Thorley Weir

Fiction ~ novel
Published September 1913 (previously published in serial form in Cornhill magazine)
Approx. 84,000 words
(First read 25/10/2014)

Thorley Weir is the story of an art patron's 'adoption' of two young geniuses, one a painter, the other a playwright, and of his attempts to win the hand in marriage of a young lady.  And, or maybe or, it's the story of a young painter's adoption by an art patron, and of his love for a young lady.  Then again it's the story of a young playwright's adoption by an art patron, and of his subsequent disillusionment.  At the same time it's the story of a hypochondriac, his elderly nymphomaniac mother, and his virginal young daughter.  Have I mentioned the pinkish donkey? ~ it's also the story of a pinkish donkey.  What I'm trying to convey is that, like several other E F Benson novels, the thing lacks focus.
The art patron (Arthur Craddock) is an interesting character, as well as being not at all EFB's type ~ we're constantly reminded that he's fat, fifty-ish, very pale, with soft hands and black hair worn in a comb-over, etc.  A professional art critic of long-standing, discovering untapped genius is his favourite sideline after fleecing Americans out of their bucks for British art.  He's so inured to devious business-dealing that the habit has spilt over into his private life.  Despite all this, he is at heart a good egg, and certainly a shrewd, generous, and enthusiastic promoter of young talent.

Not that kind of painter, dummy

The painter (Charles Lathom) is merely Benson Male Type A, the devastatingly handsome and youthful genius, so it's only natural that EFB should be most drawn to him.  Unfortunately, as we all know, Benson Male Type A is only matched in dullness by Benson Female Type A: the impossibly sweet and virginal young gel.
The love interest (Joyce Wroughton) is Benson Female Type A.
Joyce's dad (Philip W) is the perfect Bensonian hypochondriac: petty, mean-spirited, niggardly, self-obsessed, querulous, etc.  He's also very funny.
Philip's mum (for some reason called Lady Crowborough) is another in EFB's long line of 'spunky' old dames, don't ya know, much given to talking in what passed for slang in the 1860s, and to flirting with chaps a quarter her age.  She isn't very funny.
The pinkish donkey [see below under Quotables] is part of the hired help when Arthur, Philip, Joyce and Lady C are having a totally unnecessary holiday in Egypt about halfway through the proceedings.

"That's not really 'ugly', is it, Ewie?"

Who does that leave?  Ah yes! ~ the most interesting character in the book.  Frank Armstrong, the playwright, is so rara an avis in the works of E F Benson that he doesn't even have a Type.  That other struggling young dramatist Rex Whatsisname (of Rex fame) is a mere shadow next to Frank, a petulant-brattish scribbler.  Frank is ~ believe it or not ~ an Angry Young Man, forty years before his time.  Not only is he ugly on the outside¹, he's a seething mass of violent mood swings, careering through life with a massive chip on each shoulder, believing that the world owes him a living, that his patron, despite launching his career very nicely indeed thankyou, is the embodiment of evil, etc.  Ah if only Benson had written Frank rather than the dreary Rex!
The plot goes like this: Arthur realizes he's getting on and lonely so falls in love with Joyce; at the same time she falls in love with Charles, Arthur's new protégé, and he with her; Arthur tries to put her off him but fails; Charles and Frank become good pals, then discover the 'truth' about Arthur, that he's attempted to blacken Charles' name so as to win Joyce's hand, and that he's been exploiting them ~ a bit; Charles forgives him; Frank doesn't; The Happy End.
If you're planning on reading Thorley Weir², prepare yourself for a long leisurely read in which virtually nothing happens and what does happen is blown out of all proportion.
Needless to say, I quite enjoyed it! ~ I've made it sound a lot worse than it is.
It's available online here.

¹ His ugliness, as Fred never tires of telling us, seems largely to consist of his having a big black beard.
² I should probably add that the actual weir in the novel might as well not be there: it doesn't drown or even almost drown anyone.

QUOTABLES
EFB goes into homoerotic overdrive describing Charles' portrait of his brother Reggie diving into the river:

 […] his face and the side of his body seen almost in profile were brilliantly illuminated by the glint from the shining pool below him. But underneath these surface lights there had to be indicated the building and interlacement of the firm muscles and supple sinews of his body.

 Arthur Craddock commits the sin of Not Being Young:

It was not until he had walked as far as Hyde Park Corner that he knew he was waging a war instead of merely conducting a child's education. He was at war, he with his obese person and half-century of years, with the generation that had sprung up after him, and was now realising the zenith of its youthful vigour. Already it trod on his heels, already he seemed to hear in his ears its intolerable laughter at his portly progress, and his first acute attack of middle-age stabbed him like the lumbago from which he occasionally suffered.

