Today is Anthony Hope’s birthday

The novelist and playwright who wrote under the name Anthony Hope was born on this day, February 9th, in 1863.

Anthony Hope is the main founder of the Ruritanian romance genre; his best-known book is The Prisoner of Zenda (1894).

Taking a short break from Stella Benson and Living Alone to refresh my memory and produce something to mark the occasion has been a great relief. Unlike the Stella Benson material, The Prisoner of Zenda and its sequel Rupert of Hentzau have no disturbing associations; they don’t stir up painful and depressing memories or give rise to horrible ideas.

On the other hand, the Zenda stories don’t contain the sort of material that generates investigations and commentary; they have no witches or magic in them, although they are fantasy of a kind.

The basic biographical information available, most of which can be found in Anthony Hope’s Wiki entry, is not very relevant either.

Sir Anthony Hope Hawkins was an English gentleman. He and his swashbuckling adventure stories have some similarities with John Buchan and his works. Both men had brief legal careers before they started writing for example.

Stella Benson’s Living Alone: Part IV

The time has come to deal with the end of the relationship, such as it was, between Angela the Witch and Sarah Brown.

After coming under Angela’s influence, Sarah Brown is led by her to what will look like disaster to most people.

If anyone else had said and done to Sarah Brown what Angela did, I would expect them to be cruel, malevolent, a cult leader who makes people burn all their bridges behind them or even a front for something evil.

Angela is definitely not evil or even malicious: she is just lacking in understanding and empathy and she has no feelings of responsibility for the effect that she and her magic have on people and their lives. It means nothing to her; it is their problem not hers. She is bored or baffled by it all.

After all, she is not completely human; she is a magic person.

First, some details of the context in which the disaster happens.

Angela lays the trail

Angela makes her first appearance when she bursts in on the charity committee. She gives them a small demonstration of her powers.

Angela has a strange effect on some of the people at the committee meeting, Sarah Brown in particular. Perhaps because they have fallen slightly under her spell, some of the members feel an inclination to see her again. She leaves her broomstick - whose name is Harold - behind. Was this deliberate, or was it an accident? 

Her address is on Harold’s collar, which makes it easy for them to find her.

Four visitors for Angela

The four people who seek Angela out at the magic shop want more from her than just the taste of her magic that she gave them. They sense her powers and think that she can help them.  

Stella Benson’s imaginary friends

Stella Benson’s biography and her novella Living Alone are raising many points and issues, creating new connections and inspiring ideas for more articles.

It is all so overwhelming and difficult to organise that it seems best to deal with just one topic of interest at a time, beginning with the imaginary friends who were a very important part of Stella Benson’s life.

She called her imaginary friends ‘dream people’, ‘thought people’ and ‘Secret Friends’. She spoke about them both as herself in her diaries and via various characters in her novels.

They may have been entirely her creation, or they could have had, or taken on, an independent life of their own.

Stella Benson’s Secret Friends

Stella Benson had many friends and acquaintances during her life. She never lacked for company. Some people liked her and she sometimes experienced popularity. She went on many visits and to many events and enjoyed some of the associated socialising. She met large numbers of people on her travels, and someone was always there to wave her off on her departures and welcome her on her arrivals.

Yet her best relationships were with her ‘thought people’, partly because she sometimes felt alone in a crowd and partly because they were often much more satisfactory than what was available in the real world. They were something to fall back on; they filled gaps in her life.

In Stella Benson’s own words, many written when she was only 15 years old:

“I have never met a real person who could give me half as much comfort.”

“My thought people are everything I long to be and am not. They are beautiful and strong, above all strong.”

“...every crack in the day is filled with ecstatic Secret Friends.”

“I always somehow imagine I have someone with me. Of course, I know that there is nobody but I sometimes find myself acting as if there was...”

She later thought of them as muses who inspired her writing. She also had ambivalent feelings about them:

“...beset to the edge of lunacy with ecstatic Secret Friends...Both God and man may forsake me but I...am never alone.”

“...they really are an involuntary drug, and before I die I shall be overwhelmed by them...”