Impossible Life of Mary Benson, The

by Bolt, Rodney

  AS GOOD AS GOD,

  AS CLEVER AS THE DEVIL

  THE IMPOSSIBLE LIFE

  OF MARY BENSON

  RODNEY BOLT

  First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2011 by Atlantic Books,

  an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

  Copyright © Rodney Bolt 2011

  The moral right of Rodney Bolt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright holders.

  The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 0 85789 582 0

  eBook ISBN: 978 184354 861 4

  Printed in Great Britain

  Atlantic Books

  An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

  Ormond House

  26–27 Boswell Street

  London

  WC1N 3JZ

  www.atlantic-books.co.uk

  For mothers

  Love is God

  Mary Benson

  CONTENTS

  List of Illustrations

  The Benson Line

  A Word on the Book

  Prologue

  PART I Minnie

  PART II Mrs Benson

  PART III Ben

  Acknowledgements

  Notes

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  p.11 Edward White Benson (Senior) and Harriet Benson. A. C. Benson, The Life of Edward White Benson, Sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, Vol 1, 1899.

  p.27 Mrs Mary Sidgwick. A. C. Benson, The Life of Edward White Benson, Sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, Vol 1, 1899.

  p.46 Mary Benson. E. F. Benson, Mother, 1925.

  p.47 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, 1859.

  p.52 Revd E. W. Benson and his wife. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Benson adds 19, (#14 & #15).

  p.60 Wellington College. A. C. Benson, The Life of Edward White Benson, Sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, Vol 1, 1899.

  p.63 E. W. Benson. A. C. Benson, The Life of Edward White Benson, Sometime Archbishop of Canterbury, Vol 1, 1899.

  p.71 ‘Willie We Have Missed You’. Public Domain.

  p.74 The Doubt: Can These Dry Bones Live? by Henry Bowler, 1855. The Granger Collection/Topfoto.

  p.82 Elizabeth Cooper with Hugh. A. C. Benson, Hugh, Memoirs of a Brother, 1915.

  p.90 The Benson family at Wellington College. A. C. Benson, The Trefoil, 1923.

  pp.108–9 Sketches in letters from Mary Benson to Ellen Hall. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Benson 3/40, fols 182, 184.

  p.114 Nellie and Maggie. A. C. Benson, Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, 1917.

  p.139 Maggie with some of her pets. A. C. Benson, Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, 1917.

  p.143 The Family at Lis Escop. A. C. Benson, The Trefoil, 1923.

  p.172 Fred Benson. E. F. Benson, Our Family Affairs 1867–1896, 1920.

  p.174 Ethel Smyth. World History Archive/Topfoto.

  p.205 Maggie Benson. A. C. Benson, Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, 1917.

  p.210 Maggie with Nettie Gourlay. A. C. Benson, Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, 1917.

  p.229 Sketches from Hugh’s Egyptian diary. Reproduced by permission of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Benson 1/58, fols 151v, 159v.

  p.233 Queen Victoria celebrates her Diamond Jubilee. Topfoto.

  p.242 Mary Benson with Maggie. A. C. Benson, Life and Letters of Maggie Benson, 1917.

  p.246 Motorized delivery wagon. Mary Evans.

  pp.248 & 251 Tremans. Reproduced by kind permission of the websmaster at horstedkeynes.com.

  p.264 A visit to Tremans. Reproduced by kind permission of the websmaster at horstedkeynes.com.

  p.271 The ‘Boys’ at Tremans. A. C. Benson, Hugh, Memoirs of a Brother, 1915.

  p.299 Beth. A. C. Benson, The Trefoil, 1923.

  p.311 Mary Benson. E. F. Benson, Mother, 1925.

