The Life of Alcibiades

Non-fiction ~ biography/Ancient Greece
Published 1928
Approx 82,000 words 
(First read 14/10/2016)

There are things of EFB's that I will never ever read, that wild horses armed with Kalashnikovs couldn't induce me to read.  This is one of them.  If you have the stomach for this kind of thing, the whole book is available online here.
STOP PRESS!
Yes, I actually read it.
And, would you believe, I actually quite enjoyed it.

THE CRITICS

Athens of the fifth century B.C. is an episode of human history of which the world is never likely to grow weary, and, as long as people care more for brilliance than for stability, Alcibiades is sure to be the most attractive figure in the latter half of that century. We are well informed as to his character and works, chiefly by Thucydides, who wrote as his contemporary, and by Plutarch, the professional biographer, to whom the fifth century was already ancient history. No one, perusing those two sources, could fail to have a vivid impression of Alcibiades, favorable or otherwise; but, of course, the readers of Thucydides and Plutarch are no longer common, and Mr. Benson has decided to publish a biography combining the evidence of antiquity with the inferences which he thinks may fairly be drawn from that evidence.

Now the first question that presents itself is "How far should such a biography be supplemented by imagination?" And this is a question of considerable importance. Alcibiades is exactly the kind ofperson whose mental processes one longs to know. He was a roué, a spendthrift, and a traitor, yet he exerted an almost magic fascination over his contemporaries. For these facts we have plenty of evidence, implicit or explicit; but for the actual emotional texture of his life we must rely largely on our imaginations, and their contributions are, of course, fiction.

Either the fact or the fiction might dominate: Mr. Benson has tried to hold the balance even, and the result is neither a good novel nor a good biography. It is not a good novel because the fiction is too scanty and generally too slight to add very much to what is contained in the historical sources or to create a character which is a true work of art. Moreover, the style is repetitious and hyperbolic and sometimes cheap. We are told half a dozen times that Alcibiades advised the fortification of Decelea; the superlatives in the language not sufficing, the word 'supremest' is created, and 'superbest' (!); and it is charitable to suppose that such a phrase as "the Bolshevist committee (the Council of Four Hundred!) must commit hari-kari" is due to haste of composition.

 

~Alfred R. Bellinger in The Saturday Review, 20/07/1929 [much abridged: the original is 1,315 words]

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

Classical Education

The doings of Athenians

Non-fiction ~ opinion piece
Published in The Spectator, 6th July 1928
1,335 words
(Read 03/06/2014)

EFB bemoans not the fact that Latin and Greek are taught at all but that they are taught so badly.  Well, to be honest, hardened Græcophile that he was, he talks almost exclusively about Greek, dismissing the Romans pretty summarily in the first paragraph.  He makes a fair point, though:

The fruitless expenditure of time and anguish over the acquisition of Greek, when it might be far more profitably employed, is tragic ... .  The fault was not in [boys'] brains, nor in the subject that they studied, for any boy of the smallest imagination would be interested in the doings of the Athenians, if only he had been made to realize that this tiresome parsing and syntax were not steps towards the mere acquisition of a language but towards the knowledge of an attractive and extraordinarily modern people, and that Athenian boys* played games with just as much zest as they, and spoke Greek, as it were, by accident.

The article can be read online here.

*Girls just don't come into it, obviously.

Mother

Non-fiction ~ memoirs
Published 1925
Approx. 62,000 words
(First read 20/03/2014)

Mother is the highly enjoyable sequel to Our Family Affairs: 1867-1896 (1920).  I presume the only reason Fred didn't call it Our Family Affairs: 1896-1918 is that he wanted to leave an enduring tribute to his much-loved mother.  Yes, Mary (Sidgwick) Benson (1841-1918) is the focus of the book but she's far from being the exclusive focus.  A good two-thirds of it is devoted to other family members, in this order: EFB himself, his doomed sister Maggie (1865-1916), brother Hugh (1871-1914), the family nurse Beth (1819-1911), and, somewhat bringing up the rear, brother Arthur (1862-1925). 
Rather than whiffling on endlessly I'll just pick out a few highlights.

George I of Greece

EFB, after performing relief work in Greece following some kind of war they had there in the 1890s¹:

When I got home I was told by Lord Wantage, the head of the Red Cross, that King George of Greece had expressed an amiable desire to decorate with the Order of the Redeemer two of those who had been engaged in this relief work, and that my name had been recommended.  But from that day to this I never heard a word more about it, and the mystery as to whether the Order of the Redeemer was lost in the post, or whether King George, on second thoughts, considered that it would be too much pleasure, remains unsolved.

