The Murder of Alan Grebell

Non-fiction ~ essay
First published in The Spectator, 18th November 1932¹
1,250 words
(First read 24/06/2014)

In his capacity as Mayor of Tilling Rye and spinner of unlikely yarns, EFB recounts the grim story of the town's most notorious, blunderous, and ever-so-faintly-humorous, murder: that of local big cheese Alan Grebell by the butcher John Breeds, in 1742.  Breeds, in the manner so typical of 18th-century killers, was knocked off his trolley by something-and-nothing: the mayor had fined him for selling meat at short weight.  That mayor ~ the intended victim ~ was none other than James Lamb, owner of the famous Lamb House in which Benson (amongst others²) lived.  The tale is constructed of plot contrivances such as impenetrable fog, and improbabilities such as the victim dying without even realizing he's been murdered, but, unlike the overwhelming majority of the author's own similarly themed stories, it rings absolutely true ~ well, it is true.  Still, Fred tells it with great relish.
You can read it online here.




¹ The article was collected in Sea Mist: Collected Spook Stories Volume 5 (2005).
² Elizabeth Mapp, Henry James, Emmeline Lucas, no doubt a whole herd of other terrifying old women.

Roderick's Story

Fiction ~ short story
First published in Hutchinson's Magazine, May 1923
Collected in Visible and Invisible, October 1923
5,690 words
(First read 04/08/2012) 

Lamb House, Rye, in EFB's day

I have only one good thing to say about Roderick's Story but I'll say all the others first.  In it EFB displays all his worst habits as a writer: the 'plot' is absurd, risible, ludicrous; the 'characters' are nothing more than pawns to be shunted this way and that, stricken with mysterious but oh so convenient diseases, and/or prematurely culled; the dénouement is signposted well in advance; the 'emotions', including a sizeable dollop of Victorian sentiment, are stereotyped, phoned in from Sentiments'Я'us; the whole is a clumsy, garbled mess.
I'll not trouble you with the storyline (you'd think I was making it up anyway) but here are one or two of Roderick's most salient features: (i) a minute description of Lamb House (not named thus or at all) in Rye (named Tilling) which belongs to Unknown and Featureless Narrator ~ more of him soon; (ii) a case of such extreme stiff-upper-lip that it's actually tipped over into insanity; (iii) a typical Bensonian love-hate triangle: a woman suffers nobly while her horrid husband lives and ~ for reasons known only to EFB ~ continues to suffer after his death; (iv) two handsome lads (18, 19) dying in the European War; (v) a certain amount of uncertain thinking re spiritism; (vi) some golf ~ as if we weren't already miserable enough!; and (vii) I repeat: a plot so preposterous that I can't think of adequate terms to describe it.

Anyway, the one good thing I mentioned earlier is this: Our Unknown Narrator has asked his pal Roderick to read and comment on some of his (U.N.'s) ghost stories for a forthcoming volume.  Quote Roddy:

"[...] you will make a book that not only is inartistic, all shadows and no light, but a false book.  [...] You play godfather to your stories, you see: you tell them in the first person, [...] and that, though it need not be supposed that those experiences were actually yours, yet gives a sort of guarantee that you believe the borderland of which you write to be entirely terrible." [etc.]

Now that I come to look at it again, Roderick's thought is about as clear as U.N.'s ~ or E F Benson's ~ thinking on spiritism and revenants, so even the thing I thought was good isn't.
Enough!
It's available online here.