by C. S. Lewis
Jenkin himself is an enthusiastic Cornishman and some are bored with his persistency in talking of his native scenery, habits, language and superstitions. I rather like it. He put on a little linen cap which he wears when ‘he goes down mines’. Cornwall of course is all mines: they are full of beings called Nackers whom one hears knocking at the ends of the lonelier galleries. The workmen leave little bits of their food for them, for they are terrible bringers of good and bad luck—rather like Leprechauns as I understand. Jenkins has only one vice: that of writing very sad poetry which he sometimes shows me. It is usually about Cornwall.
12 March 1921
Everyone was going down today. Such days have all the atmosphere of a school end of term with its joy taken out of it—body without soul. I hate it: and lest empty rooms and stacks of suit cases should not be sufficiently offensive, we have the intolerable institution of Collections. This is the worst relic of barbarism which yet hangs about the University. From 9 until noon the Master with all his ‘auxiliar fiends’ sits at the high table in Hall and one by one sheepish or truculent undergraduates, as their names are called, walk up the long emptiness, mount the dais and stand foolishly gaping while he delivers a little homily. In my case he always used to say the same thing. ‘Well Mr Lewis, I—ah—I—have nothing but—ah—satisfaction to express as regards—ah—ah. We expect great things of you.’ Apparently he has now given up expecting great things of me.
Now you, lolling in your punkah while the lotuses fly over a pagoda coloured sky etc, may think me very weak: but it is extraordinary that any ceremony which is destined to make you feel like an inky schoolboy will succeed in making you feel like an inky schoolboy. I doubt if even the P’daytabird could have invented anything more subtly undermining of one’s self-respect than that early morning procession up a big hall to be complimented by an old gentleman at a table. Try to imagine it and then add the idea of nine o’clock in the morning: and that your collar has broken loose from its stud at the back: and that there’s a smell of last night’s dinner about: a fly on your nose: a shaving cut beginning to bleed—but no, it is too painful . . .
13 March 1921
It being Lord’s Day I waited after breakfast on Pasley in his rooms at Unity House: that is a cottage in a lane by Headington Church where the buildings are so ruinous that it looks like a bit of France as the cant goes—well FAIRLY like it. Pasley is my oldest ally: he used to write poetry but is now too engrossed in history and he has also become engaged—that fatal tomb of all lively and interesting men74 . . . Unity House is ruled by a strangely ugly woman . . . I had an excellent walk with Pasley: he described to me the humours of the new constitution of TzechoSlovakia, which I wish I cd. remember. We sat in a wood full of primroses. Damnit, how generations of P’dayta’s have teased the language till the very name of a primrose sounds sentimental: when you come to look at them, they are really rather attractive. I walked Pasley off his legs and we lunched chez moi on rabbit pie—our common fare at present—Pasley and Mrs Moore having a lively conversation on money in view of his intent shortly to try ‘this marrying business’.
14 March 1921
I received this morning a letter from my obliging friend Stead.75 Stead is rather a punt: I think you saw me stop to speak to him one day in the Corn. He is an undergraduate but also curate of a parish in Oxford. He writes poetry. The annoying thing is that it’s exactly like mine, only like the bad parts of mine: this was my own original opinion and it has been confirmed by others. Perhaps you can imagine the sensation I experienced in reading it. Stead’s letter was to say that he had mentioned to Yeats—whom he knows—‘my double claim to distinction as an Irishman and a poet’ and would I come along this evening and see him?
I accordingly repaired after dinner to Stead’s lodging in Canterbury Street. He is a married man: his wife is an American: she is the sister of a woman who is married to a brother of Mrs Moore’s.76 She was a woman of implacable sullenness who refused even to say good evening to me: beside her at the fire sat an American gentleman who was apparently left to console her for the absence of her husband. This was a very amiable person: he was ‘studyin’ when I entered, but politely laid his book down. You know the sort of face in which a long promontory of nose (eagle build) projects from between two rounded hills of cheek (cherub build)? Picture this surmounted by a pair of horn spectacles and made of a texture rather like cod’s roe: then add that this face beams but can contribute to the crack only by saying ‘That’s right’ at the end of everyone’s remark. In these rather nasty surroundings Stead was finishing a very nasty meal of cold fish and cocoa: but he soon put on his coat and after asking his lady why there were no stamps in the house and receiving no answer, swung out with me into the usual Oxford theatrical night. Trusting soul to leave his wife unguarded in such society!
