David King-Wood, who taught English and French with incomparable grace to two generations of St. Bernard’s boys, died on September 3, 2003, after a brief illness. He would have turned ninety years old on September 12. Few people have done more for St. Bernard’s or its boys than David King-Wood. He was a class master in grades VII, VIII, and IX, director of the Shakespeare play for twenty years, leader of many summer trips to France, founder of the Debating Society. Far more important is the effect of his energy, enthusiasm, wit, and kindliness on his pupils and colleagues. Those of us lucky enough to have worked with Mr. King-Wood know that we shall never see another teacher like him.
On October 9, St. Bernard’s celebrated the life of David King-Wood. The following are some of the touching tributes from the memorial service. The program started with a recording from Romeo and Juliet and ended with a recording from "East Coker," T.S. Eliot
I have one question for you. How lucky have we been? How lucky have we been to have this marvelous man be part of our lives?
I know I feel lucky. Especially lucky. I experienced David's wisdom and joie de vivre for the better part of two years. He was my seventh grade teacher here, in this, the best of all possible schools. Then in eighth grade I had him as a teacher again, and was in one of his plays, The Taming of the Shrew. For years Mr. King-Wood used to tactfully refer to me as his largest Petruchio, though I've always known that what he really meant was that I was the loudest. And finally, after my St. Bernard's days had ended, I spent the six weeks following eighth grade with David King-Wood traveling through France, along with his equally estimable colleague David Westcott.
I have been lucky, haven't I? For two years David King-Wood, that extraordinary teacher and wonderful man, was as much a part of my life as my family. More, really, if you think back on how much time an eighth grade boy actually spends willingly with his parents.
Such was his David's effectiveness during those two years that I still find myself learning from him. Just last spring, in one of the last conversations we had together we were, of course, talking about Shakespeare. He was explaining to me how he had never really liked doing Hamlet here at St. Bernard's, not only because eighth grade is a bit too young for Hamlet, but also because he personally had always found Hamlet to be so dreary. My memory may be wrong here, but I believe "dreary" was exactly the word he used. How many teachers, or Shakespeareans for that matter, have you ever met with the audacity to call Hamlet, the most universally praised work of the English theater, dreary? But that was part of David's skill as a teacher. He was unorthodox, and generally justified in his unorthodoxy. I, too, must confess to finding Hamlet dreary (although the three-minute production the current faculty gave us on this very stage three weeks ago was the antithesis of dreary). So I told David during that conversation last spring that I was glad to hear him call Hamlet dreary, as it had never been one of my favorites, either. And I went on to tell him how I had always liked the histories best, because they seemed to me to combine the best elements of the comedies and the tragedies all into one.
That was when David turned to me and said, in that marvelous way he had of speaking that we all miss so much already, "Dear boy, of course they do. That's why they're the most splendid." And that was when I realized that I had just learned, at the ripe old age of forty-nine, one more thing David had taught me, too many years ago, back in what we at St. Bernard's refer to so sentimentally as the "sowing of spring."
St. Bernard's and David King-Wood: was there ever a more perfect match? Marriages should be so fortuitous. The accomplished actor and Englishman, grounded so thoroughly in the history and culture of the last century, come to teach impressionable young boys in New York City, the capital of the post-war world? As I said, we have all been extremely lucky. David brought just the right measures of wisdom, charm, and affection to the St. Bernard's classroom. In the process he inspired several generations of boys to love language and learning as much as he loved them himself.
It's not often talked about in this modern world of ours, but teaching boys requires special skills. All you parents and educators in the audience know that. Boys often have their own agendas that are quite separate from those of their school. I know this from personal experience. David, however, had that rare ability to steal a boy's attention away from his own more natural interests such as eating, manufacturing rude noises, or staring out the window at patches of absolutely empty sky. And not only did he steal our attention, but he successfully retained it, once he had it. Faced with David's considerable skill in the lost arts of both rhetoric and oratory, it was the rare boy who fell asleep in Mr. King-Wood's class. And what's even more extraordinary, Mr. King-Wood never resorted to hurling Latin textbooks or tennis balls at our heads to bring us back to the classroom. A simple, if occasionally exasperated, "Dear Boy! Please do pay attention!" almost always sufficed.
