A Creed of Manners

Fiction ~ short story
First published December 1894¹
Reprinted in Bensoniana No. 2 (Hermitage Books, 1993)
(First read 14/11/2014)

Oh dear ... oh deary dear ... oh very very dear indeed ~ A Creed of Manners is an unbelievably stupid story, the 27-year old E. F. Benson at his worst².
It consists largely of a fatuous, epigram-sodden³ dialogue between two male friends, Claude Ackersley and his stooge Jack Anstruther.  Claude is an early example of ... well, this:

[...] rich, good-looking, well-born, perfectly healthy, entirely unambitious, and twenty-five years old.

He also has 'an insatiable appetite for loafing' ~ nice.  As you'd expect from this type of Bensonian person⁴, he describes himself as a 'harmless, unnecessary young man' ~ too right; and his 'creed' is this:

My hope and aim are that under every circumstance, however trying, I may behave like a gentleman.  My fear is that circumstances may be too strong, and that I shall fail, and behave like a coward or a cad.

Luckily the Mad Axe-Murderer EFB is on hand to put him to the test: Claude swallows a piece of glass from a broken soda siphon ['Death by Whisky and Soda'] ... and, despite being in agonizing pain, dies the most excruciatingly gentlemanly and noble kind of death the 19th century had to offer.
As I said, a stupid stupid story ~ by 21st-century standards, obviously ... though I'm willing to bet it caused a certain amount of tittering even in 1894.  Anyway, it's available online here.  



¹ Not sure where this first saw the light of day, either in Phil May's Winter Annual (UK) or in Lippincott's Monthly Magazine (US).  Of course it's conceivable that it was published in both places simultaneously.
² Well, at his worst after Dodo, that is.

³ At one point, in reply to a particularly inane epigram, Jack actually says, "How very Oscaresque!"  A mere two months after this story was published, Wilde was engulfed in the scandal that ended his career.  EFB, who knew him personally if not especially well, continued with the epigrammatic style for the next 40 years, long after the rest of the world had pretty much abandoned it, and, to a degree (see As We Were), remained faithful to the memory of the Great Irish Windbag's supposed genius.
⁴ I admit this wasn't my first choice of word here.

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.

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.

An Act in a Backwater

Fiction ~ novel
Published 25th January 1905
Approx. 62,000 words
(First read 08/06/2014) 

The more I read of EFB, particularly but not exclusively the early novels, the clearer it becomes that he wasn't really cut out to be a novelist ~ his short stories (and non-fiction, essays, articles, reviews etc.) are much much better as writing.  His novels, sadly, have a marked tendency to be inchoate, uneven, lumpy, sometimes even incoherent ... well, no, not that exactly ~ it's as if his mind kept wandering and he forgot what he was doing.
Anyway, enough musing.
Having read some of the reviews below, I'd been looking forward to An Act: "Oh goody," I thought, "a very early example of a Benson smalltown comedy."  Well, for the first few chapters I wasn't disappointed: we're introduced to the inhabitants of the small cathedral town of

Wroxton, and a very promising bunch of characters they are.  Colonel Raymond, late of the India Service (or so he wants people to believe) is a fore-runner of Colonel Chase in Paying Guests, and to a lesser extent of Major Benjy in 'those novels': a blustering, buffoonish braggart; his wife is obviously completely squashed by him, while his three little children are merely terrified.  The Misses Clifford are 40-something spinsters with harmless eccentricities.  But pride of place goes to Mrs Collingwood: EFB pulls off quite a trick with this character ~ he patently doesn't care for this cold, puritanical and (perhaps) rather stupid woman, but he somehow contrives to make her fairly sympathetic, particularly when, after an uncharacteristically personal conversation with her artist son, she melts ~ just once.

Now the unfortunate thing happens: EFB takes his eye off this promising material and relegates it to the background.
Enter the supposed hero and heroine of the piece: Mrs Collingwood's son Jack, and the Honourable Jeannie Avesham¹.  The former in fact is pretty much of a cypher, a young chap with vaguely artistic leanings but who's obviously more passionate about bloody golf than anything else.  Most of the book revolves around Jeannie, who is Benson Cliché Number 3, naught but an agglomeration of tedious saintly virtues ... after a while of her one almost starts to wish a Dodo would appear ~ she doesn't.  Instead EFB regales us with the preposterous story of an orphaned baby, which Jack and Jeannie 'adopt' ('appropriate' would be nearer the mark), treat much like a pet dog, and never bother to give a name to.  Jeannie becomes literally addicted to do-goodery, and faces her greatest challenge when there's an epidemic of typhoid fever in the town², but she sails through it triumphant, falls in love with Jack, The End.

