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All My Road Before Me

Page 4

by C. S. Lewis


  D hung today a curtain we have made for the drawing room door. The base was an army blanket: on a design of mine D worked a tree (unknown to naturalists) and storks and lilies and a moon with stars. All in wool, bright flat colours. It goes admirably with the walls, and I am very pleased with it . . .

  Wednesday 26 April: Having finished the Herodotus period I am now making up the Pentekontaetia:20 a hard and enjoyable days work. If I had only a few months more I could manage well.

  A card from Maureen to say that after an hour with Miss Whitty she finds her music ‘hopeless’ and a letter from Miss W. saying that her technique has been disgracefully neglected.21 After putting in some well deserved curses against the thorough inefficiency of the school in every branch, D and I discovered to our surprise that we did not know what technique was in music . . .

  Thursday 27 April: Term began today. Worked hard on the Athenian politics of the Pentekontaetia: very hard to find out the facts. Grundy full of learning but writes abominably and it is almost impossible to see the connection of thought between some of his paragraphs. Before lunch I went into Oxford and got Whibley’s book out of the Union: but I find it was written before the discovery of the Ath. Pol. and is therefore useless.22 Worked again from lunch till tea. It is really rather hard not only to have to learn history but to write it first! . . .

  Friday 28 April: Went into College early and found that we had collections in hall at 9.30.23 Philosophy papers, but Stevenson handed them round, saying that Carritt had mumps.24 He implored us to take them seriously, but everyone remained very cheerful: Blunt, Wyllie, Watling, P. O. Simpson, Montagu, Hastings, Haig, and Salvesen—the latter ‘a steady rumble in the distance’ as Haig said.25 Everyone talked and ragged and talked. Everyone always appeals to the rest for any fact he has forgotten, and gets a dozen suggestions: but I doubt if anyone writes down the varied and often irreconcilable information thus obtained. Blunt said that Plato was born too soon and was fitted by nature for an orthodox English parson. I said I didn’t think we was as bad as that. Got out about 12.30. Looked into Wadham to see if Baker was up yet, but no sign of him.26

  After lunch went on with Gk. History. Stead came in, obviously wanting to have his new proofs praised. Luckily the Sweet Miracle in its quiet way has considerable merits, and I told him so . . . He had a letter from Yeats who is now living in a tower at Gort on Lady Gregory’s estates: it all sounds very well chosen as a setting for the great man . . . He also talked of Bridges. Either Stead is a much better man than he seems to me or else he has pushed like a true American in the literary world . . . D very busy making some ‘nighties’ which Mrs Raymond is going to buy. Letter from Cox’s acknowledging £67 from my father.

  Saturday 29 April: Up betimes and into college where we did a general ancient history paper for Stevenson. I was interviewed by him as usual and arranged to do no lectures this term: he warned me ‘not to work too hard’. All the usual people there. Wrote a good deal, but not of high quality . . . Simpson described collections as the effort to write journalese in the tower of Babel . . .

  A long letter for D from Miss Whitty today. She says that a serious music career is hopeless for Maureen and that the fault is entirely in the teaching: she has been left to all the original sin that any child will indulge in if allowed, and taught inaccurate, emotional drawing room playing. Her fingers are too old to go back and learn technique now. So her dream has ended as suddenly as mine of the Civil Service: mine was killed by the Geddes Committee, hers by sheer inefficiency at the school. It is very regrettable: apart from the question of a career (and if she marries that doesn’t matter) the immediate psychological effect on her will be very bad. Miss Whitty is furious, and I don’t wonder.

  Sunday 30 April: Called for Baker at Wadham and we walked over the fields to Marston, starting through Mesopotamia. A splendid morning. Baker is very busy with rehearsals for a Wycherley play in which he is to appear as a heavy father: it is at the Palace, got up by [Edith] Craig (Ellen Terry’s daughter) and he is one of two or three amateurs in an otherwise professional cast. He has had a good deal of encouragement and has met Mrs Asquith and Princess Bibesco. He described Mrs A. as a horrible old woman with queer garters.

  He has had a poem accepted by the Beacon: he says that Barfield is now as good as sub-editor. So probably my ‘Joy’ has gone to him. I don’t much envy Barfield his job of refusing all his friend’s poems for the next year or so!27 . . .

