The Most Reverend and Right Honourable Edward Benson | |
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Archbishop of Canterbury | |
Installed | 29 March 1883 |
Term ended | 11 October 1896 |
Predecessor | Archibald Tait |
Successor | Frederick Temple |
Personal details | |
Birth name | Edward White Benson |
Born | 14 July 1829 Birmingham, Warwickshire, England |
Died | 11 October 1896 (aged 67) Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales |
Buried | Canterbury Cathedral |
Nationality | British |
Denomination | Anglican |
Parents | Edward White Benson, Sr. |
Spouse | Mary (Minnie) Sidgwick |
Edward White Benson (14 July 1829 – 11 October 1896) was the Archbishop of Canterbury from 1883 until his death.
Edward White Benson was born at Lombard Street in Highgate, Birmingham on 14 July 1829, the son of Birmingham chemical manufacturer Edward White Benson Sr. (26 August 1802 - 7 February 1843) and his wife Harriet Baker Benson (13 June 1805 - 29 May 1850).[1] He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated BA (8th classic) in 1852.[2] At King Edward’s, Benson “manifested a deeply religious tone of mind and was fond of sermons”.[3]
Benson began his career as a schoolmaster at Rugby School in 1852, and was ordained deacon in 1852 and priest in 1857. In 1859 Benson was chosen by Prince Albert as the first Master (headmaster) of Wellington College, Berkshire, which had been built as the nation's memorial to the Duke of Wellington. Benson was largely responsible for establishing Wellington as a public school, closely modelled on Rugby School, rather than the military academy originally planned.[1]
From 1872 to 1877 he served as Chancellor of Lincoln Cathedral, at which in 1874 he set up a Theological College.
He was then appointed first Bishop of Truro, where he served from 1877 to 1882. He founded Truro High School for Girls in 1880.[4]
In 1883 he was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury.
Five years later Benson avoided the prosecution before a lay tribunal of Edward King, Bishop of Lincoln, under the Public Worship Regulation Act 1874 for six ritual offences by hearing the case in his own archiepiscopal court (inactive since 1699). [5] In his judgement (often called "the Lincoln Judgement"), he found against the Bishop on two points, with a proviso as to a third that, when performing the manual acts during the prayer of consecration in the Holy Communion service, the priest must stand so that they can be seen by the people.[6]
Benson tried to amalgamate the two Convocations and the new houses of laity into a single assembly. In 1896 it was established that they could 'unofficially' meet together.[7]
In September of the same year, the papal apostolic letter Apostolicae curae was published and Benson had started to work on a reply before his sudden death of a heart attack. He died while attending Sunday service in St. Deiniol's Church, Hawarden, Wales, on 11 October 1896, during a visit to former Prime Minister William Gladstone. Three days later his body was put on the train at Sandycroft station to be returned to London.[8]
He was buried at Canterbury Cathedral, in a magnificent tomb located at the western end of the nave. The tomb is emblazoned with the epitaph Benson had chosen: “Miserere mei Deus Per crucem et passionem tuam libera me Christe” ("Have mercy on me O Christ our God, Through Thy Cross and Passion, deliver thou me").[9][10]
His devotion to Saint Cyprian bore posthumous fruit with the publication of Cyprian, his life, his times, his work the following year.[11]
Benson is best remembered for devising the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, an order first used in Truro Cathedral on Christmas Eve, 1880. Considerably revised by Eric Milner White for King's College Cambridge, this service is now used every Christmas around the world.[12]
Benson was the founder of the Church of England Purity Society,[13] an organization which later merged with the White Cross Army. Alfred Ryder served as a trustee of the organization.[14]
Benson told Henry James a simple, rather inexpert story he had heard about the ghosts of evil servants who tried to lure young children to their deaths. James recorded the hint in his Notebooks and eventually used it as the starting-point for his classic ghost story, The Turn of the Screw.[15]
The hymn "God Is Working His Purpose Out" was written by Arthur C. Ainger as a tribute to Benson as both were Masters at Eton and Rugby respectively.[16]
In 1914, a boarding house at Wellington College was named after him. Benson House carries the emblem of a blue Tudor Rose, and is situated outside of the main College.[17]
In 2011, a book about Mary Benson characterized her husband as living "a life of relentless success."[18]
Benson married his second cousin Mary (Minnie) Sidgwick, the sister of philosopher Henry, when she was 18. The couple had six children.
Their fifth child was the novelist E. F. Benson, best remembered for his Mapp and Lucia novels. Another son was A. C. Benson, the author of the lyrics to Elgar's "Land of Hope and Glory" and master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Their sixth and youngest child, Robert Hugh Benson, became a minister of the Church of England before converting to Roman Catholicism and writing many popular novels. Their daughter, Margaret Benson, was an artist, author, and amateur Egyptologist. None of the children married; and some appeared to suffer from mental illnesses, possibly bipolar disorder.[19]
After the archbishop's death, his widow set up household with Lucy Tait, daughter of the previous Archbishop of Canterbury, Archibald Campbell Tait.[20] A full-length biography of Mary Benson, drawing on her numerous letters, was published in 2011.[21] It cast new and unexpected light on the Bensons' domestic life.
