Rex

Fiction ~ novel
Published March/April 1925
Approx. 109,000 words
(First read 12/04/2014) 

[21/04/14] It's now well over a week since I finished Rex and I'm still trying to think of something good to say about it ... 
[24/04/14] This isn't what you'd call a 'good' thing: it's just something that came to me while I was lying there racked with insomnia (etc.) at 3.30 this morning.  When EFB had finished writing Colin (1923) and Colin II (1925) he found he had about 100,000 words left over: these he published under the title Rex.
Okay, serious now.  The plot: Rex is a young chap (24 in this case) who wants to be a playwright.  When he's not living in London and working as a solicitor's clerk, or something like that, he lives with his parents in Norfolk, or somewhere like that, somewhere with a beach nearby.  He and the said father, who's Benson Father Type A (much older than his

wife; cold; forbidding; cantankerous, etc.) don't get on at all; in fact they live in a state of

constant hostility.  During one of his spells in London, Rex meets a woman, a divorcée of 32 years, a certain Mrs Winton; he doesn't reckon much to her at first, but is happy enough to live rent-free in her flat while she goes off on holiday for a couple of months.  The pater finds out about this; incensed that his son should be living off a woman, he confronts Rex; there's a Big Scene, after which he just has enough time to cut the troublesome son off without a penny, get the train home, have tea with his wife, during which he tells her the news, then drop dead on the drawing-room carpet.
This comes more or less exactly half way through the book ...
... and is the point at which it turns into just another Bensonian 'drama', with not the least shred of humour, about a not-especially-interesting young man pursuing a not-at-all-interesting career.

Rex has a best friend named Oliver who is ~ I'm not going to beat about the bush here ~ a poorly repressed homosexual who's in love with our hero.  His declarations to Rex, coming from a supposedly straight man, are toe-curlingly embarrassing.  Rex, having no great liking for anything other than his 'work', finds Oliver a nuisance at best, and they have a falling-out, then eventually a reconciliation of sorts.  So that's one thing that happens.
The other ~ the Big One ~ is that Rex, despite having no soul to speak of, gradually realizes he's 'in love' with his divorcée, and convinces himself that it's reciprocal.  In a scene which I can only describe as 'risible', he declares himself, and goes into a clinch with said woman; after which, she turns round¹ and says to him, "If you think I'm in the least bit in love with you, you're a total div ~ I was just messing with your head."²  Rex is devastated and has a kind of nervous breakdowny affair.  He says to Oliver, of Mrs Winton:

She's a spiritual Sadist, of great intellectual and physical refinement, but with a passion for the torture and heart's blood of nice young men like you and me.

No, like you, Rexie.
Does any good come of all this?  Well, yes and no.  Mainly the latter.  Our hero, who's been plugging away at plays all this time only to have them all rejected, suddenly realizes that he needs to pander to the public's love of cruelty and cynicism, so he dips his pen in bile and pens a piece about a cruel and heartless woman etc.  And it's a hit!  (The funny thing is that from what EFB tells us of Rex's work before and after his Road to Damascus experience, it's all exactly the same!)

Is that the end?  No, the end is that Mrs W conveniently develops some mysterious illness or other; Rex visits her on her deathbed; and he forgives her.
Rex is, not to put too fine a point to it, a hopeless farrago of idiotic plotting, unbelievable characters you couldn't care less about, dead ends, red herrings, extremely feeble attempts at humour, missed opportunities, turgid dialogue, creaking moralities (difficult to believe EFB and, for example, D H Lawrence even inhabited the same planet, let alone the same country and time) ~ in short, it's a mess. 


¹ Oops, this sounds rather like he was kissing the back of her head.  He wasn't.
² This isn't a direct quote, obviously. 