A telling image of Charles:

To-day he had no touch of [guilt or anxiety]: he felt entirely untrammelled: his soul stood nude and unimpeded, like some beautiful runner or wrestler. There was nothing to hinder its leap and swiftness.

On holiday in Egypt the rather prissy Craddock and the rather prissy Philip are selecting their donkeys for a trip into the desert ~ this is the comic highlight of the book:

[Craddock] highly approved Philip's penchant for the pinkish donkey, and selected for himself a small one that resembled in some essential manner a depressed and disappointed widow. His large legs almost touched the ground on either side of it, he could almost have progressed in the manner of the ancient velocipede.

Craddock on Philip Wroughton [same scene as previous quote]:

Till he heard this rapid staccato speech, Craddock felt he had never really known what egotism meant. Here it was in excelsis: almost grand and awe-compelling in this gigantic and inspired exhibition of it … crowning it “Do not leave my donkey, Mohammed.”

Charles and Joyce wax 'philosophical':

She was silent a moment.

“In a way an injury done to oneself is easier to forgive than an injury done to somebody else.”

Charles rudely interrupted.

“Painfully noble sentiment?” he enquired.

“Yes; perhaps it was. Let us be careful: we might die in the night if we became more edifying.”

Quite. 


THE CRITICS

Mr Benson at his cheeriest. An excellent novel.

~The Times, quoted in a newspaper ad of 19/09/1913.  (I suspect this reviewer hadn't read the whole novel: it's certainly not my idea of 'cheery'.)

This is very good. Written in a light and cheerful vein, in a spirit of delightful comedy.

~Daily Chronicle, quoted in a newspaper ad of 19/09/1913.  (Ditto)

The best book he has published for years.

 ~Daily News, quoted in a newspaper ad of 19/09/1913

Those who want the safely pleasant should put down Mr E. F. Benson's new novel, Thorley Weir. It is very like the other Benson books, but quite without the uncomfortable attempts to deal with big problems that has spoiled the later ones. The heroine is a dear, and there is an even dearer old lady, nominally eighty, but essentially about eighteen ~ a Mrs Wroughton.

 ~Derby Daily Telegraph, 20/09/1913

Mr E. F. Benson in Thorley Weir has added another success to his list of fine novels. No one else gives us quite the same sort or the same quality of books. They abound with gaiety, and they are full of delightful people. There is always a fascinating romance, and as a rule charming dissertations on music and painting. His subjects vary much, and he never can be charged with monotony, yet his novels are all of the Society type, and his characters always include one delightful, inconsequential old lady, who is thoroughly welcome once again in Thorley Weir. As a writer, too, Mr Benson is by no means always equal. Indeed, he can at time be very thin, but Thorley Weir belongs to the best of his works.

'Thorley Weir' is the name of the house in which the heroine, Joyce Wroughton, and her father live, and into the district there come on holiday Charles Lathom and his brother, Reggie. The former is a painter of very considerable promise. While visiting the Wroughtons, the villain of the book, Mr Craddock, a connoisseur in art and the drama, sees Charles's work, and, acting as a 'middleman', purchases his pictures, and makes a business agreement with him, very much to his own advantage. The same thing happens to Frank Armstrong, an unknown but talented dramatist. Charles Lathom and Craddock are both in love with Joyce, but Craddock does not scruple about disparaging his rival to Mr Wroughton, so that the door of Thorley Weir may be closed to him. Here, however, comes in Mrs Wroughton, Mr Benson's favourite type of elderly lady referred to. She helps to disentangle the situation, and the end is interesting. The book is fresh and bright, and written with all the peculiar charm which the author can infuse into his novels.

~The Aberdeen Daily Journal, 22/09/1913

Now that Mr. A. C. Benson has found his power as a novelist, it is open to Mr. E. F. Benson to step into his place, and betake himself to a gentle philosophy. It might be a good experiment. Mr. Benson has changed much as a writer of late years: his novels are no longer of the school of Dodo. We are far less concerned with what Mr. Benson's puppets do, or even with what they think; we look rather for his view of this world of ours, for his opinion of men and women, for his knowledge of art and music and the drama—in short, for his gentle philosophy of life. Thorley Weir is good; it shows no sign of that exhaustion and exaggeration which are the danger of the prolific novelist; it has a good central plot woven round the super-dealer in the arts, the trafficker in men's brains, who meets his final defeat at the hands of the young dramatist and the young artist; it has a pleasant, out-of-door, early-morning setting of the river and loose-strife and kingfishers; it has some charming pieces of writing, and it has several of Mr. Benson's early friends, and ours, thinly disguised under new names. Here is Lady Sunningdale as Mrs. Wroughton, and Hugh Grainger has given up his music and taken to art; here is Bensonian dialogue and freshness and freedom. The book has its faults, of course. Mr. Benson must beware of exaggeration in his drawing of character, for Philip Wroughton's neurotic tempers are on the edge of farce, and the atmosphere of farce is by far too coarse and heavy for Mr. Benson's spirit of pure comedy; we wonder why such a word as "eyne" should find a place in his vocabulary; and we grow almost a little weary over the repeated transports of the young artist. But, when all is said, it is Mr. Benson, and Mr. Benson at his best, which is good enough for the most blasé reader of novels.

