'Oh, to be in England ...'

Non-fiction ~ article
Published in The Spectator, 10th November 1928
955 words
(First read 30/04/2014)

Benson talks about Browning (1812-89), giving us a glimpse of the poet's visit to the Archbishop's family when Fred was a lad.  The article is mostly about Browning the man, though EFB does have a bit of a dig about Browning the playwright ~ fine one he was to talk.  The article is available online here ~ this was the second of two articles Benson wrote on this subject: for the other see here.

Reading in Bed

"Wow! this Persuasion is hot stuff!"

Non-fiction ~ essay
Published in The Spectator, 5th May 1928
1,035 words
(First read 29/04/2014)

One of those "It does exactly what it says on the tin" jobs: EFB ruminates on the pleasures of reading in bed, advises on what to read and what not to read ~ Jane Austen falls into the first category, Wuthering Heights into the second, but he of the no-doubt-stripey jimjams favours above all else things like 'the note-books of Samuel Butler' (whoever he was) and the Essays of Elia (whatever they might be).  Still, it's mildly diverting.  It can be read online here, in or out of pyjamas.

Early Brontë

Non-fiction - review
Published in The Saturday Review, 10th June 1933
690 words
(First read 24/04/2014)

EFB reviews Legends of Angria, a collection of Charlotte Brontë's juvenilia about the fantasy world she created with her brother Branwell, and which obsessed her to such a degree that "her contributions to it exceeded in length the whole of the work which made her a classic in English literature."  Fred sums up:

What of the intrinsic merit of these stories?  It may be said at once that if the manuscripts [...] had been found in some spider-webbed cupboard, [...] and that if their authorship was unknown, they would never have been fully deciphered, [...] nor would they have even found a publisher.  But they were known to be by Charlotte Brontë, and that made all the difference.  [...]  [Though they] chiefly illustrate the faults of Charlotte's classical work (or even because of that), they are immensely interesting.  The fire is there, and that passionate devotion for her art, but she was learning still, and she could not yet confine and curb the fire so that it glowed with the intense white heat of Jane Eyre and Villette: it flares and smokes and makes a great to-do, but the incandescence is lacking.

The whole thing can be read online here.

'O lyric love half-angel and half-bird'

Non-fiction - article
Published in The Spectator, 3rd November 1928
945 words
(First read 30/04/2014)

This was the first of two articles EFB wrote for The Spectator on the subject of the poet Browning (1812-89).  The tone of both is fairly gossipy, particularly so for this one in which Benson talks about the poet's relationship with his wife, which is mildly amusing in parts, and of his feud with another dead poet Fitzgerald* who apparently didn't reckon much to Mrs B.  I'm afraid I'm a hopeless philistine when it comes to poetry: I entirely see why it appeals to people ... but it doesn't appeal to me.
Anyway, the article is available online here.  For the follow-up article see here.



*He wasn't dead at the time, obviously.

May 29th, 1928

Non-fiction ~ article
Published in The Spectator, 1st June 1928¹

835 words
(First read 20/04/2014)

29th May 1928 was, apparently, one of those days, like the one we had a couple of years ago², when the kind of folk who believe in ropey old prophecies (Nostradamus etc.) believe that the world is going to end.  Speaking with the authority of someone who knows what he's talking about, which he does, and in his best quietly sarcastic style, EFB pooh-poohs the very notion that the precise or, as he wittily points out, precise-ish measurements of the Great Pyramid foretell anything whatsoever.  The article is available online here and jolly good fun it is.


¹ The article was collected in Sea Mist: Collected Spook Stories Volume 5 (2005).
² 21st December 2012.

There Arose a King

Faction ~ sketch
Published in The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories, 1920
Approx. 4,500 words
(First read 14/04/2014)

As I said in my post on David Blaize and the Blue Door, it's a real shame EFB didn't write more stuff about animals as he always excelled himself in charm and ~ particularly here ~ humour when he did so.  There Arose a King picks up where 'Puss-cat' finishes and recounts the formative years of his Persian cat Cyrus, king of the household from day one.  As I say, it's very funny in parts ~ in large parts: it actually had me laughing out loud.  I'll just give one example ~ this happens during a heatwave:

The heat also increased [Cyrus'] somnolence, and one morning, when he came up to breakfast with me, he fell asleep on the sofa before I had time to cut off the little offering of kidney which I had meant to be my homage.  When I put it quite close to his nose he opened his mouth to receive it, but was again drowned in gulfs of sleep before he could masticate it.  So it stuck out of the corner of his mouth like a cigarette.  But eventually, I knew, he "would wake and remember and understand."

The story is available online here.

The Ape

Fiction ~ short story
First published in The Storyteller, May 1917
Collected  in The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories, 1920
Approx 6,400 words
(First read 13/04/2014)

We're firmly on Image in the Sand territory with this tale of the supernatural.  The action takes place in Luxor/Karnak in Egypt; it's the everyday tale of a rich young gent (Hugh: no relation) who acquires a whatchacallit ... a talisman, in the shape of a monkey, which, so we're told, the owner merely has to say the name of three times, while carefully clicking together the heels of his ruby slippers*, in order to become 'lord of all apes'.  This poor sap has the misfortune to be in love with Benson Bitch Type No. 1, a posh young lady "whose mission in life appeared to be to make as miserable as possible the largest possible number of young men."  Having arranged to go and gawp at Karnak by moonlight with Hugh, she throws him over at the last minute for the newly-arrived man she really intends to marry.  She even has the brass neck to ask our Hughie if she and her marital victim can borrow his horses to make the same excursion!  At this our hapless hero feels himself to be 'one shaking black jelly of wounded anger'.  (I rather like that.)  In despair (presumably) he asks the heartless hag to marry him; she fobs him off; he lends the pair his geegees but decides to follow them to Karnak in secret.  Coming across them snogging in one of the temples there he does the incantation thing, summoning a zillion apes which are entirely in his power, it's all (for once) fairly exciting, and then ... Benson bottles it.
A crushingly disappointing tale.  It's available online here.

*Okay, I invented this bit.

THE CRITICS

The Passenger and The Ape—for all their professional verve seem somewhat perfunctory and hence don't quite make it [as first-rate].

~Alexis Lykiard. Quoted from his review of Ash-Tree Press' The Passenger, first published in All Hallows magazine, 02/2000