The Weaker Vessel

Fiction ~ novel
Published March 1913
Approx. 138,000 words 




















THE CRITICS

Mr Benson has written his latest novel in a serious mood. There is little of his usual froth and bubble, and no Lady Sunningdales enliven the pages. Nor does the story possess the vitality and delightful humanness of The Challoners and some of his fellows. Eleanor and Harry Whittaker are very interesting to read about, but the Eleanor of the first few chapters who peruses The Second Mrs Tanqueray in secret, and rebels against her duty loving stepmother is much nearer the reader's heart than the Eleanor who says “I forgive you, Harry dear,” at frequent intervals. Harry is often in need of forgiveness. When, as tutor in the house where Eleanor is governess, he wins her love, he possesses good looks, qualified by a weak mouth, and a gift for play writing. Unfortunately this gift requires to be stimulated to do its work well. Half a glass of whisky will enable it to achieve in a couple of hours, what a whole day's solid work has left undone. “From habit, just as people will take a little more bread at breakfast which they do not want, in order to put on it the butter on their plates, which they do no want either,” he gets into the way of finishing the glass. As a matter of course the habit grows. Eleanor discovers it some time after a successful play enabled Harry to marry her. Then the fight begins ~ Eleanor's love versus the drink which gives Harry such happy moods of inspiration. The battle is fierce, for a long time the enemy, reinforced by the actress Maria Anstruther, is victorious, and it is only a chance street accident that gives Eleanor the final victory. In The Weaker Vessel the author displays all his delightful insight into human nature and the little trivialities of life, and while this quality continues to pervade his books they will never contain an uninteresting page.

~The Manchester Courier, 07/03/1913

There are many people, we imagine, who will consider Mr E. F. Benson's latest story, The Weaker Vessel […], the best he has yet written, and certainly its character-studies very nearly approach the high-water mark in modern fiction. Eleanor Ramsden, daughter of a clergyman of peculiarly lovable character, leaves home owing to a disagreement with her stepmother, and accepts a position as governess in the family of an acquaintance. In this same family Harry Whittaker, son of Lord Prinstead, a drunken peer, is acting as tutor, and in and between his tutorial duties is engaged upon the writing of a play, the composition of which owes a good deal to Eleanor's criticism and suggestion. The play is produced, makes a sensation, and Whittaker and Eleanor are soon afterwards married. For a time they are blissfully happy, until at last the young wife discovers that the brilliant passages of her husband's plays ~ written always after she has retired for the night ~ are induced by alcoholic over-indulgence. She exerts herself to save him, and only partially succeeds. While under the spell of her wonderfully subtle influence Whittaker is enabled to ward off the demon but presently another equally potent and less beneficent influence enters his life in the person of the leading actress for whom his play has been written, but whose influence is eventually conquered by the splendid patience and tactful winsomeness of his wife. The character of Eleanor Ramsden is indeed a magnificent creation, and one upon which its creator may well be congratulated. The conception is striking and is the more convincing on account of its very unconventionality, and it is no small tribute to Mr Benson's literary skill that even the wayward Harry Whittaker, with all his faults and with all his failings, never for one moment exasperates or forfeits the sympathy of the reader. The book, indeed, is in every sense so far removed from the commonplace and so brilliantly written throughout that it must be reckoned certainly amongst the most important novels of the present publishing season, and is, moreover, probably one of the few novels of modern production for which the discriminate reader is likely to find a permanent place in his bookshelf.

~ The Liverpool Echo, 08/03/1913

Mr E. F. Benson has perhaps been more praised and more blamed than any other living novelist. He has, of course, the defects of his qualities, and it is impossible for any of us to be always on the heights. But despite occasional adverse criticism, each of Mr E. F. Benson's novels is eagerly welcomed, for in certain senses he gives us what no other writer can do. His latest book, The Weaker Vessel, is one of his longest novels, and he gives a powerful picture of the heights of heroism and unselfishness to which a woman can rise to shield and help her 'Weaker Vessel'. Harry, with his brilliant brain and wholly unbalanced temperament, would not retain the tolerance, far less the love, of any ordinary woman, but Mr Benson's unerring skill makes Eleanor's attitude and large-heartedness simply the outcome of a natural soul. No one can describe London life and society with a wittier and happier pen than Mr Benson, and the creation of Mrs Ramsden along would make the book a joy. Who does not recognise in her the patient, exasperating, unselfish, posing martyr who renders life intolerable to those round her. The Weaker Vessel is distinctly one of Mr E. F. Benson's typical and excellent novels.

