FROM AN INKWELL

Southland Times, Issue 20496, 26 May 1928, Page 13 (Supplement)

FROM AN INKWELL

STELLA BENSON

(by

Brunnhilde)

The other day I was astounded and considerably shocked when an extremely literary person of my acquaintance betrayed complete ignorance of that brilliant writer, Stella Benson. I do not want that word “betrayed” to be misleading. You will notice that I did not use “pleaded” nor “confessed” ; as I have already remarked, she was an extremely literary person, and only by the blank brightness that slid with the efficacy of a sliding door over her face, was I not deceived. For the life of me I cannot remember the gist of her murmured words; something delightfully vague, delightfully enthusiastic, I am sure; but I was too much detached at the time by the intriguing fancy that her fingers were groping towards me, feeling for something; that from behind those widely beguiling eyes conciousness had been despatched posthaste after clues, queues; and because I was the only available means of communication, perhaps, I had a distinct and uncanny feeling that something of mine was being raided. It must be a serious handicap to acquiring knowledge, an extremely literary reputation. When you come to think of it, the average unawareness of Miss Benson is not surprising. Apart from the fact that her output has not been great, in point of quantity, there could only be a nearly neglible section of a community by whom her significance could be appreciated. As far as I can remember, she has written six novels, a slim little book of verse entitled

"Twenty,” and “The Little World,” containing a number of travel sketches which she has also illustrated. “I Pose’” was her first novel, published eleven or twelve years ago. There was a select few who, discovering it, grew ecstatic about this astonishing performance of a new writer. Shrewd reviewers put their fingers on it and pronounced it good. Someone described it succinctly as “a dream charged with purpose.” I feel as if the phrase had been J purloined from myself. The new writer, ; Stella Benson, was extraordinarily amused i over the enormqps joke of living, one felt. : She blamed nobody, she denounced nobody; her attitude was wholly indulgent, humourous without bitterness, and although she avoided the screeches of derisive laughter, she managed to shatter many starched and corseted illusions with the gorgeous ridicule from her wit. She was sharing her joke, but only with those who possessed the same spark of appreciation as herself. ThaJ is why there never could be many to read her sympathetically. There will probably be a small coterie of kindred spirits in each age who will “discover” her; they may even endeavour to induce their contemporaries to share their enthusiasm and read her; then there will be a long silence. I believe that is a part of her joke, that there will always be so few to appreciate it. The dear old Greater Public will take her up, put on its generous spectacles, acknowledge her brilliancy—only brilliant people of course could be so incomprehensible—and in its kindly, lumbering way, after blinking through one astonishing volume, close it very gently and slip it back amongst the other uncut editions on the book-shelf. Once in every age, perhaps, the Greater Public will do its duty by Stella Benson. “This is The End” was her second novel, followed two years later by “Living Alone,” and after three years, “The Poor Man.” “Pipers and a Dancer” and “Goodbye Stranger” followed at long intervals, and then the enchanting, fragmentary record of her ' travels which are “The Little World”. I I believe that since the publication of ■ “Twenty” she has been compiling another book of poems which is due shortly. As i I have said before, her output is disappointI ingly small. In a recent London paper I read that she and her husband had returnj ed on an extended holiday from Manchuria. . Perhaps the soil of England will once again ! move her creative instinct, and she will ! write. One would wish that it could induce ' her pen to be more prolific. i In “I Poee” there was an ex-gardener 1 who took a position as a steward on a passenger liner, and took his garden with him in a flower-pot, called Emily, I think. | "This is The End” is the story of Jay, who is introduced by the author as “not the heroine, but the most constantly apparent woman in the book. I cannot introduce you to a heroine, because I have never met one.” She was also a bus-conductor and an idealist, and she had run away from her family,. Jay also had a brother who “had lied so successfully all his life that quite a lot of people thought him a most admirable young man.” These two lived each in a Secret World.

Gods had been born there. No surprise could live there now, no wonder, no protest. The years like minutes fled between those trees, dynasties might fall during the singing of a bird. I think the thing that haunted the wood was a thing exactly as old and as romantic as the first child that tracked its Secret Friend

across the floor of a forest. Stella Benson never says too much. If one were finding fault one would suggest she erred cn the other side. But once under the spell of the sheer beauty of her imagery, the startling honesty of her thoughts, it would be hard to shake oneself into the effort of’ criticism.

Usual people are at once unusual under her pen. It is pregnant with ideas born of her observation and her imagination. Nothing is too small for her comment. Drab people remain drab, but their impress on the earth becomes vivid through her. Here was a hero-worshipper. Her self-consciousness took the form of a constant repentance. In the night she would go over the day and probe it for tender points. “Oh, that was a dreadful thing to say,” was a refrain that would keep her awake for hours, wriggling and giggling in her bed over the dreadfullness of it. She had too little egoism. The lack gave her face a look of littleness. A lack of altruism has the same outward effect. A complete face should be full of something, of gentleness, of vigour, of humour, of wickedness. of vigour, of humour, of wickedfull of anything. All the same there was

