Censoring Queen Victoria (6 page)

Wedding night – Folkstone [sic]– crossing – Oh how my heart sank – I daren't let it – no wonder – an utter child … danced and sang into matrimony, with a loving but exacting, a believing and therefore expecting spirit. 12 years older, much stronger, much more passionate! And whom I didn't really love – I wonder I didn't go more wrong …

Paris – the first hard word about the washing – But let me think how hard it was for Ed. He restrained his passionate nature for 7 years and then got
me
! this unloving childish, weak, unstable child! Ah God, pity him! Misery – knowing
that I felt nothing of what I knew people ought to feel. Knowing how disappointed he was – trying to be rapturous – not succeeding – feeling so inexpressibly lonely and young, but
how
hard for him! Full of all religious and emotional thoughts and yearnings – they had never woke in me. I have learnt about love through friendship. How I cried at Paris! Poor lonely child, having lived in the present only, living in the present still. The nights! I can't think how I lived.

Although Mary began the diary seventeen years after her wedding night, the emotion was still palpable. One of the few complete sentences was: ‘I have learnt about love through friendship.' The one thing Mary was certain of was her emotional debt to other women. Indeed, the diary was begun as a cathartic self-examination on the advice of a new friend, Mrs Mylne. Mary went on to establish passionate relationships with several women of high spirituality. After Edward's death in 1896 she set up house with Lucy Tait, daughter of the previous Archbishop of Canterbury.

Arthur and his brother Fred read their mother's diaries together in August 1923, as they sorted her papers following her death. ‘She was afraid of Papa (I don't wonder),' wrote Arthur, ‘and it must have been terrible to be so near him and his constant displeasure … In fact this little record changes my whole view of their relations … probably they should never have married.' He did not ponder what effect his parents' relationship had had on him. He knew himself well enough: ‘My own real failing is that I have never been in vital touch with anyone – never either fought with anyone or kissed anyone! … not out of principle, but out of a timid and rather fastidious solitariness.' He did not know or care to explore the cause.

During the ten years after 1892, Arthur published on average one book a year and during the following decade this rate more than doubled. These included gentle little prose collections, containing gentle reflections on nature and philosophical themes, which sold well, particularly amongst female readers. But he also wrote about individual men's lives, their characters and achievements. The men he chose were exceptional, mostly unmarried, or men for whom marriage was ‘a closet' in Brenda Maddox's sense. He became something of a champion of homosexual and ambivalent men. In 1923, the year before his death, Arthur recorded a conversation with his brother Fred:

We discussed the homo sexual [sic] question. It does seem to me out of joint that marriage should be a sort of virtuous duty, honourable, beautiful and praiseworthy – but that all irregular sexual expression should be bestial and unmentionable. The concurrence of the soul should be the test surely?

The novelty of the term ‘homosexual' is evident in Arthur's writing of it as two separate words. He believed that men should be judged according to their depth of feeling, not social conventions or legalities. This was especially apparent in his biographical writings and in his celebration of the lives of men, many of whom he knew to be of ‘irregular sexual expression'.

These books were published with neither fanfare nor secrecy, but sympathisers would have identified the encoded messages. Benson's first book, published under the pseudonym Christopher Carr, was
Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B.A. of Trinity College, Cambridge, extracted from his letters and diaries, with
reminiscences of his conversation by his friend Christopher Carr of the same College
. It was published after Benson's return to Eton as master and he was soon identified as the author. The memoir described a love affair between two Eton boys. Such friendships, Benson wrote,

are truly chivalrous and absolutely pure, are above all other loves, noble, refining, true; passion at white heat without taint, confidence of so intimate a kind as cannot even exist between husband and wife, trust as cannot be shadowed, are its characteristics.

But the affair painfully disintegrated when the boys were reunited at Cambridge, thwarted by guilt and a crisis of faith.

Benson's second book was a collection of biographical sketches called
Men of Might: Studies of Great Characters
, written in collaboration with his lifelong friend and fellow Eton master, Herbert Tatham. Published in 1892, this volume was written as a teaching aid, aiming to supply schoolmasters with ‘lectures on men of various eras and denominations for boys 15 to 18 years old'. The subjects chosen were ‘Socrates, Mahomet, St Bernard, Savonarola, Michael Angelo, Carlo Borromeo, Fenelon, John Wesley, George Washington, Henry Martyn, Dr Arnold, David Livingstone, General Gordon, and Father Damien, the leper priest of Molokai'. Benson and Tatham's mission was to instil in boys (and any other readers) a sense of glory in manhood, of the faith men could have in each other, and of the love and moral strength they could give to one another. Their collaboration itself grew out of a quintessentially homosocial friendship that began in boyhood and lasted for thirty-five years, until Tatham's death in a fall in the Alps in 1909.

