A Little Tea, a Little Chat

by Christina Stead, Hilary Bailey (Introduction)

Living on the seamier side of New York in 1941, Robert Grant is a middle-aged man to whom life is a game in which he makes his own rules. This is no more evident than in the pursuit of his only hobby: the search for, seduction and betrayal of women. His targets are always 'easy', the cheaper the better. He is constantly on the lookout for a new face, a new phone number, 'a little tea, a little chat'. While Grant gets a certain thrill from his intrigues, he receives little pleasure - and gives none, until he meets Barbara, the 'blondine', a large, goodlooking but sluttish woman of thirty-two. In Barbara, he meets his match.

First published in 1948, A Little Tea, A Little Chat provides an irresistible, sardonic commentary on men and women on the make whose sexual appetites wickedly mirror the materialism of wartime America.

Genres: Classics, Novels, 20th Century, Australia, Fiction

408 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Christina Stead (1902–1983) was an Australian writer regarded as one of the twentieth century’s master novelists. Stead spent most of her writing life in Europe and the United States, and her varied residences acted as the settings for a number of her novels. She is best known for The Man Who Loved Children (1940), which was praised by author Jonathan Franzen as a “crazy, gorgeous family novel” and “one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century.” Stead died in her native Australia in 1983.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This review is published to coincide with the anniversary of Christina Stead’s death (17 July 1902 – 31 March 1983).
Oh, Christina, you were a wicked woman in the best possible way!
Way back in 1948, Christina Stead wrote the ultimate satire of marriage and capitalism when she savaged the predatory male in this witty black comedy that shows in excoriating detail what a hashtag can never could. Her portrait of Robert Grant, whose hobbies are making money and seducing women, is both revolting and hilarious, and readers will be cheering from the sidelines when he meets his match, Barbara, who is every bit as calculating as he is. I wonder what Jane Austen, doyenne of The Marriage Novel, would have thought of it? She would have been thunderstruck, I think, but her sense of humour would have held sway…
Girls, think of the sleaziest man you know. Was it your first boss, who these days would be fired for his daily sexual innuendos? Was it your Ex’s ‘mate’ who put the hard word on you when you briefly worked for him? Was it the well-known academic who put his hand on your knee under the table while his wife sat oblivious on the other side of you? Was it the clown at a party who cupped his hands under your boobs from behind and hauled you to your feet because he thought he was irresistible (and who copped a six-inch stiletto in the calf for his trouble)? None of these are in the same league as Robert Grant…
‘A little tea, a little chat’ is Grant’s euphemism for seduction. In 1940s New York, he’s always looking for opportunities to make money and to ‘beguile and betray’ the women he encounters. He has plenty of money to splash around because of all the deals he has made, and now after Pearl Harbour and the declaration of war, he’s busy finding ways to profiteer from it. Stead’s descriptions of this perfidy seem so authentic, she must have heard conversations like it in New York where she lived with her banker husband. There may have been some red faces when the book was published in 1948. But maybe not. Types like this – as we see so often in today’s media – are completely shameless…
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/03/31/a...

[Guy · Rating 4 out of 5]

“He had suffered too much from women.”

In Christina Stead’s comic novel, A Little Tea, A Little Chat Robert Grant, a middle-aged businessman, a dealer in cotton, is a despicable, opportunistic predatory male who is always on the lookout for the next sexual encounter. This bombastic braggart spends most of his time scoping out likely women he can invite up to his New York apartment for the euphemistic “a little tea, a little chat.”

The novel opens in 1941, with an introduction of Grant and his repulsive male circle of friends, all “birds of prey” and “each of them loved money and lechery, above all,” so between these men, stories of ripping off widows or seducing them makes good cocktail talk. It’s hard to say which of these men is the most revolting, but the novel concentrates on the philandering career of Grant, and how he subsequently meets his match.

Robert Grant isn’t an interesting man. He’s shallow and “had no hobbies. He could not read more than a few consecutive sentences in any book or newspaper unless they referred immediately to himself or his interests.” Grant’s relentless, pitiless modus operandi geared towards women is the compelling fascination here. He’s a pig, picking up women, stringing them along with false promises, assessing whether or not they’re worth bedding, buying them the cheapest meals possible. and then dumping them when he’s bored or if thing gets complicated.

