The Judgment Books

Fiction ~ novella
First serialized in The Graphic November 1894
Published in full 1895
24,405 words

A very posh portrait-painter paints a self-portrait, neurotically.
When you boil all the rotting flesh off this bloated carcass of a story, that's all you're left with.
Even if Benson had told it at his customary short-story length (5-6,000 words), it would still have been vastly overlong.
The author doesn't blush to mention that he's been inspired by (voir plagiarized) Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886); what he singularly does fail to mention is that the yarn owes as much to Wilde's Dorian Gray (1890/91).  At the exact time The Judgment Books was being published in full, Wilde was engaged in his idiotic trials.  So that might have had something to do with the omission.


A truly mind-blowingly atrocious piece of writing.

QUOTABLES
There's one very brief interlude in all the tedium.  Our toff hero and his toff wife have invited the vicar and his wife to dinner ~ for no reason other than to have a break in the tedium, it seems.  The vicar's wife, Mrs Greenock, is ceaselessly inquisitive:

[Asking questions of everyone], she was persuaded, was the best way of improving an

 already superior intellect, as hers admittedly was.  There is a great deal to be said for

 her view—there always was a great deal to be said for her views, and she usually said

 most of it herself.

Now that you've read the one good line in this yarn, please forget about it.  Under no circumstances should you attempt to read it.

THE CRITICS

An odd, suggestive story … The tale is well told, the conceit a striking one.

~Hartford Courant, quoted in front endpapers of The Vintage

Mr. Benson is at his best thus far, in this new book rather than in Dodo, and that best is excellent.

~Boston Advertiser, quoted in front endpapers of The Vintage

The new work of the author of Dodo is much less ambitious and somewhat better written than that amusing story. It is hardly long enough to be called a novel, and treats of a single episode in the life of a portrait-painter. This gentleman, who is not very strong in the mind, reads Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde whilst he is casting about for a new piece of work, and it fires his imagination to “put his Jekyll and Hyde on the canvas for men to wonder at and be silent before.” He would paint himself, he decided, “as the husband and lover of Margery, the Jekyll of himself who had known and knew the best capabilities for loving in his nature; and he would paint his Hyde, the man who had lived as other men live in Paris, a Bohemian, careless, worthless, finding this thing and that honey in the mouth, but to the soul wormwood and bitterness.” Unfortunately Margery, who was not only his wife, but his backbone, went away on a visit, and the consequence was that Hyde got the upper hand on the canvas. One is then led to expect a sort of Dorian Gray transformation, but nothing comes of it. The wife returns home, the picture is destroyed, and everything goes on as before. There is a good deal of moralising about the immortality of all our deeds, and how they are inscribed in the 'judgment books', but it is not particularly new. One is left with a distinct feeling that in this little work Mr Benson, to use an expressive American phrase, “has bitten off more than he can chew.”

~The Glasgow Herald, 18/07/1895

The Judgment Books, by E. F. Benson, tells the story of an artist who painted himself as he was, influenced by the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It is rather horrible, but the conception is well carried out. Frank Trevor had “lived the life of a man,” in Paris too, and his wife accepted him, declining to hear his story. She was consistent, however, and when he had painted a terrible picture of himself as he was (or, rather, of the 'Mr Hyde' part of him), she saved him by her love from madness, and accepted him as he was, good and bad. A book like this cannot be read without one gaining an impression not merely of its cleverness; the brief, concentrated story is one that haunts the imagination and awakens thoughts which the best of men would willingly let die out of his memory.

~The Leeds Mercury, 31/07/1895

A curious, imaginative, introspective study of character. An artist of singularly sensitive temperament paints a portrait of himself, and knowing of certain dark passages in his life is driven to express them in his picture. The result is a 'horror' that terrifies his wife and well-nigh deprives him of reason. How he is saved by her courage and devotion must be learnt from the book itself, which is well worth reading from more than one point of view.

~The Liverpool Mercury, 28/08/1895

The Judgement Books [sic] is Fred's attempt to emulate Dorian Gray, and was published in the year of Wilde's disgrace (1895 also saw The Importance of Being Earnest). The hero, Frank, is an artist who believes that each time he paints he loses part of himself which is, as it were, kidnapped and absorbed by the picture in hand. He is now embarked upon a self-portrait, but is frightened by the prospect that he may paint himself as he really is ~ dissolute and depraved ~ and not as the good and decent man his loving wife Margery sees. For Frank, before he married, had been rather a cad and risks raising the ghost of that past life. Indeed, as the picture progresses, it grows more vicious and reveals a loathsome personality, which Margery flees from in fear. Eventually, Frank persuades Margery to help him, to rescue him from himself, and the painting is dramatically ripped to pieces.

Not only is the theme Wildean, but there is a Wildean principle at stake which Fred seems to question. The preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray makes the famous claim, “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.” Benson has Frank make an analogous point about art:

You call one thing pretty, another ugly. Believe me, art knows no such terms. A

thing is true, or it is false; and the cruelty of it is, that if we have as much as grain

of falsehood in our measure of truth, the thing is worthless. Therefore, in the

picture I am now painting, I have tried to be absolutely truthful; as you said at

dinner, I have tried to paint what I am, without extenuation or concealment. Would

you like to see it? You would probably call it a hideous caricature, because in this

terrible, cruel human life, no man knows what is good in him, but only what is bad.

It is those who love us only, who know if there is any good in us.

In other words, a portrait may be well-painted (honest) or ill-painted (deceitfully), but it cannot be accused of evil. It can only depict what is, and not be blamed for failing to depict what ought to be. With the denouement of the story, however, it is clear that Benson is challenging this view. He does not believe the artist has a responsibility towards his audience as well as towards his art, that there is evil in the world and the artist must neither glamorise nor excuse it. Fred's moral view is simple, and it occurs again and again in his work. It is this: evil can be banished by good, and salvation is always possible, but the struggle, the conflict, are unceasing. In The Judgement Books it is Margery who saves Frank. […] Since many of Fred's books are made of incidents in his life, stitched together in varying ways, or reflect moments in his intellectual and moral development, we are bound to ask, who was it who saved Fred from himself.

The Judgement Books was a dismal flop …

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

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