  THE BENSON LINE

  A WORD ON THE BOOK

  The Bensons were hopelessly literate. The offspring of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson, and his wife Mary, formed (said the composer Dame Ethyl Smyth) an ‘unpermissibly gifted family’. Mary Benson’s children wrote their own magazine, played word games incessantly, kept scrapbooks of stories and poems. As adults, they became so prolific that their sister Maggie remarked: ‘Some of the family really must emigrate, or English literature will be flooded.’ Maggie produced a philosophical treatise and an archaeological study of the Egyptian Temple of Mut. All three of her brothers wrote novels. A. C. (Arthur) Benson also published poems – most notably the words for ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ – as well as literary essays, biography and uplifting musings. E. F. (Fred) Benson is today best known for his ‘Mapp and Lucia’ books, but his vast literary output also included history, biography and writing about sport. None of them ever married. As Maggie once commented: ‘The odd burst of books in a non-marrying family is better than marriage.’ Mary Benson did not herself join this literary whirligig, but in the novels of her children and in their biographies she frequently flashes by.

  In all manner of ways, the Bensons wrote about themselves. Arthur produced biographies of their father the Archbishop, of brother Hugh and of Maggie. Fred wrote one of their mother (though it is largely about himself); both brothers wrote books on the family as a whole, and Maggie came up with one about their pets. Members of the family appear, thinly disguised if at all, in their fiction. Characters may even bear the names of the author’s real siblings. Yet they were a reticent family, locked up and guarded in their relations with others, often not really even in touch with themselves. They fudge issues in their biographies and tell truths in the fiction; sometimes delude themselves in their diaries yet unwittingly reveal themselves in their letters.

  When Arthur writes a beautiful account of a childhood walk with his father, something in his tone – and in the eulogizing nature of Victorian biography – creates a niggle of doubt; when, in his novel Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, the boy Arthur writes ‘I hate Papa’ on a piece of paper and buries it in the garden, the incident has an aura of autobiographical authenticity. The Bensons’ writings present an acute version of a well-worn but nonetheless enduring problem, that of the tricky relation between an author’s life and work. It is an issue that often leads to tiresome speculation – something I have hoped to avoid. Yet the Bensons, who were at times quite open about the autobiographical nature of their novels, do present something of a special case. When it comes to their own work, one feels, the truth frequently lies somewhere in the interstice between the biography and the fiction.

  In grappling with this problem, I became inspired by the idea of a commonplace book – those all-purpose notebooks so beloved of writers, where one page might contain a poem that has caught the eye, another a striking phrase or two, or the opening lines of a novel, and yet another a laundry list. I have also found myself imagining a Benson family scrapbook, full of drawings and word sketches, photographs, memorabilia and stories. These id
eas suggested a structure that at the very least would deal with the old problem in a different way.

  On the banks of the stream that was Mary Benson’s life, I have placed paragraphs of fiction, something to note as you pass by – extracts that may throw a more penetrating light on the flow of the non-fiction. These are an open admission of what has influenced my perception, placed there in the hope that they might contribute a shade or two to the reader’s own. As the idea of a commonplace book grew in my mind, I decided, in addition to extracts from Benson novels, to include further Bensonia, fragments compiled from contemporary sources, as well as other images and writings that may briefly divert attention and, without labouring a point, simply say, ‘Think on this for a moment’ – items that might give a context, provide an illustration, or even a note of contradiction; passages that caught my own eye along the way, and might take the reader on a similar journey. All the while, the main thrust of the narrative tells Mary Benson’s story.

  There is a sense in which all biography contains an element of fiction, is an imagined truth created from the available base of verifiable facts. At one end of the spectrum are those impressive, scholarly studies that record almost all known data and every notable event of a subject’s life. This is not such a book. Nor is it a broad cultural history of the subject’s times. Its focus is domestic and intimate; its aim to paint a personal portrait of a woman, her marriage, her loves, the trials of her spirit, and of her vivid, difficult, ‘unpermissibly gifted’ family.

  Rodney Bolt

  Amsterdam 2011

  PROLOGUE

  On Sunday, 11 October 1896, Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, insufferable to the end, died on his knees in church saying the Confession, ending a life of relentless success.

  At that moment his wife Mary – ‘Ben’ to her intimates – became nobody. Life as consort to the Archbishop had been led in a ‘thunderous whirlpool’, a ‘beating fervent keen pulsating life’, of queens and countesses, of discussing politics with prime ministers and dining with poets laureate. William Gladstone had proclaimed her ‘the cleverest woman in Europe’; Queen Victoria had on occasion affectionately foregone the royal ‘we’. ‘All this is over,’ Mary wrote in her diary, ‘it has fallen to pieces around us.’

