by C. S. Lewis
After lunch I walked up Shotover and went on to the grove of firs at the far end which overlooks the lane to Horsepath. Here I was quite out of reach of the Sunday crowds and sat for some time . . .
After supper I continued the Antigone. Who can have invented the theory that the Greeks were great craftsmen in subordinating the parts to the whole? As a matter of fact they will sell their souls to bring in myths, ‘gnomes’ and purple patches. I notice Creon’s long digression on money, and the chorus and the beautiful Niobe passage in Antigone’s duet with chorus . . .
Monday 19 June: After breakfast I set out determined to waste no money on smokes or busses, leaving my tobacco behind and taking a halfpenny in my pocket . . .
A hot clammy day with much sun. I had a slight toothache but it went away after lunch. D and I sat in the garden, the first time for many days. I wrote some more of the IIIrd Canto of ‘Dymer’ and two political stanzas for a later canto, with some self satisfaction . . .
After tea . . . I walked up to Headington again and [saw] Mrs Hinckley . . . We had an interesting conversation on parents and children and the ‘revolt of youth’. I was inclined to think it was necessary and occurred in every generation: she held strongly that it was peculiar to our own . . . D very bad with sickness and headache but became better after sal volatile.
A letter from Aunt Lily containing a violent and rather silly attack on Sir W. Raleigh and announcing that she is coming to stay at Broadway: also telling me that I should eat at least ‘six or eight oranges a day’! . . .
Wednesday 21 June: Warmer today. Sat in the alley way and wrote Tan’s speech for the IIIrd Canto of ‘Dymer’: then wrote to P and Aunt Lily.
After lunch I bicycled to Beckley and called at Bee Cottage where I found Harwood alone and reading in a pleasant, stumpy 18th Century Bible. He quoted from Genesis ‘Whatever Adam called anything, that was the name of the thing’, as an excellent definition of poetry. He told me that the Chancellor’s prize had not been awarded this year. He put the wind up me by telling me that he thought he had got A on all his translation papers in Greats last year, but really got Γ. He showed me De la Mare’s new book, The Veil which is very fine: the ‘Monologue’ expecially concentrates all misery into the likeness of a nursery rhyme.
After tea he brought out Barfield’s ‘Tower’ and some new pieces of his own, while I gave him the new Canto of ‘Dymer’ to read. The ‘Tower’ is full of magnificent material and never a dead phrase: the new part strong and savage—‘Big Bannister’ is splendid—but very hazy at present. The story is (to me) as hard to follow as Sordello.61 But what genius! The metre too eccentric for me, but on that subject Barfield has probably forgotten more than I ever knew.
Harwood’s pieces original, quaint and catchy—he has improved: the Dresden China bit about Nausika and ‘nous n’irons plus au bois’ are the two best.62 He surprised me by saying that Canto II of ‘Dymer’ was better than Canto I: he thinks the end ‘really great’.
We then went out for a walk, through a wood, down to Otmoor. He led me through the poppied garden of a Tudor Manor house with a stagnant moat, tall chimneys and narrow windows. It was still and uncanny. It was said that an eccentric American millionaire and his wife live there alone and do their own work. Got back to Bee Cottage about 7.15. Supped off home cured ham (the best that ever I ate in my life) which they get very cheap in the village.
Left—after a very pleasant afternoon—at 7.45 and biked in to the Martlets in 25 minutes. The first meeting I have been to for ages. Allen, Carritt, Watling, Robson-Scott, Curtis, Ziman, Fasnacht, E. F. Simpson, and unknown, and a dreadful old bore called Dr Counsell. Allen read a paper on Joseph Conrad: very good, tho’ rather aggressively manly. Pretty good discussion afterwards, but was amazed at the stupidity of Allen in a theoretical argument against Carritt and me.
Heard from Carritt that one of the examiners had said to him ‘One of your men seems to think that Plato is always wrong.’ Carritt guessed several people. Finally the other said ‘No:—Lewis. Seems an able fellow anyway’—wh. I suppose is good news . . .
Thursday 22 June: Went into Oxford and left an advertisement at the Oxford Times office for tutoring work in the Vac., at the ridiculous charge of 7/6d for three appearances.63 . . .
Became convinced today that Canto II of ‘Dymer’ as written up to date will not do. Having now left the myth and being forced to use fiction I find new difficulties springing up and doubt if ‘Tan’ and his revolutionaries are really advisable.