~The Spectator, 04/10/1913

A novel kind of a villain is the 'middleman' in this story. He is a connoisseur in art and also knows a lot about the stage. So when he finds a struggling young artist or play-writer of genius, he pets him, buys his first work, and then exacts an option-contract by which he gets future good work at a trifling price. He buys masterpieces, too, from friends after he has bargained to resell them to rich collectors at an enormous profit. All 'within the law,' but mean and tricky. The novel has a delightful old lady and a pretty love story. It is not Mr. Benson's best book, but it reads easily and is amusing.

~The Outlook (US), 01/11/1913

With pleased marvel at the freshness of a pen which has to its credit twenty-eight successful novels, I have been reading Thorley Weir, Mr Benson's latest. In his father's house were many Bensons, four being regular and prolific contributors to the literature of the day. The author of Thorley Weir is E. F. Benson, who, some years ago, captured the attention of the town by the publication of Dodo, a novel which the lady whom the public insisted had served as lay-figure for the heroine* once told me she had never read. The scene of his new story shifting to Egypt, the glow and colour of which flood his pages, Mr Benson writes how the lover of the charming Joyce told her of Sen-mut, the architect of Deir-al-Bahari, to whom the queen showed all her heart, and entrusted with the secrets of her will, and how Thothmes, on his mother's death, erased from the inscriptions all mention of the low-born fellow. [the writer then wanders off onto a different subject and never comes back to this one]

~'Our correspondent' in the 'London Letter' column of Gloucester Journal, 28/02/1914 [from BNA]. * i.e. Margot Asquith, née Tennant (1864-1945).

The title of Mr. Benson's new book is not descriptive, for, as usual, he is concerned with the development of one character, the presentation of a certain type of man who, this time, is embodied in a middle-aged, stout, and not overattractive Arthur Craddock. Craddock possesses discriminating taste and judgment, seeming to know by instinct the best in literature, music, and art, and particularly what would be commercially available. He utilizes this power to bind to himself the

young artist who has not yet 'arrived,' and so makes for himself a fortune and reputation. When he decides to win Joyce Wroughton, however, his methods become involved and his means questionable. Two of Craddock's victims hasten the catastrophe that finally reveals his underhand methods and duplicity. He overreaches himself, and Joyce, in spite of Craddock and his contracts, is allowed to be happy with the young artist Charles.The strength of the story lies in its clear and subtle analysis of the different characters, whose development presents to us many interesting and exciting episodes.

~The Literary Digest, 21/03/1914

Thorley Weir (1913) is a simple romance and nothing more. No titled ladies, no society chatter, no supernatural goings-on: it is the story of an artist who finds fame, and of the girl he loves, restored to him after a series of understandings.

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

Rex

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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




THE CRITICS

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

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

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

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

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

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

~The Saturday Review, 20/02/1926

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

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

 

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

To Account Rendered

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

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

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


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

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

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

Aunt Jeannie

Fiction ~ play
Performed on Broadway in September 1902 ~ I imagine it was first performed in the UK, but have yet to find evidence
Unpublished



THE CRITICS

FAMOUS ACTRESS IN A TIRESOME PLAY

MRS PATRICK CAMPBELL IN NEW YORK

[TO-DAY'S 'DAILY TELEGRAPH' TELEGRAM]

NEW YORK, Wednesday

Mrs Patrick Campbell received a warm greeting on her reappearance before a New York audience last night, and enjoyed several recalls when the curtain fell on Mr E. F. Benson's Aunt Jeannie. Those people who expected that the author of Dodo would take a place in the front rank of dramatists with his new play were sadly disappointed. Aunt Jeannie is rather tiresome. Its wit is strained, and what is perhaps most important of all in this connection it does not provide Mrs Campbell with a really good opportunity for the display of her special powers. Although a friendly and fashionable audience gave the actress warm applause, the piece is found wanting by the critics.

~The Evening Telegraph, 18/09/1902