Robin Linnet

Fiction ~ novel
Published 1919
Approx. 98,000 words

Mike / Michael

First published in serial form under the title Michael, from November 1915 to ?
First published in book form in the UK under the title Mike, September(?) 1916
Published in the US (1916/17) under the title Michael¹

57,300 words
(First read 23/05/2015) 



¹ To be honest, Michael is the better title as that's how the hero's most often referred to.

THE REVIEWS

One feels somehow that the writing of Mike […] imposed no particular strain upon Mr E. F. Benson. It suggests a delightfully easy command of material. But, of course, Mr Benson is a master of graceful narrative, and it is perhaps a tribute to his power that he should give the rather poignant situation to which his tale leads up so simple and, in a sense, so charming a directness. The lucidity of his examination of a mood and passion is delightful. The story turns upon the war. Mike, otherwise Lord Comber, gives up the Army for music, and is accidentally brought into contact with a young music teacher, Hermann Falbe, and his sister, for whom he develops an appreciation which in the case of the latter becomes love. The Falbes are of mixed parentage, their father being German, and, though they have lived their life in this country, Hermann is a German at heart. One of the best things in the book is the description of his emotions on paying a visit to his fatherland. When war breaks out Hermann leaves England in order to fight for his own country, and Mike rejoins the Army to fight for his. How, then, about the love affair between Mike and Hermann's sister? The conflict of emotions, personal and national, created by war and love is manifestly intricate, but Mr Benson treats it so cleverly that the play of feeling is easily followed. We cannot say that the novel is one of his best. It is none the less an attractive story. The writing is always pleasant, and the characterisation has a crisp distinction which is refreshing to encounter. All the characters interest us in some way, and their individual peculiarities are described with admirable skill.

~Liverpool Post and Mercury, 13/09/1916

The most human of romances that have been written about the war.

~Punch, quoted in newspaper ad of 09/10/1916

Wonderfully fresh and amusing.

~Westminster Gazette, quoted in newspaper ad of 09/10/1916

Mr Benson's masterpiece.

~Evening Standard, quoted in newspaper ad of 09/10/1916

It is not easy in times such as these to imagine a much more trying lot than that of those whose sympathies are in any great measure divided between two of the combatant nations by ties of parentage, association, or marriage. Such a case it is, or rather two such cases ~ for brother and sister are alike involved ~ that Mr Benson brings us to contemplate. But that problem arises only in the later stages of his story; in the earlier it is another case of divided allegiance, that of a son called on to decide between dutiful loyalty to a father's wishes and the sacrifice of his own feelings on the one hand, and on the other the assertion of his right to live his own life. Mr Benson has in this part taken care that our sympathies shall be on the right side, for he has presented his hero in most pleasing colours, as he has every right to do, and then, as if that were not enough, he has sought to strengthen his case by representing the father as an egregious ass and snob, self-centred, domineering, a repulsive blend of self-important arrogance and pompous fatuity. And just as we feel compelled to quarrel with his Lord Ashbridge, so do we think he has erred in overdoing the ineptness of his Lady Ashbridge and also of Mrs Falbe, who was also 'one of us'. Not even the pathetic picture that comes later of Michael's touching devotion to his mother can atone for the vacuousness of the initial portrait. Lady Barbara, on the other hand, with her brisk and healthy vigour, her since and humorous kindliness, is excellently drawn, though the author puts an unnecessary strain on our credence when he makes her husband ambassador. He makes a similar mistake, to our mind, in the last scene but one of his novel. But the main material of the story is excellent; the tracing of Michael's musical development is well done; his devotion to Germany, the genuine outcome of his debt to her, the fortnight at Bayreuth and Munich, with its revelation that “Germany was music,” the awakening of his own powers under the stimulus and skilful guidance of Hermann and Sylvia Falbe. And it is well also that some among us should be reminded that the patriotism of the German is in itself a deep-rooted and an ennobling thing. “Scratch a German,” says Hermann, “and you find two things ~ a sentimentalist and a soldier.”

~The Birmingham Daily Post, 11/10/1916

A story of music, love, and the war. Well written, sometimes even delightfully written. The ending has a situation of grievous distress, but joined to it is the triumph of faith and love.