THE CRITICS

There are some writers whom it is somewhat difficult to place. Mr E F Benson is one of them. He can be ethereal one minute and mundane the next. You never quite know ~ when you hear that he has a new book on the stocks ~ whether he is going to describe the stars or discuss the slums ~ as witness his several David books and Dodo the Second. But whether it relates to the heavens above or the earth beneath, a new book by him is a great literary event. In Rex […] we are moved by high moral considerations at one moment and are brought down to such everyday problems as the evacuation of the Ruhr the next. The title of the book is the Christian name of its chief character.

Rex Goodwin and his doings and his sayings provoke thought and reflection. No ordinary man is this, and the study of his character as portrayed by Mr Benson not only provides delightful reading, but stern teaching. My advice to those who like to think while they read is ~ read Rex. It is a really great novel.

~'The Bookworm' in The Western Morning News and Mercury, 06/04/1925

It is a hard thing to say about the author of the once daring Dodo (by the way, isn't Dodo's granddaughter almost ripe by now for analysis?), but Mr. Benson is an incorruptible Victorian. One has a rather Rip Van Winklish feeling about the people of his latest novel—that they went to sleep sometime in that relative age of innocence, the naughty 'nineties, and on awaking in the age of flapper went on behaving themselves as though nothing had happened. Rex Goodwin is not really of this day and generation, but of Mr. Benson's own, and it was about the time of the Boer War that he should have come down from Cambridge with an Ibsen in his pocket and in his heart the determination to go and do likewise. Even the successful play that he finally writes with a cynical snarl, prostituting his art because a lady has been unkind, is the sort of play that was ridiculed by the young intellectuals of the beginning of the century.

If Rex is a Victorian, or at latest an Edwardian, heredity may account for it, for more Victorian figures than his parents could hardly be imagined—an irascible, unreasonable father, a sweet, docile mother, palpitating with love and sacrifice for both the superior, and mutually irreconcilable, males of her family. There may still be fathers like Rex's, but one prefers not to believe it.

After all, however, Mr. Benson has a perfect right, if he pleases, to postulate Victorian survivals in a post-war world; and in this case it happens that the play is not the thing (Rex could have been an insurance broker just as well as a dramatist), but the character of the playwright. In Rex Goodwin the author has drawn a character probably more unusual in fiction than in life— hard, glittering, intellectual, able to stimulate love, but seemingly incapable of feeling it. As foils and victims are his mother and a man friend of school and Cambridge days. The interplay of the three characters, with the preposterous father appearing and disappearing as a diabolus ex machina, is dexterously handled and interesting to watch. The experienced reader would no doubt guess the dénouement even had the publisher's blurb not obligingly given it away. Love cavalierly treated will have its revenge, and in Rex's case the vampire lady chosen as the instrument of vengeance makes a remarkably good job of it The conclusion is just the sort of thing that Rex and his sophisticated young intellectuals (of the 'nineties) would have become ribald over, and if the novel were ever filmed there would undoubtedly be a title about the 'cleansing fires of love'; but there it is,— and Mr. Benson has again given us an entertaining novel in his second best style.

~The Saturday Review, 20/02/1926

Mr Benson's novels are always so fresh, full of the sage of life, and Rex is one of those stories, that, once begun must be finished. It savours of undergraduate repartee being so rich in finesse. It concerns parental responsibility and filial devotion. Parents would learn from it much wisdom, and sons and daughters much understanding of their duty and age. It clearly shows that the demands made by age from youth should not be demanded so much as a right but received as the bouquets from human understanding and direction. Rex is a highly-strung boy who whilst ready to be friends is quite as keen to be at variance with his father. He wants a reason for every action demanded of him. He is a sort of Cassabianca standing always on the burning deck, and even when friendly is always on guard for an undiplomatic word which will give him his chance. Mr Benson has [gauged] the psychology of youth in aspersed fashion. The criticisms are healthy, affording a much desired mental tone. Rex has his problems to face and faces them, even maintaining his sang froid against all the conventions. He accepts the flat of a woman friend who bears all expenses, yet sees nothing wrong, until his mother sees his predicament. Rex is selfish, always taking, and at times he thinks it is too much trouble even to receive.

