LIFE OF E F BENSON

by Brian Masters

The creator of Mapp and Lucia, E.F. Benson (always known as Fred) ranks with P.G. Wodehouse as one of Britain's greatest humorists. He was born into one of the most extraordinary brilliant and emotionally doomed of Victorian families and it fell to the urbane, kindly and enigmatic Fred to steer parents and siblings through their crises. He took refuge in smart London drawing rooms; in his friendships with Oscar Wilde, Margot Asquith, Marie Corelli and Henry James; in lotus-eating days on Capri; and, always, in his writing. As this vivid and fascinating biography makes clear, the follies and well-cloaked oddities of English society, from the days of Victoria to the Second World War, shaped the story of E.F. Benson's own life as much as they did the plot of his sparkling fiction.

Genres: Biography, History

326 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Brian Masters is a British writer best known for his biographies of mass murderers, including Killing for Company, on Dennis Nilsen; The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer; She Must Have Known, on Rosemary West; and The Evil That Men Do. He has also written about the British aristocracy and worked as a translator.

Reviews

[Eddie Clarke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Benson’s claim to fame is his comic series the Mapp and Lucia novels, gently satirising upper middle class life in (largely) provincial English towns in the period after WWI. He cast his own home in Rye in a starring rôle, and this early Georgian abode, now in the ownership of the National Trust, is probably today the biggest tourist draw in this quaint village as a result. Although the Trust prefers rather to celebrate the building’s earlier inhabitant (and owner), Henry James.

Masters relates that the celebrated and hugely distinguished literary genius James was the first reader of the young Benson’s first draft of his first novel (Benson’s proud mama pressed it on James, a family friend). James was always famously tactful if somewhat ambiguous and vague in his responses to requests for advice. Benson himself showed his manuscript to another family friend who was, unlike James, a best-selling novelist at the time (Lucas Malet, forgotten today) - and actually followed her (Lucas was her pseudonym) useful advice instead. His resulting first novel, Dodo, was a runaway success, tearing through multiple editions in the months after publication, and laid the foundation for Benson’s literary career.

The young novelist wrote about what he knew, and more particularly who he knew - the eponymous Dodo was based on another of his parents’ high-society friends, Margot Asquith, wife of the future prime minister. Margot was at this time a celebrated beauty and personality and readers recognised her as the original immediately. The fact this wicked society satire was written by the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury probably added spice to the mix. Benson had to write Margot an apology. Such was the fame of the novel people started to call Margot Dodo - and Dodo even became Benson’s nickname too (Bosie Douglas inscribed a gift ‘from Bosie to Dodo’).

Which pretty much typifies Benson’s whole career as a charming middling writer and social commentator. Although enjoying high society life he was pretty self-effacing himself (his own mother called him ‘a sphinx’), and Brian Masters does well to produce this readable and entertaining biography of this secretive man. One of the huge ironies is that although Benson is clearly gay, as shown by vast amounts of circumstantial evidence in his life and writing, he consistently suppressed any documentary evidence whatsoever, so it’s impossible today to conclusively identify any definite lovers. This leads Masters to equivocate over whether Benson ever really had sex with anyone (his brother definitely was celibately gay). However I think that a handsome young man such as Benson was to spend two separate holidays (one in Athens, the other cruising the Nile) with the scamp Lord Alfred Douglas (‘Bosie’) is pretty conclusive. Benson also shared the lease on a villa in the gay hotspot of Capri with two other gay men, Somerset Maugham and John Ellingham Brooks.

[Carole Tyrrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bought this book at my then local library’s mega book sale some years ago and have only now just got round to reading it. I only know E F Benson through his ghost stories of which he wrote 70. They still have the power to chill and enthral. However he’s also known for his comic novels, Mapp and Lucia, based on a pair of social climbers. They are still in print and were a TV series. I was interested in exploring his influences and inspirations especially as the master of the English ghost story, M R James, much admired Benson’s supernatural tales. I have a collection of them on my bookshelf. However I haven’t read Mapp and Lucia and maybe it’s time that I did.
E F Benson or Fred as he was known to his family was a prolific writer and made his living through it. Some of his work has fallen out of fashion but he also wrote highly regarded non-fiction works such as a biography of Charlotte Bronte and an archaeological study of Athens.
He was described as a Sphinx by his mother and I did feel after finishing this book that he remained so. But this isn’t the fault of the biographer as Fred seemed essentially a private man. Kindly, urbane, sociable and supportive he seemed the most adjusted of his family. He moved in high society having known Oscar Wilde and Bosie or Lord Alfred Douglas amongst others. He was known to have based some of the characters in his novels on real life acquaintances and friends who sometimes were not amused. Miss Mapp is based on Maria Corelli whose real name was Emmeline Lucas but the biographer doesn’t comment on how she felt being portrayed like that. Poor Fred outlasted all of his family and saw the tragedies that befell them. Gifted and eccentric - there was a suggestion of an inherited family madness. I’ve recently read Louis Wain’s biography and there were very similar parallels.
None of them married. A fortune teller is alleged to have told Minnie ‘ that her children would grow up to cause her vexation in one way or another but they would never be dull.’ Never was there a more accurate forecast; Fred enjoyed romantic attachments with young men, Hugh followed his father into the Church but converted to Catholicism, Maggie became suicidal and insane and died at 51 and Arthur lived in academia as the Head of Magdalen College. He suffered from depression and Hugh had a fear of being buried alive. Arthur’s legacy was writing the words to Land of Hope and Glory which has been sung with much flag waving on the Last Night of the Proms for years.
But the Bensons were a strange family to say the least. Fred’s parents, Edward and Minnie were in an unhappy marriage and after Fred’s birth she deserted him for a time. He proposed to Minnie when she was 11 and they married when she was aged 20 and he was 32. He was looking for a woman that he could mould and educate and he never stopped letting her know when she wasn’t coming up to the mark. She confided in her private diary that she didn’t love him and instead she felt a different kind of love. They had 5 children, two of which died young. Edward seems to have been very ambitious which can breed selfishness as everything is expendable to the goal. He suffered from depression when he wasn’t nagging Minnie. She was always conscious of failing him. He was the first headmaster of Wellington College, then headmaster of Rugby and finally Archbishop of Canterbury. He was determined to make the Wellington headmastership a success but some of his comments and writings reveal a self-righteous, perhaps almost a bully, who expected to be obeyed. Life with him must have been exhausting and difficult for Minnie and the children and he didn’t live to see their lives and fates. After his death the family began to drift apart.
Fred went to Cambridge and was probably present when M R James read some of his stories for the first time. The Victorians were fascinated with the supernatural as was Edward. A relative of the Bensons founded the Society for Psychical Research.
Eventually, Fred came to Rye in Sussex as a guest of Henry James who was living in Lamb House. After his death in 1916 Fred was offered the lease of Lamb House and lived there until his death in 1940. He became mayor of the town and it is known as Tilling in the Mapp and Lucia novels. A window in the town church is dedicated to Arthur as they lived together at Lamb House for a time. Fred believed that Lamb House was haunted and claimed to have seen at least one ghost. Lamb House was the setting for several of his ghost stories.
It was a fascinating book to read as I wondered what it must have been like to grow up in such a household of fiercely intelligent people all vying for attention amid a loveless marriage. And Fred knowing that he was the last of them. A good solid biography which told me a lot about Fred – a shame that he didn’t write his own after having known such luminaries as Oscar Wilde. However, there’s no mention of Fred’s own mental health –did he suffer from the family curse or manage to escape it? I did like the comment he made on his writing routine: The muse does not come unbidden it has to be grabbed.