Letters of C. S. Lewis

by C. S. Lewis

  At my suggestion Mrs Moore has come down here and is staying in rooms near the camp, where I hope she will remain until I go on leave. It is a great relief to get away from the army atmosphere, although for that matter I have been lucky in finding several decent fellows, including even another aspirant for poetical laurels—a most amusing card. It is fine country down here and I am glad that chance has given me its hills and cliffs to walk on. Certainly, if nothing else, the army has shown me some bits of England that I would not otherwise have seen . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from Eastbourne

  [16?] December 1918

  I have already wired to you the dates of my leave: a list of the periods alloted to each of us has been posted up here, and, as was to be expected, the coveted dates which would include Christmas fall to the Majors and Captains et hoc genus omne. If however you can let Warnie know in time, I should think he would have no difficulty in getting his leave postponed. Everyone of course will be trying to get home for Christmas day, and it ought to be easy to change with someone who had got a later date against his will. I quite agree with you that it would be most disappointing if even now our little gathering were broken up.

  Of course I shall be only too pleased if any influence of yours could succeed in getting me a discharge, though at the same time I am afraid it will be a very difficult business. As you have probably seen in the papers, we are to be drafted on our demobilization in ‘Class Z Reserve’ where I suppose we shall remain ready for the next scrape that some Labour government in the future may get the country into. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but there does not seem much hope of ever being quite free of the army again. To get a discharge might be possible on the score of unfitness, but I do not think that my degree of military unfitness will be sufficient to serve our turn . . .

  So far my readings both in Latin and Greek have been a pleasant surprise: I have forgotten less than I feared, and once I get the sound and savour of the language into my head by a spell of reading, composition should not come too hard either. In English I have started friend Trollope again—The Small House at Allington . . .

  [In his wire Jack told his father that his leave was 10–22 January. Warren was, however, unable to alter the dates of his and he arrived home on 23 December. Suddenly Jack found himself demobilized from the Army. There was no time to tell his father. Mr Lewis and Warren were in the study of ‘Little Lea’ on 27 December when a cab drove up the drive and Jack got out. As Warren says in his Memoir, they drank champagne to celebrate the occasion. Following this reunion with his family, Jack returned to Oxford on 13 January 1919 to begin the ‘Honour Mods’ course in Greek and Latin literature. Mrs Moore and Maureen found rooms nearby in 28 Warneford Road, Oxford.]

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College, Oxford

  27 January 1919

  After a quite comfortable journey (which showed me that 1st Class travelling is very little different from 3rd) I arrived here somewhat late in the evening. The moon was just rising: the porter knew me at once and ushered me into the same old rooms (which by the way I am going to change). It was a great return and something to be very thankful for. I was also pleased to find an old friend, Edwards, who was up with me in 1916, and being unfit, has been there all the time.

  There is of course already a great difference between this Oxford and the ghost I knew before: true, we are only twenty-eight in College, but we DO dine in Hall again, the Junior Common Room is no longer swathed in dust sheets, and the old round of lectures, debates, games, and whatnot is getting under weigh. The reawakening is a little pathetic: at our first [meeting of the J.C.R.] we read the minutes of the last—1914. I don’t know any little thing that has made me realise the absolute suspension and waste of these years more thoroughly.

  The Mugger48 preached a quite memorable sermon on the first Sunday evening. It was very plain, even homely in style, not what one expected, but it grew on one, and I admire the restraint where ‘gush’ would have been so fatally easy. By the way, I have not been asked to see the Mugger yet, but I gather he has a waiting list and is working slowly through it. We have quite a number of old members who were up before the war and are a kind of dictionary of traditions.

