THE TREFOIL. By A. C. Benson, (Murray, 12s. net.)
Mr. Benson's narrative has all the mellow quiet of an autumnat Sunday afternoon in the country. It tells what he can remember of the three phases of his father's life that led up to the Primacy ; and whether it concerns the Master's Lodge at Wellington College or the Chancery at Lincoln, or the Vicarage of Kenwyn at Truro, it is all pretty much the same —a gentle tale of deans and dinners, purple silks and lawns. Minor canons and Bishops flit across its pages just as, appar- ently, they do across the quiet gardens of a cathedral close. A trifling snow blizzard is a crisis ; and the tritest anecdote a thing worth remembering. Dr. Temple was staying with the family at " The Chancery." It was the custom at break- fast for everyone to purchase his hot roll with a rhyming, couplet. The rule was explained. Dr. Temple closed his eyes, shook his head, and extended his hand. Nothing, however, was proffered him ; and at last, in desperation. he said :— " An egg
I beg "— " which we all considered unworthy of a Bishop." The reader is treated to whole chapters descriptive of the rooms and gardens and neighbourhood of whatever house the family happened to be occupying : no detail, from the ice-cellar in the garden to the view of the leads from the nursery window, is considered too trivial. Yet this very detail is the charm of such a book : it is life etched in miniature and no line must be omitted :—
" He heard the postman's knock and saw the maid take the letters from the box and put them .on the hall-table. He went• downstairs—it was a few minutes before eight—and took up the: letters ; there was one from Lord Beaconsfield offering him the see of Truro."
In such a drowsy narrative it came with something of a shock to read of Charles Kingsley that, " when news of a great fire at Bramshill reached the church during Matins, he summoned from the reading-desk all the men to follow him, told the curate to shepherd the women back to church and finish the service, and then in surplice and hood leapt over the Rectory fence, seized an axe and rushed off to the fire." Whilst when we read of Bishop Benson, " in bathing costume striped red, running up the sloping splash-board, for vigorous headers into the sea," we felt as if a breach of etiquette had been committed : it was a relief to get back again to the sunny crow-filled sleepiness of the Close.
Yet the book makes a pleasant companion volume to the official Life of 1899 ; indeed, Mr. Benson gives it as his purpose that he wishes to tell, as it was not possible to tell in the former volume, the inner history of his father's Truro episcopate. If Archbishop Benson is the " hero " of this gentle book, the author has not forgotten the share his mother took to make his heroism possible.
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