~The Outlook (US), 28/02/1917

In Michael Mr. E. F. Benson shows himself, as always, a very capable storyteller with no genius to disarrange his neat workmanship. One habit of his he does not outgrow, which seems to me a bad habit from the point of view of workmanship: his habit of diffuse and repetitious dialogue. When two or three of his people get to talking, we may be sure they will use ten pages to say what a playwright would make them say in ten lines. But there are readers who like this sort of garrulity (witness the amazingly large constituency of Miss Ellen Glasgow), and no doubt they are readers to whom the general ingenuousness of Mr. Benson appeals. The Michael of this book is an English lord, very ugly and sincere, who tires of being a Guardsman and determines to devote himself to music. His father, the Earl of Ashbridge, is as highly coloured a caricature of the British aristocrat as has ever appeared on any stage. He is a snob, a martinet, a self-conscious ass, a person with no dignity of character or conduct: certainly not a gentleman. Well, of course he forbids Michael his music and orders him back into the Guards. Luckily the young man's grandmother has left him plenty of money. He sets forth for Baireuth and Munich, as the first stages of his musical journey, and falls in with a young Falbe, a brilliant musician and pianist who is to be Michael's master and friend. Falbe is half German, half English; but his German paternity determines his allegiance when the test comes. In his companionship and that of his sister Sylvia, a singer, Michael quickly finds himself. Almost at once he shows ability as pianist and composer. Friendship also comes to him, and love in the person of the beautiful Sylvia. So we have our situation. Meanwhile there have been tremblings of the earth, and suddenly the tempest of the war breaks forth. Falbe becomes all German, Michael all English, and poor Sylvia is torn between. Thus we are worked up to our catastrophe in the form of a chance encounter in the trenches between Michael and Falbe... Michael shoots and kills his friend, not recognising him until-the thing is done. The slayer returns to England wounded, and Sylvia must be told. Here, evidently, is a 'big scene' at hand. It is well, no doubt that Mr. Benson should not have laboured it, but he somehow fails to make anything of it at all. Michael tells the girl he has killed her brother, bursts into tears, and she tells him it is all right. The fact is, Mr. Benson's field is that of a mild social comedy, and his efforts at dramatic intensity of mood are inadequate to the verge of banality. To a point, there is characterisation here-—Michael seems real, the Falbes seem real, despite their association with that man of straw the Earl; but the action in which they are involved fails to come home to us the moment it attempts the heroic plane.

~H. W. Boynton in The Bookman (US), 03/1917

E. F. Benson has followed the lead of several English novelists by including in his newest book, Michael, just published by the George H Doran Company, a 'full-length description' of the German Kaiser. Benson's hero, Michael, is a young Englishman with a talent for the piano. The story opens before the war, and Michael journeys to Munich, where he hears Tristan at the Hof-Theatre. The Emperor is in the city, and having several years before been the personal guest of Michael's distinguished father in England, invites the young man to sit in the Imperial box with him. Benson's description of the Kaiser is interesting.

~The Evening Post [Wellington, New Zealand], 28/04/1917

The Osbornes

Fiction ~ novel
Published October(?) 1910
Previously serialized in The Cornhill Magazine, July 1909 - about May 1910
(First read 05/04/2015)

The Kaiser and English Relations

Non-fiction ~ current(ish) affairs
Published 19th October 1936
(First read 26/02/2015) 

















REVIEWS

[…] ingenious […] The book is a very skilful mosaic of the vast amount written or spoken by William, his majestic grandmother Queen Victoria, and his brilliant mother the Empress Frederick, largely made possible by the fact that the letters and papers of the Empress and of her husband, the unlucky Frederick, Emperor for but ninety-eight days, were smuggled out of Germany and deposited safely in this country. [The remainder of this very long review is basically nothing but quotations from the book.]

~Aberdeen Press and Journal, 19/10/1936

Before he was kaiser

Mr Benson is brilliant and finished. Also, he has found the key to the tortuosities of the Kaiser's foreign policy. That monarch's ultimate intention ~ as is pretty generally admitted to-day ~ were pacific. But, like Polonius, he preferred with indirections to find directions out. If he wished for friendly relations with B, a straightforward advance was not enough: it was necessary first to embroil B with C, then to point out to the former how ill he stood with the latter, and thus to let him reach the conclusion that to meet the German advances would be best for 'wretched, meritorious B'.

