Review: Queen Lucia

Queen Lucia by E.F. Benson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was hoping that this classic comic novel would be a warm comedy, like Wodehouse, Jerome K. Jerome, or England, Their England . In places, it is; there are certainly kind and well-intentioned people in it, and the title character is treated, if anything, more sympathetically than she deserves, but occasionally it feels catty.

Lucia, as she calls herself (real name Emmeline Lucas) is based in part on the novelist Marie Corelli, real name Minnie Mackay, who had some of the same affectations: pretending to speak Italian (and in her case to be Italian by descent, which at least Lucia doesn't claim), being devoted to Shakespeare and the Elizabethan era in general, and sometimes talking to her friends in baby talk. Lucia believes herself to be a great lover of music, so much so that she theatrically can't stand the sound of a gramophone, but on two separate occasions she demonstrates that she's not reacting to the actual music she's hearing but to what she assumes it to be, based on who she (incorrectly) believes to be performing it.

She's a more successful version of Margo Leadbetter (Penelope Keith's character in the classic 1970s comedy The Good Life): queen bee of her little village, where she controls her neighbours and is the arbiter of taste and the premier social hostess. But there are rumblings of rebellion. Some of these come from her sidekick Georgie (clearly presented as what we would recognize today as a "gay best friend," though he falls emotionally in love with a woman later in the book; the author was discreetly gay, and some of the cattier moments are descriptions of Georgie's small affectations and vanities). Also contemplating rebellion against the rule of Lucia is another of her neighbours who goes in for fads and is, in the course of the story, duped by not one, but two confidence tricksters posing as spiritual advisors (both of whom Lucia attempts to annex, the first one successfully and the second one unsuccessfully).

The other village characters at first look like the stock cast of any novel set in an English village of the time (1920): the retired military officer, the disabled widow in her bath-chair, the snooty lady of the hall with her put-upon companion and her pug, the deaf widow who is the only one with any offspring (young adult daughters who are known to everyone as Piggy and Goosie, apparently without malice). As the story progresses, though, some of them - notably the Colonel and the disabled widow - develop other dimensions.

A big driver of change in the book is Olga, the opera singer who has risen from an orphanage to fame and a degree of fortune, but remains straightforward, openhearted and genuine, all of which makes her a foil for Lucia. Olga, who has recently moved to the village, organizes an evening party spontaneously (Lucia's functions are, even when they're purportedly spontaneous, actually carefully rehearsed) and everyone has a great time, much more so than they do at Lucia's. Olga is, unintentionally, behind both of the occasions on which Lucia is revealed to not have much musical perception at all, as well as innocently exposing her pretensions to speak Italian as, to say the least, exaggerated. Olga never means to make Lucia look ridiculous; Lucia does that for herself, but Olga feels responsible, is sorry for Lucia, and sets out to make it up to her and put her back on her little throne, since after all she does no real harm there, and it makes her happy.

It's a character-driven rather than a plot-driven novel, though incidents do occur; the interactions of the characters in the context of those incidents are what is important, rather than the incidents themselves. And in terms of giving us memorable characters, it definitely succeeds.

It's part of a series, and I'm considering reading more of them, because even though it wasn't quite the kind of comedy I was hoping for, it's excellently done.

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