The Centenary of 'Colin II' by E.F. Benson: A Guest Post by John Howard

E.F. Benson (1867-1940) is probably best known today for his tales of supernatural horror and the six novels, dripping with campery and back-biting, portraying the rivalry between Elizabeth Mapp and Emmeline Lucas (‘Lucia’). Benson was a prolific and efficient writer, producing books of all kinds and qualities, including history, biography, memoir, and current affairs – as well as many other novels of social comedy and satire. A number of these blurred genre labels and could perhaps be described as explorations into dark psychology, terrible secrets, and obsession, with touches of the gothic and sensational, sometimes crossing further borders and venturing into the supernatural. Many also contained strong homosexual or homoerotic elements. Several of Benson’s novels in this vein were reprinted in paperback during the 1990s by publishers specialising in gay literature. Among them were The Inheritors (1930) and Raven’s Brood (1934); others were Colin (1923) and its continuation or sequel, Colin II – which was first published one hundred years ago in August 1925.

Although Colin II might seem a somewhat uninspired choice of title, it is certainly an accurate one. As Benson stated in his spoiler-friendly Preface to Colin: ‘“Colin” comprises the first part only of this romance: it will be completed in a second volume which will tell of the final fading of the Legend with which the story opens.’ Colin Stanier was not the first member of his family to bear the name; there was the ‘old Colin’ whose pact with Satan made in the late sixteenth century took him from life as a shepherd boy to becoming a close confidante of Queen Elizabeth, ennoblement as Lord Yardley, and given the riches and continuing prosperity for him and his descendants that flowed from the bargain.

This part of the story so far is summarised in the Introduction to Colin II, which makes clear that not only evil, but its redemption, will be the theme of the story. This provides an ongoing tension between good and evil, love and hate, obligation and liberty, that may only be resolved at the end: ‘Often Violet [Colin’s wife] wished he could have killed her love for him, for then would have died withal that eternal struggle within her between love and her horror of him, whose soul, whether in fulfilment of the legend, or from his inherent wickedness, was as surely Satan’s as if with his own blood he had signed the fabled bond. Yet as often as she wished that she cried out on herself at so blasphemous a desire, for she knew that by love alone, though in some manner inscrutable, could redemption come to him’ (11).

Colin divides his time between Stanier, the great house near Rye in Sussex built by his ancestor, and his villa in Capri. At Stanier he lives with his wife and young son Dennis, playing the role of an influential local grandee who is also a loving family man. His grandmother, aunt, and wife’s parents also live at Stanier, and within its walls provide opportunistic outlets – relief – for Colin’s endless store of barbed wit, sarcasm, and scarcely concealed mixture of contempt and hatred. Benson knew Capri well, sharing the lease on a villa for many years; the island was a haven for writers and artists whose lifestyles would be deprecated – if not illegal – in their own northern European countries. The ancient shadow of another regular visitor, the Emperor Tiberius, cast as a background contrast to the heat, glaring light and glowing colour of Capri, is inescapable – and necessary – as a symbol to depict Colin’s two aspects and double life. Colin is looked after by his valet Nino, who ‘had the morals of a sleek black panther’ (39). Nino is Colin’s willing accomplice – although always still a servant who can be put in his place when required.

Colin learns that Mr Cecil, the British Consul in Naples, possesses a missal of the Black Mass which once belonged to his ancestor. Now determined to build a chapel to Satan at Stanier, Colin quickly forces Cecil to give it him: ‘Never had he felt himself so truly in harmony with the spirit that inspired his life. Here, under the symbolism of the rite, was his own spirit revealed to him, his hatred of love, his love of hate. Here was the strengthening and refreshing of his soul; the renewal, mystically, of the bargain made in Elizabethan days…’ (91f).

Traditionally fathers told their sons the truth when they came of age: ‘They had, so he pointed out to them, the free choice of disassociating themselves from that bargain, and of taking the chance of material prosperity here and of salvation hereafter…’ (Colin 20). Colin begins to consider how he can influence Dennis, now in his teens, towards choosing the same allegiance that all previous generations of Staniers had, so he could initiate his heir into the ‘evil sacrament’. Disregarding all opposition from Violet, Colin decides to do so through hate and cruelty; however, no matter how hard he tries he cannot get Dennis to hate him. The novel ends dramatically with Colin, apparently a victim at last, confronted and in mental agony, asking his tormentor whether he is ‘the Lord whom I have served so well’ (254).

Benson’s novels from the years of Colin and Colin II seem to have provoked very different reactions from his biographers. For example, Geoffrey Palmer and Noel Lloyd wrote in E.F. Benson – As He Was (1988): ‘They may be a tribute to Fred’s industry, but not to his talent. He seems to have been marking time, waiting in a literary limbo, content to drift along. The seven books are either exceedingly silly or exceedingly sentimental or just dull’ (190). In The Life of E.F. Benson (1991) Brian Masters discussed Colin and other novels in very different terms, stating that ‘Fred was periodically obsessed with the notion of people who are the epitome of evil while bearing the appearance of consummate good’ (267). He went on to describe The Inheritor as combining ‘mystery, terror and a goodly chunk of healthy male beauty to make a tantalising cocktail. Beneath it all lies Fred’s serious, reiterated purpose, to demonstrate that inherent evil can only be destroyed, and the victim whose lot it is to carry evil within him be saved, by the intercession of human goodness’ (273). The same could be said of Colin II.