Well no, that's not quite the end.
One of those long-neglected Clifford sisters makes the mistake of moving in the background; she catches EFB's eye and is instantly stricken with cancer, which she promptly dies of just before our hero and saint tie the knot³.  Benson commits this monstrous act of character-murder purely so he can trot out the platitude "While life begins for some, it ends for others."  An Act in a Backwater has nothing more profound than that to say, just like the vast bulk of Benson books.
I'm absolutely convinced that he sat down to write a Mapp and Lucia-style comedy ~ why else go to such lengths to introduce all one's minor characters? ~ but soon either changed his mind or forgot what he was doing.  The result is neither fish nor fowl.
The whole novel is available online here ~ it's fairly short.


¹ For heaven's sake, EF, don't you know any other christian names?
² For heaven's sake, EF, don't you know any other diseases?
³ Benson pulled off exactly the same 'trick' in Mr Teddy, but at least in that novel the character is allowed to die on the page, at some length, and with humour and dignity.  Poor Miss Clifford is merely bumped off.  Nastily. 
 

THE CRITICS

Mr E. F. Benson's new story will be published by Mr Heinemann at the end of this month. It is a story of love and courtship in a quiet cathedral town, and is somewhat in the vein of The Challoners. Mr Benson, who never neglects his 'minor characters', here gives them special attention.

~The Western Times [UK], 10/01/1905

Love and courtship in a quiet Cathedral town form the theme of Mr E. F. Benson's new novel, An Act in a Backwater, which Mr Heinemann announces for Wednesday [i.e. 25/01]. The society of the place is depicted in Mr Benson's happiest vein, and the story is told with his customary neatness and vivacity. It may be worthy of remark that Mr Benson's book, The Challoners, has been the greatest of all his successes.

~The Courier [Dundee, UK], 23/01/1905

 Mr. Benson has given us a slight but pleasing study of life in a small Cathedral town. The brother and sister of a poor nobleman settle there, and introduce a novel element into the placid life of the place which gives many opportunities for comedy. The son of a Canon, an artist, and therefore a rebel against the tyranny of the Close, falls in love with the sister, and the progress of their romance is the main interest of the book. Almost the only disagreeable person is a retired Colonel of Volunteers, who is aptly described by one of the characters as "the sort of man you find in a book on the Army by a lady." He is a snob and a coward, and provides the necessary relief from the intense amiability of the others. Jeannie Avesham is an attractive heroine, but the author is so anxious to show her goodness to the reader that he overdoes it and makes her a little theatrical. A deserted child and an epidemic of typhoid were surely enough, without afflicting a poor old spinster with cancer in order to bring out an unselfishness which was already sufficiently established. The best portrait seems to us to be the Canon's wife, Mrs. Collingwood, a type of the narrow good woman; but the treatment, as in that of the others, is spoiled by an undue sentimentality. It is a pleasant, wholesome story, but it might well have ended with Miss Avesham's engagement, for the later chapters read like the elaboration of a tale already told.

~The Spectator, 04/02/1905

Mr. Benson always tells a good story. An Act in a Backwater is a little comedy of an English town, dealing with the love story of a nice English girl and a young painter, neither of whom possesses a bit of morbidness. The book is one that puts the reader in a good humor with himself and other people, and so is a good book to read.

~Buffalo Express, quoted in endpapers to US edition of The House of Defence

An Act in a Backwater is in Mr Benson's lighter vein, but written with all his accustomed cleverness and humor, and it forms a delightful commentary on human nature in general as well as on its particular manifestations in the quiet, not to say dull, English town of Wroxton. That is to say, Wroxton was undoubtedly dull to the casual, unobservant eye of any but its most devoted inhabitants, but a quite different state of affairs is revealed when Mr Benson begins to examine it for literary purposes and discovers the possibilities for entertainment in the vanities and pomposities of Colonel Raymond, in the pathetically innocent enthusiasm of the elderly Miss Cliffords, the strenuous but irritating virtue of Mrs Canon Collingwood, the doings of the Ladies' Literary Union, where 'very improving and sometimes amusing pieces were read,' and in the contrasting unconventionality of 8 Bolton Street, whither the exigencies of fortune had brought a son and daughter of the late Lord Avesham to live while the son was initiated into the vulgar but lucrative mysteries of brewing beer.

