George Passant

George Passant (Strangers and Brothers, 2) C. P. Snow Open Road Integrated Media (ISBN: 9781504096966) 2024, first published 1940.

Summary: A charismatic young solicitor gathers a group of mentees. Business schemes with two others lead to fraud charges.

“And so with the others of George’s group … George had set us moving, lent us money: he never seemed to think twice of lending us money … It was the first time we had been near to a generous-hearted man. We became excited over the books he told us to read and the views he stood by … We were carried away by his belief in human beings and ourselves.“

And so we are introduced to the central character, George Passant, of the second of C.P. Snow’s “Strangers and Brothers” series, held together by its narrator, Lewis Eliot, whose career we trace in the course of the series. [The novel is actually the first to be written and carried the title Strangers and Brothers until Snow developed the series, using that for the series name and retitling this book after its main character.]

George Passant is the charismatic young solicitor, working as the manging clerk of Eden and Martineau, a law firm in a small town. Beginning in the 1920’s, he gathered a group of students from a nearby school where he was a lecturer, including Lewis Eliot. He was generous with his ideas, his funds, and his support of their budding careers. He was also profligate in sexual matters, both with some women in the group as well as prostitutes. The group gathers at cafes, in each others’ flats, and overnights at a farm they rent out.

One of the group, Jack Cotery, became his special cause. Cotery is an apprentice at a newspaper. The publisher’s son, Roy Calvert, develops a crush on Jack. Therefore, when father finds out, he withdraws support for printers’ training at the college. George responds with outrage, and against the counsel of friends, defends Jack with the scholarship board. He wins a partial victory but makes enemies and undermines his prospects to advance to partner at Eden and Martineau.

However, he persists with the group, and gives Jack as much support as he can as Cotery undertakes various business ventures. We’re now into the 1930’s. Eliot’s career has taken off in London. But Jack and George are still back in small town England. George has aspirations for so much more, financially and with the group, where his life is. Jack brings him an opportunity to do that. Martineau has had a religious awakening and not only is selling off his interest in the firm, but an ad agency with an advertising newspaper that is his side hustle. He overstates the circulation, and because of his reputation, no one questions the numbers.

Olive Calvert, Roy’s sister, who is in a relationship with Jack, also joins the effort. They recruit investors and the business flourishes sufficiently to consider a second venture. They decide to acquire the farm, both for the use of the group and as a hostel. All is going well until one of the investors accuses them of fraud based on the advertising newspaper’s inflated circulation figures. Eliot, becomes their lawyer, and at the insistence of Eden, becomes co-counsel with his old supervisor, Herbert Getliffe.

Not only is some of the evidence indicative of intent to defraud. Both testimony, and a diary of George’s reveal compromising moral goings-on, for which the farm provided cover. All this leads Eliot to reassess his mentor. A good part of the book covers the preparation for and trial of the three.

Reading this book made me think of C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man and particularly the phrase “men without chests.” Lewis used this to describe the debilitating effect of moral relativism on intelligent and ambitious people:

“You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful” [The Abolition of Man (New York: Touchstone, 1996), p. 37].

This is an apt description of the people we meet in George Passant. They do not lack in intelligence, sophistication, charisma, or drive. There is competence without character. They seem to live in a world where all is gray. It’s a world lacking in color. And yet, Snow offers a fascinating exploration of a group of people navigating just such a world.