~Aberdeen Daily Journal, 10/03/1913

Mr E. F. Benson has made wonderful strides as an author since he wrote the story of undergraduate life at Cambridge, Babe B.A. [sic]. That was bright enough in its way, but it scarcely foreshadowed the brilliant work which was to follow. To-day Mr Benson is unquestionably one of our most popular novelists, and a new work from his pen is eagerly welcomed. It is not difficult to discover the reason for this popularity. Mr Benson's novels depict life [as] it really is; his characters are so thoroughly human. His heroes and heroines are not those perfect beings whom one so frequently finds in the realms of fiction, but ordinary, everyday people, with faults and failings like the rest of mankind.

In The Weaker Vessel, his latest novel, Mr Benson is at his best. The character who furnishes the title is Harry Whittaker, an amiable but weak young man, who when we first make his acquaintance is acting as a private tutor, but soon afterwards blossoms forth into a successful playwright. There is, however, one great drawback. He finds he can only do good work under the stimulus of alcohol. “He had no craving for alcohol in itself, he merely employed it as a means towards an intellectual end, to give him the sparkle and freedom of brain that were necessary to the creation of incisive dramatic writing.” Time and again he resolves to do without it, and to use no spur except that of his own desire, but in the end it proves too strong for him.

Acting as governess in the same house as Whittaker is Eleanor Ramsden, a high-spirited girl, with whom he finds he has many traits and tastes in common. While his ambition is to write a play that shall be accepted by a great actor-manager, she is tremendously keen on becoming an actress, and has already given proof of her talent. Their marriage follows the production of Harry's first play, and for a time there seems nothing to mar their happiness, but it is when her husband is at work on his second play that Eleanor discovers his weakness. To his wife he explains the position:

“There's nothing to be said of the habit I have got into. But the matter is that I can't write unless I've been drinking. Drink ~ I don't mean getting drunk ~ sets something loose in my brain, that which we used to call the elf or the Uncontrollable. And when it's loose ~ very often just one whisky and soda lets its loose ~ I get so keen about my work that I just must keep it loose. And that means drinking more. So it goes on, I drinking instinctively and working, utterly happy because I know I am doing good work, and that the best part of my brain is active. You remember my reading you The Dilemma in the schoolroom at the Wilkins? And how you put your finger on certain bits of slack stuff? All that, just that, and nothing else, was written without ~ without help. All that you thought was good was written with help. In consequence, I did no good work. Of course, it was a rotten plan to trifle with such methods at all, but it was so easy to persuade myself that I would just finish this act, or just finish this play, and that then I would give it up.”

This is what Harry is always saying: “I will give it up when I have done this,” but he has not the strength of will to leave it alone for long. Through it all, however, Eleanor is his good angel. He repeatedly falls away, but she never turns from him, even when faced with a worse trial in the form of a dangerous intimacy between her husband and a leading actress for whom he was been writing a play. She is ever striving to lift him up to higher things, and in the end she has her reward.

The Weaker Vessel, while quite unlike the customary stage novel, gives one an interesting glimpse of the work involved in the writing and production of a play, and reveals something of the terrible nervousness experienced both by dramatist and actor on a first night.

~The Cambridge Independent Press, 14/03/1913

There is a world of irony in the title Mr E. F. Benson has chosen for his latest novel. Eleanor [Ramsden] marries a man who has made a brilliant success of his first play, and is proud of her husband and his work. The awakening comes when she learns that the cannot write save under the stimulus supplied by intoxicants. He is, indeed, the weaker vessel, but her large-hearted love prevents the catastrophe that seems inevitable. Worse is to come, but still she sacrifices herself for the sake of the man she loves. Mr Benson has given us a masterly analysis of temperament and character. He probes the full depths and measures the heights of human nature, and in both he is equally successful.

