by C. P. Snow
Copyright & Information
The Masters
First published in 1951
© Philip Snow; House of Stratus 1951-2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The right of C.P. Snow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.
This edition published in 2009 by House of Stratus, an imprint of
Stratus Books Ltd., Lisandra House, Fore Street, Looe,
Cornwall, PL13 1AD, UK.
Typeset by House of Stratus.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library and the Library of Congress.
ISBN: 0755120043 EAN 9780755120048
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About the Author
Charles Percy Snow was born in Leicester, on 15 October 1905. He was educated from age eleven at Alderman Newton’s School for boys where he excelled in most subjects, enjoying a reputation for an astounding memory and also developed a lifelong love of cricket. In 1923 he became an external student in science of London University, as the local college he attended in Leicester had no science department. At the same time he read widely and gained practical experience by working as a laboratory assistant at Newton’s to gain the necessary practical experience needed.
Having achieved a first class degree, followed by a Master of Science he won a studentship in 1928 which he used to research at the famous Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. There, he went on to become a Fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1930 where he also served as a tutor, but his position became increasingly titular as he branched into other areas of activity. In 1934, he began to publish scientific articles in Nature, and then The Spectator before becoming editor of the journal Discovery in 1937. However, he was also writing fiction during this period, with his first novel Death Under Sail published in 1932, and in 1940 ‘Strangers and Brothers’ was published. This was the first of eleven novels in the series and was later renamed ‘George Passant’ when ‘Strangers and Brothers’ was used to denote the series itself.
Discovery became a casualty of the war, closing in 1940. However, by this time Snow was already involved with the Royal Society, who had organised a group to specifically use British scientific talent operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour. He served as the Ministry’s technical director from 1940 to 1944. After the war, he became a civil service commissioner responsible for recruiting scientists to work for the government. He also returned to writing, continuing the Strangers and Brothers series of novels. ‘The Light and the Dark’ was published in 1947, followed by ‘Time of Hope’ in 1949, and perhaps the most famous and popular of them all, ‘The Masters’, in 1951. He planned to finish the cycle within five years, but the final novel ‘Last Things’ wasn’t published until 1970.
He married the novelist Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1950 and they had one son, Philip, in 1952. Snow was knighted in 1957 and became a life peer in 1964, taking the title Baron Snow of the City Leicester. He also joined Harold Wilson’s first government as Parliamentary Secretary to the new Minister of Technology. When the department ceased to exist in 1966 he became a vociferous back-bencher in the House of Lords.
After finishing the Strangers and Brothers series, Snow continued writing both fiction and non-fiction. His last work of fiction was ‘A Coat of Vanish’, published in 1978. His non-fiction included a short life of Trollope published in 1974 and another, published posthumously in 1981, ‘The Physicists: a Generation that Changed the World’. He was also inundated with lecturing requests and offers of honorary doctorates. In 1961, he became Rector of St. Andrews University and for ten years also wrote influential weekly reviews for the Financial Times.
In these later years, Snow suffered from poor health although he continued to travel and lecture. He also remained active as a writer and critic until hospitalized on 1 July 1980. He died later that day of a perforated ulcer.
‘Mr Snow has established himself, on his own chosen ground, in an eminent and conspicuous position among contemporary English novelists’ - New Statesman
Dedication
In memory of
G H Hardy
Author’s Note
I have not given a name to the college in this story; I have never liked geographical inventions such as Christminster, and have avoided them through the whole sequence of Lewis Eliot novels.
This fictional college stands upon an existing site, and its topography is similar to that of an existing college, though some of the details are different. That is the end, however, of my reference to a real institution. The history (which I have sketched in an appendix, in the hope that it may be interesting to some unfamiliar with Cambridge) has no factual connection with any real college, though the generalizations are as true as I can make them. The people have been composed from many sources; and, to the best of my belief, there has been no actual election in Cambridge or Oxford in recent times which followed the course of this imaginary one. There is a tradition of a last-minute change of fortune early in the century, and a well-authenticated one in Mark Pattison’s Memoirs. It was G H Hardy who first drew my attention to the latter source, when I was originally contemplating this theme. To his memory I dedicate this book, in love and reverence.
CPS
Part One
A Light In The Lodge
1: News after a Medical Examination
The snow had only just stopped, and in the court below my rooms all sounds were dulled. There were few sounds to hear, for it was early in January, and the college was empty and quiet; I could just make out the footsteps of the porter, as he passed beneath the window on his last round of the night. Now and again his keys clinked, and the clink reached me after the pad of his footsteps had been lost in the snow.
