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’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...”
