All My Road Before Me

by C. S. Lewis

  In the porch I met Poynton. He had heard of my news and came up at once to offer his regrets: he said that I had done well and that Warren had expressed himself ‘greatly impressed’ but that ‘it was hardly my examination’. I explained that I would be ‘up’ this term: he said he supposed my scholarship had ceased. I said this had been discussed at the end of last term and that the Master had held out hopes of its being extended . . .

  Friday 13 October: . . . Shortly before one I saw Farquharson. He told me to go to Wilson of Exeter for tuition in English.95 He then gave me a paternal lecture on an academic career which was not (he said) one of leisure as popularly supposed. His own figure however lessened the force of the argument. He advised me, as he has done before, to go to Germany for a time and learn the language. He prophesied that there would soon be a school of modern European literature and that linguistically qualified Greatsmen would be the first to get the new billets thus created. This was attractive, but of course circumstances make migration impossible for me . . .

  Home to lunch: thence rushed back and went to Exeter. Wilson was not there but I found him in his house in Manor Place. He is a fat, youngish man: his face impressed me well. He tells me I shall have my work cut out to manage the work in the time.96

  Having fixed up work and lectures I hurried home, where I found Jenkin. I strolled out with him before tea. He is staying up to write for his B.Litt.

  After tea I went in to see Carlyle . . . He was delighted to hear that I had got Wilson. He gave me a letter of introduction to Miss Wardale and I hurried off to Wellington Square to find her: but it appears that she has left that house . . . Altogether a not very pleasant day: late to bed, very footsore. A mile of pavement walking is more than a five mile country walk.

  Saturday 14 October: Hurried over breakfast and went as quickly as I could by bus to St Hugh’s to inquire for Miss Wardale’s address. I found her in a house in Margaret Road. She is an elderly, pallid woman, rendered monstrous by a lower lip hanging loose enough to expose an irregular gum. I am to go to her on Tuesdays at 12.97

  Having fixed this up I came back, taking a volume of Chaucer from the College library. At home I went to my room where I read till lunch, finishing the first and two thirds of the second book of Troilus. I enjoyed it very much.

  After lunch I bicycled to Merton St. as arranged and called for Jenkin. We set off along Parks Road, then through Wolvercote and Port Meadow. We went by the tow path, between golden trees, crossing many bridges, to Wytham village. Here, in defiance of the notice ‘strictly private’ we entered with bated breath just under a game keeper’s house, where my bike made a great noise. We met no one. The wood was glorious. It contains all kinds: in places there are open glades of green trunked oaks and brown bracken, elsewhere the intensest thickets. We got into open country on top of the hill—grassland with a lot of little valleys walled (partly) with some kind of white rock. Below was a huge landscape, behind us the edge of the wood, chiefly silver birches. It was at once so lonely, so wild, so luxurious, that we both thought of Acrasia’s bower of bliss. To add to that suggestion, Jenkin saw at no great distance, a very comely couple in flagrante.

  We went down the other side of the hill, emerging on the road at Swinford Bridge. We turned right and came along the river bank under the side of the wood. At Godstow we had a cup of tea in the Trout Inn, and so back to town. Jenkin remarked that natural beauty always affected him as the suggested background of a happiness that wasn’t there: the scene was set, but one couldn’t enjoy the scenery for wondering why the play never began.

  At Gadney’s I bought Sweet’s Anglo Saxon Reader. I reached home by 6.30 and was sorry to find that D, since I had expected to be back for tea, had worried about me. After supper I started on a piece in the Reader which Miss Wardale had directed me to—Alfred’s account of ‘Ohthere, the old sea captain’. Late to bed.

  Sunday 15 October: . . . Worked all morning in the dining room on my piece in Sweet’s Reader and made some progress. It is very curious that to read the words of King Alfred gives more sense of antiquity than to read those of Sophocles. Also, to be thus realising a dream of learning Anglo-Saxon which dates from Bookham days.

  At 12.45 I changed and bicycled to Chadlington Rd. to lunch with the Stevensons. Besides the family there was a pretty woman and a very tall man whose names I did not catch. We all laughed at Stevenson carving. Nothing of much interest was said, but I like both Stevenson and his wife very well. They are thoroughly unacademic.