After supper I read the first volume of my diary aloud to D and we both got a laugh or two out of it. D troubled with a sore throat and swollen gland: the Doc calls it neuritis.
Friday 23 June: Letter from Arthur in the morning suggesting that he might come up on the 28th, and would we care to see him.
A bleak and blowing day. I went into town in the morning: first to Blackwell’s where I sold for 25/-my History of Persia, the History of Seventeenth Century France, Joseph’s Logic, two volumes of Sellar, and a volume of the Loeb Euripides. I seem almost to have lost the possessive love of books and shall henceforward be content with very few provided that I am within reach of a library.
I then went to Wadham and was almost alarmed to find a notice on Baker’s door saying he had been moved to the Acland Nursing Home. I walked to the home in Banbury Rd. and saw him. He has had a break down and came in on Thursday with a temperature of 104. The last day of his Schools was a nightmare to him. I noticed that he asked me the same questions several times, forgetting what was said: yet he was able to imitate Dr Counsell to the life, who is attending him and who at that moment came in . . .
I then got a letter in College from Dodds, summoning me to an interview in Reading at 11 A.M. tomorrow—which will alter my route to Bradfield . . .
D suggested that Baker ought to come out and stay here, if he was fit to be moved, as they are rooking him £7–7–0 a week at the Acland: I therefore went back to town after lunch to make this proposal. I was admitted with difficulty. Baker was now much worse, having gone up to 103 again. He thinks he may be able to move on Sunday . . .
Saturday 24 June: Breakfasted before 8 and cycled to the station to catch the 9.10 to Reading: I read the Antigone during the journey. Arriving at Reading I found my way to University College and left my bike at the Lodge. I saw a great many undergraduates of both sexes walking about: a nice looking lot. I then stolled until 11 o’clock when I was taken to the Principal’s room.
Childs, de Burgh and Dodds were present.64 All very very nice to me, but Childs very firmly ruled out my idea of living anywhere else than at Reading. I was told that most of my pupils would be girls. I had seen so much beauty in the corridors that one born under a less temperate star would have wanted to enter on his duties at once. They seemed anxious to meet me half way (the dons not the girls) and said that ‘no verse’ and Roman history confined to the third period would not matter.
Dodds then took me to his room and we talked for a while. I gather he is no longer a friend of Butler’s. He said Carritt had examined me in 1916 when I got my scholarship and had been ‘astonished at my wide reading’. Dodds does philosophy at Reading (tho’ pure scholarship is his natural line) and is strong on Plotinus. Their staff includes Ure the Historian and Holts the composer. He then showed me round the college which is pleasant and unpretentious, and left me in the Senior Common Room, to wait for lunch, coming back at 1 o’c.
At lunch he introduced me to Miss Powell who is one of their dons. She smoked through a thing like a lorgnette. She discussed the nakedness of pigs. The contempt which her affectation and cheap Sitwellian artistic cynicism provoked in me is best described by saying that she is the sort of woman in whose presence one thinks it worth while to try and make epigrams. Thank God I’ve been through that once and come out the other side.
I left the College at 2 and cycled to Bradfield [to see Sophocles’ Antigone performed in Greek at Bradfield College]: it was raining and blowing. Met Watling and J
enkin outside the theatre. It is perfectly Greek—simple stone steps to sit on and incense burning on the altar of Dionysus in the orchestra. Unfortunately the weather was perfectly English.
It was not well done: most of the actors were inaudible and as the rain increased (beating on the trees) it completely drowned them. The Carritts were there, his Cambridge daughter sitting beside me. Watling and Jenkin left me to find more shelter and when their places were taken by people who talked, I moved too and found that I could see nothing of the stage. The audience were spectacle enough: rows of unhappy people listening to inaudible words in an unknown language and sitting hunched up on stone steps under a steady downpour. If only P[apy] cd. be taken to this show!
I then noticed that Jenkin was standing on the last tier where the amphitheatre merged into the hillside—a steep bank of ivy over-hanging the stone work. Crept up to join him—‘Oh, think of a cup of steaming hot tea,’ said he. We exchanged a pregnant glance: then I led the way and in a trice we had plunged into the bushes, plugged our way on all fours up the ivy bank, and dropped into a lane beyond. Never shall I forget J. shaking streams off his hat and repeating over and over again, ‘Oh, it was a tragedy!’ We then repaired to a marquee and had tea . . .
