Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson, Novelist

Ann Applegarth surveys all of the fiction, historical and contemporary by the convert son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson for The Catholic World Report:

Both Pope Francis and Pope Benedict XVI (when he was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) have encouraged Catholics to read Lord of the World, Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson’s 1907 novel that eerily predicted the state of the world at the beginning of the 21st century.

Catholics have listened. Back in print and apparently selling well, Benson’s dystopian tale that, as Pope Francis said, depicts “the spirit of the world which leads to apostasy almost as if it were a prophecy,” is generating much talk and not a few articles, including Dorothy Cummings McLean’s pithy commentary in Catholic World Report (January 15, 2014).

But Benson—Hugh, as his family called him—was not a one-novel novelist. During the years from his ordination to the Catholic priesthood in 1904 until his death in 1914, a month shy of his 43rd birthday, he published 16 novels—in addition to writing several non-fiction books, hundreds of homilies, devotionals, plays, apologetics, essays, children’s books, poetry, letters, and introductions to books of other authors!

Should we read Robert Hugh Benson’s other novels, too?

She answers "yes" with a list and brief summary of each novel. I would answer "yes" too, although I have not read all of his novels. Read the rest here.

I do have one recommendation regarding his historical novels set in the English Reformation era: Read The King's Achievement first and By What Authority second. They have common characters and the chronological order is important.

Rereading Come Rack! Come Rope!

Come Rack! Come Rope! is one of Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson's historical novels, set in the Elizabethan era, telling the story of recusant families and priests in Derbyshire. I've read it at least a couple of times, but must admit that I've read his other historical novel set in the Elizabethan period, By What Authority? more often. Even The King's Achievement, which is almost a prequel to By What Authority?, has been more favored. After re-reading Come Rack! Come Rope! I agree with Joseph Pearce that this novel deserves more attention:

In Come Rack! Come Rope!, first published in 1912, the whole period of the English Reformation is brought to blood-curdling life, the terror and tension gripping the reader as tightly as it grips the leading characters, who witness courageously to their faith in a hostile and deadly environment. According to the Jesuit, Philip Caraman, it “quickly became established as a Catholic classic” and remains “perhaps the best known” of Benson’s novels, although his futuristic tour de force Lord of the World is surely its literary equal and the lesser known Richard Reynal, Solitary remains sadly and undeservedly neglected.

The inspiration for the novel came from the account of the Fitzherbert family in Dom Bede Camm’s Forgotten Shrines, published in 1911, and from Benson’s own visit, in the same year, to the Fitzherbert house in Derbyshire, where he preached at the annual pilgrimage in honour of the Catholic priest-martyrs, Blessed Nicholas Garlick and Blessed Robert Ludlam [the Padley Martyrs], who were executed in 1588. From the blood of these martyrs came the seed of Benson’s story. The novel’s title is taken from the famous promise of St Edmund Campion that he would remain steadfast, “come rack, come rope.” Campion was executed in 1581.

St. Edmund Campion, St. Nicholas Owen, Richard Topcliffe, Elizabeth I (at a distance), Anthony Babington (of the Babington Plot), and Mary, Queen of Scots are among the historical personages who appear in the novel. It is a more compact story than the epic of By What Authority?, and as Pearce notes, Benson tells a love story in the midst of this historical novel:

It is a great romance, a great love story. It is a story that shows the romance of Rome and the true greatness of a noble and self-sacrificial love between a man and a woman. The love between Robin and Marjorie, the two principal protagonists, is a love far greater than that between Romeo and Juliet. Their love for each other has none of the possessiveness of Shakespeare’s “star-cross’d lovers” and everything of the purity and passion of Lear’s Cordelia. As a love story alone, Come Rack! Come Rope! deserves its place in the canon.

As for the novel’s climax, one must agree with Hugh Ross Williamson that “it is impossible not to be moved by the last chapter which, as far as I know, has never been bettered as an account of an Elizabethan martyr’s execution”. For potency and poignancy, the novel’s climactic moment compares in literary stature with the final, fateful moments of Lord Marchmain in Waugh’s masterpiece, Brideshead Revisited. And if Benson’s finale lacks the subtlety of Waugh’s denouement it matches it for dramatic tension.

Benson uses some excellent techniques in telling the story without changing the scene or location of the narration, which centers on the houses of recusant Catholics in Derbyshire (although there is a trip to London): Letters, reports of executions, descriptions of events by witnesses. When Robin travels to the Continent to study for the priesthood, Marjorie remains at home, waiting for news from him as he waits for news from her--and the letters take a long time, carried secretly from Douai to Derbyshire. Marjorie's home becomes the center of recusant activity in her area as she assists the missonary priests serving the Catholics of Derbyshire. By focusing on that area, and a few Catholic families, Benson is well able to depict the stresses and strains of recusancy, as it divides family and friends. The Fitzherbert family, for instance, endures fines, imprisonment, threats, and even the danger of betrayal from within.

As Benson includes Anthony Babington and his plot to assassinate Elizabeth I, free Mary of Scotland from captivity and place her on the throne of England, he is able to depict the frustration and impatience of some Catholic laity -- and the counsel of priests against such treasonous plotting.