In the eyes of Wroxton the intrusion of beer did not at all detract from the brilliance of a noble name, and for all sorts and conditions of Wroxtonites a new interest was added to life by the settling in their midst of these two youthful but exceedingly wideawake members of the house of Avesham. Even on the day they moved into Bolton Street a consuming curiosity kept the younger Miss Clifford wobbling back and forth past the house on her bicycle, from which she had to dismount when she needed to turn round, while on the same occasion Colonel Raymond happened once at least to be near enough to lend a hand with an abnormally heavy bookcase. Colonel Raymond's interest in the newcomers was more painful than pleasurable, as he had all his life been shining in the much-diluted glory of having a wife whose brother-in-law's sister was the late Lady Avesham, and if some of his much-boasted noble relatives, who did not know him from Adam, were actually coming to live in Wroxton he had an irritating consciousness that his habitual conversation would have to be curtailed or, still worse, corrected. It therefore behooved the Colonel to obtain a suitably familiar footing in Bolton Street at the earliest possible moment, and he hovered in the vicinity like the traditional moth round the candle. His experiences in this process of introduction, and even afterward, were of a variety calculated to pierce even his thick-skinned egotism, and in fact the exposure of the Colonel's character in all its devious ramifications is quite the best thing in the book, and amusing enough by itself to pay for its reading.

Mrs Collingwood, whose horizon was bounded by the Cathedral Close, and who waged fierce warfare upon the use of stimulants and modern fiction, adds uninterruptedly to the gayety of the story, and is unique in her narrow British bigotry, as is the Colonel in his unblushing pretenses. The Miss Cliffords are delightful types of the kind of maiden lady who never grows old in her tastes. Miss Clara was forty-two, her sister, Phoebe, a year or two older; but Clara rode her bicycle and wrote lyrics, while Phoebe accompanied sentimental ditties on her mandolin with exactly the same flow of youthful spirits as in their teens. They were happy and satisfied and felt no tragedy in their lives, but it was there all the same as they floated slowly around in a backwater of life, while the adventure and romance of living swept by them.

Nothing has been said so far of the heroine and hero of Mr Benson's charming little story, but it has both of those indispensable adjuncts, and naturally they bear no small part in the proceedings. Mr Benson has been known to draw smart English society in terms hardly complimentary to either its brains or its heart, but the aristocrats in this book are of the true-blue variety. There was not a drop of snobbish blood in Jeannie or Arthur Avesham, or in their wonderful Aunt Emma, and all that was sincere, natural, and worth while in Wroxton was accepted by them with a simplicity quite disarming; things like the Colonel and Mrs Collingwood were, as simply, kept at arm's length and made game of, greatly to the reader's satisfaction.

An epidemic of typhoid fever in the village gives the Aveshams an opportunity altogether to win the hearts of their neighbors by nursing them, regardless of weariness or danger, and it also convinces Mr Jack Collingwood, an artist, and therefore the black sheep of the Canon's family, that Jeannie Avesham's safety is of infinite importance to himself. Strangely enough, that was exactly what Jeannie had unconsciously been waiting for him to find out, and so all went merrily ever after,

As an example, not of Mr Benson's power, but of his wit, cleverness, and knowledge of human nature, An Act in a Backwater is a delightful bit of work.

~The New York Times, 11/03/1905

In some ways it is one of the best of Mr. Benson's books, for it develops certain quiet characters with considerable skill, and it is pleasantly and evenly written. It is eminently pleasant and wholesome; has many touches of nature in it.

~The Westminster Gazette, quoted in endpapers to Juggernaut

In An Act in a Backwater Mr. Benson gives us at least the shock of a surprise. For no one would have expected from the author of Dodo a mild and moving story, which we might describe as the apotheosis of Family Herald fiction. There is a Colonel, of course, and an Earl's daughter—the former a braggart and a coward, the other an angel of democratic tendencies. The Canon's rebellious artist son falls in love with the Earl's daughter. When fever breaks out in the village, the Earl's daughter is to be found by the bedside of the humblest, and the Canon's artist son is meanwhile heroically watching over the illegitimate child of his oldest friend. To complete the pathos Mr. Benson cruelly causes the charming village spinster to die of cancer. The plot of the book is banal to a degree, and only the obvious sincerity and seriousness of much of it forbid our consideration of it as an extravagant skit. The characterisation is often excellent, and, thanks to Mr. Benson's skill, the story makes very agreeable reading. But the wit in the book is not sufficient to save it from being not only surprising, but a little ridiculous. Mr. Benson is not at his best in a backwater. He is more himself in a house-boat on the Thames.