Benson was writing at a time when there was a culture of homosocial and homosexual literature and publishing. Examples included the
Yellow Book
, the Uranian poetry movement and the journals of individual men. In 1897, both Benson and Esher were among the twenty-three subscribers to the publication of the
Journals of William Cory
. We met Cory previously as William Johnson, the Eton master (and Esher's mentor) dismissed in 1872 for indecent behaviour with a student. The
Journals
collected Cory's accounts of his romances with men and boys. Later, in 1902, Esher sent Benson four large volumes of Cory's letters to read. Benson wrote in his diary:

They are deeply, wonderfully, moving and fascinating. The extraordinary mixture of shrewdness, knowledge, & dryness with abundant passion and sentiment. The high estimation in which he held the intellect – and yet … The letters about the boyfriendships are very touching. It is odd to be surrounded, as we still are, by all this charm and not to feel it. But those lost and haunting
purences
of whom he writes – those boys with serene eyes … with low voices full of the fall of evening … they stand in these pages in a magic light of which no mortal would ever have for me … I almost wish it were not so; if one could passionately idealise, like Newman, how much happiness … how much pain … and no one sees the dangers more clearly than I do.

Benson himself had published poetry expounding the beauty of boys and of boys' friendships, almost always in a lyrical tone of sad recollection. In ‘A Song of Sweet Things That Have an End', he wrote:

Heart speaketh to heart

Friend is glad with friend;

The golden hours depart,

Sweet things have an end.

When Benson was asked to write an introduction to a collection of Cory's poems, he agreed. The result bordered on hagiography, further demonstrating his ability to be ‘bland, truthful but completely locked against the inquisitive'. He celebrated Cory's influence and downplayed the behaviour of his dismissal:

There are many men alive who trace the fruit and flower of their intellectual life to his generous and free-handed sowing. But in spite of the fact that the work of a teacher of boys was intensely congenial to him, that he loved generous boyhood and tender souls, and awakening minds with all his heart, he was not wholly in the right place as an instructor of youth … He began to feel his strength unequal to the demands made upon it; and he made the sudden resolution to retire from his Eton work.

Benson knew the reasons for Cory's departure and obliquely hinted at them:

… with William Cory the qualities of both heart and head were over-developed. There resulted a want of balance, of moral force; he was impetuous where he should have been calm, impulsive where he should have been discreet.

Despite his own liberal views, Benson did not offer any anachronistic defence of Cory's relationships with boys. But
by linking his name with Cory's poems, he did much to popularise them. This poetry provided inspiration to
aficionados
who themselves became Uranian poets, many of whom had been Eton boys themselves.

In his biography of the art critic Walter Pater, Benson considered the impact of classics education on the sexuality of young men:

… if we give boys Greek books to read and hold up the Greek spirit and the Greek life as a model, it is very difficult to slice out one portion, which was a perfectly normal part of Greek life, and to say that it is abominable etc etc. A strongly sensuous nature – such as Pater or [John Addington] Symonds – with a strong instinct for beauty, and brought up at an English public school, will almost certainly go wrong, in thought if not in act.

Tim Card
, the historian of Eton College, wrote that Arthur Benson was ‘like all the members of his gifted family, a depressive and a homosexual … yet during his time at Eton he kept pederasty and depression at bay'. This was not without difficulty. In his diary Benson recounted that while doing his nightly rounds to speak to each of the boys, he stood unnoticed, watching as a maid tucked one of the students in. ‘The boy was prattling away with intense amusement and interest … I envied the boy's maid,' he wrote. Benson poignantly described this sensation as ‘heart-hunger'.

He knew himself to be longing for love but incapable of intimacy. His writing was a means of bridging this abyss. Through biography he could bring a life into the public domain and engage with his deceased subjects in a pseudocloseness, without the emotional risks of real life. Reading the Queen's
letters created a very particular sort of intimacy for him: a trespass-by-invitation; a private view of a life that was already publicly known; but necessarily a one-sided experience, and one hampered by his limited experience of women.