I had drawn my curtains early that evening and not moved out. The kitchens had sent up a meal, and I had eaten it as I read by the fire. The fire had been kept high and bright all day; though it was nearly ten o’clock now, I stoked it again, shovelling coal up the back of the chimney, throwing it on so it would burn for hours. It was scorchingly hot in front of the fire, and warm, cosy, shielded, in the zone of the two armchairs and the sofa which formed an island of comfort round the fireplace. Outside that zone, as one went towards the walls of the lofty medieval room, the draughts were bitter. In a blaze of firelight, which shone into the sombre corners, the panelling on the walls glowed softly, almost rosily, but no warmth reached as far. So tha
t, on a night like this, one came to treat most of the room as the open air, and hurried back to the cosy island in front of the fireplace, the pool of light from the reading lamp on the mantelpiece, the radiance which was more pleasant because of the cold air which one had just escaped.
I was comfortable in my armchair, relaxed and content. There was no need to move. I was reading so intently that I did not notice the steps on the staircase, until there came a quick repeated knock on my door, and Jago came in.
‘Thank the Lord I’ve found you,’ he said. ‘I’m glad you’re in!’
Outside, on the landing, he kicked the snow from his shoes and then came back to the armchair opposite mine. He was still wearing his gown, and I guessed that they had sat a long time in the combination room. He apologized for disturbing me. He apologized too much, for a man who was often so easy.
But sometimes he found the first moments of a meeting difficult; that was true with everyone he met, certainly with me, though we liked each other. I had got used to his excessive apologies and his over-cordial greetings. He made them that night, though he was excited, though he was grave and tense with his news.
He was a man of fifty, and some, seeing that he had gone both bald and grey, thought he looked older. But the first physical impression was deceptive. He was tall and thick about the body, with something of a paunch, but he was also small-boned, active, light on his feet. In the same way, his head was massive, his forehead high and broad between the fringes of fair hair; but no one’s face changed its expression quicker, and his smile was brilliant. Behind the thick lenses, his eyes were small and intensely bright, the eyes of a young and lively man. At a first glance, people might think he looked a senator. It did not take them long to discover how mercurial he was. His temper was as quick as his smile; in everything he did his nerves seemed on the surface. In fact, people forgot all about the senator and began to complain that his sympathy and emotion flowed too easily. Many of them disliked his love of display. Yet they were affected by the depth of his feeling. Nearly everyone recognized that, though it took some insight to perceive that he was not only a man of deep feeling, but also one of passionate pride.
At this time – it was 1937 – he had been Senior Tutor of the college for ten years. I had met him three years before, in 1934, when Francis Getliffe, knowing that I wished to spend most of my time in academic law, proposed to the college that they should give me a fellowship. Jago had supported me (with his quick imagination, he guessed the reason that led me to change my career when I was nearly thirty), and ever since had borne me the special grateful affection that one feels towards a protégé.
‘I’m relieved to find you in, Eliot,’ he said, looking at me across the fireplace. ‘I had to see you tonight. I shouldn’t have rested if I’d had to wait until the morning.’
‘What has happened?’
‘You know,’ said Jago, ‘that they were examining the Master today?’
I nodded. ‘I was going to ask at the Lodge tomorrow morning.’
‘I can tell you,’ said Jago. ‘I wish I couldn’t!’
He paused, and went on: ‘He went into hospital last night. They put a tube down him this morning and sent him home. The results came through just before dinner. It is utterly hopeless. At the very most – they give him six months.’
‘What is it?’
‘Cancer. Absolutely inoperable.’ Jago’s face was dark with pain. He said: ‘I hope that when my time comes it will come in a kinder way.’
We sat silent. I thought of the Master, with his confidential sarcasms, his spare and sophisticated taste, his simple religion. I thought of the quarrels he and Jago had had for so many years.
Though I had not spoken, Jago said: ‘It’s intolerable to me, Eliot, to think of Vernon Royce going like this. I can’t pretend that everything has always been easy between us. You know that, don’t you?’
I nodded.
‘Yet he went out of his way to help me last term,’ said Jago. ‘You know, my wife was ill, and I was utterly distracted. I couldn’t help her, I was useless, I was a burden to everyone and to myself. Then one afternoon the Master asked me if I would like to go a walk with him. And he’d asked me for a very definite reason. He wanted to tell me how anxious he was about my wife and how much he thought of her. He must have known that I’ve always felt she wasn’t appreciated enough here. It’s been a grief to me. He said all he’d set out to say in a couple of dozen words on the way to Waterbeach, and it touched me very much. Somehow one’s dreadfully vulnerable through those one loves.’ Suddenly he smiled at me with great kindness. ‘You know that as well as anyone alive, Eliot. I felt it when you let me meet your wife. When she’s better, you must ask me to Chelsea again. You know how much I enjoyed it. She’s gone through too much, hasn’t she?’ He went on: ‘That afternoon made a difference to all I felt for Royce. Do you wonder that it’s intolerable for me to hear this news tonight?’