 EFB on Oscar Wilde in his prime²:

[...] Oscar Wilde was producing the plays which, however artificial they may seem now, sent his audiences reeling into the street, intoxicated by epigram and paradox.  None of them had the smallest spark of immortality, except possibly The Importance of Being Earnest, but they were very new, and their audacious nonsense was very like wit.

No comment.

My and EFB's sentiments on this subject tally exactly:

[...] the greatest wizard of all was Emily Brontë: how many times I have read Wuthering Heights I have no idea, but never, in spite of the clumsiness of its narration, have I laid it down without the firm conviction that it stands alone at the head of all novels in the English language.

(Rather like Mother, EFB's Charlotte Brontë (1932) is as much ~ if not actually more ~ about the other members of the family, especially Emily.)
EFB on what his mother thought of the Benson brothers' books, particularly Fred's, circa 1905:

Mary Benson at 19

[...] it was becoming common knowledge between her and me that she found the sort of book that I was writing now quite intolerable, [...] none of us yet had written anything that gave her any sense of personal pride. [...]  Some struck her as too quietist for the world [Arthur's], and some too worldly for her own quietism [Fred's]; some were propagandist of beliefs she did not share [Hugh's], and some were sentimental, and some were crude, and I feel convinced that she never read twice anything that any of us had written, nor indeed would have read much of it all once, if it had not been we who had written it.  She liked "bits" in most [of them], but not one spark of inspiration, not one crumb of the bread of life, did she find in any of them.³

Francis Yeats Brown

The section in which EFB talks about his close friendship with the young Francis Yeats Brown⁴ is interesting and ~ possibly ~ more revealing than he intended.  FYB was about 20 years younger than EFB and, at the start of their friendship, which apparently lasted several years, aged about 20.  And oh my! do those holidays they spent together in Italy ever sound idyllic under Fred's pen!

[...] the love of the sea and the swimming and the basking, and presently we spent inseparable days among rocks and sea-caves, or climbed, perspiring, through the woods of chestnut and laburnum to the Portofino Kulm [...]  another summer I settled down with him from May to August in that enchanted castle of Portofino.  [They slept in hammocks side by side in the garden]  And as long as I live I shall bear in my inward heart of happiness that nightly falling to sleep in the open, with the scent of stocks, and the drowsy pulse of the sea below, and the stars burning in the boughs of the stone-pine, and the black shadow of the castello lying across the white, moonstruck garden, and the sense of a drowsy friend in the hammock close by.

Now I ask you, Gentle Reader, if that isn't Love, what is?  (By contrast, there's none of this kind of rapture ~ in fact, there's no rapture at all ~ when he talks about his dealings with John Ellingham Brooks, the shirt-lifting pal he shared a house with on Capri ...)
The section in which the author recounts the final decline and death of the family nursemaid Beth, who served the Sidgwicks and the Bensons faithfully and with love for 77 years, is pretty well guaranteed to have you reaching for a hanky.  It did me.  [For more on Beth, see Across the Stream.]
Gaaah! this is going on forever! ~ okay, I'm going to wrap it up here.  I highly recommend Mother for anyone who has the least interest in the Benson family, Fred in particular: the book is ram-full of goodies, far too many to mention.

¹ "Don't blind us with details, Ewie!"
² Benson returned to the subject of Wilde ~ and was slightly less dismissive ~ in As We Were (1930).
³ For the happy ending to this subject see under David Blaize.
⁴ (1886-1944); author of The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1930). 

STOP PRESS:
A certain Mr Rodney Bolt has produced a biography of Mary Benson, the splendidly titled As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil: The Impossible Life of Mary Benson, published by Atlantic Books in 2011. 

A Reaping

Fiction ~ novel (kind of)
Published 1909
Approx. 72,000 words
(First read 21/01/2014)

... is the sequel to The Book of Months and is really just more of the same, only longer: it's no better, no worse, just more.

The 'action' picks up two or three years later: our faceless, originless, characterless, surnameless author-hero has now been married two years to the woman (Helen) he selected at the end of Months and Months for pretty well the sole reason that she was the dead spit of the departed Margery.  The couple mooch about between London and their house in the country (mostly the latter), often accompanied by Jack's cousin 'Legs', a kind of elongated 20-year-old puppychap, very likeable.  Jack has lost none of his chronic habit of tedious maundering.  I won't bore the pants off everyone by recounting any of the 'plot', just give selected 'highlights':
(1) September¹: Jack and Legs ~ and the dog Fifi² ~ have a mildly supernatural experience involving a so-called revenant.  It's a lot less interesting than it might sound.

