Mary Benson

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety seven, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is a writer. Born in South Africa at the end of the First World War, she was brought up in a world where the privileges belonged to the whites. She travelled in Europe and America, dabbled in the theatre and cinema, and fell in love with unattainable men. Then in 1948 she read a book which changed her life, Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Payton.

Presenter0:53

From that moment she became committed to the black African cause. She met Nelson Mandela, became the first South African to testify before the UN Committee on Apartheid, and was subjected to house arrest and a ban on her writing.

Presenter1:07

In nineteen sixty six she left behind the country she loved and came to live in Britain, but she never gave up the struggle. Her recent biography tells her story in a way described by Nelson Mandela as the striving to realize a fond dream. She is Mary

Presenter1:25

And is the realization of that dream all you hoped it would be, Mary, or do you get depressed by the fact that it's so fraught with problems?

Mary Benson1:33

It's almost what I mean, in a way, it was so extraordinarily unexpected in its way when it happened, and enormously exciting. But yes, there are obvious, very

Mary Benson1:46

unpredictable problems, I think. There's growing corruption in some spheres, but also there are some marvellous people of all ages, black and white, who are working very, very hard to counteract that.

Presenter1:58

But terrible violence. I think I'm right in saying that South Africa has the worst murder rate in the world and there's a rape every twenty five seconds. I mean the the dream has brought a terrible nightmare with

Mary Benson2:06

Yeah.

Mary Benson2:09

The thing is that I've been Mack about five times since nineteen ninety, and I've had absolutely no experience of any violence, but one reads about it a great deal, and I think the alternative which would have been civil war when you look around the world

Mary Benson2:25

one realizes that

Mary Benson2:27

The generosity of the blacks has been quite extraordinary.

Presenter2:30

More about the present day later, but let's turn to you. Um a young woman who was determined, I read, to have an eventful life. That was your ambition, wasn't it? You really didn't want it to be dull.

Mary Benson2:40

No, no. I had a great taste for adventure, I think, from books I read as a teenager.

Presenter2:46

But did you have any idea what you would do? I mean, you were quite a movie star groupie, weren't you?

Mary Benson2:50

Well, I wanted to be a movie star, and when I went to Hollywood and that didn't quite come off, I turned into a bit of a writer, but I was only ever trained as a shorthand typist.

Presenter3:01

But what you really wanted, if I understand you right, you were looking for a purpose, weren't you? You were looking for something to focus on. And it was when

Mary Benson3:09

And it was a very good thing.

Mary Benson3:11

The man I was so much in love with during the war that we couldn't marry because he was already married, and after that blow I really was seeking a purpose.

Presenter3:22

And that was when you read Cry the Beloved Country.

Mary Benson3:24

It was. I think it's very exciting to think that a work of art can change your life.

Mary Benson3:30

Even if it's music, say, or a painting, something extraordinary can happen if you're open to it.

Mary Benson3:37

I suppose something had been growing in me that at the end of the war I had worked among displaced persons in Germany and seen the absolute horror and the suffering, while never for a moment thinking that in my own country the blacks were all displaced persons.

Presenter3:55

Tell me about your first record.

Mary Benson3:57

I chose um this magnificent duet from Rigoletto. I was in Rome during the war, and I'd been a bit of a Philistine over music.

Mary Benson4:07

And suddenly to hear this was so fantastic, and also it introduced me to Verdi.

Speaker 44:15

Maybe Skyo

Speaker 44:29

Fun behind fun is a black

Speaker 44:44

Wait, wait, wait.

Speaker 45:03

Look for the day, won't you, for the day?

Presenter5:13

Tito Gobbi and Maria Callas singing part of the duet from the end of Act Two of Verdi's Rigoletto, with the orchestra of La Scala Milan conducted by Tullio Serafine.

Presenter5:23

Tell me more, Mary Benson, about this privileged white life of your childhood in South Africa. How did it prevent you from knowing about your country?

Mary Benson5:31

Well, everything in those days was a question of whites really only knowing their black servants.

