Stella Benson and L. M. Montgomery

This article summarises a few common elements in the lives of novelists Lucy Maud Montgomery and Stella Benson.

They both had something to say about the feeling of being innately different from the people around them and the horrors of having to live an ordinary life. They both came to realise that their marriage was a terrible mistake.

Shared feelings of being different
Feeling fundamentally different is so common in creative people as to be almost a cliché. I have quoted Kathleen Raine on the subject. 

This feeling usually goes with the territory, although they don’t all go as far as Stella Benson did and believe that they have the souls of snakes!

As previously mentioned, Stella Benson felt different in kind from the throng of ‘real girls’ who surrounded her. Sometimes she felt superior to them. She wrote, “I know I have something infinitely more important which these giggling girls have not.“

L. M. Montgomery too felt this way. I mentioned in a previous article that, like many others of her kind, she felt that she did not fully belong in this world. She seems ambivalent about this:

“It was really dreadful to be so different from other people…and yet rather wonderful, too, as if you were a being strayed from another star.” 

From Anne of Windy Poplars

Stella Benson's diaries

I came across this quotation from L. M. Montgomery recently:

“Only lonely people keep diaries.”

She kept a diary from the age of nine, and this is where she wrote the above words. I think that they are probably true in some cases but definitely not in all.

Sometimes diaries are kept primarily for record keeping purposes, to be used for reference in the future if necessary. Isaac Asimov for example kept detailed but mainly factual diaries for much of his life.

Journalling is a possible outlet for creative people who must write. It provides a way of exercising writing skills and keeping them honed; it keeps the channel of inspiration open.

The quotation made me think of Stella Benson, who kept a diary from the age of ten until shortly before she died. It is certainly applicable to her. In Stella’s own words:

“To set down a record of my contact with people...is most necessary to me. Because my most continuous sensation is a feeling of terrifying slipping-away from people - a most devastating loneliness - I have to place on record the fact that I was human and that even I had my human adventures.”

Two more writers who were discouraged from reading

This article was inspired by a quotation in the previous one, which is about L. M. Montgomery and writing:

“Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.”

-From Anne of Green Gables

Marilla’s words to Anne may well have come from someone L. M. Montgomery knew in real life, a grandparent perhaps.

Marilla is not alone in her views; her words have reminded me of two other writers who in childhood encountered people with this dismissive attitude and met with disapproval or worse just because they loved to read.

John Masefield, whose children’s books have been featured on here, had a horrible domineering aunt who disapproved of his love of reading and thought that it was a disgusting habit that should be broken. When he was 13, in an attempt to cure his addiction she sent him away to train for a life at sea.

More words about writing from L. M. Montgomery

This article contains a few more hard-hitting quotations on the subject of writers and writing from L. M. Montgomery.

She seems ambivalent about the whole business of being a writer, seeing it as both a gift and a curse:

“You'll never write anything that really satisfies you though it may satisfy other people.”

From Emily Climbs

This may be true in some cases - artists often feel that their works fall far short of their visions - but the converse also applies: some writers may be proud of their productions while their readers may not think much of them.

Disapproval, criticism and discouragement

People who read a lot are often criticised for it, and people who try to write are often discouraged. L. M. Montgomery obviously experienced much disapproval herself:

“’I think this story-writing business is the foolishest yet,’ scoffed Marilla. ‘You’ll get a pack of nonsense into your heads and waste time that should be put on your lessons. 

Reading stories is bad enough but writing them is worse.’”

From Anne of Green Gables

Although this disapproving attitude does a lot of damage, that last line seems quite funny to me.

Taylor Caldwell’s gods and Terry Pratchett’s elves

Taylor Caldwell and Terry Pratchett wrote very different types of books, but they both touched on the subject of humans as playthings of evil and sadistic supernatural beings.

They describe one aspect of this phenomenon in much the same way, although they use different words and blame different paranormal entities.

From Taylor Caldwell’s Romance of Atlantis:

“...the gods amuse themselves by tormenting us. They fire us with thirst, then give us stagnant water with which to quench that thirst. They endow the sensitive with majestic desires, with yearnings for beauty, with radiant spirits with which they might enjoy glorious things, and then let these unhappy wretches eat out their hearts in unsatisfied longings.“

Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel Lords and Ladies contains some warnings about elves. I quoted him in an article about energy vampires. Here is a relevant extract:  

“All they can give is gold that melts away in the morning. They make us want what we can't have, and what they give us is worth nothing and what they take is everything and all that is left for us is the cold hillside and emptiness and the laughter of the elves.”

Being tormented by unsatisfied longings, being made to want what they can’t have and being left empty and desolate happens to people in this world too. What the two authors say above will seem spot on to them, a perfect description of what happened to them and how they feel about it.

Taylor Caldwell’s Atlantean gods, who sound more like demons to me, can’t be blamed for this misery in our world, nor can Terry Pratchet’s malevolent Discworld elves.

Is this suffering just a part of life for certain types of people, divine discontent and all that, or are sinister unseen influences at work in our world too?

103 years of John Buchan’s Greenmantle

Last year was the 103rd anniversary of the publication of John Buchan’s Thirty-Nine Steps; 2019 is the 103rd anniversary of the first appearance of the sequel, the classic spy thriller Greenmantle.

This book was written partly as propaganda and in the hope that it would help to bring America into the First World War.

The first instalment of this exciting adventure story with a wonderful title and a ‘man with a mission on the run in enemy territory’ scenario appeared in the magazine Land and Water in July 1916, and the entire story was published in book form later that year.

Greenmantle was a great success. It is still very popular, all the more because of current events in the Middle East. However, a radio dramatisation was dropped from the BBC’s schedule in 2005 for containing ‘unsuitable and sensitive material’.

Greenmantle is my favourite John Buchan book. It is an old friend. I have already mentioned it briefly in an article about Robert. A. Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy, and I covered the spying aspect in articles about energy vampires and John Buchan's fellow author of exciting adventure stories, Rafael Sabatini.

The best of Greenmantle

It is difficult to think of anything more or something new and original to say about this enthralling story with its excitement, adventure, danger and double dealing.

Greenmantle has much to offer its readers. It has educational background information; it has moving scenes and amusing scenes, and there is some material that has a wider application.

Some miscellaneous material from Strindberg’s Inferno

This is yet another article in the series inspired by Colin Wilson’s references in The Occult to Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s autobiographical novel Inferno.

Included here are some miscellaneous incidents and details of yet another ‘friendship’ that ended badly. The material speaks for itself; it is all typical of Strindberg and his life; it is all typical of things that happen to people who use occult instead of natural methods to go through life and get what they want. 

The meal that backfired

This is a very small incident, but it is significant in terms of what happens to people who use psychological black magic.

Strindberg’s mother-in-law cooked what she said was his favourite dish; not only was it not at the top of his list, it was something he disliked more than anything else. He had to force himself to eat the revolting dish.

He got the exact opposite of what he expected.

The worst towns in Sweden

Strindberg said this:

“There are ninety towns in Sweden, and the powers have condemned me to go to the one which I most dislike.” 

The powers? He blamed ‘occultists and their secret powers’ for his many misfortunes when he himself was often the cause.

He moved on to another Swedish town:

“...I have made personal enemies here, and have contracted debts under circumstances which set my character in a dubious light... I have also here relations who ignore me, and friends who have left me to become my enemies. In a word, it is the worst place I could have chosen for a quiet residence; it is hell...”

So he ended up in the exact opposite of the peaceful refuge he wanted, with more former friends who had become his enemies and more debts. Same old same old...