Peter

Fiction ~ novel
Published 4th March 1922
(First read 27/01/2015)

As I said in my recent post on Limitations (1896), no matter how bad the E F Benson novel, and no matter how bad my ~ or other folk's ~ reviews might make them sound, I can almost always find something good to say about them, and do generally enjoy them, even if only masochistically.  They may have ropey or downright idiotic plots, be stuffed with loathable cardboard-cutout characters, feature reams of guff about Art or Music or Ancient Greece, contain dodgy, clumsy writing, or a mixture of these, but there's usually some redeeming feature.  Limitations was the exception to this rule¹; Peter isn't.
Yes the plot's hackneyed ~ even EFB has done it before, in [I can't for the life of me remember which one ... it's the one where the spare wheel smoothes everything over for the hero and heroine by walking off a cliff] ~ 'poor' boy marries rich girl; other girl threatens to ruin everything; all turns out well in the end.  Yes the heroine is your stereotypical Bensonian 'saint'.  Yes the whole thing lacks any kind of drive or tension.  [in progress]


¹ Scarlet and Hyssop came extremely close. 

Limitations

Fiction ~ novel
First published in book form October 1896
(previously serialized in Temple Bar magazine, April-October 1896)
(First read 03/01/2015)

Limitations is the story of a rich young man who, on a trip to Greece ~ yawn, decides to become an Artist ~ yawn.  Not for him the shocking modernity of Art Nouveau or even anything a bit more old-hatteau than that: he decides to be a sculptor in the Ancient Greek style ~ yawn.  Along the way he falls in love with and marries a young woman who either is or isn't suitable for him, depending on how you look at these things ~ she's about as interested in Greek art as I am ~ yawn.  By doing this he shoves some other young woman's nose out ~ yawn.  Then by one of those curious Bensonian plot twists (by which I mean that they only seem to happen in EFB novels) he becomes 'poor' ~ yawn ¹, so he's forced to jettison his Artistic Ideals² and become 'commercial' ~ yawn.  And he lives glumly ever after.  Yawn.
If I've made the novel sound dull, that's because it is dull ~ it's fearfully dull, narcoleptically dull, calamitously dull (etc.).  I can usually find something good to say about Fred's novels; in this case I can't.
The whole sorry thing is available online here.

¹ As an indicator of how 'poor' he and his wife become, they're reduced to just the one maid and one nurse for their baby.  
² All these capitals are ironic, by the way.



THE CRITICS

The son of a rich man, Mr Carlingford, is about to return to Cambridge for his third year. Tom Carlingford and his father have a chat on the eve of the departure. Says the father:

“There is only one thing I should object to, and that is if you made a fool of yourself. Don't do that, Tom. Many people, when they make fools of themselves, think that they are doing what nine-tenths of the human race have

done since the beginning of the world. More than nine-tenths, probably. Adam

and Eve both made fools of themselves; so did Cain and Abel ~ Abel particu-

larly.” … “One can make a fool of oneself at Cambridge, if it comes to that,”

says Tom. “No, not very easily. Public opinion is against it, whereas in most

places the fools themselves constitute public opinion. … Folly's quite the

worst investment you can make. … There are no such things as bruties: there

are only wise men and fools ~ chiefly fools. … The best preparation is to lead

a healthy life and think about cricket.”

And so the conversation rattles on. The tale, Limitations, is by Mr E. F. Benson, son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and appears in Temple Bar. It sparkles as well as interests. Whether Mr Carlingford would admit that Whitechapel has found a brute in the murderer of poor old Mr Levi and his housekeeper we do not know. Probably he would say that the exception proves the rule.

~The Cornishman, 09/04/1896. Obviously this is a review of the serialization, not the complete novel.  See also below, 03/12/1896

Mr Benson has written an interesting and truly human book. His range is much wider than it was, his character-drawing has gained in depth, delicacy and precision; while the sparkling dialogue which we enjoyed in Dodo has lost none of its old brilliancy.

