David Blaize

David Blaize by E.F. Benson (1908)

E. F. Benson's David Blaize opens at Helmsworth Preparatory School, where ten senior boys are being taught temporarily in the school museum while a new classroom is built. Thirteen-year-old David Blaize, distracted by daydreams about a mammoth's tooth and his own teeth, is writing his weekly letter home under the halfhearted supervision of Mr. Dutton, who is secretly reading a French novel by Guy de Maupassant. David is hit by an inked paper dart thrown by his friend Crabtree, nicknamed Bags, and swears under his breath. The Head, Mr. Acland, appears unexpectedly at the window, confiscates and destroys Dutton's novel, and takes over the class himself, punishing Bags and forcing him to wash David's inky mouth. A disastrous Catechism and Bible lesson follows, ending with the whole class kept late and condemned to extra work, though the Head later relents and treats them to tea. David plots revenge on Bags for the ink-dart by kicking him before chapel. That night David discovers his pet stag-beetles, the Monarch and his wife, missing from his washbasin; suspecting Bags, he is caught out of his cubicle by the matron, Glanders, and reported. A "challenge" is arranged whereby Bags must allow his cubicle searched or take punishment; nothing is found, but David then discovers the beetles returned to his own bed. Bags, guilt-ridden, admits he had taken and replaced them out of spite for the kick, and confesses he is fond of David despite everything; the two reconcile. The story turns to the school cricket match against Eagles School, complicated by the arrival of David's father, an Archdeacon, whose old-fashioned dress, ignorance of cricket, and eager mingling with the boys mortify David. David is out for a duck but later bowls impressively, taking numerous wickets, only to drop a crucial catch that loses the match, making him briefly unpopular with his schoolfellows except loyal Bags. Mr. Dutton spitefully punishes David for being late to lock-up after walking with his father, but the Head intervenes and cancels the punishment upon learning the truth, then catches Dutton with a hidden pipe. The following day, the Head publicly praises David's bowling, restoring his popularity, and grants an extra half-holiday in honor of the Archdeacon's visit despite the excruciatingly long sermon he delivered. David's father tells him he is to sit for a scholarship examination at Marchester, the public school David longs to attend, where his old friend Hughes now lodges in Mr. Adams's house. David travels there, is coached by Hughes on public-school etiquette (discarding his cigarettes and buttonhole flower as unsuitable), and is deeply impressed by the house, its cricket-playing, book-loving hero Maddox, and the fast bowler Cruikshank. David prays fervently to be admitted to Adams's house rather than caring about the scholarship itself. Back at Helmsworth, David narrowly misses winning a scholarship (placing eighth of six awarded) but learns he will still go to Adams's house at Marchester. The Head gives him a solemn, cryptic warning about things "worse than stealing" that damn the soul, telling him to remember it later without explaining further. David bowls Helmsworth to a rare victory over the Old Boys, ending his time at the school in triumph. During the summer holidays at his father's house in the cathedral close at Baxminster, David feels restless and outgrown by his old amusements, a mood his sister Margery attributes to "changing his skin" as he matures. The two discover a rare second edition of Keats at a workstall and unexpectedly encounter Maddox, visiting his uncle the Bishop; David invites him to tea, and Maddox admires the house, garden, and Roman antiquities, generously declining to accept the valuable book David and Margery found. The narrative resumes months later at Marchester, where David and Bags, now both in Adams's house, are close friends. David's earlier fear that Bags's want of athletic talent might make him unsuitable dissipates as their friendship deepens, and Maddox continues to take a warm, guiding interest in David, coaching him at squash and shielding him from coarse talk among the other boys. During a wet half-holiday, after playing squash and being coached by Maddox, David experiences a sudden, unsettling discomfort when he finds Maddox looking at him strangely in the bathroom, which he does not understand and flees from without examining. Maddox, alone afterward, is shaken by his own feelings and reproaches himself severely, resolving that David's innocence must remain protected from whatever has stirred in him.

By E.F. Benson · First published 1908 · Genre: Coming-Of-Age, Historical Fiction, Adventure · 16 chapters · 115,700 words

First lines

There was a new class-room in course of construction for the first form at Helmsworth Preparatory School, and the ten senior boys, whose united ages amounted to some hundred and thirty years, were taken for the time being in the school museum. This was a big boarded room, covered with corrugated iron and built out somewhat separate from the other class rooms at the corner of the cricket-field. The arrangement had many advantages from the point of view of the boys, for the room was full of agreeably distracting and interesting objects, and Cicero almost ceased to be tedious, even when he wrote about friendship, if, when you were construing, you could meditate on the skeleton of a kangaroo which stood immediately in front of you, and refresh yourself with the sight of the stuffed seal on whose nose the short-sighted Ferrers Major had balanced his spectacles before Mr. Dutton came in.

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coming of age · fantasy · adventure · friendship · imagination · youth · magic · school life · self-discovery · British literature · nostalgia · whimsy

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