The Rector of Justin

by Louis Auchincloss

Regarded as one of Louis Auchincloss's most accomplished novels, THE RECTOR OF JUSTIN centers on Frank Prescott, the founder of an exclusive school for boys. Eighty years of his life unfold through the observations of six narrators, each with a unique perspective on the man, his motivations, and the roots of his triumphs and failings.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Classics, American, Education, Literature, Literary Fiction

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Louis Stanton Auchincloss was an American novelist, historian, and essayist.

Among Auchincloss's best-known books are the multi-generational sagas The House of Five Talents, Portrait in Brownstone, and East Side Story. Other well-known novels include The Rector of Justin, the tale of a renowned headmaster of a school like Groton trying to deal with changing times, and The Embezzler, a look at white-collar crime. Auchincloss is known for his closely observed portraits of old New York and New England society.

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author of The Rector of Justin, Louis Auchincloss, is the last novelist of “Old Money” in America, and may be considered as the inheritor of the tradition of Henry James and Edith Wharton. He possesses neither the genius of James nor the subtlety of Wharton, but he writes with clarity, builds an exemplary novel, and—being a product of Old Money himself (of the New York variety)—explores a world he knows well with an affection tempered by understanding.

The Rector of Justin presents us with the life of the founder of St. Justin Martyr, a prestigious East Coast Episcopal school, a man who presides as headmaster (“rector”) for more than half a century. Because Auchincloss attended Groton School--alma mater of Dean Acheson, Averell Harriman, Teddy Roosevelt's four sons, their cousin Franklin, and others—it is assumed the model for Rector Francis Prescott is Endicott Peabody, founder and rector of Groton for fifty-six years. (Auchincloss, however, has said that many of the biographical details—particularly Prescott's family of three daughters--were inspired by the life of Justice Learned Hand.)

Whatever the origins, Francis Prescott is a compelling portrait of a Christian Humanist in the mold of Dr. Thomas Arnold, a man who believes that great literature illuminated by firm faith--and with a little football thrown in--offers a sound basis for education. His character is presented warts and all: he is prideful, stubborn, occasionally persisting in rash decisions motivated more by personal dislike than principle. All in all, though, he is a man who strives to be good and genuinely loves his students and his school. Indeed, he loves them so blindly he comes to believe that his worldly graduates--the businessmen and lawyers who sit on Justin's board--esteem faith and literature as much as he does. At the end of the book, Prescott becomes wiser . . . and sadder.

One of the best things about this book is glimpses it offers into a world now so far removed from us that it seems almost as fantastic as Tolkien: a world where oldsters mourn the passing of the art of “cutting someone dead” in the street, and friendships can be fashioned from a mutual love for Attic Greek and a loathing for the verses of Tennyson.

Although the naivete of the principal narrator--an earnest young teacher preparing a Prescott biography—becomes a bit wearisome at times, Auchincloss excites his reader's interest by his sharp portrayal of outsiders, many of whom tell their own stories: the fey, expatriate old schoolmate of the rector, the scholarship student who takes the rap for his affluent friend, certain it will make his career, and the board member's son who sincerely loves literature and art and who sees how full of posture and pretense a muscular Christian Humanism can be.

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Rector is passé.

So it was with me in the Workplace. A Dutch boy with his finger in the Dike!

Après moi, le Déluge: so the old hidebound Rector thinks… as he guides the reader into a labyrinth of underground old-fashioned subtleties and veilleties.

My own subtleties were only zingers over the bemused heads of my senior managers. They chuckled at me.

Until they saw a certain software giant had pulled the wool over their unwary myopic eyes. They had been buying a cheap pig in a poke to solve their logistics problems. They had been had.

We introverted aspies can be Cassandras, by giving you food for thought!

And this novel will keep You thinking for sure, in its intense but downplayed irony, for it is the Testament of a War-weathered Past Time now Outwitted by our Idiotic Inanity, Surpassed by our Stupidity, and now as thankfully Dead to some as a Dimwitted Dodo.

Only the rector thinks things thoroughly through. He refuses to go with the flow.

The Rector of Justin Prep School is a man of the straight and narrow path of hard-won personal achievement, from a time when personal Pride Still MATTERED (by the way, you really should read the sports bio of that name, about the unconquerable NFL coach Vince Lombardi!)

He has been Rector of Justin since Adam was in Penny Loafers, and he’s not about to relinquish it easily.

Like this slow, thoughtful novel itself, he is an upright, thoughtful man of Outstanding Achievement.
***

This book moves slowly through your mind like an old Dark River.

It takes its time, and it pulls its punches till the time reaches its fulfillment. It sweeps you through its subtle secrets like a placid Paddle-wheeled Riverboat travelling sedately down the Mississippi.
***

But None of us is getting any younger.

