Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson, Part 4

This is the fourth post on Robert Hugh Benson’s novel, Lord of the World.

You can find Part 1 here.  

Part 2 here.    

Part 3 here. 

Book 3, Chapter III

Oliver has noticed that the destruction of the Catholic world has disturbed Mabel psychologically and emotionally.  She feels the government has betrayed the humanitarian ideals on which they were to bring about.  Oliver goes over the rationale for how the only way to bring about this ideal was to destroy those that disagreed with it.  Oliver is informed that Felsenburgh has passed a bill that would exterminate all Catholics from the earth.  Oliver tries to explain the reason for the new bill but Mabel cannot accept it.  She secretly leaves the house.  Late that night Mabel has made an unplanned visit to Mr. Francis to ask him, an ex-priest, why Catholics believe in God.  He explains the fundamentals and declares it is based on emotion.

 

Book 3, Chapter IV

A week later Mabel wakes up to a home where she has come to put an end of it.  She has waited the legally required eight days to ensure certainty, and thinking over the failure of the Humanitarian Faith and the new persecution laws, despite seeming perfectly logical, has caused her to lose faith in life itself and seek euthanasia.  On this her last day, she continues to be certain it is the right course of action.  A little while later she reads over her last letter to Oliver explaining why she has made this decision.  Then the nurse comes in with the euthanasia machine, but Mabel is looking out the window and frightened at the black sky.  The nurse reassures her and shows her how to use the machine.  Alone with the machine, she looks again out the window at the black sky.  She speaks to God, as if He existed, and was sorry for it all.  She then fumbles with the mask and turns the handle where a sweet gas strikes her.  As her earthly moments end, she sees the beyond.

 

###

 

I have to say I was quite moved with chapter four of the third book.  I’d like to highlight some details.  First let’s look at her decision to end her life.  Here early on she describes her emotions as she came to this “home.”

 

She had suffered, of course, to some degree from reactions. The second night after her arrival had been terrible, when, as she lay in bed in the hot darkness, her whole sentient life had protested and struggled against the fate her will ordained. It had demanded the familiar things the promise of food and breath and human intercourse; it had writhed in horror against the blind dark towards which it moved so inevitably; and, in the agony had been pacified only by the half-hinted promise of some deeper voice suggesting that death was not the end.  (p. 290-291)

 

The word that sticks out is “will,” “the fate her will ordained.”  The word comes up especially at the end when she has set the euthanasia machine in motion.  “Then the steady will that had borne her so far asserted itself, and she laid her hands softly in her lap, breathing deeply and easily” (303).  “Then she understood that the will had already lost touch with the body…” (303).  Ending her life is an act of will, something that has to override (1) her survival instinct, which Benson might argue was planted in each of us from God as natural biology, and (2) has to override her heart which Benson might argue is linked to God in natural morality.  Overriding the will is theologically choosing to do evil, to contradict God’s natural course. 

 

Also I think the will is linked to logic and all the arguments Oliver makes and Mabel accepts pertaining to logic.  Notice how often logic is employed.  Something is logical only if people agree on the ground rules of which the facts are based.  Something that is logical to a European can be completely illogical to a native of an Amazonian jungle.  Just because something seems logical doesn’t mean it is true.  Once you have accepted the logic, one carries out that action from an exertion of the will.  This is especially true when the logic violates natural instinct and God’s morality as I mentioned above.

### 

I am also fascinated by what Mabel sees in the sky and then as she dies physically and transition to the metaphysical.  Here is the scene when Sister Anne comes in the machine to find Mabel staring out the window at the sky.

 

When Sister Anne came in a few minutes later, she was astonished at what she saw. The girl crouched at the window, her hands on the sill, staring out at the sky in an attitude of unmistakable horror.

 

Sister Anne came across the room quickly, setting down something on the table as she passed. She touched the girl on the shoulder.

 

“My dear, what is it?”

 

There was a long sobbing breath, and Mabel turned, rising as she turned, and clutched the nurse with one shaking hand, pointing out with the other.

 

“There!” she said. “There look!”

 

“Well, my dear, what is it? I see nothing. It is a little dark!”

 

“Dark!” said the other. “You call that dark! Why, why, it is black—black!”  (p. 297)

 

First, before I get to the sky, why is the nurse’s title “sister”?  She is a “sister” of this new humanitarian religion.  In Benson’s day, many hospitals across Europe were worked by religious sisters.  It’s quite ironic that Sister Anne is the new Sister of Mercy.