Came home: D and I had for supper the sandwiches she had made up for my lunch and discussed the Reading job. To live at Reading means my living there alone while the others live at Oxford, or else changing Maureen’s school for a year. The first alternative I don’t care about, the second would be a thousand pities. Also, from the commercial point of view, it is undesirable to lose touch with the dons here . . .
Sunday 25 June: Late getting up. After breakfast, at ten exactly, I set out and walked to Beckley. A beautiful, windy morning with blue sky and great colours. Calling at Bee Cottage where I found Harwood’s brother and Barfield with a game leg, I arranged that Barfield and Harwood should come to tea on Tuesday, and continued my walk . . .
After lunch, while D was practising with Maureen, I wrote seven stanzas of a new Canto III for ‘Dymer’ in my own room. I think I have got back to the right track again . . . Jenkin arrived and we all had tea. D and I were amused to notice again how in his conversation all roads lead to Cornwall. A good talk afterwards on books. I showed him the American poet Robinson’s poem in the Mercury and he agreed with me in praising it.
Baker arrived by taxi, with his Aunt, in a bright blue dressing gown and was put to bed in the back room. His Aunt left almost at once. Jenkin stayed till 7 o’clock. After supper I talked with Baker. He tells me that Beckett sat the Antigone out yesterday and thought it splendid.65 . . .
Monday 26 June: . . . We had today our first dish of green peas this year—always a moment to be treasured up. After lunch I continued ‘Dymer’ with considerable satisfaction, bringing him to the second view of the ‘matriarch’. Baker got up and came down stairs for tea . . .
After supper while I was doing Latin with Maureen, D appears to have had a long conversation upstairs with Baker on a variety of subjects, including the possibility of my getting married. I sat with him for some time afterwards. He remarked that Harwood was playing Watts Dunton to Barfield’s Swinburne. We talked of H. G. Wells.
A letter from Arthur today: funnily enough he is coming to Waldencote to stay with a Mrs Taunton, a painter. D reminded me that Pasley had seen her and taken a very different view of her profession—and Arthur is paying ‘only 4/-a night’!
Tuesday 27 June: Another close, drizzling day. Most of the morning worked on ‘Dymer’, Canto III, with varying success. After lunch went out for a stroll through St Clement’s and up the old London Rd. A most unpleasant day.
Harwood turned up at about 4 o’clock and Baker came down shortly afterwards. We discussed Doughty. Harwood thought his manner was no more difficult than Milton’s would be if you had not come to it from the Classics and one might have as much survival power as the other. He supported Barfield’s view that there was no essential difference between the Christina and art: Baker and I opposed this. Harwood accepted my suggestion that imagination was ‘disinterested fancy’ . . .
D repeated to me some amusing details of her talk with Mrs Raymond . . . We then spoke of Baker: we quite agree about a certain lack of kindliness in him, and easy acquiescence in the fence which intellect tends to make between a man and the ‘solid folk’, and that this is a great and dangerous fault . . .
Wednesday 28 June: . . . A wire came from Arthur saying that he would arrive by the 5.55. Wrote a little more ‘Dymer’ and went in to meet him thro’ a steady drizzle.
He turned up with many pieces of luggage and in much indecision, but finally taxied out here. D persuaded him to stay with us, after a long and cataclysmic argument wh. amused Baker immensely. Baker and Arthur seemed to take to each other. Arthur is tremendously improved: nearly all the nonsense is gone and he talked interestingly.
Supper, with Miss Wiblin, was a pandemonium: everyone in great form, but Maureen shouting them all down. Afterwards Miss W. played—delightfully: D and I were specially struck with Debussy’s Cathedral. Miss Wiblin discovered that there were two poets present and asked someone to write words for her exercise, which is to be in the manner of Stravinsky: Baker knew Stravinsky and said at once that neither of us could do it. Whitman or a psalm was suggested. It was arranged that Miss Wiblin—who is frightfully overworked—was to come to me for Latin tuition on Friday evenings. We were all late in getting to bed after an enjoyable evening. Arthur occupied my camp bed in my room.
Thursday 29 June: A bright morning. Arthur had been disturbed by my snoring during the night and had got up to plug his ears with India rubber! This was quite like old times.