Mary Benson5:39

We didn't know blacks socially at all in our world. Of course there were white communists who were in the thick of it all, but we didn't know them. So yours was the was the civilized

Presenter5:48

Life style of the White South and the servants, the country club, the bridge in the afternoons, and and all the rest of it. When you eventually became aware of the system of apartheid, and you attached yourself to the struggle against it. D did that experience then shame you? Did you feel great shame for the way you behaved earlier on?

Mary Benson6:09

Yes, I did.

Mary Benson6:10

It was a feeling of guilt, I suppose, more than shame, when one looked back over the past and wished that one had taken an interest even in the, for instance, the washerwoman who we called a girl, who came every week from some remote township. And when we drove to Pretoria, the family, which was a wonderful day's outing, we drove to Johannesburg. We would drive past Alexandra Township, which was a hive of black life, and we would laugh at the blacks who were trying to play golf. You know, good heavens, look at the natives playing golf.

Presenter6:46

Hmm.

Mary Benson6:47

Uh

Presenter6:47

Tell me about your next record.

Mary Benson6:48

Yeah.

Presenter6:48

Uh

Mary Benson6:49

In nineteen sixty five, which was one of the most dramatic, really scary years in South Africa, Mandela, Sisulu, and the others were on Robin Island, and Athel Fiogaard, who was a very close friend, and Barney Simon also, they were doing Athel's play, Hello and Goodbye, and Athel and his family were staying in the same big house that I was. And on very hot days, with the heat

Mary Benson7:21

Absolutely blazing outside, we would go into a big dark room and play Bach's prelude and fugue, and it was so lovely and calming.

Presenter8:28

Andrus Schiff, playing part of the prelude and fugue number nine in E major from Book two of Bach's Well Tempered Clavier. You had, as they say, a good war, I think, Mary. Where where did you serve?

Mary Benson8:38

Where did you stop?

Mary Benson8:39

I'm a bit ashamed of that because well, in search of adventure, a hundred South African young women were asked to volunteer to go up north to relieve British army people in Cairo. But what were you? What were you? I was a private. We were privates, you see, and when we got to Cairo

Presenter8:41

I'm really

Presenter8:55

Well is

Mary Benson9:00

I was given the job of sticking up envelopes, and I complained I only did about an hour's work a day, and of course the sergeant major was absolutely furious, and I was promptly transferred to work for a brigadier, whereupon I went up in rank. When he became a general, I became a lieutenant and ultimately a captain. Anyway, I got bored when the war moved on from Cairo, and so I got myself transferred to another general in Algiers, and from there to Italy, up as far as Siena. And then when that got a bit boring, we were left behind. I got myself off to Athens. So it was very, very interesting, and one did see the devastated cities, but it in a personal way, I'm afraid it was mostly rather fun, and also I fell very much in love, which was delightful in Greece after all, before the pollution.

Presenter9:57

And he broke your heart.

Mary Benson9:59

Yes, yes.

Presenter10:00

Tell me what happened.

Mary Benson10:04

It's very well we knew that there was no future to it. He was married to a Roman Catholic and uh

Mary Benson10:16

He was always saying that of course we would marry, but in the end I got fairly bitter about that,'cause I knew that was impossible short of divorce, so uh I made a break, and uh that's when I started looking for a purpose in life.

Presenter10:34

But um as a great film fan, I know um it was the era of brief encounter. That must have rung a few bells with him.

Mary Benson10:40

I saw Brief Encounter when I was in UNRWA in Germany. It was a weird experience because the British troops, of course, were hooting with laughter, which was disgusting. But I did think it was a wonderful film, and I've always been a great believer in writing letters if you wanted to do anything. And so I wrote to the director, David Lean, when I got to London, and asked if he needed a secretary.

Mary Benson11:06

And I had a reply, I think it was about a day later, saying he did.

Presenter11:10

So it began at a rather glamorous period in your life. Why wasn't that enough? Why didn't that feed your appetite for excitement?

Mary Benson11:17

Well, it was fun at first because he and Stanley Haynes were writing the screenplay of Oliver Twist, and I would sit with them every day and take notes. But I realized very soon that I hadn't the gifts even to become an editor, let alone a director. And then David fell terribly in love with Anne Todd, and I found myself having to go and buy her shoes and so forth. So I rather lost interest and resigned.