David possessed a very English certainty about language which I believe was of great use to him in the classroom. Thirteen year olds specialize in being imprecise, sometimes from laziness and sometimes from a malicious joy in frustrating those who would lead us into better habits. I know in my day we frequently peppered our papers and classroom answers with such ill-chosen phrases as, "kind of," "sort of," and the truly dreadful, "like." Whenever we did so David would pounce, and ask, not always gently, "kind of what, dear boy?", "sort of like what, if I may be so bold?"; and go on to tell us that if we wanted to be thought of as possessing even moderate intelligence we must excise all such vagueness from our minds. As you can see, this lesson has remained with me for the last thirty years, which is why I'm talking about it now; and has led me to some fairly draconian prejudices. For example, I once caught Updike describing something in one of his lesser novels as "kind of." I haven't been able to read him since. Thank you, David. That's probably why I prefer Austen and Thackeray anyway.
And yet, for all my own predilections, David was never judgmental about what I, in my pre-adolescent tastelessness, chose to read. Though I'm certain he must have rolled his eyes heavenward more often than I ever imagined, he never complained when my classmates and I brought in our collected works of Mickey Spillane, Edgar Rice Burroughs, or Hugh Hefner. He might, perhaps, encourage us toward Poe, or Wells, or Flaubert, but he never criticized our current choices. In the best St. Bernard's fashion, David understood that any sort of reading was to be encouraged, be it comic books or Chaucer.
Precision of thought, elegance of style, and an openness to the ways of the world: these were the gifts David wished to share with us, his students. I especially recall the elegance of his own style. Frequently he came to class dressed as if he were just returned from a modeling assignment at GQ, and he spoke with the most distinctive turns of phrase. "Mother of God!" he might exclaim whenever someone said something astonishing, or execrable. "Dear boy," he would begin, whenever he particularly wanted you to listen to him. "Splendid," was his highest compliment. And, as to his openness to the ways of the world, let me just say that one of the highlights of my French Trip was our excursion into Montmartre, for an evening in the balcony of one of the competitors of the Folies Bergere. Tame enough stuff now, but eye-opening to fourteen year old boys at the time.
There are many things I'll remember about David King-Wood: the way he banged the wooden paper tray on his desk when a score of twelve year old boys had pushed him a little too far; the kindness with which he told me, after I had jumbled my lines completely in The Taming of the Shrew, how no one had noticed except he and I; his cry of "Mother of God," not entirely unamused, when our particular French Trip was caught stealing every single ashtray from a hotel in Brittany. But mostly I'll remember how much he cared for all of us, his "dear boys," no matter how evil we had been, no matter how poorly we had read some passage in the Tempest that was dear to his heart. He cared not only about how we learned, but about what we learned and how we would live our lives after we left St. Bernard's. A grammar school is all about learning the tools of learning, and no who seemed to understand that better than David King-Wood.
I have talked about how lucky I was, and of how lucky all of us in this room have been, and now I'd like to add one more person to the list of good fortune: David King-Wood himself. Lucky, first of all because, being David King-Wood, he got to spend more time in the engaging company of David King-Wood than all the rest of us. But more importantly, lucky because I think he knew how much he meant to us: parents, peers, or pupils. Unfortunately we live in a world where teaching does not receive the respect it should. That was not true of David King-Wood's teaching. For most of his career he was cherished as one of the great ones. If St. Bernard's is, as I have already said in paraphrasing Mr. Johnson (that's Samuel, not Stuart), the best of all possible schools, it is very much because David was one of St. Bernard's teachers so long. I believe he knew full well how well regarded he was by all of us in the St. Bernard's family. He was admired. He was respected. He was loved. There's not an Old Boy from the last forty years who won't miss terribly the delight of seeing David at the Old Boys Dinner, especially the way his eyes always lit up joyfully when he saw you for the first time that evening. How much we shall all miss that joy now that he is gone.
To employ three of David's favorite adjectives: he was wonderful; he was extraordinary; he was splendid. How lucky we all are to have known him.