Look at me and my Dad…

In his 100th year my old Dad, too, has slowed down with late-onset dementia - much like my younger self when cursed (or blessed?) with bipolar illness. When each of us came to his own respective crunch, we saw our Shadow.

We were convicted.

Hospitalized at the age of twenty, I was made to see the shadow of evil in MYSELF. It made my now-too-human soul more balanced in the end.

The Rector hasn’t yet seen his. He is blind to his pride - the fabled downfall of King Oedipus - his "hamartia." Spry in his advancing years, he still speaks carefully and reservedly as an ammo tech in a minefield. His talking is always calculated for maximum effect.

Your shadow, though, when seen, will give you endless humility.

But the Rector ploughs the soil more obdurately and still carefully, just as he sows the teeth of young dragons, like Hercules did in days of old:

So that their seeds may some day sprout into Noble, stubbornly never-say-die warriors like himself!

But Never say die, Rector, whether Right... or WRONG?

And When will you finally pull the plug, and retire?

Sometimes you’ve gotta draw the line, and let it all go!!!

For pensioned retirement is now a rare victory.

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

The American prep school experience is the subject of Louis Auchincloss’s 1965 novel The Rector of Justin. The eponymous rector founds a school to produce an end product of comprehensible human import: young men of character who understand certain values like responsibility, discernment, and integrity. He fails utterly because, well, times were changing. The emerging corporate world did not need character, it needed high expectations which can be ’sold’ as valuable in themselves to others in order to both motivate and enrich. Auchincloss knew that the world he had been brought up in was dying. And he saw the implications for the future, not just for education but for what we casually call civilisation.

See here for a review in larger context: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

[Cindy Rollins · Rating 4 out of 5]

What if at the end of your life you looked back and saw that the kingdom you had formed was nothing at all like what you imagined it would be, in fact, it lays crumbling at your feet? Is that a life worth living?

Frank Prescott is the larger-than-life progenitor of a New England Preparatory School who shapes the school and the boys
by the force of his personality, a force that cannot possibly be passed down.

In The Rector of Justin a young protege of Prescott, Aspinwall, details the stories of Frank's life as they come to him from
various sources.

It is a fascinatingly woven story which ends where it must end with Prescott seeing his life work not as the magnificent kingdom he thought he was building but rather as the work done in individual hearts here and there over the years. Is that a life
worth living? The answer: Yes.

Even when all our critics turn out to be right, there is a kingdom whose builder and maker is God and that defies them
all, which is probably why we should be very careful in judging another man's servant.

This book is popular among readers of David Hicks's Norms and Nobility. It answers the question David poses, "What is a teacher?" with the sobering reminder that a teacher is a human just like the student.

[ALLEN · Rating 4 out of 5]

The correct title for this 1964 Louis Auchincloss novel is indeed THE RECTOR OF JUSTIN, though some listings, through some kind of ecclesial muddle, would have it "Vicar," which is wrong. Some people draw easy analogies between the novels of Louis Auchincloss and his generational forebear, J.P. Marquand, but I think that's misleading: while both plumbed the northeastern upper middle class, Marquand was given to genre novels (think of the "Mr. Moto" series), some longer, quite thoughtful novels, and of course the flashfire fame of his 1937 bestseller, THE LATE GEORGE APLEY. Auchincloss's output runs more to standard-length novels that are neither chest-crushers nor movie-ready.

THE RECTOR OF JUSTIN is a good old-fashioned novel with good old-fashioned virtues, about a boy's school headmaster who performs his duties faithfully and honorably, and generally quite successfully. As such it is neither a send-up nor a celebration, nor is it loaded with fail, abuse or extraneous political interpolation. As an author, Auchincloss was certainly familiar with satire (see his DIARY OF A YUPPIE, for example) but here he plays it straight. The qualities of dignity, stability and of course darn good writing make this a very, very good novel and for a while I thought we were going to lose it. Fortunately, it's back in print again. And despite my sedate review, it is anything but boring.

Here's a link to an appreciative 2008 review by Jonathan Yardley, in the WASHINGTON POST:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/...

[Albert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those novels that has been sitting on my shelves for many years, transported from one home to another, but never read. Sometimes when this happens what I eventually pull from the shelf is a great discovery; this one was good but not great.

It is the story of Francis (Frank) Prescott who created a college preparatory school 30 miles west of Boston. I was always intrigued growing up by the college preparatory schools in the northeast United States. The idea of leaving your family and going away to school was both scary and exciting, not that it was ever an opportunity for me. Frank Prescott wanted to create a school that surpassed all the others: one that would set a new standard. In many ways he succeeded, but late in life he finds he must reassess what he has and has not accomplished.