Four days before Victoria's death in January 1901, Arthur Benson had joined a huge crowd outside the Mansion House to read the bulletins of her illness. Taking recourse to the language of chivalry, he wrote in his diary:

It is curious how personally affecting it is. The thought of my dear liege lying waiting for death is a background for all my thoughts – and it gives me the same sort of anxiety that I feel for a near and dear relation.

It is not surprising that Benson should allude to the feudal relationship of lord and servant, or that he should have felt the Queen's decline so acutely. He had written words for hymns at her request; he had dined with her; his family had received condolences from her; and she had shown great kindness to his mother. Following Edward Benson's death in 1896, Victoria had invited Mary to Windsor, offering her consolation and even accommodation. In 1899, on the occasion of the Queen's birthday, some Eton boys had sung to her from a courtyard at Windsor Castle outside her breakfast room. Their program included a verse specially written by Benson and he was afterwards presented to the Queen, an experience he found surprisingly moving:

I appeared bowing and drew as near as I dared.

‘I must thank you for having written such a beautiful verse,' she said. ‘It has been a great pleasure to me!'

I bowed and withdrew rather clumsily, as I had forgotten the backward walk and only remembered it after a moment – however I did not quite turn my back on the Queen I think … But what was an
entire
surprise to me & will remain with me as long as I live was her voice. It was so slow and sweet – some extraordinary
simplicity
about it – much higher than I imagined it & with nothing cracked or imperious or (as imitations misled me into thinking) wobbly. It was like the voice of a very young tranquil woman. The phrases sounded a little like a learnt lesson – but the
tone
was so beautiful – a peculiar genuineness about it; I felt as if I really
had
given pleasure … Tho' if I had had the
choice
I would not have dared to go, I am now thankful to have seen her and had speech from her. And is it absurd to say that I would cut off my hand to please her.

Although this deep emotional connection remained with him as editor of Victoria's letters, Benson was not enamoured with royalty
per se
. He could be scathingly critical of the people and practices of the Court, especially of King Edward VII. On attending a play at Windsor Castle, he commented:

The Windsor Uniforms are silly looking things. And the pussy cat manners of the men in-waiting [some of whom had been his Eton and Cambridge friends] all rather feeble … The royals came at length. The King with the ‘irresistible bonhomie' look which I so particularly dislike. The Q. of Italy very disappointing – a coarsening Albanian! The King like a little dwarf. Our Queen very beautiful but a little haggard. My Duchess marched in, looking plumper and more matronly than ever; a crowd of nonentities, like
Lorne [husband of Queen Victoria's daughter, Louise]. (What a figure!)

Benson was thus not mindlessly in thrall to the royals. Nevertheless, a royal commission was a powerful thing.

Benson regularly had vivid dreams, which he carefully recorded in his diary. None was more remarkable than the one he described in August 1923, soon after accepting another royal commission, this time from King George V and Queen Mary:

I was to have lunch with the King and the Queen, but on coming into a large saloon where I was to meet them, they had gone into lunch. A huge hall with many people. The Q. waved her hand to me, and the K. beckoned me to a small side-table where he had turned down a chair. He said, ‘You see I have kept you a place. The Q. wanted to send up to you, but I said we wouldn't disturb your writing.' Then after a little he said, ‘Do you ever reflect that I am the only king who ever inherited all the virtues and none of the faults of his ancestors. I have the robustness of the Normans, the activity of the Plantagenets, the romance of the Stewarts and the common sense of the Guelphs.' Then he said, ‘I want you to look at the roof of my mouth. That will show you. That is how you tell a well-bred spaniel.' He turned to me, threw his head back and opened his mouth – but I could see nothing except that it was of enormous extent, cavernous and dark. I said I couldn't see, and he called an attendant who brought on electric torch. Then I saw it was as black as jet. I thanked him and he said, ‘I particularly wish you to look at the roof of the Queen's mouth – do so afterwards.' I said I could hardly do that, but he said, ‘Tell
her I wished you to do so.' Events followed which I can't recollect, but I was eventually in a small sitting-room with the Queen, who said, ‘Mind, it is only because the King desires it that I show you my mouth.' She threw back her head, and it was an enormous cavity of a dark purple, as if enamelled. I said, ‘It's very remarkable,' and she said with a smile, ‘You are right. You are about the only person to whom we have ever shown our mouths!' This did not appear strange or ludicrous – only a solemn privilege.