~The Courier [Dundee], 20/03/1913

This is a contrast in its quietness to the liveliness of the book which first attracted attention to Mr. Benson as a novelist. Dodo had more sparkle, but The Weaker Vessel has far more fidelity to life. It is a serious and truthful study of social conditions and of individual temperament. Particularly exact in its realism is the character of the self-sufficient and narrow-minded rector's wife who makes miserable the life of her cheerful, ambitious, and gifted stepdaughter. Equally good in its depiction is the character of the man the girl marries—a genius as a writer of plays only when he is under the inspiration of alcohol, and therefore inevitably a weak though lovable character, whose life trends naturally downward. While his power weakens, his wife's strengthens; and she becomes a fine embodiment of honor and faithfulness.

~The Outlook (US), 05/04/1913

In Mr. Benson's new novel he draws five admirably contrasted principal characters. The father of Eleanor, the heroine, Mr. Ramsden, a wise and benevolent country clergyman, has that knowledge of the world which comes from the Church not having been his first profession. In striking contrast to him is his well-intentioned wife, who succeeds in being the most disagreeable person who has appeared in fiction for a long time past. The other three characters are the gentleman who enacts the name part of the piece (the novel is so concerned with theatrical matters that it is impossible to help slipping into theatrical language); Eleanor, his wife, who, besides being by far the better man of the two, is a heaven-born genius on the boards; and the Circe of the book, who leads Harry Whitaker astray. She, however, is a far more conventional figure. Harry himself is a striking study, and Mr. Benson almost persuades his readers that his hero was right in yielding to the temptation of giving way to drink when it enabled him to write such admirable dramas. Eleanor Whitaker is herself a well-drawn and credible figure, though the reader would like to hear the opinion of a professional actor-manager on the possibility of her taking the town by storm on the stage without ever having learned the rudiments of her art. The book cannot be called epoch-making, but it is pleasant reading, though the unfortunate Harry is obliged to be half-paralysed before his moral character can be rescued.

~The Spectator, 26/04/1913

In this novel there are two weaker vessels, namely, the father and the husband of the heroine; and for some time we were unable to make up our minds which weaker vessel was intended to give the title to the book. If this were a play, the leading female part would not be that or the heroine, but that of her step-mother—the very virtuous, correct, and managing clergyman's wife. A clever actress might make a great deal of the character. Whether the story would make a play we are not so sure. The vicar's wife gave much of her goods to feed the poor; and she once cheerfully gave her body—at least, her hands—to be burned, by putting out the flames in the clothes of a little boy, who had set himself on fire at a Christmas tree. "The child was not hurt at all, so prompt was her aid ; but he was hurt afterwards when Mrs. Ramsden repeated the occurrence to his mother, adding that she had repeatedly warned the children not to touch the candles. But in no reasonable mind could there be any doubt as to the overwhelming weight that duty occupied in the spiritual economy of Mrs. Ramsden. She put out the small male infant, with risk to herself, as cheerfully and as ungrudgingly as she repeated his misconduct afterwards to his mother." This is the key to her actions and sayings, whenever she comes on the stage; and they usually "bring down the house." As to the lengthy descriptions of the married hero's gradual falling in love with an objectionable actress, and his equally gradual taking to drinking, we found them dull, although cleverly described. By the way, the hero's wife was also an actress, and a very fine one. After seeing her perform, in her greatest character, Mrs. Ramsden said: "The audience were very much pleased, but to me she did not seem to be acting at all. She spoke and did things as she might have in the vicarage at home." And when told that this was the highest tribute she could give her, Mrs. Ramsden replied: "You mean that Harry wrote the part for her, so that there was no acting to be done. I am sure that was very clever of him." The woman is really splendid all through.