~The Bookman (UK), 03/1905

This story is so slight and uneven as compared with Mr. Benson's last published novel, The Challoners, that it seems like a sketch of a larger story abandoned because the author was dissatisfied with it. It has some pleasant bits of human nature and one or two lovable characters, but, considered as a novel, it is wretchedly constructed.

~The Outlook (US), 04/03/1905

A typical English novel

Much that goes to the make-up of a goodly section of modern English life may be found in this novel. There is the retired Indian official now turned garrulous clubman, the bishop, bishop's wife and bishop's son, the titled man and his relatives. A sister of the titled man and the bishop's son become hero and heroine, and an interesting couple they make, altho[ugh] they never wander outside conventional paths. A bevy of lesser lights circulate about these; gossip bubbles, babbles, and overflows. Nothing of unusual import really happens, yet interest is sustained by the force and vividness with which the people flitting before us are held up to the mirror that reflects the narrow,gossipy interests of an English provincial, town in which the intimate personal note is paramount and the large interests of the outside world play no part. And yet there is an ethical value in the minute exposition of this seeming inconsequent everyday life, because of the unlooked forheroisms that underlie it and crop to the surface as the story unfolds. As for the rest, it is sprightly in movement, well seasoned with the salt of humor, marked by literary skill in the construction, and in general fidelity to detail might be called Jane Austen-like—almost.

~The Literary Digest [US], 10/06/1905

The Morning Post has some very amusing criticisms of Mr. E. F. Benson's new novel An Act in a Backwater. Commenting on the wonderful achievements of artists in fiction, as for instance Charles Reader's sculptor, who could carve the bloom on a plum, the writer goes on to state that 'Jack Collingwood', Mr. Benson's hero, is worthy to stand with the best of them. When walking by a river he sees a girl playing with a dog, and from an instantaneous mental photograph, so to speak, paints a large canvas in three days, which is accepted by a local exhibition. “In the middle of it, cutting the picture nearly in two, was the figure of a girl, dressed in black, hatless, and keeping off a puppy with her parasol. Round the dog was a halo of spray, and he was in the middle of shaking himself, for his head was curly, his flanks and tail still smooth. It was an inimitable representation of a moment. One almost expected to see the halo of spray spread further and the hind part of the dog grow curly.”

~The Manchester Courier [UK], in the 'Painters at Work' column, 22/08/1905

A number of vivid and entertaining character sketches, and dialogue that is quite spontaneously witty and amusing.

~Daily Graphic, quoted in endpapers of Sheaves

It is a delicious world into which he takes us. There are scenes in it which 'catch hold'. The breaking down of the barrier between Jack Collingwood, the artist, and his mother, the canon's wife, is told as only a writer who has felt the pulse of humanity could tell it. It is a powerful study in high-strung emotion. In short, the author has given us a very kindly picture of a quiet life. Humour is to Mr. Benson as the circumambient air.

~Daily Express, quoted in endpapers of Sheaves

In An Act in a Backwater, published at the beginning of 1905, Fred returned, in a literary way, to a quiet cathedral town to recount a story of love and courtship, which he wrote in a gently flippant style, only at the end dropping into sentimentality.

An Act in a Backwater did not please the critics as had The Challoners. The Bookman called it the apotheosis of Family Herald fiction and Academy hoped that it was an early work of Mr Benson's, slightly touched and re-written in parts ~ 'certainly a very disappointing piece of work'.

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

An Act in a Backwater (1903), set in Winchester, is sentimental, slushy, mawkish, too sweet.

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

Scarlet and Hyssop

Fiction ~ novel
Published March 1902
73,800 words
(First read 03/06/2014)

Here's the basic plot: Lady Marie Alston and her husband Jack have been married several years ~ both are still fairly young (late 20s? early 30s? ~ I forget); they have no children; she has never loved him though he once loved her.  Shortly before their marriage Marie thought she might be in love with a chap named Jim Spencer, but didn't go through with it.  Jim went off to South Africa 'to forget', and has just come back a millionaire.  In the meantime Jack has been having an affair with a married woman named Mildred Brereton; he supposes he loves her; she loves him about as much as she loves the average footman, which is to say not one whiff.  Marie and Jack resume their 'friendship' and soon realize they're in love; but they're too noble to consummate their love.  Marie finds out about Jack's affair with Mildred; he breaks it off with Mildred and falls in love with his wife all over again.  (I may be getting some of this in the wrong order: the whole thing was instantly forgettable.)  Marie wants none of him but is persuaded to carry on with the marriage for appearances' sake.  Mildred goes, "Ho hum ~ next!"  Jack gets flattened by an omnibus.  Marie and Jim (and Mildred too, for that matter) live happily ever after.  The End.

