David Selwyn’s funeral – on 24 April 2013 at Christ Church with St Ewen, All Saints and St George, in the
City of Bristol – included three tributes from Bristol Grammar School, where David worked for thirty-eight
years.
Roland Clare, a teaching colleague of David’s since 1976, spoke first; then David Briggs, Head of the English
Department to which David belonged; and finally Roderick MacKinnon, Headmaster, who introduced messages
about David from his present and former pupils at the School.
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‘Eulogy’ means something like ‘beautiful word’, but if I’m to be truthful I need to start with
something harsh: however long we’ve seen it coming, the death of David Selwyn is going to
leave a large crater in many lives.
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?
The dying speech of King Lear, from David’s favourite play. Not something he’d say himself,
but surely the thoughts of his pupils, friends and relations, on the loss of a beautiful and
lovable man.
But I do hear David’s voice when Lear’s godson says …
Men must endure / Their going hence, even as their coming hither / Ripeness is all
David was already ripe when I first encountered him in 1976, on joining Bristol Grammar
School, where he was a music teacher. I assumed that the ample figure, and the inimitable
laugh, belonged to a man in his forties … but only ’til our first joint escapade, in the pit band
for the BGS Macbeth. During the first-night interval the Head’s wife warned David that his
walloping percussion was ‘much too loud’ … and the gusto with which he redoubled his
exertions in the second half was my first inkling of that Puckish heart, quite incapable of
ageing.
Such contradictions don’t necessarily make a person complicated: David’s integrity was
transparent in everything he did. But the more sides you have, the more rounded you are: and
David devoted his whole life to rolling out that roundness and ripeness. His kindness bred
kindness, his subtlety, subtlety. His infectious delight in Austen, Browning, Chaucer, Dickens,
Eliot … you get the picture … was a gift. And in the classroom – as everywhere – he was
completely individual, and utterly himself. Classes loved his wit (the way he’d always select
himself to read the part of Cassius, to set up a laugh about his ‘lean and hungry look’) but they
also warmed to his redoubtable intellect. As a former colleague observed, ‘I don’t think
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anybody ever won an argument with David!’ But when you lost, as you inevitably did, you lost
to the ideas, not to the man behind them.
A cousin writes that David’s kindness and courtesy – his lack of ego – were with him ‘right
from the start’. It was a loving family, but he was orphaned by his early twenties, having cared
alone for his mother, following his father’s death. At the bungalow in Whitchurch, where he’d
grown up, you could see what mattered to him: the old shelves bending under the weight of
operatic scores, the little picture of Britten and Pears watching from the wall above the piano.
In this somewhat austere setting, though, he maintained a generous tea-pot, and friends would
laugh and discuss with him into the small hours.
And what discussions! Year after year at BGS, he and I presented a weekly Arts Miscellany,
usually improvising each ninety-minute session on a topic decided moments before the bell.
The name ‘Selwyn’ deserves to be spelt with three Ws, because that capacious head of his was
a World Wide Web avant la lettre. Some days he’d be Radio 4, some days Radio 3. I was
probably Galaxy FM. Actually popular music was one of his few blind spots. It was Mick
Jagger’s example that started the teenage David wearing cravats, but actual rock and roll never
interested him at all. He could also drift off to sleep during a film like Eraserhead – then, even
more astonishingly, chime in with some cogent critique the moment he woke up. BGS was
lucky to retain a character who could so easily have gone off to become a national figure in
arts broadcasting.
But with David what mattered was face-to-face contact, and the ceaseless supply of stimulating
pupils and fellow-teachers – with whom he would never lose touch. Fired by their energy, his
physical stamina was extraordinary: think of all the School plays he produced, substantial
Shakespeare, Ibsen, Christopher Fry. In the field, too, during energetic forays into Hardy
country: he took us to every monument, every backwater, and to every cosy hotel … where
he treated his colleagues to old-fashioned feasts, enjoying cabbage and gravy and cream teas –
not necessarily on the one plate – until his diabetes took hold.
I often heard him say he didn’t expect to live into old age (an Aunt had told the young David,
'You're digging your grave with your teeth') and he was carpe diem-ing from the moment I met
him. He couldn’t stand unfinished tasks, and liked to mark homework the minute it came in:
but he also loved to linger for a tea-time natter … before hurrying out to teach an evening
class at the University, or conduct a Puccini rehearsal.
