Robert Hugh Benson: Life and Works by Janet Grayson

Abstract

Robert Hugh Benson: Life and Works. By Janet Grayson. (lanham, Maryland: University Press of America. 1998. Pp. xxvi, 231. $39.50.) At his death in 1914, at the early age of forty-three, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson had achieved an enviable reputation in Britain, America, and Rome. His sermons and lectures, his historical novels and books of apologetics, had taken the public bv storm. The adulation was such that one day the British Week@y clamored for the worship to cease in a headline NO MORE HUGH BENSON. Today, it would seem, that headline writer has gotten his wish. for the very first sentence of this study poses the question: Does anyone read Robert Hugh Benson any more? The answer is given in sixteen short chapters that liken him to a brilliant comet that hurtled across the sky and quickly burned out. Some Benson admirers remain here and there, but little remains of the international audience he once commanded, one drawn from all classes, including the British royalty, that stretched across two continents, The appetite for Hugh Benson was unabating, and his devotees were not satisfied with a book now and again. Those not fond of his literary efforts claimed that his creative machinery was so smoothly oiled that he had contracted with his publishers to crank out three books a year. This critical biography joins a half-dozen or so studies of his life and works. Though it contains little that is new, it is a highly readable presentation of a fascinating figure, a zealous member of the clergy and a highly capable writer. While it does not supersede C. C. Martindale's Life of Monsignor Robert Benson (1917) or Arthur Christopher Benson's Hugh:Afemoir of a Brother(1915), it does bring various matters about his life, personality, and works into better perspective. Martindale, who to some extent envied Benson's great success, ironically. wrote his biography at the specific request of Cardinal Bourne, who tended to distrust Anglican convert-priests. Benson, additionally, was never on good terms with Cardinal Bourne. As for Arthur Christopher Benson's treatment of his younger brother's life, it reveals that lie failed to appreciate Hugh's gifts and that he could never fully accept that someone ordained into the Anglican clergy, as Hugh had been in 1895, could then be ordained in the Roman Church on June 13,1904-within nine months of his conversion. Highly thought of in Rome, he was granted a private audience with Pius X. After a warm discussion of ecclesiastical matters, the Pope, smiling broadly, took off his white zucchetto, and in a humble, friendly gesture lifted the black one Hugh was wearing, and exchanged them. Hugh was ecstatic, and took the exchange of zucchettos as a sign of the Pope's expectations of great things from him. …