When I brought Baker his shaving water I showed him ‘Misfire’ which he had not seen before: he was interested in my taking that line, but did not approve. I then settled down to finish and fair copy Canto III of ‘Dymer’. Baker and Arthur spent most of the morning in the drawing room talking psychoanalysis. Just before lunch Arthur and I walked as far as Magdalen to get a taxi, and were rather late in getting back. A very amusing time at lunch . . .
At five to three we said goodbye to Baker. He had to go in order to see Lilian Bayliss about his contract at the Old Vic., tho’ he is not really fit to move. During the last two days he has been more human, less of the ‘spiritual aristocrat’ than I ever knew, and, in that way, I really believe his stay has done him good.
Arthur and I then walked to Waldencote through Mesopotamia and the green lane: it was a cool and showery afternoon—curiously tiring. At Waldencote we saw Mrs Dawes the caretaker. She also hates Hall. The house has a certain attraction—it is nicely furnished—but it is dark and inconvenient.
We then came home to tea. D in very poor form and depressed by the shrieking wind which has a bad effect on her, as on some other people. Arthur read James’ Turn of the Screw while I finished my canto. In the evening D, Arthur and I had started three handed bridge when Mary came in and made a fourth. We had a good evening of it, enough to make D and me sleepy. Arthur moves into the back room tonight. Dorothy came down in the evening with a present of flowers for D, the first thing she had bought out of Baker’s tip.
Friday 30 June: It was another winding and tiring day. After breakfast Arthur and I bussed into Oxford. I called first at the Times office where I found one answer to my advertisement, apparently from a very illiterate person . . .
We went to College. Arthur went off to look for Bryson of Oriel while I saw Farquharson.66 He made it pretty plain that he had now no tutoring job up his sleeve for me and hastened to talk about mathematics in the Greek philosophers. I showed him my answer to the advertisement and he advised me to ask Poynton what I should charge. I then showed Arthur the Library, Chapel and the Shelley memorial.
In Chundry’s we saw a curious book of drawings by un nomme Austin Osmond, spare, affected, grotesque and foul, after the manner of Beardsley.
We returned home very tired, buying strawberries in Cowley Road. When
lunch was just ready a woman called Malcomson of Islip, to whom Arthur had written, turned up. Arthur, instead of saying that he was staying in digs with me, or simply that he was in Oxford, had volunteered some yarn about ‘friends’. It all seemed so gratuitous that I positively lost my temper. I was made to go into the drawing room for a few minutes and speak to her. She is a grey haired woman with a shrill voice: in her conversation everything in ‘killing’ and ‘no end of a lark’. She stayed an unconscionable time. I think that she wanted to be asked to lunch, but of course it was better that D and she should not meet. It was arranged that Arthur should spend Sunday and Sunday night at Islip.
After lunch I packed up my things for the night and biked into Oxford: failing to see Poynton in College I went on to Beckley through wind and rain. I was warmly welcomed by Barfield and Harwood. M. L. Jacks (brother of Stopford, late Dean of Wadham, headmaster elect of Mill Hill) and his jolly wife came for tea.67 He was one of the strangers with whom I travelled from Pangbourne last Saturday: a pleasant man, laughs a lot. He tells me Stopford is now in business.
After their departure we got into conversation on fancy and imagination: Barfield cd. not be made to allow any essential difference between Christina dreams and the material of art. In the end we had to come to the conclusion that there is nothing in common between different people’s ways of working, and, as Kipling says, ‘every single one of them is right’.
At supper I drank Cowslip Wine for the first time in my life. It is a real wine, green in colour, bittersweet, as warming as good sherry, but heavy in its results and a trifle rough on the throat—not a bad drink however.
After supper we went out for a walk, into the woods on the edge of Otmoor. Their black and white cat, Pierrot, accompanied us like a dog all the way. Barfield danced round it in a field—with sublime lack of self consciousness and wonderful vigour—for our amusement and that of three horses. There was a chilling wind but it was quite warm in the wood. To wander here, as it got dark, to watch the cat poising after imaginary rabbits and to hear the wind in the trees—in such company—had a strange de la Mare-ish effect. On the way back we started a burlesque poem in terza rima composing a line each in turn: we continued it later, with paper, by candle light. It was very good nonsense. We entitled it ‘The Button Moulder’s story’ and went to bed.