THE IRISH MONTHLY

JANUARY, 1915

MONSIGNOR BENSON

By Rev. FRANCIS C. DEVAS, S.J.

ANY an ambitious man must have envied Mgr. Robert

Hugh Benson living: still more must have envied

him dead; for from every country where English is spoken, has gone up a chorus of praise for the dead priest, and in many cases the praise has been heightened by expressions of genuine personal affection, and the sense of personal loss, even on the part of those who knew this gifted man only by his writings.

In truth Mgr. Benson deserved this rich tribute of loving admiration. As a priest, as an author, as an Englishman, he stretched out such helpful hands to so many classes of men; he spoke so simply, he wrote so candidly, he acted so unselfishly, that it is not wonderful he won in so short a time such a wide popularity. That Catholics should rally round one who spoke and wrote of the Church, and of our Blessed Lord with such insight, such variety, such freshness, was natural: but the triumph of his public career lay in this, that those to whom his gospel was unpalatable, found themselves compelled by the very charm of the man to give him a hearing from the beginning to the end.

These two things stand out clearly in all Mgr. Benson's printed work, namely, that throughout he was preaching a gospel, and that in each successive book he wrote, he revealed more and more of his own attractive personality. There was no Benson mystery. His gospel was always the same-the

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Catholic Church: she is true; she is beautiful; she answers all our needs; she is a mother, not only wise, checking our frowardness, but indulgent, making allowance for our incurable childishness. There is no need to labour the point in detail, but putting aside such directly and beautifully spiritual books as Christ in the Church, The Friendship of Christ, The Religion of the Plain Man, no one can rise from reading those historical romances which began with By What Authority, and ended with Oddsfish, without feeling a glow of enthusiasm for the Old Religion. Even those who cannot distinguish transient and accidental abuses from enduring and essential error, who think that the Old Religion was hopelessly overlaid with superstition, incurably eaten into by fatal corruption, must sigh for the loss of what was once so fair.

Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade
Of that which once was great is pass'd away.

But it needed Mgr. Benson's genius to show them how great, and how lovely, and how worth dying for, was that whose shade they imagine to have been destroyed, or at least permanently discredited, in the sixteenth century. It is not so difficult a task to enquire into the rights and wrongs of a case, when certain blinding prejudices have been removed, and certain undeniable truths have been well and wisely stated.

In the old-fashioned, Scriptural way of speaking-good seed was sown in those romances, and Mgr. Benson's full harvest from them is yet to reap.

The other novels modern, analytic, psychological (the epithet is of little moment)—are all too, in their different ways, sermons. But then just because their ways are so different, and so excellently different, they are read one after the other, each for its own intrinsic interest. Only when each is finished does the reader see the meaning of the whole.

The cheap sneer at "novels with a purpose" has passed out of date and these are all with a purpose. But the purpose is not a moral tacked on at the end: it is not even a hobby, a theory, a "King Charles' Head," that Mgr. Benson could not keep out. He wrote with a purpose, because without it he would have had no heart to write at all.

Mgr. Benson was a sincere and fearless man. From his boyhood he had looked about him at things good and evil, not denying himself the joy of the former, nor sparing himself the pain of the latter. He remained throughout life something of an enfant terrible-how many of his friends he must have shocked when he confessed his inability to appreciate the Waverley Novels! But in this confession, and many another, he proved the sincerity of his thought and utterance. He could not like a thing, nor persuade himself that he liked a thing, because others liked it: still less could he say he liked it, because such a saying was expected of him. In this, let us hope he was not singular; his claim to distinction lies in the fact that though he held his own opinions, and could give good reasons for their justification, he did not set them out as canons for the ordering of public taste.

This in matters of lesser moment. In the graver issues of life, though this habit of mind steadied him, and prevented an aggressive dogmatism, he did not shrink from stating and re-stating with his utmost power, his firm convictions, and the grounds on which they rested.