  Now as to work: I am ‘deemed to have passed’ Responsions and Divinity and it was open to me either to take Honour Mods or go straight on to ‘Greats’—as you know, the final fence. In consideration of my wish to get a fellowship, Poynton, who is my tutor, strongly advised me not to avail myself of this opportunity of slurring over Mods. I presume I was acting as I should when I followed his advice. Except for the disadvantage of starting eighteen books of Homer to the bad I find myself fairly alright: of course the great difference after Kirk’s is that you are left to work very much on your own. It is a little bit strange at first, but I suppose hard work in any lines will not be wasted. The best thing I go to is the series of lectures by Gilbert Murray, which are very good indeed: I always feel much the better for them.49

  The coal difficulty is not very serious. We have all our meals in Hall, which, if it abolishes the cosy breakfast in one’s rooms and the interchange of ‘decencies and proprieties’ is a little cheaper: we shall go back to the old arrangement as soon as we can. The library, one lecture room, and the Junior Common Room are always warm, and the two former are quite quiet: then for the evening we can afford a modest blaze at one’s ‘ain fireside’. Our little body gets on very well together and most of us work. The place is looking more beautiful than ever in the wintry frost: one gets splendid cold colouring at the expense of tingling fingers and red noses.

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  4 February 1919

  I find the work pretty stiff, but I think I am keeping my head above water. Poynton is, so far as I can judge, quite an exceptionally good tutor, and my visits to him are enjoyable as well as useful—although he objects to my style of Greek prose—‘I don’t care very much for treacle OR barley sugar myself’. So you have bequeathed to me some remnant of the old Macaulese taint after all. I drank tea with him last Sunday. Another man from Univ. went with me and the party consisted of Mrs and Miss Poynton, two girl undergraduates, and ourselves. As a matter of fact our host did nearly all the talking and kept us very well amused: he is an excellent if somewhat unjust raconteur. He came up to Balliol under Jowett and had a lot to say of the great man. It’s funny you know, they all laugh at him, they all imitate his little mannerisms, but nobody who ever met him forgets to tell you so.

  Much to my surprise I have had ‘greatness thrust upon me’. There is a literary club in College called the Martlets, limited to twelve undergraduate members: it is over three hundred years old, and alone of all College Clubs has its minutes preserved in the Bodleian. I have been elected Secretary—the reason being of course that my proposer, Edwards, was afraid of getting the job himself. And so if I am forgotten as all else, at least a specimen of my handwriting will be preserved to posterity. Someone will read a paper on Yeats at our next meeting: we are also going to have one on Masefield and we hope to get Masefield himself (who lives just outside [Oxford]) to come up and listen to it and give a reply.50

  I have a very bad piece of news for you: Smugy is dead. Sometime in the middle of last term he fell a victim to flu. I suppose I am very inexperienced but I had come to depend on his always being there51 . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  5 March 1919

  I don’t think that anyone who takes the trouble to read my book through will seriously call it blasphemous, whatever criticism he may make on artistic grounds.52 If he does not, we need not bother about his views. Of course I know there will be a number of people who will open it by chance at some of the gloomiest parts of Part I and decide ‘Swinburnian Ballads’ and never look at it again. But what would you do? If one writes at all—perhaps like Talleyrand many ‘don’t see the necessity’—one must be honest. You know who the God I blaspheme is and that it is not the God you or I worship, or any other Chr
istian. But we have talked over this before. Arthur tells me that you have a copy of Reveille with my thing in it.53 They have omitted to send me one—‘who am I?’ as Knowles said.

  I look like having a busy time next week: I am reading in Chapel, saying grace in Hall, writing a paper on Morris for the Martlets, finishing the Iliad, and dining with the Mugger. I hope to be able to eat and sleep a little as well! As the time goes on I appreciate my hours with Poynton more and more. After Smugy and Kirk I must be rather spoiled in the way of tutors, but this man comes up to either of them, both as a teacher and as a humorous ‘card’. Gilbert Murray is, I’m afraid, not very much good for exams., tho’ his literary merits are unsurpassed . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  15 [March 1919]

  I am writing to tell you that the ’Varsity term ends today and the College term on Monday. I shall be staying up for a week more, following Poynton’s instructions. After that I shall go down to help Mrs Moore with her move at Bristol: she has had to come back to clear out the house. There seems to be considerable difficulty about getting anywhere else. London and Bristol are both hopeless: I have suggested here, but that seems equally impossible. I can’t understand where the influx of people is coming from. Of course the expences of the journey I shall pay myself . . .

