Twenty

by Stella Benson

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

26 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2007

About the author

Stella Benson (1892-1933) was an English feminist, travel writer and novelist. Stella was often ill during her childhood. By her sixth birthday, she and her family, based in London, had moved frequently. She spent some of her childhood in Germany and Switzerland getting an education. She began writing a diary at the age of ten and kept it up for all of her life. By the time she was writing poetry, around the age of fourteen, her mother left her father; consequently, she saw her father infrequently. When she did see him, he encouraged her to quit writing poetry for the time being, until she was older and more experienced. Instead, Stella increased her writing output, adding novel-writing to her repertoire.

Stella was noted for being compassionate and interested in social issues. Like her older female relatives, she supported women's suffrage. During World War I, she supported the troops by gardening and by helping poor women in London's East End at the Charity Organisation Society. These efforts inspired Benson to write the novels I Pose (1915), This Is the End (1917) and Living Alone (1919). She also published her first volume of poetry, Twenty, in 1918.

Benson's writings kept coming, but none of her works is well known today. Pipers and a Dancer (1924) and Goodbye, Stranger (1926) were followed by another book of travel essays, Worlds Within Worlds, and the story The Man Who Missed the 'Bus in 1928. Her most famous work, the novel The Far-Away Bride, was published in the United States first in 1930 and as Tobit Transplanted in Britain in 1931. It won the Femina Vie Heureuse Prize. This was followed by two limited edition collections of short stories, Hope Against Hope (1931) and Christmas Formula (1932).

She died of pneumonia just before her forty-first birthday in December 1933, in the Vietnamese province of Tonkin. Her last unfinished novel Mundos and her personal selection of her best poetry, Poems, were published posthumously in 1935. Her Collected Stories were published in 1936. Anderson's sons from his second marriage were Benedict Anderson and Perry Anderson.

Reviews

[Debbie Zapata · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do wish each poem in this collection had a date by it to show exactly when it was written. The book as a whole was published in 1918, so it is easy to imagine that the horrors of World War One shaped most of the work here. That is obvious in offerings such as The Cornishman:

At sunset, when the high sea span
About the rocks a web of foam,
I saw the ghost of a Cornishman
Come home.
I saw the ghost of a Cornishman
Run from the weariness of war,
I heard him laughing as he ran
Across his unforgotten shore.
The great cliff, gilded by the west,
Received him as an honoured guest.
The green sea, shining in the bay,
Did drown his dreadful yesterday.

Come home, come home, you million ghosts,
The honest years shall make amends,
The sun and moon shall be your hosts,
The everlasting hills your friends.
And some shall seek their mothers’ faces,
And some shall run to trysting places,
And some to towns, and others yet
Shall find great forests in their debt.
Oh, I would siege the golden coasts
Of space, and climb high heaven’s dome,
So I might see those million ghosts
Come home.

The Dog Tupman was a hymn to her childhood pet, the only friend who saw her own soul's truth because he too had a secret, mostly hidden, youthful heart during his entire life:
You shared my youth, oh faithful friend,
You let me share your puppyhood;
So, if I failed you in the end,
My friend, my friend, you understood.

But most other works are less clear, and I admit that much of the time I was puzzled about what Benson intended to say. In general she was clearly questioning her place in the world, pondering the validity of organized religion, wondering about women and heir fates, and more than once dealing with anger and depression. The writing is lovely: even at my most confused, I admired her style. But I could rarely ever think 'Oh, I know exactly how she felt!' when I finished the last line of a poem. That is not an absolute requirement for me when reading poetry, but it does help if it happens at least once.

I am going to keep this book link open for a few days so I can re-read (again) the poems. Even if I don't manage to 'get' them all, they are worth the effort. And next month (or Someday soon) I will try to read the two novels of Benson's that are also available at Gutenberg. I hope her prose is as lovely as her poetry.

[Siobhan · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.75 rounded up to 3

[Dunya Al-bouzidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Has the past died before this present sin?
Has this most cruel age already stonèd
To martyrdom that magic Day, within
Those halls, enthronèd."

"Yes, I have built To-day, a wall against To-morrow,
So let To-morrow knock—I shall not be afraid,
For none shall give me death, and none shall give me sorrow."

(TO THE UNBORN)
"Oh, bend your eyes, nor send your glance about.
Oh, watch your feet, nor stray beyond the kerb.
Oh, bind your heart lest it find secrets out.
For thus no punishment
Of magic shall disturb
Your very great content.
Oh, shut your lips to words that are forbidden.
Oh, throw away your sword, nor think to fight.
Seek not the best, the best is better hidden.
Thus need you have no fear,
No terrible delight
Shall cross your path, my dear.
Call no man foe, but never love a stranger.
Build up no plan, nor any star pursue.
Go forth with crowds; in loneliness is danger.
Thus nothing God can send,
And nothing God can do
Shall pierce your peace, my friend."

(TRUE PROMISES)
"You promised War and Thunder and Romance.
You promised true, but we were very blind
And very young, and in our ignorance
We never called to mind
That truth is seldom kind.
You promised love, immortal as a star.
You promised true, yet how the truth can lie!
For now we grope for hands where no hands are,
And, deathless, still we cry,
Nor hope for a reply.
You promised harvest and a perfect yield.
You promised true, for on the harvest morn,
Behold a reaper strode across the field,
And man of woman born
Was gathered in as corn
You promised honour and ordeal by flame.
You promised true. In joy we trembled lest
We should be found unworthy when it came;
But—oh—we never guessed
The fury of the test!
You promised friends and songs and festivals.
You promised true. Our friends, who still are young,
Assemble for their feasting in those halls
Where speaks no human tongue.
And thus our songs are sung."