Murder most civilized - group of professors who attempted to drive Oxford colleague to suicide - Editorial

National Review, Dec 19, 1994 by John O'Sullivan

It is mystery fiction in the classic mold, set in an Oxford college and with a murder plot worthy of Dorothy Sayers or P. D. James. But it is not fictional.

In his memoirs, Sir Kenneth Dover, the distinguished classicist and former head of Corpus Christi, Oxford, recounts that he had come to regard Dr. Trevor Aston, historian and fellow of Corpus Christi, as a thorough nuisance: half mad, drunk by mid-morning, abusive to students, staff, and colleagues. Thus: "One morning he staggered out of his urine-soaked bed, fell down some stairs, shouted at two cleaners who tried to help him, made his way to the porter's lodge (attracting unfriendly looks from members of a conference staying in college) and got the porter to ring for a taxi to take him to Heathrow. But he was too drunk to find his money or his air ticket to Spain. So he returned to his room."

This might have passed unnoticed in some British institutions--the intelligence services spring to mind--but at Oxford even his fellow dons noticed it.

Sir Kenneth could not be sure of ousting him. Some younger fellows might be "irrationally hopeful" (that Aston might reform) "or indiscriminately compassionate." Also, Dr. Aston could appeal to the college visitor, the Bishop of Winchester, who might be irrationally hopeful or indiscriminately compassionate too.

Professor Dover called a meeting of senior fellows. "Their sentiment was expressed unanimously, promptly, and ruthlessly: We have got to get rid of the man." But how?

It was a ticklish question: "How to kill him without getting into trouble." He consulted psychiatrists who had treated Dr. Aston. Their opinion was that a letter threatening to remove his fellowship might push him into suicide. Professor Dover duly wrote such a letter; but Dr. Aston, presumably in a manic phase, noticed only the kind parts. What next?

As so often, the lawyers were no help. Suppose the professor were to do nothing about a suicide threat from Dr. Aston? "The law is not inclined to make things easy for those who plan to cause the death of others," he reflects. "I was warned that a deliberate act of omission could lead to a charge of murder."

Then Professor Dover had a stroke of luck: Dr. Aston re-read his letter and fell into a depression. He later committed suicide.

Now, here is the twist that allows Professor Dover to give this account without fear of arrest. Beside Dr. Aston's bed was an official letter notifying him of divorce proceedings and what the usually glacial Professor Dover describes as "a desperately affectionate letter of farewell to his wife."

But he does not linger on past sorrows. The following day, he recalls, "I cannot say for sure that the sun was shining, but I certainly felt it was."

Some have explained this story as the result of detaching the brain from the heart, reason from emotion. They are misled by Professor Dover's drily brutal style. Underneath, he seems to have been in the grip of an underrated emotion--irritation.

Why was irritation not restrained by morals? Professor Dover, justifying himself, praised the morality of the Greeks who were prepared to sacrifice the individual to the collective. But in pointing back to pre-Christian standards, wrote Libby Purves in the London Times, the professor was also pointing forward to post-Christian morality and its taste for euthanasia.

Voluntary euthanasia, of course. But administered, inevitably, by those new bureaucrats, detached, rational, and made in Professor Dover's image, whom G. K. Chesterton foresaw:

"They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes/ They look at our labor and laughter as a tired man looks at flies."

And when another mad, gifted, troublesome Dr. Aston appears, would they even pause to calculate the personal consequences before swatting him?