Escape and Other Essays

Escape and Other Essays

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Title: Escape and Other Essays
Author: Arthur Christopher Benson
Release Date: November, 2003 [Etext #4652] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on February 20,
2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
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ESCAPE
AND OTHER ESSAYS

By ARTHUR CHRISTOPHER BENSON
I love people that leave some traces of their journey behind them, and I
have strength enough to advise you to do so while you can. --Thomas
Gray.
NEW YORK
1915

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1. Escape 2. Literature and Life 3. The New Poets 4. Walt
Whitman 5. Charm 6. Sunset 7. The House of Pengersick 8. Villages 9.
Dreams 10. The Visitant 11. That Other One 12. Schooldays 13.
Authorship 14. Herb Moly and Heartsease 15. Behold, This Dreamer
Cometh

NOTE

I desire to recourd my obligations to the Editor of the Century
Magazine, and to the Editor of the Cornhill Magazine, for their
permission to include in this volume certain essays which appeared first
in their pages.
A. C. B.

INTRODUCTION
1

I walked to-day down by the river side. The Cam is a stream much
slighted by the lover of wild and romantic scenery; and its chief merit,
in the eyes of our boys, is that it approaches more nearly to a canal in
its straightness and the deliberation of its slow lapse than many more
famous floods--and is therefore more adapted for the maneuvres of
eight-oared boats! But it is a beautiful place, I am sure; and my ghost
will certainly walk there, "if our loves remain," as Browning says, both
for the sake of old memories and for the love of its own sweet
peaceableness. I passed out of the town, out of the straggling suburbs,
away from tall, puffing chimneys, and under the clanking railway
bridge; and then at once the scene opens, wide pasture-lands on either
side, and rows of old willows, the gnarled trunks holding up their
clustered rods. There on the other side of the stream rises the charming
village of Fen Ditton, perched on a low ridge near the water, with
church and vicarage and irregular street, and the little red-gabled Hall
looking over its barns and stacks. More and more willows, and then,
lying back, an old grange, called Poplar Hall, among high-standing
trees; and then a little weir, where the falling water makes a pleasant
sound, and a black-timbered lock, with another old house near by, a
secluded retreat for the bishops of Ely in medieval times. The bishop
came thither by boat, no doubt, and abode there for a few quiet weeks,
when the sun lay hot over the plain; and a little farther down is a tiny
village