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Queer Fiction Free-for-All Book Bracket Tournament: Preliminary Round

Book summaries below:

David Blaize (1916) by E.F. Benson

Memorably evoking the joys and torments of boyhood, from midnight feasts and glorious days on the cricket field to waxy masters and hilariously embarrassing parental visits, E. F. Benson follows young David Blaize from prep school to Marchester College.

David Blaize is the son of an archdeacon, the friend of a bishop's nephew, and this is a story of their friendship and life at a public school. Possibly the tale may be reminiscent of the author's own youth. It tells of cleanliness, physical and moral, of the self-restraint learned from one another by boys who were to be among the future leaders in England.

Classics, coming of age, boarding school

Time to Orbit: Unknown series (The Javelin Program, The Antarctica Conspiracy) by Derin Edala

When Dr Aspen Greaves signed up for the Javelin Program, humanity's first foray into colonising deep space, they expected to wake up to life in a thriving colony on a distant planet. Instead, they find themself five years away from their destination on a broken spaceship full of complex mysteries, dead astronauts, and a very unhelpful AI.

Aspen wasn't trained for any of this. But if they can't keep themselves alive, get the ship in working order, and find out what went wrong by unravelling a chain of mysteries leading all the way back to distant Earth, then neither Aspen nor the five thousand sleeping passengers in their care will ever see a planet again.

Science fiction, mystery, series, adult

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Hugh Benson's Catholicism - and its impact on fraternal trust....

In the house of Tremans was a small room, licensed as a chapel for the celebration of the Eucharist, and now, when, within a year of his “version,” Hugh was in priest’s orders in the other Church, it became impossible for him to stay with my mother, unless he said daily mass, he (more Rugby football) collared this room. He had, of course, to make some little changes: he procured plaster casts of the Blessed Virgin and a few saints, and grabbing Maggie’s box of oil-paints, he spent a perfectly happy morning in tinting their faces, and giving them robes of celestial brightness. There was still a little paint left in some of the tubes when that was done, so he used it on the windows, and made radiant effigies of more saints in their leaded panes. The altar was a large black oak chest with, luckily, two shelves within, and so Hugh allowed the paraphernalia of the Anglican use to occupy one, but took the other for his own. Sometimes he would meet Beth on the stairs, carrying up fresh linen, and he would give her a word of warning, ‘Now, Beth, don’t mix their things up with mine. Praya- be careful!’ He always brought down some boy to serve him, and in the morning the loud Anglican hymn from family prayers below went on simultaneously with his office.

There were other offices as well, tierces and quarts and quints (I do not profess to give their names accurately), and one morning Hugh and I were playing croquet on the lawn below the window of the chapel, in that mingled spirit of suspicion, passion, and vengeance which accompanies and illuminates all serious croquet. At a crucial point, with a disembodied “rover” prowling about, Hugh suddenly looked at his watch: “Oh, blow it, I must go and say my prayers,” he said, and hurried within. From the open window above there came a rapid and confused murmur, and soon, wonderfully soon, Hugh scurried out again and looked balefully at the balls. ‘I’m sure that ball wasn’t there,” he said. “Fred, do you promise you haven’t moved it?” . . . so little fraternal trust had quints produced. . .

Mother, EF Benson, 1925

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Fred Benson on religion: enragingly and bafflingly superficial

A Very Queer Family Indeed - Sex, Religion, and the Bensons in Victorian Britain, Simon Goldhill, 2016

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‘Mother’ by EF Benson, 1925

I have been wondering if there is a way of looking at Fred’s memoirs that does more than just dismiss him as being in denial about the awfulness of his parents’ marriage.  For me, ‘Mother’ is a great example of the potential power of the unsaid when it comes to discussing difficult and painful experiences.  It’s not a psychological treatise, after all.  But it is unashamedly a memoir of a son and what his mother meant to him.

There are other instalments to his memoirs of course, but for this one, his father is conspicuous by his absence.  I wonder if he was tempted to call it ‘Mother and Son’, in a nod to Edmund Gosse’s book.

