SOURCE: Braybrooke, Patrick. “A. C. Benson and The Thread of Gold.” In Peeps at the Mighty, pp. 59-76. New York: Books for Libraries Press Inc., 1966.

[In the following essay, originally published in 1927, Braybrooke defends The Thread of Gold against critics who charge Benson with superficiality.]

Since the very lamented death of the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, certain critics while admitting the charm of Mr. Benson's writings, have added at the same time, that they savour of superficiality. Now, I have an idea that these critics have rather confused simplicity with superficiality. Rather, I go further and say that Mr. Benson is profound. He is profound because he is simple, his truths, his problems are not dressed up in ornate trappings, nor are they unclothed and mere skeletons; they are put down in a straightforward way. Taking rather at random, one of his most popular books of Essays, The Thread of Gold, I shall endeavour in this Essay to examine Mr. Benson's methods and approach to certain incidents and lines of thought. I have been influenced in my choice by the question of diverseness, for Mr. Benson had a wide mind, if I may use the term in the sense that he wrote about a wide area of human tribulation, human joy and human activity. And I suggest that his mind was not only wide, it was also deep.

Let me start for examination with something about melancholy. For all through the book this divine stream wends its way. I say divine, for melancholy is the fairest of the gifts of the gods. She can be seen in the gentle rain which sweeps down over the hills spreading a mist that appears like a soft garment, she can be seen when the sun shines on the blue sea and in the distance makes gold, the big ships that are going to the other ends of the earth, she can be seen hiding just away in the distance, when all is joy, waiting to calm the reaction that might otherwise lead to a violent despair. For melancholy is not violent, she is serene, she is not angry, she is merely rather sad, she hovers over all nature and poets define her nature.

I never read Mr. Benson without feeling that here we have a melancholy man, a melancholy man because a man of great unselfishness, because a man of vast imagination, because, a man of depth of soul. If the critics who call Mr. Benson superficial would study his melancholy, they would find that the charge of superficiality had in it a distinct recoil. For the melancholy of Mr. Benson is the best type. He calls it Leucocholy. It is the gentle melancholy for which I hold so strong a brief.

This is how Mr. Benson writes of the divine mood. It comes in the nature of a friend.

“I have had to taste, during the last few days, I know not why, the cup of what Gray called Leucocholy; it is not Melancholy, only the pale shadow of it. It sends flowing through the mind a gentle current of sad and weary images and thoughts, which still have a beauty of their own; it tinges one's life with a sober greyness of hue; it heightens perception, though it prevents enjoyment.”

This last statement in my opinion is utterly untrue, I believe it is quite possible to thoroughly enjoy melancholy, if it is not, how is it that so much poetry is read? How is it that Barrie can get thousands to listen to his plays? How is it that the Church has made the central part of Christianity the bone in the whole essence of the story? How is that we love the sad sea waves, if their sadness or melancholy did not produce pleasurable emotions? And I refuse to concede that to enjoy melancholy is a form of morbid excitement, I contend that it is an appreciation of the essential bedrock of things. Of course it may be said that at times melancholy leads to that pernicious emotion of despair, but it often leads not to despair but to joy. Joy is the reaction of melancholy, melancholy is the reaction of joy. And I believe melancholy is a finer emotion. Mr. Benson himself says after his fit of melancholy has lifted:

“To-day, little by little, the cloudy mood drew off and left me smiling. The love of the peaceful and patient earth came to comfort me. How pure and free were the long lines of ploughland, the broad back of the gently-swelling down!” And Mr. Benson cannot quite think where his sad mood has gone, perchance it has gone to kiss someone else far away.

“Where was my sad mood gone? The clear air seemed to have blown through my mind, hands had been waved to me from leafless woods, quiet voices of field and stream had whispered me their secrets; “We would tell, if we could,” they seemed to say. And I listening, had learnt patience, too—for awhile.”

That is perhaps the supreme lesson of melancholy, patience; that things change, joy is not for ever, melancholy is not for ever, we must sometimes be sad and we must sometines enjoy this sadness. For there is indeed laughter in tears and, so much more, tears in laughter.

