GLR May-June 2026

ing his clothes. This was “wonderfully healing”; after some weeks Benson was “much better” and Plank “hated leaving.” Throughout 1920 they were together often—London, Norfolk, France, the “perpetual privacy” of Rye—but in between the good times, neediness and dissatisfaction seeped in. Benson was “huffy” when Plank’s friends Mildred and Jimmy took him to Paris, upset about Plank traveling without him, and sometimes wanted more of his time than Plank felt was compatible with his work (although Benson took this “very nicely,” playing golf in the afternoons so Plank could draw). They were close enough at the end of 1920 to be together in Rye, planning theatricals with Edy Craig, Plank attempting to tease a reluctant Benson into appearing—and then, something happened. It’s not clear what it was, but we can make some guesses. Plank had initially been swept off his feet by a sophisticated and glamorous older man who combined success with independ ence, playfulness, and relentless activity. They shared intellec tual interests, creativity, social observation, a sense of humor (even late in life Plank recalled Benson’s jokes). Plank valued solitude but was happy to share it with someone he loved, and Benson’s cheerful, creative busy-ness made it easy. But as Ben son’s family died, he became increasingly unhappy, preoccu pied with the memories and endless tasks that came with successive bereavements. He needed emotional support and struggled to be graceful about it; he wasn’t comfortable with vulnerability. For his part, Plank was unwilling to sacrifice his work and other friendships for what he thought Benson wanted but refused to openly request. American candor clashed with English reticence, and both men felt misunderstood. There may have been other pressures on them, too. In late 1917, Benson had received a postcard reading only “I know your secret.” He was a public figure, and exposure was threat ening to him in ways that it wasn’t to Plank. Did this contribute to the nosedive in his mental health? In October 1920 Benson dedicated to Plank a presentation copy of Our Family Affairs , a book that dances neatly between defending homoerotic school boy friendships and criticizing homosexuality, at least at first glance, in a way that someone in a loving relationship with him, however equable, could plausibly find difficult. A single letter survives from Benson to Plank in 1922. Its tone is different: hesitant, careful, sad. Part of the sadness might be Benson’s declining health—he is “rheumatic and feeble in the hip,” which prevented him from going to Switzerland for his beloved winter sports—and Plank had already left London. Something had been lost. § E. F.B ENSON ’ S NEXT DECADES were productive and peaceful but riven by increasing disability. He wrote a series of books that implicitly challenged conventional sexual mores. Alongside the notably homoerotic Colin (1923), Colin II (1926), and The In heritor (1930), there is The Life of Alcibiades (1928), with its defense of contextual morality and Athenian love, and Phar isees and Publicans (1926), an impossible, adulterous love story set in Lamb House. It isn’t an open justification of homosexu ality, but it almost could be: With its references to Whitman and love scenes in Rye, its “golden days out of doors” full of “pas sion” and “sweet languor,” its open defense of “the spiritual sacrament which inspired the physical hunger,” it’s hard not to

think about Plank. Unlike other friends such as Archie Daukes, Francis Yeats-Brown, and Regie Lister—whose eventual mar riages or deaths rendered them safe—Benson writes nothing of Plank until Final Edition , a reflective autobiography finished ten days before his death, where at last “a very intimate friend of mine ... an artist of whimsical and imaginative work” ap pears, making Lamb House home. George Wolfe Plank, for his part—despite his close circle of queer friends and regular visitors, including writers like H. D., Bryher, and Sylvia Townsend Warner—lived alone for the rest of his life. Lady Sackville, of whom he spoke as a mother figure, paid Lutyens to build him a house in East Sussex, and he stayed there until his death in 1965. In later life he seems to have been perfectly content, but in the 1920s—post-Benson— he was unhappy enough for H. D. to speak of his having “been through something ... some sort of psychic wound.” He told Dorothy Wellesley in 1926 that he was considering leaving the country. Her reply contrasts her willingness to be drawn back into emotional entanglements—she’d left her husband after an affair with Vita Sackville-West—with his “lonel[iness],” his in sistence that “I cannot bear to suffer like that.” It wasn’t that either Plank or Benson was unloved after they parted. Benson retained many close friendships and developed a cheery mutual dependence with his valet, Charlie Tomlin. Plank’s friends adored him, fighting to support him financially and ral lying ’round during the war. But Benson and Plank had changed each other. Was it worth it? Only they could tell us, but looking at the loving fragments they left, it’s tempting to hope.

May–June 2026

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