As to what they see, there is a decided disconnect.  So who is seeing the reality?  Here’s how Benson portrays the disconnect.

 

“Nurse,” she said more quietly, “please look again and tell me if you see nothing. If you say there is nothing I will believe that I am going mad. No; you must not touch the blind.”

 

No; there was nothing. The sky was a little dark, as if a blight were coming on; but there was hardly more than a veil of cloud, and the light was scarcely more than tinged with gloom. It was just such a sky as precedes a spring thunderstorm. She said so, clearly and firmly.  (297-298)

 

Is Benson describing the sky objectively in that paragraph or is that description filtered through the point of view of Sister Anne?  That is an important decision the reader has to make there.  If Benson is objectively describing the sky, then Mabel is experience some sort of delusion from her nerves.  But if it is the sky seen through Sister Anne’s point of view, then there is some supernatural event going on that only Mabel is allowed to see.  I believe it is the second.  Mabel is being given a grace from above as a call to not go through it.

###

 

I was very moved by her last confession, though she didn’t think of it as a confession.

 

Then, hardly knowing what she said, looking steadily upon that appalling sky, she began to speak....

 

“O God!” she said. “If You are really there really there ”

 

Her voice faltered, and she gripped the sill to steady herself. She wondered vaguely why she spoke so; it was neither intellect nor emotion that inspired her. Yet she continued.... (p. 302)

 

Her will subsides here.  This comes out of her without her even thinking about it.  I think it’s an act of grace, God leading her to either away from what she wants to do or at least an act of penance.  She continues.

 

“O God, I know You are not there of course You are not. But if You were there, I know what I would say to You. I would tell You how puzzled and tired I am. No No I need not tell You: You would know it. But I would say that I was very sorry for all this. Oh! You would know that too. I need not say anything at all. O God! I don’t know what I want to say. I would like You to look after Oliver, of course, and all Your poor Christians. Oh! they will have such a hard time.... God. God You would understand, wouldn’t You?” ...

 

She even makes amends to the Christians, and cares about their difficulties to come.  This is so tender that as a reader I so wished she would pull back from the act.  But alas she doesn’t, and even asks God if He understands.  And God I think responds.

 

Again came the heavy rumble and the solemn bass of a myriad voices; it seemed a shade nearer, she thought.... She never liked thunderstorms or shouting crowds. They always gave her a headache ...

Of course He doesn’t approve.  Will this confession be her saving grace?  Perhaps.  Perhaps there is a suggestion in her final moments. 

###

Those last moments of Mabel passing may be one of the best descriptions of a person dying that I have ever read.  Mabel was curious as to what she would feel, and she “would at least miss nothing of this unique last experience.”  So we get her observations in detail.  Her eyes are looking at that sky once again.

 

 It seemed at first that there was no change. There was the feathery head of the elm, the lead roof opposite, and the terrible sky above. She noticed a pigeon, white against the blackness, soar and swoop again out of sight in an instant....  (p. 303)

 

Ah, a white pigeon, the Holy Spirit.  But then she began to lose her will.

 

There was a sudden sensation of ecstatic lightness in all her limbs; she attempted to lift a hand, and was aware that it was impossible; it was no longer hers. She attempted to lower her eyes from that broad strip of violet sky, and perceived that that too was impossible. Then she understood that the will had already lost touch with the body, that the crumbling world had receded to an infinite distance that was as she had expected, but what continued to puzzle her was that her mind was still active.

 

What Benson does so beautifully here is have the beginnings of a dissociation between the body and soul.  And the paragraph continues as the soul and body start to pull apart.

 

It was true that the world she had known had withdrawn itself from the dominion of consciousness, as her body had done, except, that was, in the sense of hearing, which was still strangely alert; yet there was still enough memory to be aware that there was such a world that there were other persons in existence; that men went about their business, knowing nothing of what had happened; but faces, names, places had all alike gone. In fact, she was conscious of herself in such a manner as she had never been before; it seemed as if she had penetrated at last into some recess of her being into which hitherto she had only looked as through clouded glass. This was very strange, and yet it was familiar, too; she had arrived, it seemed, at a centre, round the circumference of which she had been circling all her life; and it was more than a mere point: it was a distinct space, walled and enclosed.... At the same instant she knew that hearing, too, was gone....  (p. 304)

 

What has happened I think is that all physical sensation is now gone except for sight, and I might venture to say that her physical sight is gone but there is now some sort of metaphysical sight.  The experience continues.

