Miss Mapp E-Book

Edward Frederic Benson

• Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Set against the idyllic backdrop of the fictional English seaside village of Tilling, Edward Frederic Benson's "Miss Mapp" masterfully intertwines sharp social satire with a vivid character study. The narrative centers around the titular Miss Mapp, a formidable figure dictated by her need for social dominance and control. Benson's prose is notable for its wit and an acute awareness of human frailty, encapsulating the complexities of village life'—rivalries, friendships, and the quest for status'—with an elegance that simultaneously entertains and critiques the societal norms of Edwardian England. This novel also serves as a fascinating exploration of gender dynamics and the subtleties of social maneuvering, making it a rich text for literary analysis. Benson, a member of a distinguished literary family and a prolific writer of the early 20th century, drew on his observations of the English social scene and an acute understanding of human psychology. His experiences living in both Europe and England, along with his intimate knowledge of high society, profoundly influenced his portrayal of the intricate social webs within Tilling. "Miss Mapp" is a testament to Benson's keen eye for detail and ability to illuminate the quirks of human behavior with both humor and insight. For readers interested in a delightful blend of character-driven humor and incisive social commentary, "Miss Mapp" stands out as a must-read. Benson's keen observations and rich descriptions invite readers to immerse themselves in Tilling's vibrant community, making it an engaging exploration of the human condition that resonates even today. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.

Leseprobe

Edward Frederic Benson

Miss Mapp

Enriched edition. Navigating Gossip, Schemes, and Social Dynamics in a Quaint English Village

In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience.

Introduction, Studies and Commentaries by Chloe Fields

Edited and published by Good Press, 2022

[email protected]

EAN 4064066086466

Table of Contents

Introduction

Synopsis

Historical Context

Miss Mapp

Analysis

Reflection

Memorable Quotes

Notes

Introduction

Table of Contents

In the quiet theatre of a small English seaside town, the fiercest contests unfold not with declarations or blows but through invitations extended or withheld, rumors floated over tea, strategic views from front windows, and the delicate choreography of precedence by which ambitious neighbors attempt to place themselves at the center of communal attention, so that reputation becomes currency, etiquette becomes a battleground, and every market errand or polite exchange becomes an opportunity to outmaneuver a rival while preserving the serene appearance of perfect civility.

Miss Mapp is a comic novel of manners by Edward Frederic Benson, first published in 1922, and set in the fictional seaside town of Tilling. As one of Benson’s celebrated Mapp and Lucia novels, it stands comfortably on its own while contributing to a wider portrait of social life in provincial England. The book belongs to the tradition of satirical domestic fiction, where the everyday rituals of a community reveal the deeper workings of pride, ambition, and civility. Its interwar publication context frames the story within a period attentive to shifting norms, yet the novel’s comedy rests on timeless human behaviors.

At the center is Elizabeth Mapp, vigilant, resourceful, and alert to every nuance of local custom. The premise is simple and delightfully inexhaustible: Tilling’s routines—shopping hours, afternoon games, churchgoing, charitable efforts, seasonal entertainments—form a stage on which Mapp seeks to guide, anticipate, and, when necessary, preempt the moves of her neighbors. The stakes are social rather than catastrophic, but they are felt intensely by everyone involved. What follows is a sequence of cleverly arranged situations in which manners are tested, positions are defended, and small disruptions become occasions for ingenuity, all presented with a steady, unblinking comic gaze.

Benson’s style is urbane and exact, combining an observant narrator with an amused, gently acerbic tone. The prose favors clarity over ornament, allowing the precision of social detail to do the comic work: a raised eyebrow, a carefully phrased compliment, the choreography of arrivals and departures. Scenes are built from layered misreadings and artful timing, yet the mood remains airy rather than abrasive. Dialogue and description intertwine to reveal the rules under which Tilling operates. The result is a witty, steady rhythm that invites readers to notice how the smallest habits—when watched closely—become rich sources of satire and delight.

Among the book’s abiding themes are the management of appearances, the uses of gossip, and the subtle forms of power that flow through courtesy and ritual. Benson explores how communities police themselves through reputation, and how individuals construct public selves that must be constantly maintained. The novel also considers neighborliness as both consolation and constraint, suggesting that intimacy can generate solidarity, rivalry, and comedy in equal measure. Without moralizing, the story shows how pride and insecurity animate social performance, how kindness and calculation coexist, and how a shared code of manners both limits and protects those who live under it.

For contemporary readers, the novel’s examination of curated identity and public surveillance resonates beyond its period setting. The small-town grapevine anticipates the dynamics of modern networks, where attention is a prize and missteps travel fast. Yet the book offers more than a mirror to our anxieties; it provides the pleasure of precision comedy, the comfort of patterns, and the intellectual satisfaction of seeing systems of status laid bare. Its episodic structure and lucid prose make it easy to savor in measured sittings, while its cumulative portrait of a community rewards close reading and invites reflection on the social worlds we inhabit.

