Robert Hugh Benson AFSC KC*SG KGCHS (18 November 1871 – 19 October 1914) was an English writer and priest. Initially an Anglican priest, he converted to the Catholic faith in 1903 and was ordained the following year. He was a very prolific writer, and some of his most famous works include Lord Of The World (1907), Come Rack! Come Rope (1912), The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary (1912), and The Friendship of Christ (1914).
Benson was born in Berkshire, the fourth and youngest son of Edward White Benson, an Anglican priest who would become Archbishop of Canterbury, and Mary Benson (née Sidgwick). He was the younger brother of Edward Frederic Benson, Arthur Christopher Benson, and Margaret, all of whom became writers in their own right. Throughout his childhood, Benson was known to be highly individual; he refused minor roles in his brothers' games, saying that he would be no man's "deputy sub-sub-bootboy", and had his own direction and ambitions.
In 1885, Benson won a scholarship at Eton College, where he was accused of some severe form of misbehaviour, though he was innocent of all charges. After three or four years, he sought to compete for the Indian Civil Service. However, when he went up in the summer of 1890 he failed to pass, and he decided to take up classics and theology at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1890 to 1893. He proved to be a very lackadaisical student, graduating with a third, but his intellect stimulated, Benson sought a career in writing, with the ministry as his profession.
Benson decided to take Orders, studying with Dean Vaughan in 1892 in Llandaff; he was ordained deacon by his father in Croydon parish church in 1894 and would be raised to the Anglican priesthood the following year. After Edward White Benson unexpectedly died on 11 October 1896, Hugh Benson went to Egypt for the winter with his mother and sister. During this time, he expressed doubts about the Church of England. For one thing, it seemed that the Church of England did not count for abroad and seemed very foreign on Egyptian soil. By contrast, when he stepped into a Catholic church, a simple mud building, in an Egyptian village, it seemed so obviously a part of the place, suggesting a sort of universality (or "catholicity", rather) about the faith that he began to consider that the Catholic Church might be right. These doubts grew as he returned home through Palestine, but a year working as curate for Kemsing snuffed out these anxieties. Drawn to the High Church traditions, he entered the Community of the Ressurection at Mirfield, taking vows in July 1901.
Benson spent two more years at Mirfield, but his difficulties regarding the claims of the Catholic Church came back. They got so intense that he eventually left the Community in the early summer of 1903 and was received into the Catholic Church on All Saints' Day (11 September) of the same year. Before leaving England for Rome, he completed his first novel By What Authority? (1904). He would later be ordained as a Catholic priest in 1904. As did St John Henry Newman's conversion some sixty years prior, Benson's conversion and ordination into the Catholic Church caused a scandal, given that he was the son of the late Archbishop of Canterbury.
Fr. Benson later returned to England and settled at Llandaff House, where he studied advanced theology, in Cambridge. Then, in 1905, he became the college chaplain of Cambridge, working at the Catholics' Cambridge rectory. Some two or three years later at Cambridge, he realized that his work lay more in the direction of writing and preaching than in purely pastoral duties. Moreover, he began making an income from his books, so he sought a secluded spot where he could write without any interruptions. "A small Perpendicular chapel and a whitewashed cottage next door is what I want just now," he wrote: "it must be in a sweet and secret place — preferably in Cornwall." The result was the purchase of a house in the Hamlet of Hare Street, near Buntingford, where he spent the last seven years of his life.
The hamlet in Hare Street became the centre of an influence that spread throughout England and beyond. Fr. Benson went to Rome on three different occasions to preach, and three times visited America to lecture and preach; his most strenuous activities were confined to England, where he preached, lectured, or gave a retreat at a convent, but he always found time to return to Hare Street to write his novels.
His strenuous activities eventually took a toll on him. In 1913, Fr. Benson wrote: "I am being obliged to draw in my horns and economize time, and everything else just now, as I am on the very edge of my capacities." Nevertheless, he still carried out his duties to the best of his abilities, to the bitter end.
On 10 October 1914, Fr. Benson went to Salford to deliver the second of a course of sermons at Salford Cathedral, but two days later, he was so ill that he could not leave Salford, and all immediate engagements were canceled. He eventually succumbed to a fit of pneumonia on 19 October.
Fr. Benson was buried in the orchard of Hare Street House, a chapel, dedicated to St. Hugh, being built over the sight. He also bequeathed the house to the Church as a country retreat for the Archbishop of Westminster. In 2019, Hare Street house was put up for sale, and Fr. Benson's body was moved to the crypt of St. Edmund's College in Old Hall Green.
Major Works:
- The Light Invisible (1903): Fr. Benson's first literary work. It is a collection of short stories in which he explores miracles and mysticism in the natural world, told through a series of connected anecdotes by an old priest.
- By What Authority? (1904): Fr. Benson's first novel. It is a historical novel set in the England of Elizabeth I and focuses on Anthony and Isabel Norris, Puritans who find themselves drawn to the Catholic Church.
- The King's Achievement (1905): Another historical novel set during the time of King Henry VIII. It focuses on Sir James and Lady Torridon, their sons Ralph and Christopher, and their daughters Mary and Margaret. The Torridons' loyalties are divided between the Church or King Henry VIII.
- Lord Of The World (1907): One of Fr. Benson's most famous works. It is a dystopian novel envisioning a future in which secular humanism has largely replaced traditional morality. Senator Julian Felsenburgh, a charismatic and mysterious politician, promises world peace that comes at the price of the Christian faith's demise, and Fr. Percy Franklin, the protagonist, seeks to counter this.
- The Necromancers (1909): A supernatural horror novel about Laurie Baxter, who becomes consumed by grief and an obsession with the supernatural following the death of his fiancée. He attends rituals and séances in an attempt to communicate with his dead love, only to come into contact with more sinister forces...
- The Dawn of All (1911): A dystopian novel that serves as a counterpart to Lord of the World, imagining a future where Christianity has emerged victorious. However, an amnesiac priest wakes up to find himself in the centre of the world, but he does not recognize this world as his, nor does he recognize the Church as his, let alone Christ's, as "civilization had fettered Christianity in unbreakable chains".
- The History of Richard Raynal, Solitary (1912): A historical novel and Fr. Benson's personal favourite of his many works. It is about the hermit Richard Raynal, who is told by God to deliver a message of dire importance to the king and journeys to Westminster. Along the way, the king's men deem Richard's endeavour highly suspect and harass him in the hopes of arresting his mission.
- The Friendship of Christ (1912): A series of sermons preached from 1910 to 1912, reflecting on Christ's call to friendship.
- Come Rack! Come Rope! (1912): One of Fr. Benson's most famous novels, set during the Elizabethan persecution of Catholics in England. It centres on Robin and Marjorie, who give up their love for one another and hope of marriage in order to minister to their persecuted neighbours.
