The King and His Reign VI: The War

Queen Mary seems to curtsey before EFB*

Non-fiction ~ essay
Published in The Spectator, 29th March 1935
1,450 words
(First read 03/02/2015)

Benson has nothing but praise for the King's record during the First World War, coming pretty close to defining what he considered the True and Perfect English Gentleman: a man who conducted himself always with quiet, sober dignity and compassion, with the minimum of pomp and fuss (unlike that shocking Kaiser-cousin of his!), etc.  Also singled out for encomiums are the King's mother (Queen Alexandra), wife (Queen Mary), and even his son the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII).  The essay's emphasis is definitely on the royal family here, though there's stuff about the war itself too.
The article is available online here.

* Benson was visited by Queen Mary at Lamb House (Rye) on 11th March 1935 ~ "I was in the area, y'know" ~ about three weeks before this article was published.  I daresay he spent the entire visit trying to divert her attention away from his collection of antique silverware, notorious kleptomaniac that she was.
She's not really curtseying to him in the photo, by the way.

The King and His Reign IX: The King and Democracy

James Keir Hardie (1856-1915)

Published in The Spectator, 18th April 1935
1,380 words
(First read 01/01/2015)

EFB gives a brief and not especially riveting account of the birth of the British Labour Party, and is generally fairly even-handed and magnanimous about them¹, except with regard to what he believed to be their part in the ultimate refusal to allow the Russian royal family to find exile in the UK².  As with all these articles, Benson feels obliged to compare George V with his grandmother and father, and, it has to be said, he lays it on pretty thick in his final paragraph.
You can read the article online here.


¹ There's a mildly amusing ~ or perhaps the word is 'risible' ~ anecdote about the King refusing admittance to his garden party to Keir Hardie and his Labour-founding-father pals.
² Even though Labour weren't actually in power at the time.

The King and His Reign IV: Women's Rights

Non-fiction ~ essay
Published in The Spectator, 15th March 1935
1,420 words
(First read 11/12/2014)

Mrs Pankhurst addresses a crowd

This one falls very much under the 'His Reign' category: as EFB makes barely any mention at all of George V, we can only assume he had nothing to do with women's rights¹.  What we get instead is a preamble in which we're reminded of Queen Victoria's opinions on uppity females (she was rabidly agin the idea), of Edward VII's opinions ditto (also agin, but less so), followed by a potted history of the pre-War emancipation movement, of the role women played during the War itself, and of their new-found freedom after it.
Benson was clearly no feminist; indeed he's often accused of outright misogyny ~ generally by people who've only read the Mapp and Lucia novels.  In fact his fictional women fall into two very pronounced types: (1) the cats, shrews, vixens, cows, harpies, bitches, witches (etc.) we all know and love from his satirical novels; and (2) the sweet, noble, impossibly virtuous, nauseating and frankly improbable saints so prominent in his (melo)dramas.  There was practically no middle ground. [Sorry ~ wandering off the point a bit.]  In this article he carefully aligns himself with those who claim post facto that their sole objection to the Suffragist movement was the activities of its more militant wing.  EFB might not ever have been violently anti-women's suffrage but, before the Great War, he rarely missed an opportunity to poke fun at it².


¹ I daresay he didn't approve, though.  Queen Mary wouldnt've let him.
² For his most sustained mock see the novel Mrs Ames (1912).  It has to be said that the eponymous heroine's feeble'n'futile pro-suffrage protest is the highlight of that book.

The King and His Reign II: The Inheritance

Non-fiction ~ essay
Published in The Spectator, 1st March 1935
1,495 words
(First read 04/12/2014)

The young George V ... what a handsome chap he was

EFB continues the life story of George V he started in Prince George's Childhood by ... well, by saying virtually nothing about him.  This article sets the background for what he 'inherited' when he came to the throne, by telling us about his father Edward VII's efforts to maintain peace in Europe (kind of) by performing a round of visits to his fellow monarchs in the hope of charming them into uniting against his nephew the Kaiser ~ a 'policy' which failed dismally in the long run ~ and the short one too, come to that ~ because, as Benson himself says:

These Royal visits of King Edward, which up to the time of his death he had made a large part of the duties and services of a Sovereign to his country, have been roughly analysed in order to show how meaningless they had become. With the growth of democracy it seems strange, twenty-five years later, that they could ever then have been thought to be of value, for the age when personal friendships between Sovereigns could affect strong national movements was already long past.

Ah well.   While all that was going on, George himself

occupied his time for travelling to infinitely greater advantage by visiting India with the Queen in 1911 and magnificently demonstrating at the Durbar the power and friendliness of the Raj.

You can read the full article online here.

The King and His Reign I: Prince George's Education

Non-fiction ~ essay
Published in The Spectator, 22nd February 1935
1,295 words
(First read 02/12/2014)

"What do you mean 'Four's too young for the Navy'?"

In this the first of twelve articles published to commemorate the silver jubilee of King George V (1865-1936), EFB contrasts the prince's rearing with that of his father Edward VII (1841-1910).  The latter had a miserable, lonely childhood thanks to his parents¹ and so, to ensure that his son didn't suffer the same fate, packed young George off to the Navy at the earliest possible opportunity, along with the ill-fated heir to the throne Prince Albert Victor (1864-92)².
That's pretty much it, actually.  It's available to read online here.


¹ See King Edward VII: An Appreciation (1933) and The Baron (1937), etc.
² I daresay Edward found kids a bit style-cramping as well.