[Unlike his subject, Mr Benson is a realist: he has] attempted, successfully, to pronounce a just verdict. [He] has resisted the temptation of making the ex-Kaiser into a blundering buffoon, a monster of tactlessness; and has shown that his uncle, for example, contributed his share to the friction between these two kinsmen.

~W H Johnston in an article titled Kaiser and Field-Marshal, which was a joint review of EFB's book and of Hindenburg: The Wooden Titan by J W Wheeler-Bennett. Published in The Yorkshire Post, 21/10/1936

Mr. E. F. BENSON, who thoroughly knows his way about the many volumes of royal correspondence published since the War, has used them, together with a few other familiar sources, to put together this slight but agreeable study of relations between the ex-Kaiser William II and our own royal family. The volume begins with the marriage of Queen Victoria's eldest daughter to the Crown Prince Frederick, heir to the Prussian throne; and it leaves the eldest son of that marriage in his house of exile to Doom, preparing to read the Sunday morning service to his attenuated suite, and wondering (Mr. Benson, be it said to his credit, does not often indulge in these tricks of fictionised biography) "why it had all happened like this."

So dramatic a story, told by a practised craftsman like Mr. Benson, cannot fail to interest and entertain, even though the facts on which it is based are well enough known to every reader of pre-War history. But the story would have been better still if Mr. Benson had been able to conjure up a little human interest in his central figure. William II was not a great or a wise monarch. He was impulsive where caution was needed, bombastic in utterance, tactless and sometimes sly in his dealings with foreign monarchs and Governments, and easily rattled in moments of crisis. But constant insistence on these defects of his hero's character makes Mr. Benson's book smack a little too much of the atmosphere of war propaganda. Mr. Benson is well aware, as many passages show, that the Princess Frederick was a difficult mother. But this is not allowed to mitigate by one jot the indictment of William as a difficult son. The relations between Edward VII as Prince of Wales and William II show both of them in anything but a favourable light. The fact that the Prince was the uncle and the Emperor the nephew obviously made the relationship delicate and embarrassing and is, in itself, almost sufficient to account for the chronic antipathy between them. But here again Mr. Benson, while not particularly flattering to the Prince, loses no opportunity of pressing home the case against, the Kaiser.

More important, however, than these petty personal issues is the question how far the course of history was affected by the constant correspondence and the frequent family meetings between royal personages which were characteristic of the half century before the War. Much has been written and talked in the past few years about the foreign peregrinations of British politicians. It is not generally remembered that the place of these personal discussions between Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries was in part taken before the War by the regular intercourse between crowned heads of States (who, for important meetings, were often accompanied by Ministers). These meetings were, of course, habitually used for the transaction of political business. But were they a governing factor of policy or merely its instrument? Was the notable falling off in such meetings in the few years immediately before the War a cause, or a symptom, of the impending

The newish kaiser (1890)

catastrophe? Mr. Benson's book, in so far as it makes any contribution to this historical problem, confirms the impression that all this personal intercourse between royal relations, despite the immense importance attached to it by its participants, had little decisive influence on the course of events. Neither Willy nor Nicky deflected the policy of his country by a single inch in the interest of friendship or cousinship with the other; and it would be fantastic to attribute to the temperamental incompatibility of William II and Edward VII any determining rôle in the deterioration of Anglo-German relations. There is no ground for suggesting that French interests were penalised because France had no crowned head to hobnob with royal cousins from other leading European countries. The Tsar of all the Russias found no difficulty about allying his country with a republic, and receiving on equal terms a President in a silk hat and boiled shirt; and the picture of Queen Victoria consenting, albeit with reluctance, to stand while the Marseillaise was played suggests an irreverent comparison with M. Litvinov proposing the health of King George V. When important interests of foreign policy were at stake, the principles of the International of Monarchs went by the board as easily as the principles of the Third International.

