AtDtDA(28): Bevis, the Story of a Boy

[Dave Monroe]

   "'Bevis,' Theign was in the habit of pronouncing each time he
looked into young Moistleigh's cubbyhole--'the Story of a Boy.' ..."
(AtD, Pt. IV, p. 800)


Bevis, the Story of a Boy

Richard Jeffries, Bevis, the Story of a Boy (1882)

http://www.archive.org/details/bevisthestoryofa003314mbp
http://www.archive.org/details/bevisthestoryofa014319mbp

Vol. I, Ch. 2 The Launch

Whiz! Away it went, bend first, and rose against the wind till the
impetus ceased, when it hung a moment on the air, and slid to the
right, falling near the summer-house. Next time it turned to the left,
and fell in the hedge; another time it hit the hay-rick: nothing could
make it go straight....

http://books.google.com/books?id=35uAmC3TSN8C

The names were duly registered ; Pompey's lieutenants as Val Crassus
and Phil Varro, and Caesar's as Mark Antony and Scipio Cecil....

http://books.google.com/books?id=mukBAAAAQAAJ

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=5NwHLQ3k0CgC

Richard Jefferies' best works were his observations and descriptions,
albeit somewhat saccharine by today's standards, of the English
countryside, tinged with a great deal of Nature-mysticism -- certainly
today he would be termed an environmentalist. For example, no one
today would mistake his description of a ruined London (Chapter 23 of
After London-Wild England) as anything but that of a anthropogenic
toxic wasteland (Chernobyl comes to mind). On a lighter note were the
childrens novels he published in the early 1880s, Wood Magic: A Fable
and Bevis: The Story of a Boy (no, no relation to Beavis).

In Wood Magic, Bevis, a young boy wanders into an enchanted woodland
world, where all of Nature has stories to tell. In particular, the
water flowing in the creeks and the wind whistling through the trees,
have more profound truths to reveal, about life, about good and evil,
and so on. With their help, Bevis can sort out the intrigues
surrounding the woodland creatures' attempts to overthrow the evil
autocratic regime of the magpie. Bevis a sequel to Wood Magic, where
Bevis is joined by a friend Mark, is based on Jefferies own early life
on his father's farm at Coate. Having "discovered" a large lake close
to their home, they imagine it to be a vast inland sea surrounded by
jungle swarming with savages and wild beasts. After reenacting a Roman
battle with some friends, Bevis and Mark build a raft and cross to an
island on the lake. There, with a few supplies, a home-made shotgun,
they spend several days living in Nature, learning survival skills,
and drawing much personal growth from the experience.

In both books there is the sense that only the young can grasp the
essence of Nature, communicate with it, and that adulthood ruins
everything....

http://www.sfsite.com/columns/britkids02.htm

Theign taunts Bevis with the title of a popular novel, Bevis, the
Story of a Boy (1882), by Richard Jefferies.

This contributor, with a keen sense of sacrifice for the greater good,
actually read the three-volume novel. Jefferies writes in a good plain
style but seems not to have thought of putting a plot in his book.
Bevis, of what would later be recognized as Boy Scout age, spends
several hundred pages of a southern English summer exploring and
naming the world within a dozen miles of his home (Africa, Ceylon, the
East Indies, South America are all there). He is rich and has, sadly,
what we must call criminally negligent parents who don't even look for
him when he vanishes into the South Seas for a week at a time. Most of
the highlights of the book concern Bevis' killing some creature (to
eat it, more often than not) or kicking his faithful dog Pan. Bevis
doesn't know the meaning of fear, and my guess is that he went into
the Army and got his self-reliant head blown off in South Africa. If
Bevis shares any thematic point with AtD it is pretty well limited to
geographic exhaustiveness; his journeys of exploration are set forth
in as much detail as any of the Traverses'.

Bevis takes his name from a hero of medieval romance, Sir Bevis of Hampton.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_792-820#Page_800

BEVIS OF HAMPTON
Edited by Ronald B. Herzman, Graham Drake, and Eve Salisbury
Originally Published in Four Romances of England
Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/Teams/bevisfrm.htm

BEVIS OF HAMPTON: INTRODUCTION

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/bevisint.htm

Bevis of Hampton is a legendary English hero and the subject of an
English metrical romance that bears his name.... After succeeding to
his inheritance he is, however, driven into exile ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bevis_of_Hampton

H.J. Ford, "Little Sir Bevis avenges his father" (1905)

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/cinder/images/LANG12.htm