by C. P. Snow
‘Arthur Brown is for him.’
‘Uncle Arthur loves odd fish.’
‘And Chrystal,’ I said, ‘thinks he can manage him. By the way, I’m very doubtful whether he’s right.’
‘It will be extremely funny if he isn’t.’
We turned down into Petty Cury, and Roy said: ‘The ones who don’t want Jago won’t take it quietly. They’ll have a good deal to say about distinguished scholars – and others not so distinguished.’
‘I know more about that than they do,’ he added. I smiled at the touch of arrogance, unusual in him, I saw his face, clear in the light from a shop. He shook his head to get rid of some raindrops, he smiled back, but he was in dead earnest. He went on quietly: ‘Why won’t they see what matters? I want a man who knows something about himself. And is appalled. And has to forgive himself to get along.’
7: Decision to Call on Jago
Roy Calvert and I kept coming back to the Mastership, as we talked late into the night. Before we went to bed, we agreed to tell Brown next day that we were ready to support Jago. ‘Sleep on it, sleep on it,’ said Roy, mimicking Brown’s comfortable tones. The next morning Bidwell, after announcing the time and commenting on the weather, said: ‘Mr Calvert’s compliments, sir, and he says he’s slept on it and hasn’t changed his mind.’
At five that afternoon, we found Brown in his rooms. His tea was pushed aside, he was working on some lists: but, continuously busy, he was always able to seem at leisure. ‘It’s a bit early for sherry,’ he said. ‘I wonder if you feel like a glass of chablis? I opened it at lunchtime, and we thought it was rather special.’
He brought out some glasses, and we sat in his armchairs, Brown in the middle. His eyes looked from one of us to the other. He knew we had come for a purpose, but he was prepared to sit there all evening, drinking his wine with enjoyment, and leave the first move to us.
‘You asked me,’ I said, ‘to let you know, when I’d decided about the next Master.’
‘Why, so I did,’ said Brown.
‘I have now,’ I said. ‘I shall vote for Jago.’
‘I shall also,’ said Roy Calvert.
‘I’m very glad to hear it,’ Brown said. He smiled at me: ‘I had a feeling you might come round to it. And Roy–’
‘It’s all in order,’ said Roy, ‘I’ve slept on it.’
‘That’s just as well,’ said Brown. ‘Because if not I should certainly have advised you to do so.’
I chuckled. In his unhurried, ponderous fashion he was very good at coping with Roy Calvert.
‘Well,’ said Brown, sitting back contentedly, ‘this is all very interesting. As a matter of fact, I can tell you something myself. Chrystal and I had a little talk recently, and we felt inclined to put Jago’s name forward.’
‘Without committing yourselves, of course?’ Roy enquired.
‘Committing ourselves as much as it’s reasonable to do at this stage,’ said Brown.
‘There’s one other thing I think I’m at liberty to tell you,’ he added. ‘Nightingale told me definitely this morning that he was of the same way of thinking. So at any rate we’ve got the nucleus of a nice little party.’
How capably he had managed it, I thought. He had not pressed Jago on any one of us. Chrystal had been undecided, but patiently Brown drew him in. With Chrystal, with me, with Nightingale, he had waited, talking placidly and sensibly, often rotundly and platitudinously, while our likes and dislikes shaped themselves. Only when it was needed had he thrown in a remark to stir one of our weaknesses, or warm our affection. He had given no sign of his own unshakeable resolve to get the Mastership for Jago. He had shown no enthusiasm, he had talked with his usual fair-mindedness. But the resolve had been taken, his mind had been made up, the instant he heard that the Master was dying.
Why was he so resolved? Partly through policy and calculation, partly through active dislike of Crawford, partly through a completely uncalculating surrender to affection; and, as in all personal politics, the motives mixed with one another.