Approached as an introduction to E. F. Benson, Miss Mapp demonstrates how a seemingly modest canvas can yield ample dramatic and comic richness. It is a standalone portrait of a place and a temperament, and an inviting gateway to the broader cycle of novels that share its milieu. Readers can expect a brisk, polished entertainment grounded in close observation and an affectionate, unsparing eye for human foibles. Without relying on sensational turns, the book generates momentum from the interplay of character, custom, and competition, leaving a lasting impression of how ordinary rituals shape the dramas of everyday life.

Synopsis

Table of Contents

Edward Frederic Benson’s Miss Mapp follows the daily life of a small English town, Tilling, where social rituals and keen observation govern every interaction. At the center is Miss Elizabeth Mapp, who watches High Street from her garden-room window in her house, Mallards, tracking neighbors’ habits and schedules with meticulous care. The narrative introduces her routines, from morning shopping to afternoon bridge, and her informal authority over gossip and etiquette. With a focus on the rhythms of provincial life, the opening sets a tone of close-knit community, quiet competition, and the persistent calculations that shape invitations, alliances, and reputations.

Early chapters establish Tilling’s hierarchy and the customs that maintain it. Tea tables, church attendance, and market errands function as stages where precedence and politeness are measured. Miss Mapp announces an economy drive, insisting on modest meals and careful coal use, while privately safeguarding her own comforts. The town’s favorite sayings, including Miss Mapp’s brisk au reservoir, circulate like badges of membership. Familiar figures—shopkeepers, club secretaries, and charitable organizers—appear in roles everyone understands. The mood is light but exacting, presenting a place where the smallest gesture, from who bows first to who hosts last, can tip the balance of power.

Miss Mapp’s rivalry with her energetic neighbor Diva Plaistow becomes a recurring thread, illustrated through dueling bargains, fashion one-upmanship, and competing claims to novelty. The autumn sales prompt skirmishes over fabrics and frocks, with each woman determined to be first to display a new acquisition. Mrs Poppit and Mr Wyse, with their own influence and resources, complicate the pecking order. Miss Mapp counters with strategic generosity and well-timed hints, staging teas and musicales that advertise her primacy. These episodes unfold as a series of tactical engagements, revealing how appearances and timing matter as much as wealth, and how small triumphs set up later contests.

Two bachelors, Major Benjy Flint and Captain Puffin, add fresh variables to Tilling’s calculations. Their habits—golf, shooting, and convivial evenings—offer material for speculation and careful hosting. Miss Mapp positions herself as indispensable guide and gatekeeper, arranging meetings, nudging introductions, and calibrating expectations. The bachelors’ camaraderie and occasional tactlessness generate ripples of talk, which Miss Mapp channels to her advantage. The question of precedence at dinners, and whether invitations imply favor or obligation, becomes a lively undercurrent. With each gathering, alliances shift an inch, and Miss Mapp adjusts her strategy, ensuring her house remains a nexus of information and influence.

A misunderstanding between the two men escalates into an episode that tests Tilling’s capacity for discretion and decorum. Whispers of an early-morning confrontation send the town into contained excitement, and Miss Mapp moves quickly to manage narratives, soften corners, and appear at the center of resolution. Without lingering on outcomes, the event reshapes perceptions and provides opportunities to reassign status. Miss Mapp’s attention to small details—who arrived when, who was told what—reinforces her role as organizer-in-chief. The incident also exposes the fragility of social harmony, showing how easily bravado and pride can disturb the surface of well-arranged routine.

The seasons turn, and Tilling marks them with fêtes, bazaars, church festivals, and afternoons of bridge. Miss Mapp excels at shaping the guest lists and seating plans that nudge conversation where she wants it. Yet carefully laid schemes do not always proceed as intended. A miscue at a public gathering, compounded by a series of minor misunderstandings, leads to a moment of awkward visibility for her. The town’s reaction is polite but watchful, and Miss Mapp responds with renewed industry—calling, writing notes, and setting fresh engagements. The episode underscores how quickly ceremonies can pivot, and how resourcefulness can repair delicate impressions.

A visit from a figure of higher social standing alters Tilling’s equilibrium and invites new rituals of deference. Mr Wyse’s refined tastes and connections become more prominent, prompting adjustments in tone, dress, and conversational topics. Miss Mapp adapts by curating a more cosmopolitan outlook, adding small cultural flourishes to her entertainments and demonstrating flexible etiquette. The visitor’s presence highlights competing definitions of distinction—lineage, taste, generosity, and local service. The town’s interest concentrates on who secures introductions and how protocols are observed. For Miss Mapp, the episode is a test of poise under scrutiny and of her ability to reassert centrality amid shifting prestige.

Practical challenges punctuate the social maneuvers. Confusions over daylight saving time tangle dinner hours and church meetings, producing comic dislocations. An outing beyond Tilling brings minor travel snags and a moment of collective improvisation. Miss Mapp meets these disruptions with brisk commands and strategic apologies, keen to appear both efficient and magnanimous. Neighbors display competence of their own, reminding her that authority in Tilling is negotiated, not absolute. These incidents broaden the narrative beyond drawing-room games, showing how schedules, weather, and logistics can unsettle plans—and how quick recovery becomes another measure of standing in a town that remembers everything.

