The Region Where One Loves
In adolescent novels, no trespass is more dastardly than that of reading another’s intimate journal, all those entries beginning, ‘Dear Diary’, containing outpourings of contemplative hearts. There are diaries, though, that are written with a readership in mind, be it a future one. Such are those of A.C. Benson, son of E.W., archbishop of Canterbury, and brother of R.H., Catholic priest and apologist. A.C. decreed that his 180 personal notebooks should be locked away for fifty years post mortem, but that term has long since passed: he died in 1925. D.J. Taylor recently wrote a splendid review of The Benson Diary just out, edited by Eamon Duffy and Ronald Hyam. I smiled at cited character studies like those of Talbot Peel ‘in whose veins runs the blood of generations of maiden aunts’ or of a noxious brandy-drinking woman met on a train to King’s Lynn in whom A.C., as the train advanced, discovered a vulnerable person ‘so anxious & sore stricken at the perils of the journey, & so resolved to safeguard her own health & comfort’ that she needed recourse to a tot now and again. Really striking is this confession in the first person: ‘The only fine things come out of the lonely part of the mind – out of the region where one loves and hopes – the stale things come out of the place where one jostles & scores off people.’
