Six Common Things

Fiction / Non-fiction collection
Published November 1893
(First reading complete 26/10/2014)

Six Common Things was E F Benson's first* collection of ... well, stuff.  Some of the sixteen pieces are straight fiction, others straight non-fiction, others sort of unidentifiable as one or the other.  (For more of this irritating habit of EFB's see The Book of Months and A Reaping inter alia.)

The pieces are as follows ~ they're best read in order as things sometimes follow on from one another:

Once
Autumn and Love
Two Days After
Carrington
Jack and Poll
At King's Cross Station
The Sound of the Grinding
Blue Stripe
A Winter Morning
The Zoo
The Three Old Ladies
Like a Grammarian
Poor Miss Huntingford
The Defeat of Lady Grantham
The Tragedy of a Green Totem
The Death Warrant

The book itself is available online here. 

VERDICT
It's no wonder the critics and the public were baffled by Six Common Things and steered well clear of it: it's a mess. 



*Or second if you include the earlier Sketches from Marlborough (1888) which was published privately.

The Death Warrant

Fiction ~ short story/thing
Published in Six Common Things, November 1893
Approx. 1,300 words
(First read 26/10/2014)

In the final doodah of Six Common Things our Unnamed Narrator tells us he's been diagnosed with cancer and has six months to live.  He addresses the reader directly:

May I treat you all quite intimately?  May I say things to you that I would say only to those that I trusted and loved?

"Yeah, why not, whatever, knock yourself out," was my reply; "you don't mind if I carry on worming the cat while you're doing it, do you?"  Luckily the up-and-coming 26-year old wunderkind E. F. Benson is on hand to drive away any clouds of gloom that might consider showing themselves to attend on our moribund middle-aged friend:

[...] I do not fear, but I look forward to this change that will soon happen to me, with the intensest longing and wonder.  What will it be?  I wish I could come back and tell you.  [...] it is worth while, I think, to be brave.

Appalling.  For my final verdict on this irritating little book, go to Six Common Things.
It's available online here. 


THE CRITICS

The final story [of Six Common Things], The Death Warrant, is an extraordinary little account of how the narrator, discovering that he is going to die of cancer, faces death and the thought of what might come after, with resignation and courage. It might have been written by a very old man [rather than] a young one on the threshold of life.

~Geoffrey Palmer and Noel Lloyd in E. F. Benson As He Was, 1988

The Tragedy of a Green Totem

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.

The Defeat of Lady Grantham

Fiction ~ short story
Published in Six Common Things, November 1893
Approx. 1,800 words
(First read 23/10/2014)

After doing a teeny bit of sterling work on behalf of the humble downtrodden governess in the previous story Poor Miss Huntingford, EFB and his faceless narrator return to undo it all here.  It's a year later and Miss H has now married the eldest son of her former employer Mrs Naseby, making her a very wealthy woman, society queen, etc.  The story tells of the first encounter between this new Mrs Naseby and arch-snob Lady Grantham, while Miss Grantham (from Poor Miss Huntingford), here thoroughly de-clawed and

outclassed by her mother*, merely looks on.  How will the humble ex-Miss Huntingford deal with this harpie?  Well, the fact is that she's gone totally native:

She lounged up to the cedar where we were sitting, bowed to me as if she ought to remember me but just did not, with that sublime self-possession which I had always imagined a thing which some were born with, but to be as unattainable as the line of aristocratic ancestors with which it is usually coupled.

The long and the short is that the new Mrs Naseby has become as odious as everyone else in Society, and so is able to give as good as she gets in her no-holds-barred claws-unsheathed catfight with Lady G.
I do, however, think that the story is mistitled: the result is a draw.  You can judge for yourself: the story's available online here.

*Benson has seen fit to make Lady Grantham Spanish for no reason other than that jibes can be made about her not being English.
P.S. Almost forgot to mention that Dodo's dadastardly second husband (Prince Waldenech) makes a brief cameo appearance in the conversation here.