He was the musical director of Bristol Opera Company for twelve years, later becoming their
chairman and patron. He wrote six operas himself, and countless occasional works. His most
ambitious achievement was the 1984 opera Beauty and the Beast, much of it composed in the
hurly-burly of our staff-room: this suited his Muse better than any ivory tower. And the
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libretto was the work of his dear friend, Derek Lucas, Head of BGS English, who had wisely
poached David from Music to his own Department.
Derek was both a soulmate and a father figure. They were constantly on the move, an
amazingly merry pair, week-ending at their London clubs, Piccadilly or Pall Mall, visiting the
theatre or a morning service at St James's Palace. When they jetted off to European galleries
and opera-houses they’d book three tickets, to fly in comfort, an overspill seat between them
– Tweedledum and Tweedledee, without the tantrums. When David joined Derek in the
splendour of Barrow Court, all kinds of creative endeavours flourished, not least The Barrow
Gurney Festival, which has made such a notable contribution to the South-West arts scene,
and given such pleasure.
When Derek died we saw a foretaste of the Stoical grace with which David would face his
own mortality. But first came a hugely creative literary period, which we’ll hear more about in
a moment. How did he research and write so much, while involving himself so generously in
so many other people’s lives: cousins; neighbours; friends, stretching right back to
undergraduate days; his beloved university teachers – one of whom called David ‘the greatest
all-rounder’ he’d ever worked with. And the children of the above: with his mischievous
hilarity, and love of play for its own sake, David made an indispensable godfather.
When asked, during a BGS staff assessment, what he would most like to change about his job,
David wrote simply: I don't like change. Part of him had never left his native 1950s, and this
gave our students a window, back in time, to the era when intellectuals stalked the land,
before the great meteor of the Internet smashed into the world and search-engines rose to
power. To be fair, David was never a technophobe, just a slow convert to the online world.
But YouTube allowed him to revisit grainy episodes of favourite sitcoms, like the ghastly All
Gas and Gaiters, which he loved to share with his ever-indulgent tutees.
David placed a lifelong faith in the importance of the arts in people's lives; yet he openly
admired the attitudes of Margaret Thatcher. Unlike his provocative approval of fox-hunting,
this Maggiolatry didn’t strike me as a wind-up. Political flux appalled him – he couldn’t imagine
Britain without peers – but he was not terrorised by terrorism: immediately after the 9/11
bombing he was the one international delegate who dared to fly to the USA for a Jane Austen
conference.
This physical courage informed his exemplary lack of self-pity in hospital. ‘The great thing
about a catheter, you know, is I can drink as much hot chocolate as I like and never have to
get up in the night.’ If his body lost the argument with ‘the illness’ (as he always called it),
David still won a moral victory, because his mind, his wit and compassion, went marching on.
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We can’t over-praise the specialists and staff who cared for his last two years. David placed
complete trust them, and was surely their most entertaining and patient patient. It took a
heart-attack, on April the seventh, to close down the Open House he’d conducted so long on
the Oncology Ward; and two days later he was gone. I guess this means he was spared the
death of Baroness Thatcher, but we can imagine their meeting at the pearly gates: Oh Mr
Selwyn – so glad to meet you at last.
Because that’s certainly where he was going. He was a committed Anglican, of suitably
antiquated tastes: to be churchwarden of St Ewen’s – over the road, demolished 1820 –
seemed perfectly apt. He loved to sense the generations that stretch behind us: and long ago
he told me that he hated to think of the future, ‘a world with none of my friends in it’.
Well a whole world of friends obviously thought the same way – and didn’t we all feel much
better for those happy hours at David’s deathbed (as we must now call it) … even though he
was the one who was actually ill?
David declined my request for a valedictory piece for our school magazine: he had said all he
wanted to say in this world, and set his sights on the next. He took Communion on the ward,
and delighted in Ezekiel 37, where faith restores the dead, dry bones to life. Such was his
humility, in departing, that he left no instructions for this funeral. Not that we should have
been able to read them anyway.
I started by saying how unlike King Lear David was, and I’ll finish by saying the same about Dr
Faustus. You may recall the sixty desperate lines at the end of Marlowe’s play …
Ah, Faustus, now hast thou but one bare hour to live and then thou must be damned perpetually
His soul is polluted by pride, and cannot take its place in Heaven – quite the opposite of our
own beloved polymath. But the excruciating list of evasions, by which Faustus hopes to elude
God’s anger, does contain one image that seems fitting today.