(2) October: Jack and Helen do some gardening.
(3) November: Jack and Helen do some more gardening.  Legs nearly gets engaged.  And ... into this teeth-grindingly dull farrago of dusty drivel EFB sees fit to drop A Comic Character, in the shape of Mr Holmes, one of their neighbours in the country.

"He is a kind little gentleman, about forty-five years old, who lives with his sister, and does not do anything whatever³.  He is generally known as the Bun-hander, because no tea-party has ever been known to take place for miles round at which Mr. Holmes was not handing refreshments to the ladies.  That is his strength, his forte.  His weakness is just as amiable ~ though, perhaps, hardly so useful ~ for his weakness is Rank."

Before anyone gets excited at the prospect of an undiscovered Bensonian comic hero, I hasten to point out that Mr H isn't actually all that funny: as with the character of Mrs Murchison in Mammon & Co., EFB describes with glee everyone's (especially Legs') reaction to him without bothering to make the character himself especially comic.  Oh and he's gone in a flash.

(4) February: Edward Frederic Benson murders Legs for no reason whatsoever.
(5) April: Jack and Helen, but mainly Jack, goes on holiday to Greece and bores us rigid with that for what feels like 300 pages but is in fact only 14.  As an example of how supremely turgid the Benson prose gets when he's waxing lyrical about the ancient world, I'll quote this stupefyingly bad sentence:

"Never, so we must believe, during that wonderful century and a half, when from the ground, maybe, of the lifeless hieratic Egyptian art there shot up that transcendant flower of loveliness, of which even the fragments that remain to us now, battered and disfigured as they are, are in another zone of beauty compared to all that went before or has come afterwards, was anything ugly produced at all, except as deliberate caricature."

I defy anyone not to turn blue with tedium reading this section.
Okay enough! ~ I've already wasted far more time than I intended to on this.
NOT RECOMMENDED, but if you're feeling very brave it's available online here.


¹ Like it's predecessor, A Reaping is divided into twelve month-long chapters.  But for no discernible reason it starts at June this time.
² Yes: Fifi.
³ Jack presumably hasn't heard the thing about casting the beam out of one's own eye ...

THE CRITICS

A Reaping (1909) is not a novel to shine.

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

There is nothing to hold against the Benson brothers but their unfailing industry. Nothing can swerve them from the path of producing a book or two a year. It remains, therefore, for their readers to accept the fact that the matter contained in the books must be slight. A Reaping, by E. F. Benson, is slighter than usual. It is unconventionally invented, the chapter headings bearing the names of the months and the structure being of a rather straggling and casual kind. The usual ingredients, however, are to hand; meditative à la A. C. Benson; the third brother's unfailing interest in the god Pan; also his lasting interest in women's hair, which the author brushes and describes much as he has done in The Climber and other volumes. There is also a ghost, a warning, reflections upon death, à la R. H. Benson, as well as a great deal of charming landscape and light laughter. The doctrine is Stevenson's of cheer and kindness at all costs; excellent doctrines, but not gripping nor vitalizing. It is sad, but somehow the ultimate amiability of all things was always and remains still a tepid inspiration. The book is very gentle, sweet-spirited and kindly, and if it were by a young and unknown author we should hail it with pleasure and delight; but Mr. Benson must submit to the criterion of his past. Our demand upon him is like that the little schoolgirl made of the readier elder sister who wrote her compositions for her week by week: "Now be sure and make me improve a little since last time," she would urge. We want Mr. Benson to improve a little each time. He is still quite young enough, and we recommend a stern experience of deprivation and misery or a very undermining course of reading; not so much that he may, as Nietzsche might say, hold more correct views, but that he should liberate himself from what is customary either successfully or disastrously. It is a great doctrine to set one's faith upon, that a big failure is better than a slight success.

~The North American Review, April 1910 (edited for crap spelling etc.)

Juggernaut

Fiction ~ novel
Published 1911
Approx. 105,000 words
(First read 19/09/2013)

Juggernaut¹ tells the story of Margery Morrison's marriage to Arnold Leveson, of her cousin Walter's thwarted love for her, and ... well, that's about it, really.