  Home by about 3.30 and did Anglo-Saxon till tea: afterwards went on with Troilus. Smudge came at 6.30 and I did Latin with her till 8, when we had supper. After that and washing up and more Troilus up till nearly the end of Book III. It is amazingly fine stuff. How absolutely anti-Chaucerian Wm. Morris was in all save the externals.

  Joined D in the front room as soon as Mrs Hankin was gone to bed. D is becoming very dissatisfied with Dorothy and also with Ivy’s habit of coming here daily almost, and inviting herself to meals in the kitchen . . .

  Monday 16 October: Bicycled to the Schools after breakfast to a 10 o’clock lecture: stopping first to buy a bachelor’s gown at the extortionate price of 32/6d. According to a usual practice of the Schools we were allowed to congregate in the room where the lecture was announced, and then suddenly told it would be in the North School: our exodus of course fulfilled the scriptural condition of making the last first and the first last. I had thus plenty of time to feel the atmosphere of the English School which is very different from that of Greats. Women, Indians, and Americans predominate and—I can’t say how—one feels a certain amateurishness in the talk and look of the people.

  The lecture was by Wyld on the History of the language.98 He spoke for an hour and told us nothing that I haven’t known these five years: remarking that language consisted of sounds, not letters, that its growth did not depend on conscious changes by individuals, that two and two make four, and other deep truths of that kind . . .

  After lunch I bicycled again to Schools to seek out the library of the English School. I found it at the top of many stories, inhabited by a strange old gentleman who seems to regard it as his private property, talking about ‘I’ and never ‘we’. I got out W. M. Rossetti’s collation of Troilus and Il Filostrato and came home . . .

  I went back to Troilus and nearly finished Book V. It is simply amazing. Except Macbeth and one or two of the old ballads I don’t know that any poetry has affected me more. Unfortunately whenever I look up a particularly fine stanza in Rossetti, hoping it will be Chaucer’s own, it always turns out to be pure Boccaccio . . .

  Tuesday 17 October: Bicycled to town after breakfast and went to Wyld’s second lecture. Today he was clear and interesting, though still telling us what everyone should know already: the mere giving of names to old conceptions is however useful . . .

  I then cycled to 12 Margaret Road to Miss Wardale and had an hour’s lesson. She gave me a kind of scheme of grammar: I am to read the Riddles for next time. She spoke of Classical education and said that for us English, who have no grammar of our own, it was a necessary introduction to the study of language. I thought this perfectly true . . .

  From lunch till tea time I worked at an essay on Troilus. My prose style is really abominable, and between poetry and work I suppose I shall never learn to improve it.

  Another very warm afternoon. D in excellent form. After tea I walked to Iffley churchyard and back. It was now a fine frosty evening. The village was beautiful, and especially the church with the trees all golden. As I walked, my head began to be full of ideas for the VI Canto of ‘Dymer’. Forgot to mention that I wrote a fragment for the Vth last night, but without very much success . . .

  Wednesday 18 October: After breakfast I sat in the dining room doing Vergil with Maureen: bicycled to Schools for a 12 o’clock lecture on Chaucer by Simpson, who turns out to be the old man I found in the English School library. Quite a good lecture.99

  I found a letter from my father aw
aiting me in College. He has seen the result of the Magdalen show and writes very kindly. I then rode home (against a strong wind, bitter, tho’ it was very bright) lunched, and retired to my own room. I began to have a headache and to feel very tired: lost control of my thought and finally gave it up. So left my books and walked to the foot of Shotover, thence by the field path to Cowley Barracks and home on the golf links.

  I was just starting to work when Jenkin arrived and I went to him in the drawing room. We talked of Troilus and this led us to the question of chivalry. I thought the mere ideal, however unrealised, had been a great advance. He thought the whole thing had been pretty worthless. The various points which I advanced as good results of the Knightly standard he attributed to Christianity. After this Christianity became the main subject. I tried to point out that the mediaeval knight ran his class code and his church code side by side in watertight compartments.