Justin Martyr is a church-based school, therefore, there is a sizeable dose of religious thought and content that comes with the story. I did not find myself enjoying this aspect of the novel. This is not generally true for me; I have read other novels that focused on religion and religious thought that I enjoyed very much, so it was more about how it was done in this novel. I do believe religion needed to be an integral part of the story.

Overall, the story was at times slow. While there was significant depth to the characters, none of them appealed strongly to me. Many of the choices that Frank Prescott must make in developing the school felt very authentic.

[Davis Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one really took me by surprise. I was expecting a quaint, cozy, light, Mr. Chips-like read about an eccentric, lovable schoolmaster who serves as a brilliant mentor and a paragon of the spirit of classical education. What I actually read was a teeming portrait of a very complex man and his even more complex ambitions. This is a real literary novel in the tradition of quiet chroniclers of American ambiguities like Wharton and Cather, with a rich and supple prose that is a pleasure to read, and an innovative structure that actually works—it seems that that each of the personalities behind the interspersed letters/memoirs represents a different facet of modern vice perhaps corresponding to the deadly sins (Horace = gluttony, Cordelia = lust, Jules = anger, etc.) There are dark/mature themes and tragic intimations (Chapter 15 feels like John Updike has entered the room and is almost too much out of line with the rest of it). It's as much a novel about the decay of the last vestiges of the gentlemanly ideal in the West—and everything that it represents—as it is about education. In that sense, it is a great novel of classical conservatism; a story that ought to stir yearnings in the reader for a life of beauty and cultivation amidst a stable moral order. But like all great literature, it also questions that order in a healthy and probing manner, and forces us to do the same. It very much reminds me of Brideshead Revisited in that sense, and in others as well. But a qualification: this very much falls into line with something like Stegner's Crossing to Safety in that it is intended for the erudite reader who knows the Great Tradition. It is littered with references to literature, music, and art that the reader really should know in order to get the most of it.

I have one concern: Auchincloss doesn't actually show us much of Dr. Prescott's actual educational and theological philosophy. It's mostly about his personal character and interactions with his students, acquaintances, and colleagues. I would really have loved to see more of his intellect at exercise in the pulpit and classroom; it would have given an even more convincing glimpse into his greatness and uniqueness. I can't say I have any idea why Auchincloss made this decision—maybe so that we are only exposed to what Brian sees, knows, and hears about? But overall, this is really, really excellent. I can confidently say it might be one of the more neglected American novels of the last century.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novel was the #6 bestseller in 1964. I had heard of the author, often written about in reverent terms, but had not ever read him. He wrote 31 novels spanning his writing career of 60 years, served as President of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and received the National Medal of Arts.

Because he was known for continuing the tradition of Henry James and Edith Wharton in writing about the 20th century American upper class, I was not drawn to seek him out. I must admit that his writing is good and much smoother reading than James or Wharton has been for me.

The Rector of Justin would fall into the genre of boarding school fiction. A rector is a headmaster and Justin is an Episcopalian boarding school outside Boston. Francis Prescott is its founder and aging rector, fighting off retirement as the world changes around him.

Essentially the novel reveals the Rector's life story through the viewpoints of various people including his oldest friend and his rebellious daughter. Like most people, he has many sides to his personality but since he is such a personage with power over boys aged 12 to 17, as well as having a Board of Directors to appease, all of those sides get full play.

I enjoyed reading the book for the range of decades it covers. Wealth does not ensure good behavior. As the 20th century progressed the exclusivity of Justin was encroached upon by the rising middle class and the loosening morals of the times. Bad behavior is where you find it. An aging man, part authoritarian martinet, part moral fusspot, tempered somewhat by his Christian beliefs, Francis Prescott is a personification of 20th century New England and the uneasy relationship between its social classes.

I would have read this book regardless due to the bestseller list so I was pleased to have learned a few more things about those times and to have been entertained by a variety of unique characters.

[Elizabeth (Alaska) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another of my summer new-to-me authors and quite good. I came to this one because of a review in Second Reading: Notable and Neglected Books Revisited. It is a character study of Dr. Frank Prescott, Episcopalian minister, headmaster and founder of what is supposed to be one of the foremost New England boarding schools for boys. He is a larger than life man who was both revered and hated. We are given six points of view.

This Auchincloss book is sprinkled with literary references from O'Hara (who I had read just prior) to Proust to Austen to the early Greeks and a few in between. If one is to believe that such a pre-collegiate education actually existed in the US - and I believe it once did - these references are entirely appropriate.