Fred’s father proposed to the 12-year-old Minnie Benson at the age of 23 and ‘groomed’ her for marriage over a period of six years.  The ‘education’ he gave her did not turn out as he had planned on a number of levels, so this line is bound to raise some eyebrows:

For if her marriage was a mistake, what marriage since the world began was a success?

To me, Fred is not trying to romanticise or gloss over the unpalatable, but is expressing the paradox that any child of an unhappy union faces: un-wish the union and you un-wish your own existence. 

He also has an additional problem:

… she kept also a more intermittent and far more private chronicle……Much therein was too private ever to be published; of the rest I have made considerable use. Should any reader think that I have exceeded the limits of due discretion, my excuse must be that I believed it could only benefit him to learn something of the inner history of a life so beautiful as hers.

Whilst he wants to share with the world his pride at his mother’s strength of spirit, he is acutely aware of the care she took to keep her private worries private:

she concealed them with such success that we thought there was nothing being concealed……..Whether one ought to have guessed that she was not as keen and confident as she appeared to be, I do not know, but most emphatically I am delighted that I did not. 

Another paradox – how does the grown-up child square the circle of a natural sense of guilt that a parent was privately suffering and concealing it, with the knowledge that the parent did not want her children to be burdened with her woes?

And Fred in turn used a lot of concealment with his mother when she was alive.  She referred to him as being ‘Sphinx-like’ in his lack of detail about his movements, and coined the term ‘Freddian’ to describe his elliptical style.  It is a style he applies with great skill.

At 32, she released him from his promise to live with her and his sister following their father’s death, a move which turned the family home from a prison in which Fred felt trapped into a haven which he drew comfort from for the rest of his mother’s life.

Meanwhile Fred seems to go through a delayed adolescence as soon as he moves into his central London bachelor-pad.  The book is highly entertaining on all sorts of subjects.  But running through it seems to be the tiny voice of a child saying, ‘I hope I made you proud.’  He is quite open, for example, about her lack of enthusiasm for his literary output (until David Blaize, that is). He was never going to follow in his father’s footsteps and be ordained, but in describing his obsessions, he constantly turns to religious language.  Hence his ambitions with skating are pursued 'like an aspiring Christian', his discovery of the deep connection he feels with Italy, particularly Capri, includes a 'baptism of water', and the chapter on writing conveys powerfully the drive to produce work that is worthy, and the difference between true inspiration and ‘faking it’.  With the latter, he says, we ‘damn our souls’.

In the end, if Fred broadly takes his own writing advice.  He paints a vivid picture, but he does not shy away from the darkness in his life – he lost his brother, sister and mother in quick succession.  Would his mother wanted to have her private troubles shared at all? Probably not, but Fred’s gratitude and love win out.  He cannot express that without expressing the sacrifices she made for him, but he wants us to know how his mother helped to form him, and to do that, we have to get to know him, through his story.  To do anything else would be to wish away his own existence.

[fredbensonenthusiast]

".....I did read….that when his mother died, EF Benson then had access to her diaries, and they showed that really the relationship between his father and his mother, exactly how bad it was, and how difficult his father was, and I wonder whether, if that was a revelation to him, and I’m sure they knew their father was a pretty dark character prone to really bad moods and so on, that if that was a little bit of something that he didn’t quite realise, then you could reach for that sense of a golden childhood that actually was never golden.  Which is what this story is about, it’s a village that was perfect, you thought was perfect, and then you turn up there, and not only had it become bad, but actually it was always bad......"

Transcribed from episode 70 of 'A Podcast to the Curious'. I wanted to post this excerpt because it makes me wonder if they've somehow captured the essence of Fred here.......

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The Benson family spook-fest podcast episodes and free audio versions of the ghost stories

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

Please share any comments or favourites in the tags/comments, as usual Fred was very prolific......

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It suddenly occurred to me that this book was privately published in Naples in 1906 - surely the Capri set were all over this one! Literally just over the water from Fred's favourite spot. And I do wonder how deliberate some of those David Blaize parallels might have been 🤔

Imre: A Memorandum

I just wanted to shout about this novel by US author Edward Prime-Stevenson, but I'm not sure even where to begin. Thank you to @eclare1000 for recommending it to me.

