Queer Fish and Golf Balls

In the introduction to the only modern edition of David of King's, Peter Burton suggests that the character Arthur Gepp is based on Oscar Browning, known as ‘O.B.’, the homosexual and pederast master ejected from Eton who became a fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

Doubtless E.F.B. knew the don, since he had been educated in classics at King's during Browning's tenure as a fellow in classics. Doubtless he also knew of O.B. and his eccentric as well as his sexually predatory ways. Doubtless too, Browning's death would have reminded E.F.B. of his erstwhile teacher. However, another possibility for E.F.B. returning to the subject of David Blaize after the death of O.B. was that he could now write about him without fear of a libel trial. You cannot libel the dead. O.B. had left Eton without facing action from the family of George Curzon, towards whom (and towards many other boys in his care) he had been ‘overly amorous’ and with whom he had taken a tour of Europe without the Headmaster of Eton's consent. What E.F.B. thought of O.B. is not known, but A.C.B. thought him ‘greedy, vain, foul-minded, grasping, ugly, [and] sensual’.