.....

I have always been most interested in an adventure Mr. Benson appears to have had with a beetle. The adventure opens up a most terrific problem. The beetle met Mr. Benson's eye, the eye killed the bettle, therein lies the problem. Mr. Benson deals with it in this manner.

It was such a trifling thing after all. I was bicycling very pleasantly down a country road to-day, when one of those small pungent beetles, a tiny thing in black plate-armour, for all the world like a minute torpedo, sailed straight into my eye. The eyelid, quicker even than my own thought shut itself down but too late. The little fellow was engulphed in what Walt Whitman would call the liquid rim.

Here then is the simple problem that might occur a thousand times, on a thousand country roads any fine day you like to mention. This is how the incident set Mr. Benson thinking. It leads to a perfectly insoluble problem.

“Now, that is not a very marvellous incident; but it set me wondering. In the first place, what a horrible experience for the creature; in a moment as he sailed joyfully along, saying “Aha” perhaps, like the war horse among the trumpets, on the scented summer breeze with the sun warm on his mail, to find himself stuck fast in a hot and oozy crevice, and presently to be crushed to death. His little taste of the pleasant world so soon over, and for me an agreeable hour spoilt, so far as I could see, to no particular purpose.” So the small incident leads to speculation about the love of God. It worries Mr. Benson as it has worried and will worry millions of other people, who can see no purpose in the apparently senseless acts of cruelty that take place every minute. This is not melancholy, make no mistake about it, this thought soons leads to despair or, which is much more frequent, “oh well, there you are, there is no solution, lets leave it alone, let us eat drink and be merry, for to-morrow—plenty of time to worry to-morrow.”

But not so Mr. Benson, the beetle sets in motion a depressing line of thought. I have a very good idea that it pursued the brilliant kindly Essayist until his death.

“If God is omnipotent and all-loving, we are bound to believe that suffering and death are sent by him deliberately and not cruelly. One single instance, however minute, that established the reverse, would vitiate the whole theory; and if so, then we are the sport of a power that is sometimes kind and sometimes malignant. An insupportable thought.”

But, are we not born in the image of God, are we not sometimes kind, sometimes malignant? We cannot start a parallelism and not finish it. We cannot say that God is only like us in so far as He is kind, it may be that He is like us, in so far as we are cruel. Unpleasant I admit, but there you are.

And here comes in the desperate sorrow of the whole thing. Mr. Benson can offer no solution. Who can?

What, then, is my solution? That is the melancholy part of it; I am not prepared to offer one.

And yet perhaps, were there to be a solution, it would be more melancholy. Mr. Benson has said that melancholy leads to patience. Perhaps yet again, patience is the answer. It is in so many things in life. We are with Mr. Benson in a black mood here, one of those dreadful moments when all is thick fog, so thick that we shall choke, so thick that we cannot remember where we have come from and where we have to go.

I am met on every side by hopeless difficulties. I am tempted to think that God is not at all what we imagine him to be; that our conceptions of benevolence and justice and love are not necessarily true of him at all.

Yes, but there is the converse and here Mr. Benson does seem a little superficial. If our conception concerning the benevolence of God be wrong (as Mr. Benson suggests) why not that our conception of his possible cruelty be wrong also?

For after all we have not yet determined at all what cruelty really is, it is a most indubitably evolutionary concept.

And yet the position is not quite hopeless, for Mr. Benson writes:

And thus I rest in the trust that there is somewhere, far off a beauty and a joy in suffering; and that, perhaps, death itself is a fair and desirable thing.

Not perhaps a very original conclusion but probably the only possible one. Then Mr. Benson is extremely dogmatic, for he says that the “poor beetle knows about it now.” Perhaps Mr. Benson and the beetle have met again, and perhaps the beetle has told him that he bears him no grudge for his premature death, perhaps even, it may be that the beetle has said that his death was neither premature nor the spite of a cruel and illogical God.

So like most problems, there is a possible way out, or in other words a refuge from a deep and bitter depair. Perhaps again that the Infinite Mind of the Universe is not cruel but inscrutable for inscrutability looks so much like cruelty that they become mixed up. In fact, we must not grieve too much for the beetle who died so suddenly and so violently in the eye of Mr. Benson.

