The Upton Letters by A.C. Benson

‘Give it a name’ said Jimmy the Saint following that biblical injunction that brought things into existence but generally seeing that it was not good more a vile exhalation. That’s a kind of nominalism which holds that until an inchoate thought has become fixed as a definite concept its existence is so tenuous it can hardly be said to exist at all. Lately I have scouted the metaphysical fairing that states ‘religion’ did not exist until the 17th.C. A related trinket is the bizarre idea that ‘homosexuality’ did not exist until 1892 for it had not come to the attention of the fine forensic mind of the psychologist.

I saw this in relation to famille Benson about whom I have written. Brilliant and quite queer, all of them. A.C. Benson’s excellent Upton Letters pub. 1905 touches on the topic of what he calls ‘impurity’ among public school boys. The book was meant to be published anonymously but when it came out accidentally that Benson was the author then the Eton masters were annoyed. The author taught classics there for 18 years. Eton in American terms might be described as ‘juvie’ with Latin, Greek, cricket, fives, and optional but likely birching and buggery. British officers in Staleg accommodation found it an easy berth after public school.

In the form of a fictional series of letters to a correspondent Benson writes:

It is curious to note that in the matter of bullying and cruelty, which used to be so rife at schools, public opinion among boys does seem to have undergone a change. The vice has practically disappeared, and the good feeling of a school would be generally against any case of gross bullying; but the far more deadly and insidious temptation of impurity has, as far as one can learn, increased. One hears of simply heart-rending cases where a boy dare not even tell his parents of what he endures. Then, too, a boy's relations will tend to encourage him to hold out, rather than to invoke a master's aid, because they are afraid of the boy falling under the social ban.

The social ban comes from what Stephen Daedelus’s father called ‘peaching’.(Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man)

And his father had told him that if he wanted anything to write home to him and whatever he did, never to peach on a fellow.

Torridge by William Trevor published in the New Yorker in 1977 is a school story with Benson’s theme.

Benson, it is clear, though fraught by the ‘homo sexual’ (sic) tendency never practised. The Upton Letters went through 14 impressions. So far like the rest of his work that I have read it is brilliant. More anon when I have finished it.