~The Daily Mail [Hull], 20/03/1925. A curiously incoherent bit of writing. When he says 'Cassabianca' does he mean 'Cassandra'?  Also: I get the distinct impression the reviewer only read about one third of the book.  EDIT, after doing a bit of that research thing: No, the reviewer meant Casabianca ~ he just didn't know how to spell it.

 

The Dance

Rupert Grint (not relevant)

Fiction ~ short story
First published in the collection More Spook Stories, April 1934
5,290 words
(First read 26/11/2012) 

The Dance shows EFB at his most gleefully sadistic and (I have to add) morally censorious.  The 'hero' of the piece is Philip Hope; his description is worth quoting in full:

In person he was notably small and slight, narrow-chested, with spindle arms and legs.  He leaned on a stick as he walked, for one of his knees was permanently stiff, but he was quick and nimble in spite of his limping gait.  His clothes were fantastic; he wore a bright mustard-coloured suit, a green silk tie, a pink silk shirt, with a low collar, above which rose a rather long neck supporting his very small sharp-chinned face, quite hairless and looking as if no razor had ever plied across it.  His eyes were steel grey, and had no lashes on either lid: whether they looked up or down, they gave the impression of a mocking and amused vigilance.  They saw much and derived much entertainment.  He was hatless, and the thick crop of auburn hair that covered his head could deceive nobody, nor indeed did he intend that it should.

(The only elements missing from this rundown are his goatlike laugh and prominent ears.)  And he is, dear reader, a sadist ~ there's no other word for it.  At his clifftop house near Cromer (Norfolk) his wife [Benson Heroine Type A] who's less than half his age and who married him out of pity, and his secretary [Benson Hero Type A] have just fallen in love and for a week or so Philip delights in tormenting them at every available opportunity.  Then one day he and

Cromer lighthouse (has small part)

the sec, Julian, go for a walk along the cliff and, just after Phil's told him to sling his hook, the inevitable ~ okay, the predictable ~ happens and over he goes.  A year passes; Julian and the young widow are now married; they come to stay at the Norfolk house ...  You can pretty much guess the rest.
Now admittedly Philip is the great star of the show, and when he dies the story does sag a little ~ but his return is well worth the wait.  Of course The Dance is utterly daft, and EFB's habit of punishing all those who commit adultery or even think about it*, regardless of how loathsome the intended cuckold, rather sticks in the craw these days ~ but it's fun, it's not too long, and the bit just before the climax is actually rather good.  It's available online here. 

The Dance is a condensed version of EFB's own novel Paul (1906).

* See also Christopher Comes Back (1929).

 

The Tale of an Empty House

Fiction ~ short story [AKA: A Tale of an Empty House]
Published in Hutchinson's Magazine, June 1925
Collected in Spook Stories (1928)
5,170 words
(First read 23/08/2012) 

Hohum.
On his way to a golfing holiday with his pal Hugh Grainger, here bearing the very thin Bensonian disguise 'Jack Granger', our Unnamed Narrator stumbles across what sounds to me like an utterly ghastly place on the Norfolk coast.  He thinks it's wonderful, though, so invites Hugh-I-mean-Jack to come and join him there.  On a desolate spit of land stands an empty house, where our duo of chums are forced to shelter from a storm, and wherein Jack has an extremely close encounter with an invisible ghost-with-a-limp.  Apart from the climax, which is over in 18 lines, the whole thing is pretty yawny and, as happens all too often, the final sewing-up left me simply reeling with boredom.
It's available online here. 


THE CRITICS

A Tale of an Empty House concerns the unsuitable ambitions of the despicable 'day-labourer' Alfred Maldon, whose fate is to inherit the story’s abandoned and unwanted property as a clause of his damnation.

~James Mooney at “Tychy”, 25/07/2011. Quoted from here.