  After lunch worked at ‘Dymer’. D writing off arrears of letters. Miss Featherstone called while I was out: D says she was in wretched health. After tea put up curtains in D’s room with the new gadget called Rawlplugs: their advertisement claims are untrue, but a clever idea.

  After supper finished and fair copied the first canto of ‘Dymer’ . . .

  Monday 1 May: This morning the fates tried to infuriate me but carried it too far, so that it became merely funny. D got at breakfast time an answer from a house agent, telling of a bungalow called Waldencot to let in Headington. So rushed off after swallowing a meal, only to find that it was the ‘stable’ . . .

  Worked all afternoon at Thucydides, an author I love. A letter from Barfield accepting ‘Joy’ for the Beacon and saying nice things: he describes himself as ‘acting, unpaid, sub lance-editor’ . . .

  Tuesday 2 May: Worked in the morning memorising notes on the Pentecontaetia and reading Thucydides.

  Maureen went up to Headington and got into the ‘stable’, since we think it worth trying for. Maureen got in with a lady, another prespective tenant and rival, and did good work in pointing out to her all the disadvantages of the place.

  After lunch I called to try and see Jenkin, but he was out.28 Left ‘Nimue’ to be typed. I walked slowly and pleasantly thro’ Mesopotamia and by rope ferry to Marston, thence up the lane to Headington via the small cemetary. A beautiful day and plenty of cuckoos. Thinking for once—and free from Christina dreams . . .

  Got back in time to put in some more work before supper. Concocted with D a letter to Dr Ley of Christ Church asking him to recommend a good music teacher for Maureen:29 she has been removed from Miss Ploughman under some euphemism about ‘times not fitting in’—if Miss Ploughman will ever notice whether she turns up or not! . . .

  Wednesday 3 May: A wet morning. Worked on the Thucydides text, with great interest, but finding many passages which, for the mere translation, it is wise to go over.

  Went into town after lunch, and after looking in vain for Jenkin in Merton St., met him in the High. It had now cleared and we walked down St Aldate’s and over the waterworks to Hincksey.

  I talked of staying up for another year and lamented that all my friends would be down: he said he had not got to know any new people of interest since his first year. We both agreed that to find people who had any interest in literature and who were not, at the same time, dam’d affected dillettanti talking ‘l’art pour l’art’ etc., etc., was almost impossible—in fact he put Baker, Barfield and me as the only exceptions in his own circle: and even the ‘hearty’ men were preferable to the usual literary sort . . .

  We talked about religion, on which his views are traditional and quite different to mine. He quoted a good (and true) perversion of an old platitude—‘To the pure all things are impure’ . . .

  D, after trying a new cure for indigestion, presented by Miss Featherstone, is very poorly, with a bad head. Worked at Thucydides again in the evening. Early to bed.

  Thursday 4 May: A bright, windy, and beautiful day. D very sick as a result of Miss Featherstone’s vile drug (heaven save us from our friends) and finding her sight queer—seeing the paper which I was reading at breakfast as if blue. This wore off to some extent during the day. Miss Featherstone, as an old nurse, ought to know better than to give this sort of drug to a patient without medical advice.

  Went into town early. Called on Baker in Wadham. He asked me several questions about the Sophists. He said he wd. probably see Barfield today and I asked him to get Barfield
to leave some message saying when he and I could meet. He showed me the May number of the Beacon: it is slowly improving from month to month.

  Went to college at 10.30 for Stevenson’s class: Watling, Wyllie, Blunt, Montagu, Haig, and (later) Hastings. Stevenson had marked my paper A minus. Blunt was a great nuisance, keeping us relentlessly to some damned chronological problem about intercalary months and eclipses, partly I think because Stevenson does not shine on these subjects . . .

  Went to Cornmarket and got back ‘Nimue’ accurately typed for 3/6: sent it to Squire in the afternoon, not so much in any hope that he will accept it, but ‘in order that he may fill up the measure of his iniquities’.

  Worked at an English text of the Politics in the afternoon, with some interest, and went for a short stroll up Headington before supper. Thucydides (note making) in the evening . . . Worried today by shooting pains in my left armpit near the old wound, but very slight.

  Friday 5 May: . . . Met Barfield at 2.30 by Headington Post Office. A bright day: we walked over Bayswater brook (where I saw the snake) and had tea in a little house on the London Rd. We talked of Baker and the mysterious fragments of his previous life that one got, and compared our knowledge . . . He said Baker’s mystifying way of referring to things was quite unconscious, and we had a good laugh over it.

