and thus begins in her campaign to conquer the social scene of that city’s titled and wealthy inhabitants.

Lucia’s drive to conquer London life is difficult to root convincingly in her portrait as drawn in the earlier book. Lucia and her husband had lived in Onslow Gardens in London while Mr. Lucas was in Benson’s words amassing ““a fortune, comfortable in amount and respectable in origin, at the Bar.” It was from London that the couple retired to Riseholme. From Benson’s description it seems that the Lucases were among the first to take part in the gentrification of the village and thus to some degree the Riseholme they lived in was at least in part their own creation. Lucia’s attitudes toward London and RIseholme are made quite clear In Queen Lucia:

As long as she directed the life of Riseholme, took the lead in its culture and entertainment, and was the undisputed fountain-head of all its inspirations, and from time to time refreshed her memory as to the utter inferiority of London she wanted nothing more. But to secure that she dedicated all that she had of ease, leisure and income.

Lucia disparages London frequently, “No one in London has time to listen: they are all thinking about who is there and who isn\’t there, and what is the next thing.” While the reader may be forgiven for not being entirely convinced that all of Lucia’s opinions about London arise from her sense of aesthetics and culture rather than her perception of her relative place in the metropolis Benson makes it quite clear that Lucia wanted to live where she would be able to dominate society. It was a natural and logical thing for a woman with such an ambition to relocate herself to a place of a size that made its fruition possible.

The attitudes that Lucia previously demonstrated towards the titled and the renowned also make her vigorous social climbing out of character. It is not that Lucia the reader met in the previous book was not a snob but rather that she saw others as no more than ways of enhancing her own importance. Lucia did not attend the lunches and dinners of the titled and wealthy because she was impressed by them but rather because she wanted the titled and wealthy to be seen by others to lunch and dine with her. In London she would always be one of many hovering around the brightest of society’s lights while in Riseholme the light that wealthy and titled shone was on Lucia herself.

The change of venue for Lucia also detracted from one of the greatest strengths of Benson’s writing in the Mapp and Lucia books—the minute and loving examination of a small group of people in a restricted environment. The first chapters are vintage Benson and vintage Lucia as Georgie, the Quantocks and various other Riseholmites attempt to determine just exactly how much money has been left the Lucases. In subsequent chapters Benson\’s focus seems to drift. There is not enough about Riseholme nor is there enough about Lucia’s new London friends. Other than in the earliest chapters the passages in the book when the reader revisits Riseholme much of the book feels a lightly sketched series of vignettes rather than serious character studies or plot advancement.

Village life in Riseholme, the reader is told, was dry and flat without Lucia to inspire everyone else and yet over the course of the book Daisy Quantock takes up more than one new stunt and Pillson and his friends successfully launch a monetarily successful village museum. We are told that even with all this activity the Riseholmites are left feeling flat without their one-time queen and yet when we do see them they are as active and involved as they were in Queen Lucia. If Benson had occasionally returned the reader to a Riseholme where all seemed static and stagnant he would have run the risk that the reader would find the chapters in Riseholme boring. However this reader is convinced that Benson wrote the Riseholme chapters as he did not because he feared that readers would look interest in Riseholme but instead because Benson himself actually found Riseholme and its inhabitants far more interesting than denizens of the social circle Lucia works her way into in London. The underwritten nature of the London characters adds to this suspicion. Those characters seem to have an existence only for the purpose of this book and one feels that they disappear like the mist when the last page is read. Daisy Quantock, on the other hand is written so strongly that one would not be surprised to come upon her one day as one is doing one’s marketing.

Lucia in London is not a badly written book nor is it a boring book. It is, however, a letdown for the reader after the dizzying heights of Queen Lucia and Miss Mapp. It convinces this reader that Lucia is best observed in the milieu of the small town with social circle made up at most a dozen characters. Thus this reader is anxious to start the next book in the Mapp and Lucia series, Mapp and Lucia. Benson now has all his players on the stage—it is time for the curtain to go up.

Book Review: Miss Mapp

Miss Mapp by E. F. Benson (1922)

The modern day reader who having come across E. F. Benson’ Queen Lucia and enjoyed it may find herself somewhat perplexed as to which book she should read next in order to get her Benson-Lucia-Fix. Standing in the library (or the bookstore) she sees a book entitled Miss Mapp. Having just read Queen Lucia the reader is comfortably sure that no lady of that name was among the Riseholme residents who made up Lucia’s social circle. Looking more closely at the cover the reader notices that the book is subtitled Part III: Make Way For Lucia and searches the shelves for the elusive next book in the series. Coming upon Lucia in London, Part II: Make Way For Lucia the reader happily hurries off to read the further adventures of Lucia.

Is the reader wrong in assuming that this Lucia in London is the second of Benson’s books which feature Emmeline Lucas? No. But if the reader is interested in reading all of the Mapp and Lucia books by original publication date then Miss Mapp is clearly the second rather than the third book of the series since it was published in 1922 and Lucia in London in 1927.

