Impossible Life of Mary Benson, The

by Bolt, Rodney

  INNOCENT INTIMACIES

  Marian Halcombe speaks of her half-sister Laura Fairlie, who, the night before she weds, comes to Marian’s bed

  I won’t live without her and she won’t live without me. . . [I] love her better than my own life. . . Poor dear Laura hardly leaves me for a moment, all day; and, last night, when neither of us could sleep, she came and crept into my bed to talk to me there. ‘I shall lose you so soon, Marian,’ she said; ‘I must make the most of you while I can.’

  From The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, 1860

  Jane Eyre befriends a sick Helen Burns. . .

  Resting my head in silence on Helen’s shoulder, I put my arms around her waist; she drew me to her, and we reposed in silence.

  and comforts her as she dies of consumption

  ‘Helen!’ I whispered softly; ‘are you awake?’ [. . . ]

  ‘Can it be you, Jane?’ she asked, in her own gentle voice [. . . ]

  I got onto her crib and kissed her. . .

  ‘Jane, your little feet are bare; lie down and cover yourself with my quilt. . . How comfortable I am! That last fit of coughing has tired me a little; I feel as if I could sleep; but don’t leave me, Jane; I like to have you near me.’

  ‘I’ll stay with you, dear Helen: no one shall take me away.’

  ‘Are you warm, darling?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good-night, Jane.’

  ‘Good-night, Helen.’

  She kissed me and I her; and we both soon slumbered.

  From Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, 1847

  Lizzie, who has been pummelled by goblins and covered with the pulp and juice of their fruit, invites her dying sister Laura to partake of the juices in the hope of saving her life. . .

  She cried ‘Laura,’ up the garden,

  ‘Did you miss me?

  Come and kiss me.

  Never mind my bruises,

  Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices

  Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,

  Goblin pulp and goblin dew.

  Eat me, drink me, love me;

  Laura, make much of me:

  For your sake I braved the glen

  And had to do with goblin merchant men.’

  From ‘Goblin Market’ by Christina Rossetti,

  written in 1859 and published 1862

  Old Mrs Edwardes saw ghosts at Yately Hall – silent, hooded figures, their eyes fixed upon the ground. (Yately Hall had been built on the site of a monastery.) Mrs Edwardes was a small, sprightly woman, whose spiritualist experiences intrigued and baffled those around her, and who was eager to use her gifts as a medium. With Mary present, she had managed to induce a heavy silver pencil to rise in the air, and to float to the surface of a vessel filled with water. Despite Edward’s injunction on séances, Mary and Ada met with Mrs Edwardes and Emily for sessions of automatic writing and table-turning. The tables proved remarkably active. First, a velvet-topped one ‘began to creak and start, but went no further’, then the women tried a small candle-table, ‘which tilted and jerked and span around till we were giddy’. Finally, they lightly placed their hands on a walnut table with three claws for feet, not touching each other but with their thumbs joined; as soon as they did so it ran along the floor and ‘after a try or two’ mounted a dais and attempted to climb on to a seat. ‘I dare say if the door was open it would go out into the passage,’ exclaimed Mrs Edwardes. Instantly, the table slid towards a door (the women bustling along beside it, their hands still lying on the walnut surface), rapped it three times, drew back, struck the door with force and immediately became so heavy that none of them could move it. After that they repaired, with no apparent sense of incongruity, to their evening prayers.

  Emily had been Ada’s friend at first, but Mary – just twenty-six herself – was ‘fascinated’ by her. ‘I tried to make love, but she kept me at arm’s length,’ she wrote. But as spring moved on into summer, Mary’s friendship with Emily ‘began to tremble into life’. Soon the pair were ‘wild with joy’ in each other’s company, revelling in ‘the hot months. . .’ until Fred was born, on 24 July.

