Charles Snow - The Masters

Despard-Smith cleared his throat.

‘The college will be partly prepared for the announcement which it is my painful duty to make. When the Master asked me to act as his deputy less than two months ago, I fully expected that before this term was over he would be back in the s-saddle again. I little imagined that it would fall to me to announce from this chair the most disastrous news that I have been informed of in my long association with the college.’ He paused. ‘I am told,’ he went on, ‘upon authority which cannot be denied that the Master will shortly be taken from us.’

He paused again, and said: ‘I am not qualified to express an opinion whether there is the f-faintest hope that the medical experts may be proved wrong in the event.’

Crawford said: ‘May I have permission to make a statement, Mr Deputy?’

‘Dr Crawford.’

‘Speaking now not as a fellow but as one who was once trained as a medical man, I must warn the society that there is no chance at all of a happy issue,’ Crawford said. He sat impassively, while others looked at him. I saw Jago’s eyes flash at the other end of the table.

‘You confirm what we have been told, Dr Crawford, that the Master’s days on earth are n-numbered?’

‘I must confirm that,’ said Crawford. He was a physiologist, best known for his work on the structure of the brain. His fingers were short and thick, and it was surprising to be told that he was an experimenter of the most delicate manual skill.

‘We are all bound to be impressed by Dr Crawford’s statement,’ said Despard-Smith.

‘I must add a word to it,’ said Crawford. ‘The end cannot be long. The college must be prepared to have lost its head by the end of the Easter term.’

‘Thank you for telling us the worst.’

‘I considered it my duty to tell the college all I knew myself,’ said Crawford.

He had said nothing novel to most of us; yet his immobile certainty, Despard-Smith’s bleak and solemn weight, the ritual of the meeting itself, brought a tension that sprang from man to man like an electric charge.

After a silence, Winslow said: ‘Dr Crawford’s statement brings the whole matter to a point. I take it that with your permission, Mr Deputy, the college will wish to discuss the vacancy we shall soon be faced with.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Chrystal at his sharpest.

‘I thought I made myself fairly clear,’ said Winslow.

‘I don’t understand,’ said Chrystal. This kind of obstinate pretence of incomprehension was one of his favourite techniques at a meeting. ‘I should like us to be reminded of the statute governing the election of a Master.’

‘I wonder,’ said Brown, ‘if you would be good enough to read it, Mr Deputy?’

‘I’m in the hands of the m-meeting,’ said Despard-Smith.

‘Why are we wasting time?’ said Francis Getliffe.

‘I should like the statute read,’ snapped Chrystal.

Winslow and Crawford exchanged glances, but Despard-Smith opened his copy of the statutes, which lay in front of him on the table, and began to read, half-intoning in a nasal voice: ‘When a vacancy in the office of Master shall become known to that fellow first in order of precedence he shall summon within forty-eight hours a meeting of the fellows. If the fellow first in order of precedence be not resident in Cambridge, or otherwise incapable of presiding, the duty shall pass to the next senior, and so on. When the fellows are duly assembled the fellow first in order of precedence attending shall announce to them the vacancy, and shall before midnight on the same day authorize a notice of the vacancy and of the time hereby regulated for the election of the new Master, and cause this notice to be placed in full sight on the chapel door. The time regulated for the election shall be ten o’clock on the morning on the fifteenth day from the date of the notice if the vacancy occur in term, or on the thirtieth day if it occur out of term.’

When he had finished, Gay said sonorously: ‘Ah. Indeed. Very interesting. Very remarkable. Fine piece of draughtsmanship, that statute.’

‘It makes my point,’ said Chrystal. ‘The college as a college can’t take any action till the Mastership is vacant. There’s no question before us. I move the next business.’

‘This is formalism carried to extreme limits,’ said Winslow angrily. ‘I’ve never known the Dean be so scrupulous on a matter of etiquette before—’

‘It’s completely obvious the matter must be discussed,’ said Francis Getliffe.

‘I’m sure the Dean never intended to suggest anything else, Mr Deputy,’ said Brown with a bland and open smile. ‘If I may take the words out of his mouth, I know the Dean hopes — as I feel certain we all do — that we shall discuss every possible element in the whole position, so that we finally do secure the true opinion and desire of the college. The little difference of opinion between us amounts to nothing more than whether our discussion should be done in a formal college meeting or outside.’

‘Or, to those of us who haven’t the gift for softening differences possessed by Mr Brown, whether we shall dissolve immediately into cabals,’ said Winslow with a savage, caustic grin, ‘or talk it out in the open.’

‘Speaking now as a fellow and not as a former medical man,’ said Crawford, ‘I consider that the college would be grossly imprudent not to use the next few months to resolve on the dispositions it must make.’

‘But that’s agreed by everybody,’ I put in. ‘The only question is, whether a formal college meeting is the most suitable place.’

‘Cabals versus the open air,’ said Winslow, and Nightingale smiled. Despard-Smith was not prepared for the waves of temper that were sweeping up.

‘I cannot remember any p-precedent in my long association with the college,’ he said.

Suddenly Pilbrow began speaking with great speed and earnestness: ‘The college can’t possibly have a meeting about a new Master… When the man who ought to be presiding is condemned… I’ve never known such an extraordinary lack of feeling.’

He finished, after his various starts, with complete lucidity. But the college had a habit of ignoring Pilbrow’s interventions, and Chrystal and Winslow had both begun to speak at once when Jago quietened them. His voice was not an orator’s: it was plummy, thick, produced far back in his throat. Yet, whenever he spoke, men’s glances turned to him. He had his spectacles in hand, and his eyes, for once unveiled, were hard.

‘I have no doubt,’ he said, ‘that we have just listened to the decisive word. This is not the first time that Mr Pilbrow has represented to some of us the claims of decent feeling. Mr Deputy, the Master of this college is now lying in his Lodge, and he has asked you to preside in his place. We know that we must settle on someone to succeed him, however difficult it is. But we can do that in our own way, without utterly offending the taste of some of us by insisting on doing it in this room — in a meeting of which he is still the head.’ When he sat back the room stayed uncomfortably still.

‘That settles it,’ said Roy Calvert in a clear voice.

‘I moved the next business ten minutes ago,’ said Chrystal, staring domineeringly at Despard-Smith. ‘I believe Mr Brown seconded it. Is it time to vote on my motion? I’m ready to wait all evening.’

The motion was carried by seven votes to four. For: Pilbrow, Jago, Brown, Chrystal, myself, Calvert, Luke. Against: Winslow, Crawford, Nightingale, Getliffe.

Neither Despard-Smith nor Gay voted.

At hall after the meeting, Winslow was grumbling about Jago’s last speech — ‘high-minded persons have a remarkable gift for discovering that the requirements of decent feeling fit in exactly with what they want to do’. I thought about how we had voted. The sides were sorting themselves out. Nightingale had voted with the opposition: was that merely a gesture of suspiciousness against Chrystal and Brown? He was the most uncomfortable of bedfellows. Despard-Smith would presumably vote for Crawford. What about old Gay? He might do anything. I fancied Pilbrow would decide for Jago. It looked encouraging.