The Benson Saga

Extract

Obvious pitfalls are in the way of one who writes about a member of his family. Friends and foes alike are ready to raise objections, to discount the value of praise on the score of personal bias, to resent criticism on the grounds that, as Jane Find-later says, £ so often there is something between people of the same family like a pane of glass. You mayn’t know it’s there until you try to touch one another, but it divides.’ Relations with whom we are thrown too intimately, in too frequent contact, never see us, according to this view, in perspective.

None of this applies to the different authors of the Benson Saga. The Bensons must have come together as friends even if the ties of blood had not linked them. Frankly aware of each other’s foibles, not one of which escaped the sense of humour which they had in common, they responded just as impulsively to individual fineness. Passionately interested in each other, indefatigable talkers with an avid flair for argument, no subject, no dogma, however controversial, was taboo. At times, Mr. E. F. Benson explains in the latest volume of the Saga, Mother they metaphorically fell upon each other tooth and nail. As a rule, play was fair. But ‘to argue with Hugh on religious topics,’ according to his brother, ‘was like playing Rugby football under rules framed by himself ! . . .’ When things ‘got too hot,’ however, an onlooker would break up the game.