~E. H. Carr in The Spectator, 30/10/1936

The Benson name will stimulate interest in this though it is unlikely to achieve the sales of his English subjects. But for anyone interested in the international picture, the psychological aspects of the German-English relations, this is important, and a story that bears close reading, as written by an author whose integrity in stating problems and facts differs openly on many points with previous writers. [He] Covers the Kaiser's life, from a sensitive, tragic boyhood, to his present retirement in Holland. [He] Stresses the atmosphere of hostility between England and America at his birth, fostered by the unpopularity of his English mother. Essential for public libraries and colleges. 

~Kirkus Reviews, 10/11/1936

Mr. E. F. Benson's biographical study of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII has well fitted him for writing on The Kaiser and English Relations, for the story of William's relations with England is largely the story of attempts by his English relatives, wiser than he, to keep him in check. William, the grandson of Victoria, is a sort of Richard III of Germany ~ a deformed, ambitious, unbalanced schemer, who lived to be cursed by his own mother and to be morally execrated by his own countrymen. These freaks occur in history. There was nothing in William's parentage to suggest such a creature. His father was an eminently upright man, without any egotism or desire for self-advancement; his mother an amiable woman, who did her best to promote the friendship of England and Germany. Yet their eldest son grew up to trample on them and exult at his father's death, to ally himself with Bismarck, who systematically humiliated them while the old Emperor lived, and to overthrow all their good works. Mr. Benson explains this degeneration from type as due to the accidents of William's childhood ~ the paralysed arm and consequent physical weakness, his harsh schooling that set up in him an inferiority complex, and so led him to assert himself at all costs. At heart, Mr. Benson maintains, he was a sheer coward, and even in his most grandiose and blatantly truculent moments trembled inwardly for

A bit later ...

the consequences of his words and actions. Then, too, he had no judgment, no common sense, no self-restraint. He would commit the silliest errors, and endeavour to escape responsibility by denying them. Time and again Mr. Benson catches him out on his own words. By setting a passage from an authentic letter alongside a passage from the Kaiser's own memoirs, adding the testimony of others, he is able to show what a pitiful liar the man was. Altogether, Victoria, and after her, Edward, had a bad time of it holding in this blustering, irresponsible kinsman. Several times ~ over the Boer War, at Tangier, at Agadir ~ he nearly precipitated a crisis; luckily, the wise monarch of England never lost his or her head over it.

William's grand delusion ~ again to be attributed to that ingrained conviction of personal inferiority ~ was the 'encirclement' of Germany by the other European Powers, so he was constantly intriguing ~ you never knew where to have him. He would write warning Victoria against the designs of Russia; at the same time he would be showering his blandishments on the Csar. He never really hated England, Mr. Benson shows how deep-seated his love of that country was, and how genuinely he longed for a permanent alliance with her. He was inordinately proud of the tincture of Stuart blood in his veins, swelled in glory when Victoria made him an Admiral of the Fleet, touched the sky when she bestowed on him a colonelcy in an English regiment. All this strengthened his position in England, but his personal behaviour at the same time made it impossible. He was persistently rude to Edward, as Prince and King ~ he even flouted Victoria. When the armaments competition began, through his mad ambition to control the Atlantic, the inevitable conflict was definitely envisaged, and when it came it was a relief to the Kaiser, as it must have been to English statesmen who had long despaired of holding such a trouble-maker in check. It was then that his many wild utterances began to be remembered against him ~ the 'mailed fist,' the adjuration to Germans to be Huns, etc. He found himself regarded as a dangerous lunatic.

Mr. Benson is more impartial, even ~ for all his gentle but crushing irony ~ sympathetic with William in some of his moods. In spite of his bloodthirstiness, William had genuine artistic taste and ability, and to his friends he was a pleasant companion. The final verdict is, however, quite just. "Destiny had been cruel in ordaining that a man of his temper and temperament should be emperor of a great nation. Throughout his reign he had never shown any grasp of the serious responsibilities of kingship, never once, for all his sincere patriotism, had he rendered any true service to his country, nor ever had he failed to use his great abilities in the cause of European disquiet. Save for those moments of hysterical exaltation when some impetuous and imprudent impromptu had satiated his craving for imperial gestures, he had been the prey of fear and jealousy and deep-seated self-mistrust. . . . If only Providence had consecrated him to be a squire of ample means and estate, just outside some county town in England, what a pleasant and useful existence might have been his! ... " As it is, the Squire of Doorn has found almost his right level. 

