Lionel Birch

According to its author, this long-forgotten novel,published in 1931, was "primarily intended as a study of the development, particularly of the emotional development, of a boy, in the usual school surroundings."
By "school" Birch means "English Public School," hence the customary elements of cricket, prefects, spanking, classics and classism, chapel, headmasters, and homoeroticism.

During his five years at Tower Hill School, Tony Roreton rises from new boy to monitor to Captain of the House, and all-the-while searches for "the Ideal of the One Perfect Friend." That friendship is conceived as a romantic one: he admires a classmate’s "body curved as by the Athenian sculptor's art." Accused of sounding effeminate, he "fiercely" retorts: "Hellishly effeminate...More effeminate even than that so-terribly-effeminate-man David, whose love for his friend was wonderful, and passed the love of women." Tony endures the torment of unrequited love for several classmates, growing frustrated in his search for the perfect friendship.

"Pyramid" gives fascinating look at what could be discussed regarding homosexuality in this period, and how tangled attitudes toward it were. Tony exhibits disgust at the "fairies" he sees during a trip to Paris (and even describes one as having "serpent eyes"). He attempts to make a distinction between "a romantic friendship [and] an immoral attachment." Noting that Oscar Wilde still influences the British public’s attitude toward love between schoolboys, Tony says "the case of Wilde has nothing whatever to do with this. His attachments were not friendships; and they were quite other than romantic."

Modern readers might regard such distinctions as cowardly cant, but in the early 30s a novel from a mainstream publisher could hardly make a case for "immoral attachments." Tony’s search for an idealized romantic friendship proves futile, but so does a late foray into heterosexuality, leaving him with few options beyond the abhorred paths of Wilde, or the closeted life of Mr. Kitson, a sympathetic schoolmaster. But instead of settling for the customary suicidal ending of many early gay novels, the book concludes on a note of mature disillusionment.

Birch’s style is lush, sometimes purple. He includes several of his poems, which are not terrible but rather old-fashioned and sentimental. The story is too long and meanders, especially during the scenes in the uncomfortably patrician household of Tony’s parents. Additionally, the repetition of one unrequited crush after another gives the book a frustrating start-stop pace. A greater fault lies in the
characterization: though Tony is a convincingly solipsistic, sensitive teenager, the other characters are no more than sketched out, which means we cannot share the intensity of Tony’s ardor, having never seen in them what Tony sees.

"Pyramid" was published when Birch was a 20 year old undergraduate at Cambridge, looking back on his schooldays at Shrewsbury (disguised as Tower Hill in the novel). After publication the novel was banned by his old school, which threatened severe punishment to any students caught reading it. Birch spent the rest of his career in advertising and journalism. He was married 6 times, which suggests that Tony’s search for the ideal partner was no easier for his creator.

Pyramid has been out of print since the 1930s, but a scanned copy can be read online at the Internet Archive (https://archive.org/details/Pyramid_201401). If the link doesn't work, google the author’s name and the title.… (altro)