When we first meet Margery she is sixteen-going-on-seven, bawling her eyes out over a kitten which has supposedly been drowned at the orders of her wicked aunt (Mrs Agnes Morrison, widow).  Marge is an orphan who has lived with said aunt and her cousins (Olive and Walter) for the past few years.  The latter is two years Marge's senior and Benson Type No. 1; the pair have grown up as thick as two short planks ~ oops, sorry, I mean 'as thick as thieves'.  But lo! over the course of a walk, during which it turns out the kitten hasn't been drowned after all (phew! that's a relief), Walter suddenly grows up and realizes he's in love with his couz.
Our heroine, as I've subtly hinted already, is a simple lass: to give her her due, she's the first to admit, on more than one occasion, that she's 'not very clever' ~ a bit of an understatement.  However, she makes up for her lack of brains by being sweet, flawlessly pretty, remorselessly optimistic, open-hearted, generous, pure in spirit and outlook, kind to animals, loving, virginal, saintly ... yes, she's Benson Young Female Type 1: so entirely good that you find it impossible to believe in her.  EFB does his best to convince us she's a bit of a tomboy (or maybe he uses the term 'romp'), but with little success: he's so obsessed with slathering on the 'tiny hands and feet', 'masses of silky hair', 'porcelain complexion' etc. etc. that you're left with the girliest tomboy that ever was. 

Into this cozy mix is thrown (very gently) Mr Arnold Leveson, an elderly bachelor (he's about 30 ~ joke!) and all-round dry-old-stick.  His great passion in life is writing incredibly long and tedious books about Ancient Greece ~ we're treated to a few quotes: they gave me the dry-heaves, I can tell you.  Margery raves about them and, now that Walter has been safely packed off to Germany (!), very soon ends up raving about Arnold himself.  They get married.  Marge is obviously ~ yes, obviously ~ so lacking in any kind of insight that when, on his return, Walter tells her he's over her and he's fine with her marrying Leveson, she believes him.  Walter proceeds to hang stoically around for the rest of the novel, confounded self-sacrificing idiot that he is.
Unfortunately, the marriage doesn't turn out well, to put it mildly².  It becomes clear that Arnold loves his Ancient Greek περίττωμα³ more than his wife.  Margery joins Walter in the Suffering-in-Silence corner.  The End.

No, I don't think I've forgotten anything ... other than: Margery's aunt.  Mrs Morrison is the closest Juggernaut gets to comedy: she's another of EFB's 'classic' middle-aged ~ but prematurely-agèd ~ embittered cows, a close relative of (e.g.) Mrs Hancock over at Arundel [qv].  The difference between the two is that Mrs M is actually pretty rubbish at her selfish manipulatings, constantly putting her foot in it, giving herself away, etc.  But she's nasty to everybody ~ her niece, her own kids, her neighbours, no-one escapes.  Sadly there isn't enough of her, though, to rescue Juggernaut from being a pretty tedious read: the plot is wafer-thin; Margery you just feel like punching; Walter is a moron; Arnold, though 'bad', is as dull and irritating as everyone else; only Walter's sister Olive shows occasional flashes of what might be called 'character', but she's a pretty minor character all told.   



¹ Published in the USA under the title Margery, which is far more sensible.  The UK title suggests a great deal of movement and noise: the novel has neither.
² Without giving too much away (!), I'll just tell you there's another heart-stoppingly callous Bensonian infanticide involved ...
³ The English is one syllable long and rhymes with grit.  Don't blame me if I've got this Greek word wrong: Greek isn't my thang ... obviously. 

THE CRITICS

 

"Juggernaut" in this book is performed by the man, who marries the very attractive heroine, and then allows his literary work so completely to absorb him that her married life becomes a complete failure. Even his wife's health is sacrificed by Arnold Leveson to his book; it is hard to believe that a sane human being could possibly be so absolutely egotistical. The book is written with Mr. Benson's usual powers of observation and analysis, but the nature of the theme is a constant source of irritation. It is impossible to avoid a wish that the scholarly Arnold should meet with some sudden disaster, as that would be the only possible way in which his unfortunate wife, Margery, could be restored to happiness. He declines to allow anyone to come to the house, for fear of disturbing his hours of work, and poor Margery is obliged even to drop her piano playing, in which she might have found an absorbing hobby. The minor characters are well drawn, and the portrait of Margerv's aunt, Mrs. Morrison, is so carefully studied that she is quite entitled to a place as one of the four principals of the book. But here, again, is a study of a purely self-centred egotistical person, and two characters of this sort in one book overweight it with non-conductors of sympathy.