~The Sydney Morning Herald, 28/11/1936

 

After the invention of colour

Kaiser William possessed in a high degree all those characteristics which least recommend themselves to the British. He manifested on every occasion tendencies which in English preparatory and public schools are given disobliging names and systematically extirpated. Sneaking, swanking and bullying, that triple anathema of the Lower Fourth, figured strongly in his repertoire. When thwarted, he bit no bullets, but shouted and stamped and swore. When pleased, he gave way to extravagant displays of emotion. Really, thought grandmama Victoria, looking round on the family circle of crowned and coroneted Coburgers, Willy was the naughtiest boy in Europe.

Much of the bitterness has passed from the minds of those who in the strained atmosphere of 1918 were ready to shout "Hang the Kaiser ! " But the impression remains that William was something of an ass and something of a cad ; there is an unpleasant edge to the laughter which greets his appearance in back numbers of Punch—a journal for the suppression of which he once pleaded, eagerly but in vain. It is therefore the more satisfactory that a writer such as Mr. Benson should have undertaken to present the Kaiser in his most difficult, most pathetic aspect. For there is no malice in Mr. Benson's pen, nor is he liable to sentimental extenuations. Using the best and sanest method of psychological approach, he has substituted a human being for the pompous and fantastic lay-figure. The Kaiser and English Relations leaves no room for ens.
Much importance is given to the deformity which handicapped William from birth, the torn left shoulder which made riding so difficult for him, though he strove so pluckily and so successfully to overcome the disability. To this can be traced the overwhelming sense of inferiority for which his tasteless and fatuous arrogance and sabre-rattling were a perpetual compensation. This mental condition of insecurity and instability in turn gave rise to suspicion and jealousy, to dread of "encirclement," to a conviction that only in the unassailable superiority of German arms could he place his trust.
Such was the man who sent the Kruger telegram, who landed—' 'a reluctant and timorous Mephistopheles"—at Tangier, and sanctioned the despatch of the Panther to Agadir. They are singularly futile, singularly irresponsible gestures. The whole of William's foreign policy was of the same order ; it seemed to have been conceived by a destructive child. His ambition was to break down the mutual confidence of other nations rather than to construct alliances for his own. Herein lay the difference between William and Edward VII. He always hated Uncle Bertie, whose genial friendliness revealed a poise which his own twisted nature could never hope to achieve. Mr. Benson ably contrasts the manner and method of the two sovereigns : "Each of them claimed exclusive rights of political cruising, and regarded the other as invariably engaged, under the pretext of a recuperative holiday, with sinister designs. The King's method on these excursions was very different from his nephew's ; his visits to any country were intended to promote cordial relations by his jollity and geniality ; the Emperor's, by a display of majesty and giants, to typify the might of Germany and to sow suspicions in his host's mind as to the sincerity of some country with which he had friendly relations."
William always had a sincere affection for his grandmother, Queen Victoria. She understood him. "William's faults," she told Edward, "come from impetuousness (as well as conceit) ; and calmness and firmness are the most powerful weapons in such a case." Calmly and firmly she dealt with his most outrageous actions, writing to him after the Kruger incident the famous letter which ends : "I hope you will take my remarks in good part, as they are entirely dictated by my desire for your good. Victoria R.I." ; and to the Tsar the letter which, in the same level tones, shattered the intrigue known as the Willy-Nicky correspondence.
As he loved the Queen, so William loved England. It was a love which England could neither understand nor repay, but years later, at Doorn, when the tragedy of the War had separated him from England for ever, it was still alive. In a penetrating and sympathetic epilogue, Mr. Benson makes us aware of this. "Hate without such furnace of underlying longing can never remain molten," he writes. If hate is the feeling with which Kaiser William's name is most readily associated in English minds, we should remember it is hate based on rejection.