It was published in 1906, and is frank in its discussion of same-sex attraction between men. But for me it has become more than just a literary/historical curiosity - the book is a fascinating insight into the times, written more like a detective novel than a romance - it is Austen-esque in its dissection of the many and various social niceties that needed to be navigated, and yet (or maybe because).......also rather romantic!

If you know this book, I would love it if you re-blogged and shared your thoughts 💖

It is free on Project Gutenberg

And also, don't forget to take a look at the only fic in the Imre fandom!!! So beautifully done by @black-bentley

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M.R. James and the “Twice A Fortnight” Club

This picture can be found in the book "Ghosts and Scholars"

According to the book, Fred was a "long-time friend of MRJ', [and] was a member of the Chitchat Society which heard the two original ‘ghost stories of an antiquary’ being read on 28th October 1893…..but very few of his own superb occult tales were distinctly Jamesian". The Twice a Fortnight club was an offshoot of the chitchat.

And thank you @alovelywaytospendanevening for this delightful snippet from Geoffrey Palmer’s book –

Clearly the plan didn’t succeed!

For more on MR James, there is an interesting podcast from ‘Gone Medieval’ about his career as a medieval scholar and how it influenced his writing, as well as his collaborations with Fred.

And a deep dive into one of Fred's most famous ghost stories 'negotium perambulans' can be found here along with some interesting biographical background.

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The real chit-chat club - high on caffeine and snuff...

Our Family Affairs, EF Benson, 1920

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You might find EF Benson interesting! The decline of the aristocracy and the seismic changes that took place after WWI are key themes for him, although his most interesting writing for this is likely to be the memoirs and bios rather than the fiction. He wrote a biography of Edward VII for instance. I have just finished his memoir 'Mother' which references both these things, but 'As We Were: a Victorian peepshow' sounds like a good bet for this topic. He is a very fun and lively writer. He was extraordinarily prolific, hence I am still getting to grips with his output.

If you do enjoy any of his work, I hope you will pop over to fredbensonenthusiast to shout about it 😊

Hello! I've seen you say several times on here that you style yourself after an English country gentleman of, I think, the 1920s and 30s. I'm really interested in this time period and in social and cultural changes English people living between the first and second world war would have gone through (I blame Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies and the movie adaptation Bright Young Things, there's just this air of racing towards catastrophe and laughing about it that I find really compelling). I don't know if this is still in your wheelhouse but if it is could you recommend me some other fiction from or about this time period that deals with similar themes of the decline of the aristocracy and its effect on people coming into adulthood during that time? If not that's totally fine, it might be kind of a stretch to approach somebody interested in fashion. Thanks.

Heya, Anon! I'll leave this up for folks to comment on, as my knowledge is mostly surface level or specific to the media I consume.

My interest in this fashion style came a lot from the book series, All Creatures Great and Small. One of the prevelant themes in the first few books is the transition from traditional farming to automation / better medical practices. The farmers constantly struggle with understanding new testing methodology, seeing tractors and factory milking become competitors, etc. While the books are largely vignettes, you feel this presence in the background. But, it is still largely background.

So, yes. Anyone who has media they'd like to recommend that center moreso the cultural changes around the impact of the aristocracy are welcome to chime in!

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Thank you for sharing this @bb-8, it is so great to hear more about Fred's writing! This book sounds absolutely wild!!! And a David Blaize cameo?! Oh boy! The theme of the family curse seems to crop up a lot (I guess it might have been a thing anyway but even so, given his family background it's interesting).

I hope you will read more Benson and share your thoughts! I have just finished the memoir 'Mother' and am planning a couple of posts on this and on his parent's marriage which I can't help feeling must have had an effect on his attitudes to relationships in general…..

Oh hello there! Asking on behalf of Fredbensonenthusiast, I saw your post on The Inheritor by EF Benson and unfortunately I haven't read it (there is so much to get through 🤣) but looking at the synopsis it looks very intriguing with plenty of Fred's favourite obsessions! I would love to know more about it and what you thought of it! Don't worry about spoilers......