  TO HIS BROTHER: from University College

  [2? April 1919]

  The reason for my silence in general is that I have got to work like Hell here—I seem to have forgotten everything I know. If you are on the look out for a cheap modern edition of Chesterfield’s letters, I will see what I can do, but I feel inclined to reply in Tommy’s irreverent style, ‘Wot ’opes’. About St Simon you will find it much easier to write to Paris for a French edition: when you had finished with it you could send it on to me to be bound and pressed—after which you would find it as good as new. I don’t know of a crib to it.54 To take up P’s style, have you ever noticed a book at home ‘very much on the same lines’, the Memoirs of Count Gramont, written in French by a Hamilton who was a hanger on of the grand monarque, and translated?55

  In the name of all the gods why do you want to go into the ‘Russian Expeditionary Force’? You will drag on a post-less, drink-less, book-less, tobacco-less existence for some months until the Bolshevists finally crush us and then probably end your days at a stake or on a cross.

  The typewriting of private letters is the vile invention of business men, but I will forgive you on the ground that you were practising . . . Did you see the ‘very insolent’ review of me on the back page of the Times Literary Supplement last week?56 . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  25 May 1919

  I have not written to Evans, as I found a circular from a Press cutting Association to which I have replied, enclosing 10/-. The results so far have been a very interesting review on ‘The Principles of Symbolic Logic’ by C. S. Lewis of the University of California. I am writing back to tell them that they have got rather muddled. Symbolic Logic forsooth! I started reading it without noticing the title and was surprised to find myself—as I thought—being commended for a ‘scholarly elucidation of a difficult subject’.

  As nearly everyone here is a poet himself, they have naturally no time left for lionizing others. Indeed the current literary set is one I could not afford to live in anyway, and tho’ many of them have kindly bought copies of the book, their tastes run rather to modernism, vers libre and that sort of thing. I have a holy terror of coteries: I have already been asked to join a Theosophist, a Socialist, and a Celtic society.

  By the way, the distinction which one finds in such books as Tom Brown by which the poor, the industrious, and the intellectual, are all in one class, and the rich, brainless and vicious, all in another, does not obtain. Some ‘poor scholars’ are bad lots, and some of the ‘gilded youth’ are fond of literature . . .

  [Increasingly, Mr Lewis and Warren worried about the prominent position of Mrs Moore in Jack’s life. Writing to Warren on 20 May, Mr Lewis said: ‘I confess I do not know what to do or say about Jacks’ affair. It worries and depresses me greatly. All I know about the lady is that she is old enough to be his mother—that she is separated from her husband and that she is in poor circumstances. I also know that Jacks has frequently drawn cheques in her favour running up to £10—for what I don’t know. If Jacks were not an impetuous, kind hearted creature who could be cajoled by any woman who has been through the mill, I should not be so uneasy. Then there is the husband whom I have always been told is a scoundrel—but the absent are always to blame—somewhere in the background, who some of these days might try a little aimable blackmailing. But outside all these considerations that may be the outcome of a suspicious, police court mind, there is the distraction from work and the folly of the daily letters.’ On 3 June Warren wrote to his father, saying: ‘I am greatly relieved . . . to hear that Mrs Moore HAS a husband: I understood that she was a widow; but as there is a Mr Moore, the whole complexion of the business is altered. We now get the following very unsatisfactory findings. (1) Mrs Moore can’t marry Jacks. (2) Mr Moore can’t blackmail him because “IT” hasn’t enough money to make it a paying risk. (3) YOU can’t be blackmailed because you wouldn’t listen to the proposition for one moment. But the daily letter business DOES annoy me: especially as I have heard from Jacks ONCE since January of this year.’]

