Fiction ~ short story
Published in Six Common Things, November 1893
Approx. 2,200 words
(First read 23/10/2014)
The totem of the title is a figure from the toy Noah's Ark set belonging to our Unnamed Narrator's son. The story recounts this battered and unprepossessing figurine's 'adventures' at the hands of the little boy and his daddy ~ a certain perhaps-unhealthy amount of interior design is involved in their games but we won't go into that. It's a charming and amusing wee tale, told in EFB's best "This story is for clever and good children and adults" style.
The only thing we're left wondering is: Are the narrator and child ('Jack') of this story the same as the narrator and deceased child ('Jack') of A Winter Morning in this same collection? If so, why can't the author, or at least the narrator, tell us this? If not, was Benson really so careless as not to notice the sameness of the names? The only clue we have that these characters might be the same people is this mind-blowingly cryptic final sentence/paragraph [the place = 'the place where we built a house for the totem']:
I often pass the place, seldom without thinking of Totem, and other things.
I've read this sentence 23 times and have no idea what it means ~ does it even make grammatical sense?
Anyway, it's available online here.
Fiction ~ short story
Published in Six Common Things, 1893
(First read 22/07/2014)
If you thought the story before this one (Blue Stripe) was sad, have your hanky ready again for A Winter Morning.
On a morning of thaw after a long cold snap, our Unidentified Narrator travels back 20 years in memory to a particular evening, six years after his wife's death in childbirth, when he and his brother were playing billiards, while U.N.'s little boy tried to keep himself amused on the hearth rug ~ a piece of cue chalk took his particular fancy as a plaything. The following morning the child, Jack, goes out for a ride on his pony only to come back two hours later with a broken back and on the brink of death. The 'familiar object' on this occasion turns out to be a piece of that billiard-cue chalk, which the father finds in Jack's pocket after he has been laid out.
It's partly because the piece is so short, partly because the subject takes you somewhat by surprise, and partly because EFB, as in all the other episodes from Six Common Things, shows admirable ~ and very masculine ~ restraint in his writing, that he manages to pull the story off without crossing the line into mawkishness. So, a quintessentially Victorian subject ... but handled in a rather modern manner.
You can judge for yourself, though: the story's online here.
Fiction ~ short story
Published in Six Common Things, 1893
(First read 21/07/2014)
The sight of some very familiar object, observed again even half unconsciously after some great change has happened, is full of a pathos almost unbearable.
Unidentified Narrator recalls the occasion, many years ago, of his wife's death in childbirth. He remembers the game of croquet they'd been playing shortly before this double life-changing event, and goes in search of the 'familiar object' ~ a croquet ball shunted off into the bushes: there it still lies, decades later.
An exquisitely sad vignette, simultaneously shot through with quiet bitterness and quiet joy. I had a terrific sensation of déjà vu all through this: I'm fairly sure EFB recycled the exact same motif in a later piece of work ~ number one suspect was The Book of Months (1903) but I've not been able to find it so it may have been in something else, or I may be mistaken. For the continuation see A Winter Morning, also in Six Common Things.
You can read it online here.
