Search Results

“... Benson resembles a large tabby which stalks round the house switching its tail, delicately sniffing this, softly circling round that; every so often a paw is extended to pluck gently at a human being who has crossed its path – as if to explore what kind of a creature this intruder might be and whether he likes cats ...”

“... many exasperating delays and alterations attendant on all royal publications. As the editor A.C. Benson wrote to Murray in the course of a letter threatening to resign, ‘Royalty have no conception how much trouble they give.’ With the new century the correspondence changed in various ways. Telegrams began to appear, film rights became a consideration and ...”

“... In 1892 A.C. Benson published an essay which introduced the modern appreciation of Andrew Marvell. For more than two hundred years Marvell’s verse had shared with Metaphysical poetry a lowness of esteem which now seems puzzling. As the Cyclopaedia of English Literature explained in 1844, Marvel ‘is better known as a prose writer than a poet, and is still more celebrated as a patriotic member of parliament ...”

“... But the most typical – not the liveliest – letter is one that arose from Howards End. A.C. Benson read it, compared notes on it with his mother, Mary Sidgwick Benson, and wrote off warmly to Forster, complaining only that ‘the appeal of the house was a little strained – I should rather have expected the ...”

“... fair. He allows a good deal of space to a formidable devil’s advocate in the person of A.C. Benson. Monty regarded Benson as his oldest friend, and Benson declared Monty to be very dear to him. But the two appear seldom to have met without ...”

“... gathering of ‘eminent authors’, attended by William Archer, J.M. Barrie, Arnold Bennett, A.C. Benson, Hugh Benson, Laurence Binyon, Robert Bridges, Hall Caine, G.K. Chesterton, Arthur Conan Doyle, John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, Maurice Hewlett, Anthony Hope, W.J. Locke, E.V. Lucas, J.W. Mackail, John ...”

“... much else. Even among his fellow dons his insulation was thought remarkable. His best friend, A.C. Benson, declared that Monty’s ‘mind is the mind of a nice child – he hates and fears all problems, all speculation, all originality or novelty of view. His spirit is both timid and unadventurous.’ James’s knowledge, he conceded, was ‘extraordinarily ...”

“... with his own additions: ‘a bully and a liar’. Better balanced, if more merciless, was A.C. Benson, that expert in pinning into his diary the writhing anatomies of his intimates. He receives a letter from a 68-year-old O.B., whom King’s is preparing to superannuate: A long letter from O.B., & a very sad one ... All this is very pathetic; & what makes ...”

“... Christian revealed religion had never seemed so little worthy of belief.’ When A.C. Benson asked him what he believed he answered: ‘Nothing supernatural, thank God!’ This last is a witticism of sorts, but it appears to have been not preponderantly by wit that Gosse made his conversation – as he undoubtedly did – extremely attractive. It ...”

“... close descriptions of minutiae and masturbation scenarios. His narrators read Maurice Baring, A.C. Benson, Hopkins, Swinburne and Iris Murdoch. In Room Temperature, Mike takes a copy of Mark Pattison’s Isaac Casaubon to read on a plane; in the novel’s closing sentence he picks up a copy of the TLS. And on top of being a great observer and metaphor-maker ...”

“... the spirit of the age. In 1904, influenced by Max Nordau’s theories of racial degeneration, A.C. Benson ascribed the pervasive Tennysonian gloom to a strain of ‘dark Southern blood’ tainting the predominantly Scandinavian stock of the family. In 1923, Harold Nicolson, persuaded by Strachey’s sardonic view of eminent Victorians, diagnosed Tennyson as a ...”

“... looks (he credited him ‘with the face of a Botticelli’). In April 1915, Mallory wrote to A.C. Benson, his former tutor: ‘there’s something indecent when so many friends have been enduring so many horrors in just going on at one’s job quite happy and prosperous.’ Eventually, he took a commission in the Royal Artillery and went to France in May ...”

“... of disaster – and see life as ferocious and sinister,’ James wrote in 1896 to a startled A.C. Benson), but the story itself could not be less Jamesian: it is a thousand-word-long lament, in which a woman faces the prospect of a nuclear war, and confronts the inadequacy of any possible imagining of it. ‘I could weep for my furniture. The earth will be ...”

“... the everyday (as well as any non-American correspondents). Other friends, including Gosse and A.C. Benson, eulogised James with tender anecdotes demonstrating their intimate access to his private life: Gosse tells of calling on James the morning after the disastrous premiere of Guy Domville and finding him, contrary to public expectation, perfectly calm. James ...”

“... Arthur Benson​ never stopped dreaming about his father. Edward White Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, dropped dead saying the Confession in 1896 – he sank onto his prayer cushion and didn’t get up again – but nearly twenty years later his son found him crouched in the cupboard under the stairs, dressed in his purple cassock and playing with some toys: ‘Papa … giggled; then he said: “But now that you have found me out, you must run down here as often as you can, and we will have a good game at something – You don’t know what fun it is ...”