Headmaster for Life

The Rector of Justin 

by Louis Auchincloss

“I was sophisticated enough to know that the written word is no mirror of the writer’s character, that the amateur, though a selfless angel, may show himself a pompous ass, while the professional, a monster of ego, can convince you in a phrase that he has the innocence of a child. I”   ― Louis Auchincloss, The Rector of Justin

This novel is considered by many to be a modern classic. Whether you share that opinion or not, I believe it certainly represents the author's best work in the genre. Through his skillful use of multiple narrators and viewpoints, he underscores the elusive nature of human truth, necessarily subjective in our individual perspectives, yet ultimately existing in reality no matter how difficult to discern. In his narrative he highlights the inevitable moral blindness implicit in much human endeavor.

The narrative presents the life story of Francis Prescott, from his youth as a schoolboy to his death at age 85. As Dr. Francis Prescott, he is the Rector (headmaster) and founder of the exclusive New England Episcopalian boys' school Justin Martyr (a famous prep school). The multiple narrators' attitudes toward their subject range from veneration to hatred, thus providing a depth of character that infuses the book and elucidates effectively the somewhat larger-than-life central character of the Rector. Through the character, actions, and career of Frank Prescott, Auchincloss shows both the benefits and the dangers of such a character; the dangers are perhaps most evident to Prescott himself who, perceiving the true nature of his accomplishment at the end of his life, honestly believes that he has failed in his appointed task.

Louis Auchincloss, himself a Wall Street attorney and a product of Groton, among the most eminent of American preparatory schools, has often used such schools in his fiction to help delineate the background formation of his characters. Never before or since, however, has he so successfully presented the implicit irony, or even absurdity, of the existence in the United States of an educational alternative frankly based on the elitist British public school yet ostensibly dedicated to the ideals of democracy. The book is both well written and compulsively readable, and a fine introduction to this modern author. If you enjoy this novel I would recommend Auchincloss's short stories.