The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss

First published: 1964

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Narrative and novel of manners

Time of plot: 1879-1947

Locale: Massachusetts and New York City

Principal characters

• Brian Aspinwall, an English instructor at the Justin Martyr school
• The Reverend Francis Prescott, the school founder and rector
• Harriet Winslow, his wife
• Horace Havistock, his boyhood friend
• David Griscam, a lawyer and school board member
• Harriet Kidder, ,
• Cordelia Turnbull, and
• Evelyn Homans, the Prescott daughters
• Charley Strong, Cordelia’s lover
• Jules Griscam, David’s son

The Story:

Brian Aspinwall, a graduate of Columbia and Oxford (Christ Church), accepts a position in 1939 to teach English at Justin Martyr, a residential school for boys located in rural Massachusetts. The school is still under the tutelage of its founder and headmaster, the Reverend Francis Prescott, who is, at the age of eighty, still a force to be reckoned with. Aspinwall is torn between returning to England to be part of the war raging in Europe and staying in the United States to study for the clergy, a calling he expresses some doubts about.

Although Aspinwall starts off rocky at Justin Martyr by not adequately disciplining his charges, the Reverend Prescott helps him out by demonstrating the proper way to dispense demerits and otherwise intimidate the boys in his house. He soon becomes a favorite of Mrs. Prescott—Harriet Winslow—the head’s aristocratic wife, who is dying; she requests that Aspinwall read to her Henry James, an author not appreciated by her husband. Harriet, a grandniece of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the New England Transcendental philosopher, apparently was of great help to her husband during the school’s early years. After her death, Aspinwall is made assistant to the headmaster to lessen his administrative duties as he enters the final year of his headmastership. It is in this capacity that Aspinwall decides to construct a biographical portrait of Prescott by collecting impressions of him from those who have known him through the years.

The first set of impressions comes from Horace Havistock’s manuscript for his unfinished work “The Art of Friendship,” and it provides the earliest memories of Prescott, who was Havistock’s boyhood friend. Havistock and Prescott met at the residential boy’s school St. Andrews in Dublin, New Hampshire, in 1876, and Prescott provided the less athletic and more effete Havistock with not only friendship but also protection from the bullying of the other boys. Later, Prescott founded his own school and based it on his experiences at St. Andrews, including his interactions with its headmaster, Dr. Howell. Prescott’s Justin Martyr school became totally unlike St. Andrews, a place he abhorred.

After attending Balliol College, Oxford, Prescott goes to work for the Vanderbilt family’s New York Central railroad in New York City. He joins the city’s social world and falls in love with a rich young woman, Eliza Dean, daughter of a senator from the West. Fearing that she would not be the best partner for someone starting up a new school, Havistock persuades Eliza to give him up. After breaking off their engagement, Prescott leaves the business world and goes to Harvard Divinity School in a preparatory move toward founding a school for boys based on Christian principles. Later, Havistock is responsible for encouraging Prescott in his attachment to Harriet Winslow, a more suitable helpmeet for a schoolmaster.

Aspinwall’s second source is the notes recorded by David Griscam, a wealthy New York lawyer, graduate of Justin Martyr, and now chair of the school’s board of trustees. Griscam also had planned a biography of Prescott. Griscam’s knowledge of Prescott spans the years from when he was a student and later when, as a member of the board of trustees, he persuaded his old friend to enlarge the modest school he had founded, thus doubling its size and considerably expanding the school’s physical plant. The expansion created a loss of intimacy the smaller school provided, but it also enlarged the scope of Prescott’s fame.

Aspinwall also receives information from Prescott’s three daughters, Harriet Kidder, the eldest; Cordelia Turnbull, the youngest; and Evelyn Homans, the middle child. They provide an insider view of the great man, as Prescott was often called. Cordelia’s perspective is perhaps the most revealing because her memories include a brief interlude with another pupil, the disillusioned World War I veteran Charley Strong, whose religious life Prescott had saved while he visited him and Cordelia in Paris after the war, and just before Charley died of his wounds. Prescott even let Cordelia read the single chapter of Strong’s memoirs, the rest of which he had destroyed. These various biographical sources conclude with the memoir of Jules Griscam, David’s son, who had been thrown out of Justin, had failed at Harvard, and finally died an alcoholic suicide in the south of France. His expulsion and his subsequent life were both an affront to everything his father and Prescott stood for.

Aspinwall gathers multiple views of Prescott as minister, educator, and family man. The group portrait is supplemented by various journal entries from Aspinwall’s diary, as he pieces together Prescott’s past life and observes his present one, following him through the end of his active control of Justin Martyr to his death some years later. It is a composite portrait only loosely tied together by Aspinwall.

Bibliography

Bryer, Jackson R. Louis Auchincloss and His Critics: A Bibliographical Record. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1977. This bibliographical record lists criticism about Auchincloss’s writings and career. Dated but still helpful for its perspective.

Dahl, Christopher C. LouisAuchincloss. New York: Frederick Ungar, 1986. The first book-length study of Auchincloss’s work. Examines his novels and stories and offers a balanced view of his accomplishments. Of special interest is the investigation of the boundaries between Auchincloss’s fiction and fact, in which possible historical antecedents are noted for characters and plot.

Gelderman, Carol. Louis Auchincloss: A Writer’s Life. 1993. Rev. ed. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2007. A good biography that addresses the events and contradictions of Auchincloss’s life and career. Includes photographs and an index.

Milne, Gordon. The Sense of Society: A History of the American Novel of Manners. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1977. This study provides an overview of the American novel of manners, with a chapter devoted to Auchincloss, in which his characterizations and prose style are examined.

Parsell, David B. Louis Auchincloss. Boston: Twayne, 1988. This book is another brief study of the author’s life and writings.

Piket, Vincent. Louis Auchincloss: The Growth of a Novelist. New York: Macmillan, 1991. The study traces the development of Auchincloss as a writer.