Which Way?, page 1
Which Way?
Theodora Benson
First published in 1931
This edition published in 2021 by
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London nw1 2db
Copyright © 2021 Estate of Theodora Benson
Preface copyright © 2021 Tanya Kirk
Afterword copyright © 2021 Simon Thomas
Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7123 5398 4
e-ISBN 978 0 7123 6713 4
Text design and typesetting by JCS Publishing Services Ltd
Contents
The 1930s
Theodora Benson
Preface
Publisher’s Note
Part I
The Four Cross Roads
Part II
Approaching the Cross Roads
Part III
Turning to the Left
Part IV
Going Straight On
Part V
Turning to the Right
Part VI
Which Way?
Afterword
The 1930s
1930: 769,239 babies are born in the UK – a 30 per cent decline from 1900. Throughout the rest of the 30s, the number stays below 750,000, before rising again in the 1940s.
1930: 2,635 women receive university degrees in UK – 29 per cent of the total awarded. This percentage had dropped by the end of the decade and wouldn’t rise above a third until the 1980s.
Marie Stopes’ influential work Married Love, published in 1918, has sold 750,000 copies by 1931. While relatively conservative, it explains sex and sexuality frankly and means that far fewer women start marriage ignorant of what consummation entails.
The 1930s is the decade where films with sound, commonly known as ‘talkies’, overtook silent films. The transition is not immediate; the first talkie is released in 1927, and silent films continue to be made throughout the 1930s, but the ‘silent era’ is widely considered to be over.
1931: There are 3,764 divorces in the UK.
1931: Which Way? is published.
1931 (October): Ramsay MacDonald remains Prime Minister in a landslide general election victory for the newly formed National Government.
Book-of-the-month clubs become very popular in this decade, where readers receive monthly books chosen by a panel of noted authors and critics. Intellectuals are often disparaging of them, but tens of thousands of readers subscribe to their lists, receiving novels by authors such as Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence, as well as more ‘middlebrow’ works.
Theodora Benson (1906–1968)
Theodora Benson was born Eleanor Theodora Roby Benson in 1906, the third child of Dorothea and Godfrey Rathbone Benson, later Lady Charnwood and 1st Baron Charnwood – at which point their daughter became The Honourable Theodora Benson. The family lived at Stowe House in Lichfield, Staffordshire, and both Benson’s parents were writers: her mother wrote books about her collections of autographs and manuscripts, as well as three novels, and her father was a biographer specialising in American presidents.
Benson’s first novel, Salad Days, was published in 1928. It was critically and commercially successful, and Benson followed with several novels in quick succession. When Which Way? appeared three years later, it was her fourth novel. Benson’s writing has been described as ‘presenting a cynical world of failed romance, lost ideals, social foibles and ruthless self-seeking’, while Which Way? has been singled out as particularly experimental.
Alongside her prolific novel output, Benson also co-wrote several irreverent books with her childhood friend Betty Askwith, including Muddling Through, or Britain in a Nutshell which opens, ‘Sense of humour is a very exclusive quality. Only the English have it.’ She also turned her hand to mystery writing, horror short stories, and travel writing – visiting most of the countries in northern Europe, often with Askwith, as well as several countries in Asia.
During the Second World War, Benson published Sweethearts and Wives: Their Part in War, a short book illustrated with photographs from the home front, designed to encourage women to take up war work in support of soldiers. She also worked as a speechwriter for the Ministry of Information, where the novelist and biographer Elizabeth Jenkins was her assistant.
Benson never married, which Jenkins attributed to the youthful failure of a romance with a man whom her mother considered unsuitable. On Christmas Day 1968, Benson died of pneumonia while staying with her sister, at the age of 62.
Preface
How would my life have turned out if I’d made a different choice? It’s something we all probably think about at times. In this extraordinary novel, Theodora Benson allows the reader to play out three different versions of the heroine Claudia’s life, each the consequence of the seemingly trivial decision of where she should spend a weekend away. At the start of each parallel narrative, Claudia comes into an empty room, with two invitations in her hand and the telephone ringing. She makes her choice, and we explore the vastly disproportionate effect that simple decision has on her relationships, her future and even her personality.
Which Way? was published in 1931. Benson was only 25 but already had a number of her novels in print. The experimental form of Which Way? is indicative of her growing confidence as a writer.
The idea of alternate histories had been around for a long time, but writers had usually focused on huge tipping points, such as the outcomes of wars. Which Way? was published in the same year as a book called If it Had Happened Otherwise, edited by J.C. Squire, and containing essays by Winston Churchill, Hilaire Belloc, and G.K. Chesterton, among others. Each chapter imagined the world as it would have been had an historical event turned out differently. Readers were asked to imagine the communist Britain that could have resulted from a successful General Strike of 1926. They were also presented with a Louis XIV who had avoided execution by embracing a constitutional monarchy, a decision which had ensured his survival and had the knock-on effect of preventing the American War of Independence from taking place. With great success, Benson applied the same method employed by Squires and other historians to the life choices of an average person.
