Swedish: David Blaize, Lund: C.W. K. Gleerup, 1923, 270 pp.

Benson, E. F., David Blaize and the Blue Door, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1918, 

Benson, E. F., David Blaize of King’s, New York: George H. Doran Company, 1924.

David Blaize follows the titular David as he journeys through his preparatory school and public school before he graduates and attends Oxford University (explored in David Blaize of King’s, also titled David of King’s: Benson, E. F., David Blaize of King’s. George H. Doran Company, 1924). Throughout the novel, David has several friends, including Bags, Adams, and most importantly, Frank Maddox. Frank is David’s closest friend and the two have an intense bond that continues into their university life. Through David’s time at his two schools, he plays a lot of cricket, attends class, and attempts to avoid the embarrassments of his father, a clergyman, when he comes to visit. While the novel is a fairly typical public-school story and bildungsroman, it highlights an idealised view of late nineteenth century boys’ education, with a focus on sport, the beauty of nature, friendship, and the influence of classical (particularly Ancient Greek) mythology and culture on the childhoods of middle- and upper-class boys of the time. David Blaize was read widely during the First World War by men at the Front, reminding them of their simpler childhoods before the war.

Throughout David’s education at Helmsworth Preparatory School and Marchester public school (as in real life for upper-class boys), study of the Classics is integral to the education system. Although David is not an excellent student, he has several revelations throughout the novel from his classical studies that affect his outlook on life and ultimately make him a more generous, understanding, and, in some ways, affectionate, boy. In particular, his study of Aristophanes culminates in the realisation that “they had all become people who went to the theatre like anybody else, and went to Olympia, just as anybody now might go to the Oval, and had play-writers like Aristophanes who made just the same sort of jokes as people make nowadays” (Benson 255). The ancient Greeks are hugely influential for both David and his friend Frank, who study Plato and Sophocles together. Chris Mounsey argues that through their study of Plato’s Symposium, David and Frank’s relationship becomes an inverted form of the eromenos and erastes, which is then reciprocated between David and his fag/younger student assistant Jevons when he is in the sixth form (Mounsey 73–74). This relationship structure was upheld throughout queer, neo-classical, and decadent circles in the late-nineteenth century, particularly among groups of upper-class men connected with public thought about male homosexuality, including J.A. Symonds, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde.

David’s relationship with his friends, particularly the older Frank Maddox, is integral to his maturation as a student and a man, and is almost unabashedly queer in its representation. In preparatory school, David “adores” the “godlike” Hughes (Benson 35), and when he arrives at Marchester he quickly becomes enamoured with Frank, who represents David’s ideal of boyhood. The “hero-worship” that David experiences in regards to Frank makes “his heart burn… [when] the demigod had thrown a careless word to him” and David is in awe that “Maddox, the handsomest fellow in the world, the best bat probably that Marchester had ever produced, and altogether the most glorious of created beings” had even “noticed him at all” (Benson 183). David’s likening of Frank to a demigod highlights the prevalence of classical mythology in the childhood experiences and education of public boys’ schools, and also subtextually underlines the queer connotations of David’s admiration for Frank. In a particularly fruitful scene, Frank helps David construe lines of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Kolonos, where David realises how “ripping” the play is but is embarrassed that he likes it so much, “despite his barbarian instinct that things like the beauties of Greek literature might perhaps be thought about, but hardly talked of” (Benson 249). This embarrassment of appearing passionate about a topic is aligned with typical Victorian ideals of masculinity and the stoic “stiff upper-lip” mindset of the time. Throughout the late 1800s, interest in and reference to Ancient Greek had also become coded language for (male) homosexuality, and so this shame that David experiences about his interest in Antiquity can be understood as shame about his burgeoning understanding of sexuality. Through the study of Plato’s Symposium, ideas of spiritual love between men gained popularity, creating the subculture of Uranian writers and poets, who wrote about their passion for other men. Although David does not seem to share the passion for writing that Frank does, it is easy to imagine that Frank in the future would have enjoyed the writing of the Uranians and may have even written some of his own.

Though David has tendencies of becoming the fairly weak-minded and sport-focused “everyman”, it is through his relationship with Frank that he educates himself and becomes a softer, more emotionally mature and passionate man and student by the time the novel concludes. 

Benson, E. F., David Blaize, The Hogarth Press, 1989.

Carabine, Keith. ‘The Author’s Life’ in E.F. Benson, The Complete Mapp & Lucia, Volume One, Wordsworth Editions, 2011, 7–10.

Dowling, Linda, Hellenism and Homosexuality in Victorian Oxford, Cornell University Press, 1994.

Ewie, ‘Reviews of the Works of Edward Frederic Benson (1867–1940)’, E.F. Benson – The Complete Works, (accessed: October 23, 2024).

Farinou-Malamatari, Georgia, "Philhellenism and after: Greece in E. F. Benson’s Life and Work", Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 47. 2 (2023): 218–236.

Goldhill, Simon, A Very Queer Family Indeed: Sex, Religion, and the Bensons in Victorian Britain, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Masters, Brian, The Life of E. F. Benson, Pimlico, 1993.

Mounsey, Chris, Being the Body of Christ: Towards a Twenty-First Century Homosexual Theology for the Anglican Church, Routledge, 2014.

Naylor, Carol, "Passion and Power: Edwardian Censorship and E.F. Benson’s Homoerotic Public School Novel David Blaize (1917)", Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature 11. 2 (2001): 17–26.