All My Road Before Me

by C. S. Lewis

  D was still stiff with lumbago and this was one of the worst days yet for her toothache, tho’ fortunately it is always cured by going into a cold room . . . Before going to bed I had a talk with D about ways and means: we are not on our beam ends at the moment, but too near to be comfortable. I also read aloud a good part of the last volume of my diary.

  Wednesday 13 December: . . . I set out taking Lyly in my pocket. I walked first to Cowley village, then past the barracks to Horsepath, up the bridle path and so home over Shotover. The loathsome depression which we have all been living in these last few days now first thoroughly lifted and I had a most enjoyable afternoon. During the duller parts of my walk I read the greater part of Endymion,126 with which I was agreeably surprised. It’s got an air about it, I don’t know what, that seems to make the absurd style rather brave . . .

  While D and I were having tea a letter arrived from Warnie. This brought the good news that he is having a week’s leave and that I am to meet him at Euston on the 23rd. He very decently offers to put up the difference between the fare via London and the fare via Birkenhead . . .

  Thursday 14 December: . . . The three of us proceeded to the House to see the ceremony.127 I don’t know why I found it very uncomfortable—gave me a sort of suffocating feeling and nervous. The Bishop in his address spoke like a man: tho’ of course he couldn’t help bringing in the absurd statement that this day would be the one of all their school days which they would remember most vividly. However it was over at last, and someone played a fine fugue on the organ.

  Immediately after the service we met Mary and the Doc. The Doc agreed with me that the thing was a pretty arrant farce. I said I felt as if I’d been forced to come and see a pig killed. There’s some good glass in this cathedral. D asked the others home to tea and they all went back by taxi, including Smudge, whom we found under Tom Tower. I walked home.

  After tea I had a good deal of talk alone with the Doc, chiefly on philosophy. He explained to me (from the scientist’s point of view) the difference between epiphenomenalism and parallelism which I hadn’t quite clear before. We argued about the source of things: I said his ‘awareness’ was too qualified, there must be a bare ‘is’ beyond it. We drifted into psychology and I mentioned my trouble of becoming ‘self conscious in solitude’. After premising that I must not be alarmed he said it was a mild form of dissociation and certainly ought to be avoided . . .

  Friday 15 December: . . . After breakfast I bussed to the Union where I finished and noted The Broken Heart and read nearly all of Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster, a very jolly romantic play—the only Elizabethan one I have yet found which avoids rant and has a sense of restraint. B & F could certainly have taught Shakespeare a lesson in this line . . .

  I finished Philaster and after writing a note on it, began The Maid’s Tragedy. This was an absolute revelation to me. It is a great pity that Shakespeare’s plays both good and bad have been made into such an institution that a man might never open Beaumont and Fletcher if he didn’t happen to read the English School . . .

  Saturday 16 December: A raw, wet day. I spent the morning doing Vergil with Maureen. She was extraordinarily stupid and seemed to be making no effort—which I suppose is always the teacher’s fault in some way, tho’ I can’t quite see where I fail.

  At 12 o’clock I set out for Forest Hill . . . Aunt Lily combined cooking and philosophy and we did not lunch till 3.30—off chops and a capital plum pudding wh. she had bought at Buols. I found her very tedious today: tho’ I like enthusiasm one gets desperately tired of a fixed circle of ideas. She pays for her depth by narrowness. It was all the old business today: Shakespeare (praised, not as a great poet, but as a kind of monstrosity of intuition), the inevitable Emerson, the élan vital, the ‘exchange of differences’, heroism and the forward plunge.

  There was one inexplicable anecdote. She had been held up by a crush of prams at Carfax and had asked one obstructive woman to take her pram off the pavement. The woman replied that she had a right to be there. Aunt Lily retorted that she had no right to bring these children into the world for other people to look after and still less to block up the pavement. The woman said she was shopping. Aunt Lily said it was bad for the child to be taken shopping and the only good thing was that it killed some of them off.

  I asked her why on earth she said such a thing. ‘I was angry,’ she answered. I replied, quoting Plato, that anger was an aggravation, not an excuse. She added that she had a lot of leaflets issued by the C.B.C. (Constructive Birth Control): and she was going to drop one into every pram the next time she went into Oxford, wh. would indeed be a good joke: but I don’t think she saw it that way.

  Lunch was a slow business and after-lunch tea a slower, so that it was after five before I knew. I then left her and walked home. It was almost quite dark, with wind in the trees and a little grey light over Shotover Hill: it was like plunging into a cool bath after all this afternoon’s jargon. What I can’t stand about her is that she knows everything: the Holy Ghost discusses all his plans with her and she was on the committee that arranged creation . . .

  Reached home shortly before seven to find the Doc, Mary and the Brat here and D rather worried as she had expected me earlier. The Doc is to vaccinate us all tomorrow.

  Maureen came in with the news that Mr Raymond—who is leaving for a job at Watford—is proposing to let his house (Hillsboro) unless he gets a good offer of purchase, and was surprised that we hadn’t made an offer. I am to go and see him about it in the morning: I suppose it is a wild goose chase like all the rest . . .

  Sunday 17 December: I dreamed in the night that the Doc was ‘vaccinating’ Baker. I came into a room and found the patient lying nude on a hearthrug: the Doc was using an instrument like a spanner—which was not screwed together but sprang together at the pressure of a trigger. The operation in my mind was understood to be vaccination, tho’ at the same time castration. I fled from the room and woke.