~The Daily Telegraph, quoted in newspaper ad of 29/10/1896

It is so splendidly told. Limitations will stand a good chance of being the novel of the season.

~The Glasgow Herald, quoted in newspaper ad of 29/10/1896

The best that Mr Benson has yet given us.

~Westminster Gazette, quoted in newspaper ad of 29/10/1896

Above all, there is that incommunicable charm which is the happiest possession of a novelist and a passport to success.

~The Globe, quoted in newspaper ad of 03/11/1896

Mr Benson has not wholly succeeded in what he has apparently attempted, namely, defection from his old ideal of the smart-society novel. Dodo would be sensational and cynical and worldly or nothing; but since then youth has learned a little, and young blood has grown older, and life has seemed even unto Mr Benson to be none so humorous and immaterial and irresponsible as it once appeared. The consequence is that Limitations is a sad and serious effort after grave human factors, but not quite to sad and serious as the author probably intended. If the truth be told, it is least successful where it most solemn, and more tolerable where it is merely flippant, like the Mr Benson of yore. The rattle of the undergraduate Carlingford is quite amusing, and meaningless. The battle of this same Carlingford with life is merely uninteresting, and no more convinces us of Mr Benson's genuineness than the spectacular tragedies of a doll's house. In fine, Limitations is still written by the undergraduate, the clever undergraduate, who knows better than any one how much of a favourite he is, and what a clever dog he is. It is a pity, however, that he should fly at sentiment, which is always a rank pitfall (if you don't mind broken figures) for youth and irresponsibility. The essential plot of Limitations is by no means novel. It is the tragedy of the artistic life ~ the soaring genius, the drab wife, and the rest. But we find it very hard to believe in Carlingford's genius. He is a babbler, 'an agreeable rattle', a University Extension lecturer, anything but a real artist. Nor are the remaining characters more persuasive, save the wife herself, who is, to be frank, the only real character in the novel. They have all the air of artifice, as if they had never been observed, but were rather constructed out of Mr Benson's inner consciousness. Now that the dust that Dodo kicked from fashionable carpets is decently laid with tea-leaves, we may be permitted to hope that Mr Benson will stick to his craft and diligently pursue its particulars with a mind unembarrassed by the glorious but fallacious glitter of an accidental success.

~ Pall Mall Gazette, 17/11/1896

A plotless novel, strictly a narrative in fiction rather than an exciting story of action and motive, is the most difficult form of fiction to make interesting. That Mr E F Benson has succeeded under these conditions is the high praise we can bestow upon Limitations […]. The principal in the story, Tom Carlingford, married the girl he loved, and another girl who loved him had to refuse a man who passionately loved her. In the early bliss of his marriage Tom's father was ruined, and he died with the cynical remark on his lips, “I'm stone broke, Tom, and it's lucky for you that you learned to break stones.” Tom was a sculptor for love of the art, and in this sense he was able to 'break stones' for his bread. There had been plenty of limitations up till now, but there came one limitation greater still. For Tom's ambition was to make Greek gods. He tried, and everyone admired, but no one bought. So he had to make statuettes and pretty modern things, his genius being limited by modern taste. Happily he bowed to the inevitable, and earned for the family opulence, if not wealth. The theme is cleverly worked out, but the charm of the book is the delightful conversation. There is Maude [sic] Wrexham, the disappointed one, whose talk justifies Tom in describing her as experienced, but fresh. It is Maude who says, “Compliments are a cheap way of paying debts. They are like

apologies.” And again, “If men hadn't professions, they would bore themselves to death. That is why they take to the Stock Exchange and politics ~ they do anything to make them forget their own selves. I don't say that women are any better, but they find themselves more interesting than men do.” With this sort of conversation we glide agreeably through the book. But it is not always frivolous. Beneath the cynical geniality there is seriousness, and there are occasions of pathos, as when the baby is born, and when Tom's wife has her moment of jealousy.

