CHF2.00
Download est disponible immédiatement
This carefully crafted ebook: 'The Collected Works of E. F. Benson (Illustrated)' is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents.
Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer, known professionally as E.F. Benson. He started his novel writing career in 1893 with the fashionably controversial Dodo, which was an instant success, and followed it with a variety of satire and romantic and supernatural melodrama. He repeated the success of Dodo, with sequels to this novel, but the greatest success came relatively late in his career with The Mapp and Lucia series consisting of six novels and two short stories. The novels feature humorous incidents in the lives of (mainly) upper-middle-class British people in the 1920s and 1930s, vying for social prestige and one-upmanship in an atmosphere of extreme cultural snobbery. Benson was also known as a writer of atmospheric, oblique, and at times humorous or satirical ghost stories.
Table of contents:
Make Way For Lucia:
Queen Lucia
Miss Mapp
Dodo Trilogy:
Dodo: A Detail of the Day
Dodo's Daughter or Dodo the Second
Dodo Wonders
David Blaize Series:
David Blaize
David Blaize and the Blue Door
Other Novels:
The Rubicon
The Judgement Books
The Vintage
Mammon and Co.
Scarlet and Hyssop
The Relentless City
The Valkyries
The Angel of Pain
The House of Defence
The Blotting Book
Daisy's Aunt
Mrs. Ames
Thorley Weir
Arundel
Michael
Up and Down
Across the Stream
Short Story Collections:
The Room in the Tower, and Other Stories
The Countess of Lowndes Square, and Other Stories
Historical Work:
Crescent and Iron Cross
This carefully crafted ebook: "The Collected Works of E. F. Benson (Illustrated)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940) was an English novelist, biographer, memoirist, archaeologist and short story writer, known professionally as E.F. Benson. He started his novel writing career in 1893 with the fashionably controversial Dodo, which was an instant success, and followed it with a variety of satire and romantic and supernatural melodrama. He repeated the success of Dodo, with sequels to this novel, but the greatest success came relatively late in his career with The Mapp and Lucia series consisting of six novels and two short stories. The novels feature humorous incidents in the lives of (mainly) upper-middle-class British people in the 1920s and 1930s, vying for social prestige and one-upmanship in an atmosphere of extreme cultural snobbery. Benson was also known as a writer of atmospheric, oblique, and at times humorous or satirical ghost stories. Table of contents: Make Way For Lucia: Queen Lucia Miss Mapp Dodo Trilogy: Dodo: A Detail of the Day Dodo's Daughter or Dodo the Second Dodo Wonders David Blaize Series: David Blaize David Blaize and the Blue Door Other Novels: The Rubicon The Judgement Books The Vintage Mammon and Co. Scarlet and Hyssop The Relentless City The Valkyries The Angel of Pain The House of Defence The Blotting Book Daisy's Aunt Mrs. Ames Thorley Weir Arundel Michael Up and Down Across the Stream Short Story Collections: The Room in the Tower, and Other Stories The Countess of Lowndes Square, and Other Stories Historical Work: Crescent and Iron Cross
Échantillon de lecture
Chapter Two
Table of Contents
As she traversed the smoking-parlour the cheerful sounds that had once tinkled from the collar of a Flemish horse chimed through the house, and simultaneously she became aware that there would be macaroni au gratin for lunch, which was very dear and remembering of Peppino. But before setting fork to her piled-up plate, she had to question him, for her mental craving for information was far keener than her appetite for food.
"Caro, who is an Indian," she said, "whom I saw just now with Daisy Quantock? They were the other side of il piccolo Avon."
Peppino had already begun his macaroni and must pause to shovel the outlying strings of it into his mouth. But the haste with which he did so was sufficient guaranty for his eagerness to reply as soon as it was humanly possible to do so.
"Indian, my dear?" he asked with the greatest interest.
"Yes; turban and burnous and calves and slippers," she said rather impatiently, for what was the good of Peppino having remained in Riseholme if he could not give her precise and certain information on local news when she returned. His prose-poems were all very well, but as prince-consort he had other duties of state which must not be neglected for the calls of Art.
This slight asperity on her part seemed to sharpen his wits.
"Really, I don't know for certain, Lucia," he said, "for I have not set my eyes on him. But putting two and two together, I might make a guess."
"Two and two make four," she said with that irony for which she was feared and famous. "Now for your guess. I hope it is equally accurate."
"Well, as I told you in one of my letters," said he, "Mrs Quantock showed signs of being a little off with Christian Science. She had a cold, and though she recited the True Statement of Being just as frequently as before, her cold got no better. But when I saw her on Tuesday last, unless it was Wednesday, no, it couldn't have been Wednesday, so it must have been Tuesday -"
"Whenever it was then," interrupted his wife, brilliantly summing up his indecision.
"Yes; whenever it was, as you say, on that occasion Mrs Quantock was very full of some Indian philosophy which made you quite well at once. What did she call it now? Yoga! Yes, that was it!"
"And then?" asked Lucia.
"Well, it appears you must have a teacher in Yoga or else you may injure yourself. You have to breathe deeply and say 'Om' -"
"Say what?"
"Om. I understand the ejaculation to be Om. And there are very curious physical exercises; you have to hold your ear with one hand and your toes with the other, and you may strain yourself unless you do it properly. That was the general gist of it."
"And shall we come to the Indian soon?" said Lucia.
"Carissima, you have come to him already. I suggest that Mrs Quantock has applied for a teacher and got him. Ecco!"
Mrs Lucas wore a heavily corrugated forehead at this news. Peppino had a wonderful flair in explaining unusual circumstances in the life of Riseholme and his conjectures were generally correct. But if he was right in this instance, it struck Lucia as being a very irregular thing that anyone should have imported a mystical Indian into Riseholme without consulting her. It is true that she had been away, but still there was the medium of the post.
"Ecco indeed!" she said. "It puts me in rather a difficult position, for I must send out my invitations to my garden-party today, and I really don't know whether I ought to be officially aware of this man's existence or not. I can't write to Daisy Quantock and say 'Pray bring your black friend Om', or whatever his names proves to be, and on the other hand, if he is the sort of person whom one would be sorry to miss, I should not like to have passed over him.