Omg absolutely! So I loved it and highly recommend it. I'll expand on what I wrote in my goodreads review - apologies if this jumps around! Not relevant to the plot but fun fact: Benson threw in a David Blaize reference (a cameo of a character named Dr. Blaize)!

The Inheritor starts out in Cambridge with a witty cast of characters very reminiscent of David of King's and slowly devolves into a claustrophobic, otherworldly novel that takes place in Cornwall (with lots of pagan/faerie influence). And there are layers and layers of queer imagery and queer subtext at play.

Relevant character list:

Steven: a 20 year old student at Cambridge, due to inherit a large fortune and, potentially, his family curse

Maurice: a 25 year old don at Cambridge, studies culture in ancient Greece, falls in love with Steven

The Child: a childhood friend of Steven's who is absolutely devoted to Steven (nicknamed The Child because he is 6'4" with a baby face)

Tim: a Pan-like illegitimate relation to Steven who nearly identical in appearance to him; he acts half mad.

Betty: Steven's wife

Mrs. Crofts - Steven's mother; may or may not be a witch We follow Steven Crofts as his closest relationships come under intense strain as he falls deeper and deeper into a family curse that pulls him away from reality and closer to the mystical world that he feels a part of. Of the characters mentioned above, the only relationship that persists is Steven's relationship with Tim. The references to paganism, interestingly, seem to be a representation for both heterosexuality and homosexuality in this novel. In a literal sense, Maurice and Steven lose themselves and their social confines to follow their nature feels pretty obvious as far as symbolism goes. Steven goes as far as recognising something in Maurice's nature that reflects his own and next thing you know, they're quoting Walt Whitman together. But when Steven rejects Maurice and loses his humanity altogether and perpetuates the family curse (involving Betty and their first born), the paganism has now shifted to represent the unnaturalness of a heterosexual relationship/heterosexual coupling. The abundant themes and references to paganism and ancient Greek culture aside (you bet we get comparisons to the Platonic ideal), Steven and Maurice form a passionate friendship that is so overtly romantic that a few sentences needed to be dedicated for Benson to assure the reader that their relationship was sexless. If you took these statements at face value, you probably wouldn't read into the fact that Steven is disappointed when his wife loses her boyish appearance when she's pregnant and he's repulsed by her touch...even though he has had very physical relationships with his male close friends. (Of course there is a lot of bathing together.) The homoeroticism between Steven/The Child, Steven/Maurice, and even Steven/Tim is fairly obvious. (Even if Steven and Tim are blood-related, Tim's place beside Steven usurps Maurice's in exactly the way Maurice usurped The Child.) This plot is entirely character-driven and the books sustains itself on the atmosphere it creates. Maurice/Steven are absolutely the heart of the novel - they have a dynamic that is absolutely captivating. And after finishing the novel, I can't quite tell how much was a decent into madness, if Steven really was cursed, and/or how much of the ancient magic was real. 

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I thought I would just share this link of audio versions of some of the ghost stories. Please reblog/comment if you are a fan of the ghost stories or have any favourites you want to share!

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'Father and Son' by Edmund Gosse

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:

Fred's brother Arthur was great friends with Gosse and hugely admired it; perhaps it was the book he wanted to write but couldn't. What was Fred's answer to 'Father and Son'? I will post more soon.....

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a nineteenth-century poem on the love between David and Jonathon

Viewing Jonathon and David as romantic and/or sexual lovers, and even married ones at that, is not something new. Back in 1878 one John Addington Symonds wrote a poem called “The Meeting of David and Jonathon” that is undeniably erotic.

John Addington Symonds was himself gay or bi, and many of his works contained male lovers. Overall, he’s a pretty cool member of LGBT history:

He translated Michelangelo’s sonnets and restored their use of he pronouns, which had previously been translated incorrectly with she pronouns in order to conceal Michelangelo’s love of men. He corresponded with Walt Whitman. Interestingly, he used the word “homosexual” in one of his works before the term was supposedly coined by the medical writer C. G. Chaddock. Finally, his uncompleted memoir stands as one of the earliest self-consciously gay autobiographies. (source) 

You can read the full poem here on google books, starting on page 151 – but it’s pretty long, so I’m posting the best parts below.