 

The Corner House

Fiction ~ short story
First published in Woman, May 1926
Collected in Spook Stories (1928)
5,310 words
(First read 28/06/2012) 

Two middle-aged gents, frequent visitors to a remote Norfolk coastal village, are intrigued by the goings-on ~ or rather the seemingly complete lack of life ~ at a particular house on the corner of the square.  By a process of listening to the innkeeper's tittle-tattle and seeing stuff with their own eyes (including a very modest wee ghostie), the mystery and fate of its inhabitants is revealed.
I'd say this is very definitely one of EFB's better spook offerings: he doesn't begin the story by telling you what's going to happen at the end, then proceed to drop so many heavy clues for those who didn't get it at the beginning that it's not worth reading to the end; the ghostly nonsense is kept to a bare minimum: it's really more a who-dun-what than a ghost story.  You can read it online here.

The Dust-cloud

My grandfather and his sisters, circa 1906

Fiction ~ short story
First published in Pall Mall magazine, January 1906
Collected in The Room in the Tower and Other Stories (1912)
5,350 words
(First read 27/06/2012) 

Now it has to be said that the spook element of this story is a bit negligible ~ it's there but it's not important, and it's not very good anyway.
No, what we have here is a hymn in praise of motoring.  It takes place "in the early days of motors, when there was still the sense of romance and adventure round them" ~ reminder: this was written in 1906!  In those days cars still had what EFB calls a 'syren' as well as a separate 'hooter', could expect to have four or five punctures on journeys of over 50 miles, and broke down with monotonous regularity. 

The same g.dad, all grown up and with a car of his own, ca. 1925

Still, to give him his due, Fred does make the trip described, from Dunwich¹ in Suffolk to Kings Lynn in Norfolk² sound great fun, though obviously having a chauffeur helps.  To do this he employs two very extended metaphors: in the first the car is a horse, in the second (after switching steeds in the blink of an eye) it's a foot-soldier.
There's a certain amount of tedious and garbled 'ghost theory', and a sizeable dollop of what can only be called 'padding', but ignore all that and just enjoy the motor ride.
It's available online here.


¹ See also The Face (1924). 
² Or is it Lincolnshire?  [Looks it up.]  No, I was right: it's Norfolk.  Hunstanton (Norfolk) also gets a few mentions in this story.

To Account Rendered

Fiction ~ short story
First published in The Storyteller, June 1925
Collected in Desirable Residences and Other Stories (1991)
Approx. 4,300 words
(First read 08/05/1992) 

There are three ways the reader might approach this story.  (1) Those who've already read EFB's novel Rex (1925¹) will think, "This is the plot of Rex, pretty much ~ why bother repeating it?"  (2) Those who haven't read Rex can just read the story and save themselves the misery of reading that novel ... or (3) they can read the story then go on to delight in the

full expanded novel version.
In brief, then, Hugh Ranworth is a young London playwright who's spent the past decade or so trying to come up with something produceable.  He started out full of the joys (?) of creative expression but ended up writing whatever mindless pap he thought the market would want.  At the age of 32 he suddenly cracks it and is an overnight sensation, having jettisoned all his youthful ideals.  Problem No. 1: He'd always promised his old mum, safely tucked away on the Norfolk coast, that when he made it big she was to come and live with him in the Big Smoke.  Problem No. 2: All that youthful disappointment has turned him into an empty husk of a chap, devoid of affection or any other worthwhile emotion ~ all he is is a writing-machine ...
The End².
Available in Desirable Residences and Other Stories.


¹ The novel appeared in late March or early April.  Just why Benson thought the public might want to read the same story all over again a mere three months later is beyond reckoning.
² Obviously there's more to Rex than this ... but that's basically it in a nutshell.

Incidentally, à propos de rien, EFB does a bit of self-referencing in this one: the only play of Hugh's mentioned by name is titled The Bread of Deceit, which was also the title of a 1903 story by Fred.  

I intend, though it will probably never happen, to devote a whole section of this blog to EFB's rather dismal 'career' as a playwright.