 

The enclosure melted, with a sound of breaking, and a limitless space was about her limitless, different to everything else, and alive, and astir. It was alive, as a breathing, panting body is alive self-evident and overpowering it was one, yet it was many; it was immaterial, yet absolutely real real in a sense in which she never dreamed of reality....

 

What she saw in her metaphysical sight suddenly shatters.  She has broken through into a new a new world and a new life, and she is aware of it.

 

Yet even this was familiar, as a place often visited in dreams is familiar; and then, without warning, something resembling sound or light, something which she knew in an instant to be unique, tore across it....

 

Then she saw, and understood....

 

What did she see?  What does she now understand?  One can guess: Christ? Heaven? Angels?  It is the mystery that we all await, and Benson quite properly leaves it a mystery.

The breaking light from the darkness in the sky reminded me of the verse in the Canticle of Zachariah, of which is prayed in every Lauds of the Divine Office:

 

In the tender compassion of our God

the dawn from on high shall break upon us,

to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death,

and to guide our feet into the way of peace.  (Luke 1: 78-79)

 

There is a sort of tender compassion in her death, despite her violation of God’s law against suicide.  She’s only a character in a novel, and Benson has no obligation to explain further, but one hopes she is saved and not damned.

 

Frances Comment:

I'd like to share what Joseph Pearce writes in his excellent book Literature: What Every Catholic Should Know, and hope this is a good time to do it:

 

"Lord of the World deserves to stand beside Brave New World and 1984 as a classic of dystopian fiction. In fact, though Huxley's and Orwell's modern masterpieces may merit equal praise as works of literature, they are patently inferior as works of prophecy. The political dictatorships that gave Orwell's novel an ominous potency have had their day. Today, his cautionary fable serves merely as a timely reminder of what has been and what may be again if the warnings of history are not heeded. Benson's novel, on the other hand, is coming true before our eyes.

 

"The world depicted in Lord of the World is one where creeping secularism and godless humanism have triumphed over religion and traditional morality. It is a world where philosophical relativism has triumphed over objectivity and where, in the name of tolerance, religious doctrine is not tolerated. It is a world where euthanasia is practiced widely and religion hardly practiced at all. The lord of this nightmare world is a benign-looking politician intent on power in the name of 'peace,' and intent on the destruction of religion in the name of 'truth.' In such a world, only a small and defiant Church stands resolutely against the demonic 'Lord of the World.'

 

"We can hope that in healthier times, Benson, so long neglected, will once more be seen among the stars of the literary firmament, his own star once more in the ascendant." (pages 148-149)

 

My Reply to Frances:

Well, one could quibble that Orvell's "ominous potency" still lives in China. But on the whole that is so true. Benson is much more relevant to our times. It is very prophetic!

 

Susan Comment:

That is fascinating that you expressed your comment like that Manny...

That reminds me of the book I am reading right now, "America on Trial, A Defense of the Founding"... It really stresses the ideas of the primacy of the intellect vs. the primacy of the will.... and what happens when they get flipped...

The Aristotelian-Thomistic idea of Logos, and God's will being led by HIs Intellect, Natural Law...; the medieval roots of constitutionalism vs. the development of nominalism (no natures, so no natural law) and voluntarism, William of Ockham and Martin Luther, severing Aquinas' synthesis of reason and faith, primacy of the will/God is capricious... -> political absolutism. It is an excellent book... anyway, I think your comments on logic (reason) and will have a much more profound and integral connection to The Lord of the World than you might have thought, a connection to the uniqueness of America and the enshrinement of Natural Law/primacy of reason (in theory anyway, always imperfectly actualized) vs. the looming (ever closer!) triumph of primacy of will (totalitarianism).... a perfect read for July 4th! Have a wonderful, safe, holiday weekend!

 

My Reply to Susan:

Good comment Susan. Another way to phrase this is that Mabel supersedes God's will with her's. It becomes my will, not Thy will. Where have we seen that before? It seems to come up regularly in Catholic fiction. I admit, it's sometimes hard to discern God's will but I am certain that taking one's life is in opposition to God's will.

 

Actually I have been tracking the motifs of logic and will throughout the novel. It's not just in this chapter, but it seems to come to a climax here.