The Satire of Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson

A few months ago as of this writing, Pope Francis caused a minor flurry of interest in the work of a lesser-known English Catholic novelist, Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson (1871-1914). He mentioned Benson’s science fiction fantasy Lord of the World, believed by some commentators to be the pope’s favorite novel, in a press conference during a flight on January 19, 2015. As His Holiness commented,

“There is a book — excuse me I’m advertising — there is a book, perhaps the style is a bit heavy at the beginning, because it was written in 1907 in London. . . . At that time, the writer had seen this drama of ideological colonization and described it in that book. It is called Lord of the World. The author is Benson, written in 1907. I suggest you read it. Reading it, you’ll understand well what I mean by ideological colonization.”

That was not the first time Pope Francis mentioned the novel. In a homily on November 18, 2013, he claimed that Lord of the World illustrates how today’s Zeitgeist leads to “adolescent progressivism,” “uniformity of thought,” and “apostasy.”

Not surprisingly, a number of commentators rushed into the breach to assure everyone that the pope’s remarks confirmed their understandings of Benson’s writing. In virtually every case, Lord of the World has been taken as prophecy, while its companion piece, The Dawn of All (1911), is characterized as Benson’s blueprint for an ideal society.

Speaking as the author of an appreciation of the fiction of Nicholas Cardinal Wiseman, John Henry Cardinal Newman, and Msgr. Benson (So Much Generosity, 2013), and the editor of a number of Benson’s novels, these commentators are, in my opinion, mistaken. Benson was not a prophet, nor did he ever claim to be one. He was a brilliant if somewhat low-key satirist, as his admirer Evelyn Waugh noted, exposing the foibles of humanity with wit and irony, as the definition of satire has it.

Benson, in fact, appears to have inspired Waugh in some of Waugh’s more appalling and much blacker satires. Waugh’s gruesomely funny The Loved One: An Anglo-American Tragedy (1948) seems to have used Benson’s amusingly grim A Winnowing (1910) as something of a springboard. Waugh’s short story, “Out of Depth” shares elements and a theme with The Dawn of All — as, surprisingly, does Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s Slaughterhouse Five (1969). In Waugh’s novella Love Among the Ruins (1953 . . . with illustrations by the author), which he characterized as a light diversion to while away a few hours, we see a sprightly (if you’ve got a peculiar idea of sprightliness) alternative version of what Benson lambasted in Lord of the World.

Given the uniformly high quality of Benson’s fiction, it is curious that Lord of the World, his most uncharacteristic and most misunderstood novel, gets the most attention. Of course, it strikes a Benson aficionado as equally curious that Benson’s least favorite work, one he grew almost to hate, the interrelated short story collection The Light Invisible (1903), is in some respects nearly as popular as Lord of the World.

I said that Benson was ordinarily a low-key satirist. In Lord of the World, however, he was (in his words) “screaming” — and apologized in a brief note to the reader if it came across as “unduly loud.” Had Benson seen what he regarded as outrageous and fantastic exaggerations to make a point come to be regarded as normal behavior and public policy, however, he might not have been able to write the book.

How, after all, do you exaggerate an exaggeration without appearing to be completely out of touch with reality? Can we even imagine what Jonathan Swift would have written had he seen his “modest proposal” to end poverty by eating the poor mirrored in today’s reliance on abortion to raise living standards?

My goal, however, is not to urge you to read Lord of the World. If you haven’t done so already or are not planning to, my recommendation added to that of Pope Francis isn’t going to persuade you.

What I want is to convince you to give Benson’s other fiction a try. Just keep in mind that he was often bitingly satirical, especially when you might think he was being blandly prosaic.

Having said that, I have to qualify it. You will not see satire in his short stories. Not that you should avoid them, but his goal was different in short fiction, in which he seemed to take a break from his constant theme of personal vocation. Despite the fact that both his short story collections, The Light Invisible and A Mirror of Shalott (1907) fall into the supernatural or horror genre, they are not in a sense as serious as his novels. Interestingly, A Mirror of Shalott may have inspired Taylor Caldwell’s 1963 themed short story collection, Grandmother and the Priests.

Benson’s first novel was an Elizabethan epic, By What Authority? (1904). Like Come Rack! Come Rope! (1912), his last-written (but not last-published) historical novel, used as a textbook in Catholic schools for decades, it features St. Edmund Campion. It is so easy to get caught up in the narrative, however, that you might miss the little jabs sprinkled here and there, e.g., when he comments that the distressed survivors of the Spanish Armada made it to shore, only to be slaughtered by Irish savages and English gentlemen.

The satire is even less evident in most of his other historical novels, The King’s Achievement (1905), The Queen’s Tragedy (1907), Come Rack! Come Rope!, and Oddsfish! (1914). Depending on your point of view, The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary (1906), is a mystical treatise in fictional form, a profound commentary on the search for vocation, or one long, sustained, satiric kick in the pants — take your pick. Given Benson’s predilection for ambiguity that forces the reader to think, it might be all three.