Yeats lives at the end of Broad St, the first house on your right as you leave the town. I can assure you I felt a veritable Bozzy as I reflected that I was now to meet at last WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS! But enough of that. We were shown up a long stairway lined with rather wicked pictures by Blake—all devils and monsters—and finally into the presence chamber, lit by tall candles, with orange coloured curtains and full of things which I can’t describe because I don’t know their names.
The poet was very big, about sixty years of age: ‘awful’ as Bozzy says: grey haired, clean shaven. When he first began to speak I would have thought him French, but the Irish sounds through after a time. Before the fire was a circle of hard antique chairs. Present were the poet’s wife, a little man who never spoke all evening, and Father Martindale.77 Father M. is a Catholic Priest, a little twinkling man like a bird, or like Puck, whom I take to be an atheistical dog. I used to go to his lectures in the old days: he is a mocker. Everyone got up as we came in: after the formalities I was humbly preparing to sink into the outlying chair leaving the more honourable to Stead, but the poet sternly and silently motioned us into other ones. The meaning of this I have not fathomed: ’twas very Pumblechookian.
Then the talk began. It was all of magic and cabbalism and ‘the Hermetic knowledge’. The great man talked while the priest and Mrs Yeats fed him with judicious questions. The matter I admit was either mediaeval or modern, but the manner was so XVIII Century that I lost my morale. I understood how it is possible for a man to terrify a room into silence: and I had a ghastly presentment that something would presently impel me to up like that ‘unknown curate’ and say ‘Were not Vale Owen’s revelations, Sir, addressed to the passions?’ And then as Max Beerbohm says ‘Bang’ the suddenness of it! However I remembered that Johnson WAS really dead and controlled myself. Indeed some good angel guided me: for presently I really had something to say—a case mentioned by Coleridge which was most apposite and indeed crying for quotation on something just said. But thank God I didn’t: for a minute later the priest did.
YEATS (thumping his chair): ‘Yes—yes—the old woman in Coleridge. That story was published by Coleridge without the slightest evidence. Andrew Lang exposed it. I’ve never had a conversation on the subject that SOMEONE didn’t bring in Coleridge’s old woman. It is anonymous in the first place and every one has taken it over without question. It just shows that there’s no limit to the unscrupulousness that a sceptical man will go to—’
MARTINDALE: ‘Oh surely Mr Yeats—’
YEATS: ‘Yes! There is a Professor living in Oxford at this moment who is the greatest sceptic in print. The same man has told me that he entered a laboratory where X (some woman whose name I didn’t catch) was doing experiments: saw the table floating near the ceiling with X sitting on it: vomited: gave orders that no further experiments were to be done in the laboratories—and refused to let the story be known.’
But it would be only ridiculous to record it all: I should give you the insanity of the man without his eloquence and presence, which are very great. I could never have believed that he was so exactly like his own poetry.
One more joke must be recorded.
Stead presently told us a dream he had had: it was so good that I thought it a lie. YEATS (looking to his wife): ‘Have you anything to say about that, Georges?’ Apparently Stead’s transcendental self, not important enough for the poet, has been committed to Mrs Yeats as a kind of ersatz or secondary magician.
Finally we are given sherry or vermouth in long and curiously shaped glasses, except Martindale who has whiskey out of an even longer and more curiously shaped glass, and the orgy is at an end. Try to mix Pumblechook, the lunatic we met at the Mitre, Dr Johnson, the most eloquent drunk Irishman you know, and Yeat’s own poetry, all up into one composite figure, and you will have the best impression I can give you.
