#lamb house

[rjdent]

Henry James's writing desk, Lamb House, Rye, England.

[artisthomes]

Lamb House, home of Henry James and E. F. Benson, in Rye, East Sussex, England

[fredbensonenthusiast]

E.F. Benson’s artefacts

I did not expect to find much physical evidence of Fred’s time at Lamb House, especially since he never owned it and the contents were more or less cleared out by relatives after his death.  The room I would have loved to have seen, the 'Garden Room', which contained his beloved piano, was bombed to smithereens in 1940 (thankfully after his death). This lovely garden covers part of that site (the wisteria is where the bay window would have been):

But I do think Fred the archaeologist would have been amused to know which objects found their way into the glass cases inside:

The calling card holder (which no doubt in his heyday would have been bulging) contained ‘The Medallion of the Maharaja Ranjit Singh (1780 – 1839)’.  I immediately think of his dear friend Francis Yeats Brown, author of the Bengal Lancer, or even of Fred’s visit to India.  But was it a treasured keepsake with some kind of special meaning he kept with him always, or a trinket he picked up randomly and forgot about?

As for the cigarette case, engraved with his nickname ‘Dodo’ – had it been stuffed out of sight in a drawer somewhere, an embarrassing reminder of the novel which had been both a blessing and a curse to him?  Or was it easily found because it was in constant use?

In the telephone room there used to be a large bookcase containing all of Fred’s first editions.  The bookcase remains, but not the first editions.  Instead, it is stuffed full of cheap old copies of Fred’s books. Still there was something hugely satisfying about gazing on this shelf where the David Blaize trilogy nestles alongside Dodo, and his book on English Figure Skating, that other great passion of his.

Fred’s beloved dog Taffy has a more lasting memorial in the garden next to some older pet headstones.  Fred’s love affair with the town of Rye is well documented, but for my final instalment I will cover the church, host to the ‘Benson windows’, which are so remarkable they need a post all of their own.

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[fredbensonenthusiast]

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...........

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[calmgrove]

Winners and losers

Malcesine, Lake Garda (photo by kries [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)Rumer Godden: The Battle of the Villa Fiorita Introduced by Anita Desai Virago Modern Classics 2015 (1963)

Speaking as someone who has holidayed there, I can confirm that Lake Garda is a jewel, one of Italy’s many natural delights and the largest of its lakes, nestled at…

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[calmgrove]

Rye thoughts

Allan Ramsay: Thomas Lamb of Rye (1719-1804) painted 1753; National Galleries of Scotland

I promised some more Rye, but not wry, thoughts about that East Sussex town bordering Kent, where we’ve recently spent a very pleasant week.

Normally I wouldn’t post about holidays — they tend to be personal matters, after all, of little concern to the world at large — but in the case of Rye and further west…

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[lightsfromtheshadows]

Lamb House. Rye, England.

[partitionaustinexchangeyth]

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