fredbensonenthusiast

[fredbensonenthusiast]

'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.....

[fredbensonenthusiast]

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.

[fredbensonenthusiast]

🎄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)

[fredbensonenthusiast]

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

[fredbensonenthusiast]

So, here are my thoughts on the excerpt from The Life of Alcibiades. I found it very interesting, because it kind of says more about the time it was written than about the customs of Ancient Greece. I apologize for the length of this!

"No girl at Athens had any education at all, and could not possibly be a companion to a man except for one purpose."

"The absence of the culture and of the mental and moral development of women"

Here, dear old Fred is displaying a logic typical of an Englishman of his period: formal education and culture are intrinsically linked; therefore, since Athenian women had no access to formal education, they had no culture at all!

“With such a guardian, then, we must make allowance for a lad whom Athens was doing her very best to spoil and corrupt. She was crazy about him: whatever he did, as the preservation of these innumerable adventures of his youth shows, was the subject of laughter and gossip. As a boy and a young man he provoked all the social interest which is now shown in the doings of some high-bred, daring, witty and wonderfully beautiful girl; if Athens had had daily papers they would have been full of paragraphs about Alcibiades. Every madcap insolence was forgiven him by the adoring city for his amazing charm and his beauty at an age when, in modern life, he would still have been in the fifth form of a public school and liable to be set down to write five hundred lines of Homer or to be birched. But we find him in his school-class asking his master for a Homer, and, because he had not got one, smacking his face. He was forgiven; nothing happened.”

I don’t know if Benson was the first person to come up with this concept, but this is truly a fantastic description: Alcibiades as a media phenomenon! Everybody talks about him, everybody knows what he’s done, every boy wants to be as cool as him. He seemed unstoppable, until suddenly he wasn’t. He’s debauched, reckless and self-destructive, yet his imperfections are actually a large part of his appeal, a way for people to form a parasocial relationship with him and somehow understand his deeply flawed but shining humanity. The Marilyn Monroe of Ancient Greece!

If Benson were a very bold author, he could’ve written a decadent novel around this. He knew how to write social comedy, so this would’ve been an obvious progression. But as we know, his self-preservation instincts always got the better of him.

“The flesh, so ran his most Christian gospel, warred against the spirit; the two were like a pair of ill-mated horses harnessed to a chariot which was driven by the lover of beauty, and the wicked black horse of the flesh had to be tamed, and its wanton desires beaten out of it, till at length it learned its lesson, and no longer lusted after the fair form, but with awe and holy reverence discerned through it the eternal beauty of God. [...] It is in this spirit that, at the end of his dialogue with the young Phædrus under the plane trees of the Ilyssus, he offered the prayer which, but for the paganism of its invocation, might have been that of some enlightened Christian mystic after the realization of Him who is altogether lovely.”

Another typical fallacy: he was “righteous” and enlightened, which means he was a proto-Christian! This one has been around since the Middle Ages, as a way to justify the moral validity of Ancient Greek philosophers.

“It is also important, in rendering his environment, to try to dissipate the erroneous view of Athenian love which is current.”

“But the Athenian lover, as defined by Plato, was no carnalist, but one who filled the mind of his beloved with all manliness and noble aspirations. He was not, as Socrates the arch-lover of youth is never tired of insisting, the lover of the beauty of his body, but of the beauty of his soul, which he discerned and adored through the fair veil of the flesh. The whole instinct, largely the result of the social non-existence of women at Athens, was not considered shameful or secret it was in no sense a hidden moral cancer, nor could it possibly have been, since, as far as we can judge, there was as much cancer as healthy tissue, and many, probably the majority, of the most high-minded of intellectual Athenians, Socrates and Plato, Themistocles and Sophocles, accepted and shared it as a normal instinct, and saw in it an elevating influence.”

"There was an ideal affection behind it; it did not result in the promiscuous and abnormal immorality with which it usually credited."