  Jenkin said that the typical example of the Christian ideal at work was Paul, while admitting that one would probably have disliked him in real life. I said that one got very little definite teaching in the Gospels: the writers had apparently seen something overwhelming, but been unable to reproduce it. He agreed, but added that this was so with everything worth having . . .

  Thursday 19 October: . . . Sat too long over my last cup of tea at breakfast and had to bus into town, thus arriving late at the Schools for my 10 o’clock lecture. This was by Onions on M[iddle] E[nglish] texts.100 He is a good lecturer, but unfortunately stammers: tho’ I noticed that in quoting verse (which he does well) he got rid of the stammer.

  From this I came home and started to read the Hous of Fame, a work I do not much care for. I continued it after lunch until Dorothy suddenly announced that Cranny and his daughter were in the drawing room.

  I went in, shook hands with him, and was introduced to her. I saw a girl over six feet high, broad in the shoulder as Tolley, with a large, sullen face, and a gruff, vulgar voice. She seemed to fill the whole room when she rose. ‘She could have ta’en Achilles by the hair.’ She refused to talk and never smiled. D presently joined me. Conversation was rather difficult.

  With the girl it was something like this: ‘You have had a pony haven’t you Miss Macran?’ ‘No, worse luck.’ ‘We have had a very poor summer.’ ‘I got plenty of tennis thank goodness.’ ‘Maureen thought your school at Wantage very nice.’ ‘I don’t.’ D remarked that we had a P.G. who was rather stiff: the girl said ‘Bring her to me. I’ll unstiffen her.’ Her father said that the clergyman with whom he had been trying to exchange, seemed to have told him a lot of lies: upon which the girl said ‘Just like a parson.’ I said that Mr Goodacre had been a man with no mind: she shouted ‘Like me!’ After each remark, which she blurted as if some demon were compelling her to break a vow of silence, her face relapsed at once into its settled expression of implacable ferocity and discontent. When I went out to make the tea, D set her to the piano: she vamped some rubbish and then sang a suggestive song in a high soprano—her speaking voice having the timbre of a coalheaver.

  At tea Smudge and Maureen turned up from this afternoon’s concert where they had heard Vaughan Williams’ new symphony.

  Shortly after them came Jenkin. He persuaded me to come in to his rooms for a few minutes. He showed me one or two poems of Donne’s which I liked: he also read me some ballads recently written by Cornish miners: two of them were the real stuff. I asked him if he ever wrote verse now. He startled me by replying ‘No, you stopped me doing that.’ I asked him what he meant. He said I had told him, after seeing some of his work, that he needed a long course of technical discipline. He had thought this true, but decided that since he wouldn’t give all his energies to it, he might as well give up . . .

  Friday 20 October: In to the Schools for an eleven lecture on the O[ld] E[nglish] poetry by Miss Wardale.101 We had the usual Schools business of being shifted twice before we were finally settled in the North School . . . Miss W., in her cap and gown, looks a very odd figure: quite a good lecture, but her voice is not strong enough and the strain of listening is tiresome. She drew a distinction between the pessimism of O.E. literature and the comparative cheerfulness of the Icelandic.

  From there I bicycled through wind and rain to Wilson at 9 Manor Rd. I think I shall like him. He caught me up very sharply when I mentioned Fairfax in my essay, asking ‘What did he write?’ This shows the sort of people he has to deal with, and I really think he was surprised to find that I had read Fairfax. We agreed over most points. He quoted from Legouis a view that Chaucer’s Pandaurus was indistinct and merely a transition between Boccaccio’s and Shakespeare’s. What nonsense! He lent me Ker’s Mediaeval Essays.

  I came home. Mrs Hankin departed for London immediately after lunch: this was a delightful event, spoiled only by the prospect of her speedy return. I went to my own room, and after messing about with the prologue to the Legend of Good Women (pretty, but hopelessly mediaeval) I began the Canterbury Tales in great glee. Continued these till supper time, by which [time] I had reached the third part of the Knight’s Tale.

  Poor D is in very poor form these days. She has taken on too much work in the sewing line and is worried with it: she is also bothered by the laziness and uselessness of Dorothy . . .

  Saturday 21 October: Up rather late and started Vergil with Maureen after breakfast, going on till eleven o’clock. Then I set to on my O.E. Riddles: did not progress very quickly but solved a problem which has been holding me up. Sweet is certainly an infuriating author . . .

