Snow in his prefatory note to the novel mentions the memoirs of Mark Pattison in which a similar situation of deadlock and treachery developed in the election of the head (Rector) of Lincoln College, Oxford with 9 fellows (electors) two of which were abroad, in 1851. I read it some time ago on the recommendation of A.C. Benson. Pattison was an early adaptor of Tractarianism very much influenced by Newman. Excellent short read with a sense of peering through a crack in time at the contortions of Victorian seriousness and ambition.
memoirs of Mark Pattison
(clean epub copy)
You can discern Pattison's influence readily:
Radford’s funeral took place on the 29th October. All the Fellows who were in England were present at it. William Kay junior and Bousfield were abroad. The 13th of November was fixed for the election, at which there would be nine electors, therefore five votes would be required to elect. The three junior Fellows, Perry, Andrew, Espin, voluntarily and heartily supported me, so with my own I had already four votes. My three supporters were all regular residents, and it was our four votes which had succeeded, in spite of the resistance of the old regime, in introducing all the reforms and improvements which had been established in the college and in totally changing its tone. The other five votes were Calcott and Gibbs, the rump of the old Lincoln of the days of degradation; Metcalfe, whom we had taken without knowing enough about him from Cambridge, and who had gradually gravitated towards the old set;
The electors in our novel divide on the basis of Science versus the Humanities. Paul Jago is the Senior Tutor and represents the emotional intuitive side of life. Crawford is cool, impersonal, highly competent and gifted as a scientist. He would seem the obvious choice for a college that wants to become more modern particularly as the endowment by a rich industrialist of four new fellows is dependent on three of them being in science. The two fellows who are trying to bring this about, Chrystal and Brown, are from the humanities side of the college and are for Jago. Excellently well drawn portraits here of two men, Brown in particular who has that curious British gravitas known as 'bottom'.
He was used to being thought of as just a nice old buffer. ‘Good old Brown’, the Master called him. ‘The worthy Brown’, said Winslow, with caustic dismissal: ‘Uncle Arthur’ was his nickname among the younger fellows. Yet he was actually the youngest of the powerful middle-aged block in the college. Jago was just over fifty; Chrystal, Brown’s constant friend and ally, was forty-eight, while Brown himself, though he had been elected a fellow before Chrystal, was still not quite forty-six. He was a historian by subject, and was Jago’s junior colleague as the second tutor.
We know of course because this is England and enthusiasm is frowned upon and wanting a job as Jago does is bad form likely to end in tears. Where is the manly reluctance of the natural leader? Jago is Anglo-Irish which is hybrid form that does not exactly run true. His wife is insecure, liable to feel slighted and a snob. The interplay of types is excellent and the tension is maintained right to the end. It's an insight into the workings of a system that has produced many excellent scholars and which by the way I was amazed to find out can run quite well without students due to the accretion of endowments over the centuries. They dine remarkably well but the heating system is primitive. Fires, drawing, being mended, gusting smoke into the room create an igloo of comfort in high ceilinged chambers with three foot thick walls.
This book is a classic of its kind. Good lockdown stuff.
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