SOURCE: Newsome, David. Introduction to Edwardian Excursions from the Diaries of A. C. Benson, 1898-1904, edited by David Newsome, pp. 1-9. London: John Murray, 1981.

In the following introduction to Edwardian Excursions, Newsome provides an overview of the major themes in Benson's diary excerpts.

Praised be thou, O my Lord, of our brother the Bicycle, Who holdeth his breath when he runneth, And is very swift and cheerful and unwearied, and silent. He beareth us hither and thither very patiently, And when he is sick he doth not complain. 

So, in the summer of 1902, Arthur Benson paid his tribute to the bicycle, by his own individual addition to St Francis' Hymn to the Sun. ‘Hither and Thither’ his bicycle certainly took him in the years of his travels, the seven years between 1898 and 1904, when he was a housemaster at Eton in his late thirties. He had given up Alpine...