O soul, be changed – cries Faustus – be changed into little water-drops
Imagine our tears now as being little water-drops of David’s generous spirit, the fruits of a life
of consummate ripeness. And when the world seems dead and dry without him, our
consolation must be to turn these drops of sorrow to good purpose: to irrigate our
imaginations, and cultivate creativity and kindness, in ways that will consolidate the memory,
and perpetuate the life's work, of our dear friend.
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During one of the conversations I enjoyed at David’s bedside on Ward 62, he explained his
fondness for being in hospital. He said he’d never really paid much attention to his immediate
surroundings anyway. It’s the life of the mind that matters most; that, and good company. As he
had both on the ward, not to mention double helpings of tapioca pudding, he felt he had
everything he needed.
David’s mind was a rich and stimulating place. A little like the British Museum, in the days when it
also housed the British Library. It wasn’t so much that he’d read everything; nor, even, that he
seemed to have remembered it all; but, that he’d organised it with such intelligence in the many
rooms and shelves of his brain, that he was able to bring ideas together in endlessly creative
combinations.
I remember during one of our London trips we’d taken a detour out of the rain into Tate Britain,
and the first room we walked into was filled with portraits of horses by George Stubbs. Good as
they are, they weren’t entirely promising material from which to spin an impromptu seminar. My
first thought was to take the group elsewhere in the gallery, but David saw this material as a
treasure trove. Having taken a second to collect his thoughts, he turned to the students with
characteristic enthusiasm. ‘Now, let me tell you this …’ he began, and we were off.
Beginning as art historian he talked us through the pictures; then, as cultural historian, he told us of
the rise in popularity of horse-racing among the gentry during the Regency period; thence, to the
craze around this time for owning thoroughbreds, how your Lord Nonesuch or so might get
Gainsborough or Reynolds in to paint themselves, and their families, but call upon Stubbs and his
ilk to paint their animals. Then, with a neat turn, he was back in literary territory, commenting on
the peculiar fact that, despite Jane Austen’s not having been especially keen on horse-racing, the
last thing she wrote, a poem, takes as its subject the Winchester Races. His conclusion? How the
truly great artists seem to be able to make use of almost anything – even phenomena for which
they don’t hold much particular affection – to imbue their purposes with reason. QED, as they say.
David brought his vast knowledge, indeed all aspects of himself, to bear in his reading. So, when I
try to identify the distinctive lens through which he read – the Selwyn School of Criticism – I think
I know where to look. Probably not at the Marxist School of Terry Eagleton et al. Anyone uttering
a statement with even a whiff of socialism within David’s earshot would have been sharply advised
to wash their mouth out with a bar of Pears soap. No, David’s literary critical lens, if it is to have a
name, was Etiquette. And it helped that his mind seemed to have come pre-loaded with the entire
back catalogue of Debrett’s.
In his first book Jane Austen and Leisure, David uses his knowledge of the social mores of Regency
England as a key with which to unlock hidden doors in Austen’s oeuvre. So, the ordering of the
daily meals of the leisured classes, even the question of where to place the dining table for those
picking strawberries at Donwell, could become, in David’s hands, a way into a hitherto unswept
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corner of – for example – Mr Knightley’s character. The title of his David Lunn Memorial Lecture
– A Case for the Toothpick: Fiction, Consumerism and the Domestic Interior – showed his ability to see the
world not so much in a grain of sand as in the gaffe in a table-setting, in the placing of a coffeespoon.
In a similar vein, David very kindly proofread the manuscript of my first book, and I was struck by
the toothpick-like precision with which he read when he called me to heel over two lines I’d
written about a pair of culture vultures: ‘we’re drinking gin and tonic at the opera house – we’ve
just seen Otello’. David said: ‘You might well be drinking gin and tonic, but you’re aren’t having
them at the opera house if you’ve seen Otello. They close the bar at Covent Garden immediately
after the interval. You’ll have to be drinking them near the opera house.’
And this just goes to show that it was a gracious fib when David claimed he didn’t really notice his
surroundings. The fact he could take you on a guided tour of almost any major European city,
pausing here and there at particular buildings, or monuments, to regale you with an anecdote about
Gertrude Stein, or Byron, or whomsoever, was a measure not solely of his urbanity, but of his love
of detail.
And he always assumed that you knew all these things too.