21 March 1921
Having met Stead yesterday in the Broad with his wife and of course with our friend of the nose, I was told that the great man had expressed himself sorry not to have been able to see more of me owing to his argument with the priest, and would I come again with Stead next night?
This night we were shown to a study up in the ceiling and entertained by him alone: and, would you believe it, he was almost quite sane, and talked about books and things, still eloquently and quite intelligently? Of course we got on to magic in the end—that was only to be expected. It was really my fault, for I mentioned Bergson. ‘Ah yes,’ said he, ‘Bergson. It was his sister who taught me magic.’ The effect of this statement on Aunt Suffern (already in paroxysms of contempt over what I had already told her about Yeats) ought to be amusing.
We spoke of Andrew Lang. YEATS: ‘I met him once—at a dinner somewhere. He never said a word. When we began to talk afterwards, he just got up and took his chair into a corner of the room and sat down facing the wall. He stayed there all the evening.’ Perhaps Lang didn’t like wizards!
Of the ‘great Victorians’ he said: ‘The most interesting thing about the Victorian period was their penchant for selecting one typical great man in each department—Tennyson, THE poet, Roberts, THE soldier: and then these types were made into myths. You never heard of anyone else: if you spoke of medicine it meant . . . (some “THE Doctor” whose name I’ve forgotten): if you spoke of politics it was Gladstone.’
This is especially interesting to us as explaining the mental growth of a certain bird we wot of. (‘Well all said and done boys, he was a GREAT man.’) So home to bed more pleased with our poet than I had been on the last occasion: and rather thankful that L’Oiseau Pomme de Terre hadn’t been there to explain that ‘you can see he’s a disappointed man’ after every adverse criticism on any living writer. Oh, before I leave it, Stead told me he had shown Yeats a poem: Yeats said he thought ‘IT WOULD DO VERY WELL’ to set to music! Stead thinks this is a compliment. H’mh!
TO HIS FATHER: from University College
28 March 1921
I am glad that you sent me the wire. I am a poor reader of papers and should have been very sorry, through ignorance, to let such a thing pass in silence. Poor old Kirk!78 What shall one say of him? It would be a poor compliment to that memory to be sentimental: indeed, if it were possible, he would himself return to chide the absurdity. It is however no sentiment, but plainest fact to say that I at least owe to him in the intellectual sphere as much as one human being can owe another. That he enabled me to win a scholarship is the least that he did for me. It was an atmosphere of unrelenting clearness and rigid honesty of thought that one breathed from living with him—and this I shall be the better for as long as I live. And if this is the greatest thing, there are others which none of us will forget: his dry humour, his imperturbable good temper and his amazing energy—these it is good to have seen. He was a unique personality with nothing inconsistent about him—except the one foible about the Sunday suit: the more one sees of weakness, affectation and general vagueness in the majority of men, the more one admires that rigid, lonely old figure—more like some ancient Stoic standing fast in the Roman decadence than a modern scholar living in the home countries. Indeed we may almost call him a great man, tho’, as it happened, his greatness was doomed to reach so small a circle. I should have liked to have seen him once again before this happened. I have of course written to Mrs K.
You ask whether I am satisfied with my Optimism, and I am afraid I hardly know. For one thing I almost know it by heart, and consequently can least of all judge it impartially . . . At any rate, it has given me, in parts, as much trouble as anything I have ever done and I shall be glad to have it launched into the registrar’s box for good and all and to leave the rest on the knees of the gods. Only don’t expect any results. You see I am afraid I have rather fallen between two stools: it has to aim at being both literary and philosophical, and, in the effort to accomplish the double object, I have made it too literary for the philosophers and too metaphysical for the dons of English Literature. These are the pitfalls with which the walks of Academe are digged. Such things are written for a tiny public of appointed judges, and you never know what their particular point of view is going to be: they are only human beings and must have tastes and tempers of their own, but one can’t find these out. It must be difficult to be quite fair to an essay which expresses some view that you have been denouncing to a submissive Senior Common Room for the last half century, however good it may be . . .