Poor Miss Huntingford

Fiction (probably) ~ short story (kind of)
Published in Six Common Things, November 1893
(First read 06/10/2014)

In this little sketchy-storyish thing EFB makes one of his exceedingly rare forays into that Other World of servants.  Still, he doesn't go too far beyond the green baize door ~ the eponymous 'heroine' is a governess ~ and he certainly doesn't commit the folly of trying to inhabit her head.  Instead he paints his portrait through the eyes of a young(?) gent staying at the house where Miss H has just started work.  And, if truth be told, his tale is as much about his and another guest's treatment of her than about the governess herself.  When Miss Huntingford accidentally breaks a wine glass at lunch, our Unnamed Narrator gallantly takes the flak for her by saying that he did it.  This is spotted by his vis-à-vis who just happens to be Society Cat No. 1¹, a certain Miss Grantham²:

She had a morbid craving for small scenes, which made other people rather uncomfortable.  [... She spoke] with an infernal sweetness of manner, unable to deny herself the pleasure of making a scene even at the expense of a governess.

So this proto-hag, whose type we'll meet countless more times in the Benson œuvre over the next four and a half decades, gets her petty, pointless rapier thrusts in at both Miss H and our gent, mainly the latter.  But have no fear, Unnamed Narrator gets his revenge ~ and the beauty of it is that he ~ literally ~ doesn't lift a finger to do so.
A tiny gem in the rough.  It's available online here.   

For the return of Miss Grantham (now de-clawed) go to The Defeat of Lady Grantham.

¹ I mean 'Society Cat No. 1 after Dodo'.  
² No relation, one hopes.

Like a Grammarian

Fiction ~ short story
Published in Six Common Things, November 1893
(First read 19/09/2014)

More death, I'm afraid.  In this little character sketch (kind of) our Unnamed Narrator meets, as a bookish boy, an elderly scholar who takes his fancy.  Said gent is engaged on the task of compiling an encyclopedia of Greek mythology, as Victorian gents were wont to do: there are very distinct shades of Mr Casaubon in Middlemarch here ~ he who spent a lifetime preparing to write a book on mythology.  Anyway, half a dozen or so years pass as in a dream and UN goes to stay with the scholar, now definitely in Last-Legs-Land ... and the inevitable comes to pass.  And lo! it turns out that he's spent so long on writing his book that it's become hopelessly out-of-date, old-fashioned, unpublishable.
So, more meditative musings on the futility of human endeavour, told in EFB's most wistful/melancholy style ~ if you like this kind of thing (as I do), you'll be in clover.  It can be found online here.

The Three Old Ladies

Non-fiction? ~ sketch
Published in Six Common Things, November 1893
(First read 06/08/2014)

A faintly voyeuristic EFB talks about three old sisters who live in his neighbourhood.  He's never met them and never exchanges a word of conversation with them: he merely observes their comings and goings in the street and local shops, is amused by their purple petticoats, etc.  One by one ~ for this is E. F. Benson, and E. F. Benson in Six Common Things mode to boot ~ the sisters die off until only the middle one is left, at which point

I longed to tell her that she was not so much alone as she thought; that I wanted to carry her basket for her, to sit and read to her in the evening [...].  But it was impossible; it would not do.  I could not have explained what I felt, and if I had, she would not have understood me.

Like so much of the material in this volume of stories and sketches, The Three Old Ladies is exquisitely melancholy ... and Benson (or 'the narrator', as you prefer) comes across as lonely and somewhat ineffectual.
It can be read online here. 

The Zoo

"Hullo everyone ~ I'm a quagga!"

Non-fiction ~ sketch
Published in Six Common Things, November 1893
(First read 04/08/2014)

Casting about for Something To Write About, EFB pays a visit to the zoo (undoubtedly London Zoo) and produces various sketches of the animal life.  As always, our favourite author excels himself when talking about animals ~ here he tackles parrots¹, seals, storks, bears, dingoes, snakes (for which creature he exhibits a peculiar venom² which can only be described as biblical), and, at some length, monkeys.  All good clean fun.  Unlike the majority of zoos, which any civilized person wouldn't even keep a quagga in. [joke]

You can read it online here.