It is always a matter of the supremest interest to know what a man thinks about his own trade or profession. We like to hear what a jockey thinks about the profession of jockeyship, we are glad to know how an executioner regards his own work. He may think quite differently about it to those who are outside. The public may imagine that an executioner is a bit of a brute whereas I believe that he himself considers his profession to be honourable and utilitarian! Now it is especially interesting to know what an author thinks about his own work. Many people who are not authors (and even in these days one or two people do not write) regard the profession as a gigantic hobby. That it is serious and hard work comes to them as a bit of surprise. That is perhaps quite natural, the finished book looks so easily done. People think it is nice and comfortable to merely write books and become written of in all the newspapers. Authorship appears to many as a sort of perpetual amusement, “It must be so charming,” they say, “to write novels.” So it is; and the most charming part is when they are written and past that fiend in human form the publisher's reader. All this gossip about what people think of their own work has been occasioned by the fact that Mr. Benson writes of his own work, in that he writes of authorship.

Mr. Benson has no belief in worrying too much over writing, in the sense of being over anxious or unduly pedantic.

To be honest, I do not believe in fretting too much over a piece of writing. Writing, laboriously constructed, painfully ornamented, is often I think both laborious and painful to read; there is a sense of strain about it.

I think that quite generally speaking this is true enough. Much of the best work that is done by the pen, is that which comes straight, almost with a rush, from the brain, via the pen, down to the paper.

Then there is the question of how long at a stretch a writer should work. This is of course largely depends upon the writer. Many people do not realise how great is the physical strain of writing, the strain of sitting in one chair hour after hour, the strain of thinking and producing thought at almost the same moment. Again it entirely depends upon what is being written. Mr. Benson does not advise very long hours of work. But it has to be remembered that Mr. Benson could not have been called a strong man. His advice on the matter of the length of time that one should write at a stretch is well worth quoting.

I do not think that one can write for very long to much purpose; I take the two or three hours when the mind is clearest and freshest, and write as rapidly as I can; this secures, it seems to me, a clearness and a unity which cannot be attained by fretful labour, by poking and pinching at one's work. One avoids by rapidity and ardour the dangerous defect of repetition; a big task must be divided into small sharp episodes to be thus swiftly treated.

This seems to me to be extraordinarily important. The arrangement of a piece of writing, is, in my opinion, of much more consequence than the actual style. It is easier to follow a confused style than a confused arrangement. It is better for the reader if the work before him is well arranged than if it is merely well written with no plan whatever. Naturally the ideal is a good style and a good arrangement. But where one only can be obtained, I believe that arrangement is the most important.

Of the joy of writing Mr. Benson experiences in no small measure. It is to him a very delightful occupation.

I am speaking here very frankly; and I will own that for myself, when the day has rolled pat and when the sacred hour comes, I sit down to write with an appetite, a keen rapture such as a hungry man may feel when he sits down to a savoury meal.

And it may be said here that the writing of Mr. Benson gives the impression of being the work of someone who is in love with his work. We can inagine the busy Cambridge scholar, away up in the glorious quiet of a University town, passing away the hours in these Essays about all the miscellaneous things that came into his mind. So rapidly does he pass from one subject to another, that we feel his mind was absorbed by a perpetual and enthusiastic energy. And this energy could quite obviously only be expelled by eager and unrestrained writing. Of course the case of the professional writer is not quite the same. He cannot wait for a mood, any more than the bank clerk can wait for a mood to start him to his daily work. The professional writer (and I do not mean by this the journalist), must write day in, day out, if he is to attain to anything at all. He cannot wait until he is hungry enough to wish to satisfy the writing hunger, he must write quite often just mechanically, because (to use a mealtime symbolism), it is writing time. And very often he produces quite as good work as the man who only writes when the overpowering mood is upon him.

Then Mr. Benson says something which sounds very magnanimous and very unselfish and very fine, but like many fine sounding things, there is no bedrock of truth in the saying. He writes:

But the essence of the happiness is that the joy resides in the doing of the work and not in the giving it to the world.