The reader who happened upon Miss Mapp before any of the Lucia book would finish Miss Mapp quite ignorant of the very existence of Emmeline Lucas although there is internal evidence that the two women inhabit the same universe as indicated when the reader learns where Miss Mapp picked up the phrase “au reservoir”:

She had heard it last month when on a visit to a friend at that sweet and refined village called Riseholme. It was rather looked down on there, as not being sufficiently intellectual. But within a week of Miss Mapp\’s return, Tilling rang with it, and she let it be understood that she was the original humorist.

Although this reviewer understands some of the reasons behind the choice of those who edited the compendium Make Way For Lucia to reverse the order by publication of these two books by doing so they make it more difficult for the modern day reader to appreciate all the nuances of Benson’s portrait of the town and society of Tilling. The reader is less likely to see the way in which the book Miss Mapp functions as a commentary on the characters and their social situation.

The first part of this review contains only the mildest of spoilers. The reader will be warned before the reviewer moves in outright spoiler territory.

Miss Mapp is set in the coastal town of Tilling. It is there that the titular character lives and all of the “on screen” events take place in the town and its environs. The book follows some months in the lives a subset of the residents of Tilling and, at least on the surface, it is about the things that matter to this small group of people. Thus, it is a detailed study of life among the generally financially comfortable and yet not too-comfortable gentry in England in the early years of the period between the wars. The titular character is a middle-aged spinster who has not yet publicly given up the hopes of leaving spinsterhood although the possibility of marriage is seldom foremost among her concerns. Her energies are apparently concentrated on paying the least amount of money possible for any goods and services and on knowing every detail of the lives of those she considers her social equals.

It may be difficult for some reading this book almost a hundred years after its initial publication to quite ‘place’ Mapp’s monetary circumstances. She has the financial wherewithal to have two live-in servants and a gardener who comes in several days of the week yet she does not own a car. Neither is evidence that she is very wealthy nor quite hard up.

It is misleading to use the economic and social standards of one time as a measuring stick to judge to wealth or poverty of another. Agatha Christie is reported to have said, “when I was young I never expected to be so poor that I couldn\’t afford a servant, or so rich that I could afford a motor car.\” In the England in which this book is set no one with any pretentions to being a member of ‘society’ or ‘the gentry’ would be without at least one servant while the ability to own a car was a sign of real wealth. To flaunt that wealth among a community of social equals was considered by some a sign of ill breeding unless most of one’s community was equally well off.

Miss Mapp, and most of those in her social circle, practice the kind of small economies that signal economic insecurity yet since almost everyone practices the same economies there is no shame in them. Indeed, life in Tilling revolves around the unacknowledged awareness that almost everyone else in one’s social circle is doing so.

The economic insecurity that lurks in the background is not due to an impending war or to a present depression but rather it reflects a larger change going on in society. Rising levels of industrialization have diminished the number of men and woman who are available to work as servants since they receive better wages and are better hours in jobs that did not exist two decades earlier. Rising levels of education not only meant that working class men and woman had access to more jobs it also changed the ways they interacted with members of the middle class. Class distinctions were beginning to break down. If one reads books such as this closely one realizes that many of the tradesmen with whom Miss Mapp and other members of her social circle interact probably have similar yearly incomes. The distinction between the two is, of course, is that Mapp and her circle live on pensions and dividends rather from wages or the profits from their own businesses or labour.

From this point on the reader may find explicit and implicit spoilers for both Miss Mapp and Queen Lucia.

In Queen Lucia Benson held up a magnifying glass to examine one small group among the middle-class/gentry of the England of the early 1920s and in Miss Mapp he examines a group separated from Lucia’s by geography, economics and concerns.

Riseholme s a village within easy distance of London and is still, as Queen Lucia opens undergoing the process of gentrification. Lucia and those in her social circle are not natives of Riseholme in the sense of being born there, or living there during their childhood. These are people who have, for the most part, retired to Riseholme. They are not beyond having economic concerns and yet when they have to choose between maintaining face socially and reporting thefts to the police they choose to swallow their loses rather than their pride. Indeed their greatest concern is how to fill their time. They gossip a lot. They have dinners and teas. They hold parties. And they very consciously pursue fads as a way to pass their time. These are people who work at not working. They read book reviews rather than books since they desire to talk about books rather than read them. They learn piece of music in order to play it with and in front of other people and so learn no more of the work than is necessary for that purpose.

Although Miss Mapp’s social circle is not made up exclusively, or even primarily, of people who were born in Tilling, Tilling is not undergoing the process of gentrification. The people in Mapp’s social circle live in houses that have stood for generations rather than in repurposed cottages. Mapp herself, the reader will learn in another book, inherited her house from her aunt.

Although none of them, with the exception of the Vicar, has a job their lives do not seem to be dominated by the need to fill their time. They play bridge, it is true, but bridge, like so much else they do, seems to function as a combination of an opportunity to exercise small economies and a form of social warfare—for social warfare, the infighting and place jostling so endemic among small communities, is the true work of most of the people Mapp socializes with. They worry over small changes in the social hierarchy at least as much as they worry about money.

