Charlotte Brontë and the nightmare scenario

Stella Benson’s fantasy novella Living Alone (1919) ends with the arrival in New York of her autobiographical character Sarah Brown, who is ill, alone and penniless.

This scene in the book is my idea of a nightmare scenario.

Stella Benson put something of her own experience into the New York episode. She travelled by ship to America in July 1917. She had more in the way of resources than Sarah Brown did, but it was still an ordeal. Approaching New York Harbour, she was:

“...sick with excitement and fright at such an unknown day before me.”

She wrote in her diary on the evening of her first day in New York:

“I never wish for a more wretched thirty hours than this last.”

She was so overcome by loneliness, confusion and the great heat that she started to cry. She awoke the next morning from dreams of death and despair.

The Living Alone scenario and others from Stella Benson’s life sound familiar; they remind me of other writers’ accounts of permutations of isolation, desperation, dangerous situations, going into the unknown, lack of resources and dreadful inner states.

The many common elements make me wonder whether these scenarios are engineered, perhaps subconsciously or perhaps by sinister unseen influences.

Some of Charlotte Brontë’s writings are of particular interest here; they say to me that she knew the terrible feelings well and had experienced a few nightmare scenarios of her own.

How the bureaucrats’ plans backfired

A recent incident provides a good example of the backfiring feature, which I something I have mentioned a few times in various contexts as I find it fascinating.

The bureaucrats who sometimes behave like cult members called another meeting. We decided to go, as there were some more points to be made and we wanted to ensure that the right people heard them.

The enemy turned up in large numbers; they sat in rows and in such as way as to split us up. This was probably an attempt to intimidate my neighbours and me.

Their schemes didn’t work; we were not intimidated and the bringing in of extra people backfired on them.

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 imagination

Stella Benson had a powerful and vivid imagination, and from an early age she used it to enhance her life.

There are many factors in her life that help to explain why she should have turned to fantasy friends and an inner world for consolation and compensation, including a difficult family background, a critical and unsympathetic mother, feeling different from other girls, increasing deafness and, above all, very poor health that often kept her bedridden and hospitalised and entailed some horrible and excruciatingly painful medical treatments.

Such factors can be found in the lives of many other fiction writers. Mary Webb, who has been featured on here, also suffered from poor health and had a critical mother for example.

Great potential on the inside may be activated and employed when there is a hostile environment on the outside.

Am I the only one?

Stella Benson wrote this when she was 15 years old:

“I don’t know whether other people are the same as me in having an imaginary world filled with imaginary people to whom at every spare moment of the day one’s thoughts return. I daresay it is childish, but it has grown absolutely indispensable to me.”

The majority of people are not the same as her. For most people, the real world is all there is; they have little contact with an inner world or other dimensions.

While the owners of exceptionally strong and vivid imaginations take them for granted and see using them as normal and natural as breathing, as much a part of life as sleeping and eating, most people will have little experience or understanding of what it is like to live in a self-created inner world or have an imagination that is like an extra faculty.

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...”

Stella Benson’s Living Alone: Part III

We now come to Sarah Brown and the House of Living Alone.

Sarah Brown’s initials are the same as Stella Benson’s; she is an autobiographical character: much of what is said in Living Alone by and about Sarah and her life applies to Stella Benson herself, as can be confirmed by reading her biography.

The same applies to the House of Living Alone where Sarah Brown goes to live; Stella Benson knew it well.

Sarah Brown

Sarah Brown is the third main character of interest in Living Alone. 

She is a young woman who lives in London and is a member of the charity committee.

Her health is not good and her life is not satisfactory. Just like the witch Angela, she often goes short of food for lack of money and has to settle for scratch meals.

Sarah Brown is not very good at dealing with the real world; she says this about herself:

“You don't happen to know of a suitable job. I can't cook, and if I sew a button on it comes off quicker than if I hadn't.“

She has written a little poetry and means to write a book some day...some people have a creative temperament without having much creative ability. This does not apply to Stella Benson!

Sarah Brown accepts that magic exists. She can see it in action but cannot practise it herself. She has always wished to be friends with a witch. People who can’t operate very well in the real world or deal very well with real people often look for magical - or other - alternatives:

 “She was not really used to being alive at all, and that is what made her take to magic so kindly.”

This turning to the world of magic can be dangerous. People who seek salvation may be lured to destruction.

Angela the Witch supplies Sarah with sandwiches that, judging by the effects, were enchanted:

 “Sarah Brown would have been very susceptible to such a drug; her mind was always on the brink of innocent intoxication… Therefore, I think, she was a predestined victim of magic, and it seems unlikely that the witch should have missed such an opportunity to dispense spells.”

Sarah accepts Angela’s invitation to come and live in the House of Living Alone. This could be the best thing she has ever done, or it could be the worst.