"He had little pleasure out of his real hobby, libertinage; and he gave none. Women fell away from him, but he did not know why; and he retained only the venal."

He claims to be afraid of women, irreparably damaged by a femme fatale in his past. He poses as a free thinker, a “bit of a Marxist,” but considers a woman goes too far when she dances with a “negro fellow.” He’s learned to pose as a Leftie and has convinced himself that he really is one. Again this is just a role for sexual benefit. Leftist women seem to want to give it away free.

"usually his radicalism made his girls trustful and either cheap or for nothing: a radical girl should not take money for love."

Grant is a practiced seducer who always plays the victim to his prey, and here he is on what he’s looking for in a woman:

"I’m looking for romance. My heart needs a home, a cradle, eh? I’ve used myself up, played too hard. Now I need a woman, a mother, a sister, a sweetheart, a friend. That’s what that cow in Boston doesn’t realize. I need a mother now. She could have me back. But it’s too late now."

Discarding woman as casually and frequently as if they were paper underwear, he finally runs into a woman called Barbara Kent–a woman he eventually nicknames The Blondine. At first she seems a little drab, no big deal, but he becomes intrigued even though he knows “she’s possessive, she’s greedy, she is from the Land of Grab.” Barbara’s friend, Paula (another of Grant’s conquests) calls Barbara a “tramp.”

In this darkly, cruelly funny novel, we see Grant perplexed by the languid Barbara, who’s really every bit as boring as he is, and as she slips his grasp, he becomes obsessed with her. Setting, at no small expense, private detectives on her trail, sightings of Barbara with various men serve to fuel his obsession, and eventually, comically, he discovers, or thinks he discovers, Barbara’s secret life.

A Little Tea, A Little Chat is an intense character study of the male predator. After a certain point in the novel, we don’t really learn anything new about Robert, his methods or his tastes, but nonetheless, we follow him through his obsession with Barbara Kent. Grant is a bore, and like most bores, he won’t shut up, has the same speeches, and the same beliefs which he trots out in company. Grant’s speech about how he’s been done wrong by women appears repeatedly, for example, although it’s modified at times to fit his audience. At one point, for example, he has an idea for a book, called All I Want is a Woman, and in another scene he meets a woman “just back from Reno,” who wants to write a thinly veiled novel about her marriage. This meeting morphs into a duel for attention as Grant and the woman wax on about their respective experiences. Both egomaniacs, neither listens to the other. Some readers may be disappointed in the repetitiveness of Grant’s behaviour, but Grant’s boring repetitiveness and insatiable rapaciousness is all part of his shtick.

This is not a perfect novel, and at times Grant’s constant rants can be bludgeoning. But in spite of its flaws, I enjoyed the book thoroughly for its portrayal of a type who finally meets his match.

[Adelaide Mcginnity · Rating 3 out of 5]

An excellent, if idiosyncratic, beginning shows great promise of riches to come, but A Little Tea, a Little Chat soon lulls into an unfortunate tedium in which the same scenes seem to be repeating over and over again in a sort of third-rate Henry Miller rip-off, though with a number of abrupt and occasionally jarring jump-cuts thrown in, as if Stead were writing the novel in one sitting without revision, and just throwing in new ideas the moment they popped into her mind, only to be gradually forgotten over the course of the next ten replays of the same familiar scenes. Still, if you can soldier through the superfluous hundred-odd pages of mindless palaver, the thematic climax at the end is superb, though the Gatsby-like ending that follows is weak and seems out of place given the satirical tone of the rest of the work.

I take pity and give three stars here, for there is without question an amazing two-hundred page novel lurking amid the four-hundred fifty pages that Stead actually wrote. But alas - the character soup, general unevenness, and numbing repetition make this book somewhat of a slog to even get through. Oh, if only a couple good editors had gotten their hands on this before it was published!

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've wanted to read more of the VMC series and have never read anything by Christina Stead. As the back cover describes this one's female character as "a big, handsome, sluttish woman of thirty-two," it seemed like a good place to start.

[Ann Theis]

Kirkus