  Edward White Benson had ruled over his wife, from the moment he wooed the young Minnie Sidgwick (as Mary then was) and throughout their marriage. His death created a vacuum not of intimacy, but of meaning. ‘There is nothing within, Good Lord, no power, no love, no desire – no initiative,’ she declared. ‘He had it all and his life entirely dominated mine. Good Lord, Good Lord – give me a personality.’ As Mrs Benson, Mary had held gleaming pearls, ‘always on one string, worn, carried about till they seemed as if they had some real coherence. In a moment the string is cut – they roll to all corners of the room – a necklace for glory & beauty no longer, but just scattered beads. Who will string my life together once more?’

  When Ben woke up one morning a few days after her husband’s death, Lucy Tait, beside her in bed, was already helping her to find an answer. Lucy, the daughter of Edward Benson’s predecessor as Archbishop, had long been part of the Benson household. By the time Edward was buried, and Ben and Lucy were seeking respite in Egypt, Ben could assert: ‘I have never had time to be responsible for my own life. In a way I feel more grown up now than I ever have before – strange, when for the first time in my 55 years I am answerable to nobody no-one has the right to censure my actions, and I can do what I like. What a tremendous choice!’

  PART ONE

  MINNIE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Little Minnie Sidgwick was eleven years old in the spring of 1852. She was a sunny child, plump, high-spirited, nimble of mind, gay and adventurous. ‘Minnie is more volatile than her brothers,’ she overheard her mother remark. Minnie was a little frightened of her mother.

  Not too long ago, Minnie had called herself ‘Mama’s ickle tresor’. She said she loved her mother, as a daughter should. Mrs Sidgwick spoke firmly about duty. She was inclined to check the child’s natural frivolity. Yet little Minnie was not simply inclined to pleasure; she desired to please. She did not like church, but she said her prayers obediently enough. Her mother wanted her love. Minnie hated disappointing her.

  Mrs Sidgwick was practical, matter-of-fact and a formidable trainer of servants. She was fond of moral maxims. ‘There’s many a poor person would be thankful for that,’ was one, or: ‘I cannot understand people caring for luxuries.’ Luxury for Minnie – extreme luxury, to the point even of wicked indulgence – came in the form of the simultaneous enjoyment of a soft chair, a book and an orange. Love, warmth and comfort were to be found in the person of her nurse, Beth, a wiry, twinkle-eyed Yorkshirewoman.

  Minnie’s father was dead. She did not remember him at all, as he had gone when she was just a few months old. Her favourite brothers, Henry and Arthur, had but a hazy recollection of him, perhaps conjured for them by portraits and family conversation, but the eldest, William, had known him. Papa had been a headmaster in Yorkshire, near their grandfather’s home of Skipton Castle, but Minnie and her family were now planted comfortably in one of the elegant new houses overlooking Durdham Down, on the edge of Bristol, together with her cousins Ada and Eleanor, her maiden aunt Etty, Nurse Beth, Frisk the dog and a canary called Dickey.

  Cousin Edward arrived on a visit a short while before Minnie’s eleventh birthday. Edward belonged to the mature, mysterious world inhabited by Minnie’s mother and aunts, having reached the advanced age of nearly twenty-three. He was Ada and Eleanor’s elder brother. Their father and Minnie’s father had been cousins, so really that made Edward and Minnie second cousins. He was at Cambridge. He was quite the dandy (his accoutrements for chapel included lilac gloves and a silk necktie decorated with flowers and toucans) and he was strikingly beautiful. He had long, abundant, light golden-brown hair, pale blue eyes under a high forehead, a straight, noble nose and a mouth like an angel’s, which curved and dimpled delicately at the corners. His face danced with eager, active looks, and he blushed frequently, through sheer pleasure. Minnie’s bachelor uncles in Yorkshire were besotted with him, as was the household at Bristol.