~The Sheffield Daily Telegraph, 19/11/1896

Mr Benson's latest novel of contemporary society, Limitations, is, in our judgment, in every sense a more worthy performance than Dodo, though possibly it may not receive quite so wide a welcome. Let nobody imagine from that, that it is a dull book; on the contrary, it is vivacious and clever, whilst less vulgar and sensational than its famous predecessor. Mr Benson still has his own 'limitations' in the direction of good taste, and he is still far too fond of that vacuous and rather silly banter which is [confused] in the undergraduate world with wit. Far too many pages of his book are filled with this exasperating padding, and the small talk of people who make assertions rather than think, ought ~ in fiction as in real life ~ to be administered in homoeopathic doses. Novelists ought to remember that though in actual life men cannot always pass to another room, but must silently endure the infliction of bantling wit, it is always possible to pass to the next book ~ a temptation which, though it assailed us in the present case, we are glad to have resisted. Tom Carlingford is the hero of Limitations, and let us say at once that it is impossible not to like him. We meet him at the outset in his rooms at King's College, Cambridge, light-hearted, feather-brained, well-intentioned, and with such considerable expectations that the world for all practical purposes seemed already at his feet. Coleridge says somewhere that all men born into this world have in them the making of a disciple either of Plato or Aristotle; and when Tom Carlingford suddenly awoke to the majesty of Greek art, he became as ardent an idealist ~ in certain directions at least ~ as is perhaps possible to a young man moving in modern polite society. He wished to be a sculptor, and a visit to Athens strengthened the desire into an unalterable purpose, and nothing would suit him but the grand, classical antique style. He married a girl who was practical, somewhat severe, rather unemotional, but with high ideals of her own, though towards religion and philanthropy rather than art. The young people had a mutual friend, a girl called Maud Wrexham, who possessed the artistic temperament, and about whom Tom had dreamed during his days in Athens. She might have been his evil genius; but if there is a crisis, there is no catastrophe in the book, for the girl no less than the man has her great qualities. The book is a veritable study of temperaments, and of temperament[s] at the moment when they are passing through the eclipse of disillusionment. Tom Carlingford had to take in sail. He was not a great sculptor even in the making, though he could model cleverly enough artistic statuettes. The artistic temperament is always chafing against its 'limitations', and until people accept the inevitable there can be no peace. Money grew suddenly scarce with Carlingford, and the statuettes ~ well, it was no use despising them, even though a grand block of Carrara marble had been chipped into a statue of Demeter, all in vain, before the eyes of an unbelieving generation. There is vision in the book, a vein of pleasant irony, no lack of audacity in moral judgment, and more common sense than Dodo ever showed.

~The Leeds Mercury, 21/11/1896

It is not altogether easy to say why this story enchains the attention of the reader, as it undoubtedly does. Nothing particular happens. The people who live and move and have their being in its pages are quite ordinary folk, yet we follow their unsensational fortunes from beginning to end with undiminished interest. The dialogue is good, indeed in some places is remarkably clever, but this hardly accounts for the charm of the story. Merely smart word-fencing is apt to grow wearisome, which the conversations here never do. It has to be put down to the art of the story-teller, of which Limitations is really a very fine example. Tom Carlingford is a capital example of the robust yet impulsive young Englishman, who has 'crises' in his life, and lives through them in a sensible, manly fashion, despite his turn for 'art' of a strictly classical character. The author has a very pretty knack of describing 'scenes', whether they be of an English covert-side or of the blue waters of the Ægean, seen from the Acropolis, with Salarmes in the distance. He is able also to depict the 'true pathos and sublime of human life', as witness the closing incident of the career which Tom had marked out for himself, and which he gave up with so much pain. We have great pleasure in commending this novel to the notice of that portion of the reading public that is not wedded to sensationalism.

~The Liverpool Mercury, 02/12/1896

Reviewing Mr E. F. Benson's just-published book, Limitations, The Academy says:~ “Unfortunately, you cannot make a novel out of a pepper-pot full of epigrams and a nice touch in verbal landscape.”

~The Cornishman, 03/12/1896.  See also first review above

[…] much above the general level of fiction.