There is also a fair amount of religion as one could expect when the purpose is to provide a characterization of a minister. I was surprised at myself for not minding it, at not feeling as if I was being preached to as I often do with such writing.

I am adding so many authors to explore further. I won't promise myself to add Auchincloss to my expanding list. I do think if I tripped across a title at exactly the right time, I'd find a way to fit it in.

[BlackOxford · Rating 5 out of 5]

His best, although the title on my copy includes Rector not Vicar. Perhaps a more Anglican tone is suggested by the latter. In any case this is a book about the fate of all human endeavour: ultimate failure no matter what the motivation. But under Auchicloss's direction this isn't depressing, merely human. The society we inhabit is unavoidably political and draws us all into political compromise incrementally. Our ideals are transformed in the process, often paradoxically to precisely those they opposed. Disaster and tragedy are avoided only because consequences, often beneficial in ways we do not intend and of which we have no awareness, result. Auchincloss is a master of the East Coast upper class and its trials. Incredibly, we are drawn into this world of casually accepted privilege and find that it too includes humane human beings.

[Carol Bakker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this about ten years ago, when it was all the buzz in educational circles. I find that it has improved with age (<-- mine), and yet I would not call it formative or transformational. The closer I get to my expiration, the more I think of the questions raised in this book: how does one define a successful life? Has my life done any good? Have I made a difference?

As the child of a college professor who influenced hundreds of students, I wonder how one weighs the shaping of young lives against the nurture and/or neglect of your own children? As an influencer (in a miniscule corner of the universe), I apply to myself the same questions. Do my offspring have my heart? What if they aren't thriving? Do personal achievements and helping others matter if my own are struggling?

Along the way of philosophical questions are some excellent, stand-alone phrases:

the real tragedy of living too long...is not losing one's health or one's memory or even one's mind; it is losing one's dignity.

frustration is the hardest thing in the world for a woman to make attractive.

he did not trust to the durability of his own magnanimity

my revolt was as hackneyed as the conformity of the majority

If you could transmit some of the beauty of Jane Austen, you would be transmitting a small vision of God.

[Amy Edwards · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m at the point in my life in which my children are beginning to launch, and my oldest have reached adulthood, while I still have children I am actively parenting and educating (as a homeschooling mom). And indeed, The Rector of Justin is a book that examines exactly what I am beginning to wonder: I put my ideals into practice by choosing home education and a particular flavor of that inspired by classical education with the belief that it is the best option and the hope that it will be a blessing to my children that they will value—that it will sink deeply into their souls and become an important part of their spiritual formation, and of the development of virtue in them.

But what will it mean if in fact the outcome is not what I imagine?

Was Frank Prescott’s life work at Justin Martyr worth it? Was it a success even when many students let the riches of education skate over the ice in their heart, so to speak, never letting it take hold? What about his own daughters?
How do we evaluate our lives after living them in service to our beliefs?

I appreciated the book for leading me to wrestle with these questions, but I didn’t give it four stars because I felt frustrated with some of the characters and struggled to stay invested in the back half of the book. Probably the fault is mine.

[Tim McIntosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compelling novel about a mysterious personality. Francis Prescott is the headmaster of a boarding school for boys. The book is told through a series of testimonies written by Prescott's students, family, and coworkers. Some love him, some hate him, all are affected by him.

Auchincloss's style is lucid and bright. And the book reads as a treatise about the power and travails of huge personalities like Prescott's. Can high ideals ever be realizable through a high-minded school like Justin Martyr? A primer on the hopes and disappointments of anyone committed to spiritual education.

[Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful novel

Although I have been aware of this book for many years, I can not believe I never read it until urged to do so by a Goodreads friend to whom I am very grateful. It was a wonderful reading experience.