And those convictions were all in harmony with, if not actually derived from, the teachings of the Catholic Church. To the many perplexities that vex the human soul, he found, where a solution might be looked for, the solution offered by the Catholic Church to be the most satisfying; where an immediate solution could hardly be expected, he found again that in her suggestions, and her directions, or in her wise prohibition of certain methods, or certain lines of research, lay the path of peace and of progress. Not that the Church was to him mainly an intellectual code, still less mainly a social club or confraternity to which he belonged: the Church was to him on a higher and wider plane, what nationality is on a lower and narrower plane, to every true patriot. He was an Englishman through and through, English of the English; but while a man's nationality is not co-extensive with a man's soul, the Catholic religion is.

To say that religion is a life, savours of that superior way of talking, that has little to distinguish it from cant. But Christ in the Church has shown even the " Plain man" how

intelligible that expression may be made. To Mgr. Benson, his individual life was but one among the many millions of living cells, whose union, through the grace of God, builds up the mystical body of Christ. Hence his appreciation of his life's inestimable dignity, and priceless worth. When this is understood and remembered, it is easy to see why such a man could not but speak and write as a Catholic.

His reception into the body of the Catholic Church did not stifle a single interest or narrow in any respect the range of his active mind. On the contrary, a fuller life was opened out to him, with greater scope for energy, and diminished danger of unnecessary waste. Yet this great step, the turning point of his life, meant to him no complete break with the past. In his Confessions of a Convert, as in Father Maturin's Price of Unity, the sanctities of life in the Church of England meet with full and generous recognition. It was not in either of these two men to ridicule, still less to revile, the Church to which they owed so much.

With regard to the novels themselves, while none will deny their brilliant cleverness, opinion will greatly differ as to their individual merits. Of them all it would seem to be a safe generalisation to say that Mgr. Benson was an interpreter rather than a creator. He has made no contribution to the enduring characters of English fiction. He took the men and women of his day and of his class, and showed us the innermost workings of their mind. Then setting easily in motion the simple machinery of life, he confronted his puppets with those world-old difficulties and problems, that vary from age to age only in external circumstance. Social ambition, disappointment, pain, fear, sickness, death, vices whether of drink or drug, uncanny dealings with the world of spirits, a sudden or a clearer call to God's more special servicethese and many another humorous or tragic happening were skilfully brought into play, that he might once again tear aside convention, usage, subterfuge, hypocrisy, and lay bare the real struggles of the soul. Then the story ended. There was no moral. Only one's own brooding fancy was left to regret the chance missed, or rejoice at the right course chosen ; but the chance or the right course were always what the dictates of the Catholic conscience would have approved.

To some the analysis at times will seem too cruel, the situations too painful, the bitter reality overstepping the limits of a right appreciation of the artist's rôle. As Cardinal Newman delighted to state a difficulty with exquisite precision, setting it to the best advantage, giving to it the last ounce of its due weight, before entering on the task of demolition, so Mgr. Benson with loving fingers would paint-and how well he knew them the most perfect pictures of human happiness, a home where nothing was wanting to complete contentment, a character whose powers and charm gave promise of a glorious future, before he showed the skeleton in the cupboard, or the little rift within the lute of poor human nature.

One last word of praise, where to praise is such a pleasure. Mgr. Benson only wrote of what he knew. There are no typical characters; not even among his many priests, a typical Irishman. The more fantastic novels and essays, such as The Light Invisible and Papers of a Pariah are so suggestive -some of them so provocative—that they demand, in justice, full and separate treatment. So too the plays and poems for children, and the books of prayer and devotion-perhaps the sweetest legacy of all. Even now the catalogue is not complete, so versatile was the genius, so indefatigable the energy of this devoted priest.

After the many labours of his holy life, may he now rest in peace.

LETTY ON THE SHORE

The ripples came with freight of sand
And, ere they made a last retreat,
Beside the bound of sea and land
They hid the traces of her feet.

One day perhaps, long ages hence,

Some probing sage shall find them there,

And argue from such evidence

The small and dainty race we were.

J.W.A.