In my opinion, Benson dropped satire in The King’s Achievement because he was countering Victorian anti-Catholic “historical” novels that had very little history in them, viz., anything by the Reverend Charles Kingsley, best known for his slanderous attacks on Cardinal Newman. Consequently, Benson concentrated on getting his facts straight, driving his historical consultants almost to distraction with his attention to detail.

In Come Rack! Come Rope! you find a few squibs here and there, but Benson’s focus was on Campion, considered one of the greatest intellects in England . . . until he converted to Catholicism. With The Queen’s Tragedy and Oddsfish!, I think the difficulty Benson had writing both books caused him to forego the fun of poking sticks at himself and others, although it peeps through occasionally.

In his screaming fit, Lord of the World, though, Benson pulverized the complacency of Edwardian England into subatomic particles. He took everything the secular world considers good, carried it to its reductio ad absurdum, and brought on the Apocalypse. It is, admittedly, difficult to understand why Benson thought this comic. It must be that English sense of humor.

In The Dawn of All, Benson turned the premise in Lord of the World on its head. He started with everything Edwardian society considered worst about organized religion, especially Catholicism. By taking these beliefs to their logical conclusion, he then demonstrated (to his own satisfaction, at least) that it could lead to a virtual utopia . . . that he insisted repeatedly he hoped would never come to pass!

The Necromancers (1909), like Lord of the World a “sensational” novel, takes on what we know today as the “New Age” movement, inflicting a number of wounds with its pointed barbs. Other works by Benson also contain satire, such as The Sentimentalists (1907) and its semi-sequel, The Conventionalists (1908).

It is not, however, until we come to Benson’s half-dozen “mainstream” novels that we see Benson at his satirical — and entertaining — best.

Paradoxically — possibly because most readers don’t seem to realize what Benson was doing — these finely honed and exquisitely crafted works are virtually unknown among those who hold Lord of the World and other sensational works in high esteem. Nevertheless, they are quintessentially Benson, far more so than any of his other works.

I believe this is because they take place in a milieu that Benson knew probably better than anyone on earth, both as an insider as the son of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, and as an outsider as a convert to Catholicism: the upper class society of Edwardian England. Readers expecting something along the lines of Lord of the World often find themselves disappointed, sometimes bitterly so, at what they seem to regard as a betrayal by an author they have grown to admire on the strength of his most atypical work.

They thereby do themselves as well as Benson an injustice, and cheat themselves out of a profound, yet entertaining experience. Take, for example, the following passage from A Winnowing, the first of the mainstream novels, describing a character who drifts between being a major player and part of the scenery:

I love contemplating people of this kind, because the subject is so endless and evasive. I have no certainty of what Mr. Fakenham thinks about, but I am stimulated by him to form unverifiable conjectures forever. Thoughts undoubtedly pass through his mind beyond those to which he gives expression, but I have no idea as to what they are; words proceed out of his mouth — often, so long as the subject is on his own plane, shrewd and suggestive; and actions are done by him. He lives, and he will die; and as to what he will do then not even I dare to form conjectures of any kind. He is the strongest argument for the annihilation of the soul that I have ever met. . . .

I wish now to describe his appearance this morning — not that anything depends upon it. (He is not, later on, to be convicted by its means of some nameless crime.) I wish only to gaze upon him for a minute or two.

If you don’t run out and obtain a copy of A Winnowing on the strength of that passage alone, I’m afraid there is no hope for you. This isn’t Upstairs, Downstairs, or Downton Abbey. It’s Edwardian England by someone who lived it.

Now, I am in something of a quandary. Do I summarize each one of the six mainstream novels, possibly spoiling some of your enjoyment? Or do I risk turning you off by listing each title and enough to identify it, leaving the rest to your imagination? Knowing that my readers are among the more astute members of the human race, the latter course seems advisable. So —

• A Winnowing (1910). Death. Lots of death. And lots of bizarre behavior surrounding death.
• None Other Gods (1911). A college student chucks it all and sets out to find himself. He fails. Or not. (That, by the way, should get the Pulitzer Prize for “Worst Sixteen-Word Description of a Novel Ever.”)
• The Coward (1912). The utter barbarity of the Stiff Upper Lip.
• An Average Man (1913). Not an average novel. No, really. This novel is indescribable, yet seems so . . . ordinary at first glance. Stunning.
• Initiation (1914). Redemption through suffering. Sounds trite. It’s not. Amusing at times. Ghastly at others.
• Loneliness? (1915). Benson’s last novel, published posthumously without the usual final polish. It’s about Grand Opera . . . sort of. Don’t let that fool you.

Pope Francis’s recommendation to read Lord of the World? By all means. Don’t stop there, however. Do, and you’ll be missing the intellectual, literary, and spiritual experience of a lifetime.