David King-Wood was one of the best friends I will ever have, but it did not start out quite that way. I came to St. Bernard's in September 1968 in my mid-twenties with no teaching experience, other than a short stint at an Anglican mission in East Africa, but then a lot of us arrived without formal training other than a good education. I was assigned to the Middle School and David was well established in the Upper, and back then the two did not mix much. I have to admit - and some of his former students might agree - being a bit overwhelmed by his powerful presence, who with equally intimidating David Westcott, ruled the rarified top floor.
Then eighteen months later during spring vacation, David was staying on Nantucket and I was there too in my family's house. I offered to show him some of the island's extremities, inaccessible other than by jeep. He accepted and we had a really fine time, me knowing the terrain and he the birds. The fog rolled in the next day, followed by a late spring snow storm and my parents and girlfriend could not fly to the island, and in turn David could not get off, so we got together again and planned to drive off the island and back to NYC. Then a nor'easter hit and the island-bound steamer Uncatena collided with the Nantucket near off Nobska Point, Woods Hole and now there were no planes and no boats.
April 1st happened to be my birthday so David and I booked a table at the Mad Hatter, for its seasonal opening night, and we arrived to find the owner/chef drunk. The waiter said he could cook - there was only one other table occupied - but the wine cellar was flooded, so there would no wine. David, after muttering - Mother of God - announced that this was unacceptable and he was ready to leave, but the waiter invited him down to the flooded cellar to see for himself. David took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his trousers and proceeded to wade to the wine racks and came triumphantly back up with two rather nice bottles that we never got charged for. That evening marked the start of a great friendship that lasted thirty-three years, at first more out of school than in.
At the core of our relationship, besides good chemistry, was that I have never felt so energized or uplifted by anyone. David's remarkable enthusiasm for life carried one along, and his high standards for the spoken and written word, clear thinking, and fund of knowledge presented a challenge to match. Whether we talked about politics, film, theater, travel or our passion for New York, I felt life and limb rising to new heights. In late July this year, we had dinner together at Café Luxembourg, and a few hours later he fell ill. Then on the Tuesday of the week before his 90th birthday, David Westcott phoned from Roosevelt Hospital to say, you better come quick if you want to see David once more. It was drizzling that afternoon but I decided to walk across the park to pull myself together. Arriving at the ER, David Westcott warned me to be prepared for a shock. While David was lying there all wired up, he opened his eyes and said, "Oh Ted - there is so much to talk about and so little time." His speech was difficult but his mind clear as a bell. I had been abroad, and he wanted to know how I liked the Military Tattoo, what did I think of Londonderry. Then I asked, for some strange reason, in a slightly annoyed tone, had he ever gone to see Winged Migration - a documentary film about birds and one of his favorite subjects. He looked straight at me and said with some gusto, oh yes I did, and while I liked it enormously, I had two problems - far too many big birds, not enough little birds. Even our last conversation was uplifting, and David died the next morning. I feel so lucky to have had such a wonderful friend.
David and I were good friends for more than 40 years. Not sure that even that long was enough to get to know thoroughly a complex man.
He was driven by passions and spontaneity, both held in check by rigorous rules of behaviour, personal and in society.
Born in Persia (rhymes with pasha) [I wish he were around tonight to pronounce m-o-u-r-n-i-n-g for us - he made it into one of the most beautiful words in the language] in 1913, just in time to be imbued with a very Edwardian set of principles: passionate about duty; never any shirking. Noblesse oblige was his guide: those of privilege had an obligation to those without.
This is not to suggest that he was a prude - in his Oxford days he was stopped by the police at 3 a.m. and fined three pounds for "Sounding Motor Horn at 3:35 a.m. during a Night Wrangle, Trying to Knock Up Oxford Garage." Who had been foolish enough to ever give him a driver's licence? Perhaps he didn't have one.
He was passionate about friendship. In his address book names of Oxford chums with whom he was corresponding right up to his death - extremely generous with his friends.
He was passionate about gardening. Exploited shamelessly by relatives and friends with gardens. Wielded a mean secateur, and knew the names of many trees and flowers.