The closing movement reestablishes Tilling’s steady tempo while acknowledging subtle changes wrought by rivalries, mishaps, and visiting influences. Miss Mapp remains vigilant at her window, but the year’s incidents have refined the town’s understanding of her and of one another. Without tying events to a single climactic revelation, the novel emphasizes continuity: small gestures, layered etiquette, and the enduring pleasure of routine. Its central message is an even-handed portrait of social theater—how people perform roles, protect dignity, and find community within constraint. Miss Mapp presents a closely observed world where tact, timing, and perseverance quietly determine who leads and who follows.

Historical Context

Table of Contents

Edward Frederic Benson sets Miss Mapp in the early 1920s, in the fictional town of Tilling, modeled closely on Rye, East Sussex, where he lived at Lamb House. Published in 1922, the novel occupies the immediate post–First World War moment, when small English coastal towns balanced tourism, local trade, and the rhythms of church, club, and High Street. Tilling’s lanes, the tidal marshes, and the nearby golf course frame a society obsessed with etiquette and precedence. The population of a town like Rye hovered around five thousand in the 1921 Census, a scale that magnifies reputations and gossip. The heroine presides from Mallards on the High Street, epitomizing the spatial intimacy of provincial life.

The First World War (1914–1918) and its aftermath provide the novel’s most decisive historical backdrop. Britain mobilized over 8 million men; approximately 886,000 died, and nearly 1.7 million were wounded. Demobilization in 1919 brought large numbers of veterans into small towns, often living on reduced means and pensions. Wartime rationing of sugar, meat, and fats (formally ending by 1920) and the memory of shortages conditioned domestic habits for years. Benson mirrors these facts through Tilling’s veterans—figures like retired officers whose income and status rest on past service—and through Miss Mapp’s vigilant household economy, hoarding, and jam-making. The lingering nervousness about supply, the ceremonial deference to ex-servicemen, and the quiet grief encoded in civic life are all transposed into the jealousies, displays, and anxieties that organize Tilling’s social calendar.

Emergency wartime regulations and their peacetime residues also mark the setting. Under the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA, 1914), authorities imposed blackouts, censorship, and liquor restrictions; the Liquor Control Board’s shortened pub hours became permanent in the Licensing Act 1921. British Summer Time, introduced nationally in 1916 to save coal, endured thereafter. Benson mines these measures for comic and social effect: altered closing times encourage private decanters in respectable drawing rooms, and clock-changes become occasions for scheduling stratagems, invitations, and small humiliations. The habits of regulation—queues, permits, early closing—remain embedded in Tilling’s routines, showing how a total war bureaucracy filtered into everyday civility even after armistice.

Women’s political and social ascendance in the period shapes the novel’s female-led civic world. The Representation of the People Act 1918 enfranchised about 8.4 million women aged 30 and over; the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 opened professions, juries, and degrees; the Equal Franchise Act 1928 later equalized the voting age at 21. Organizations such as the Women’s Institute (established in Britain in 1915) proliferated in rural and small-town communities. In Tilling, power concentrates in committees, bazaars, and church fetes where women like Miss Mapp and her rivals marshal influence. The book thus reflects the interwar reality of assertive middle-class women shaping local policy, charity, and taste without necessarily holding formal municipal office.

The postwar slump of 1920–1921 inflicted sharp economic readjustment. Wholesale prices, which had more than doubled between 1914 and 1920, fell, while unemployment surged above 2 million in 1921. Industrial strife peaked with the coal crisis and “Black Friday” (15 April 1921), when transport unions declined to support miners, leading to wage cuts and shortages. Coal and fuel constraints pressed households to economize; the end of price controls stirred anxieties about staples like sugar. Domestic service, Britain’s largest female occupation in 1911 (over 1.2–1.3 million workers), contracted and became harder to staff. Benson translates these pressures into Tilling’s relentless thrift, scrutiny of servants, careful coal scuttles, and the social theater of provisioning, where a successful jam-boil or a coveted delivery confers prestige.

Modern transport and leisure expanded provincial horizons during the interwar years. Motor vehicles multiplied from tens of thousands before 1914 to over a million by the late 1920s, altering status, noise, and mobility in small towns. Rail links mattered: Rye lay on the South Eastern and Chatham Railway (grouped into the Southern Railway in 1923), feeding London visitors and seasonal trade. Golf and bridge, both with late Victorian roots, became markers of respectability; Rye Golf Club dated from 1894. In Miss Mapp, tee-times, train timetables, and the conspicuousness of a motorcar or hired carriage map onto precedence battles, illustrating how new conveniences intensified, rather than dissolved, social competition.

Commemoration culture, formalized after 1918, pervaded British civic life. King George V instituted the two-minute silence for Armistice Day in 1919; the Royal British Legion formed in 1921; the first poppy appeal also occurred in 1921. Between 1919 and 1923 thousands of local war memorials were erected across England, including in Sussex towns like Rye. Such rituals structured calendars, church attendance, and the honors accorded to veterans. Benson echoes this environment through the deference afforded ex-officers, the choreography of church and charity, and the guardedness of reputations. Tilling’s etiquette is inseparable from mourning customs and remembrance, which constrain and sanction behavior even in ostensibly trivial rivalries.