This is pure eyewash and pure rubbish. The joy of literary work is in the publishing of it, the making of the rough sheets of manuscript into a book which will adorn many bookcases. If the joy of writing merely lay in the writing, how is it that hundreds of people go down to a miserable despair because their manuscripts live and die in the bottom drawer in the back room? How is it that publishers and editors are inundated with unsuitable work, if people find the joy of writing sufficient in itself? No, Mr. Benson is utterly wrong and if he were right three-quarters of the books that are published would remain as manuscripts to the infinite loss of many people. For I am no believer that much bad work is really published, I believe, much more, that bad work is unpublished!

From a discussion of authorship, it is appropriate enough to go on to examine something of what Mr. Benson says of Wordsworth. Mr. Benson has a great deal to say about this poet which is both interesting and true. But I cannot say that Mr. Benson makes Wordsworth out to be a particularly attractive personality in some ways. And this was not because the poet was vicious or even disagreeable but rather that he was full of an unbounded self-satisfaction. So many poets have seemed to be the most dissatisfied of men, that we are a little annoyed to discover one who was not. This is how Mr. Benson writes of the self-sufficiency of Wordsworth.

Wordsworth, indeed, was armed at all points by a strong and simple pride, too strong to be vanity, too simple to be egotism. He is one of the few supremely fortunate men in the history of literature, because he had none of the sensitiveness or indecision that are so often the curse of the artistic temperament.

How true in every sense is this, not only concerning Wordsworth but concerning the general principle of the sensitiveness of artistic people. The world little knows how those who are really artistic shudder at its gross vulgarity, its absurd conventions, its contempt of all that is beautiful, its hideous commercialism and snobbery, its utter disregard for anything except itself.

With regard to Wordsworth, the reason of his self-sufficiency was, according to Mr. Benson, that he was never particularly interested in anyone. An excellent maxim if you would shun sorrow, for if you never love deeply, you can never miss deeply. And perhaps it is better to love slenderly and miss slenderly than to love overwhelmingly and then be overwhelmed and crushed utterly when the inevitable time for parting comes. Here is a really brilliant picture of the “evenness” of Wordsworth.

He bore himself with the same homely dignity in all companies alike; he was never particularly interested in anyone, he never had any fear of being thought ridiculous or pompous. His favourite reading was his own poetry, he wished everyone to be interested in his work, because he was conscious of its supreme importance. He probably made the mistake of thinking that it was his sense of poetry and beauty that made him simple and tranquil.

But he was not this at all, thinks Mr. Benson. In all probability whatever Wordsworth had done he would have been contented for:

It was the simplicity and tranquility of his temperament that gave him the power of enjoyment in so large a measure.

And again how kind a critic is Mr. Benson. How well does he always blend praise with his slight condemnation. If he has to concede that Wordsworth was self-satisfied and slightly pompous, we must be told at the same time of the nobility of his life, his gentleness and his pilgrimage of wonder in the hills and lakes that were his background.

And yet what a fine, pure, noble, gentle life it was! The very thought of him, faring quietly about among his hills and lakes, murmuring his calm verse, in a sober and temperate joy, looking everywhere for the same grave qualities among quiet homekeeping folk, brings with it a high inspiration. But we tend to think of Wordsworth as a father and priest rather than as a brother and a friend.

Which says only too truly that a priest is not a brother but a leader, someone remote yet in a sense a kind of father. Something like the idea that we have of the Fatherhood of God and the Priest “for ever after the order of Melchisedec.”

Once more, for Mr. Benson, Wordsworth was a really contented man, he accepted the mysteries of the world and did not fret about them. How different to the writer of the book that I am attempting to examine. In Mr. Benson we see the type of man who is always discontented, the mysteries that he cannot hope to solve, perplex and annoy him. They produce in him a state of hopelessness, though it is true the sun shines sooner or later. But his temperament is the very opposite to that of Wordsworth. In the poet we see transquillity and acceptance personified. In Mr. Benson we see the sorrowing mind at the problems of the universe, we see the moods of dark despair and then the sudden glimmers of light, we see the sky obscured by dark masses of black cloud, then suddenly there is a break, the sun shines through, the birds break into song again and the outlook is not so hopeless. But these fits of hopelessness take heavy toll of a man, they took heavy toll of Mr. Benson, we can see through The Thread of Gold the fight that he has to retain his faith. It is a sombre spectacle but one of great courage.

