#a.c. benson

When I visited Lamb House the sexual orientation of its literary inhabitants (chiefly Henry James and EF Benson) was conspicuous by its absence......

On my way out, however, I spotted a small sticker with a QR code in the corner of the ticket office window inviting me to try a 'queer audio trail of Rye', named, ironically enough, 'Against our vanishing'.

You do not need to be in Rye, or have visited at all, to enjoy this podcast by Diarmuid Hester and David Bramwell, which features some interesting reflections on Fred's writing, commentary on the famous gay inhabitants of Rye, interviews with current residents on Rye's history and 'queer sensibility', and great gossip on the rival EF Benson societies and what they disagree on!

I will be posting in more depth about my findings on Fred over at @fredbensonenthusiast

In her book ‘EF Benson and his family and friends,’ Gwen Watkins points out that Fred’s rather rose-tinted version of his first meeting with Henry James wasn’t quite all it seemed.  He claims that he was invited down to Lamb House in the Summer of 1900.  It turns out he did the inviting, as Henry James proclaimed in an exasperated letter to a friend:

Dodo Benson has invited himself and another young man for the weekend!

Fred was after all only the annoying younger brother of his actual friend Arthur. Still, James replied indulgently thus:

I love the ‘Dear “Fred” Benson and companion’!  If it is possible to write a letter through gritted teeth, then surely this is the proof.  I note that he is anxious to emphasise that he will be ‘alone’, perhaps because he did not want Fred meeting his serious literary friends. Fred here reminds me of a certain other cheeky young man.

Fred writes amusingly in ‘Final Edition’ of the feedback he had received from James on the unpublished 'Dodo' several years before:

He wrote acknowledging the safe receipt of a sheaf of ill-written text, saying that he had not realised that it was so substantial a work....... He wrote me two or three long and kindly and brilliantly evasive letters about it. He called it “lively,” he called himself “‘corrosively critical” though he made no criticism, except that he did not find it as “ferociously literary” as his taste demanded. “Hew out a style,” he said; “it is by style we are saved,” and I drew the obvious conclusion.

Sixteen years later, on Henry James’ death, Fred had the opportunity to move in himself.  In ‘Final Edition’, he paints a picture of a series of fortunate coincidences leading to his residency there.  We know it was a little more rocky than that, especially his attempts to secure George Plank as a house-mate.

Perhaps the most eccentric arrangement followed in 1922-25, when Fred and older brother Arthur leased the property jointly.  Apart from a period of time when Fred took care of Arthur while he was suffering from depression, they made every effort to ensure they would see as little of each other as possible:

[Arthur] very naturally wanted sole occupation for himself and his friends in his vacations......All the morning, strictly undisturbed, he wrote his letters or his diary. In the afternoon he and his friend drove or walked or bicycled, timed to be back for the sacred hours from tea till dinner. For a few days at Christmas and possibly at Easter, I stayed with him at his invitation where lately I had been host helping him, as best I could, to get through the heavy days.

In 1925, Arthur's death left Fred in sole possession of the lease, ready to become a pillar of the Rye community.

More on that soon...........

Pan himself makes music on the pipe he loves, See his soft lips gliding o'er the close-ranked reeds! Nymphs that range the mountains, Nymphs that haunt the groves, Weave the dance around him in the grassy meads.

Forest Music, epigram attributed to Plato

Well, the exhibition was from last year but I thought I would just share this handy exhibition guide which gives a flavour of the diaries and A.C. Benson's milieu at Cambridge. And as a bonus, courtesy of @alovelywaytospendanevening here is Eamon Duffy talking about the latest expanded edition of the diaries which he co-edited, with some tantalising snippets:

Now that I have listened to all of them, I just wanted to give another shout-out to the MR James specialists at 'Podcast to the Curious' for their Benson family podcast episodes discussing Fred, Arthur and Hugh and their ghost stories. Of course Fred gets the highest rating, but all the episodes contain a summary of the story and some interesting discussion and speculation.

The relevant episodes are:

Episode 70: Negotium Perambulans EF Benson

Episode 73: Out of the Sea by AC Benson

Episode 75: The Traveller by RH Benson

Episode 76: How Fear Departed the Long Gallery by EF Benson

And, now that I have actually sampled them, Richard Crowest's readings of Fred's ghost stories are definitely worth a listen, and are merrily leading me down the ghost story rabbithole 😉

The Ghost Stories of EF Benson - all episodes available to download

I want to just highlight this remarkable book, available free at Project Gutenberg before I post more about Fred’s own memoirs.  If anyone has read this book it would be great to hear from you!

I read it some time ago expecting unrelenting misery.  Instead I found a nuanced and often quite funny and insightful account of a very unusual childhood. He sums up the relationship with his father thus:

On the face of it, Fred and Edmund’s childhood experiences could not have been more different, but I have been increasingly struck by the similarities.  The way that Gosse presents his dilemma at the end of the book could just as easily apply to Fred: