The Headmaster's Dilemma

by Louis Auchincloss

  This, of course, evoked a host of protests, and Ione thought she had reason to believe that things were going well. And they were, until an archly smirking Sally Evans raised her hand.

  “I think there may be another reason for Strether’s not wanting to marry Maria Gostrey.”

  “Well, Sally, we’ll be glad to hear it.”

  “Strether has reached a certain age, has he not?”

  “You’re quite right. Strether is one of the few characters in James whose exact age is given. He’s fifty-five.”

  “And we know what happens to men of that age.”

  “Do we?” Ione was suddenly uneasy. “What happens?”

  “They can’t get it up!” Sally, as she almost barked this out, turned to survey the class with a broad smile. An eruption of laughter came, led from the back row where a half-dozen rather ribald boys liked to isolate themselves from the others.

  Ione recognized Sally’s ploy as a challenge to her authority, but she decided quickly that the way to handle it was to treat it as a serious contribution to the discussion.

  “But he had shown himself perfectly willing to marry Mrs. Newsome,” she pointed out. “Evidently he saw no problem of impotence there.”

  “Nor was there!” Sally affirmed triumphantly. “Mrs. Newsome was the kind of grim old New England widow who had probably hated sex anyhow and was glad when her lusty old spouse kicked the bucket. She may even have stipulated that she and Strether would have separate bedrooms.”

  “You mean she would have insisted on what is called a manage blanc? Possibly.”

  “And doesn’t it dovetail,” Sally went relentlessly on, “with Strether’s idiotic insistence on seeing Chad’s red-hot affair with Madame de Vionnet as a ‘virtuous attachment’? All the other characters know they’re fucking up a storm!”

  Ione, despite the roar of laughter that now emanated from the whole class as well as from the back row, was still determined to handle the crisis in her own way.

  “It’s interesting in that respect,” she pushed firmly on when the laughter had died down, “to note that James has a habit of dropping the curtain on any scene of sexual intimacy. The sole exception may be the one in The Golden Bowl where Charlotte and the prince embrace. In James’s own life we have no evidence that he ever had a love affair with a person of either sex, though as an aging bachelor he manifested a seemingly homoerotic inclination for handsome young men. That needn’t mean, however, that he ever gave into it. You must remember that in his day homosexuality was widely regarded as a mortal sin, and James himself may have felt it as a temptation to be resolutely resisted. He showed little sympathy for Oscar Wilde in the latter’s troubles.”

  This seemed to bring the class to a less ribald mood. One girl asked, “How do you think he felt about Olive and Verena in The Bostonians? That was certainly a lesbian relationship, at least on Olive’s part.”

  “But there’s no reason to deduce that Olive so much as touched Verena!” Ione exclaimed with conviction. “James was not such a Calvinist as to believe that a feeling was as bad as an action. He greatly, I believe, sympathized with persons who couldn’t help their feelings but resisted implementing them. I suspect that his heart went out to Olive, that he saw in her his own inner sadness.”

  A more orderly discussion of morality and immorality in sexual relations followed, and at the bell Ione felt that she might have even initiated a new step in the communication between teacher and student. But the coolness of Miss Thompson at their next encounter gave her reason to suspect that one of the latter’s pets had given her a more lurid version of what had gone on in the class. And once again she forbore from enlightening Michael on this subject at their nightly discussion.

  The following Monday morning, when Ione was grading papers in the small office assigned to her in the main classroom building, word reached her that the headmaster wished to see her in his big study below, the primary seat of his administration that she rarely had occasion to visit. In the little anteroom where his dear old chatty and dowdy secretary, Miss Schultze, worked, she was asked if she would mind waiting a minute.

  “He’s having to break the news to the Anderson boy that his grandmother has just passed away,” Michael’s fluttery and adoring amanuensis informed her. “Oh, he does that sort of thing so beautifully, Mrs. Sayre! It makes me almost want to lose a loved one to have him tell me.”

  “Dear me, I trust that won’t have to happen.”

  The study door opened, and a boy drying his eyes came out. Ione found herself seated before her husband’s big desk, with its neatly stacked piles of paper and silver-framed photos of his family. The chamber was hung with pictures of the assembled varsity teams and crews of long past years, and the walls contained shelves of yearbooks and reference volumes. Over the mantel of the empty fireplace loomed the large bad portrait of Michael’s clerical predecessor. Ione felt in an odd new and somehow subservient relationship to the gravely attentive man before it. She made an inner resolution to redecorate his office.

  “Darling, I’m afraid I have to bring up a rather unpleasant matter,” he began. “Miss Thompson has been to see me with a complaint about you. She claims that you have lost control over your class.”

  Ione bit her lip. “Tell me just what she said, Michael.”

  He gave her now a roughly accurate account of the classroom discussion that had started over The Ambassadors. “Is that a fair version?” he ended.

  “More or less. Anyway, it will do. Why did Miss Thompson not come to me with her complaint?”

  “She said that she had warned you before, and that you had paid no attention to her. She implied that you were set in your ways and counted on me to back you up.”

  “And that I may not do?”

  “Darling, you put me in a very difficult position.”

  “I see it. Very well. Tell the old prude I’ll give up teaching.”

  “Ione, dearest, please be reasonable. Nobody’s asking that. Miss Thompson simply wishes me to persuade you to accept her presence in your classroom until such time as order is reestablished.”

  “And what does she think I have now?”

  “I’m afraid she used a strong term. She said you had allowed the class to turn a delicate discussion into a pornographic free-for-all.”

  “The woman’s prejudiced and unreasonable!”

  “Ione, please. Is it true that a girl in your class used the f-word?”

  “Oh, Michael, the f-word. Why can’t you say it?”

  “Because I heard it so overused in my naval years that I resolved never to say it except in the very rare cases when it meets the bill. But that’s not really the point. The point is that a class where four-letter words are freely flung in the teacher’s face is a class either out of control or getting close to it. Miss Thompson may be something of a prude, but she enjoys the reputation of being one of the best English teachers in the New England preparatory schools.”

  Ione slumped in her chair in a reaction of sudden bitter depression. The great square desk between her and her husband became a barrier; it symbolized in that moment the whole institution that was taking him away from her. And wasn’t he right? Wasn’t that the worst part of it? The wretched Thompson woman had given her life to teaching; she had even made an art of it. If part of her program was to avoid four-letter words, could a tyro like Ione Sayre really claim that she had a value because she tolerated them? And what had she accomplished but add another burden to the weary shoulders of a heroic and too-loving mate?

  “There’s enough said, Michael. I’m through with teaching.” She rose. “I couldn’t teach anyway with that woman in my class. Forgive me for interfering with a schedule that has cost you enough anyway, without adding my peeves.”

  “Ione, listen to me…”

  But Miss Schultze had opened the door and was standing there. “I’m sorry, sir, but the bishop has arrived early, ahead of his appointment to see the new window in the chapel. I knew you wouldn’t want to kee
p him waiting.”

  Ione took a quick step to the door. “It’s all right, Amy. I was just leaving, anyway.”

  Michael moved to stop her. “Ione, please, we’ve got to talk.”

  “It’s just what we don’t have to do. Now go. Please!”

  After a brief pause he nodded abruptly and left. Ione turned to Miss Schultze. “Would you please inform Miss Thompson that I am resigning as of today from the teaching staff. She’ll have to take back her Friday class. But she’ll make no difficulty about that, I assure you.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Sayre, don’t do that!” The secretary’s hands were clasped as if in prayer. “You’re going to upset your husband terribly. I know it’s not my place to tell you, but there’s no trouble he won’t go to to make you happy at Averhill.”

  Ione felt a surge of pity for the pleading woman. The poor old thing was probably in love with Michael. And here was his wife actually making a difficult job even more difficult!

  “Look, Amy,” she said in a kinder tone, “you must know that things will go more smoothly here if the headmaster’s wife doesn’t interfere with the teaching policies of the school.”

  When Miss Schultze nodded slowly after a momentary pause, Ione had the mortification of suspecting that her problems had been the subject of serious discussions between her husband and his confidential secretary.

  Later that day she herself had a serious discussion with Michael. She took a high and firm tone with him. She took the blame for having thrust herself into the academic program, but criticized him for not having checked her. She reduced his protests to a resigned silence and affirmed that it was her duty now to find a more fitting role for herself in the Averhill community. She ended with a ringing assertion of her conjugal devotion, and that night they made passionate love.

  She now resolved to accept her position as a faculty wife, and, as a start, to cultivate the society of the other faculty wives. She organized a book class to meet for a buffet lunch at her house on alternate Mondays that was soon well attended. She decided to also include the women teachers, though all but one declined, on the alleged ground of a too busy schedule, but for the real reason—at least Ione suspected—that they considered the faculty wives a bunch of old tabbies. She also invited the husbands of any women teachers, but only one of these, a shrill gossipy type, accepted.

  The first book selected for discussion was The Scarlet Letter, and it was followed by Madame Bovary and then The House of Mirth. Ione was a bit nonplussed to discover that the ladies tended to confine their “criticism” of classic fiction almost exclusively to the expression of their like or dislike of the characters involved. It was as if Hester Prynne or Emma Bovary or Lily Bart were up for membership in the book class. And all would have been turned down, even over the acid dissent of the solitary faculty husband.

  In an effort to stir up some more lively comment she proposed The Ambassadors for the next meeting. She had seen what students could make of it; it might be interesting to see what an older group would.

  Mrs. Warren, the senior member of the class, wife of the sexagenarian head of the Latin department, who, with the aid of a fortune inherited from her wealthy New York clan, had built a grotesque gothic mansion near the campus, was a berouged, bewigged, would-be grande dame who deemed herself the leading intellectual of the group on the basis of a slim volume of privately printed verse. She took it upon herself to lead the discussion.

  “Of course, in my youth, it was taken for granted that any young man who paid more than a tourist’s visit to Paris was there for an immoral reason. He was naturally expected to come home and go into a proper business and marry a proper girl. That was the system, and who is to say that it didn’t work? Look around you, and see what we have today. Strether was a perfect ass to assume that Chad Newsome had the slightest moral obligation towards a designing and married French woman ten years his senior. There was a time in history when such women were whipped at the cart’s tail. And good enough for them, too. I’d have saved a few lashes for Strether himself. He actually believed that a young man should give up his home, his family, and his business, and tie himself to the apron strings of an old tart because she has taught him how to enter a theatre box gracefully after the show had started!”

  “Oh, but Mrs. Warren, you’re leaving out love!” protested Mrs. Littleton, the pretty new bride of a handsome physics teacher. “It is love that has turned the crude young Chad into a charming and poised gentleman. Strether has seen that Chad has attained the sublime in life and can’t bear to have him give it up.”

  The room now joined in heartily. But the tide was clearly in Mrs. Warren’s favor, and the romantic views of the physics teacher’s wife were in the minority. Ione suspected that there was some feeling in the group that the latter was too junior a member to be quite so vociferous, but there was no doubt that they were sincere in their belief that the novel perniciously promoted adultery and expatriatism. She decided at last to protest.

  “I can’t help thinking that some of you may be missing what is really going on in Strether’s mind and heart. He sees that Chad is basically a child of Woollett and that he is bound in time to break with Madame de Vionnet and take himself home to Mummy and the family business. He knows he can’t prevent this; he simply wants to express as forcefully as he can to Chad how much the young man owes to the wonderful woman who has taught him all the beautiful things that his drab hometown hasn’t. Strether knows how his own vision of Paris has made a garden of the desert of his life, and he hopes that Chad will at least take some of that vision home with him.”

  Everyone in the room listened respectfully—after all, she was their hostess—but she could tell that her interpretation failed to impress. Strether had told Chad that he would be a villain if he deserted his Parisian mistress, had he not? How could any of them get around that? Wasn’t Averhill their Woollett? How could they ever admit a vision of Paris that threatened their satisfaction with what they were?

  That night was “parlor night,” when some forty students (different dormitories were invited on different nights) invaded the big hall and two living rooms of the headmaster’s house to play games or join sing-alongs or even to dance to taped music. Ione and a couple of faculty wives acted as hostesses, but that evening she pleaded a slight headache and sat in an isolated corner with a pale, skinny, and awkward fourteen-year-old lad who worked on a large and difficult jigsaw puzzle spread out on a card table. He had worked on it on a previous parlor night, and Ione had seen to it that the card table, with folded legs, had been placed on a shelf in a closet so that the unfinished puzzle was preserved. The boy, Berty Dean, was an obvious Ioner who had presumably found it difficult to adjust himself to boarding-school life.

  “Do you mind my helping you with it?” she asked him, smiling. “Together we might be able to finish it tonight.”

  “Oh, I don’t mind at all, Mrs. Sayre. It was very kind of you to preserve it for me.”

  “You like jigsaw puzzles?”

  “I like this one.”

  “Why this one, particularly?”

  The boy’s large dark eyes seemed to betray a struggle with caution. Was this lovely lady really on his side? Could she be trusted? “Because it takes me away from here. When I fit a piece into the picture I’m doing something that has nothing to do with school.”

  “It takes you home perhaps. Are you homesick, Berty? It’s very natural. I sometimes am myself.”

  “But this is your home, isn’t it?”

  “I sometimes wonder.”

  He gave her a tiny smile. Evidently, she could be trusted. “Not liking where you are doesn’t have to mean you’re homesick.”

  “I suppose it could even mean you’re schoolsick.”

  But she shouldn’t be getting into this, and they both turned their attention to the puzzle. A sing-along had started in the hall, and the noise distracted her.

  The sons of the prophet

  were hardy and bold,

  And quite
unaccustomed to fear,

  But the bravest of all,

  at least so I am told,

  Was…

  “I really do have a headache now,” she murmured, half to herself, and rising and apologizing to one of the presiding faculty wives, she went upstairs to her room to lie down.

  The image of the unhappy and ungainly boy struggling to escape the jeers and pokes of his nasty contemporaries by fitting together pieces of pasteboard to create a landscape that had no merit other than its not being Averhill haunted her with its suggestion of a parallel to her own case. But of course he had no Michael to love him, and when the latter came suddenly into the room she sat up and threw her arms about him.

  “My poor darling,” he exclaimed. “I heard you had to leave those awful games. Are you all right?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she assured him. “Just a bit tired, that’s all. Get me a drink, will you. I want to talk to you.”

  When he came back with their drinks, she was already out of bed, seated in a chair and ready for a serious discussion.

  “Ever since my fiasco as a teacher,” she began, “I’ve been doing a good bit of thinking, not only of my role in our lives, but of yours.”

  “So have I,” he concurred. “My role seems to have been pretty well determined, but it’s been very much on my mind that it’s been determined at the expense of yours.”

  “I shouldn’t so much mind that if I could be sure that you were on the right path for yourself.”

  “You’re not content with what I’m doing here? I can hardly blame you. I am constantly running into problems that make me see how inadequately I was prepared to be a headmaster.”

  “No, no, I don’t mean that at all!” she emphasized. “You’re doing great as a headmaster. Everyone agrees to that. Everyone, that is, but that ass, Spencer, and with him it’s just jealousy and spite. No, what I’m getting at is that I have the highest ambition for you. I’m very proud of your record here, but I don’t see Averhill as your final goal. I want much more for you. Much more, my darling.”