The Freaks of Mayfair

Benson fans should rejoice in this release which chronicles the "freaks"--strange fauna--who haunt the fashionable drawing rooms of the Mayfair microcosm of Edwardian Society. As a collection of "entries", the style does not require a sustained plot--so don't expect one. Benson chose a form that allowed for publication in the satirical magazines of the day and each entry has its share of droll wit. I bought the book specifically for the "Aunt Georgie" piece, suspecting that it would prefigure the character who became Georgie Pilson. I had hoped for a really early look at how Georgie hired Foljambe, his peerless parlor maid/caregiver. This is not the case: Aunt Georgie is the wealthy head of a "good" British family with plenty of sisters and so on to support and a large house in the country where he houses his dependent relatives. He has "serious" interests in poetry and music but is not the artist that Benson makes of his "immortal" Georgie. Read the book to learn more...but rejoice also that Benson later developed Georgie Pilson. In other chapters, Benson goes on to lampoon the social fads of his day, familiar to readers of the "Riseholm" period of his Lucia books: Yoga, Spiritualism, Christian Science Healing, Vegan lifestyles and so forth. Of course he chronicles a typology of "climbers", finding room for chapters on "verticle" ones and "horizontal" ones. Not one prefigures the highly developed skills Lucia displays in her social mountaineering but they make for a cozy evening read--perhaps at bedtime, just before dropping off. This book is well worth buying.