[Unbridled · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Rector of Justin is as exquisite, refined, and quietly intelligent as the society it describes. Genius? No, there is no radiance here, but what would we read if we read for geniuses only? Even the majority of geniuses are only capable of one book of genius - with minor constellations circling and illuminating the singular consequence. More fundamentally, geniuses are rarely born of the society Auchincloss describes. Still, is the book brilliant? Brilliantly fulfilled? Yes. I was not committed to its brilliance until Cordelia's section(s), when the narrative took flight for my imagination. Auchincloss's prose is clean and excellent (ever the lawyer); he is a 'type' of writer, a writer of his class, more cerebral than inspirational, but an excellent story teller, much like Edith Wharton and Henry James, both of whom he happens to hold in high regard (an opinion which I wholly agree with). It is no coincidence that Auchincloss wrote of a society that still limps along in an America where it once held a social and financial monopoly. Namely, the elite WASP establishment, when/where it was still not okay to be Catholic, much less Jewish, in the most powerful and exclusive social-industrial circles of yore. It's hard for people to understand what these people are like unless they grew up within or upon the fringes of the East coast establishment - truly America's only sustained aristocracy, the so-called blue-blood Protestant family lines that proudly trace themselves to the very founding of the country. People of 'new' wealth can (and do) buy (marry) into these social circles, now more than ever, but they will always be considered inferior to the bluest-blooded among them. Returning to Auchincloss's writing, true to the blue-blood mien, he withholds excess (emotion) and pursues refinement as a 'moral' choice; to his credit, he never becomes cold. This is because he is, ultimately, an artist - and as a man of the arts, he is by default, by choice, among the 'vulgar,' those who feel deepest, and those who feel the need to share their art with the public at large. This has the desirable effect of drawing in a reader who might not otherwise care about the nature of the material. What is that material? Why Frank Prescott, of course, the rector of Justin, a fictional character who is one of the great accomplishments of (late) 20th century American fiction. Loosely based upon the legendary Endicott Peabody, founder of Groton, where Franklin Roosevelt went to school, where the Averell Harrimans of the world sent their progeny to school; and where, of course, Auchincloss went to school (relation, Gore Vidal, went to St. Albans). To this day there exists a mild controversy (milder with time) about just how much of Frank Prescott is based upon Endicott Peabody. Groton alumni were not happy with Auchincloss after the book's publication. Why? This is something that is better understood the better you understand the society from which it rises (the "rich are different from you and me"). Auchincloss himself would later say that Prescott was an amalgamation of many famous headmasters of private schools and that as much as anyone (physically, in particular), he modeled Prescott on the great judge, Learned Hand, whom he knew personally. Given my personal admiration for Learned Hand (pshaw to Cardozo), I find this book all the more irresistible. I've rambled on now and said little about the book, so I will end it here by recommending it with enthusiasm, even if you read a summary of the book and think to yourself that you would never find the content interesting. If you're a milquetoast eater, that may be so (Brillat-Savarin: "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are"), but if you're adventurous and curious enough to read about something you know nothing about and have no special interest in, you will find a masterly experience within the pages of this book. If you're actually curious about this society, this book is worthy of sitting on the same shelf with your Wharton and James.

[Núria · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘El rector de Justin’ de Louis Auchincloss es una novela con una clara influencia de Henry James, ya que tiene bastante del aire intelectual, serio y reflexivo de James. Es casi una novela de ideas y habla de temas como religión, fe, valor, honor, vanidad, sinceridad, etc. Pero es también una novela que retrata un mundo que ya ha desaparecido, el de los colegios privados religiosos de Nueva Inglaterra, pero por extensión también retrata el mundo de las clases dirigentes americanas de finales del siglo XIX y primera mitad del siglo XX. De hecho, parece que una de las principales intenciones de esta novela es describir el progresivo proceso de extinción de este mundo. Es por tanto, una obra que no se podría escribir hoy, casi algo pasada de moda, pero esto es también parte de su encanto.

Afortunadamente la pretenciosidad que podría desprenderse a priori de un planteamiento tan sesudo queda anulada por la capacidad de crear personajes complejos e interesantes y también porque Auchincloss tiene el suficiente buen oficio como para no ser nunca categórico ni sentencioso, es decir, de plantear preguntas pero nunca dar las respuestas. Por otra parte, el aire demodé que tiene la novela también queda compensado porque en el fondo habla de temas universales y lo hace de una forma que engancha al lector. ‘El rector de Justin’ se centra en la figura de Frank Prescott, el fundador y director de Justin, un elitista internado para chicos. Prescott es un hombre idolatrado por antiguos alumnos, una leyenda ejemplar, un modelo de conducta, pero el problema está en que el hombre real no está a la altura de esta leyenda que se ha creado a su alrededor: es egocéntrico y manipulador, vanidoso y algo tirano, pero todo de una forma sutil.

Uno de los grandes aciertos de la novela es que está narrada por distintos narradores (un viejo amigo, varios antiguos alumnos, una de sus hijas, compañeros de trabajo, etc.) que conocieron a Frank Prescott en diferentes momentos de su vida, y dan su visión subjetiva sobre el hombre en cuestión. Hay algunos que lo idolatran y otros que lo detestan, pero tanto en un caso como en el otro, como lectores, nos damos cuenta de que sólo nos están dando una visión distorsionada del hombre real y es tarea de los lectores leer entre líneas, recomponer el rompecabezas y averiguar cómo era realmente Frank Prescott.

