Before the Bombardment by Osbert Sitwell (1926)

Sitwell's intention here is, I think, to bury the Edwardian era - using, thankfully, humour, urged on with a reasonable quotient of rancour! This story of a slightly shy, slightly mysterious aged gentlewoman with an urge to become more popular, fantastically named Miss Collier-Floodgaye, and her newly acquired aged companion, Miss Bramley, who has been used in previous positions to being dominated and put upon, and now in Miss Collier-Floodgaye finds instead a victim of her own, is a magnificent indictment. Or at least it would be, if one subscribed to Sitwell's prejudices. I don't quite, but I cannot deny the brilliance of his effort. The relatively slender plot revolves around Miss Collier-Floodgaye being taken up by 'scheming types' in the seaside town of Newborough, famously modelled on Scarborough. Miss Bramley, having previously astounded herself by establishing very effective control over her employer's life, is disgusted with this new interest being shown in Miss Collier-Floodgaye by a putative group of 'relatives'; this connection is only maintained by the fact that their surname is Floodgay. Miss Collier-Floodgaye goes along with the story very willingly, finding popularity for the first time in her life, being the centre of attention, wearing herself out. Miss Bramley, of course, suspects that her fortune may be the target, but is powerless to completely deflect their inroads. All this takes place while Sitwell methodically sets about destroying the illusion of comfortable Edwardian respectability in a provincial outpost in 1907. He does this by means of superb setpieces of satiric explosion, character after character in the background standing in for one or another fatuous garrulity, veiled sadistic impulse, hopeless euphemism, wicked prejudice or doddering incapacity. The consistency of the wit cannot be denied, and is splendidly enjoyable. Then Miss Collier-Floodgaye passes away, and Miss Bramley realises that all of these befuddled reminders to see the lawyer she has been given, degenerating into intense stares when Miss Collier-Floodgaye becomes helpless and wordless in her last days, were in order to write her into the will, not the Floodgays! Her jealousy in angling to deflect her employer from the legal visit has undone her. Finally there is an effective epilogue in which Sitwell pushes forward a few years and posits the bombardment of the title occurring in Newborough, a skirmish of the 'Great' War. He seems to relish the obliteration of this world he has built up, writing of characters being 'atomised' in bomb-drops. So, a visceral expunging of long built-up frustration? I think so.