Charles Snow: The Masters

‘I hope you like this in the morning,’ he said. ‘Chrystal and I are rather given to it.’

Chrystal followed soon after me, gave his crisp military good morning, and began at once: ‘Winslow gave a lamentable exhibition last night. He makes the place a perfect beargarden.’

It seemed to me a curious description of the combination room.

‘He’s not an easy man,’ said Brown. ‘And he doesn’t seem to be mellowing.’

‘He won’t mellow if he lives to be a hundred,’ said Chrystal. ‘Anyway, it’s precisely because of him that we want to talk to you, Eliot.’

We sat down to our glasses of madeira.

‘Perhaps I’d better begin,’ said Brown. ‘By pure chance, the affair started in my direction. Put it another way — if I hadn’t been tutor, we mightn’t have got on to it at all.’

‘Yes, you begin,’ said Chrystal. ‘But Eliot ought to realize all this is within these four walls. Not a word must leak outside.’

I said yes.

‘First of all,’ Brown asked me, sitting back with his hands folded on his waistcoat, ‘do you happen to know my pupil Timberlake?’

I was puzzled.

‘I’ve spoken to him once or twice,’ I said. ‘Isn’t he a connection of Sir Horace’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘I know the old man slightly,’ I said. ‘I met him over a case, two or three years ago.’

Brown chuckled.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I was almost sure I remembered you saying so. That may be very useful.

‘Well,’ he went on, ‘he sent young Timberlake to the college — he’s a son of Sir Horace’s cousin, but his parents died and Sir Horace took responsibility for him. The boy is in his third year, taking Part II in June. I hope to God he gets through. It will shatter everything if he doesn’t. He’s a perfectly decent lad, but a bit dense. I think he’s just a shade less stupid than young Winslow — but it’s a very very near thing.’

‘It’s not a near thing between their seniors,’ said Chrystal. ‘I’ll trade Winslow for Sir Horace any day.’

‘I was very much taken with Sir Horace when I met him.’ Brown liked agreeing with his friend. ‘You see, Eliot, Sir Horace came up for a night just about three weeks ago. He seemed to be pleased with what we were doing for the boy. And he specially asked to meet one or two people who were concerned with the policy of the college. So I gave a little dinner party. The Master was ill, of course, which, to tell you the truth, for this particular occasion was a relief. I decided it was only prudent to leave out Winslow. I had to ask Jago, but I dropped him a hint that this wasn’t the kind of business he’s really interested in. Naturally, I asked the Dean.’ He gave Chrystal his broad, shrewd, good-natured smile. ‘I think the rest of the story’s yours. I left everything else to you.’

‘Sir Horace came up,’ said Chrystal, ‘and Brown did him well. There were only the three of us. I should have enjoyed just meeting him. When you think what that man’s done — he controls an industry with a turnover of £20,000,000 a year. It makes you think, Eliot, it makes you think. But there was more to it than meeting him. I won’t make a secret of it. There’s a chance of a benefaction.’

‘If it comes off,’ Brown said, cautiously but contentedly, ‘it will be one of the biggest the college has ever had.’

‘Sir Horace wanted to know what our plans for the future were. I told him as much as I could. He seemed pleased with us. I was struck with the questions he asked,’ said Chrystal, ready to make a hero of Sir Horace. ‘You could see that he was used to getting to the bottom of things. After he’d been into it for a couple of hours, I’d back his judgement of the college against half our fellows. When he’d learned what he came down to find out, he asked me a direct question. He asked straight out: “What’s the most useful help any of us could provide for the college?” There was only one answer to that — and when there’s only one answer, I’ve found it a good rule to say it quick. So I told him: “Money. As much money as you could give us. And with as few conditions as you could possibly make.” And that’s where we stand.’

‘You handled him splendidly,’ said Brown. ‘He wasn’t quite happy about no conditions—’

‘He said he’d have to think about that,’ said Chrystal. ‘But I thought it would save trouble later if I got in first.’

‘I’m not ready to shout till we’ve got the money in the bank,’ Brown said, ‘but it’s a wonderful chance.’

‘We ought to get it — unless we make fools of ourselves,’ said Chrystal, ‘I know that by rights Winslow should handle this business now. It’s his job. But if he does, it’s a pound to a penny that he’ll put Sir Horace off.’

I thought of Sir Horace, imaginative, thin-skinned despite all his success in action.

‘He certainly would,’ I said. ‘Just one of Winslow’s little jokes, and we’d have Sir H endowing an Oxford college on a very lavish scale.’

‘I’m glad you confirm that,’ said Chrystal. ‘We can’t afford to handle this wrong.’

‘We mustn’t miss it,’ said Brown. ‘It would be sinful to miss it now.’

These two were the solid core of the college, I thought. Year by year they added to their influence; it was greater now than when I first came three years before. It had surprised me then that they should be so influential; now that I had lived with them, seen them at work, I understood it better.

They were both genuinely humble men. They were profoundly different, at the roots of their natures, but neither thought that he was anything out of the ordinary. They knew that others round them were creative, as they were not; Chrystal had once been a competent classic, was still a first-rate teacher, but had done nothing original — Brown wrote an intricate account of the diplomatic origins of the Crimean war soon after he graduated, and then stopped. They did not even think that they were unusual as men. Either would say that the Master or Jago or one or two others were the striking figures in the college. All they might add was that those striking figures did not always have the soundest judgement, were not the most useful at ‘running things’.

For, though they were the least conceited of men, they had complete confidence in their capacity to ‘run things’. Between them, they knew all the craft of government. They knew how men in a college behaved, and the different places in which each man was weak, ignorant, indifferent, obstinate, or strong. They never overplayed their hand; they knew just how to take the opinion of the college after they had settled a question in private. They knew how to give way. By this time, little of importance happened in the college which they did not support.

They asked very little more for themselves. They were neither of them ambitious; they thought they had done pretty well. They were comfortable and happy. They accepted the world round them, they believed it was good the college should exist, they had no doubt they were being useful in the parts they played. As they piloted their candidate through a fellowship election, or worked to secure this benefaction from Sir Horace, they gained the thrill that men feel at a purpose outside themselves.

They were both ‘sound’ conservatives in politics, and in religion conforming and unenthusiastic churchmen. But in the college they formed the active, if sometimes invisible, part of a progressive government. (College politics often cut right across national ones: thus Winslow, an upper-class radical, became in the college extremely reactionary, and Francis Getliffe and I, both men of the left, found ourselves in the college supporting the ‘government’ — the Master, Jago, Chrystal, Brown — with whom we disagreed on most things outside.) To that they devoted their attention, their will, their cunning, and their experience. They had been practising it for twenty years, and by now they knew what could be done inside the college to an inch.