Henry James and the Bensons at Lamb House
In her book ‘EF Benson and his family and friends,’ Gwen Watkins points out that Fred’s rather rose-tinted version of his first meeting with Henry James wasn’t quite all it seemed. He claims that he was invited down to Lamb House in the Summer of 1900. It turns out he did the inviting, as Henry James proclaimed in an exasperated letter to a friend:
Dodo Benson has invited himself and another young man for the weekend!
Fred was after all only the annoying younger brother of his actual friend Arthur. Still, James replied indulgently thus:
I love the ‘Dear “Fred” Benson and companion’! If it is possible to write a letter through gritted teeth, then surely this is the proof. I note that he is anxious to emphasise that he will be ‘alone’, perhaps because he did not want Fred meeting his serious literary friends. Fred here reminds me of a certain other cheeky young man.
Fred writes amusingly in ‘Final Edition’ of the feedback he had received from James on the unpublished 'Dodo' several years before:
He wrote acknowledging the safe receipt of a sheaf of ill-written text, saying that he had not realised that it was so substantial a work....... He wrote me two or three long and kindly and brilliantly evasive letters about it. He called it “lively,” he called himself “‘corrosively critical” though he made no criticism, except that he did not find it as “ferociously literary” as his taste demanded. “Hew out a style,” he said; “it is by style we are saved,” and I drew the obvious conclusion.
Sixteen years later, on Henry James’ death, Fred had the opportunity to move in himself. In ‘Final Edition’, he paints a picture of a series of fortunate coincidences leading to his residency there. We know it was a little more rocky than that, especially his attempts to secure George Plank as a house-mate.
Perhaps the most eccentric arrangement followed in 1922-25, when Fred and older brother Arthur leased the property jointly. Apart from a period of time when Fred took care of Arthur while he was suffering from depression, they made every effort to ensure they would see as little of each other as possible:
[Arthur] very naturally wanted sole occupation for himself and his friends in his vacations......All the morning, strictly undisturbed, he wrote his letters or his diary. In the afternoon he and his friend drove or walked or bicycled, timed to be back for the sacred hours from tea till dinner. For a few days at Christmas and possibly at Easter, I stayed with him at his invitation where lately I had been host helping him, as best I could, to get through the heavy days.
In 1925, Arthur's death left Fred in sole possession of the lease, ready to become a pillar of the Rye community.
More on that soon...........