La historia empieza cuando un joven profesor, apocado e inseguro, llega a Justin y le es encomendada indirectamente la tarea de escribir la biografía de Prescott. Lo que tenemos los lectores no es la biografía que escribe éste joven profesor sino el diario en que explica su día a día y una serie de materiales escritos por otros personajes que conocieron a Prescott y que este joven profesor va recopilando. La gracia está en que, además de subjetivos, todos estos narradores muchas veces acaban hablando más de ellos mismos que de Prescott, y resulta que son personajes con tantos matices que a veces acaban incluso siendo más interesantes que el propio Prescott, lo cual quizás es un inconveniente, aunque quizás sea todo lo contrario.

[Nooilforpacifists · Rating 4 out of 5]

As always, Auchincloss is the master painter of early 20th Century WASPs. This book is organized as diary excerpts. But that allows the author to deviate from his dry as dust style by allowing two women to appear. They do so mainly through the pages of diaries that the unworldly Rector of Justin begins to accumulate in hopes of writing a biography of the Arnold-like headmaster of his days as a student and again when he returned to teach English, then—once ordinated—“sacred studies.” Sacred, as in high-Church Anglican.

But the Rector, our narrator except for the extensive diary entries, is conflicted between fealty to the headmaster, on the on hand, and fealty to the school on the other. The best sentence: “Is it possible that the acquisitiveness of the collector has reached such a pitch that I would rather have the relic than the saint?” That this greed is a sin, much less a deadly one, tells much about mid-century-Anglicans.

Yet Auchincloss has the perfect brushstroke. The only work of his I prefer is his short fiction about life at his law firm. Which is all the more worthwhile because it was written when law was a profession, not a cash register.

[Graychin · Rating 4 out of 5]

“There is no real distinction between the pulpit and the classroom,” writes Louis Auchincloss in The Rector of Justin (1964), and perhaps that’s always been true. The teaching profession certainly presents itself today as a vocation for would-be evangelists. I see billboards around town for a teacher certification program at a local college enticing new enrollees to “teach the change you want to see in the world.” God help us, I say to myself when I consider the applicants likely to be inspired by that slogan.

But in fact I nearly became a high school teacher myself once, and I still wonder if I might have found a more rewarding career in that direction. It was almost twenty years ago. I was accepted into a graduate teaching program and was only prevented from enrolling by the caution flag of a pink line on my wife’s over-the-counter pregnancy test. “Is it really wise just now to take on new school debt?” it seemed to ask. “And can you really support a family on a public school teacher’s salary?”

It’s just as well, I’m sure. I might have had a good run for a while but by now, with retirement still years off, I’d have found myself in trouble with the administration for my inability to comply with the agenda of the New Puritanism.

Back to Auchincloss. What an exemplary novel The Rector of Justin is, and how finely drawn is the character of Frank Prescott, headmaster of the fictional New England boys school St Justin Martyr. Auchincloss gives us Frank Prescott not as Prescott sees himself or through the mediation of an omniscient narrator, but as he is seen by others, in the journals and memoirs and conversation of former students, family members, and acquaintances. He draws Prescott the way my childhood art teacher sometimes made me sketch portraits: from the outside, by describing the shapes and shadows of the space around the subject until its essential form is revealed.

The method of The Rector of Justin is something like hagiography, but is Auchincloss writing the life of a fictional saint? Not in the way we’re used to thinking about sainthood. Frank Prescott’s high ambitions are never really severable from his mistakes, inadequacies, and contradictory impulses. His achievements (beyond those measured in bricks and donors’ gifts) are hard to gauge; the toll of his failures is more apparent. But if sanctity is achievable by special tenacity without special grace, then perhaps it’s “St Frank Prescott” after all. “With you and me faith will always be a matter of exercise,” Prescott says to a friend. “But the faith that you work for is just as fine as the faith that is conferred.”

I once heard a story told by a Catholic high school teacher who periodically asked priests to come and address his class. Most of these were of the “Fr. Cool” variety. They used slang, threw out pop-culture references, and generally tried to make the Church relevant to the interests and fashions of the young; one even brought a skateboard. The students seemed to enjoy these visits. But one day the teacher invited a different sort of priest. He made no attempt to meet the kids “where they were.” Instead, his message was: “Christ is real. Sin is real, and holiness is real. Every single one of you is called to be a saint. Take that calling seriously!”

He talked this way for a half hour. The room was silent and no one asked questions. Then the bell rang and they all went home for the weekend. In the classroom next week the teacher apologized for inviting the priest. He’d never meant to make these visits such heavy occasions, he explained. Then a student raised his hand and said that, in fact, this was the only guest priest who had made an impression on him. He’d spent all weekend thinking about what the priest had said. Could they invite him back again? It turned out the whole classroom felt the same way. “These kids didn’t really care about the sort of ‘relevance’ I assumed was important to them,” the teacher said. “They just needed to know they had a vocation as Christians.”