(John Howard)

'A Borderland of Shadows': The Centenary of 'Visible and Invisible'

E F Benson’s classic ghost story collection Visible and Invisible was published about one hundred years ago in October 1923. The twelve stories include several that have become anthology favourites, especially ‘Mrs Amworth’ and ‘Negotium Perambulans’. Others are perhaps more routine magazine fare, competent professional exercises in thrills, but all have a certain brisk economy in the telling, and a sardonic glee in the macabre.

Benson was 56 when the collection appeared. In complete contrast, he had issued Miss Mapp, one of his popular society comedies set in Rye, Sussex, the year before, and he was already known as a prolific, reliable author. He was the most urbane and worldly of the three Benson brothers, and well attuned to the commercial demands of the literary market. His tone is often detached and sometimes ironic.

However, his back-list also included a significant number of uncanny works, suggesting another side to his imagination, such as The Luck of the Vails (1901) and The Image in the Sand (1905): and there had been an earlier short story collection in a similar vein in The Room in the Tower (1912).

Hutchinson’s catalogue (printed in the back of their books) says: ‘In this volume Mr. Benson, departing from his usual choice of subject, deals with the occult and supernatural, and these stories of engrossing interest are proofs of his versatility and considerable powers of imagination. Between our own and the other world lies a borderland of shadows, which eyes that can pierce the material plane may sometimes see and whose happenings are somewhat disquieting. The writer has subtly caught this vague uneasiness and made it the pervading influence upon his characters in these original and powerful stories.'

As noticed in a previous post, May Sinclair’s Uncanny Stories came out the month before, also from Hutchinson, and the notice for this uses similar phrasing, also evoking both the other world and the borderland (evidently they were the vogue terms for this sort of fiction), though it also notes that her tales have ‘a strong psychological interest.’

Mary Butts came across a copy of Visible and Invisible in the Tauchnitz edition when she was in St Malo, France, in October 1929. She regarded this as a ‘magic town’, which reminded her of Algernon Blackwood’s story ‘Ancient Sorceries’. She felt that here she would fall upon a ghost book, and there it was. ‘There’s magic about’, she added. She noted in particular Benson’s phrase: ‘Eternity isn’t a quantity. It’s a quality.’

In her journal on 21 October 1929 (The Journals of Mary Butts ed Nathalie Blondel, pg 328), she made notes about each of the stories:

‘Fun at the mediums, sense not scepticism, “Mr Tilly’s Séance”

Vampires – here he is least convincing, “The Outreach”, “Mrs Amworth”

A ‘left-over’ of early man, “The Horror Horn”, cf. Buchan

The murderer-haunt, “At the Farmhouse”, “The Gardener”, “In the Tube”

The man of science who goes too far—scientific over-weight, “’And the Dead Spake’”

The blessed dead, “Roderick’s story” & in part “Machaon.” The first a very lovely story, cf. May Sinclair.

The evil elemental, “Negotium Perambulans.”

In all, a good run over the course—Benson’s course. Egypt omitted as an ‘occult’ distributing centre—he generally puts it in.’

She rediscovered it later, when, as before, ‘at need’ for it: evidently there was something talismanic about the book for her. In a journal entry for 23 March 1936, she noted: “Grace & comfort it was & is—but a sense that . . .—it was an advance-guard—a hint of what was to come & to keep . . . –my ‘awareness’ in order,” adding, ‘I wish I knew E.F. Benson.’

When she wrote this, she had moved to Sennen Cove, in the far West of Cornwall, and one story from the collection that may have had a particular resonance for her is ‘Negotium Perambulans’, perhaps one of the most successful in the book. This is set in the same area, on ‘the bare high plateau between Penzance and Land’s End.’ Indeed, the story refers to the notable carved, painted panels at St Creed, which is Sancreed, a place of particular mystical significance to Mary Butts (and to others): she thought the Grail might descend here. It seems likely that Sancreed was partly the inspiration for Benson’s story, because his fictional Polearn has similar carvings and, like Sancreed, an uncanny atmosphere, with a sense of ‘forces, fruitful and mysterious’ that ‘were dwellers in the innermost, grafted into the eternal life of the world.’

This theme would have appealed to Mary Butts. She was convinced, like Machen, Blackwood, de la Mare and others in the field, that there are places where other worlds overlap with ours: this recurs in her stories. She noted that Aleister Crowley had told her that ‘in certain places . . . there is a leak from the astral.’ Further, in another journal entry, she noted that glimpses of the abyss seep through, and gave as an example, some of Aubrey Beardsley’s pictures. Machen also explored this idea of a link between art and occult visions in his story ‘Out of the Picture’. ‘Negotium Perambulans’ suggests this too, in the troubled work of the artist John Evans, whose pictures are ‘inexplicably hellish’, full of ‘flickering shadows’, imbued with malignancy. The story is the most speculative in the book: it is suitably gruesome and outlandish, but it also implies vaster deeps. 

I have a copy of Visible and Invisible in a later edition in a rose-red binding which has an inscription in faded ink on the fixed front endpaper: ‘G.M.H./(a bed book)/24-5-25'. It is to be hoped G.M.H. slept well.

(Mark Valentine)