~The Morning Post in 'Books of the Year', 31/12/1896

A real novel with depth as well as sparkle, and no small degree of literary merit.

~Chicago Tribune, quoted in front endpapers of The Vintage

A strong, interesting story of English life to-day, with plenty of humor but much underlying seriousness and suggestion … The novel has something more than cleverness to it.

~Hartford Courant, quoted in front endpapers of The Vintage

[After The Judgment Books Benson] returned to King's College, Cambridge, and contrived a yarn about a young man who resists advice to choose a profession, gives his soul to art, and falls on hard times. Written after the discovery of Athens and Fred's complete surrender to the Greek ideal, Limitations has a hero, Tom Carlingford, who is in many respects drawn from Fred himself. At Cambridge he makes a virtue of loafing about and doing nothing in particular save dine at the Pitt Club, even boasting that to be totally idle requires some talent; getting a degree is a wretched nuisance, an interruption of life's pleasures. He is a breezy outdoor type, inordinately fond of cricket; he plays the piano reasonably well; he skates. All this is recognisably E. F. Benson as a young man. The parallels become closer as the story develops, and Tom goes to Athens rather than get a job. There he is smitten by the beauty of Greek sculpture and determines to become a sculptor himself. Art will be his religion.

The story departs from autobiography when Tom marries (and incidentally affords us one of the few successful love scenes in the whole of the Benson œuvre), but there are pages of discussion about the nature and purpose of art which mirror Fred's post-Athenian preoccupations, and there is even a heart-to-heart talk between Tom and his father which gives some clue to the interview Fred had with [his own father] Edward about the lines of his future career. We only know that Edward recommended a job of some kind, perhaps in the Education Service, but from this and other Benson books we may safely surmise that when Fred declared his intention to be a writer he had to defend the artistic life against the remonstrations of a very sceptical father. Scenes in later novels, including The Challoners, support this supposition. Limitations was written in 1896, and published two months after the Archbishop's death.

 ~Brian Masters in The Life of E. F. Benson, 1991

The Capsina

Fiction ~ novel
Published 1899
Approx. 147,000 words
Available online here

THE CRITICS

Three or four years ago Mr Benson made a tour in Greece, the first-fruits of which appeared in his novel The Vintage. But the juice of the grapes that he gathered during his travels was not apparently to be contained in one bottle. Another squeeze and we have a sequel, The Capsina. The hero is our old acquaintance, Mitsos, of The Vintage, but the heroine is a Grecian 'new woman' of eighty years ago, a girl who builds and sails her own ships, fights for her country, and kills many Turks with her own hand. She is wedded to her favourite brig until she meets 'Little Mitsos', who enlists under her flag, but omits to tell her, till too late for her peace of mind, that he has left a wife and child at home. There is very little story, but a great deal of fighting, both on sea and land, and many ghastly details of wounds and tortures, such as the British public, so squeamish in certain respects, is supposed thoroughly to enjoy. The heroine takes her full share of the slaughter, and even Mitsos, who admires and respects her as a comrade, is just a little scandalised when she stamps on the face of a dead Turk, hangs an officer who has surrendered to her, and fires on a boat-load of women. He cannot quite reconcile these strong-minded actions with his ideal of true womanhood. For himself, he is as bloodthirsty as can be desired in the hero of an 'adventure' story, and gives 'a great giggle' when he sees an enemy's head 'dashed to a crushed eggshell' against a wall. However, he is so admirable a character from the domestic point of view, such a blameless husband and devoted father, that his inopportune giggles will no doubt be forgiven him, while as for the heroine she is quite a 'nice girl' in private life, and, since the realism that deals with human suffering is supposed to be quite innocuous compared with the realism that deals with human passions, her adventures may be recommended as suitable reading for the young person. In the intervals of the fighting the story is decidedly dull. The politics of the period, the intrigues of the Primates, and the treachery of the leaders can hardly be expected to interest the modern reader. Mr Benson has evidently studied his subject with conscientiousness, but he is over-anxious to impart his newly-acquired information. He would do well to remember that to the normal mind there are few subjects more unsavoury than stale politics, more especially the stale politics of a foreign country. The attractions of The Capsina are greatly enhanced by the illustrations of Mr Jacomb Hood.