Hyssop

I could list 101 reasons for disliking Scarlet and Hyssop but will limit myself to just four:
(1) The wild, glaring improbability at the heart of it: everyone on Earth (i.e. everyone in London Society, because nothing else exists) knows about Jack's affair with Mildred ... except Marie.  This is despite the fact that they all see each other 250 times a week and do nothing but gossip.
(2) None of the characters is in the least bit likeable, with the possible exception of Jack.  (I could add Jim to this except that he can hardly be called a 'character' ~ he's just a shadow.)  Benson's heroine, Marie, is a cold, condescending, snooty witch ~ and knows it.  At one point Jack says to her:

"You are a cold, passionless woman, and will not understand," he said.  Then he paused a moment, for a long sigh lay suspended in her breast.  "You object to my saying that?" he added.

"No; go on," said she.

It's no bleedin' wonder he went off and had an affair (though he could have chosen better), married to that sanctimonious icebox ~ he's just the average man.  And yet he's the one who, in order that a happy ending may take place, gets squashed by a bus.  Ah well.
Mildred is a piece of toxic waste: Dodo on acid.  She'd have to be buried underground for 40,000 years for me to go anywhere near her.

Bloody omnibuses! ~ they get everywhere

(3) If you've already read Daisy's Aunt and Mammon & Co. and umpteen of Fred's short stories that deal with adultery, there's no need to read this: it has absolutely nothing different to say.
(4) The supposedly comic relief, Lady Ardingly, who is another of EFB's preposterously-born-in-Russia Queens of London Society, isn't in the least bit funny.  She's a tedious old hag.  Still, she gets the best line in the book, which you have to wait till the last page of the epilogue for:

"Ah! my dear, we are lepers," said Lady Ardingly.  "We are all wrong and bad, and we roll over each other in the gutter [...].  We strive for one thing, which is wealth, and when we have got it we spend it on pleasure.  [...] and the odd thing is that the pleasure we get does not please us.  It is always something else we want.  I sit and I say 'What news?' and when I am told I say 'What else?' and still 'What else?' and I am not satisfied.  [...] we go after remedies for our ennui, for our leprosy, and there is no such remedy unless we become altogether different."

This pretty neatly sums up all the worst of the Edwardian period ... and of Scarlet and Hyssop. 
Okay, I think that's enough.  You can read the whole thing online here ... but I wouldn't bother.


THE CRITICS

In Scarlet and Hyssop […] Mr E. F. Benson has returned to his earlier manner. He opens by introducing us to a couple of ladies whose talk overflows with studied smartness in a way that may choke off some readers. But as many as persevere will not find their courage very well rewarded. Mr Benson's society ladies tire one very soon. Their affections and their affectations are equally a bore. We crave for something a little more natural, a little more healthy.

~The Yorkshire Post, 19/03/1902

All Mr E. F. Benson's stories may be said to make for righteousness, inasmuch as virtue always somehow finds its reward. But it must be frankly confessed that generally it is not the goal but the way we travel to it which interests his readers. Marie, Lady Alston, in [Scarlet and Hyssop] […] stands for right-doing, her friend Mildred, Mrs Brereton, for the opposite. Jim Spencer is the decent but poor young man who is sent out to South Africa to make his fortune. Like so many other young men in novels, he succeeds, and comes home to find Marie, whom he loves, married to Lord Alston, who loves Mrs Brereton. We sit at a game of whist, see the cards shuffled, cut, and dealt, note the mistakes made, and the cheating, and see how the wiles of the wicked are fruitless against the straight play and good cards of Marie and Jim. The best-drawn character in the book is Marie's husband Jack, Lord Alston, who wins popularity as a politician by preaching the doctrine of 'efficiency'. He finds, too late, that his mistress is not nearly so clever or beautiful a woman as his wife. His death was a necessity for Marie's reward on earth, and it comes about somewhat melodramatically, at the hands of Mildred, or rather at the feet of her horses. The characters all move in an atmosphere where the first law of life is apparently to be very amusing or very rich. Cleverness is pardoned if it can contrive to be interesting; stupidity is condoned if set in a gold frame. Men are apparently of little account except as counters in the game. That in spite of so much that is unreal, and our indifference as to the fate of the characters, we can enjoy the depiction of their little plots and counterplots, is the best testimony to the cleverness of the book.