As social and political critique, Miss Mapp exposes the coercive economics of respectability in interwar provincial England. It anatomizes class insecurity—pensions, reduced incomes, and servant shortages—masked by ritual, charity, and taste. The novel satirizes petty authoritarianism born of wartime habits: surveillance, rationing mentalities, and regulatory zeal repurposed as gossip and informal policing. It interrogates gendered power, showing women wielding cultural sovereignty in the absence of formal office, and highlights the uneasy status of veterans, honored yet precarious. By magnifying petty feuds over clocks, coal, and committees, Benson reveals the structural strains of postwar Britain—class divides, material scarcity, and anxious nationalism—translated into the minute tyrannies of everyday life.

Miss Mapp

Main Table of Contents

Cover

Titlepage

Text

Chapter I

Table of Contents

MISS MAPP

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

MISS ELIZABETH MAPP might have been forty, and she had taken advantage of this opportunity by being just a year or two older. Her face was of high vivid colour and was corrugated by chronic rage and curiosity; but these vivifying emotions had preserved to her an astonishing activity of mind and body, which fully accounted for the comparative adolescence with which she would have been credited anywhere except in the charming little town which she had inhabited so long. Anger and the gravest suspicions about everybody had kept her young and on the boil.[1q]

She sat, on this hot July morning, like a large bird of prey at the very convenient window of her garden-room, the ample bow of which formed a strategical point of high value. This garden-room, solid and spacious, was built at right angles to the front of her house, and looked straight down the very interesting street which debouched at its lower end into the High Street of Tilling. Exactly opposite her front door the road turned sharply, that as she looked out from this projecting window, her own house was at right angles on her left, the street in question plunged steeply downwards in front of her, ​and to her right she commanded an uninterrupted view of its further course which terminated in the disused graveyard surrounding the big Norman church. Anything of interest about the church, however, could be gleaned from a guide-book, and Miss Mapp did not occupy herself much with such coldly venerable topics. Far more to her mind was the fact that between the church and her strategic window was the cottage in which her gardener lived, and she could thus see, when not otherwise engaged, whether he went home before twelve, or failed to get back to her garden again by one, for he had to cross the street in front of her very eyes. Similarly she could observe whether any of his abandoned family ever came out from her garden door weighted with suspicious baskets, which might contain smuggled vegetables. Only yesterday morning she had hurried forth with a dangerous smile to intercept a laden urchin, with inquiries as to what was in “that nice basket.” On that occasion that nice basket had proved to contain a strawberry net which was being sent for repair to the gardener’s wife; so there was nothing more to be done except verify its return. This she did from a side window of the garden-room which commanded the strawberry beds; she could sit quite close to that, for it was screened by the large-leaved branches of a fig-tree and she could spy unseen.

Otherwise this road to the right leading up to the church was of no great importance (except on Sunday morning, when she could get a practically complete list of those who attended Divine Service), for no one of real interest lived in the humble dwellings which lined it. To the left was the front of her own house at right angles to the strategic window, and with regard to that a good many useful observations might be, and were, made. ​She could, from behind a curtain negligently half-drawn across the side of the window nearest the house, have an eye on her housemaid at work, and notice if she leaned out of a window, or made remarks to a friend passing in the street, or waved salutations with a duster. Swift upon such discoveries, she would execute a flank march across the few steps of garden and steal into the house, noiselessly ascend the stairs, and catch the offender red-handed at this public dalliance. But all such domestic espionage to right and left was flavourless and insipid compared to the tremendous discoveries which daily and hourly awaited the trained observer of the street that lay directly in front of her window.

There was little that concerned the social movements of Tilling that could not be proved, or at least reasonably conjectured, from Miss Mapp’s eyrie. Just below her house on the left stood Major Flint’s residence, of Georgian red brick like her own, and opposite was that of Captain Puffin. They were both bachelors, though Major Flint was generally supposed to have been the hero of some amazingly amorous adventures in early life, and always turned the subject with great abruptness when anything connected with duelling was mentioned. It was not, therefore, unreasonable to infer that he had had experiences of a bloody sort, and colour was added to this romantic conjecture by the fact that in damp, rheumatic weather his left arm was very stiff, and he had been known to say that his wound troubled him. What wound that was no one exactly knew (it might have been anything from a vaccination mark to a sabre-cut), for having said that his wound troubled him, he would invariably add: “Pshaw! that’s enough about an old campaigner”; and though he might subsequently talk of nothing else except the old ​campaigner, he drew a veil over his old campaigns. That he had seen service in India was, indeed, probable by his referring to lunch as tiffin[4], and calling to his parlourmaid with the ejaculation of “Qui-hi[1].” As her name was Sarah, this was clearly a reminiscence of days in bungalows. When not in a rage, his manner to his own sex was bluff and hearty; but whether in a rage or not, his manner to the fairies, or lovely woman, was gallant and pompous in the extreme. He certainly had a lock of hair in a small gold specimen case on his watch-chain, and had been seen to kiss it when, rather carelessly, he thought that he was unobserved.