Mary Benson11:45

Record number three.

Mary Benson11:47

I chose this particular bagatelle of Beethoven. I heard it by chance, Ashkenazi playing it on television. I hadn't any idea what it was. I got down the producer's name and found his name and the phone book rang up, and his wife told me what it was. I just fell in love with it.

Presenter13:03

Alfred Brendel playing the fourth of Beethoven's six Bagatelle, Opus one two six.

Presenter13:08

So it was nineteen forty eight, Mary, and you read Cry the Beloved Country, you found your purpose, you committed yourself to the black African cause, and you began by going to work in this country in London for a man called Michael Scott, who was one of the first people, I think, to bring the plight of black South Africans to the wider world. Tell me about him. What kind of man was he?

Mary Benson13:30

He was very dedicated. He was somebody of whom I think you could truly say he had charisma.

Mary Benson13:37

Because he was actually very beautiful.

Mary Benson13:41

And also had a sort of purity about him, I think. But you see, in 1946, long before Trevor Huddlestone, even.

Mary Benson13:50

He had both been to prison with Indian passive resistors in Durban, he'd been arrested for living among black squatters in Johannesburg,

Mary Benson13:59

And he'd gone and exposed slave labor on farms, and almost been lynched by the farmers. He was a priest, wasn't he? Yes, he was an Anglican.

Presenter14:06

Yes.

Mary Benson14:09

And then he was asked to go to South West Africa, what's now Namibia, to take up the cause of the tribal leaders there, the Holy Rose.

Presenter14:17

So, how important would you say he was? I mean, it's not a name that we immediately know, Michael Scott. How important would you say he was?

Mary Benson14:23

Well, he was headline news in 1949, 1950 in what particularly was the extraordinary independent paper, The News Chronicle, and The Observer. And David Astra, The Observer, took up that cause in a big way and became a supporter of Michael and eventually helped him financially and eventually helped me too, which is how I've been able to write books that don't make any money ever. And I heard of Michael, I read a profile of him in The Observer, and of course I I suppose I sort of fell in love with this character and all I heard about him. And I discovered that he needed somebody to type a book and I'd been given five hundred dollars and a portable typewriter by friends. So I volunteered to work for him. And did you eventually fall in love with the reality too?

Mary Benson15:16

I suppose I did. In a way I could see later that it was part of my teenage idolising of movie stars, you know. Anyway, he felt we could work together for the rest of our lives. It became too painful for me and eventually I got very serious arthritis. I mean, I don't think it was partly due to pressure, but also I think it was genetic. And after about a year of psychoanalysis, I was able to make the break, and I went back to South Africa.

Presenter15:51

So it was another man who proved unattainable, really. Yes, yes, but

Mary Benson15:54

Yes, yes, and I've got a bad neurosis that way round.

Presenter15:58

But because of your work, you went back to South Africa, you became involved uh with raising money for the defence in the so called treason trial. Was that when you met Nelson and Winnie Mandela?

Mary Benson16:09

Yes, I met them when I was secretary to the Treason Trial Defence Fund, which was in the late fifties.

Presenter16:16

And were you aware then that that Mandela was possibly a great man in the making? Was there anything impressive about him at that stage?

Mary Benson16:23

I think when I first met him he he was very tall and uh striking and handsome and he loved nice clothes.

Mary Benson16:31

and one thought of him more as rather a playboy, although I gather that the local people greatly admired him as a lawyer, because during the treason trial there were a hundred and

Mary Benson16:41

Fifty-six people on trial of all races. This was before the Ravonia trial. Um then he really did distinguish himself, I think.

Mary Benson16:50

But it was when he went underground that he really and p and the press dubbed him the black pimpinel that he hit the headlines.

Presenter17:00

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Mary Benson17:03

Miriam McKeeber and Hugh Masakela. Although this is a rather sad song about

Mary Benson17:09

A mother singing to her child when there's no food for it.

Mary Benson17:14

It's got great rhythm, and part of my choices relates to friendships. And this one I have a great friend, Phyllis, who's South African, married to an Italian, and when I used to stay with them in Italy we would play this and dance to it.