He burst out: ‘And do you know? I went for another walk with him exactly a month ago. I was under the weather, and he jogged along as he always used to, and I was very tired. I should have said, I believe anyone would have said, that he was the healthier man.’
He paused, and added: ‘Tonight we’ve heard his sentence.’
He was moved by a feeling for the dying man powerful, quick, imaginative, and deep. At the same time he was immersed in the drama, showing the frankness which embarrassed so many. No man afraid of expressing emotion could have been so frank.
‘Yes, we’ve heard his sentence,’ said Jago. ‘But there is one last thing which seems to me more ghastly than the rest. For there is someone who has not heard it.’
He paused. Then he said: ‘That is the man himself. They are not going to tell him yet.’
I exclaimed.
‘For some reason that seems utterly inhuman,’ said Jago, ‘these doctors have not told him. He’s been given to understand that in two or three months he will be perfectly well. When any of us see him, we are not to let him know any different.’
He looked into my eyes, and then into the fire. For a moment I left him, opened my door, went out into the glacial air, turned into the gyp room, collected together a bottle of whisky, a syphon, a jug of water. The night had gone colder; the jug felt as though the water inside had been iced. As I brought the tray back to the fireside, I found Jago standing up. He was standing up, with his elbows on the mantelpiece and his head bent. He did not move while I put the tray on the little table by my chair. Then he straightened himself and said, looking down at me: ‘This news has shaken me, Eliot. I can’t think of everything it means.’ He sat down. His cheeks were tinged by the fire. His expression was set and brooding. A weight of anxiety hung on each of those last words.
I poured out the whisky. After he took his glass, he held it for an instant to the firelight, and through the liquid watched the image of the flames.
‘This news has shaken me,’ he repeated. ‘I can’t think of everything it means. Can you,’ he asked me suddenly, ‘think of everything it means?’
I shook my head. ‘It has come as a shock,’ I said.
‘You haven’t thought of any consequences at all?’ He gazed at me intently. In his eyes there was a question, almost an appeal.
‘Not yet.’
He waited. Then he said: ‘I had to break the news to one or two of our colleagues in hall tonight. I hadn’t thought of it myself; but they pointed out there was a consequence we couldn’t put aside.’
He waited again, then said quickly: ‘In a few weeks, in a few months at most, the college will have to elect a new Master.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘When the time arrives, we shall have to do it in a hurry,’ said Jago. ‘I suppose before then we shall have made up our minds whom we are going to elect.’
I had known, for minutes past, that this was coming: I had not wanted to talk of it that night. Jago was longing for me to say that he ought to be the next Master, that my own mind was made up, t
hat I should vote for him. He had longed for me to say it without prompting; he had not wanted even to mention the election. It was anguish to him to make the faintest hint without response. Yet he was impelled to go on, he could not stop. It harassed me to see this proud man humiliating himself.
Yet that night I could not do as he wanted. A few years before I should have said yes on the spot. I liked him, he had captured my imagination, he was a deeper man than his rivals. But my spontaneity had become masked by now; I had been too much knocked about, I had grown to be guarded.
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘we’ve got a certain amount of time.’
‘This business in the Lodge may go quicker even than they threaten,’ said Jago. ‘And it would be intolerable to have to make a rush election with the college utterly divided as to what it wants.’
‘I don’t see,’ I said slowly, ‘why we should be so much divided.’
‘We often are,’ said Jago with a sudden smile. ‘If fourteen men are divided about most things, they’re not specially likely to agree about choosing a new Master.’
‘They’re not,’ I agreed. I added: ‘I’m afraid the fourteen will have become thirteen.’
Jago inclined his head. A little later, in a sharp staccato manner, he said: ‘I should like you to know something, Eliot. It was suggested to me tonight that I must make a personal decision. I must decide whether I can let my own name be considered.’
‘I’ve always taken it for granted,’ I said, ‘that whenever the Mastership fell vacant you’d be asked that.’
‘It’s extraordinarily friendly of you to say so,’ he burst out, ‘but, do you know, before tonight I’ve scarcely thought of it for a single moment.’