[David is called before Saul so he can be thanked for defeating Goliath; Jonathon is there too and upon first sight the two fall in love]

The eyes of David on his were turned; And in that moment their twin lives became The single splendour of one spiry flame, Shooting from sundered brands to blend the might Of married fires and leap aloft with light.  ….

[they leave Saul’s presence; that night, they meet up alone]

There by an ancient holm-oak huge and tough, Clasping the firm rock with gnarled roots and rough, He stayed their steps; and in his arms of strength Took David, and for sore love found at length Solace in speech, and pressure, and the breath Wherewith the mouth of yearning winnoweth Hearts overcharged for utterance. In that kiss Soul unto soul was knit and bliss to bliss.

Then, for the prince found bare embracement scant To stand for token of such covenant As he would strike with David, from his waist He plucked the girdle, and the robe unlaced That fell around his loins; next the blade, Hilted with ivory and gold, he laide Upon the grass before him, and his bow. These things he gave to Jesse’s son, that so, Wearing his raiment and his armour, he Within his sight a second self might be. Nor were words wanting; for he bowed his head Even to the breast of Jesse’s son, and said:

‘Nay, take them, David!  Darling art thou called, Darling of all men, Darling of the Lord, But most my Darling – mine – whose hear is thralled, Whose soul is even as thy soul! … Take all; for I have hath fallen to thee; And I am thine. Lo, as a winter wand, Flowerless and leafless on the almond tree, Waiteth, till on a sudden spring doth wake The wonder of her buds to ecstasy; So doth my soul beneath thy beauty break Her prison-bands of deadness!  Yea, I lean Forth to thy sweetness and thy strength to slake With dews of life, with heaven-shed light serene, The drought that still hath bound me.  Till this eve I lived not: now I live; now find how keen Are those swift shafts wherewith the Lord doth cleave The hearts of lovers. …’

‘Oh, for the beauty of thy brows, my brother! Oh, for thy keen unwavering royal gaze! Dearer art thou than sister or than mother, Than moonéd eyes of maidens… …This Love, this Life, this Word of living God, Lo, David, He is Lord! He bids us fall Here in this place upon the hallowed sod, To swear a sacrament and solemn vow. – Stretch forth, I prithee stretch, thy shepherd’s rod. See: it is broken.  This is mine: take thou That part.  Now either time nor chance shall sever The troth that we have plighted.  Brow to brow, Let us pace forth, to live, one soul, for ever.’ 

So from his heart spake Jonathon.  The trees Waved their still summits in the evening breeze, And all around was holy.

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🎄Merry Christmas E.F. Benson fans🎄

Can you spot Fred in his element? This was one of his favourite ways to spend the winter.....

Photos by Mrs Aubrey Le Blond: mostly from 'Winter Sports in Switzerland' by EF Benson

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E.F. Benson 'Very Much at Home' - what a find!!

Vintage Articles

These are my posts featuring vintage magazine articles. This list will be updated continuously.

"E. F. Benson, or Very Much at Home" (1926)

"Hollywood's Gay Romeos Pick Their Favorite Types" (1933)

"The Gay Life of Hollywood Bachelors" (1937)

"Stag Night at the Steam Room" (1950)

"Can Rock’s Marriage Be Saved?" (1958)

"Rock Hudson: Bachelor on the Loose" (1958)

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How do you rebel when your father is the Archbishop of Canterbury? Make ice-skating into a religion!

“By day I had to skate so much at Niagara, being at that time quite sure that life would never attain its full fruition until I had passed all three tests of the National Skating Association (English style), and could wear a badge of pure gold (silver and copper discarded) in my buttonhole. So the whole morning would be spent, like the aspiring Christian, with “the frequent fall,” and I would hobble away to lunch with entrancing people and go back for the afternoon skating session (session it was!) at three, and skate till it was almost a relief to hear the gong announce closing time.”

EF Benson, Mother

Niagara Hall, London, 1895 - 1902