Perhaps that’s something to differentiate human beings from other animals: the need for a calling. Have you noticed that almost no one – especially no one with any pretensions to being educated or enlightened – is satisfied with a simple “job” anymore? It’s not enough to have a job, a career, or even a profession; everyone wants a vocation. Even in business and industry, where metaphysical considerations used to nap from 9 to 5, people want a sense of calling, the conviction that the work they’re doing serves a higher purpose, a transcendent goal. The preacher-teachers of today are really no different from others in this respect.

The Christian faith used to provide that calling to most of us in the West. Some answered it in a special way through the priesthood or the consecrated life, but everyone was summoned, and everything was subsumed into that calling: our inward life, our family life, our community life, our life as citizens, and our work: even the most menial job, when undertaken for Christ’s sake, became a means of working out your eternal salvation.

The old faith is waning still and there’s an unmistakable note of desperation in the public square. As someone devoted (however imperfectly) to that older calling, I can’t help but shudder at the fashionable and distorted alternatives that so many of my colleagues and neighbors will accept in its place, and the fervor with which they pursue them. But I recognize the longing and the insufficiency in themselves that they feel.

4.5 stars

[Virginia · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There's got to be some limit to what's demanded of the old. We have to step down when we still feel able to go on. We have to keep out of the way of our children. We have to avoid embarrassing youth with the reminder of what it will come to."

[Jessi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love school books but this one isn't my favorite. I follow a podcast (Close Reads by the CiRCE Institute) who discussed this book recently. I'm going to try to listen to a few more of the episodes to hear what other people love in this.

[Sally · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my second time through this book, although I must not have been on GoodReads the first time I read it. It is still an enigmatic book, so I was grateful to listen in to the podcast discussion and have the chance to consider it more deeply.

This is the story of a man who achieves his life goal, to establish a school for boys, and the ways he is viewed by others in his life: a devoted admirer, a longtime friend, a business associate, his daughter. Sifting through their accounts leaves one wondering who the true man is, and how we ourselves will be regarded when our lives close.

[John_g · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started this famous book expecting to be disappointed and I was.

The story describes the elite world looking out from a prep school in the late 19th and early 20th Century. Few details were meaningful for me, whose own high school was similarly all boys, private, religious although decades later. On a grand level, yes, it's true about sermons and often-excessive discipline. Yes boys make mistakes which are forgiven or forgotten, but his message doesn't get past cliches and infatuation with society and moneyed families. Unlike historical fiction, dramatic historic events are ignored or put in deep background while he ponders morality, society, and the power of moneyed elite families sending their spoiled boys for prep school discipline.

The narrator admits the writing's sloppy diary nature and at end claims he'll correct but never does, leaving this as epistolary novel, just a diary filled with literary allusions. Style is throwback to Samuel Richardson (d. 1761) which does not rescue his old-fashioned style.
The author is unable to elucidate the themes of the 20th Century, so muddies them with anecdotal low-drama stories about questionably-fair school boy discipline, family tragedies, bad marriages. A little drama at end when Griscam confronts the protagonist (Dr.P) about money vs populism, but such themes are barely touched.
Dr.P is a sermonizing minister whom most would ignore. He is provocative because his opinions are doubtful, as he recognizes himself, but doesn't resolve. He just regrets his doubts and forgives himself as he forgives everyone. He may claim to hate Jules, but there's no drama, there's no one on his wavelength. Certainly not the narrator who meekly copies down events in his hagiography.

Example of Dr.P's opinions being inaccurate: it wasn't the carpetbaggers who sold out victory after civil war. Carpetbaggers were part of Radical Reconstruction who were reformers on behalf of blacks. They soon fell to Democratic politicians who tolerated KKK's return.

[Capítulo IV]

"Como indica su título, toda esta novela gira en torno a un solo hombre: Francis Prescott, rector del colegio episcopaliano St. Justin Martyr. Ahora bien, no se trata de una biografía al uso, de estructura lineal, centrada en contar las acciones más relevantes de su protagonista. El autor opta por una estrategia narrativa más interesante: parte de un personaje inicialmente ajeno al mundo de Justin –Brian Aspinwall, nuevo profesor de literatura– para recopilar, desde su mirada ingenua, un elenco de testimonios sobre el doctor Prescott". Más en https://capitulocuarto.com/2019/05/29...

[M.G. Bianco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leigh Bortins and others had recommended this book to me. David Hicks also mentions it in his book, Norms and Nobility. I finally got around to reading this Thanksgiving weekend.

