the lap of luxury

...with fine and rare precision....

------------------[excerpt]-------A brilliant notion struck Benjy as he listened to this impassioned speech.  Though he liked the idea of holding public office and of the dignity it conferred, he knew that his golf would be much curtailed by his canvassing, and, if he was elected, by his duties....[from The Worshipful Lucia, by E.F. Benson.]

[excerpt]------ So, tranquillity being restored, they sat together...and began plotting out the campaign for the coming municipal elections.

"Better just get quietly to work, love," said she, "and not say much about it at first, for Lucia's sadly capable of standing, too, if she knows you are."

"I'm afraid I told her last night," said Benjy.

"Oh! -- well, it can't be helped now.  Let's hope it'll put no jealous ambitions into her head.  Now, l'Economie is the right slogan for you.  Anything more reckless than the way the Corporation has been spending money I can't conceive.  Just as if Tilling was Eldorado.  Think of pulling down all those pretty little slums by the railway and building new houses!  Fearfully expensive, and spoiling the town:  taking all its quaintness away."

"And then there's that new road they're making that skirts the town," said Benjy, "to relieve the congestion in the High Street."

"Just so," chimed in Elizabeth.  "They'd relieve it much more effectually if they didn't allow Susan to park her car, positively across the street, wherever she pleases, and as long as she pleases. 

It's throwing money about like that
which sends up the rates by leaps and bounds;
why, they're nearly double what they were when I

inherited

Mallards from sweet Aunt Caroline.  And nothing to show for it, except a road that nobody wants and some ugly new houses instead of those picturesque old cottages.  They may be a little damp, perhaps, but, after all, there was a dreadful patch of damp in my bedroom last year, and I didn't ask the Town Council to rebuild Mallards

at the public expense.  And I'm told all those new houses have got a bathroom

in which the tenants will probably keep poultry.  Then, they say, there are the unemployed.  Rubbish, Benjy!  There's plenty of work for everybody; only those lazy fellows prefer the dole and idleness. 

We've got to pinch and squeeze so that the so-called poor may live in the lap of luxury. 

If I didn't get a good let for Mallards every summer, we shouldn't be able to live in it at all, and you may take that from me.  Economy!  That's the ticket!  Talk to them like that, and you'll head the poll."

A brilliant notion struck Benjy as he listened to this impassioned speech.  Though he liked the idea of holding public office and of the dignity it conferred, he knew that his golf would be much curtailed by his canvassing, and, if he was elected, by his duties.  Moreover, he could not talk in that vivid and vitriolic manner....

He jumped up.

"Upon my word, Liz, I wish you'd stand instead of me," he said.  "You've got the gift of the gab; you can put things clearly and forcibly; and you've got it all at your fingers' ends.  Besides, you're the owner of Mallards, and these rates and taxes press harder on you than on me.  What do you say to that?"

The idea had never occurred to her before; she wondered why.

=============================
{The Worshipful Lucia, by E.F. Benson.  Copyright, 1935 Doubleday.}

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