  Recalled to her duties, strained and exhausted, cast into a melancholy after Fred’s birth, Mary grew fractious not only with Edward and Mrs Sidgwick (who had come to Wellington for the confinement) but even with dear Beth. For a while she was seriously ill. The solution was a week’s seclusion, then a short holiday in Hastings with Emily, leaving the baby behind. ‘O that sweet time with Emily!’ declared Mary. Then, with an aside to her Maker: ‘How we drew together! Lord it was Thou, teaching me how to love – “friend of my married life” – how I loved her!. . . I remember how thou stirred me to know what Love was.’ Mary reluctantly returned to her baby, her toddlers and her husband, with whom she had a long talk about Emily. Edward took his young wife upon his knee, as he had done when she was a child, pronounced a blessing and prayed for her. His usual severity was no doubt tempered by her condition. Pregnancy, after all, was an illness, and the best medical men fully appreciated the connection between a woman’s internal organs and all manner of woes, including the low spirits and black moods that followed childbirth, which might develop into ‘puerperal insanity’. Edward did not forbid further contact with Emily, but gently urged Mary to resume her neglected duties.

  Mary was unmoved: ‘My heart shrank within me and became as a stone – for duties stared me in the face – I had gathered no strength to do them – bodily strength of course I hadn’t – spiritual strength I hadn’t looked for.’ Her friendship with Emily ‘rose to its height – we met daily, and we lived and loved – walks in woods – talks – she to me, I to her – I wasn’t equal to my duties at all – and neglected things terribly.’ Mary would walk along a field path through pine woods, up a narrow lane beside a stream, over the wooden bridge that crossed a dark pool edged with meadowsweet and figwort and overhung by alders, on past a timbered mill, mossy and fringed with fern, and up to Yately Hall. She went alone, or with Martin and Arthur as they grew older, sometimes with Edward and the whole family to visit old Mrs Edwardes – then Emily would take the children to pick strawberries or to fish in the pond, while the others sat talking in the shade before tea. Long after the Schwärmerei had faded, the family continued to visit, and Mrs Edwardes, Emily and Mary held the occasional séance.

  FROM A.C. (ARTHUR) BENSON’S BESIDE STILL WATERS,

  in which Hugh, the central character, recollects his childhood

  His mother had been married young, and was scarcely more than a girl when he was born; his father was already a man grave beyond his years, full of affairs, and constantly occupied. . . Looking back, it always seemed to be summer in those days. . . The country was very wild all round, with tracts of heath and sand. The melodious buzzing of nightjars in hot mid-summer evenings, as they swept softly along the heather, lived constantly in his memory. In the moorland, half a mile away, stood some brick-kilns, strange plastered cones with blackened tops, from which oozed a pungent smoke; those were too terrible to be visited alone. . . All this life was, in memory. . . a series of vignettes and pictures; the little dramas of the nursery, the fire that glowed in the grate, the savour of fresh-cut bread at meal-times, the games on wet afternoons, with a tent made out of shawls and chairs, or a fort built of bricks. . . The only very real figure was the old nurse, whose rare displeasure he had sorrowed over more than anything else in the world, and whose chance words, uttered to another servant and overheard by the child, that she was thinking of leaving them, had given him a deeper throb of emotion than anything he had before known, or was many years to know.

  Wellington College was an exciting place for a child. There were gypsies encamped on the heath and vipers (it was said) in the scrub; there were walks and adventures a-plenty, secret haunts and hiding places, encounters with inmates of Broadmoor out for exercise with their warders, visits to haunted Yately Hall, and to Eversley to see Mr Kingsley, who had now written The Water-Babies, had an enthralling collection of stuffed
birds, and whose study was a trove of exotic gifts: West Indian nuts, feather ornaments from distant lands. There was Irish Pat who prowled at night with his fierce dog and lantern, an old Roman camp, the belching brick kilns, a Catholic chapel nearby, past which Nurse Beth would hurry with a sense of horror and wickedness, resolutely pushing the perambulator and refusing to answer eager questions about what went on inside.

