The Climber

Fiction ~ novel
Published 1908
Approx. 138,000 words
Available online here

THE CRITICS

From certain points of view the heroine of Mr. Benson's new novel, The Climber, may be likened to the immortal figure of Becky Sharp. Like Becky, Lucia is absolutely unscrupulous, cold-hearted, and selfish. Like Becky, she is brilliantly successful in the early part of her career, and, again like Becky, she comes to absolute grief in the end. She has not, however, Becky's financial excuses for her downfall, her brilliant marriage and subsequent magnificent establishment being extremely unlike Becky's elopement and the house in Curzon Street owned by Mr. and Mrs. Rawdon Crawley. The whole of Mr. Benson's story is occupied with the figure of the heroine; and if it is necessary to portray in great detail so unattractive a figure, it must be acknowledged that Mr. Benson's study

is eminently successful. But this is where we find the great difference between clever modern novels and that great classic to whose heroine we have compared Lucia. In Vanity Fair Becky Sharp, though marvellously drawn, is only one figure in a gallery of masterly portraits. In a modern story, if the author takes the trouble to give one character drawn in careful detail, he builds up the whole structure round this figure and makes the rest of the book entirely subsidiary to it. Therefore, while Vanity Fair is read with ever-renewed pleasure, books like The Climber are merely painful and morbid studies of social disease. Mr. Benson has his good heroine ~ her name is Maud ~ but she is only drawn in outline, the one attractive figure in the story being Lucia's aunt Cathie. The Climber is not an immoral book in the sense of vice being triumphant, but, inasmuch as the overthrow of the heroine is due to the imprudence of being found out, it can hardly be said to what our forefathers would have called “improving reading.”

~The Spectator, 21/11/1908

Mr. Benson evidently believes there is still a serious novel-reading public. He has written a solid book which refuses to be skimmed, and which might even bear a second reading. Yet it exploits no virgin field, has no dubious scene, no purple patches, and no apparent purpose other than the dramatic representation of character. The social group to which most of the persons belong is a cultivated section of the English upper class, or—more democratically speaking—of the 'smart set.'

The Climber, Lucia Crimson, is a near spiritual relative of Mr. Pinero's Iris and Mrs. Wharton's Lily Bart. Living in quiet boredom with her two tea-drinking, patience-playing maiden aunts—capitally drawn and differentiated—she nourishes a dream of luxurious self-realization. She finds her opportunity in the priggishly æsthetic, very correct young Lord Brayton, who is not only affected by her personal charms, but is also persuaded that she can make his home the centre of a 'New Set' devoted to a very refined type of culture. This æsthetic lord seeks the beautiful in life and art with curious self-conscious and humorless gravity. Lucia, clear-headed and hard-hearted, conducts a Napoleonic social campaign, winning every battle, fulfilling every self-indulgent desire, till at last real passion touches her. Then, relentlessly, as she took Lord Brayton from her best friend, she takes away her best friend's husband. High tragedy cannot befall the two diversely fervid egotists of the drama; but such disaster as their souls are capable of comes swiftly upon them.

No other novel of Mr. Benson's shows such sobriety and maturity of workmanship. The story moves firmly, harmoniously, if somewhat slowly, forward under the conduct of a critical intelligence. The earlier chapters, indeed, make one a little impatient. The author is in no haste to get into action. He describes his field with excessive particularity as if assured of an attentive hearing. He has the bad habit of explaining the precise significance of every important speech, and he gives the reader a sharp nudge when the speech is clever. He has worked with such laborious conscientiousness that he cannot bear to let any good stroke pass unnoticed. Yet his characters are complexly alive, they develop, and they meet in sharp dramatic conflict. One may detest them all; but they survive the closing of the book.

~The Nation, 25/02/1909

Formerly the social climber was the parvenu, the vulgar person, recently enriched, who sought by means of her wealth to associate with people of position. That is the class of person held up to ridicule in such books as The Yellow-plush Papers, Ten Thousand a Year, and The Potiphar Papers. Nowadays the social straggler must enter the fray with a far more complete outfit than that of mere money, or she stands no chance of success. Intelligence, a certain amount of culture, real or imitation, never-ending perseverance and a goodly proportion of that cleverness that is quick to perceive and profit by the weaknesses of others—these are the weapons with which the climber of to-day seeks to capture the desired position.

In describing the career of Lucia Grimson Mr. Benson has given us one of his best stories and drawn some of his best characters. First of these is Lucia herself, beautiful, clever and condemned to that hopelessly dull existence which is the lot of the British alone among the nations of the earth, and from which matrimony seems to offer the only escape. Lord Brayton appears upon the scene, and to secure this eligible husband Lucia exerts every effort and ruse. Brayton is something of a prig, but a good fellow withal, desirous of doing his duty as a citizen, and sincere in his wish to have his influence, his house, and his name stand for something higher than mere fashion. His appreciation of culture is real, though perhaps a little conscious and laboured, and it is by playing skilfully upon this trait of character that Lucia wins him, and deliberately, although she knows that her best friend, Maud, is in love with him.

