Escape, and Other Essays — Themes and Context

The River as a Path to Reflection

In the introduction, Benson uses the Cam not merely as a setting but as a structuring device for thought. His walk proceeds from the town's "straggling suburbs" and "tall, puffing chimneys" to open fenland, where the landscape widens and the sky becomes "vast spacious." The movement outward mirrors a mental release: leaving behind the clatter of industry and the railway bridge, he enters a space of "unbroken silence." Benson's prose lingers on specific details—the "gnarled trunks" of willows, the "black-timbered lock," the "disused wharf" at Horningsea—each chosen for its ability to evoke a layered sense of time. He imagines medieval bishops arriving by boat for quiet weeks, and his own ghost walking there "for the sake of old memories." The river thus becomes a conduit between present and past, personal and historical, suggesting that escape need not involve grand journeys but can be found in attentive observation of a familiar place.

Dreams as Hidden Rooms of the Mind

Benson's essay on dreams offers a striking parallel to the river walk. He describes a recurring childhood dream in which he discovers a hidden staircase beneath a loose step in his Lincoln home. The dream leads to a vaulted room with "iron-barred stalls" housing tame lions and tigers. The dreamer feeds and plays with the animals, then returns cautiously, hoping not to be seen. Benson notes the dream's consistency: it always began the same way, with the same "shock of surprise." The hidden space, like the river landscape, is a secret realm of adventure and comfort, accessed through a specific, unremarkable threshold. The dream's logic—the animals are tame, no custodian appears, the only concern is secrecy—mirrors the essays' recurring motif of a private, peaceful world that coexists with ordinary life. Benson's matter-of-fact tone when recounting the dream, including his disappointment when it did not recur, underscores how such inner escapes become cherished routines.

Conversations with the Dead and the Familiar

Another category of dreams Benson describes involves "long and confidential talks" with figures like the Pope or the Tsar, who quote his books and ask his advice. More poignantly, he often dreams of his dead father: they meet at a railway station, and the father "talks smilingly and indulgently." The only sign of death in the dream is Benson's bewilderment at having seen so little of him lately. This detail reveals how Benson's essays treat absence and presence: the dead remain accessible through memory and imagination, just as the river retains the ghost of medieval bishops. The dream conversations are marked by a striking lack of surprise—the dreamer accepts the impossible as natural. Benson's prose here is understated, avoiding sentimentality. He reports the dreams as phenomena, noting their patterns: some are silent processions, others vivid dialogues. This cataloging approach suggests that for Benson, the inner life is as real and worthy of examination as the outer world, and that both offer forms of escape from the constraints of the present.

Benson's essays reward readers who attend to small details: the rattle of a loose step, the curve of a riverbank, the tone of a voice in a dream. His method is cumulative rather than argumentative, building meaning through repeated motifs of hidden spaces, quiet landscapes, and unexpected encounters. The volume does not offer dramatic conclusions but instead invites a patient, observant reading—one that mirrors Benson's own attentive walks along the Cam. For those willing to follow his pace, the essays reveal a subtle map of the mind's escape routes.

I found myself thinking of the Cam's slow water while rereading these pages, and of how my own grandmother's hidden pantry—that breathless room of preserves and quiet—once felt like an escape from her parlour's formality. This book's dreaming reminded me of wandering through The Spirit of Place, and Other Essays — Key Ideas to Explore, where place becomes memory's quiet anchor. Both hold that same hush.