Miss Mapp’s eye, as she took her seat in her window on this sunny July morning, lingered for a moment on the Major’s house, before she proceeded to give a disgusted glance at the pictures on the back page of her morning illustrated paper, which chiefly represented young women dancing in rings in the surf, or lying on the beach in attitudes which Miss Mapp would have scorned to adjust herself to. Neither the Major nor Captain Puffin were very early risers, but it was about time that the first signals of animation might be expected. Indeed, at this moment, she quite distinctly heard that muffled roar which to her experienced ear was easily interpreted to be “Qui-hi!”

“So the Major has just come down to breakfast,” she mechanically inferred, “and it’s close on ten o’clock. Let me see: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday​—​Porridge morning[2].”

Her penetrating glance shifted to the house exactly opposite to that in which it was porridge morning, and even as she looked a hand was thrust out of a small upper window and deposited a sponge on the sill. Then from ​the inside the lower sash was thrust firmly down, so as to prevent the sponge from blowing away and falling into the street. Captain Puffin, it was therefore clear, was a little later than the Major that morning. But he always shaved and brushed his teeth before his bath, so that there was but a few minutes between them.

General manœuvres in Tilling, the gradual burstings of fluttering life from the chrysalis of the night, the emergence of the ladies of the town with their wicker-baskets in their hands for housekeeping purchases, the exodus of men to catch the 11.20 a.m. steam-tram out to the golf links, and other first steps in the duties and diversions of the day, did not get into full swing till half-past ten, and Miss Mapp had ample time to skim the headlines of her paper and indulge in chaste meditations about the occupants of these two houses, before she need really make herself alert to miss nothing. Of the two, Major Flint, without doubt, was the more attractive to the feminine sense; for years Miss Mapp had tried to cajole him into marrying her, and had not nearly finished yet. With his record of adventure, with the romantic reek of India (and camphor) in the tiger-skin of the rugs that strewed his hall and surged like a rising tide up the wall, with his haughty and gallant manner, with his loud pshawings and sniffs at “nonsense and balderdash,” his thumpings on the table to emphasize an argument, with his wound and his prodigious swipes at golf, his intolerance of any who believed in ghosts, microbes or vegetarianism, there was something dashing and risky about him; you felt that you were in the presence of some hot coal straight from the furnace of creation. Captain Puffin, on the other hand, was of clay so different that he could hardly be considered to be made of clay at all. ​He was lame and short and meagre, with strings of peaceful beads and Papuan aprons in his hall instead of wild tiger-skins, and had a jerky, inattentive manner and a high pitched voice. Yet to Miss Mapp's mind there was something behind his unimpressiveness that had a mysterious quality​—​all the more so, because nothing of it appeared on the surface. Nobody could call Major Flint, with his bawlings and his sniffings, the least mysterious. He laid all his loud cards on the table, great hulking kings and aces. But Miss Mapp felt far from sure that Captain Puffin did not hold a joker which would some time come to light. The idea of being Mrs. Puffin was not so attractive as the other, but she occasionally gave it her remote consideration.

Yet there was mystery about them both, in spite of the fact that most of their movements were so amply accounted for. As a rule, they played golf together in the morning, reposed in the afternoon, as could easily be verified by anyone standing on a still day in the road between their houses and listening to the loud and rhythmical breathings that fanned the tranquil air, certainly went out to tea-parties afterwards and played bridge till dinner-time; or if no such entertainment was proffered them, occupied arm-chairs at the county club, or laboriously amassed a hundred at billiards. Though tea-parties were profuse, dining out was very rare at Tilling; Patience or a jig-saw puzzle occupied the hour or two that intervened between domestic supper and bedtime; but again and again, Miss Mapp had seen lights burning in the sitting-room of those two neighbours at an hour when such lights as were still in evidence at Tilling were strictly confined to bedrooms, and should, indeed, have been extinguished there. And only last week, being ​plucked from slumber b[3]y some unaccountable indigestion (for which she blamed a small green apple), she had seen at no less than twelve-thirty in the morning the lights in Captain Puffin’s sitting-room still shining through the blind. This had excited her so much that at risk of toppling into the street, she had craned her neck from her window, and observed a similar illumination in the house of Major Flint. They were not together then, for in that case any prudent householder (and God knew that they both of them scraped and saved enough, or, if He didn’t know, Miss Mapp did) would have quenched his own lights, if he were talking to his friend in his friend’s house. The next night, the pangs of indigestion having completely vanished, she set her alarum clock at the same timeless hour, and had observed exactly the same phenomenon. Such late hours, of course, amply accounted for these late breakfasts; but why, so Miss Mapp pithily asked herself, why these late hours? Of course they both kept summer-time, whereas most of Tilling utterly refused (except when going by train) to alter their watches because Mr. Lloyd George told them to; but even allowing for that … then she perceived that summer-time made it later than ever for its adherents, so that was no excuse.

