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Naturalist Gavin Maxwell - 'an unruliness of boys'

Posted by diogenes on 2024-April-1 08:48:38, Monday
In reply to But tell us how you really feel posted by Etenne on 2024-April-1 07:45:01, Monday
I have never heard of David Attenborough.
Ha! Now I know it's April 1st! That's against the laws of physics.

Of course, among famous British naturalists it was Gavin Maxwell (author of Ring of Bright Water) who was the great pederast. He had a penchant for taking his holidays in Morocco. Need I say more? Richard Frere hints at Maxwell's tendencies in his memoir of him. He says that he found that the area around which Maxwell lived was full of "wild rumours that build up around anyone who is unusual or eccentric in a thinly-populated countryside. It was said that he drank like a fish, spent money like water, tipped massively with some condescension, drove his powerful car with fury and to the public danger, and, it was added with a snigger, was always surrounded by young boys." (Maxwell's Ghost, Richard Frere, The Quality Book Club, 1977, p. 12.) This last point is well borne out by Frere's subsequent narrative. Here Frere describes a typical scene at Gavin's home:
On arrival at the house we retired to his study to continue the small celebration ... From time to time tousled boys knocked at his door; they were young pupils from a progressive school in Fife ... Presently we moved into the living room. Here quantities of boys were milling around and Gavin was much in demand. I noticed that they treated him with lusty informality and not with the deference due to a man who was their headmaster's contemporary and also their host ... Gavin always went out of his way to put young people at ease. He was, as the saying goes, very good with children. ... After some time I found myself rather at a loss - my host was enveloped in an unruliness of boys - and I decided that I had better be on my way. ...
(ibid., pp. 51-52)
Ah, for the days when having boys at your home would result in nothing more than a "snigger" among the locals...

diogenes
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