I don’t mean to speak disparagingly of Bristol Grammar School, but I think we’re aware there are
some who might regard a grammar school in a provincial city as an unusual home of thirty-eight
years for a mind such as David’s – rather like a planet being bound in a nutshell. If he had become
a national figure in arts broadcasting instead, it would have been as a sort of thinking man’s Joan
Bakewell. It wasn’t only his academic credentials – FRSA, Chair of the Jane Austen Society, editor,
critic – that were distinctive for a schoolmaster, but something in his presence. A sort of Betjemanmeets-Noël-Coward-meets-Falstaff élan and mischievousness that lit up a room.
One reading of Hamlet is that the prince who returns to Elsinore from his adventures on the high
seas is not the same one who was sent to England by Claudius. The Hamlet of Act V is more
resigned to his fate, and less hesitant when it comes to action. One explanation is that this second
Hamlet is a doppelgänger. The real Hamlet didn’t die at Elsinore; he sailed to England, where he went
into hiding for a time, changed his name, and grew up to be Sir John Falstaff. And Falstaff, that
huge hill of flesh, was one of the rôles David always contrived to find a way to play, even if, the
history plays not being on the exam syllabus that year, it meant adopting the ambitious plan of
reading Henry IV with Year 8. And if we focus on his larger-than-life rambunctious wit and joie de
vivre, on a twinkling-eyed naughtiness: then, perhaps, there’s something in the rumour that Falstaff
didn’t die in Mistress Quickly’s tavern after all; he stole away to Bristol, where he went into hiding
for a time, changed his name, and grew up to be David Selwyn.
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But for all his fondness for the rôle, David was also, in many ways, a most unFalstaffian character.
He regarded it as a great honour to have taken the rôle of schoolmaster. And in his time at BGS,
he counted himself a king of infinite space. In latter years he grew to hate the summer holidays.
For one thing, his colleagues at the School – and especially those in the English department – were
family. For another, as David always said on the first day of the Autumn term: what could be better
than talking about literature with young people? Quite so! And, when we consider the first mission
statement of BGS – ‘to teach good manners and literature’ – things begin to fall into place. As I’ve
tried to suggest, nobody embodied those two purposes more than David.
Thus it was that during his last term, having taught his lessons for the day, and free to go home to
Barrow Court, we’d find him still in the Senior Common Room hours later, reading, chatting, or
pleasantly a-snooze over his book.
Which reminds me of the time he stood up during one of our Common Room meetings and
began, à propos of nothing, to talk about Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers. ‘Those of you who
recall the television adaptation,’ he said, ‘will remember that marvellous moment when the
villainous Slope, played by Alan Rickman, is pinned to the wall by the tip of Dr Proudie’s cane, and
then forcibly expelled through the street-doors of their club … And I’d just like to say that any
member of this Common Room who borrows a fellow’s coffee cup without asking, and returns it
unwashed, would do well to keep that scene in mind.’
One day, only a couple of weeks before David found himself back in hospital, I passed him in the
SCR to note the book he’d fallen asleep over was The Mystery of Edwin Drood, and I shuddered
because he’d always told me that it was the one novel by Dickens he hadn’t read, that he was
saving it for his last days.
This putting his affairs in order was a feature of his last months. He completed his reading of
Dickens, and of the works of Henry James. But, more importantly, he put that great intellect and
body of knowledge to work at the task of readying himself spiritually for the end.
Rosemarie Morgan, President of the Thomas Hardy Association, wrote to David very recently,
quoting Dryden: ‘Tomorrow, do thy worst; for I have lived today’. But she could have been
quoting David himself. He lived, vigorously. Perhaps that’s why he seemed also to know how to do
the other thing. Those literary salons he chaired from his bed on Ward 62, the way he entertained
with erudite and jovial conversation the great host who came to see him, have left me with such a
positive last impression of David. In his lack of fear, his equanimity, his compassion for those he
was leaving behind; in the complete absence of anger or resentment at his body having given up on
his very fine mind far too soon, he delivered, for me, his last and finest lesson of all … this is how we
should seek to face death.
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At Bristol Grammar School we have all been greatly shaken and deeply saddened by David’s
passing, something made all the harder by news of the death just a few weeks earlier of a dear
colleague, Shaun Holman, who joined the staff of the School in the same year as David, 1975.
Roland Clare and David Briggs have shared with us a picture of David Selwyn’s extraordinary
and rich life: I want us to hear a little of what David’s pupils thought of him. I am going to read
just a few extracts from the many cards David received from current and former pupils when
he was ill, and some of the many comments recorded by his pupils on hearing the news of his
death.