He was passionate about birds. Made many birding trips around the world: Alaska, Manitoba, the Maritimes, Central America, Venezuela, South Pacific, Africa, and what he insisted on calling Indo-China, among others, to satisfy this hobby. I owe my love of birds and birding to him; during the twelve-odd French Tours we made from 1966-1980 whenever there was a moment's respite (usually just after dawn and after lunch) David would take out his binocs and wander off. I thought this was just typical British eccentricity, but one day in a gorge in the Auvergne, David called me excitedly to watch a largish bird scaling a rock face above us, black wings and tail speckled with white spots and a deep garnet back - that wallcreeper got me hooked.
He was passionate about books. If there were time, I could describe David quite accurately by listing the contents of his bookshelves - little that was frivolous, much that was high-minded, and all readable. An admirable collection of reference works. All his books had all been read and re-read.
He was passionate about wine. I'll not bore with you stories about that, except to quote his favorite jingle on the subject, from the Dean of Christ Church:
"If all be true that I do think
There are five reasons we should drink:
Good wine, a friend - or being dry,
Or lest we should be, by and by,
Or any other reaon why."
He was passionate about walking and travel - he took either paths, trains, or small ships, as befitting his devotion to the past. Even as recently as last June in London I, twenty years his junior, trotted manfully to keep up with him as he strode around his beloved city showing me the sights. Wanted to be a traveler and not a tourist, a difficult feat these days. On his desk he kept a worn, hand-written passage from the writings of the great English explorer Sr Richard Burton:
The gladdest moment in human life is the departure
upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking
off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden
weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares, and the slavery
of Home, one feels once more happy. The blood flows with
the fast circulation of childhood. A journey, in fact, appeals to Imagination,
to Memory, to Hope - the three sister Graces of our moral being.
But above all - passionate about music. If for nothing else I would remember him with gratitude for what he taught me about the enjoyment of music - preferred Mozart to Meyerbeer, Berlioz to Brahms, Wagner to Weber, Schubert to Schickele, Melba to Madonna - you see the trend. Knew little about music theory (I doubt he could read the staff), yet his joy and satisfaction at a concert or an opera was unbounded. His memory of performances was astounding. The day before he died he was telling me about Rysanek and Warren in a memorable Macbeth at the Met fifty years ago. He could forget his class mother's name, but could recount a visit to Glyndebourne in 1938 in emotional detail. Modest about his vast musical knowledge.
A social conservative, but a political liberal. He surprisingly (I thought) rushed to take American citizenship at the earliest opportunity in order to vote against Richard Nixon. He was easy game for a vast number of "liberal" charities that he supported generously, if indiscriminately.
He deplored using "like" to introduce clauses, hated the ubiquitous "you know," he abhored baseball caps, and men who wore hats indoors, he bridled when called an Englishman ("I am a Scot," he would growl, although I never saw or heard anything remotely Scots about him. His accent would have been hooted out of Glasgow.)
You all, I know, have your own memories of David King-Wood, and we could go on and on with our reminiscences. I have lost my best friend, and I know that my world, and yours too, I am sure, will now be emptier and drearier .
One Florida morning long ago, we woke
Before dawn and biked into the sanctuary
Alone with our binoculars in the grey mist.
Then, as the sun burst through the mangroves,
The swamp came alive with their wakening cries-
Herons, egrets, ibis, spoonbills stepping gingerly
in the creeks, calling from the trees everywhere
as if summoned to greet us.
"My, my, this is our lucky day," you marveled
repeatedly as, with brotherly hand on my shoulder,
you guided my young eyes here and there to spot
a flash of color, a rustle in the sedge. A shy
fattish bird scurried from one end of the shore
to another-a sora rail-then a lone bittern
on a stately patrol through the tail reeds.
Waters and leaves sparkled with a thousand keen
eyes and resounded with squawks and screeches,
honks and shrieks. Reflections of elegant legs
rippled red, orange, yellow in the growing light
under which we too reveled-this celebration of life!
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Mr. King-Wood loved nature, and as an enthusiastic New Yorker, spent many happy hours in Central Park. More than one hundred and fifty of his friends contributed to the David King-Wood Tree Fund, and two European Linden trees have been endowed in his name. There is a paving stone by the Olmsted Flowerbed at Literary Walk, mid-park at Sixty-Seventh Street, as well as the two trees near the East Meadow. |