TO HIS BROTHER: from University College (a continuation of the serial letter)
20? April [1921]
About the coal strike itself you have, I suppose, heard AD NAUSEAM from the papers: what it means to me personally is that I have done a good deal of wood sawing. Have you ever sawed wood? If not, you probably have an idea that one sets the saw lightly on the log, gets to work, and continues steadily deepening until the two halves fall apart. Not a bit of it: you set the saw lightly on the log and then try to move it. It darts aside with a sound like a swallow, and you wrap a handkerchief round your hand: when the blood has soaked through this you go into the house and get some court plaster. Next time you go more cautiously and after the saw has chirped a whole song, a bit of bark comes off: by this time you are fairly warm. Then you really get to it: back and forward you go, changing uneasily from your left to your right feeling the blisters arise on your hand, while the shadows lengthen and the sweat pours down. When you go to bed that night, the ‘big push’ has got about as far as you see in the cut, and you get visions of getting through that log on your thirtieth birthday. I have now become quite good at it and sometimes even get a degree of enjoyment out of it when the day is fine and it goes well. Pasley has turned up the other day: everyone has drifted in since.
Many thanks for your most interesting letter. What a queer end of the world backwater—just like the places we used to imagine out of God knows what sea stories but, still more ‘all made out of the carver’s brain’. I certainly never thought to hear anything like H.M.S. Dwarf in real life: and how very homely to have a telescope and a Lloyd’s register!
You will have plenty more to tell me in your next letter: I haven’t quite got my picture yet. What type of mountains are they? I assume they don’t rise to snow: I know they can’t be heathery: and I have a suspicion they are not smooth green like the hills at Malvern. So you see I am at a loss for them . . .
I am very glad you have become a convert to Milton: what put you on to him and what parts have you been reading? I wonder will you ever get to the end of the Bible: the undesirable ‘primitives’ around you will enable you to appreciate the Hebrews who were Class A primitives after all . . .
TO HIS FATHER: from University College
23 April [1921]
I can of course appreciate your feelings about poor Kirk’s funeral.79 Stripped of all wherewith belief and tradition have clothed it, death appears a little grimmer—a shade more chilly and loathsome—in the eyes of the most matter of fact. At the same time, while this is sad, it would have been not only sad but shocking to have pronounced over Kirk words that he did not believe and performed ceremonies that he himself would have denounced as meaningless. Yet, as you say, he is so indelibly stamped on one’s min
d once known, so often present in thought, that he makes his own acceptance of annihilation the more unthinkable. I have seen death fairly often and never yet been able to find it anything but extraordinary and rather incredible. The real person is so very real, so obviously living and different from what is left that one cannot believe something has turned into nothing. It is not faith, it is not reason—just a ‘feeling’. ‘Feelings’ are in the long run a pretty good match for what we call our beliefs.
TO HIS FATHER: from University College
9 May [1921]
I am beginning my period of Roman history and this has sent me back to Tacitus whom I read with Kirk. It is the strangest and in a way the pleasantest sensation. The old phrases come up inevitably in his own voice and manner, not only by the usual force of association, but also because Tacitus is a grim, sardonic author whose hardest sayings Kirk relished and made his own. One seems to remember those days in the little upper room with the photograph of Gladstone and the gas stove all the more often now that they are absolutely finished and shut up.
The weather continues pretty cold here and there are still a good many soldiers passing to and fro. I don’t know that the Colonel’s letter to me was very discursive: the Lloyd’s Register in his office and his dislike of the natives and cockchafers were the chief points. But for the climate it would not be a bad job for troglodytes and readers like ourselves: fortunately he has a streak of that in him. For the average officers with no mind and no resources it must be a terrible business and a nurse of all the solitary vices: it is a curious necessity that always casts these sort of jobs—Lighthouses, wireless stations etc.—on the men least fitted for them by nature.