  D was much more cheerful than she has been for some time and for an hour or so we were quite merry. After tea I went to the drawing room and continued the Tales. Then supper: D’s work, which has all my maledictions, had her worried again by that time, or perhaps it was depression. A delightfully small wash up, thanks to the absence of Mrs Hankin and other visitors. Afterwards I got as far as the end of the Reeve’s Tale, which is pretty poor: but the Miller’s capital.

  Sunday 22 October: Up late and a fine cold morning. I went out shortly after breakfast taking Two Gentlemen of Verona in my hand. I finished it during my walk: it has some lines which are pretty in a faint way, and Launce with his dog is good, but on the whole it is poor stuff. I walked up Shotover and home by the wood path and Morris’ works. There was a fine display of colours on the hill, I never saw them better. I remember particularly one tree, golden apple coloured with red bushes underneath.

  Home to lunch at one thirty. Afterwards while D worked I sat in the dining room and went on with Chaucer, reading the Man of Law’s Tale—pretty work. D was in good form and we were all very merry at tea.

  Afterwards I retired to the drawing room and had a go at the Riddles. I learned a good deal, but found them much too hard for me at present. I finally left them and learnt the passage on Cynewulf and Cyneheard from the Chronicle which I could manage well. Then supper and washing up, after which I started the passage of Aelfred on the state of learning in England.

  Last of all D and I settled down by the drawing room fire. She read me from the Sunday Times the week’s instalment of Mrs Asquith’s Biography.102 This week it was on the shell controversy, wrapped up in a lot of allusion and rhetoric, but with no clear defence that we could see. We talked of Mrs Hankin and her apparent indifference to her son’s return from Spain. To bed, very jolly, at midnight.

  Monday 23 October: Walked into town after breakfast to the Schools: there was a greater confusion than ever about the rooms, Wyld being announced ‘unable to go upstairs’. We were finally shepherded into a room that would not hold us, most of the audience standing outside and gradually trickling away. Wyld had a sprained ankle and delivered his lecture sitting: it was pretty interesting. He quoted a passage from Prometheus Unbound and said he didn’t know where it came from.

  I came home and did some more O.E. before lunch. Afterwards I sat in the drawing room and worked on Chaucer. My mind was disturbed somewhat by thinking what a poem could be written on the harrowing of hell: and
I saw that most of the ideas which occurred to me in connection with Sarastro would come into this . . .

  Tuesday 24 October: . . . After breakfast to the Schools to hear Wyld, who managed to come upstairs today. After his lecture I went to College, thence to the Union and to Taphouses to do a message for Maureen. I then bicycled to Margarets Road and did my tutorial with Miss Wardale. I think this old lady will not be much use: she is too much interested in phonology and theory of language, delightful subjects no doubt, but life is short . . .

  Wednesday 25 October: . . . I went into town on foot and returned two books to the Union: taking out . . . a volume of Burns to prepare myself for tonight’s Martlets . . .

  I . . . went to the J.C.R. where I found Fasnacht, Salveson, Jenkin, Robson-Scott, Davie and others.103 We had some amusing conversation and then departed to the Martlets meeting in the rooms of one McCissack.104 These turned out to be the rooms I had when I first came up in 1917. Here I first was brought home drunk: here I wrote some of the poems in Spirits in Bondage. D had been in this room. It was all very reminiscent.

  Curtis, who is now secretary, came in late and read the minutes between gasps: for some reason we all, including the secretary, dissolved into laughter and every word of the minutes became pregnant with ridiculous meaning. It was a good example of the group mind at work. Carlyle came in after the paper had begun.

  It was on Burns, by a Scot called Dawson, a douce lad, whom I liked very much and shall try to get into touch with.105 He, Salveson, and I had some talk during the interval: he and I arguing that the good emotions were more intense than the bad and that an amorist might write tolerable songs, but it took a man of one affair to write the Divine Comedy. Salveson did not see the point and remained convinced to the end that we were defending good emotion qua good: whereas we were merely claiming that they happened to be the most interesting. The discussion after the interval was very good.