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.

The Bell by Iris Murdoch (1958)

Heart-mysteries there, and yet when all is said
It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love,
And not those things that they were emblems of.

(The Circus Animals Desertion by W.B.Yeats)

Was he wrong? Can character become fixed by a significant incident at a sensitive moment? Iris Murdoch proposes in her novel that the tentative grooming by Michael of Nick, a teacher and his pupil, had a disastrous effect on both their lives. He the priest manqué, and the other a ‘beautiful boy’ of 15. Of course Michael does not see that, it was all so aesthetic, so pure, almost holy. Now 15 years later He is running a Brotherhood attached to a convent of Anglican Benedictines. Nick’s sister Catherine is due to join the nuns and Nick is lurking at the lodge but not a serious member of the group quartered at the big house of Imber. Yes it’s that familiar one pot stew of Murdoch’s that you must stir, stir, stir and don’t let it stick to the bottom. She is a great fabulist and the story continues to hubble bubble.


James the second in command at Imber (it’s Michael’’s house and lodge) has a view which is a rough sketch of the course of the novel:

In so far as Michael had had serious hopes that any individual other than Catherine might be of any genuine help to Nick at Imber he had thought that James Tayper Pace was the man. He was disappointed in James's reaction. James showed himself, where Nick was concerned, stiffly conventional. 'He looks to me like a pansy,' he said to Michael, soon after Nick's arrival. 'I didn't like to say so before, but I had heard it about him in London. They're always troublemakers, believe me. I've seen plenty of that type. There's something destructive in them, a sort of grudge against society. Give a dog a bad name, and all that, but we may as well be prepared! Who'd believe that thing was twin to dear Catherine?'

James has no inkling of course of how Nick was ‘turned out’ by his interlocutor and how something of the same sort is to to be visited on the innocent Toby who is helping out at Imber before going up to Oxford in the Autumn. As I wrote in my previous post Toby is quartered with Nick at the Lodge to keep an eye on him. Is he being traded? Well you decide, Iris does not tell you everything.

Another interesting character is Dora, the errant wife of a resident at Imber Paul, who is studying the historical documents of the nunnery. She is a true Dora (Copperfield nee Spenlow) scatterbrained with a good heart but a ninny. Iris reduces many pc mansions to rubble in this novel. That was the 50’s for you, an era of great repression. On a day flight from Imber and her overbearing husband Dora visits the National Gallery and has a Murdoch moment:

Dora was always moved by the pictures. Today she was moved, but in a new way. She marvelled, with a kind of gratitude, that they were all still here, and her heart was filled with love for the pictures, their authority, their marvellous generosity, their splendour. It occurred to her that here at last was something real and something perfect. Who had said that, about perfection and reality being in the same place? Here was something which her consciousness could not wretchedly devour, and by making it part of her fantasy make it worthless. Even Paul, she thought, only existed now as someone she dreamt about; or else as a vague external menace never really encountered and understood. But the pictures were something real outside herself, which spoke to her kindly and yet in sovereign tones, something superior and good whose presence destroyed the dreary trance-like solipsism of her earlier mood. When the world had seemed to be subjective it had seemed to be without interest or value. But now there was something else in it after all.

The chief characters are developed through their own voice and consciousness which change as the novel develops. The craft is to make that credible and she does along with very fine nature word painting as well. A classic.

Trivia: Glenn Ford stars in a made for tv movie The Brotherhood of the Bell which is quite good and out there:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ICl0KMm5yw