(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)
To review one of Mr. E.F. BENSON'S social satires always gives me somewhat
the sensations of the reporter at the special sermon--a relieved
consciousness that, being present on business, my own withers may be
supposed professionally unwrung. Otherwise, so exploratory a lash.... I
seldom recall the touch of it more shrewd than in _Queen Lucia_
(HUTCHINSON), an altogether delightful castigation of those persons whom a
false rusticity causes to change a good village into the sham-bucolic home
of crazes, fads and affectation. All this super-cultured life of the
Riseholme community has its centre in _Mrs. Lucas_, the acknowledged queen
of the place (_Lucia_ = wife of _Lucas_, which shows you the character of
her empire in a single touch); the matter of the tale is to tell how her
autocracy was threatened, tottered and recovered. I wish I had space to
quote the description of the _Lucas_ home, "converted" from two genuine
cottages, to which had been added a wing at right-angles, even more
Elizabethan than the original, and a yew-hedge, "brought entire from a
neighbouring farm and transplanted with solid lumps of earth and indignant
snails around its roots." Perhaps, apart from the joy of the setting, you
may find some of the incidents, the faith-healer, the medium and so on, a
trifle obvious for Mr. BENSON. More worthy of him is the central episode--
the arrival as a Riseholme resident of _Olga Bracely_, the operatic star of
international fame.
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