charm about her, the fact that she was an admirer was charming. Miss Benson never sneers. She laughs outright, laughs full in the face of - people, in infectious good-humour. She is singularly right; but she is never nasty. “Living Alone” is a magic book, a beautifull absurdity, beautifully lucid and elusively beautifully. It shows the effect of magic on the individual members of a charitable aid committee. The author is not diffident about her knowledge of magic, which as you know, has limitations. Fire is, of course, a plaything in magic hands. Water has its docile moments, the earth herself may be tampered with, and an incantation may call man or any of his possessions to attention. But space is too great a thing, space is the inconceivable Hand, holding aloft this fragile delusion that is our world. There is no power that can mock at space, there is no enchantment that is not lost between us and the moon, and all magic people know—and tremble to know—that in a breath, between one second and another,

that Hand may close, and the shell of time first crack and then be crushed, and magic be one with nothingness and death and all other delusions. This is why magic, which treats the other elements as its servants, bows before space, and has to call such a purely independent contrivance as a broom-stick to its help in the matter of air-travel. The particular witch who “managed” the house of Living Alone had a broom-stick called Harold. She kept her magic in packets, and she could make people invisible. She lived among practical people who did not know she was a witch. Miss Benson writes fairy stories, I suppose; perhaps, with her more intimate vision, what she writes is Life. “The Poor Man” is her most brilliant novel. As a matter of fact, it is too brilliant. In it there is just that trace of bitterness which gives a hard glitter to brilliancy. It is the cruellest thing she has written, and, being cruel, it is very vivid, splashed with glaring colour. The rightness of her words is startling. She leaves one spell-bound. She makes one scream with laughter; but there is pain behind the screaming, and that kind of laughter leaves tears streaming down one’s face. Screaming laughter; streaming tears. The cruel Miss Benson who wrote the story of Edward Williams, a “person of no facts at all,” in a state of semi-intoxication, not clever, deaf, ugly. Edward Williams in love with Emily, beautiful, clever, witty, sought after. He told her he wished he could tell her how much he loved her. “I haven’t told you. I couldn’t. To say anything that I could say would just make you think I loved you—just like that—that I was just one of a lot of lovers—” “You don’t know me,” said Emily. “You only know what I look like. You have heard almost nothing but lies from me. I have room for only one true thing in my life.” Emily was always much affected by the skins and shapes of men and women. The last hour had been made almost unbearable to her by the fact that Edward had red spots all over his forehead and chin. I think Edward would have killed himself had he known this. As a rule he thought of those spots whenever he found himself looked at. But tonight he was tremulously uplifted. He really forgot that Emily could see him; he only knew that he could see Emily. If he were in a book, he thought the spots would not be mentioned. If the book were well written, the reader would now be saying, “Our Hero is surely more in love than ever man was before.” Edward R. Williams, the Poor Man, had no money; yet he followed Emily to China, and later she promised to marry him and finally “Leave me alone,” she shouted harshly and hideously. Can’t you leave me alone? I can’t bear you. I can’t bear to touch you—you poor sickly thing.”— She was gone. The seas were still. A desert —a continent of silence

But the bitter Miss Benson had disappeared again by the time she wrote her latest, but by no means recent novel. To my mind is her most satisfying, her most complete and her most consistent work. Its humour is subtler, its comprehension wider. There is no acuteness in its emotions. The vivid colourings of her previous novels had been toned down, softened. Its brilliance is subdued, though in no way restrained. It is just that her vision Is stronger. It does not tempt her cleverness to extremes. It is nearly a simple story. Daley, Clifford Cotton’s young American wife, is a simple person. So was the Clifford Cotton whom the fairies spirited away seven years before, and only his mother recognized that it was a changeling they had left in his place. The story of “Good-bye, Stranger” covers only three days, during which the fairy goes and the old Clifford returns. Charming, whimsical, clever rare, witty—all the old adjectives describe it. But it gives them an adequacy I have never known them possess before. That is the difference between Miss Benson and any other writer I know of. It is her courage which is the most amazing thing about her; the courage to express her Secret Thoughts in words. “All yesterdays and all to-morrows are in this house listening. This is the place where time Is without a name. Here the beginning comes after the end. To-morrow we shall be born. Yesterday we died. To-day was just a little passage built of twenty-four odd hours.” Miss Benson has the beautiful audacity to convert honest thought into honest words. She has the almost divine gift of making her profundities the kernel of small, ordinary statements—she has borrowed the trick from Nature. I should like to quote a short poem from “The Poor Man” for two reasons; first, that it discloses a system of rhyming in which the affinities in vowel sounds are used, peculiar to herself; secondly, as one of the best of poems which are strangely disappointing as the work of a woman whose prose convinces one that she is a poet of magic, lhe poetry in her finds more effective utterance in the freedom of prose which offers no restrictions. This poem is entitled “Wild Trees in February—to Spring.” In a panic forlorn I am haunting my corners; I am dead without mourners; I am dead yet unborn. You will come to me later, You will come very late. Ah —must I wait, Must I wait, You unhurrying satyr? My sisters shall make Of their exquisite acres Carved aisles for the breakers Of sleep when they wake. They are strung to an answer, They are strung to a trance. Ah—must they dance, Must they dance, You inportunate dancer?