~The Tablet, 14/06/1913

E. F. Benson, who customarily avoids problems, presents in The Weaker Vessel an extraordinarily strong and searching study of the man who yields to the devil and the flesh. Whoever desires, without personal experiment, familiarity with the mechanism of surrendering to temptation, cannot do better than to consider the ways of the hero.

~The Atlantic Monthly [US], 11/1913

The Weaker Vessel (1913) contains two women characters who are essentially Bensonian: they may be copied from life, but they do not live. One is the daughter of a viscount and the wife of a country clergyman, and she has all the aggressive qualities that one expects of such women. She lives in an atmosphere of Sunday schools and choir practices, and she is convinced of her absolute righteousness. She exhibits a monumental lack of humour, and her bright, hard verbosity has a stunning effect both on the reader and on Eleanor, her step-daughter. Eleanor is the heroine who, rebelling against her narrow life in the parsonage, marries Harry Whittaker, an alcoholic playwright who has leapt to fame with his first play. Without any training or experience of life Eleanor becomes a famous actress, portraying subtle and varied parts with consummate triumph, taking London by storm. Also among the characters is Marian Anstruther, the stage siren, who wears rose-madder cloaks, and Louis Grey, a high-minded actor-manager who is in love with Eleanor, but at a respectful distance. Not only is Eleanor a great actress, she is wise, large-hearted and loving, and when she discovers her husband's shameful secret she sets out to save him; and she does not desert him even when the siren influences him to descend even further into the depths of degradation.

Harry injures his spine in a motor accident and will never be able to walk again, and Eleanor gives praise to God for delivering him into her hands ~ no more naughtiness for Harry, and no more rivals for her. Marian disappears into outer darkness, though not before Eleanor forgives her for being Harry's mistress. The book ends with a hint of spring in the air after a bitter winter. Harry is about to start another play and Eleanor to resume her acting.

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

Typical of the notices [E. F. Benson was getting in the pre-war years] are those which greeted The Weaker Vessel (1913), whose characters include an alcoholic playwright, a temperamental actress, and the stock clergyman's wife stuffed with nauseating piety. The Gentlewoman wrote, “They are essentially Bensonian creations. They might quite possibly be copied from life, but they do not live.” The reviewer went on to lament Fred's 'surface polish, the Benson Brilliantine', because it obscured the talent beneath. New Age, having depicted Fred as 'a servile scribbler', wondered whether he was not, in fact, a satirist in disguise, which was true though not generally acknowledged. Similarly, the Western Gazette remarked that “Mr Benson attacks no problem, but merely paints portraits remorselessly; but the problem nevertheless peeps through between the lines.”

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

Alan

Fiction ~ novel
Published 1924

THE CRITICS

MR E F BENSON AGAIN

Mr E. F. Benson continues to give us novels from his busy pen, and we imagine he secures a pretty large circle of readers for them. He is something in the nature of an historical survival, and yet he manages to preserve a rather remarkable quality of youth. As far as we can remember, his sympathies are always on the side of the youthful outlook, and he succeeds, up to a point, in stating youth's case. The curious thing about him is that in the welter of modern realism, such as we owe to Wells, Bennett, Galsworthy, and their successors, he alone survives as a realist of the period before. Older novel readers remember well the revelation of a Benson story twenty-five and thirty years ago, how real it all seemed after the romantic tales of Weyman, Anthony Hope (who did not try again in his Dolly Dialogues vein), and others on the one hand, and the novels of such writers as Mrs Humpry [sic] Ward on the other. He was as refreshing as Pinero on the stage after the Robertson comedies. And now, good though he is, he is seen to be behind the times, just as, again, is Pinero. The one has been eclipsed by Beresford, Swinnerton, and Compton McKenzie [sic, again], as the other by Somerset Maughams, Stanley Houghtons, and a host of others.