  We talked over old times: then of Barfield’s fortnight in Italy last vac. Partly in Florence, partly walking in the Appenines. He told of how in a restaurant he had a call of nature and after peevishly hunting his phrase book found that the Italian (literally) was ‘Where can she make a little water please?’ In answer to this the garçon replied ‘Wherever she likes.’

  We talked of the Beacon and he told me how Appleton had come to take him on.30 One day Appleton showed him a poem and asked his opinion. ‘Filthy,’ said Barfield. Appleton showed him another: ‘Bloody,’ said Barfield. After that they became fast friends. Barfield seemed perfectly miserable and hoping for nothing. This wretched love affair has gone very deep tho’ it has made him a real poet. I am sure he is going to be great . . .

  Saturday 6 May: Went into town after breakfast to see Dr Allchin of 15 Beaumont St. about lessons for Maureen: found he was engaged till twelve.31

  Tried to work on ‘Psyche’ in the Union (not in the new metre wh. I think almost hopeless) with no success.

  Met Wallis,32 P. O. Simpson, and Blunt. Carritt appears to have been worried over everyone’s collections. Wallis and Watling got Γ = . Went back to Allchin at 12: it was arranged that Maureen shd. go to him at 4.15 on Tuesday next and that after hearing her he was to come and see D. A nice little man.

  I reminded him of summer 1917 when he was an officer in the O.T.C. and I was a Cadet: he laughed over the ‘mad things one had to do’—lecturing on subjects that no one knew anything about etc . . .

  Sunday 7 May: A leap into summer. Sat in the garden, writing a passage for a new version of ‘Psyche’ in blank verse, not without some success . . .

  I found my way out to 14 Chadlington Rd., through the horror of North Oxford on a hot Sunday: villas, gardens, dazzle and Sunday clothes. Stevenson, his wife, his child Helen and a dummy called Mackay from Magdalen:33 quite a pleasant lunch. Stevenson told me—what I never heard before—that the Master in his youth had lost a studentship at the House for writing a modernist essay on the Resurrection: that was in the days of Pusey.34

  We sat in the garden after lunch. Stevenson talked of his job at Le Touquet during the war where they had a whole mess of code interpreting experts. He said that in the end, after the duds had been eliminated, it came to consist entirely of classical scholars. As a similar example of strange abilities used for war purposes, Mrs. S. mentioned a futurist painter who was employed on doing ‘dazzled’ ships . . .

  Came home to find D in the garden with the Doc, Mary, and the Brat [Peony Askins] . . . We sat in the garden after supper, D writing letters by moonlight: an evening of extraordinary beauty, but an exhausting day. The Doc looks much better, and in khaki shirt, belted slacks, pudding bason hat, tie pin acting as a stud (he is always studless) was an eloquent and characteristic figure.

  While at the Walkers I had an amusing conversation with Ziman who now has my old rooms, telling me how much he dislikes my distemper and how old George encouraged him for Mods. by saying that ‘Mr Lewis got a fust sir, and he never worked at all: he was always out fust thing after breakfast.’35

  Monday 8 May: A blazing day with a light wind. I got to work in the garden at 8.45 and continued, making notes and memorising, till one o’clock.

  Went into town after lunch to Jenkin’s rooms. Robson-Scott was with him when I arrived.36 After his departure J. told me that he had been quite surprised to hear of my removal from the Martlets: he had missed a meeting and he wondered whether the young men had us all degommed by now. Jenkin said he would go to any meeting he cared for, whether he was a member or not. He took me out in his canoe for a short time . . .

  Got home about 4 o’clock: tea in the garden and made an analysis of Kant, getting as far as the ‘Anticipations of Experience’. Memorised this after supper, and also my Gk. History notes.

  A beautiful day. D very wretched, whether from psychological causes or that the effects of Miss Featherstone’s poison still remain.

  Tuesday 9 May: ‘Nimue’ returned from Squire (they call him Jehovah C. I find), with the usual printed refusal. All this is done in order that the Scriptures might be fulfilled.