There’s a lot of bad faith arguing here, and this rationalization continues to be repeated throughout the text. Benson took Plato’s idealization of Socrates at face value and extended it to the whole Athenian society, while conveniently ignoring all the evidence within Plato’s own texts that indicates most Athenian men didn’t follow this anti-carnalist philosophy to the letter (or at all). There’s even an adult male/male couple in the Symposium!

I also noticed he raised the matter of gender segregation in Classical Athens, but excused himself from making any potentially worthy comparison between it and his own deeply homosocial society, where boys used to grow up mostly around only boys. And considering his comments in Mother, we know he was aware of this reality.

I don’t take Benson as stupid, nor do I think he was a gullible and/or pious man. I believe he knew a lot of his arguments didn’t hold water. He was doing his usual preaching-to-the-choir number, which allowed him to write about the things he was interested in without making too much of a fuss. He probably thought it was the only option available at the time (which is understandable, of course).

---

I remember you also mentioned a possible correlation between Benson's and Ralph's arguments. I think they're different in nature. Benson was basically arguing that homosexuality in Classical Athens was a rather incidental thing, since the average male/male relationship there was free of “any promiscuous and abnormal immorality.” Ralph, on the other hand, seems to acknowledge the prominence of homosexuality in this historical context; what he was actually trying to say is that men like Bunny and Sandy would be ridiculed and disrespected even in Ancient Greece, because they are effeminate and enjoy (or are perceived to enjoy) bottoming, while Laurie would be respected because he maintains a traditionally masculine appearance (and is a top?) — a sound point, mind you.

Oh, this is such a treat @alovelywaytospendanevening 😊 I have been pondering on this all day, no apologies needed for the length of it! I am so glad I asked you for your thoughts on the way Fred tries to 'explain' or perhaps 'explain away' Athenian 'love'. I feel like both Fred and Ralph are using a kind of 'straw man' argument, as in 'people talk a lot of rubbish', conveniently leaving it to the reader to infer what that might be and both avoiding the need to commit themselves to an actual view - both distance themselves from it in different ways......fascinating. Anyway, thank you! I so enjoyed this 🧐

[fredbensonenthusiast]

Fred and Eustace

This excerpt from David Blaize always makes me think of this snapshot of Fred....

Only I don't think it was taken by a girl.....I wonder if Eustace Miles took it, if feels like a snapshot that captures more than just a face 👀

[fredbensonenthusiast]

Hugh Benson and his conversion to catholicim - what are younger brothers for if it isn't to tease mercilessly.....

[fredbensonenthusiast]

Hugh Benson's David Blaize vibes 😮

We know that the characters in David Blaize are a composite, however personal it was to Fred, but it had not occurred to me before what influence his younger brother might have had on the book. Hugh had a stammer, and Fred describes him thus:

It was pursuits of some sort that encompassed and enthralled him: he was both in boyhood and manhood always doing something with such fervour (and usually many things together ), that he had no energy left for consciously being something, either lover or friend, still less enemy.

He died in 1914, shortly before Fred began writing David Blaize. This flight of fancy relating to Hugh's instructions for his burial feels pure David Blaize to me:

[fredbensonenthusiast]

[fredbensonenthusiast]

General History

These are my posts covering history topics. This list will be updated continuously.

Ancient Rome:

Homosexuality and the First Fifteen Roman Emperors

19th Century:

Breeching Ceremony

Cleveland Street Scandal

"How Oscar Wilde Created a Queer, Mysterious Symbol in Green Carnations" (Lit Hub article)

New York Tribune Building

Order of Chaeronea

Early 20th Century:

"The Invention of Heterosexuality" (PBS article)

"The Kinsey Effect" (LA Times article)

"A life in feuds: how Gore Vidal gripped a nation" (The Guardian article)

Pickfair

Reno, The Divorce Capital of America

"Schoolboy Homosexuality" (Mattachine Review article)

1950s:

"The Homosexual in Our Society: A Panel Discussion" (1958 radio recording)

Johnny's Greatest Hits

NBC and Color TV

Norby

Peyton Place: The Novel That Shocked America

1960s–1970s:

Lawrence of Arabia and Homosexuality (book excerpt)

Paul Newman and The Front Runner (book excerpt)

"Queer Collection" (Jet article)

The 'Rural Purge' of Television

Stonewall Nation

Related: Gay life stories posts

[fredbensonenthusiast]

Fred would have been right at home on Tumblr - look at this rant about The Mill on the Floss for example

And the weird thing is, I had exactly the same reaction to the ending! Is this just Fred and me being extraordinarily ignorant about maritime matters?