Mr Benson does not alter greatly. His style to-day in Alan […] is much the same as it was in The Image in the Sand and earlier books still. Clever 'chattery' is its mark, and a species of character drawing which consists in emphasising in hard, black lines the lineaments of complex beings, made up of a hundred real people combined to make the type-people with whom his stories deal. The publishers tell us on the jacket that Alan is a 'clever study of a novelist of the old school'. It is a clever study, but Alan is no novelist who ever lived or ever could have lived. The qualities of a great many novelists or imaginary novelists are combined to make an impossible creature. Similarly with his wife and her young lover, and the lion-hunter lady who so basely deserts him for his rising young relative. They are all drawn in a way which makes one suspect that Mr Benson has no faith in his readers. He cannot trust us to see what people are.

 

~The Yorkshire Post, 24/12/1924

Alan is a successful author, twenty years older than the wife he has made a drudge. A masterful study in egotism, a departure for Benson.

~The Bookman's Guide to Fiction, 06/1925

So predominant is Alan's profession in Mr. Benson's study of an egoist, that he strikes one as an egoist who does nothing but write novels. For his selfishness lies in neglecting his wife and enslaving her as his amanuensis, and in hating his young cousin Tim because Alan fades out as a writer while Tim becomes the literary idol of the hour. His feeling toward Tim is purely professional; be does not hate him because he and Agnes, Alan's wife, fall in love with each other.

Within narrow limits Alan is a convincing egoist, but as a writer he is hardly more than a caricature. Though conveyed in a long-winded and repetitious fashion, without any of those unforgettable flashes which reveal so much, Alan's egoism is made quite clear; but as a novelist, particularly a once famous novelist, he does not ring true. His tiresome pomposity, his dull wit and complete lack of humor, his almost incredible way of composing, his ignorance of modern literature, are a little too much to bear with, considering his position; they, and not his egoism—which is quite conceivable, even in the great—turn him into a caricature.

The book fails to assume life for another reason; it is far too wordy and undramatic. It has no feeling for either pace or climax, and two potentially good scenes—Alan's finding in a literary supplement a panegyric to Tim he expected for himself, and his entrance into Mrs. Probyn's drawing-room to find Tim lionized—are stodgily mismanaged. What Mr. Benson required to

show up his egotist was not scene after scene in Alan's workroom, but a few sharp incidents, a few revealing situations, a few clipped studies of the characters at interplay. What he achieved was a book as dull as one of Alan's own.

~The Saturday Review (US), 13/06/1925

In Alan Mr. Benson has given us a novel second only to his exquisitely humorous Queen Lucia as satirical comedy. The book deals entirely with the home life of a successful novelist whose vogue is on the wane, and the story introduces us, not only to Alan and his much enduring wife, but also to certain other well-drawn and entertaining characters. Alan is a supremely selfish man, not as elaborately portrayed or of as high social rank as Meredith's Egoist, but rather a British edition of the German husbands so feelingly delineated in Elizabeth and Her German Garden and The Caravaners. Alan's wife acts as his amanuensis, and, since he is as tireless a worker as was Anthony Trollope, the conditions of her life are pitiable. Moreover, she gains but little sympathy from her mother, who was once in love with Alan herself, or her sister Dora, a worldly woman married to a rich man and able to indulge her fancy for costly garments, a hobby that engrosses her waking hours. There comes into this family one Mrs. Probyn, a social pusher of the most virulent type, whose quarry is of the intellectual rather than the titled class. In her vision Alan is the sun around which the lesser planets of her dinner-table revolve, and, as he seldom goes about in society, she regards her capture of him as the most brilliant feather in her richly adorned cap. She squirms her way into the household, using her flattering tongue as a weapon of assault, for the novelist's vanity renders him an easy mark. She soon establishes herself in his study as a temporary amanuensis, in order to relieve the wife of some of her toil, and it is not long before she becomes a permanent fixture beside him. Meanwhile, as every reader will be glad to note, a young cousin appears on the scene and relieves the wife of some of her loneliness. He is an attractive young fellow, and every woman who reads the book, especially those who are reminded by Alan of their own husbands, will wish him well.

~The Outlook (US), 04/11/1925

The little clutch of secondraters, belonging to the first half of the 1920s, are Robin Linnet (1919), Colin (1923), Alan (1924), Colin II (1925), Rex (1925), Mezzanine (1926) and Pharisees and Publicans (1926). They may be a tribute to Fred's industry, but not to his talent. He seems to have been marking time, waiting in a literary limbo, content to drift along. The seven books are either exceedingly silly or exceedingly sentimental or just dull.

