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| 30 Jun 2017 | |
| Deaths & Obituaries |
| BENSON, Charles Gilbert Died on 21 June 2017, aged 83. He leaves behind his wife Janet Benson and his son Robert (PS 82-87). Charles’ elder brothers Richard Robert (FH 38-40) and Philip Francis (SH 41-45) were also Old Tonbridgians. The Benson family writes: Charles died on Midsummer Day this year after a long period of ill health. He was a man of wide interests, which was reflected in his consuming passions for collecting. He was very sociable, and loved prowling round every type of antique shop. Dealers would have experienced his love of negotiating ‘a bargain’, his fund of anecdotes and his sense of humour, which could sometimes be misinterpreted. Charles was directly descended from an influential line of artists, clerics and schoolmasters, including William Gilpin, originator of the theory of the picturesque, and James Bourne the 19th century landscape painter. He was proud to own a number of their works. His father was also a painter, who, after the First World War, took up his award of the prized Prix de Rome. In Rome he married a beautiful model, much to the horror of his stiff upper lipped English family. Charles was the youngest son, his first language Italian. The family wintered in a studio near the Spanish Steps, but spent the summers in the fashionable artists’ village of Anticoli Corrado, until the outbreak of the Second World War. The family was comfortably off, as Charles’ father had benefited from an inherited portion of the profits from the famous advertising company of SH Benson Ltd (Guinness is Good for You, etc.) During the 1930s, the painter Joseph Moore, brother of the poet Sturge Moore and the philosopher George Moore, took up permanent residence with the Benson family, and became the major influence on Charles’ early life, directing his interests in natural history, bird photography, music, and poetry. In 1940, the family settled permanently in Southborough, Kent. Charles attended Yardley Court preparatory school, proceeding to Parkside in 1946. He had happy memories of his schooldays, being a keen sportsman, and kept in touch with a number of his old school friends, regularly attending reunion lunches. After Tonbridge, Charles read biological sciences at Imperial College, followed by four years of entomological research. The threat of military service provoked a change of career to schoolmaster, an occupation that he loved. Charles took early retirement which freed him to pursue his many interests, whilst working as part time teacher and interpreter for Customs and Excise. He held a couple of exhibitions of his bird photographs, appeared a few times on television, talking about glass collecting, fine books and manuscripts, coloured prints and antique boxes, also regularly attended opera – Wagner, Puccini and Verdi. He lived most of his married life in a Victorian country rectory with plenty of space to accumulate collections of glass and other antiques, in particular his ever-expanding book collection and over 400 original manuscripts, a number dating back to the 14th Century. In his later years, he would sit happily surrounded by his collections and looking out at his country garden, commenting on how lucky he had been in life. He leaves a wife, son and two grandsons. (SH 47-52) |
