AC Benson, remembered for editing Queen Victoria's letters and writing 'Land of Hope and Glory', left behind a diary of over four million words, surpassing Samuel Pepys' output. However, a new review of edited volumes suggests his daily jottings fail to transcend his stuffy milieu.
Benson, a Cambridge don, knew many political and literary figures of late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, but his observations are deemed crass. He dismissed Henry James as obscure, called Arnold Bennett 'a cad', and questioned A.E. Housman's gentility. His musical judgments were equally poor, praising obscure composer Waldemar Bargiel over Brahms and predicting Wagner would be seen as 'claptrap'.
The review criticises the editors, Eamon Duffy and Ronald Hyam, for treating Benson's commonplace utterances as significant. The diary's focus on college squabbles and clubland gossip offers little historical insight, lacking the waspishness of other academic correspondents. It concludes that the diary provides 'the sedative of gossip' but should not be mistaken for genuine communion with great minds.