In the few pages more that I can give to this Essay may I be permitted to say something about Mr. Benson's thoughts about religious matters and the question of Christ.

This is what Mr. Benson writes concerning the position of his belief in Christ.

When I come to the New Testament I feel myself in the Gospels, confronted by the most wonderful personality which has ever drawn breath upon the earth.

There is nothing of much importance in this statement, it has been made again and again but It is interesting as expressing the Christological position of Mr. Benson.

Of all the fascinating parts of the Bible, and the Bible is really much more fascinating than the modern sex novel, perhaps the most fascinating is the last chapter of the Gospel which in my opinion is very rightly attributed to Saint John. After all it would be difficult to lean on the breast of Jesus and know nothing about Him. This chapter “bewilders” Mr. Benson. He writes of it in this most charming manner.

It is bewildering, because it is a postscript, added, with a single artlessness, after the Gospel has come to a full close. Perhaps Saint John did not even write it, though the pretty childlike conclusion about the world itself not being able to contain the books that might be written about Christ has always seemed to me to be in his spirit, the words of a very simple minded and aged man.

It might well be added, that if it is true that the world could not contain all the books that could be written about Christ, it is equally true that all the books which have been written about Christ have never decided exactly what He was.

Very wisely, Mr. Benson will not discuss the charge to Saint Peter, that terrible question as to whether the Catholic claims are justified. Patience is perhaps again the only solution and a hope that we shall really know one day.

.....

At the beginning of this Essay I insisted that it was unfair to attribute superficiality to the writings of Mr. Benson. At the end of this short Essay concerning some considerations in The Thread of Gold I am still of the same opinion.

It would be ridiculous to claim for Mr. Benson any great originality of thought. I think it is quite possible that it is largely because there is not this originality of thought in his work, which has been the cause of the charge of superficiality. We live in an age in which anything at all platitudinous is shrieked at with huge merriment, but it is quite forgotten that if we shriek with laughter at platitudes we must howl boisterously at the Sermon on the Mount. And after all, most platitudes are true and sensible or they would not have become platitudes.

There is a certain sombreness over the work of Mr. Benson. I do not believe that he was really at all a happy man, he was probably far too sympathetic to be able to be possessed of happiness. Nature seems to him tinged with inscrutability and cruelty. The Face of God is often veiled and the face of Man is saddened by this veiling. Yet Mr. Benson is never hopeless, there is nothing of the black despair of Ibsen in his writings, or the savage cynicism of Swift. Mr. Benson is essentially kind, his work rings with good nature and he treats his reader as though he really wanted to help him.

There is, I think, something permanent about the writings of Mr. Benson. The permanence of the writings seem to me to lie in the fact that so much of them deal with beauty. It was often expressed by the Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, the wish that he might write a beautiful book. In The Thread of Gold I think he has succeeded in his ambition.

The beauty of The Thread of Gold lies in its love for nature and again I say, its sorrow at the cruelty of much of it. The sweet peace of rural England pervades the whole book. There is the visit to the crippled man, in any village we can find such a man, perhaps not very far from the shadow of the old parish church. There is the quiet consideration about the Christian story, all dealt with carefully, with no originality about it, it is true. Then there is another visit to a blind man and a dreadful picture in one sense it is, of the frightful tragedies that hide themselves away in the little houses throughout England.

Life for Mr. Benson as I have said does not seem to be happy, it is rather a weary pilgrimage, yet at the end there is hope, the night is succeeded by the morning, the moon gives place to the sun. Perhaps I cannot do better than end this Essay with the last few lines from The Thread of Gold. They contain the germ of a wonderful kindliness.

God grant us so to live, in courage and trust, that when He calls us, we may pass willingly and with a quiet confidence to the gate that opens into tracts unknown.