¹ Again ~ see Jack and Poll.
² Pun unintentional.

A Winter Morning

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.

Blue Stripe

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.

The Sound of the Grinding

Non-fiction (?) ~ sketch
Published in Six Common Things, November 1893
(First read 16/07/2014)

An impressionistic portrait of London in the 1890s.
Benson flits from one disconnected subject to the next: the River Thames > London crowds > a drowned baby > an old chestnut-seller > the misery of child labour in a Christmas card factory > the profession of being 'disgusting' > Londoners' addiction to 'grinding' (hustle) > the therapeutic nature of paintings > the tragicomedy of London > a donkey-cart at Covent Garden > an act of charity, manqué.  The only common theme would appear to be something like "London, especially for the poor, is horrible and miserable."  The most incoherent bit of writing by EFB I've read to date.
See if you can make more sense of it yourself ~ it's available online here.

At King's Cross Station

Non-fiction (?) ~ sketch
Published in Six Common Things, November 1893
(First read 12/07/2014)

It is in the small unnoticed sorrows of average people that I realise most deeply the infinite pathos of human life.

A ~ presumably ~ observational study of a shabby, slovenly woman who can't afford a 3rd-class train ticket from King's Cross to Grantham.
Is this EFB's one-and-only full-length portrait of a poor woman? ~ it's certainly the only one I've read so far; if so, it's a real pity he didn't do more of them as it's very good.  Benson is more or less compassionate, and certainly never comes anywhere near sentimentalizing; and the revealing details are admirably done.
It's available online here.

Carrington

Fiction ~ short story
Published in Six Common Things (1893)
(First read 13/06/2014)

An old nurse waits for a visit from her favourite charge who's just returned from Australia, where he was sent for health reasons*.  Like its two predecessors in the volume, the tale is sad, poignant ~ but this time there are no homilies.  The nurse (nicknamed 'Carry') is very obviously based on EFB's own beloved Beth, who stayed with the Sidgwick/Benson families for virtually the whole of her life.
The story can be read online here ...

...  I feel I ought to warn sensitive folk that Carrington contains a reference to 'the N-people' which, if EFB wrote it today, would almost certainly get him lynched.



* Yes, I know: why Australia of all places? ~ was Cleethorpes closed or something? had the South of France not been discovered in 1893? ~ baffling.

Two Days After

Fiction (probably) ~ short story
Published in Six Common Things (1893)
(First read 13/06/2014)

This one follows on from Autumn and Love, telling the story of the little girl's funeral, of her father and aunt's behaviour in the face of their bereavement.  Like the first of the pair, the mood is poignant and melancholy.  The writing is restrained, but it ends with a homily.
It can be read online here.

Autumn and Love

Fiction? / Non-fiction?
Published in Six Common Things, 1893
(First read 06/06/2014)

EFB meditates on autumn, death, and love.  On a particular day not only does summer come to a sudden end but the young child of a faithful old servant dies and, as if this weren't already autumnal enough, the child's faithful old dog dies with her.  A bittersweet, melancholy little tale, which narrowly avoids being mawkish.  (How much of it is true is an entirely other matter.)  You can read it online here.

Once

stickleback (48 times lifesize)

Non-fiction? ~ memoir?
Published in Six Common Things, 1893
(First read 02/06/2014)

The narrator recounts various episodes from his childhood, mainly in connexion with the natural world, including the fun tale of him and his (unnamed) sister keeping ~ and inevitably losing ~ a pet stickleback.  This certainly looks and reads like straight memoir ("When I was eight years old my family moved to Truro" etc.) but ~ not that it really matters all that much ~ is rather too neat and polished not to have been at least partly fictionalized.  Still, it's diverting enough.  Read it online here.