[Spoilers for Mill on the Floss]

[fredbensonenthusiast]

The first edition of E. F. Benson’s Bensoniana – a collection of quotes from his works –, released in 1912 by Arthur L. Humphreys.

[fredbensonenthusiast]

Covers of the E. F. Benson's book editions released by gay-oriented publisher Millivres between 1991 and 1994.

Illustrations by Shane McGowan. Design by Michael Tompkins.

Colin — originally released in 1923. David of King's — originally released in 1924. Colin II — originally released in 1925. The Inheritor — originally released in 1930. Ravens' Brood — originally released in 1934.

[fredbensonenthusiast]

Ah, thank you so much, I felt the same, I am so glad to hear from a fellow enthusiast!!! I came to them knowing nothing about Fred and very little about schoolboy novels (except The Charioteer), and just found them hugely enjoyable. But the more I find out the more intrigued I am by the books and the way they were written! I think he made such clever choices about what not to say (I think someone has commented on the minimalism of that bathroom scene and a parallel to a certain Chapter two ellipse in TC!)

And you're reading Arthur Hamilton! You are brave! I did manage to finish it in the end.....it's got some interesting stuff but no wonder AC Benson was jealous of Fred's success 😮

Well, asking on behalf of Fredbensonenthusiast, how did you enjoy David Blaize and David of King's? I would love all your thoughts.....

I loved them! David, Frank, and Bags absolutely stole my heart. I wasn't expecting the books to be laugh out loud funny, either. (Meanwhile I'm trying to read Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, BA of Trinity College by Arthur Benson without falling asleep...)

I really loved that the books were the epitome of all of the classic proto-queer schoolboy tropes. And while the books can be read on their own, they are impossible to separate from Benson's own life which adds a whole different dimension to almost every scene.

There's a lot of ambiguity with the characters and this makes the characters feel so much more real and I personally like that David's sexuality is so complicated. In both books, we know David does not like to think inwardly about complicated subjects (repressing Frank's advance on him in book 1, when Bags asks David why he doesn't like women, etc.). I don't think David is straight, but I wonder what it would take for him to realise this or even want to pursue something.

But the pining and Frank's internal conflict had me drowning in angst (which is so impressive for such a lighthearted, slice-of-life novel).

[fredbensonenthusiast]

The invention of Radclyffe Hall

Simon Goldhill, writing about the Benson family, makes a very interesting comparison between the trial of Oscar Wilde, and the obscenity 'trial' of Radclyffe Hall, author of 'The Well of Loneliness', and the publicity surrounding it, which, he feels, created certain stereotypes of men and women who were same-sex attracted.

Secondly, Radclyffe Hall’s own photographic portrait, which circulated very widely at this time, emphasized the masculinity of her appearance and dress—with short-cropped hair and male clothes....... The contrast between the bustles, dresses, and elaborate coiffure of the late Victorian and Edwardian period and the trousers, flat lines, and short hair of the roaring twenties resulted in a mass of journalistic flummery—cartoons, editorial comment, shocking photographs, amused articles—about the new New Woman and the confusion of masculine and feminine in dress and behavior. Radclyffe Hall’s clothes and demeanor were in a line with such fashions but also became a defining characteristic of the “masculine woman” as the paradigm of sexual inversion. Much as Oscar Wilde’s trial helped fix a stereotype of the homosexual, so Radclyffe Hall was instrumental in the establishment of the image of the lesbian as a masculine woman, short-haired, dressed in male clothes, adopting a male demeanor, even wearing a monocle and smoking a cigarette.

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

[fredbensonenthusiast]

Read David Blaize and David of King's (and cried in public reading the latter). Is this a David Blaize fan account now??