  TO HIS BROTHER: from University College

  9 [June 1919]

  ‘Sir,’ said Dr Johnson, ‘you are an unsocial person.’ In answer to the charge I can only plead the general atmosphere of the summer term which is the same here as it was at school: whatever energy I have has to be thrown into work and, for the rest, the seductive influence of the river and hot weather must bear the blame. Term ends some time in July, but I shall be staying up for part of the vac. Would the early part of September do for your leave: one doesn’t get any chance of fine weather or of endurably warm sea water any earlier in Donegal. I quite agree with you that we could have quite an excellent time together at Portsalon—if we were ‘both’ there, if, as you suggest, we were ‘all’ there, I suppose we could endure as we always have endured.

  You ask me what is wrong with P . . . which he describes as exceedingly painful and horribly depressing. I don’t meet the doctors myself and therefore, in the case of a man who would hold precisely the same language about a boil or a wasp’s sting, it is impossible to say how bad he is: I am afraid however it is rather a serious bother. There is also a second thing wrong with him—namely that he is fast becoming unbearable. What the difficulties of life with him always were, you know: but I never found it as bad as when I was last at home. I needn’t describe the continual fussing, the sulks, the demand to know all one’s affairs—you might think I was exaggerating as you have been out of it for so long . . .

  TO HIS BROTHER: from University College

  22 [July 1919]

  I have just got your letter to which I am replying immediately. Of course I quite see your point, and am greatly relieved to hear from you as I had—of course—lost your address and wanted to get into touch with you. Now will you please wire to me at Univ. and let me know the day and approximate time of your arrival at Oxford: I will then report at the station at a suitable hour. If by any chance I am absent from parade you must drive to Univ. and wait for me, even if I do not turn up at once. The porter will have means of getting on to me if I am out. The programme you sketch is very attractive and it would be grand to have ignorance exposed by the Knock again. You understand why I behave so queerly—the effort to avoid being left alone at Leeborough. With you to back me up however, I have no doubt that we shall depart up to scheduled time. I doubt if this letter will reach you before you leave . . .

  [Warren arrived in Oxford on 23 July to begin his holiday with Jack. They were in London for the next two days, and on the 25th they visited Mr Kirkpatrick in Great Bookham. On 26 July they crossed to Ireland to stay with their father until 22 August. The
already uneasy relations between Jack and his father were considerably worsened by an event described by Mr Lewis in his diary on 6 August: ‘Sitting in the study after dinner I began to talk to Jacks about money matters and the cost of maintaining himself at the University. I asked him if he had any money to his credit, and he said about £15. I happened to go up to the little end room and lying on his table was a piece of paper. I took it up and it proved to be a letter from Cox and Co stating that his a/c was overdrawn £12 odd. I came down and told him what I had seen. He then admitted that he had told me a deliberate lie. As a reason, he said that he had tried to give me his confidence, but I had never given him mine etc., etc. He referred to incidents of his childhood where I had treated them badly. In further conversation he said he had no respect for me—nor confidence in me.’ This rupture was to last for quite a long time. On 5 September Mr Lewis wrote in his diary: ‘I have during the past four weeks passed through one of the most miserable periods of my life—in many respects the most miserable. It began with the estrangement from Jacks. On 6 August he deceived me and said terrible, insulting, and despising things to me. God help me! That all my love and devotion and self-sacrifice should have come to this—that ‘he doesn’t respect me. That he doesn’t trust me, and cares for me in a way.’ He has one cause of complaint against me I admit—that I did not visit him while he was in hospital. I should have sacrificed everything to do so and had he not been comfortable and making good progress I should have done so . . . The other troubles and anxieties which have come upon me can be faced by courage, endurance, and self-denial. The loss of Jacks’ affection, if it be permanent, is irreparable and leaves me very miserable and heart sore.’]