Miss Mapp had a mind that was incapable of believing the improbable, and the current explanation of these late hours was very improbable, indeed. Major Flint often told the world in general that he was revising his diaries, and that the only uninterrupted time which he could find in this pleasant whirl of life at Tilling was when he was alone in the evening. Captain Puffin, on his part, confessed to a student’s curiosity about the ancient history of Tilling, with regard to which he was preparing a monograph. He could talk, when permitted, by the ​hour about the reclamation from the sea of the marsh land south of the town, and about the old Roman road which was built on a raised causeway, of which traces remained; but it argued, so thought Miss Mapp, an unprecedented egoism on the part of Major Flint, and an equally unprecedented love of antiquities on the part of Captain Puffin, that they should prosecute their studies (with gas at the present price) till such hours. No; Miss Mapp knew better than that, but she had not made up her mind exactly what it was that she knew. She mentally rejected the idea that egoism (even in these days of diaries and autobiographies) and antiquities accounted for so much study, with the same healthy intolerance with which a vigorous stomach rejects unwholesome food, and did not allow herself to be insidiously poisoned by its retention. But as she took up her light aluminium opera-glasses to make sure whether it was Isabel Poppit or not who was now stepping with that high, prancing tread into the stationer’s in the High Street, she exclaimed to herself, for the three hundred and sixty-fifth time after breakfast: “It’s very baffling”[2q]; for it was precisely a year to-day since she had first seen those mysterious midnight squares of illuminated blind. “Baffling,” in fact, was a word that constantly made short appearances in Miss Mapp’s vocabulary, though its retention for a whole year over one subject was unprecedented. But never yet had “baffled” sullied her wells of pure undefiled English.

Movement had begun; Mrs. Plaistow, carrying her wicker basket, came round the corner by the church, in the direction of Miss Mapp’s window, and as there was a temporary coolness between them (following violent heat) with regard to some worsted of brilliant rose-madder hue, which a forgetful draper had sold to Mrs. Plaistow, having ​definitely promised it to Miss Mapp … but Miss Mapp’s large-mindedness scorned to recall the sordid details of this paltry appropriation. The heat had quite subsided, and Miss Mapp was, for her part, quite prepared to let the coolness regain the normal temperature of cordiality the moment that Mrs. Plaistow returned that worsted. Outwardly and publicly friendly relationships had been resumed, and as the coolness had lasted six weeks or so, it was probable that the worsted had already been incorporated into the ornamental border of Mrs. Plaistow’s jumper or winter scarf, and a proper expression of regret would have to do instead. So the nearer Mrs. Plaistow approached, the more invisible she became to Miss Mapp’s eye, and when she was within saluting distance had vanished altogether. Simultaneously Miss Poppit came out of the stationer’s in the High Street.

Mrs. Plaistow turned the corner below Miss Mapp’s window, and went bobbing along down the steep hill. She walked with the motion of those mechanical dolls sold in the street, which have three legs set as spokes to a circle, so that their feet emerge from their dress with Dutch and rigid regularity, and her figure had a certain squat rotundity that suited her gait. She distinctly looked into Captain Puffin’s dining-room window as she passed, and with the misplaced juvenility so characteristic of her waggled her plump little hand at it. At the corner beyond Major Flint’s house she hesitated a moment, and turned off down the entry into the side street where Mr. Wyse lived. The dentist lived there, too, and as Mr. Wyse was away on the continent of Europe, Mrs. Plaistow was almost certain to be visiting the other. Rapidly Miss Mapp remembered that at Mrs. Bartlett’s bridge party yesterday Mrs. Plaistow had selected soft chocolates for ​consumption instead of those stuffed with nougat or almonds. That furnished additional evidence for the dentist, for generally you could not get a nougat chocolate at all if Godiva Plaistow had been in the room for more than a minute or two…. As she crossed the narrow cobbled roadway, with the grass growing luxuriantly between the rounded pebbles, she stumbled and recovered herself with a swift little forward run, and the circular feet twinkled with the rapidity of those of a thrush scudding over the lawn.

By this time Isabel Poppit had advanced as far as the fish shop three doors below the turning down which Mrs. Plaistow had vanished. Her prancing progress paused there for a moment, and she waited with one knee highly elevated, like a statue of a curveting horse, before she finally decided to pass on. But she passed no further than the fruit shop next door, and took the three steps that elevated it from the street in a single prance, with her Roman nose high in the air. Presently she emerged, but with no obvious rotundity like that of a melon projecting from her basket, so that Miss Mapp could see exactly what she had purchased, and went back to the fish shop again. Surely she would not put fish on the top of fruit, and even as Miss Mapp’s lucid intelligence rejected this supposition, the true solution struck her. “Ice,” she said to herself, and, sure enough, projecting from the top of Miss Poppit’s basket when she came out was an angular peak, wrapped up in paper already wet.