~The Tablet, 12/12/1936

An emperor in exile

There is a charming picture, at the beginning of this vivid new biography, of Victoria, Princess Royal of England, receiving ~ by the management of her parents ~ a proposal of marriage from Prince Frederick William of Prussia, before she was fifteen. The desire of Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort for a growing friendliness between Germany and England, however, received small help from the union, for the young bride ~ English in Prussia and Prussian in England ~ was not liked by Bismarck. To that stern Chancellor her eldest son, William ~ psychologically as well as physically injured at birth ~ was strongly drawn. William's nature was hardened but not strengthened by his disability. The inferiority complex which it caused grew into a love, as extravagant as any Oriental's, of the superficial trappings of power. Greedy for uniforms and spectacles, self-deluding, screwing himself to dismiss Bismarck because that mighty shadow dwarfed his own, his lact act at the outbreak of the Great War is entirely in character ~ the resigning of his English military and naval rank. A grand study of the man, his relations, and his surroundings, which cannot but enhance Mr Benson's already high reputation.

~Western Daily Press and Bristol Mirror, 02/01/1937

The interesting thing to note in this book is that the biographer of Queen Victoria and Edward VII writes critically not only of the kaiser but of the kaiser's English relations, his mother who was Victoria's daughter, and his uncle Edward VII. There is an apparent disillusioned note in this new book by the former apologist for royalty.

~The New Masses, 12/01/1937

A chatty, superficial and inaccurate record.

~Dr. G. P. Gooch in Notes on New Books, 1937?  [Haha ~ don't dress it up, mate!]

The Kaiser and English Relations caused [Benson] some bother, as he had originally had 'William II' in the title, and referred throughout the text to 'the Emperor'. His publishers maintained that the reader would be confused into thinking that 'William II' referred to a different emperor from the one everybody referred to as the Kaiser. Fred did not think this at all reasonable. “The mentality of anyone who maintains that the title 'The Kaiser' connotes William II, but that the title 'William II' connotes somebody else, is, frankly, outside my comprehension.” Nevertheless, he was overruled and his title amended.

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

The Everlasting Silence

Fiction, kind of ~ short story or prose poem or something
First published in Lady's Realm, January 1898
Collected in Sea Mist, 2005
(First read 13/02/2015)


The story ~ such as it is ~ goes something like this: before God created Eve to keep Adam occupied, his best pal was ... erm ... a thing called Silence, and the pair of them had a whale of a time together.  Now Eve, being a woman like what she was, talked, and Silence didn't like this, so took umbrage ... or something ... then spent the next few thousand years observing the Sons of Adam and their wicked ways ... until ... erm ... did I mention that Silence looked rather like the Sphinx? ... or may actually have been the Sphinx? ... well anyway, the centuries passed and Silence carried on with his dudgeon, then one day he was dug up ~ okay that's enough ...
What to make of this muddy twaddle? what can the gentle readers of Lady's Realm have made of it in 1898? what is the point of it? what was EFB thinking?  Perhaps it's best just to draw a veil of silence over it ...

The King and His Reign VII: Aftermath

Post-War German hyper-inflation

Non-fiction ~ article
Published in The Spectator, 5th April 1935
1,200 words
(First read 05/02/2015)

Benson talks about the brief period of euphoria following the end of the First World War, which was so soon followed by the realization that the whole sorry, miserable, wretched, calamitous affair had really benefited precisely no-one.  The affair was estimated to have cost (max.) a truly stupendous £66,000,000,000 [sixty-six billion pounds], in today's money around £1,400,000,000,000 [erm, is that 1.4 trillion? not sure].  Depressing stuff.
Anyway, it's available online here.

The King and His Reign VI: The War

Queen Mary seems to curtsey before EFB*

Non-fiction ~ essay
Published in The Spectator, 29th March 1935
1,450 words
(First read 03/02/2015)

Benson has nothing but praise for the King's record during the First World War, coming pretty close to defining what he considered the True and Perfect English Gentleman: a man who conducted himself always with quiet, sober dignity and compassion, with the minimum of pomp and fuss (unlike that shocking Kaiser-cousin of his!), etc.  Also singled out for encomiums are the King's mother (Queen Alexandra), wife (Queen Mary), and even his son the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII).  The essay's emphasis is definitely on the royal family here, though there's stuff about the war itself too.
The article is available online here.

* Benson was visited by Queen Mary at Lamb House (Rye) on 11th March 1935 ~ "I was in the area, y'know" ~ about three weeks before this article was published.  I daresay he spent the entire visit trying to divert her attention away from his collection of antique silverware, notorious kleptomaniac that she was.
She's not really curtseying to him in the photo, by the way.