  Guests in their scores enlivened the scene: Grandmama Sidgwick in her cap with purple streamers, Aunt Ada, Uncle Henry and Uncle Arthur, and Aunt Etty, regal and startling in swishing silk and with a voice like a man’s. Aunt Etty had once almost torn a hymn book in two during a tug-of-war with her lady companion, and then swept from church and hooted with laughter outside. Other visitors were to be observed from behind the railings of the hall gallery, some the object of mirth – schoolboys, for whom the children invented absurd names, embarrassed and shuffling, coming for breakfast; or masters, often just as nervous, it seemed. Some were rather grand, and made even their father appear uncomfortable. Once there was a lady, small but even more dignified than Aunt Etty, with a melodious voice and clothed in black, whom Beth addressed as ‘My Majesty’.

  THE BENSON FAMILY AT WELLINGTON COLLEGE LIZZIE FOX EDWARD BENSON BETH WITH MAGGIE ARTHUR MARY BENSON WITH NELLIE MARTIN ADA BENSON

  Beth, for the Benson children, was the rock – as she had been for their mother. Mary might be ill and away from home, or preoccupied with dinners and guests, but Beth was there always. She never changed; she was totally predictable. Beth never fretted, nor scolded, never inspired fear – though her rare displeasure, or firm ‘I don’t want your sorrer’ at an insincere apology, would cause desolation until beaming forgiveness arrived. She never lost her Yorkshire accent, nor the twinkle in her eye; would gamely join in races, her feet flickering from beneath her skirts in hilariously small steps, until she had to stop with an: ‘Eh, dear, I can’t run any more: I’ve got a bone in my leg.’ Her stories were few and sorrowful, dwelling deliciously on death, and always exactly the same. She insisted that copper coins would give you ‘verdigris’ if you put them in your mouth, that the tiniest bit of cork from a ginger-beer bottle, if swallowed, would swell up inside and choke you, and she was wary of the dangers of French beans. Her love could be felt always, instinctively, and solidly. Martin, distressed, asked after her persistently when she left for just a few days when he was two, to visit her sick father. Baby Arthur screamed ‘as he has never screamed before’ when someone else tried to bathe him. For Arthur, she was the first human being that he was aware loved him; for Fred, she was a ‘loved and protecting presence’ in almost every childhood memory he had.

  FROM E. F. (FRED) BENSON’S NOVEL, ACROSS THE STREAM

  Archie Morris relates his first memory

  . . .it was the face of his nurse Blessington, leaning over his crib. She held a candle in her hand which a little dazzled him, but the sight of her face, tender and anxious, and divinely reassuring, was the point of that memory. . . as by a conjuring-trick, Blessington had appeared with her comforting presence that quite robbed the dark of its terrors. It must still have been early in the night, for she had not yet gone to bed, and had on above her smooth grey hair her cap with its adorable blue ribands in it. At her throat was the brooch made of the same stuff as the shining shillings with which a year or two later she bought the buns and sponge-cakes for tea.

  Fred’s first word was ‘Bef’, and as he began to talk a little more, at first only Beth knew what he was saying. His father and mother tried to persuade him to speak more clearly, telling him they could not understand him.

  ‘Bef can,’ said Fred.

  ‘Ah,’ said Edward, ‘but we can’t, and you are our child too, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not particler,’ retorted Fred.

  The children’s father was busy, important and fearsome. Martin, the eldest, developed a stammer almost as soon as he could talk, which seemed worse when he spoke to his father. Arthur, next in line, was secretly glad when Papa was late for luncheon – the children chattered freely with their mother, but with Edward about they were almost silent. The threat of his disapproval was ever-present, like thunderclouds on the horizon, and he had a quick eye for the smallest things – an untidy eater; a boy making a rampart of potato to dam up the gravy. He could sniff from afar the phosphorous on the fingers of a son who had picked a match off the floor, and give him a severe lecture on thieving. Yet Martin and Arthur vied for his affection, sending competing quantities of kisses and ‘best love’ (‘ove’ in little Arthur’s case, as he couldn’t say his ls) in letters when Edward was away from home. Some of Nellie’s earliest words were ‘dear Papa’, repeated over and over again. The children gathered most mornings, awed, to watch Edward shave (during which he read from the New Testament in Greek, as he abhorred wasting time). He took them on walks, made drawings of castles and cathedrals, and spent hours cutting out pictures with them, to make a beautiful collage that papered the nursery wall (in defiance of the health experts who insisted on whitewash).