[show]Ancestors of Edward Benson, Archbishop of Canterbury[22] |
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The Benson family was of Scandinavian origin with the name of Bjornsen. The Bensons "emerge into history" as an English family in 1348 when John Benson held a "toft" from the Abbey at Swinton-by-Masham.[23]
Arthur Christopher Benson, the Archbishop's son, wrote a genealogy of his family.[24] He found that "Old" Christopher Benson (born 1703) was the "real founder of the fortunes" of the Benson family having acquired a "good deal" of land. He also "established a large business."[25]
Archbishop Edward White Benson's grandfather was Captain White Benson, of the 6th Regiment of Foot. The Archbishop's seal and the Captain's coat of arms show their branch of the Benson family arms were blazoned: Argent, a quatrefoil between two trefoils slipped in bend sable, between four bendlets gules.[26]
The Archbishop's father was Edward White Benson (born in York in 1802, died at Birmingham Heath in 1843). He was a Fellow of the Royal Botanical Society of Edinburgh and the author of books on education and religion.[26] He was also an inventor whose inventions made "considerable fortunes" for others, but not for him.[27]
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George du Maurier | |
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Born | George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier 6 March 1834 Paris |
Died | 8 October 1896 (aged 62) Hampstead, London |
Occupation | Cartoonist and author |
George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier (6 March 1834 – 8 October 1896) was a French-British cartoonist and author, known for his cartoons in Punch and also for his novel Trilby. He was the father of actor Sir Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of the writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier. He was also the father of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and grandfather of the five boys who inspired J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan.
George du Maurier was born in Paris, the son of Louis-Mathurin du Maurier and Ellen Clarke, daughter of the Regency courtesan Mary Anne Clarke. He was brought up to believe that his aristocratic grandparents fled France during the Revolution, leaving vast estates behind in France, to live in England as émigrés. However, du Maurier's grandfather, Robert-Mathurin Busson, was actually a tradesman who left Paris in 1789 to avoid fraud charges, and later changed the family name to du Maurier.[1]
Du Maurier studied art in Paris, and moved to Antwerp, Belgium, where he lost vision in his left eye. He consulted an oculist in Düsseldorf, Germany, where he met his future wife, Emma Wightwick. He followed her family to London, where he married Emma in 1863. The couple settled in Hampstead around 1877, first in Church Row and later at New Grove House.[2] They had five children: Beatrix (known as Trixy), Guy, Sylvia, Marie Louise (known as May) and Gerald.
He became a member of the staff of the British satirical magazine Punch in 1865, drawing two cartoons a week. His most common targets were the affected manners of Victorian society, the bourgeoisie and members of Britain's growing Middle Class in particular. His most enduringly famous cartoon, True Humility, was the origin of the expressions "good in parts" and "a curate's egg". (In the caption, a bishop addresses a curate [a very humble class of clergyman] whom he has condescended to invite to breakfast: "I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr. Jones. The curate replies, "Oh no, my Lord, I assure you – parts of it are excellent!") In an earlier (1884) cartoon, du Maurier had coined the expression "bedside manner" by which he satirized actual medical skill. Another of du Maurier's notable cartoons was of a videophone conversation in 1879, using a device he called "Edison's telephonoscope".
In addition to producing black-and-white drawings for Punch, du Maurier created illustrations for several other popular periodicals: Harper's, The Graphic, The Illustrated Times, The Cornhill Magazine, and the religious periodical Good Words.[3] Furthermore, he did illustrations for the serialization of Charles Warren Adams's The Notting Hill Mystery, which is thought to be the first detective story of novel length to have appeared in English.[4] Among several other novels he illustrated was Misunderstood by Florence Montgomery in 1873.[5]
Owing to his deteriorating eyesight, du Maurier reduced his involvement with Punch in 1891 and settled in Hampstead, where he wrote three novels. His first, Peter Ibbetson, was a modest success at the time and later adapted to stage and screen, most notably in Peter Ibbetson, and as an opera.
His second novel Trilby, was published in 1894. It fitted into the gothic horror genre which was undergoing a revival during the fin de siècle, and the book was hugely popular. The story of the poor artist's model Trilby O'Ferrall, transformed into a diva under the spell of the evil musical genius Svengali, created a sensation. Soap, songs, dances, toothpaste, and even the city of Trilby in Florida, were all named for the heroine, and the variety of soft felt hat with an indented crown that was worn in the London stage dramatization of the novel, is known to this day as a trilby. The plot inspired Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel Phantom of the Opera and the innumerable works derived from it. Du Maurier eventually came to dislike the persistent attention given to his novel.
The third novel was a long, largely autobiographical work entitled The Martian, which was only published posthumously (1896).
George du Maurier was a close friend of Henry James, the novelist; their relationship was fictionalised in David Lodge's Author, Author.
He was buried in St John-at-Hampstead churchyard in Hampstead parish in London.
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