NOVEL: TO SERVE THEM ALL MY DAYS – R. E. DELDERFIELD/Washington Sq./Simon & Schuster – 1972
When I stumbled on to this old, yellowed and torn paperback, I knew the title was familiar. It was a Masterpiece Theatre series way back in the 80s. Although I didn’t see it at the time, when I considered buying the used book recently, I was drawn by the plot line and time frame.
Set in rural Devon during World War I, the novel concerns an injured soldier with physical and emotional scars, who has been discharged and now must support himself. The young Welshman applies for a post at Bamfylde, a boys school in the distant and remote English countryside. Although he has no teaching experience, his is an ardent student of English history. He meets with a sympathetic and short-staffed headmaster, Algy Herries, who agrees to take him on. Young David Powlett-Jones learns that this all-boys public (meaning private and residential) school is considered the best of the second tier of such schools. He is apprehensive about his credentials, but without other options, takes the job. Instantly, he has adjustment problems and is quick to make an enemy and slow to make friends of his colleagues. Given his passionate Welch temperament, he is seen as an anti-war advocate and is at first is given the sobriquet, Bolshie. Then, he is relieved to know that the lads have changed it to Pow-Wow.
We follow Davey through his learning curve, his battles with his colleagues and his championing of his students for their indescretions. As the years progress, we see Davey through an idyllic marriage, the birth of his twins and the devastating calamity of losing his wife and one of the twins in an auto accident. He is left with one daughter who is badly injured and he must see to her care, rehabilitation and her rearing as he copes with the tragedy of his own grief. We find Davey deriving strength from throwing himself into his work with the Bamfeldians.
We follow a maturing Davey, very popular with his students and developing a love for the ancient school and its odd collection of characters. With a rigid new headmaster, the history teacher comes close to dismissal on several occassions. He remarries eventually and that brings its own problems and new triumphs for Powlett-Jones.
The book ends in 1940 as Britain is in the thick of World War II.
Despite my own confusion over English educational grades, I started to understand that the forms went from boys aged about 13 to 18 or 19. We see Bayfylde as it shrinks and as it grows and how this bastion of being a world unto itself into one very connected with the difficulties of the world beyond its gate.
This is a marvelous book, both for a look at the period between the wars at this remote English academy, and for this very gripping personal story of a character laid frankly before us.