Speaker 417:47

No

Speaker 417:53

Yeah.

Presenter18:01

Miriam McCabe singing Ngola Corrilla with Hugh Masicala on the trumpet. So by your early forties, Mary Benson, you'd written a biography of an African chief. You'd been writing articles on trials, past law trials, and so on in South Africa. Hadn't you met the British journalist Peregrine Worstorn at this stage?

Mary Benson18:20

Well, in a kind of way. It was before the Sharpeville massacre, which was about the pass laws, and I'd gone with black sash women to a pass laws court, and there was this appalling experience of these African men, thousands and thousands arrested all the time, simply for not

Mary Benson18:41

having a document in order or not having them on them. I mean, a gardener might go into the street without his parsonage shirt, the police might round him up, haul him off to prison.

Mary Benson18:51

and I was making notes and I just couldn't contain myself. I sat there weeping away and Peregrine, who I'd never met, was sitting next to me. So he gave me his large white handkerchief for me to mop up the tears. And it was very strange afterwards. I went with these terrific women of the black sash for tea and and scones at the country club, which was an odd

Presenter19:16

Yeah.

Mary Benson19:18

Yes, that's what South Africa was. And a few years later. Still is. Yes, to some extent.

Presenter19:21

And a few years later

Mary Benson19:25

Well, there's so many whites who totally

Mary Benson19:30

determined never to change, who are so bitter and resentful, who had no appreciation of the generosity of the blacks.

Presenter19:37

Hmm.

Presenter19:38

Now, you, I know, were quite daring, and you must have been quite frightened, actually, because you went to meet Bram Fischer, the QC, who defended Mandela eventually when he was sent to prison, and and he'd had to go underground, and you went how how frightened were you when you went to meet him? Because the authorities must have been on to you.

Mary Benson19:58

I was frightened, and I was also very honoured.

Mary Benson20:02

Because uh

Mary Benson20:04

After he went underground I had known him as a friend.

Mary Benson20:09

And uh one night two of his comrades, two women, visited me when I was staying in Johannesburg, and uh we used little notes to write to each other because they thought the room might be bugged where I was staying. And they said could I visit him because he was isolated and living in a little house in the suburbs. So I put on a head scarf and I borrowed an outfit of my sister's. I thought I looked like a district nurse maybe. And I got to the front door and knocked.

Mary Benson20:43

And a black maid came to the door. No one had warned me of that, so I heard myself saying, Is the master in? And then suddenly there was this curious looking man standing there. Brom had silvery, wavy hair, and half rimmed spectacles, and a reddish face, and there was this bald man with auburn hair,

Mary Benson21:04

and a little auburn beard.

Mary Benson21:06

And I thought, God, I've come to the wrong huss. And suddenly he said, Mary, how wonderful

Mary Benson21:13

So that was the start of meeting him virtually every week for several months.

Presenter21:18

But he was found eventually, wasn't he was captured, wasn't he?

Mary Benson21:20

He was captured after one of the two women had been tortured with the standing treatment by the police.

Presenter21:28

Record number five.

Mary Benson21:30

I've chosen It's Only a Paper Moon because I was in New York in nineteen sixty nine. I'd come out of hospital in London after three months after foot operations, and I had a letter from my most beloved friend Barney Simon, theatre director from Johannesburg. He was in New York.

Mary Benson21:49

And he wrote and said

Mary Benson21:51

only do dangerous things, there's so little time. So I tottered out of hospital into a wheelchair and flew to New York, and he found a a rather grotty apartment, and he was painting it, and I was doing what I could with the woodwork with my feeble arthritic hands, and he would sing It's only a paper moon while he painted.

Speaker 422:13

Without your love, it's a hunky tunk parade Without your love, it's a melody played in a penny arcade

Speaker 422:28

It's a bonnet baby work

Speaker 422:31

Just as phony as it can be.

Speaker 422:35

But it wouldn't be make-believe if you believed in me.

Presenter22:41

Frank Sinatra and It's Only a Paper Moon.

