Benson Stella Quotes

I want to go out into the country, I want to thread the pale Spring air, and hear the lambs cry. I want to brush my face against the grass, and wade in a wave of bluebells.

And you shall find upon the beach The traces of my dancing

Now there is hardly anything but magic abroad before seven o'clock in the morning. Only the disciples of magic like getting their feet wet, and being furiously happy on an empty stomach.

Come home, come home, you million ghosts, The honest years shall make amends, The sun and moon shall be your hosts, The everlasting hills your friends.

Pets are almost always fatal, to oneself or to them. It is the curse of possession or motherhood. Mothers ruin their children, choke them like ivy. Dog-lovers steal the souls of their dogs and lose something in exchange. There is an essay on this subject by (I think) Stella Benson called “A Firefly to Steer By.” Everybody ought to read it.

There pass the trav'lling dreams, and these My soul adores

My love, I see you through my tears. No pity in your face I see. I have sailed far across the years; Stretch out, stretch out your arms to me.

That sea - that mother of a million summers, Who bore, with melody, a million springs, Shall sing for my enchantment...

Trees, skies, valleys mountains, seen through the rain-spotted windshield, were like a distorted, stippled landscape painted by a beginner who has not yet learned to wring living colour from his palette.

They were not spontaneous people. They were born with too great a love of words, a passion for drama at the expense of truth, and a habit of overweighting common life with romance.

Her grammar in moments of emergency always impressed Kew.

To-night the swinging stars shall plumb The silence of the sky.

The sun was like a word written between the sea and the sky, a word that was swallowed up by the sea before any man had time to read it.

The hoarse church-bells of London ring; The hoarser horns of London croak; The poor brown lives of London cling About the poor brown streets like smoke; The deep air stands above my roof Like water, to the floating stars. My friend and I - we sit aloof - We sit and smile, and bind our scars.

London is a friend whom I can leave knowing without doubt that she will be the same to me when I return, to-morrow or forty years hence, and that, if I do not return, she will sing the same song to inheritors of my happy lot in future generations. Always, whether sleeping or waking, I shall know that in Spring the sun rides over the silver streets of Kensington, and that in the Gardens the shorn sheep find very green pasture. Always the plaited threads of traffic will wind about the reel of London; always as you up Regent Street from Pall Mall and look back, Westminster will rise with you like a dim sun over the horizon of Whitehall. That dive down Fleet Street and up to the black and white cliffs of St. Paul's will for ever bring to mind some rumour of romance. There is always a romance that we leave behind in London, and always London enlocks that flower for us, and keeps it fresh, so that when we come back we have our romance again.

I want to introduce you to Jay, a 'bus-conductor and an idealist. She is not the heroine, but the most constantly apparent woman in this book. I cannot introduce you to a heroine because I have never met one.

Witch," said Sarah Brown, "I have got to say something." "Oh, have you?" said the witch, a little disappointed at being interrupted. "Oh, well, I can sympathise, I know what that feels like. Get on and say it." The Dog David, who was really a good and attentive son to Sarah Brown, came and laid his chin, with an exaggerated look of interest, on her knee-cap. "Is it any use," said Sarah Brown, "fighting against the Habits in the world, there are so many. Who set these strange and senseless deceivers at large? Religion which has forgotten ecstasy.... Law which has forgotten justice.... Charity which has forgotten love.... Surely magic has suffered at the stake for saner ideals than these?" "Why, of course," said the witch impatiently. "Magic generally suffered because it was so sane. I thought everybody knew that." "All habits. All habits," chanted Sarah Brown. "What is this Charity, this clinking of money between strangers, and when did Charity cease to be a comforting and secret thing between one friend and another? Does Love make her voice heard through a committee, does Love employ an almoner to convey her message to her neighbour?" "Not that I know of," sighed the witch. "Sarah Brown, how long do you want me to keep quiet, while you say things that everybody surely knows?" ~ from Chapter IV 'The Forbidden Sandwich' of 'Living Alone' by Stella Benson, published 1919.

My soundless feet shall fly among the runners Through the red thunders of a Zeppelin raid, My still voice cheer the Anti-Aircraft gunners, The fires shall glare - but I shall cast no shade.

To-day she had watched magic dancing in a mackintosh, and she was at a loss.

It is a place of fine weather, and this is a book of fine weather, a book written in Spring. I will not remember the winter and the rain. It was the Spring that brought Sarah Brown to Mitten Island, and the Spring that first showed her magic. It was the Spring that awoke her on her first morning in the House of Living Alone.

On the inspiration for Never Love a Stranger: “[The book begins with] a poem from To the Unborn by Stella Benson. There were a lot of disappointments especially during the Depression—fuck it—in everyone’s life there are disappointments and lost hope…. No one escapes. That’s why you got to be grateful every day that you get to the next.

This is not a real book. It does not deal with real people, nor should it be read by real people. But there are in the world so many real books already written for the benefit of real people, and there are still so many to be written, that I cannot believe that a little alien book such as this, written for the magically-inclined minority, can be considered a trespasser.