  FROM A. C. BENSON’S MEMOIRS OF ARTHUR HAMILTON, A FICTIONAL BIOGRAPHY

  He disliked his father, and feared him. The tall, handsome gentleman, accustomed to be obeyed, in reality passionately fond of his children, dismayed him. He once wrote on a piece of paper the words, ‘I hate Papa,’ and buried it in the garden.

  FROM E. F. BENSON’S ACROSS THE STREAM

  Archie was frightened of his father and always went warily by the door of the room at the dark corner of the hall where this tremendous person lived. There were other dangers about that corner, for on the floor were two tiger-skins which looked as if the animal in question had, with the exception of its head, been squashed out flat. . . Archie wished the tigers’ heads had been pressed in the same way; as it was, they were disconcertingly solid and life-like, with long teeth and snarling mouths and glaring eyes. He had always made Blessington [his nurse] come right up to his father’s door with him when he went to say good-night, so that she should pilot him safely past the tigers on his entry and escort him by them again on his return. But one night his father had come out with him, and, finding Blessington waiting there, had divined, as by some awful black magic, why the nurse should be waiting, and had decreed that Archie should in future make his way across the danger zone unattended. But, next evening, the trembling Archie had fallen down on the glassy sea between the awful Scylla and Charybdis, and, convinced that his last hour had come, when these two cruel heads beheld him prostrate on the floor, had cried himself to sleep from terror of that awful ending. But next day his mother, who understood about things in general better than anybody, had caused the tigers to make friends with him, and in token of their amity they had each of them presented him with a whisker-hair. That assured their friendship, and they wished it to be understood that their snarlings and glarings were directed, not at Archie, but at Archie’s enemies. This naturally changed their whole aspect, and Archie, after he had wished his father good-night, kissed the hairy heads that had once been so terrifying, and thanked them for successfully keeping his enemies from molesting him.

  Mary was the soft cheek to Edward’s bony bristle, the cushioned sofa to Edward’s hard leather chairs. Once, when he was still ‘the tiniest fellow’, Martin had stopped as he was leaving a room and said to her: ‘Mama, I love you till my heart stands still.’ The other children adored her, too. Her laughter bubbled deliciously ‘like the sound of cool lemonade being poured out of the bottle’; the worlds she imagined were close to theirs, she was a sparkling fount of different, delightfully dotty ideas. Mama it was who bought a live parrot to entertain Arthur in the crib when he was a baby; who had a looking-glass carried in to calm a tantrum of Maggie’s, by showing her how ugly it made her. She might retire early for the night, claiming sleepiness, and behold, a short while later Fairy Abracadabra would appear in the hall, with golden wings, a hat embowered in flowers and a dress of jewels, blowing a trumpet and distributing gifts from what looked like the n
ursery clothes basket, but could not, surely, actually have been so.

  As the children grew older, it was Mary, rather than a governess or Beth (who could not read or write very well), who gave them lessons. For two or three hours every morning, she made history and geography, especially, come excitingly alive. Little Arthur would concentrate ‘till his face came out in large drops’, Maggie dissolved easily into tears of frustration over sums and reading, Martin was transported by pride and delight when, aged five, he discovered that he could read a letter written to him by an absent Edward, all on his own. He read it again the moment he saw Beth, giving Mama all the kisses he had been commissioned to do, but saving one for his nurse, ‘as he evidently thought she should not be neglected’. It was Mary who read to the children on winter’s evenings, from Ivanhoe or George MacDonald’s fairy romance Phantastes, or she told them stories, more vivid than Beth’s, tales of an underground hall of giants, or of an enchanted bell that rang every evening in the woods.