Miss Poppit came up the street and Miss Mapp put up her illustrated paper again, with the revolting picture of the Brighton sea-nymphs turned towards the window. Peeping out behind it, she observed that Miss Poppit’s ​basket was apparently oozing with bright venous blood, and felt certain that she had bought red currants. That, coupled with the ice, made conjecture complete. She had bought red currants slightly damaged (or they would not have oozed so speedily), in order to make that iced red-currant fool of which she had so freely partaken at Miss Mapp’s last bridge party. That was a very scurvy trick, for iced red-currant fool was an invention of Miss Mapp’s, who, when it was praised, said that she inherited the recipe from her grandmother. But Miss Poppit had evidently entered the lists against Grandmamma Mapp, and she had as evidently guessed that quite inferior fruit​—​fruit that was distinctly “off,” was undetectable when severely iced. Miss Mapp could only hope that the fruit in the basket now bobbing past her window was so much “off” that it had begun to ferment. Fermented red-currant fool was nasty to the taste, and, if persevered in, disastrous in its effects. General unpopularity might be needed to teach Miss Poppit not to trespass on Grandmamma Mapp’s preserves.

Isabel Poppit lived with a flashy and condescending mother just round the corner beyond the gardener’s cottage, and opposite the west end of the church. They were comparatively new inhabitants of Tilling, having settled here only two or three years ago, and Tilling had not yet quite ceased to regard them as rather suspicious characters. Suspicion smouldered, though it blazed no longer. They were certainly rich, and Miss Mapp suspected them of being profiteers. They kept a butler, of whom they were both in considerable awe, who used almost to shrug his shoulders when Mrs. Poppit gave him an order: they kept a motor-car to which Mrs. Poppit ​was apt to allude more frequently than would have been natural if she had always been accustomed to one, and they went to Switzerland for a month every winter and to Scotland “for the shooting-season,” as Mrs. Poppit terribly remarked, every summer. This all looked very black, and though Isabel conformed to the manners of Tilling in doing household shopping every morning with her wicker basket, and buying damaged fruit for fool, and in dressing in the original home-made manner indicated by good breeding and narrow incomes, Miss Mapp was sadly afraid that these habits were not the outcome of chaste and instinctive simplicity, but of the ambition to be received by the old families of Tilling as one of them. But what did a true Tillingite want with a butler and a motor-car? And if these were not sufficient to cast grave doubts on the sincerity of the inhabitants of “Ye Smalle House,” there was still very vivid in Miss Mapp’s mind that dreadful moment, undimmed by the years that had passed over it, when Mrs. Poppit broke the silence at an altogether too sumptuous lunch by asking Mrs. Plaistow if she did not find the super-tax a grievous burden on “our little incomes.” … Miss Mapp had drawn in her breath sharply, as if in pain, and after a few gasps turned the conversation.… Worst of all, perhaps, because more recent, was the fact that Mrs. Poppit had just received the dignity of the M.B.E., or Member of the Order of the British Empire, and put it on her cards too, as if to keep the scandal alive. Her services in connection with the Tilling hospital had been entirely confined to putting her motor-car at its disposal when she did not want it herself, and not a single member of the Tilling Working Club, which had knitted its fingers to the bone and made enough seven-tailed bandages to reach to the ​moon, had been offered a similar decoration. If anyone had she would have known what to do: a stinging letter to the Prime Minister saying that she worked not with hope of distinction, but from pure patriotism, would have certainly been Miss Mapp’s rejoinder. She actually drafted the letter, when Mrs. Poppit’s name appeared, and diligently waded through column after column of subsequent lists, to make sure that she, the originator of the Tilling Working Club, had not been the victim of a similar insult.

Mrs. Poppit was a climber: that was what she was, and Miss Mapp was obliged to confess that very nimble she had been. The butler and the motor-car (so frequently at the disposal of Mrs. Poppit’s friends) and the incessant lunches and teas had done their work; she had fed rather than starved Tilling into submission, and Miss Mapp felt that she alone upheld the dignity of the old families. She was positively the only old family (and a solitary spinster at that) who had not surrendered to the Poppits. Naturally she did not carry her staunchness to the extent, so to speak, of a hunger-strike, for that would be singular conduct, only worthy of suffragettes, and she partook of the Poppits’ hospitality to the fullest extent possible, but (here her principles came in) she never returned the hospitality of the Member of the British Empire, though she occasionally asked Isabel to her house, and abused her soundly on all possible occasions.…

This spiteful retrospect passed swiftly and smoothly through Miss Mapp’s mind, and did not in the least take off from the acuteness with which she observed the tide in the affairs of Tilling which, after the ebb of the night, was now flowing again, nor did it, a few minutes after Isabel’s disappearance round the corner, prevent her from hearing the faint tinkle of the telephone in her own house. ​At that she started to her feet, but paused again at the door. She had shrewd suspicions about her servants with regard to the telephone: she was convinced (though at present she had not been able to get any evidence on the point) that both her cook and her parlourmaid used it for their own base purposes at her expense, and that their friends habitually employed it for conversation with them. And perhaps​—​who knows?​—​her housemaid was the worst of the lot, for she affected an almost incredible stupidity with regard to the instrument, and pretended not to be able either to speak through it or to understand its cacklings. All that might very well be assumed in order to divert suspicion, so Miss Mapp paused by the door to let any of these delinquents get deep in conversation with her friend: a soft and stealthy advance towards the room called the morning-room (a small apartment opening out of the hall, and used chiefly for the bestowal of hats and cloaks and umbrellas) would then enable her to catch one of them red-mouthed, or at any rate to overhear fragments of conversation which would supply equally direct evidence.