Most of all, Brown was moved by a regard for Jago, affectionate, indulgent, and admiring; and Brown’s affections were warm and strong. He was a politician by nature; since he was set on supporting Jago he could not help but do it with all the craft he knew – but there was nothing politic about his feeling for the man. Jago might indulge his emotions, act with a fervour that Brown thought excessive and in bad taste, ‘let his heart run away with his head’, show nothing like the solid rational decorum which was Brown’s face to the world. Brown’s affection did not budge. In the depth of his heart he loved Jago’s wilder outbursts, and wished that he could have gone that way himself. Had he sacrificed too much in reaching his own robust harmony? Had he become too dull a dog? For Brown’s harmony had not arrived in a minute. People saw that fat contented man, rested on his steady strength, and thought he had never known their conflicts. They were blind. He was utterly tolerant, just because he had known the frets that drove men off the rails, in particular the frets of sensual love. It was in his nature to live them down, to embed them deep, not to let them lead him away from his future as a college worthy, from his amiable wife and son. But he was too realistic, too humble, too genuine a man ever to forget them. ‘Uncle Arthur loves odd fish’, said Roy Calvert, whom he had helped through more than one folly. In middle age ‘Uncle Arthur’ was four square in himself, without a crack or flaw, rooted in his solid, warm, wise, and cautious nature. But he loved odd fish, for he knew, better than anyone, the odd desires that he had left behind.
‘We’ve got the nucleus of a nice little party,’ said Brown. ‘I think the time may almost have come to ask Jago whether he’ll give us permission to canvass his name.’
‘You don’t think that’s premature?’ said Roy, anxiously solemn.
‘He may find certain difficulties,’ said Brown, refusing to be put out of his stride. ‘He may not be able to afford it. Put it another way – he’d certainly drop a bit over the exchange. With his university lectureship and his college teaching work, as Senior Tutor, he must make all of £1,800 a year, and the house rent free. As Master he’ll have to give up most of the other things, and the stipend of the Master is only £1,500. I’ve always thought it was disgracefully low, it’s scarcely decent. Of course, he gets the Lodge free, but the upkeep will run him into a lot more than the Tutor’s house. I really don’t know how he’s going to manage it.’
I was smiling: with Roy present, I found it harder to take part in these stately minuets. ‘Somehow I think he’ll find a way,’ I said. ‘Look, Brown, you know perfectly well that he’s chafing to be asked.’
‘I think we might be able to persuade him,’ Brown said. ‘But we mustn’t be in too much of a hurry. You don’t get round difficulties by ignoring them. Still, I think we’ve got far enough to approach Jago now.’
‘The first step, of course,’ he added, ‘is to get Chrystal. He may think we’re anticipating things a bit.’
He telephoned to Chrystal, who was at home but left at once for the college. When he arrived, he was short-tempered because we had talked so much without him. He was counter-suggestible, moved to say no instead of yes, anxious to find reasons why we should not go at once to Jago. Brown used his automatic tact; and, as usual, Chrystal was forming sensible decisions underneath his short pique-ridden temper (he had the kind of pique which one calls ‘childish’ – though in fact it is shown most clearly by grave and adult men). Suddenly he said: ‘I’m in favour of seeing Jago at once.’
‘Shall I fix a time tomorrow?’ said Brown.
‘I’m against waiting. There’s bound to be talk, I want to get our feet in first. I’m in favour of going tonight.’
‘He may be busy.’
‘He won’t be too busy for what we’re coming to say,’ said Chrystal, with a tough, pleasant, ironic smile.
‘I’ll ring up and see how he’s placed,’ said Brown. ‘But we mustn’t forget Nightingale. It would be nice to take him round as we
ll.’ He rang up at once, on the internal exchange through the porter’s lodge: there was no answer. He asked for a porter to go to Nightingale’s rooms: the report came that his rooms were shut.
‘This is awkward,’ said Brown.
‘We’ll go without him,’ said Chrystal impatiently.
‘I don’t like it much.’ Brown had a slight frown. ‘It would be nice to bring everyone in. It’s important for everyone to feel they’re in the picture. I attach some value to taking Nightingale round.’
‘I’ll explain it to Nightingale. I want to get started before the other side.’