Presenter22:45

The uh authorities have got you in the end, as it were, Mary, because they put you under house arrest and they banned your writing. What what did it what did it mean, house arrest, to you?

Mary Benson22:54

It was very, very painful, though I knew that

Mary Benson22:59

that particularly blacks, it hit them horribly because they had no jobs, etc. But I was banned from all writing. I'd been sending material about conditions in South Africa to friends in Congress in Washington. Anyway, I struggled on pretending to write notes about Saul Bellows' novel Herzog and looking over my shoulder. And friends then, and even Brahm Fisher, managed to smuggle a message from prison to say that they felt as a writer I was more use overseas. So finally I came away. But even as the

Mary Benson23:38

The plane was flying off.

Mary Benson23:40

I thought maybe it's a terrible mistake.

Presenter23:42

Yes. How painful has that exile been?

Mary Benson23:48

It used to hit me especially when I watched uh nature programmes from from uh Kenya and there were these doves that got a terrible nostalgia. And one day when I was back for the months in Pretoria when I was allowed when my father was dying, I was sitting on a bench waiting for a bus and it was winter and the wind was blowing up bits of paper and dust.

Mary Benson24:15

And suddenly a schoolgirl rode by in her school uniform, and an African delivery man rode up the other way, and seeing that girl,

Mary Benson24:26

I thought that could have been me all those years ago, and I suddenly thought I belong here.

Presenter24:34

Play chord number six.

Mary Benson24:36

Alfred Brendel wrote about these three last sonatas that Schubert had written when he was dying of uh syphilis. And the third from the end I came to know when I was driving around a game reserve last November. I believe it's described as a rather dark and dramatic

Mary Benson24:56

Peace but I find this part of the last movement so enchanting and makes me laugh.

Presenter26:27

Alfred Brendel playing part of Schubert's piano sonata in C minor, D nine five eight. You've never married, Mary. Is that a source of some regret?

Mary Benson26:36

It has been at times, yes but as I as you said at the beginning I'm glad you said it that I always fell in love with unattainable people.

Presenter26:46

And do you feel in a sense wasn't it Alan Payton who said to you that that you had to pay a price for having this purpose in your life? Do you feel that?

Mary Benson26:56

patient with me as I was grinding on and on about this purpose. And he said, if you want marriage and children, you're going to have to pay for it. And when I look back, you see, if I had been able to marry, I would have ended up

Presenter26:58

Yeah.

Mary Benson27:10

Living in a village in Britain reading the Daily Telegraph, so I really don't have regrets.

Mary Benson27:19

Well, it's Bob Dylan singing Lay, Lady, Lay. I'm sure people will find that rather peculiar. I love it, anyway, apart from what it means to me.

Mary Benson27:31

emotionally. It has this curious break from one key to another. So whereas some of the love songs I knew when I was young I could sing easily, this one I can't possibly sing at all. I just can't recall how it goes. It's delightful, I think.

Speaker 428:01

Lay lay lay lay

Speaker 428:04

Lay across my big grail space

Speaker 428:13

Lay lay lay.

Speaker 428:16

Lay across my big breast baby.

Speaker 428:25

Whatever colours you have

Speaker 428:29

In your mind

Speaker 428:31

I show them to you.

Speaker 428:34

And you'll see them shine

Speaker 428:38

Lay lady de la

Speaker 428:41

Lay across my big red bed

Speaker 428:50

Steal it steal.

Speaker 428:53

Stay with your men a while.

Speaker 429:02

On to the brigade.

Speaker 429:05

Let me see you make'em smile.

Speaker 429:15

His clothes are dirty but he's

Speaker 429:18

His hands are clean.

Speaker 429:21

And you're the best thing that he's ever seen.

Speaker 429:27

Stay lit.

Speaker 429:30

Stay with your man a while

Presenter29:37

Bob Dylan and Lay Lady Lay from his album Nashville Skyline. What uh Mary Benson were the gamut of emotions you ran on february eleventh, nineteen ninety, when you watched Nelson Mandela walk out of those prison gates?

Mary Benson29:52

Well, there was no gambit because a B B C team had piled into my tiny flat.

Mary Benson29:58

To film my reactions.

