So many similarities and hints among the characters in this book to make me check when Mapp and Lucia was published and noted that it was five years later and it is clear that EF Benson recycled from this novel.
Set in a superior guest house, the Wentworth in Bolton spa, full of paying guests come to sample the waters. Mr Kemp, a hypochondriac with a downtrodden daughter Florence, Alice Howard who extemporises on the piano, Mrs Bliss who is a great believer in mind over matter and a long term resident, Colonel Chase (ex-Indian army, retired).
Colonel Chase is addicted to his walking and cycling and keeping fit, is a horror at bridge, but feels he can tell everyone else how to play, and lets out shouts of Qui Hi at regular intervals (sound famililar anybody?).
Alice Howard had been an extremely pretty girl 'by some backhand stroke of fate she had never married and now at the age of forty relinquished no atom of her girlishness. She hardly ever walked, but tripped, she warbled little snatches of song when she thought that anybody might be within hearing in order to refresh them with her maidenly brightness and sat on the hearth rug in front of the fire even though there was a far more comfortable seat nearby'.
When Alice is asked to appear at a charity concert with her 'extemporisng' her response is 'How you all work me!' (sound familiar anybody?) she immediately starts practising in secret so everyone will be amazed at her skill on the pianoforte (sound familiar anybody?) Miss Howard also plays very slowly and with great feeling, gazing thoughtfully at the ceiling totally rapt 'she knew that Mrs Oxney would probably come in and find her quite lost in her music, sitting there with her dreamy eyes and a smile hovering over her mouth'. She also paints, endlessly and badly and, though she does not realise it, attracts Florence, Mr Kemp's daughter who falls passionately in love with her (shades of Quaint Irene here though it is Florence in the breeches and boots in this case).
The whole book is a delight from start to finish. As in Riseholme and Tilling, all the characters are totally self centred, deluded and 'free from any vestige of self criticism'. In the introduction to Paying Guests we are told that 'it is the main task in life of a Benson character to take the mote out of his brother's eye while polishing the beam in his own. In order to create the impression that they are better, grander, richer and generqlly more admirable than is actually the case, they lie at all times and in all places'.
This is a totally delicious book and as I discovered the Mapp and Lucia books in 2008, and EF Benson, finding this on a shelf in my local second hand book shop was a discovery of the most serendipitous kind. Sitting next to it was another, Mrs Ames, and from a quick glance at the blurb I see that 'Mrs Ames is the queen of Riseborough Society' so back to a place familiar to me.
Hunting out EF Benson is proving quite fruitful as there seem to be plenty around to acquire and I fear my shelves are soon going to have to be thinned out again to make room for newcomers, but quite frankly, I hate getting rid of books and this is going to be a nightmare. I think I have to get another bookcase and that is all there is to it.
Now if I get rid of my CDs in the corner, I can get something smaller to store these in, then I can put a book case in there. Also, if I shift my DVDs around a bit and relocate I might be able to fit a book case in there. Then there is the bedroom and of course the bathroom and the kitchen and then...well, that is it really.
Can I please please please win the lottery so that I can buy a house and bang two rooms together and make myself a library? Either that or a nice rich man come along and sweep me off my feet? Yes, I would make that sacrifice in order to get a library. Ain't gonna happen though is it?
'sigh'....