Reluctantly, Brown rang up the Tutor’s house. He was sure it was an error of judgement not to wait for Nightingale – whom he wanted to bind to the party. On the other hand, he had had trouble bringing Chrystal ‘up to the boil’. He did not choose to risk putting him off now. He rang up, his voice orotund, confidential, cordial; from his replies, one could guess that Jago was welcoming us round without a second’s delay.
‘Yes, he’d like to see us now,’ said Brown, as he hung the receiver up.
‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ said Chrystal, rising to go out.
‘Wait just a minute,’ said Brown. ‘The least I can do is send a note to Nightingale, explaining that we tried to find him.’
He sat down to write.
‘It might help if I took the note round to Nightingale,’ said Roy Calvert. ‘I’ll drop the word that I’m going to vote for Jago, but haven’t gone round on the deputation.’
‘That’s very thoughtful of you,’ said Brown.
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Roy. ‘I very much doubt whether the next but one junior fellow ought to be included in such a deputation as this.’
Chrystal did not know whether he was being serious or not. ‘I don’t know about that, Calvert, I don’t know about that,’ he said. ‘Still, we can tell Jago you’re one of us, can we?’
‘Just so,’ said Roy. ‘Just so.’
The Tutor’s house lay on the other side of the college, and Brown, Chrystal and I began walking through the courts. Chrystal made a remark about Roy Calvert: ‘Sometimes I don’t know where I am with that young man.’
‘He’ll be a very useful acquisition to our side,’ said Brown.
8: Three Kinds of Power
In Jago’s house we were shown, not into his study, but into the drawing-room. There Mrs Jago received us, with an air of grande dame borrowed from Lady Muriel.
‘Do sit down, Dean,’ she said to Chrystal. ‘Do sit down, Tutor,’ she said to Brown. ‘A parent has just chosen this time to call on my husband, which I feel is very inconsiderate.’
But Mrs Jago’s imitation of Lady Muriel was not exact. Lady Muriel, stiff as she was, would never have called men by their college titles. Lady Muriel would never have picked on the youngest there and said: ‘Mr Eliot, please help me with the sherry. You know it’s your duty, and you ought to like doing your duty.’
For Mrs Jago wanted to be a great lady, wanted also the attention of men, and was never certain of herself, for an instant. She was a big, broad-shouldered woman, running to fat, physically graceless apart from her smile. It was a smile one seldom saw, but when it came it was brilliant, open, defenceless, like an adoring girl’s. Otherwise she was plain.
That night, she could not keep up her grand manner. Suddenly she broke out: ‘I’m afraid you will all have to put up with my presence till Paul struggles free.’
‘That’s very nice for us all,’ said Arthur Brown.
‘Thank you, Tutor,’ said Mrs Jago, back for a second on her pedestal again.
She had embarrassed Jago’s friends ever since he married her. She became assertive in any conversation. She was determined not to be overlooked. She seized on insults, tracked them down, recounted them with a masochistic gusto that never flagged. She had cost her husband great suffering.
She had cost him great suffering, but not in the way one might expect. He was a man who gained much admiration from women. With his quick sympathy, his emotional power, he could have commanded all kinds of love. He liked the compliment, but he wanted none of them. He had loved his wife for twenty-five years. They had had no children. He loved her still. He could still be jealous of that woman, who, to everyone outside, seemed so grotesque. I had seen her play on that jealousy and give him pain.
But that was not his deepest suffering about her. They had married when he was a young don, and she his pupil. That relation, which can always so easily fill itself with emotion, had never died. He wanted people to recognize her quality, how gifted she was, how much held back by her crippling sensitiveness. He wanted us to see that she was gallant, and misjudged; he was burning to explain that she went through acuter pain than anyone, when the temperament she could not control drove his friends away. His love remained love, and added pity: and the sight of her in a mood which others dismissed as grotesque still had the power to take and rend his heart.
He suffered for her, and for himself. He loathed having to make apologies for his wife. He loathed all his imagination could invent of the words that were spoken behind his back – ‘poor Jago…’ But even those wounds to his pride he could have endured, if she had been happier. He would still, after twenty-five years, have humbled himself for her as for no one else – just to see her content. As he told me on the night we first knew the Master was dying, ‘one is dreadfully vulnerable through those one loves’.