Mary Benson30:00

And we sat there you may remember hour after hour after hour no mandela at all and finally

Mary Benson30:08

that by the time he arrived they had me propped up against my television set, and I was desperately trying to think of sound bites. I didn't feel any emotion at all until the following day, because I discovered that night through a friend in London that he was staying with Bishop Tutu's, who was a friend.

Mary Benson30:29

So I got through to Tutu.

Mary Benson30:32

who was absolutely so excited and lovely, and then he put Winnie on, and she was absolutely thrilled, and said she was so sorry Nelson was in a meeting. And the next minute he'd grabbed the phone, and there was his voice sounding so strong and excited.

Mary Benson30:47

and apologizing that he hadn't been able to send me a message for my seventieth birthday, or maybe it's seventy-first, I can't remember.

Presenter30:57

And now you've you've been back and you went back to vote in nineteen ninety four in the first elections, democratic elections. Were the changes in South Africa immediately visible to you? Could you say that?

Mary Benson31:08

Oh, yes. Well, of c the first thing, of course, was that the airport was blacks everywhere, whereas before they would have been

Mary Benson31:17

put in special areas, etcetera.

Mary Benson31:19

The drive into Johannesburg it had become really rather horrible, some of the new buildings.

Mary Benson31:25

Um

Mary Benson31:26

First I felt quite alien. After all, Johannesburg was twenty four years.

Mary Benson31:31

And then the next day there was this gigantic thunderstorm which took me right back to childhood and the thunderstorms had had one practically under the bed with terror. Now I found it so exhilarating, and I knew I was home.

Presenter31:46

And at the centre of it all, of course, stands Mandela, a a unifying figure and a a a symbol of moral integrity. How much do you fear for South Africa when he retires in nineteen ninety nine?

Mary Benson31:59

It will make a big difference, and I am anxious about whoever takes over. I think there have been choices of people, elderly people among the exile movement, when it would have been better if in the government there'd been these young men who'd sacrificed so much in the United Democratic Front, who'd been great leaders in communities in rural areas, for instance.

Mary Benson32:29

who now have been rather elbowed out, so I only hope that because they are still quite young they will come back into their own.

Mary Benson32:38

Are you optimistic for its future, South Africa?

Mary Benson32:40

Well, I've never gone in much for optimism when we were asked about that in the past.

Mary Benson32:46

One was inclined to say, No, I'm hopeful, because you can't be a South African and not be hopeful. And when you look around the world, South Africa is very extraordinary. And Mandela has become such a model, I think. It was beautiful to see him in London and down in Brixton and Trafalgar Square

Mary Benson33:05

To feel that he was alive to be honoured like that.

Presenter33:11

Last record.

Mary Benson33:13

Joseph Von Dame, I heard him sing this beautiful Mala rucket.

Presenter33:13

S

Mary Benson33:20

Lit in the movie Le Maitre de Musique.

Mary Benson33:26

It is just so glorious and it's so peaceful. It's talking about being at the end of his life and being alone in his heaven, in his

Mary Benson33:41

Love in his song, and for me that says everything for the ending of a life.

Speaker 433:54

In friends good hair.

Presenter36:31

Jose Van Damme singing Ichbinder Welt Abhandengekommen, the last of Mahler's ricket leader, with the Lille National Orchestra conducted by Jean Claude Cazatsu.

Presenter36:41

If you could only take one of those records, Mary.

Mary Benson36:45

Very hard, but anyway, it would be the Beethoven bagatelle.

Presenter36:49

What about your book? You've got the Bible and you've got Shakespeare.

Mary Benson36:53

Well, I thought I had once edited Fugard's notebooks up to the nineteen seventies, so there's about twenty five years of manuscript. I thought if I could take that I would have such fun reading it'll all be new to me.

Presenter37:09

And what about your luxury?

Mary Benson37:10

I wanted a tame monkey to get fruit off trees. I'm told I can't have anything living. So I thought.

Presenter37:15

Thing living.

Mary Benson37:19

I will have a telescope for watching the stars at night.

Presenter37:24

Mary Benson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Mary Benson37:28

It was delightful, thank you.