~The Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 29/03/1902

The author of Dodo gives us here another study of the decadent aspects of certain circles of London aristocratic and wealthy society. The book has not the dash and cleverness which inclined one to condone some of the disagreeable features of Dodo. On the other hand, it has a very plainly put moral; the only man and the only woman in the book who have strong and true characters are duly rewarded. Nevertheless and despite this fact, the presentation of vice, artificiality, and insincerity in modern society has a depressing rather than a tonic effect, and the whole leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

 

~The Outlook (US), 19/04/1902

Mr. Benson here plays the part of social satirist. He whips the manners and fashions of the smart set, not exactly with scorpions, but severely enough, and, we believe, in all sincerity of indignation. Through the mouth of his heroine, Lady Alston, he calls them vulgar, and he shows convincingly that their vulgarity does not even purchase enjoyment. “'Ah! my dear, we are lepers,' says one open-eyed old sinner. 'We are all wrong and bad, and we roll over each other in the gutter like these Arabs scrambling for backshish. We strive for one thing, which is wealth, and when we have got it, we spend it on pleasure . . . and the odd thing is that the pleasure we get does not please us. It is always something else we want. I sit and I say, "What news?" and when I am told, I say, "What else?" and still "What else?" and I am not satisfied.'" That is one of the mildest arraignments; Mr. Benson's favourite term of reproach for the vulgar woman of society, 'a cook,' is a slander on a highly respectable class, but at least he means to indicate unspeakable depths of stupidity and hopeless moral and mental obtuseness. It is some satisfaction to note also that, as none of the satirised are made to appear charming, their originals in real life are left with little consolation. A more brilliant exhibition of their weak wickedness might have tickled them; Mr. Benson's can hardly fail to annoy. So far good. But he has not chosen the most effective way of reform. To ignore entirely the stupid whirl after money and senseless pleasure is perhaps too slow, too doubtfully efficacious a method of showing contempt; but, at least some stalwarts might have been introduced into the story, uninfected by the general corruption and untempted by what the 'smart set' have to offer. Of course, there is Jim; but he is a shadow; and there is Lady Alston, but she is an abstraction, or little more than a mouthpiece for Mr. Benson's tirades of reproach. Contrast is wanted in the book—a picture of the other people. These need not have been saints, they might have filled their place admirably with a moderate amount of virtue, provided they were endowed with active brains, and were minded to demand from life some of its realities.

~The Bookman (UK), 05/1902

Scathing in satire and relentless in exposure. In point of construction, Scarlet and Hyssop seems to us to mark a distinct advance in the author's work. Nothing is out of place, nothing superfluous, but all is in due order and sequence, while the interest never flags for a moment. There are many pages of witty dialogue, and quite enough clever people who talk epigrams, and, on the whole, Scarlet and Hyssop must be accounted a really brilliant piece of work, unsurpassed by anything Mr. Benson has given us.

~The Pall Mall Gazette, quoted in endpapers of An Act in a Backwater and Juggernaut and in newspaper ad of 04/06/1902

Mr. Benson has returned to the field which he developed with such signal success in Dodo, and his new novel reveals a brilliancy, social knowledge, and worldly wisdom that show how much the author has grown in force and pungency since the appearance of his first book. This remarkable story of London society may or may not afford reasons for identifications. It is certain that the author's range of acquaintances and his knowledge of the subject are exceptional, and in this amusing and striking picture of life as it is lived in London he has utilized his opportunities to the full.

 

"Look out, luv ~ E. F. Benson's about!"

~Pittsburg Press, spliced together from quotes in endpapers to US editions of The House of Defence and An Act in a Backwater

There is much pleasure, as well as philosophy, in the book; its satire is pungent, the characters are well sketched, and it is certainly a book to read.

~The Sketch, quoted in endpapers to An Act in a Backwater and Sheaves

It is astonishingly up-to-date: it brims over with chatter, with Saturday-to-Monday parties, with Bridge ~ everlasting Bridge ~ flirtation, motor-cars, semi-detached husbands and wives, and the Boer War; in fact with everything in which London society of to-day interests itself. An admirable picture, witty, cynical and amusing. It is full of brilliant things.