~The Spectator, 04/11/1911

The central issue in Margery, by E. F. Benson, is whether a young woman, replete with the joy of living, can find happiness in marriage with a man who has never in his life known a passion warmer than his delight in Grecian urns and Tanagra figurines. Margery is the child of an ill-assorted marriage; and when, as a forlorn little orphan, she first comes to live with her father's relatives, her aunt Aggie takes good care not to let her forget that her mother was a mere vaudeville dancer. Margery is not malicious or vengeful, but just a sweet, wholesome, not over brilliant girl, whose innate goodness men unconsciously recognise. That was the explanation of the failure of all her Aunt Aggie's too obvious manoeuvres to keep Margery in the background, and marry off her own daughter, Olive. Almost simultaneously Margery has the task of refusing an offer from Cousin Walter, Aunt Aggie's only son, and from Arnold Leveson, whom Aunt Aggie already felt sure of as a son-in-law. Arnold Leveson had all his life been a student and a recluse. He had already written one epoch-making volume on the Alexandrine Age, and was now engaged on a companion work, the Age of Pericles. The wonder was that, in his absorption in antiquities, he ever raised his eyes high enough from books to rest them on Margery's face. But such happened to be the case, and presently they were married. And then, for a while, the experiment succeeded. But after the honeymoon and a brief season of London gaiety, Arnold felt a return of the old fever of study, the old impelling need of creative work. From that moment, Margery's loneliness began; and the rivalry was harder than that of another woman, because against a woman she could have offset her own charms, but she was powerless against ancient tomes and crumbling marble. Mr. Benson did not lack a big issue, but of his own accord he dodged it. What Margery and Arnold would in the end have made of their lives, he refused to tell us, because one fine day in Athens, antiquarian zeal led the man a step too high upon a tottering ruin, and when he and the ruin fell together, he was undermost. It is vexatious when a novelist has all the elements that go to make up a human problem of vital interest, and then deliberately shirks his task.

~Frederic Taber Cooper in The Bookman (US), 11/1911

Aegosthena

Non-fiction ~ research article
Published in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, November 1895
Available to buy online here

ABSTRACT:

Aegosthena, now more generally known as Porto Germano, lies on one of the easternmost bays of the Corinthian gulf, and on the northern frontier of the Megarid. Its remoteness from ordinary routes—for between it and Velia, itself an ultima Thule, rise 2,000 feet of pine-clad mountains—accounts for the fact that it is to this day practically unknown, and also perhaps for the very scanty mention of it in ancient literature. There was a shrine of Melampus there, the Spartans passed it in their retreat from Leuctra, and that is all. But the same remoteness has preserved for us a Greek fortified town in better condition and greater completeness than any other, not even excepting Messene.
The town was divided into two parts, the Acropolis defended on all sides by a line of walls and towers, and the lower town fortified on the north, from the Acropolis down to the sea, by a similar line, still remaining in good condition. We are, I think, both by the exigencies of its position and also by certain scanty remains bound to assume the existence of a corresponding south wall, of which mention will be made later. The style of building both in the Acropolis and the long wall is the same.

It sounds a hoot.

THE CRITICS
Josiah Ober, in Fortress Attica: Defense of the Athenian Land Frontier, 404-322 B.C. (1985) (which also sounds an absolute hoot), calls it 'still the basic work'.
 

Ten Days in the Peloponnese

Non-fiction ~ article
Published in Pall Mall magazine, February 1894 

In the 1890s EFB was busy organizing and/or giving aid to Greek refugees from the ... something-or-other ~ details to follow, if I ever get round to it.  I've no idea if this article is about that, about archaeological stuff, or just an account of one of his Greek jollies.

The Thersilion at Megalopolis

This is it, apparently

Non-fiction ~ scholarly article
Published in The Journal of Hellenic Studies, November 1893
Available to buy here, if you're desperate for something to read or your sleeping tablets aren't working any more

ABSTRACT

The Thersilion, or assembly hall, built in close connexion with the theatre at Megalopolis, has now been completely cleared. Several plans of the building, including a conjectural restoration, have already appeared in the special Supplement to the Journal of Hellenic Studies, published this year. The latter was based on the small tentative diggings already made. The plan (Pl. XXI.) in this number shows the whole area, and includes many additions and corrections from the earlier plan.
The chief point of interest has been the arrangement of the columns behind the centre. It was evident at once, as soon as the clearing began, that the plan did not in all respects bear out Mr. Schultz's conjectural restoration (Supplementary paper, J.H.S., p. 19). This was due partly to the fact that in the previous small diggings on the site two columns in the outer row next the south wall had been missed, partly because it was found on remeasurement that the centre was incorrectly marked.

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