THE ANATOMY OF A SUICIDE HAUNTS OXFORD
By Jon dernton - Reproduced from my notes of Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta 1994 on the "Management by human values."
The sentence could have been written by Edgar Allen Pope or Fyodor Dostoyevsky the way it summons the unspeakable in a coldly confessional tone “ But it was clear to me by now that Trevor and the college must somehow be separated. My problem was one which I feel compelled to define with brutal candour: how to kill him without getting into trouble"
The words were not written by a poet trawling the depth of the subconscious and they are not fiction. They are from a newly published autobiography of Sir Kenneth Dover, one of the world’s most renowned classicists. And they describe a series of events that preceded the suicide of a troublesome colleague of Oxford nine years ago
How much responsibility - if any- Sir Kenneth bears for the death of Trevor Aston, a brilliant but erratic historian, is a matter of public debate now that Sir Kenneth’s unconventional autobiography. Marginal Comment has hit the books stores. Excerpts were carried recently in British newspapers.
The chapter dealing with Aston’s suicide from pills and alcohol in October 1985 at the age of 60 stands as a modern morality tale. Some see it as the story of Sir, Kenneth, who was the president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, defending his ancient and beloved institution by dealing firmly with a don who had become unmanageable because of alcoholism and seeming mental illness.
Others see it as a case in which the president – fed up with all the problems and aware of the dean’s despondency and a recent suicide attempt – pushed him to the brink by writing a letter expressing the college’s disapproval of Aston’s conduct at a time when his marriage was collapsing and he was particularly vulnerable.
Even those closely involved in the problems Aston was causing admit to being shocked by the icy detachment of the language and, apparently, the feelings of Sir, Kenneth, a scholar whose works on ancient Greece are read by students throughout the work. He has retired and is now 74, and lives in Fife, Scotland.
“ The intellectual normally values reason above all”, said James Howard- Johnston, lecturer in Byzantine studies at Corpus Christi. “ Dover demonstrates that reason divorced from emotion becomes cold, clinical, and ahuman”.
The author admits to being aware of Aston’s long and troubled psychiatric history. He admits to fantasizing about Aston’s death, consulting a lawyer to see if he would be legally at risk if he ignored a suicide call, and not going to investigate Aston’s room at the college after a colleague expressed concern the night Aston died. Sir Kenneth also admits to a disturbing sense of relish the day afterward.
Aston’s fellow of the college who began teaching there in 1952, showed promise for a distinguished career. He was a college librarian, university archivist, and editor of the official history of a journal, Past and Present.
“He was a central figure in the life of the college through the “70s and 80”, said Howard-Johnston. “ He didn’t publish enough to be a great historian, but he could match any of them in conversation. He was a strong personality, a daunting figure. But then the problem began with mood swings and with drinking.
To Sir Kenneth, who was President of Corpus Christi for 10 years beginning in 1976, and to others there- Aston was a pest and an embarrassment. There were squabbles over his housing threats of lawsuits, disrupted meetings, and drunk scenes at “high table”, the nightly dining ritual of Oxford colleges,” We could not have him lurching around the quad in front of the undergraduates or using violent language in the hearing of guests or visitors” Sir Kenneth wrote.
“ I am 100 percent behind Kenneth”, said Brian Harrison, a history fellow, and tutor at the college. “ It’s astonishing he bore it all those years. Even knowing that Aston was a manic depressive, you can’t hold up the operations of a college with 300 people in it. For Dover to say he wanted Trevor dead - well it’s like Henry II with Beckett. You say “Goodness, will no one rid me of this man? and the knights went off and did it.
In his account of his behavior toward Aston, Sir Kenneth uses the word “conscience” only when he is fantasizing about what would happen if he rejected a plea for help from Aston in the throes of an overdose and in wondering what he would tell the authorities.
“ I had no qualms about causing the death of a fellow from whose non-existence the college would benefit, but balked at the prospect of misleading a coroner’s jury”, he wrote.
Sir Kenneth sent Aston a chiding letter, and, in a final confrontation, informed him that a decision sometime earlier to renew his seven-year fellowship was not unanimous but head squeaked through by a slim margin. Aston was upset and shouted: “You are trying to push me out of the college”. Sir Kenneth wrote that he did not deny it.
A few days later, on the night of October 15, Sir Kenneth was telephoned by a friend who was concerned by Aston’s behaviors and warned that he might be contemplating suicide. The college president telephoned Aston’s doctor, but the two of them decided to take no action.
In a telephone interview, Sir Kenneth contended that it was a notice of impending divorce proceedings from his second wife that drove Aston to suicide, not any thing Sir Kenneth had done. “ It wasn’t I who resolved it”, he insisted. “What I said in the book was that I contemplated the possibility of causing this death by an act of omission. But that wasn’t in fact how things turned out”.
The moral, he said, is that “ there is a dilemma when one is weighing the duty of compassion to an individual with the well-being of an institution”
And he said he was surprised at “ all the fuss” the book has created. “ The whole point of an autobiography is, to tell the truth, as far as I’m concerned”.
The Times of India, New Delhi
Tuesday, December 6, 1994
Received from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta.