Benson’s friend, the author and biographer Elizabeth Jenkins, commented in Benson’s obituary that her writing showed ‘gracefulness, immediacy and realism, and a flair for experiment’. Which Way? manages to be both highly evocative of the early 1930s and to have something to say about relationships and social interactions in the twenty-first century.
Tanya Kirk
Lead Curator, Printed Heritage Collections 1601–1900
British Library
Publisher’s Note
The original novels reprinted in the British Library Women Writers series were written and published in a period ranging, for the most part, from the 1910s to the 1950s. There are many elements of these stories which continue to entertain modern readers, however in some cases there are also uses of language, instances of stereotyping and some attitudes expressed by narrators or characters which may not be endorsed by the publishing standards of today. We acknowledge therefore that some elements in the stories selected for reprinting may continue to make uncomfortable reading for some of our audience. With this series, British Library Publishing aims to offer a new readership a chance to read some of the rare books of the British Library’s collections in an affordable paperback format, to enjoy their merits and to look back into the world of the twentieth century as portrayed by their writers. It is not possible to separate these stories from the history of their writing and as such the following novel is presented as it was originally published with minor edits only, made for consistency of style and sense. We welcome feedback from our readers, which can be sent to the following address:
British Library Publishing
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London, nw1 2db
United Kingdom
Part I
The Four Cross Roads
There was a young man who said: “God!
Does it not seem to you very odd
That that walnut-tree
Should continue to be
When there’s no one about in the quad?”
There was no one in the room. Blinds and curtains were closed; the light of the skies, if any, was shut out. There was about the place the curious, expectant air of a stage set for the curtain to rise. For while hill and plain and valley are eternal and care not what fugitive dramas take them for setting, a room exists only for men and women. It is there to hear their many lies and their frightened truths; to shelter their secret thoughts; to look on at their moods of helpless revolt—things can never be the same again. … I must do something! … I must do something! … And there is nothing to do but have a bath and go to bed. An empty room is always waiting.
There was a fire in the room; very comforting and gay. It threw a lovely liquid sheet of orange on the big armchairs each side of it. It sent a flickering glow on to the gallery table where lay weekly and daily papers, magazines, a few books lately thrown down. In front of the fire was a low stool, behind that a deep, soft sofa. Against one wall were shelves of books; opposite, a writing table framed by the dull, peach-coloured curtains of the windows. Branches
Part II
Approaching the Cross Roads
1
Nature, red in tooth and claw.
Tennyson.
The hush and the rapture of youth in the holy places.
Noyes.
The world is too much with us.
Wordsworth.
When Claudia Heseltine first went to kindergarten Miss Angus, the mistress who was taking the paper mat class, put her next to a girl older than the others but backward, who tried to be kind to her. This girl, Mary, was humble and craved for affection, so Claudia, like all the rest before her, promptly repulsed her. She wanted desperately to secure similar attention from someone more popular and assured. After hanging about wistfully on the outskirts of groups she ultimately worked her way into them by dint of a campaign of trenchant snubs to other new girls, such as “don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs,” or “I’ll buzz my satchel in your phiz.” When she had thus asserted her individuality the world began to smile upon her. The other new girls wept.
Claudia became firm friends with Cecily, a most influential girl of eight summers and some gymnastic prowess. Then there was a little boy named Jack who greatly admired her. He used to follow her about and offer her presents which she always refused. He often proposed and was roughly rejected. He was not allowed to sit next her in class, nor would she eat his sweets or use his pencils or betray her weakness for his dying pigs and clockwork mice. One day an uncle gave him a super knife, a glorious affair with every kind of instrument and blade. He pressed it on his beloved who was overcome with its magnificence and took it. Naturally she could not then help letting him sit beside her for arithmetic. Having gained this advantage the faithful Jack persecuted her with diligence, saying on every occasion:
“After all, I did give you that lovely knife.”
Claudia, thus admonished, endured him, but it was not possible to find pleasure in the possession of the knife. At length, goaded and hunted, she determined to return the beastly thing and be free of him: horrors, blow, hang, dash, she had lost it. Claudia kept her money, very properly, in a china pig with a slit in his back and a trap door in his belly. She took it out, all of it, and bought a beautiful clockwork car which she gave to Jack just before prayers. He sat next her through geography and scripture in a dream of excitement and delight. During break he approached her, all elation and sudden hope. She swung her arm straight from the shoulder and slapped his face with her whole strength.