When Jago came in, his first words were to his wife.
‘I’m desperately sorry I’ve been kept so long. I know you wanted to get back to your book–’
‘It doesn’t matter at all, Paul,’ she said with lofty dignity, and then cried out: ‘It only means that the Dean and the Tutor and Mr Eliot have had to make conversation to me for half an hour.’
‘If they don’t get a greater infliction than that this term,’ he said, ‘they’ll be very lucky men.’
‘It’s wretched for them that because of parents who haven’t the slightest consideration–’
Gently Jago tried to steer her off, and show her at her best. Had she talked to us about the book from which we had drawn her? Why hadn’t she mentioned what she told him at teatime?
Then Chrystal said: ‘You’ll excuse us if we take the Senior Tutor away, won’t you, Mrs Jago? We have a piece of business that can’t wait.’
‘Please do not think of considering me,’ she retorted.
This was a masculine society, and none of us would have considered discussing college business in front of our wives, not even in front of Lady Muriel herself. But, as we went out to Jago’s study, I caught sight of his wife’s face, and I knew she had embraced another insult. Jago would hear her cry ‘they took the opportunity to say I wasn’t wanted’.
Once in Jago’s study, with Jago sitting behind his big tutorial desk, crowded with letters, folders, dossiers, Reporters, copies of the Ordinances, Chrystal cleared his throat.
‘We’ve come to ask you one question, Jago,’ he said. ‘Are you prepared to be a candidate for the Mastership?’
Jago sighed.
‘The first thing I want to say,’ he replied, ‘is how grateful I am to you for coming to speak to me. It’s an honour to be thought of by such colleagues as you. I’m deeply touched.’
He smiled at us all.
‘I’m specially touched, if I may say so, to see Eliot with you. You two are old friends – we’ve grown up together. It isn’t so much a surprise to find you’re indulgent towards me. But you don’t know how flattering it is,’ he said to me, ‘to be approved of by someone who’s come here from a different life altogether. I’m so grateful, Eliot.’
He was the more pleased, I thought, because I had hesitated, because I had not been easy to convince; it is not the whole-hogging enthusiasts for one’s cause to whom one feels most gratitude.
‘We shouldn’t ask you,’ said Chrystal briskly, ‘unless we could promise you a caucus.’
‘I think it’s only fair to tell you, before
you give us your answer, that we haven’t made any attempt to discover the opinion of the college,’ said Brown. ‘But I don’t think we’re going beyond our commission in speaking for one or two others besides ourselves. Calvert specially asked us to tell you that he will give you his vote, and, though I’m not entitled to bring a categorical promise from Nightingale, I regard him as having pledged his support.’
‘There’s no doubt of that,’ said Chrystal.
‘Roy Calvert, that’s nice of him!’ cried Jago. ‘But Nightingale – I’m astonished, Brown, I really am astonished.’
‘Yes, we were a bit surprised ourselves.’ Brown went on steadily: ‘There are thirteen of us, not counting the present Master. If we leave you out, and assume that another member of the society will be the other candidate, that gives eleven people with a free vote. It wants seven votes to get a clear majority of the society, and a Master can’t be elected without, of course. Personally, I should regard five as a satisfactory caucus to start with. Anyway, it’s all we’re entitled to promise tonight, and if you think it’s not enough we shall perfectly understand.’
Jago rested his elbows on the desk, and leant forward towards us.
‘I believe I’ve told each one of you separately that this possibility came to me as an utter shock. I still feel that my feet aren’t quite firm under me. But since it did seem to become a possibility I’ve thought it over until I’m tired. I had serious doubts as to whether I ought to do it, whether I wanted to do it, whether I could do it. I’ve had several sleepless nights this week, trying to answer those questions. And there’s one thing I’ve become convinced of, even in the small hours – you know, when one’s whole life seems absolutely pointless. I’m going to tell you without modesty, between friends. I believe I can do it. I believe I can do it better than anyone within reach. So, if you want me, I’ve got no choice.’
‘I’m glad to hear it, Jago,’ said Chrystal.