The Rye Arts Festival brought three eminent scholars of Rye’s very own satirical novelist and playwright EF Benson together on the centenary of the publication of Miss Mapp, the second book in Benson’s popular Mapp and Lucia series. Entries from EFB’s diaries and autobiographies, give impressionistic accounts which hide more than they reveal. So we are encouraged to dig deeper through anecdotes and characters in his novels to really learn about him. Allan Downend and Keith Cavers from the EF Benson Society, and Dominic Janes, Professor of Modern History at Keele University, reveal little known insights into the life and work of Fred Benson, or as he called himself to his friends ‘Dodo’.
Benson’s father, an eminent Bishop, and his emotionally unstable mother had a family of six children. Fred’s childhood, school and university days focussed on excelling at competitive sports and academic work; always conscious to display as little effort as possible in his success. Fred explored serial monogamous discreet passions for boys and young men from an early age. Known for reciting poetry in Latin on family holidays in Switzerland, Fred loved literature and wrote eloquent romantic rhymed odes to his male friends, all without a hint of sentimentality.
By the time he arrived at Kings College in Cambridge to study archaeology he was being extremely careful about not revealing his love interests for fear of getting caught in an act of illegal ‘sexual sin’. Nuances of same sex behaviour in fashionable circles of genteel bachelors and socially prominent women were meticulously discreet.
In 1916, Benson was invited by his close friend, the artist George Plank, to share the lease of Lamb House in Rye. His letters to Plank about weekends and holidays in the house made famous its previous occupant, Henry James, rave about loving the house, the library, the china, the cutlery, the linen, their ‘sun bathing’ and the village. Benson spent the last 21 years of his life writing satirical novels set in Tillingham (Rye) peopled by fascinating, strangely flavoured, delightfully monstrous characters he knew and loved.
Special thanks to Pete Anderson for his exceptionally delicious and varied selection of cakes with tea and coffee!
Image Credits: Susan Benn .