Edward Frederic Benson (1867-1940)

"Henry James died in 1916.  I had been to Rye once or twice since the first visit I paid him there, staying with an old friend Lady Maud Warrender in her house at Leasam...a mile outside the town."      "With Henry James's death I supposed that Lamb House itself would concern me no more, but in the preordained decrees of fate..., it began at once to concern me more closely."

"The house was let to an American lady, and she, being obliged to winter in the South, left her housekeeper there, and...a...friend of mine...asked me to share his tenancy.  I had war work to do in London, but

a morning train there on Monday and an afternoon train back to Rye on Friday gave me week-ends in the house which I had imagined I should never enter again.  Lamb House began faintly to assume a home-like aspect...  The remainder of the lease was offered to me:  I could not take it, for I was already co-lessee of the Villa Cercola at Capri..., but this offer seemed a sort of nudge, an aside, on the part of Fate, to indicate that she was attending, and meant that Lamb House was coming nearer.  I passed the offer on to a friend of mine, who accepted it.

. . .  Simultaneously [to the lease in Capri being terminated], Tremans was given up and my friend, to whom I had passed on Lamb House wanted...to spend his winters on the Riviera.  Would I therefore consider taking a sub-lease from October til the end of March?  I did not require much time for consideration."    (from Final Edition by E.F. Benson, 1940, pp.141-143 in the 1988 Hogarth reprint)

Once Elizabeth Mapp was set up "behind the curtains of the Garden Room, spying on her friends," and Rye became Tilling . . . perhaps "another preposterous woman, Lucia of Riseholme, who already had a decent and devout following, and who was as dominant as Mapp, might come into contact

with her some day...  I began to invent a new set of characters who should revolve round these two women, fussy and eager and alert and preposterous.  . . .  But one had to get a firm hold of Elizabeth Mapp first.  Lucia I knew."       (Benson, pp.162-163)

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