  On an earlier visit, when Minnie was only eight, she had impressed Edward by reciting from memory one of Lord Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, hundreds of energetically rhythmic lines of poetry peppered with Latin names. This and her knowledge of ‘Bible history and English history. . . to say nothing of geography, and writing and drawing’ had so delighted Edward that he submitted her to ‘a good examination in Latin grammar, to the end of the pronouns’. Minnie had passed.

  On this visit, Minnie’s ‘mighty favourite’ was Sir Walter Scott’s The Lord of the Isles. She loved poetry and relished the romantic and adventurous. Though she was a little dumpy in her ballooning girl’s skirt and sausagey ankle-length pantaloons, and a touch plain with her full cheeks and straight, dark hair, Minnie’s brightness, bubble and verve transformed her features. As she read The Lord of the Isles for Cousin Edward, he was struck by ‘the keenness and depth of her thought: how her eye would flash with a fine expression, and the really striking voice and gestures with which she would read through a fine passage’. She also read to him from Tennyson’s The Princess, and he was much moved by the Prince’s declaration that a man who does not love a woman leads a ‘drowning life besotted with sweet self. . . Or keeps his wing’d affections clipt with crime’. Love, the inspiring homily continued, encourages men and women to grow together, each absorbing the strengths of the other, a man to ‘gain in sweetness and in moral height’ (women being morally superior to men in their lack of sordid urges), and a woman (given her naturally weaker mind) to expand in ‘mental breadth’ – until at last ‘she set herself to man / Like perfect music unto noble words’.

  One night, as little Minnie half lay on the sofa on which Cousin Edward was sitting, she asked him:

  ‘Edward, how long will it be before I am as tall as i
f I was standing on that stool?’

  ‘I don’t know very well, Minnie, five years perhaps. . . ’

  ‘When I am twenty I shall be taller than that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When I am twenty, how old shall you be?’

  ‘Thirty-two.’

  ‘Thirty-two! Edward, I shan’t look so little compared to you, shall I, when I’m twenty and you’re thirty-two, as I do now that I’m eleven and you’re twenty-three?’

  ‘No, no, you won’t, Minnie.’

  ‘This unexpected close [of the conversation] made me blush indeed,’ wrote Edward in his diary, ‘and the palms of my hands grew very hot.’ A few nights later, he spoke to Mrs Sidgwick, saying that ‘if Minnie grew up the same sweet and clever girl that she was’ he should like to make this ‘fine and beautiful bud’ his wife.

  FROM THE PROLOGUE OF ALFRED TENNYSON’S THE PRINCESS

  She tapt her tiny silken-sandal’d foot:

  ‘That’s your light way; but I would make it death

  For any male thing but to peep at us.’

  Petulant she spoke, and at herself she laugh’d:

  A rosebud set with little wilful thorns,

  And sweet as English air could make her, she:

  But Walter hail’d a score of names upon her,

  And ‘petty Ogress’, and ‘ungrateful Puss’,

  And swore he long’d at college, only long’d,

  All else was well, for she-society.

  Cousin Edward’s visit concluded in a most exciting manner. One Wednesday evening at the end of March, just a few days after Minnie’s birthday and the day before Edward’s examination results were due to be published, the family sat down to dinner with Edward at the head of the table. He was in the middle of telling a long story when Chacey the butler came in, coughed quietly and said: ‘If you please, sir, a gentleman from Cambridge wishes to see you.’ An old man called Mr Martin, swathed in coat and shawls and still carrying his hat and carpet-bag, followed, somewhat breathless. Edward fell silent. Mr Martin greeted them all, then said something to Edward that made Minnie’s cousin leap about the room and have to hold on to the doorpost to support himself. Frisk the dog, excited by all the rumpus, seized Edward’s trouser leg and growled and shook until he had to be pulled off. Mr Martin grasped the young man’s hand, stroking, kneading and folding it until it was quite numb. Mr Martin, it transpired, was the Bursar of Trinity College, and Edward’s most affectionate protector. His great news was that Edward had won the Senior Medal in the Classical Tripos, the highest of university honours.