At Large

What is a bachelor to do with half a year when a round of visits feels like torture, but love cannot be summoned by will? Arthur Christopher Benson’s answer begins with a house of his own.

In the opening essay, Benson leaves the town where he works for a roomy country house on the Isle of Ely, amid the vast Fens, old churches and skies that seem to stretch without end. He wants the quiet to write, and the freedom to live by his own habits; yet he still longs for deep affection and the company of a chosen few. His refuge is no escape from the question of how to belong—it is where he can look at it honestly, with a wry eye and a poet’s attention to the land. Can solitude offer both liberty and a way back to other people?

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