I must say I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. It is a peaceful read, not a lot of excitement or intensity. It is not the 'plot' that drives the story, rather the curiosity of the character from whose perspective the book is written. The story is primarily communicated through Aspinwall's journal entries. However, once he determines to write the biography of the rector of Justin, Dr. Frank Prescott, he begins collecting material from others. Some of the chapters are his sharing their material with the reader. Most of the other chapters are his journal entries.

Aspinwall has a curious fascination with and love for Dr. Prescott, both of which I would say the reader ends up empathizing with--at least I did. You can't help but want to understand know Dr. Prescott better, just as Aspinwall does.

Louis Auchincloss, the author, is a talented writer. Throughout the book, he ends up writing from the perspective of at least five different characters, ad he does so believably and well.

There is no plot, per se, to share in this review. Like I said, you simply enter into the curiosity of Aspinwall. That alone is worth the read. I'm not sure, however, how to convince you of that in this review.

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auchincloss proves that the intellectual novel can contain sympathetic characters who make speeches and discuss idealogy. Perhaps he wrote at a time when longer attention spans of readers gave his characters the luxury to invest in elaborate discourses on the state of the nation and the states of their hearts and minds.

I recall an initial draft of a novel I wrote in a similar vein which came back from a publisher saying that the characters were wooden and that there was insufficient action and novelty. Oh, I wish I had been writing in Auchinclose's time.

I also observed that the academic world of New England in the early part of the last century was not much different from that of Old England across the pond.


The multiple narrative viewpoints focussing on the central character were very effective in drawing a very complex, conflicted and charismatic character in the Rector of Justin.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have avoided reading this novel for years because the title and description did not sound very interesting. I was mistaken. This is an extremely well-written novel. While Auchincloss is linked with the Henry James and Edith Wharton school of writing novels about the upper classes in the northeast, this novel avoids the omniscient narrator. Instead, the novel consists of what are in effect notes toward the writing of a biography of the said Rector compiled by a faculty member. Auchincloss weaves together diary entries, partial attempts a memoir by others, interview notes, etc. to tell of the Rector's impact on others and his ultimate disillusionment. This method elevates the novel to a 5th Star in my opinion.

[Syntactical Disruptorize · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of Auchincloss's two best works. He was probably the last great novelist of manners, and certainly the best depicter of the upper class of New York. His depiction of Frank Prescott, headmaster of the eponymous boys' prep school, is nuanced and vivid. His triumphs and failures, seen through the eyes of the admiring yet troubled narrator, are all the more epic in scope for being painted on such a small canvas. In the end, headmaster and narrator alike realize that Prescott's influence was neither as strong nor as beneficial as he had hoped, yet the qualified nobility of the attempt is worthy of celebration.

[Mary Ronan Drew · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read The Rector of Justin when I was young and I remember wondering idly which versions of events were the true ones and who was reliable and who not. Then I shrugged and walked away from the novel for 45 years.

This time I've read it with intensity and have worn a new wrinkle in my brow trying to decide half a hundred questions: was Horace wise to talk Eliza out of marrying Frank; did Jules commit suicide; did Griscam manipulate the rector or did the rector manipulate him; did the old man really believe in God; was the rector of the title, perhaps, the primary narrator.

Funny how books change with time . . .

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a heartfelt "biographical" story of a headmaster who has a bigger than life persona & the clerical teacher who was his friend & confidant. There were times it reminded me of `Owen Meany` & times it reminded me of `The Great Santini` in flavor & spirit. I really sailed through it because it was absolutely fascinating.

[Samuel]

This clunker is about "the greatest figure in American secondary education," Francis Prescott, told through the eyes of his students, colleagues, and family members. This aggregate storytelling makes him seem unknowable. While we are constantly made aware of Prescott's greatness and influence, we never really understand why he is held in such esteem. The novel is at pains to show his foibles and mistakes, as if to counter its otherwise glowing portrait, but these come off as gun shy---showing Prescott not as fallible, but as righteous and misunderstood.

Worse, the novel is melodramatic and saccharine, and it is replete with absurd dialogue: "You couldn't face the idea of letting the world see that I was Charley's mistress!" or "[P]oor Day wanted my affection and knew he wasn't getting it, and he accepted this just as he accepted everything else. Just as I'm sure he accepted that last horrible dive into the blue of the Pacific!"

Elsewhere, Auchincloss shows off his lack of imagination. There's a psychoanalyst named Dr. Klaus. The women are mentally ill or rebellious. And there's this chestnut: "Charley had read with passionate interest the first of Proust's novels and had been taken by Mr. Havistock to visit the author in his cork-lined room. I suppose the journal was his own recherche du temps perdu."