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

Up and Down

Fiction ~ novel
Published 1918
Approx. 92,000 words
Available online here

The Rubicon

Fiction ~ novel
Published 9th April 1894
73,900 words

THE CRITICS

Mr Benson's very clever and deeply interesting novel ~ a novel far superior to Dodo.

~Sussex Daily News, quoted in newspaper ad of 12/06/1894

Mr Benson's second novel is better artistically than his first. The character-drawing is excellent.

~The Globe, quoted in newspaper ad of 12/06/1894

Without inquiring into the causes of the notorious success of Mr Benson's first novel, it is at least fair to say that it was not for any phenomenal exhibition of imaginative or descriptive power that his book became the comet of a season for the circulating libraries. Dodo could hardly be hailed as a sign that a new sun was rising in English fiction, and The Rubicon affords no reason for any belief that another name has been or will be added to the rolll of notable novelists. The faultlessly beautiful Eva, who very deliberately barters her attractions for wealth and position, and who, neither loving nor beloved by her husband, seduces the affections of a 'clean', handsome, and abnormally innocent youth, already engaged to someone else, is no new figure in fiction. She has done duty in hundreds of romances of that well-known class in which sin is invariably associated with diamonds in the women and immaculate evening-dress in the men. In fact, The Rubicon would not have been out of place in that imaginary publication which Mr George Moore, in a book to be presently noticed, describes as the Family Reader. Lady Hayes (Eva) is an extremely selfish person, who nevertheless does two 'sublimely unselfish things' in her short life. She gives up a lover who has discovered the wickedness of her intentions, but who is none the less bound in her chains; and she ultimately takes prussic acid as the best means of retrieving the evil she has wrought. But Mr Benson's chief object is not, one may fairly suppose, to teach us high moral lessons, and those who read his novel will look for momentary pleasure rather than for permanent profit. This being so, it must be allowed that the wit ~ such as it was ~ of Dodo, was far superior in quality to the wit of the book now before us. It is unsatisfactory as a rule to extract isolated specimens of 'humour', but we may make one or two quotations, showing the kind of thing that Mr Benson is capable of presenting to his readers. We are told that a guest at Eva's wedding, “in spite of his strawberry leaves and his pedigree and his frock-coat, trembled in his patent leather shoes, and in his confusion was vividly impressed at the idea that his Prayer-book consisted entirely of the Service for the visitation of those of riper years to be used at sea on the occasion of the Queen's accession.” Among the characteristics of '[illegible: 'the best'?] London houses' we are elsewhere informed [illegible: 'that'?] “a couple of dozen large square windows looking out on to what is technically known as 'the [illegible] garden', partly because it is round, and partly because it is sparsely planted with sooty, stunted [illegible: 'bushes'?], scattered about on what courtesy interprets to be grass.” These things may not be [illegible: 'intelligent'?] wit, but if they are not, what they meant for, and if they are, even 'the new humour' will hardly acknowledge them as its own. But in spite of its many bad qualities, The Rubicon will no doubt give pleasure to scores of [illegible: 'those'?] of the undiscriminating sort.

~The Morning Post, 11/04/1894

The author of the much talked of Dodo has followed up its success by the publication of a fresh novel, The Rubicon. Mr E F Benson is, as all the world now knows, the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but a critic of The Rubicon unhesitatingly avers that if the book has any purpose at all, it is so written as to ridicule virtue, and to applaud vice. It is perhaps as well there is in the English Church no 'Index Expurgatorius'.

~leader column of The Evening Telegraph and Star [Sheffield], 10/04/1894

We congratulate Mr Benson upon an exceptional achievement. He has conceived and executed successfully an analytical study of modern life, in which a certain salt of humour serves to keep the pages wholesome. The book is a notable advance upon Mr Benson's previous work.

~National Observer, quoted in a newspaper ad of 14/05/1894

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)