~The Morning Post [London], 06/04/1899

Mr. E. F. Benson's second novel of the Greek war of independence, The Capsina, is distinctly superior to its predecessor, The Vintage, because the elements of romance and history have been more skillfully mixed, with the result of giving a continuous story interest. Indeed, the present book may truly be called a fine and strong historical novel. It has a vigorous central character in the heroine—a maiden who loves and fights as a ship-captain with equal passion. Some of the characters of The Vintage reappear, and 'Little Mitsos' again is in the foreground. The incidents of the war are dramatically told, and with vastly better perspective than in The Vintage. It was a time of the most horrible cruelty, and the claims of humanity were constantly disregarded by Greek as well as Turk. A kind of jocular bloodthirstiness in the telling of the story sometimes tries thereader's patience.

~The Outlook, 08/04/1899

It is far indeed from Dodo, Limitations and The Judgment Books to this romance of the war between Turkey and Greece. It almost seems, in fact, as if it were farther than the author can reach, for the society tone is not well adapted to the battle-cry.

The story begins with the oncoming of the struggle, and the opening scene is the little town of Hydra, which climbs Argolis, trailing its skirts in the Ægean. The people are patriots and the leader is a beautiful girl, a modern Joan of Arc, invincible on land and sea. Before the story has gone far it is in the midst of the conflict, and filled with the noise and confusion of battle. The author has evidently studied his subject, and many of the military descriptions are well done, with sympathies always on the side of Greece.

But the background of battle's smoke is not the best feature of the story. Its merit lies rather in the subtler matter of character drawing—as might have been expected from his earlier literary success. The main interest of the work is in the character and career of the 'Capsina,' and most of all in her ill-starred love. For she, being a woman and young and lovely, loses her heart early in the story, since the greatest courage and the most powerful arms are unavailing against cupid's assaults. Her love is not returned, but is naturally none the less great because of that fact, and the man whom she loves learns too late what he has lost.

Very, very far off is all this from the decadence of Dodo and her kind, but there are, nevertheless, occasional touches that recall Mr. Benson's earlier Limitations.

~The Bookman, 08/1899

Among new novels of the day there is Mr E. F. Benson's The Capsina, which is in his Vintage not Dodo style, and has its scene laid amid the stirring incidents of the Greek War of Independence. It presents, on the whole, a tolerably vivid picture of the struggle; the plot is skilfully managed and the characterisation is careful in every detail, but nevertheless the love-making and the fighting ~ and there is plenty of both ~ excite no emotion in the reader, and even the wonderful adventures and tragic fatge of the 'Capsina' herself, fail to arouse much sympathetic interest. From a literary point of view the novel is vastly superior to Dodo or The Rubicon; it is, however, less good than The Vintage, and although it will certainly not detract from, neither will it greatly enhance, Mr Benson's reputation as a fiction-writer.

~The Cheltenham Looker-On, 29/04/1899

The words of praise that met Mr Benson's earlier novel of Greek life, The Vintage, will be repeated and emphasised in regard to the present work. [...] Throughout there is no lack of action. Leaguer and assault, land fight and sea fight alternate with each other in brilliant descriptive passages. The author, however, does not make the mistake of endowing the modern Greek with too much heroism, or a character above reproach. There were heroes undoubtedly, but many of the bravest were those who were bravoes at heart, and, while eager for revenge, equally eager for spoil and booty.

~Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, 12/03/1899

Mr E. F. Benson's new novel The Capsina […] is virtually a sequel to The Vintage and is concerned, as that was, with the Greek War of Independence. On the whole, it is a better story; there is less history, less description, and more imagination ~ and to fiction imagination is obviously more necessary than mere knowledge. The hero is our old friend Mitsos, a married man now, since he has loved and won Suleima. Occupying a still more important position is Sophia Capsas, officially called the Capsina, just nineteen when the story opens, and the only child of her dead parents. Her father, head of the Clan of Capsas, had betrothed her when she was eighteen to her cousin Christos, sorely against her will, be it said; she had, in fact, only submitted in deference to the strict rule of Clan etiquette, and on condition that the marriage should take place “when she thought fit, and at no other time.” After her father's death she occupied herself with the management of the ship-building business she had inherited, and when Christos pressed for marriage curtly dismissed him for good. There is a really fine picture of her on the morning this occurred:~

“She was tall and finely made, and the sun had joined hands with the winds of theatrical

sea to mould her face with the lines of beauty and serene health. Her eyes and hair

were of the South, her brow and nose of her untainted race, her mouth firm and fine.

She watched Christos out of the gate with all the complete indifference her great black

eyes could hold, and then set off down to the shipyard, where a new brig was to be

launched that day. There she stood all the morning among the workmen, bareheaded

to the sun and wind, directing and often helping with her own strong hands.”

Her treatment of Christos is hotly discussed, and she amuses herself by wondering whether the Clan which now owns him as its head will come to the festival; but suffice it to say that this part of the book is admirable, and the Capsina remains unmarried. The story proceeds briskly to the time of the war. She joins the revolutionists, and the announcement that she has done so is virtually the beginning of active insurrection. Then we have some stirring incident, much slaughter of the Turks, an occasional execution, plenty of intermittent love-making, and through it all the figure of the Capsina on board her little ship. She is evidently a creation dear to Mr Benson's heart, but we own to finding ourselves repelled early in the book by an incident that not even the brutality of the Turks can justify. Here is the passage containing it: the italics are ours:~

“Only a few bodies of Turks had been found: the thing had been massacre not

fight. As the Capsina and Mitsos were going down to the ship again in silence, he

saw her turn aside to where a dead Turk was lying under a tree. She stamped on

the face of the dead thing without a word, and followed by Mitsos stepped into

the boat that was waiting for them.”

Nor is the calm hanging of two pages later, however well deserved, a pleasing incident, even with the qualifying passage that closes the chapter. Without being a sentimentalist, the ordinary reader will feel that such things are best left to men in fiction, if we are meant to care for the heroines. All the same, the Capsina is a striking personage, and her love for Mitsos is well told. The war scenes are much better than those of The Vintage, and the setting has the quality of actuality that distinguishes Mr Benson's work, and the book is marked by literary skill that usually makes it easy reading.

~The Standard [London], 05/06/1899

  

[…] to have read [The Capsina] I consider the ultimate qualification of the Benson enthusiast.

~C.D.B. in The Western Morning News, 25/04/1932 (full article reproduced under As We Were and Charlotte Brontë)

Shortly after [The Money Market Benson] tried his hand at two novels based on the Greek War of Independence, and using his recent experience with Greek refugees from the Turks. These were The Vintage and [The] Capsina, written in very unDodo style, obviously in an effort to find the depth and body his mother demanded. As historical novels they fall short of adequate, and The Vintage is downright soporific. “[The] Capsina has turned out as I hoped,” Fred wrote, “and is certainly a street or two higher than The Vintage.” Maybe so, but [his mother] was critical of it for quite other reasons, and she wrote him a schoolmistressy letter chiding him with what we should nowadays call obscenity. Fred had tried to describe lust, and he just wasn't up to it. Mother pointed to specific pages ~ 'the blood and flesh of her' on p.258, 'the fever of her love-sickness' on p.274, 'her love-fever' on p.275. “Things of this sort seem to me an unnecessary kind of sensationalism,” she told him, “they pull it down a moment and suggest images much lower than the great swing of the whole … quite another class of people, of rather nasty minds, will read into them things which you certainly don't mean.”

Oh, but he did mean them, only they were born of poor imagination rather than rich experience, which explains the risible artificiality of these images. [His mother] should have recalled her own advice to stick to observation and eschew theory.

~Brian Masters in The Life of E. F. Benson, 1991