3 - E.F. Benson: The David Blaize trilogy, A Sexuality Fit for My Lord – The Closet of Nightmares

Summary

Sex and the religious disapproval of two of its forms are announced as the royal road to inviolable innocence from the first incident of David Blaize. With their class, David and his friend Crabtree (Bags) are writing letters home to their fathers, from their Private [i.e. Preparatory] School, one Sunday afternoon. They are housed in the school museum as their classroom is being decorated. They have done their Catechism and Bible study, and now are watched over by the ineffectual Mr Dutton, who is reading a Maupassant novel hidden in his Bible. While Dutton is ‘deep in the misfortunes that happened to Mademoiselle Fifi’, Bags throws an inky dart that hits David on the mouth, when all of a sudden the Headmaster enters. However, rather than chide Bags or David for the dart, the Head first turns to the hidden pornographic novel, and tells off its owner:

By some strange mischance – I repeat – by some strange mischance – I have found this disgusting and licentious book on your desk. How it got there, how it happened to be open at page 56, I do not wish to inquire. It is more than enough for me to have found it there. I am willing to believe, and to tell you so publicly, Mr. Dutton, before the boys whom you are superintending on this Sunday afternoon, I am willing to believe that some obscene bird dropped from its claws this stinking – yes, sir, stinking – carrion.