From a College Window

A.C. Benson (1862-1925) was Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge from 1915-1925. He was one of the many talented children of E.W. Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his wife, Mary. (The children included E.F. Benson, author of the Mapp and Lucia novels, and Fr R. H. Benson, the Catholic convert.)
   A. C. Benson's civilized essays, redolent of Victorian and Edwardian days, are a delight to read. His easy knowledge and loquacity, combined with self-deprecation, put most of our contemporary "controversialists" - nearly all of them influenced by social Marxism - to shame (although his work and stance are vulnerable to Cardinal Newman's strictures on the English gentleman).
   I picked up Benson's volume of essays, From a College Window, by chance in a second-hand shop and greatly enjoyed it. I wrote this sonnet in respectful tribute.

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(A. C. Benson)

The drowsy fire, the shadowed room, shrug off

The autumn chill; the gyp bows his retreat;
Tapping glibly his eye-glass, the don with soft
Decision strikes through a freshman’s gauche conceit.

Later, dinner in hall; tomorrow chapel:

Gowned beneath plain windows indulgent scholars
Will nod; the timid chaplain’s black-scarfed grapple
With Erastian good sense will shew God’s favours.

Mild duty done, that afternoon the men

In the Common will jostle like muddy cattle,
Their games a path to a Secretary’s room
Or parsonage loud with a singing kettle.

Drifting, the don starts up at his student’s jest:

“The Decalogue – a matter of good taste.”

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© July 2012