She had got no further than the garden-door into her house when Withers, her parlourmaid, came out. Miss Mapp thereupon began to smile and hum a tune. Then the smile widened and the tune stopped.

“Yes, Withers?” she said. “Were you looking for me?”

“Yes, Miss,” said Withers. “Miss Poppit has just rung you up—”

Miss Mapp looked much surprised.

“And to think that the telephone should have rung without my hearing it,” she said. “I must be growing deaf, Withers, in my old age. What does Miss Poppit want?”

​“She hopes you will be able to go to tea this afternoon and play bridge. She expects that a few friends may look in at a quarter to four.”

A flood of lurid light poured into Miss Mapp’s mind. To expect that a few friends may look in was the orthodox way of announcing a regular party to which she had not been asked, and Miss Mapp knew as if by a special revelation that if she went, she would find that she made the eighth to complete two tables of bridge. When the butler opened the door, he would undoubtedly have in his hand a half sheet of paper on which were written the names of the expected friends, and if the caller’s name was not on that list, he would tell her with brazen impudence that neither Mrs. Poppit nor Miss Poppit were at home, while, before the baffled visitor had turned her back, he would admit another caller who duly appeared on his reference paper…. So then the Poppits were giving a bridge-party to which she had only been bidden at the last moment, clearly to take the place of some expected friend who had developed influenza, lost an aunt or been obliged to go to London: here, too, was the explanation of why (as she had overheard yesterday) Major Flint and Captain Puffin were only intending to play one round of golf to-day, and to come back by the 2.20 train. And why seek any further for the explanation of the lump of ice and the red currants (probably damaged) which she had observed Isabel purchase? And anyone could see (at least Miss Mapp could) why she had gone to the stationer’s in the High Street just before. Packs of cards.

Who the expected friend was who had disappointed Mrs. Poppit could be thought out later: at present, as Miss Mapp smiled at Withers and hummed her tune again, she had to settle whether she was going to be delighted ​to accept, or obliged to decline. The argument in favour of being obliged to decline was obvious: Mrs. Poppit deserved to be “served out” for not including her among the original guests, and if she declined it was quite probable that at this late hour her hostess might not be able to get anyone else, and so one of her tables would be completely spoiled. In favour of accepting was the fact that she would get a rubber of bridge and a good tea, and would be able to say something disagreeable about the red-currant fool, which would serve Miss Poppit out for attempting to crib her ancestral dishes.…

A bright, a joyous, a diabolical idea struck her, and she went herself to the telephone, and genteelly wiped the place where Withers had probably breathed on it.

“So kind of you, Isabel,” she said, “but I am very busy to-day, and you didn’t give me much notice, did you? So I’ll try to look in if I can, shall I? I might be able to squeeze it in.”

There was a pause, and Miss Mapp knew that she had put Isabel in a hole. If she successfully tried to get somebody else, Miss Mapp might find she could squeeze it in, and there would be nine. If she failed to get someone else, and Miss Mapp couldn’t squeeze it in, then there would be seven…. Isabel wouldn’t have a tranquil moment all day.

“Ah, do squeeze it in,” she said in those horrid wheedling tones which for some reason Major Flint found so attractive. That was one of the weak points about him, and there were many, many others. But that was among those which Miss Mapp found it difficult to condone.

“If I possibly can,” said Miss Mapp. “But at this late hour​—​Good-bye, dear, or only au reservoir, we hope.”

She heard Isabel’s polite laugh at this nearly new and ​delicious Malaprop before she rang off. Isabel collected malaprops and wrote them out in a note book. If you reversed the note-book and began at the other end, you would find the collection of Spoonerisms, which were very amusing, too.

Tea, followed by a bridge-party, was, in summer, the chief manifestation of the spirit of hospitality in Tilling. Mrs. Poppit, it is true, had attempted to do something in the way of dinner-parties, but though she was at liberty to give as many dinner-parties as she pleased, nobody else had followed her ostentatious example. Dinner-parties entailed a higher scale of living; Miss Mapp, for one, had accurately counted the cost of having three hungry people to dinner, and found that one such dinner-party was not nearly compensated for, in the way of expense, by being invited to three subsequent dinner-parties by your guests. Voluptuous teas were the rule, after which you really wanted no more than little bits of things, a cup of soup, a slice of cold tart, or a dished-up piece of fish and some toasted cheese. Then, after the excitement of bridge (and bridge was very exciting in Tilling), a jig-saw puzzle or Patience cooled your brain and composed your nerves. In winter, however, with its scarcity of daylight, Tilling commonly gave evening bridge-parties, and asked the requisite number of friends to drop in after dinner, though everybody knew that everybody else had only partaken of bits of things. Probably the ruinous price of coal had something to do with these evening bridge-parties, for the fire that warmed your room when you were alone would warm all your guests as well, and then, when your hospitality was returned, you could let your sitting-room fire go out. But though Miss Mapp was already planning something in ​connection with winter bridge, winter was a long way off yet….