Last week I finished Louis Auchincloss’ excellent book The Rector of Justin. It chronicles the life of a fictional Episcopal Boys Boarding School and its legendary Headmaster Frank Prescott. If you want a copy it is available at:

Barnes and Noble: The Rector of Justin

You should read it. While reading this book several things shocked me. First, I recognized that this is the only positive portrayal of a Evangelical Christian School Headmaster that I can recall in the history of Western Literature. (I was a quick fan.)

Second, the novel recounts the life of this man through reflections of others—primarily one of his Master Teachers (Masters), and through words written about him by wealthy and shallow board members, rebellious and sometimes repenting students, and by his own wife and daughter. I was both disheartened and paradoxically encouraged by these reflections. Sad, because I know a little of the pain of loss that is recounted. The misunderstandings and disappointments of building an institution. Prescott’s school serves the very wealthy and the very apt (scholarships are given for poor but promising lads). Even in this positive portrayal there is a lot of pain and a lot of regret. Most of the book is done in flashback to earlier times. In the book’s present, the old Headmaster is retiring and he is struggling with the changes that his successor is making to the school that he built. I was encouraged, however, by someone writing so knowingly about these struggles and I was encouraged by the character of Prescott who continually aims, though flawed, is both a heroic and sympathetic character.

Finally . . .

I was blessed by the resolution of the book. Prescott spent his life building a school. He was watching over it, loving it, and grieved by it at times. He, it seems, finally comes to see a truth that all Headmaster should remember. It is not the buildings that are built and the endowments that are filled that matter. A school, and a man, should be (maybe can only be) measured by the impact that his life has on the life of the people around him—in the case of Prescott, his teachers and his students. This impact, even with the best men (Prescott is a much better man than I), is not all positive. It is sometimes dreadful and sometimes unavoidably dreadful. In some of the saddest stories people are broken not intentionally, but broken still. I found in Prescott a model of a good man who is about my work and I hope that someday I could be counted as one of his kindred spirits.