Miss Mapp and Queen Lucia are similarly structured as a series of episodes in the lives of a small group of people who live in a small community and socialize only within their own small and limited social circle. The concerns of the people in both communities appear to be quite mundane and removed from the political, economic or social upheavals of their time. Yet, upon consideration the similarities between the two books actual hide significant differences.

By the end of Queen Lucia much appears to happen and yet upon reflection the reader finds that little really changed. The people who marry did so in order to minimize the changes in their lives. Olga Braceley actually plots to lessen the impact her arrival in Riseholme makes to its existing social hierarchy. Georgie Pillson only plays with idea of making a radical change in his life. Thus just as at the beginning of the book Lucia is the star around whom the other inhabitants of Riseholme orbit, she remains so at the end. Nothing has changed.

At the end of Miss Mapp nothing appears to have happened and yet upon examination the reader will find that indeed much has. The marriage that took place will change the social hierarchy of the village. A major character has died and after his death the social lives of those around him do not return to their accustomed patterns. For at least some of the inhabitants of Tilling nothing will be the same.

To read these two books, one after the other, is to see Benson examining in exquisite detail, two groups of people who from a distance appear to inhabit the same place in the social and economic landscape of England in the 1920s and yet, upon examination seem to have lives dominated by different concerns. If one reads the books in the same order in which they were published this similarity-with-difference stands out but when read in the order in which they are placed in the Make Way For Lucia compendium it tends to be lost.

In one sense, Miss Mapp and Emmeline Lucas are members of the same social and economic class and yet as these two books show the pressures and concerns of their respective social circles are subtly but distinctly different. Lucia might have plotted mightily to get the Prince of Wales to take tea with her but she would not have haunted the train station in the hope of waving a flag at him. Lucia is clearly better off than her friends in Riseholme but none of them feel the need to practice the kind of economies that are standard among those in Tilling with whom Mapp socializes. The fact that she is well off makes it easier for Lucia to dominate the Riseholme society but much of her power lies in her ability to organize others and to create among them a sense of purpose and importance. Mapp’s will to power is less elegant than is Lucia’s and the hard work it takes to dominate her world is more visible. Mapp is more aware that she is teetering on a social and economic precipice although she would be unable to explain why. Yes, wages are going up, prices are going up and dividends are going down and yet part of her unease is the fact that social mobility is thrusting up people such as Mrs. Poppit whose wealth both allows her to buy her home and her car and, to some extent, her way into Miss Mapp’s world.

Although one can see signs of the changing attitude towards servants the class system is still firmly in place. Perhaps it was most firmly in place amongst those, such as the ‘quality’ of Tilling, whose incomes only allow to continue living in what they consider to be appropriate manner if they exercise judicious care. The ladies of Tilling go to what seem extremes to the modern reader in order to keep up appearances. Diva cuts the flowers out of old chintz curtains to refurbish one of her dresses yet has a maid. Miss Mapp watches every sixpence and yet has at least a maid, a cook and a gardener. That each of these people is equal is not even a pretense. When Miss Mapp deduces how Diva plans to recycle her chintz curtains she (Mapp) works with her servants at breakneck speed in order to appear first in her chintz decorated dress so that Diva will not be able to wear hers. Diva’s revenge is to give her dress to her maid. Once Janet (or Diva’s Janet as she is referred to by others) appears publicly in the dress Mapp will never be able to wear hers again—even though it was her who first appeared thus dressed in public.

[special addendum]

The Male Impersonator (1929)

This short story was originally published many years after Miss Mapp (1922) and several before Mapp and Lucia (1931) in a run that was apparently limited to 530 copies. It is appended to current editions of Miss Mapp and sheds an interesting light on Benson’s attitude toward Mapp and Tilling and a sinister insight into what it was like, in 1929, to depart from strict social conformity.

The Male Impersonator appears to have been written by Benson long after he had ceased to think Tilling and its residents as a major venue for further stories. Indeed Benson seems to have forgotten important developments in Miss Mapp and thus refers to Susan as Mrs. Poppit even though she married Mr. Wyse near the end of that book.

The Male Impersonator makes it clear how narrow were the confines of acceptable behavior among the social circles such as those you would find in towns like Tilling and how much power was wielded by individuals such as Miss Mapp. Mapp is unwilling to recognize socially a woman who, although titled, once performed onstage as a male impersonator. Neither money nor the social prestige of a title could offset that personal history. The reader is clearly supposed to be amused that, by the end of the story, Mapp receives her comeuppance when it turns out that the Lady Deal who has bought a house for her old governess is the not the Lady Deal who was once a female impersonator. Mapp’s parsimony in not owning an up to date Peerage has led her to snubbing the new, unbesmirched Lady Deal. The lesson the reader learns is not that it is wrong to discriminate against people for having strayed outside the narrow confines of the social mores of the time but rather that not have up to date information on which to base ones prejudgments is a false economy.