~The Standard, quoted in endpapers to An Act in a Backwater and Juggernaut

Daisy's Aunt

Fiction ~ novel
Published May, 1910
Approx 59,000 words
(First read 04/02/2014)

To describe Daisy's Aunt as 'slight' would be a massive understatement: it has all the substance of a soap bubble, albeit quite a fat soap bubble.
Once again Benson dabbles in the world of heterosexual love, with his usual complete lack of understanding of how people really work.  Over a trio of automata unlikely 'characters' he casts the flimsiest, cobwebbiest plot imaginable, which goes like this:
Daisy Hanbury is a society gel, aged 22; her favourite aunt, Jeannie Halton¹, aged 30, is a widow; both are ~ obviously ~ great beauties.  It turns out that Daisy's married elder sister (Diana), who everyone thought had died five years previously, hadn't: what had actually happened was that she 'fell', i.e. she failed to love her husband and ran off with another bloke ... who was followed by another ... etc. ... in fact her 'ruin' was so complete that she ended up living in a flat in Paris where, at the beginning of her (Jeannie's) widowhood a year previously, Jeannie rediscovered her just in time for her (Diana) to die in her (Jeannie's) arms.  [I'm sure there must be a more concise way of wording this ...]  Diana's dying wish was that Daisy never find out the depths of her (Diana's) depravity (nor, presumably, that she'd been playing possum for four years ~ EFB skims over this consideration).

Now it just so happens that the elderly (32!) society gent who's been dangling after Daisy, Lord Tom Lindfield by name², was Diana's Bloke No. 2 ... or was it 3? ... might even have been 4.  Okay, that's the background, now the plot: Jeannie decides that the only way to stop Daisy finding out her sister was a fallen woman is to prevent Lindfield from marrying her; and the best way to do that is to come between them; and the only way to do that is to make him fall in love with her (Jeannie).
All of which comes to pass, in scenes of excruciating triteness and fatuity.  This thin broth is beefed up³ ever so slightly by Daisy's actually falling in love with Lindfield and wondering WTF her belovèd auntie is up to, and by Jeannie's being engaged to a man she does love while all this has been going on.  But the worst is yet to come: In the end, for no especially good reason, Jeannie bleedin' tells everyone why she's inveigled a man she doesn't love into loving her; she tells Daisy about Diana ~ contrary to everyone's expectations, Daisy doesn't immediately drop down dead on the spot; ... and everyone lives happily ever after: Jeannie marries her fiancé and lives in bliss; Daisy ~ again inexplicably ~ falls instantly out of love with Lindfield and decides to marry the ever-faithful Willie⁴; and [I tremble to write it] Lindfield happily settles down to a life in which he's best mates with Jeannie and her new hubby and more than happy to go on loving her from a short distance.
I put the book down at the end and called out across the years to E F Benson, "Do me a favour, Fred! ~ people just don't work like this!"

STOP PRESS
Given the similarity in the names, and EFB's propensity for recycling his own material, it's entirely reasonable to assume that he based Daisy's Aunt on his unpublished play Aunt Jeannie, which ran on Broadway, starring Mrs Patrick Campbell, for about a month in the autumn of 1902, and which, according to Brian Masters, received 'a most frosty reception and was deemed neither amusing nor a suitable vehicle for the famous actress.'

A fair chunk of the 'action' takes place at a house party in Bray,
Berkshire, in a house rather like this one, at Bray, Berkshire.

P.S. A few hours later, around 4.30am, as I lay there racked with sleepless neuralgia, a theory came to me: EFB's persistent delusion that a heterosexual man can be content ~ even happy ~ to live in close proximity with the woman he loves, to carry on loving her despite her being in love with (married to, etc.) another man, is, either consciously or subconsciously, a metaphor [this is where the theory starts getting ropey] for his own experiences of loving other men unrequitedly: he had no choice but to love the men he loved from close proximity, in silence, suffering nobly, etc.  Then ~ luckily ~ I nodded off. 

¹ The novel was published in the USA as The Fascinating Mrs Halton, a rather better title, IMHO.
² Not to be confused with (e.g.) Lord Tony Limpsfield in Lucia in London.
³ I was going to say 'the plot is complicated' but that would be absurd: it's only my inexpert recounting that's making this sound like War and Peace.  I find retelling plots ~ even, or especially wafery asinine ones ~ consummately tedious.
⁴ Don't ask.

THE CRITICS

Daisy's Aunt is so cloying it is like having toffee stuck to every tooth.  It was after this book that the rival novelist Hugh Walpole, about twenty years Fred's junior [...], accused Fred of being a fraud.  'E. F. Benson is a charlatan in literature,' he said, 'and writes solely for money [...]' [Arthur Benson's retort was this] 'If I were to refuse to meet everyone who thought me a literary charlatan, I should dine alone constantly.'