Claudia was fond of reading and devoured eagerly the charming books of fantasy that people such as Aunt Louisa gave her. The fact that she enjoyed these delightful and well-written stories as much as tales of bloodcurdling adventure or trash, together with the fact that she was an enchantingly pretty child, caused Aunt Louisa to imagine that her play must be delicious and whimsical. Whenever Aunt Louisa succeeded in overlooking it she was curiously disappointed. She would pay surprise visits to the nursery when Cecily had come to tea, and she would find the two little playmates drawing pictures of tortures in their copy books, plaiting plasticine into each other’s hair or urging one the other: “Give me a twizzle, do.”
Once when she came in, her niece and Cecily were reiterating angrily at each other:
“I didn’t.”
“You did.”
“Didn’t.”
“Did.”
“Didn’t.”
“Did.”
“Didn’t.”
“Did.”
She tried to produce peace and order. Cecily called out “All right! Silence in the pig market, let the old sow speak first!”
She walked into this just as she had walked into the “Say ‘iced ink,’ quickly” catch. She adored the children but they did not think much of her. She had a look of Mary in her yearning, prominent eyes. Among the many secret societies they had got up or joined at school was one for poisoning aunts with paint water.
Her parents were pleased with the promise of character Claudia showed. They hoped she would continue to be strong-minded and stand up for herself and know what she wanted and not drift. After all she had her softer side. She loved Cecily, and Nanny, and Mummy, and Daddy, and God. She was very good (beyond painting the soles of his feet green) to Mustard Middley, her middle-sized and mustard-coloured Teddy bear. And she was devoted to her two guinea-pigs, Startling and May.
Claudia did not continue to be so strongminded. At thirteen, when she had ceased to be enchantingly pretty and entered upon the awkward stage, the love of beauty suddenly flowered in her with such violence that she became a little mushy. The sadness of the world profaned so much beauty and sweetness and all that wonder so vast and elusive that she could not reach or hold it. She wanted everyone to be happy, good too if it could be arranged, but happy anyway. She was very austere and pure and single-hearted, very religious, rather priggish and sentimental, and sadly apt to blush and stammer.
This stage was mitigated a little by the time when, at the age of fourteen, she was so lucky as to make a great friend. This was Eileen Northover, a girl one year younger than herself. Happily they were suitable friends for each other; their parents made friends too; they came to stay at each other’s houses. The two girls learnt tennis together, tried to teach themselves pole-jumping, and had an endless communion of small private jokes which caused them inordinate laughter. Happily however they did not neglect to cultivate their more serious sides. They read a lot of Swinburne and Kipling, and they wrote a bit themselves. In the kindergarten Claudia had been a poet. She had written a popular verse which ran:
Miss Pencock teaches us plain and purl,
She’s a jolly funny old girl.
She’s got lots too many double chins,
Hope the Kaiser’ll kick her shins,
which was of course a shining example of groundless optimism. Now she conceived a really great poem which began:
“O vastness of the sea! My small soul shrinks …” But, fortunately or otherwise, it never got further.
They took much exercise, bicycling to all the villages of their two neighbourhoods and eating doughnuts, lemonade and éclairs in the principal tea shops. Claudia named her bicycle Oateater after Byron’s horse at Oxford; Eileen named hers Black Beauty. Claudia, as it happened, was Sir Christopher Wren and Eileen was Our Sovereign Lord King Henry of Navarre, until the sad day when historical research revealed to her that he had had mistresses. At this discovery Eileen wept exceeding bitterly. Claudia was light-hearted about it and advanced a theory that in some vague way it was rather charming of him.
The two were sent to the same boarding school. From the first they looked eagerly forward to growing up and leaving it. They duly suffered from intense moods, from the morbid atmosphere inseparable from a large community of undiluted female young, and from feeling Very Old; but it was with horror that they at last arrived at the time when Claudia, now seventeen and the elder of the two by a year, was to leave that moderately pleasant existence to return to it no more. She went off to a finishing school in Paris and embarked on a new stage.
From Miss Eileen Northover to Miss Claudia Heseltine.
Darling Claudia,—I felt powerful gloomed yesterday thinking of you so far away among those frogs. Talking of frogs, never put French tags in your letters again, a vile affectation. What’s wrong with English? And still talking of them, have you eaten any, as we Provincials do hear tell they’re a dainty in your parts. Which reminds me, my breakfast egg was high. You are a sweet writing so often, but I have been pretty good, haven’t I? Your letters are a light spot in a dark and earnest world. I am thinking very hard and often ask myself whether to be or not to be. You should read Boswell’s Johnson: it’s prime. It’s no good talking to me about French poetry: there isn’t any. Less of all this about your gewgaws and fallals: Life is real in these parts as you perfectly well know, and time was when you very properly despised all such flippancies, but now I see they are dragging you down into hell. Yesterday was Marjorie’s birthday. I gave her a Swinburne, and Muriel gave her Poems of To-day and Joan gave her a new Life of William of Orange. Felt powerfully depressed on Sunday owing to the approach of old age and the presence of indigestion so had a good cry. Joan asked me yesterday whether God really cared. I didn’t exactly know so told her I preferred to keep His secrets.