After a few years of married life she begins to find her husband rather tiresome and realises the difficulty of keeping up her pose of caring only for the higher things of life, but she has gained so much by her marriage that these are but trifles. Up to this time her heart, such as it is, has been entirely untouched when, suddenly, comes her emotional experience. Maud has married a cousin of Lord Brayton's and is very happy. Charlie is attracted by Lucia, as all men are; she begins by liking to exert her power over him, and before she knows it, the mischief is done and each is aware of the other's sentiments. No feeling of loyalty to the man who had given her so much, no touch of pity for the woman whom she is again robbing, assails Lucia. She encourages Charlie and draws him on, with the usual result of detection, exposure, and the Divorce Court. Maud sends her husband away for six months, at the end of which time he is to choose between his wife and Lucia. Should his choice be the latter, Maud will do what she can to make their marriage possible; should he decide in favour of his wife, she will take him back. Lucia goes back to the dull home in Brixton to await her sentence, which comes, six months later, in the form of a paragraph in the paper announcing that Mr. and Mrs. Charles Lindsay are in town for the remainder of the season. Her doom is sealed, and from thenceforward her life stretches on before her like a dusty road, dull and hopeless.

Lucia is plainly the descendant of Dodo, the author's earlier creation, though a little more modern, a little better educated, and far more of a manoeuverer. Her selfishness is a little more decently covered, but she is just as hard and worthless. The characters of the two old aunts are wonderfully well drawn: Aunt Cathie, with the severe appearance and demeanour and the tender heart, and Aunt Elizabeth, soft in manner, but really as hard as nails. Mr. Benson is a very prolific writer, but it is long since he has given us as good a story as The Climber.

~Mary K. Ford in The Bookman, 03/1909

Mr. Benson's book is a study in selfishness. One Lucia Grimson, poor, discontented, but ambitious, schemes deliberately to 'grab' the things in life that she considers worth while. Her wants are insatiable. To quote her own extravagant language, "I want the Pleiades to wear in my hair; I want to wear the moon as a pendant round my neck; I want Saturn and Jupiter to shine in my girdle; I want Venus." By ingenious deception, a titled husband, wealth, and social standing are secured, but these are not enough. Finally, the dangerous experiment of winning the affections of her friend's husband is tried, and this marks the beginning of the end.

The theme is not a pleasant one. The book contains few lovable or interesting characters with the exception, possibly, of the ridiculous but whole-souled Aunt Cathie with the queer dress and manners of a dim past. Even the goodness of the wronged wife is of the milk-and-water variety and calls forth little admiration.

The end of the story finds several lives wrecked and Lucia back in the small world with its round of monotonous duties from which she had struggled so frantically to escape. The outlook is hopeless for all, and it is with a sense of dreariness that the reader closes the book with the question in his mind if the society life of to-day is really as bad as it is painted.

~The Literary Digest, 06/03/1909

 

In his latest novel Mr. E. F. Benson shows himself in a graver and sterner mood than is habitual with him. The Climber is a merciless and very clever vivisection of an utterly unscrupulous and self-centred nature.

~The Outlook, quoted in endpapers to Juggernaut

In all the people whom he introduces he interests us, and his story is written with striking effect. It contains many passages one would like to quote, there are some fine descriptions in it, and those little Bensonian touches which reveal the author's wonderful power of observation are to be found on almost every page.

~The World, quoted in endpapers to Juggernaut

An unsparing analysis of an ambitious woman's soul ~ a woman who believed that in social 
supremacy she would find happiness, and who finds instead the utter despair of one who has 
chosen the things that pass away.

~?, quoted in endpapers of In the Morning Glow by Roy Rolfe Gilson

In The Climber by E F Benson, we are pleased to welcome the author in familiar mood. Lucia Grimson, who lives in comparative poverty with her two aunts, deliberately sets herself to capture the wealthy Lord Brayton, with whom she knows her friend Maud to be in love. Having climbed, her business [is] to keep waving the flag her husband hoists. But after two or three years with a man whom she does not love, and to whom she is opposed in all her tastes, she is quite ready to yield to the passion she feels for her husband's cousin, Charlie Lindsay, even though she is the husband of the friend she wronged so deeply before. She is divorced by Lord Brayton, Charlie Lindsay returns to his wife, and Lucia goes back to live with Aunt Cathie. This is the bare outline of a story that is full of good things. Vividly interesting characterisation which touches many sides of life, brilliant dialogue, and well pictured scenes all contribute to make this one of the most realistic and excellent of Mr Benson's novels. No one is more adept at unfolding a tale than this author, and, though there is no striking originality of plot in The Climber, the book holds attention from the first page to the last.

~The Manchester Courier, 06/11/1908

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.)