  Another glorious day. Got to work at 8.45 in the garden: did some more of my analysis of Kant and some Thucydides notes. As soon as the sun gets on my bedroom window, I am trying the plan of shutting window and door and drawing curtains so as never to admit hot air: I think it is an improvement . . .

  Wednesday 10 May: Back to cold weather and fires. Worked on Gk. History for part of the morning and then went in to town and did two questions in the Union under Schools conditions, one from a Roman History and one from a Logic Paper. I also bought a sham panama hat at Lane’s in Queen St. for 5/11. It is cool and comfortable and the best solution of the sunstroke problem.

  Met Watling who tells me that our schools begin on 8 June. I got Jowett’s translation of the Sophists from the library and worked on it after lunch. It is about Nothing and most interesting: beautifully translated, but in his introduction where he talks philosophy, Jowett seems a fool and a self pleasing fool.

  Miss Featherstone called today and said that she had been invited to stop with a friend for the summer, and that we need not move unless we chose, which is excellent news. I walked on Shotover after tea: it is gorgeous now and a mass of blackthorn. I was thinking seriously of how I could face the prospect of having to give up poetry, if it came to that . . .

  Thursday 11 May: The weather continued wintry. In to town betimes and called to see Baker. I told him about the return of ‘Nimue’ and cursed Jehovah C. I confessed to a fear that there must be something wholly wrong in our attitude: that though we were always ready to admit faults in the things that J.C. returned, perhaps we were really blind to the merits of what he accepted, much of which seems contemptible. Baker said he did not think it was likely.

  He gave me back the first Canto of ‘Dymer’ which I had left with him. He spoke encouragingly of most of it, especially the end. He thought some of the flippant parts weak and the first two stanzas tedious, in which I agreed with him. I found that besides the performance with professionals at the Palace, the Wycherley play is being given tonight, Friday and Saturday in the Corn Exchange with amateurs.

  I then went to Univ. and saw Carritt. I made him explain what he meant by ‘atmosphere’ in an exam paper and asked him when he had done, ‘In fact, sir, you mean bluff?’ He agreed. Then I went to Stevenson’s class. Watling, Wyllie, Blunt, Montagu, Hasting and Haig. A desperately dull but not a useless morning.

  Got home about twelve thirty. Found the Doc here and Maureen very ill. The Doc told D that Cranny had been moving heaven and earth about his (the Doc’s) ordination: b
ut that the idea of his really wishing to be ordained was mainly a fiction of Cranny’s. How typical!

  After lunch I did, under school’s conditions, a logic paper which Carritt had given me, greatly to my own satisfaction, and found that three hours gave me plenty of time to spare . . .

  Friday 12 May: . . . I worked on my analysis of Kant and then on Gk. History until shortly before lunch: then went into town to see if Jenkin would come to the show tonight. Worked again after lunch, but dully and finding it hard to concentrate.

  Lady Gonner and her niece called and I went into another room. The Doc was here twice today: the first occasion—before lunch—he told D a yarn about an undergraduate and an undergraduette living together somewhere in the neighbourhood. As the story is only one of those which ‘everybody knows’ it need not be believed. It is to be hoped that it is untrue, as, when the crash came, it would lead to a lot of silly new statutes for the rest of us . . .

  I came back for supper and then returned to wait in the queue at the Corn Exchange. It consisted chiefly of girls: we waited while the ticket holders went in. All the world was there: I noticed Cyril Bailey, Lindsay, Joachim, Carritt, Curtis, Mary and Stead.37 Great excitement was caused by the arrival of the Asquiths: it was rather a political allegory—everyone whispering ‘Here’s Mrs Asquith’ and nobody taking any notice of poor old Asquith himself, a fat, flabby figure, with a suggestion of John Bunny, flopping out of the car behind her. She had a crone’s face, with thin, very bright lips, wagged her boney fingers at someone, and was kittenish.38

  The show was, on the whole, good. I had to stand. Allen conducted.39 The music of the first ballet was from an old virginal book. The second by Purcell round the theme of a Wycherley play: this was the best of the three—a wonderful mad marionette like thing—completely carried one away. Baker capital as Mr Formal: during an interval I heard his performance praised by a theatrical looking stranger. The music was delightful. The third, by Bach, I did not care for quite so much. What struck me particularly was Barfield’s dancing in the rowdier passages: a terrific, infectious gaiety about him and you’d think he cd. never be tired.40 . . .

 

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