Dear David,
This is to say thank you for being such a joyful and affecting presence in my life and in so many
other people’s. You have been so generous with your spirit! I’m thinking back over my time
with you at BGS and clusters of words that stick with the memories – our Hardy Evening,
‘wind oozing thin through the thorn from nor’ward’; your joy at lingering over ‘the violet
hour’. And so many smiles, warmth. I think there were some very inappropriate nun-puns at
one
point.
Thank
you
David,
for
helping
to
make
my
life
full
of
poetry.
Dear Mr Selwyn,
I wanted to thank you so much for all you did for me during my time at BGS: starting with you
in Year 7 English and finishing in Upper Sixth ‘A’ levels made you a very welcome fixture
during my career at BGS. I particularly wanted to thank you for my English experience in the
Sixth form; the anxieties of what was a very uncomfortable and turbulent time in my life were
made a huge amount easier by the sanctuary of my English classes with you. Not only was the
class interesting, but the care and effort you put into educating us beyond the ‘A’ level syllabus
(I have such fond memories of our trips) gave me a sense of belonging and confidence. Thanks
to you I’ve taken away a love of reading, a love of Jane Austen and a middle-aged love of
museums and stately homes (I have a National Trust Membership at the age of 21!).
Dear Mr Selwyn,
You were a great inspiration to me; you got the best out of me in my work and also gave me a
rôle-model that I could strive to emulate, and most importantly made me look forward to
English lessons. Your passion for the teaching of English, and indeed the passing on of any
knowledge, however trivial, was incredible!
Dear Mr Selwyn,
My fondest memories of you are when we were studying Henry IV Part One, which was an
awfully dreary play – or at least we thought so – but your Falstaff impressions made the
lessons! I also recall, one Valentine’s Day, crafting a plot with my friends to send you a rose
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and card ‘from Jane Austen’. The idea escalated quickly and before we knew it, three roses
were sent your way, complete with ornate, swirly handwriting – one from Jane Austen, one
from Elizabeth Bennet, and one from Jane Eyre! That day in our lesson, we asked if you had
received any roses, and after you told us of your unexpected deliveries we gleefully revealed
ourselves as the secret senders. I’ll never forget how you laughed!
Dear Mr Selwyn,
Your passion for English and fun delivery of the lessons, no matter how naughty our class was,
inspired me to take English to ‘A’ level and that I’m second-most-grateful to you for, next to
your attempts at helping me realise I could change for the better. Your charming smile and
vast knowledge will be missed by so many people and I find comfort in the fact that you were
so positive and happy even in your hospital bed. Thank you for being such a wonderful man
and for laying the foundations of my passion for English.
Dear David,
You were the best member of an audience that anyone could ever wish for. That lovely
infectious laugh. Such a kind-natured, civilised, fun presence. An inspiration, you have made us
better people by your presence. I will never forget your portrayal of Falstaff and his hangovers
– one of the few things that made me enjoy Henry IV! Thank you for your original homework
tasks, gentle voice, kind smile, and most of all your encouragement.
Dear Mr Selwyn,
Your passion in whatever you were teaching shocked me in our first lesson – you made Hardy
come alive, and your reading of The Walk, when you were so moved by the poem despite
having read it many times before, is something I will never forget. You were so generous with
your time and your help: I feel so lucky to have been taught by you. You and your generosity,
intelligence and sense of humour are unforgettable. I’m going to miss your unceasing
enthusiasm, our little musical chats, your hilarious and insightful lessons, your marvellous
eccentricity, your genuine love and compassion for everyone here, your ability to read
Chaucer as if it were modern English, our stupid political debates in Form-time, a laugh that
will be ringing around the theatre for decades to come.
Mr Selwyn taught me GCSE English. We were watching Dead Poets’ Society and at the start of
the next lesson he came to find the whole class standing on the desks. He laughed and
laughed!
I will always remember English lessons with Mr Selwyn and how he would make the whole
class laugh by giving us his rendition of a ‘flourish’ on the trumpet at the beginning of each act
in Shakespeare!
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Dear Mr Selwyn,
I remember my time in your Form-time like it was only yesterday. You sat at your desk
exasperated that yet another detention was in your hands for a certain Form-member, or
intrigued that another Form-member had tried to bleach their hair and it had gone hilariously
wrong. Oh how I enjoyed those Form-times, readying me for the rest of the day. End-of-terms
were just as much fun, with games of cheat and chocolates for everyone.
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