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

For the sake of returning at one leap not merely to the centre of social life, but to that variety of it which is most insistently and fluffily feminine, it is profitable to take up next Mr. E. F. Benson's latest volume, The Fascinating Mrs. Halton. Now, there is no English writer, not even Anthony Hope himself, more expert in turning out idle little Dolly Dialogues that begin nowhere and end in the same place—feminine studies of the tinsel jewelry type, all sparkle and glitter but without the sterling mark. A generation has passed since he created the Dodo type, a perfectly good type so far as it goes, and one of which no intelligent student of human nature would venture to say that the Dodo of real life does not do such things. But here, at last, in The Fascinating Mrs. Halton, the author has failed to carry conviction with it. His heroine, to be sure, finds herself in a serious dilemma. Returning after a year of

widowhood upon the Continent, as the betrothed bride of another man, she discovers her favourite niece, Daisy, on the brink of accepting the proposal of a certain Lord Lindfield. Now, Mrs. Halton happens to know that the tragic death of Daisy's wayward and unhappy sister is mainly to be laid at Lord Lindfield's door. Daisy herself knows nothing of the matter, and even Lord Lindfield does not dream that there is any connection between a half-forgotten episode in Paris and the object of his present serious intentions. Now Mrs. Halton is represented to us as a woman of rather sterling qualities. Below a blithe and inconsequential surface, one feels that she is a woman who is distinctly worth while—and yet, in the face of this, what does the author ask us to believe her capable of doing? Why, here is the best way that this intelligent, warm-hearted, frank-natured woman can hit upon: she flings herself bodily at Lord Lindfield. She matches all of her maturer charms and finished arts against poor Daisy's youth and inexperience. With her own betrothed lover looking on and marvelling in patient and dumb trustfulness, she stoops to coquetries that are almost wanton in their boldness—and when finally Lord Lindfield falls into the snare and forgetful of Daisy offers himself, she assumes a sudden hauteur and becomes insulting in her attitude of disdainful and outraged dignity. Now it is obvious that Mr. Benson knew better; he felt that all this was preposterous—and the proof lies in the fact that despite the absurdity of this false position his people all act like sensible human beings; they get together, talk things over and refuse to have their lives wrecked by a bit of melodrama. Yet even here it is unnecessary to say that people don't do such things. If Mrs. Halton had not done this particular thing, Mr. Benson would have had no story to write. The real explanation is that Mrs.Halton was just a plain, garden variety of fool, and Mr. Benson was either not clever enough or not honest enough to tell us so.

~Frederic Taber Cooper in The Bookman (US)

Mr. Benson has an advantage over many current novelists in being sure of his métier. He never attempts too much. His plane is that of the social-humorous romance. He is content with few characters and simple plot. After a few of these pages, it is perfectly clear what the fascinating Mrs. Halton is going to do. Her task is an unusual one, though not unheard of: there is a very passable stage plot involved in the narrative. Mrs. Halton is a young and not over-mournful widow. She is, indeed, when the story opens,' already pledged to a second mate, and on the way to a first happiness. But an unpleasant duty intervenes. Returning to England from a season of mourning and recuperation abroad, she finds her favorite niece and companion almost engaged to be married to a certain young lord (of course a lord). He is a pretty fair sort of lord, but he has had his experiences, one of them connected with a lady in Paris, whom Mrs. Halton knows to have been the sister of Daisy, the girl. There is your situation. It is impossible for Mrs. Halton to tell Daisy, for the sake of her memory of the erring sister, who is now dead. And she cannot bring herself to tell the nobleman, since she regards him as a rascal. Evidently, there is only one thing to do. Mrs. Halton is almost as young and quite as beautiful as the fair Daisy. She determines to steal away Daisy's lover before Daisy actually promises herself to him. The thing is easily done: the gentleman is quite ready to change his objective. As soon as his fickleness is made clear to Daisy, Mrs. Halton's engagement to the other man is announced. Her game has been open, and both Daisy and his lordship demand an explanation—which the fascinating Mrs. Halton is forced to give. They agree that she has done right. Daisy promptly pairs off with her original second choice; milord is content to remain the adoring friend of the no longer Mrs. Halton. For her part, she has come to like and admire him very much: there is a touch of pure Briticism in the toleration with which she looks upon him as a man who has had a mistress, though the thought of his marrying the sister of that deceased mistress is a horror to her.

~The Nation (US), 02/06/1910

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.)