  It was a miraculously bright morning. After breakfast I walked up to Hillsboro where I found father Raymond engaged in ‘dogging’. I stood by the kennel and listened to him for a few minutes, until Mrs Raymond appeared and we retired to the drawing room. I then broached the subject of the house. The answer was a series of uncertainties. Mr Raymond does not know when he will leave nor where his new job will be. If his new place offers a good house they will move thither, if not, they will keep Hillsboro and he will live in rooms. Or again, they may let it furnished—and so on. The only fact that I could get was that he would sell for £1200 and let for £75 and that he would rather sell than let. After a little talk on politics I came away.

  Having reached home again and given my report, I wrote a little until stopped by Maureen’s practising in the next room. After lunch time the Doc arrived and we all prepared for execution—Maureen keeping up a torrent of comic relief. The Doc used a sterilised nail file and the scullery for a theatre: we were all done, including Dorothy. Maureen apparently has the thickest skin and the Doc was a long time scraping her, which she bore with admirable stoicism. When my turn came I found it less painful than it looked . . .

  Monday 18 December: Very tired again this morning. I dreamed in the night that my father had taken one of the paper shops at the bottom of Divinity Road, and Baker had taken the other. The dream turned mainly on my efforts to avoid being seen by my father when I went into Baker’s shop for a chat across the counter.

  After breakfast I went in to the Union and started Chapman’s Bussy D’Ambois: of which I couldn’t make head or tail, partly because it is such execrable drivel, partly because I was feeling so poorly. In the end I gave it up and came home with a volume of Middleton and a headache. D and Maureen had gone into town independently and were still out. After lunch I read the Changeling in the drawing room128—next to Bussy D’Ambois the worst Elizabethan play I have read, but it has one good scene. I am wondering if any Elizabethan except Shakespeare ever thought of writing except on adultery. Afterwards I be
gan Women Beware Women which is very good and made ample amends.129 Every now and then it actually has a line that scans.

  At tea D told me that Dorothy’s family are all furious with her for having been vaccinated. After tea I was just going to go out when D remembered that Smudge was coming for a lesson. I continued reading until she came and then did Tacitus with her till 8 o’clock when we had supper. D pretty well today.

  Thursday 21 December: . . . I then came to the Union and wrote to Baker and to my father. This done, I went round to the bookshops to choose a present for the latter, and after some difficulty, fixed on What the Judge Thought130—a rather bad book for a present as it cost a guinea and looks worth twelve shillings. But it is the sort of thing I think he might read. My arm worried me rather more this morning.

  I then came home: after lunch I went into the drawing room and started my table for the nineteenth century. D worked very hard in the dining room putting up parcels for all her poor pensioners: we had tea at 5.45, alone, Maureen having gone to play progressive bridge at the Taylors. We were both in as good form as could be expected, with this wretched Irish visit hanging over us. In the evening came Smudge: all very merry at supper. Afterwards I did Latin with her. Not in bed till nearly one.

  Friday 22 December: My arm has thoroughly taken by now and is pretty sore—tho’ nothing to Maureen’s. After breakfast (which was very late) I went on with my table for a little while: then, finding that Saintsbury ceased to give dates as he got near the present day, I bussed in to the Union and did some research on the eighty-ish crowd.

  The Doc was here for lunch . . . He gave us an account of the awful clothes his father had made him wear as a boy: he had had a fad for ‘government flannel’ and fitted all his sons out with thick grey shirts of that prickly material. D said their father had been a very good man really, and disagreeable nowhere except at home. The Doc agreed.

  I got him to talk travellers talk: he described a sail in the iceberg regions, bergs, one after the other like tents in a camp, stretching as far as you could see, and tremendous sunshine. He said one of the best places he’d ever seen was the straits of Magellan: he said it really gave you the feeling of the world’s end.

  We talked of the wreck of the Titanic. He said when the Captain saw the berg ahead, he should have kept straight on: in that case he would have smashed his bows, but as the impact lessened he would have come up against the first watertight bulkhead and the rest of the ship would have been safe. As it was, he put his helm hard down in a hopeless effort to get round the berg, and so got his whole side ripped up . . .

  D and I were alone for tea: afterward I walked down Cowley Road and bought a razor blade. Sat up pretty late in the evening talking over this last year and what bad times we had had—especially its beginning and the cursed visit of the Askins and their patient efforts to ruin my Schools and, what was more important, D’s health.

  Saturday 23 December: Up betimes, having packed the night before and left home immediately after breakfast. I caught the 10.5—a beautiful sunny morning. I was met at Paddington by Baker, who seemed well and cheerful. For some reason we found that we had very little to say to each other, tho’ not for lack of will on each side.

  He told me that Barfield was engaged to be married to a Miss Dewey131 who was at least thirty seven. We both agreed that the possibilities of success in such unequal marriage depended entirely on the individuals, and that it might turn out very well. He said the pity was that there could be no children and Barfield was obviously made to be a father. I saw no reason why a woman under forty shd. not have a child.

  He took me to the flat which he shares with Beckett, a very tiny place in a large block of similar ones, which are mostly inhabited by the mistresses of great men. Baker is getting on excellently at the Old Vic and has had encouraging messages from ‘in front’. He is now doing Herod’s chancellor in their Nativity play.

  I tried to get his views of Moppie. He said his aunt had seen at once that truthfulness was not one of Moppie’s virtues and was afraid we might be deceived over the main issue. He could give no explanation how she had spent so much money in London, as he had paid everything.

  At 12.30 we went out and lunched at the Good Intent: we then tubed to Charing Cross where he had to leave me, after a most disappointing meeting . . . I then wrote a card to D, got my ticket and strolled about Endsleigh Square, where I had been in Hospital in 1918.

  Shortly before 4 I returned to the Central Hall at Euston and there was met by W, when we immediately went and had tea in the refreshment room. He gave a most favourable account of Colchester which, he said, was a very old world town in an Arthur Rackham country. We caught the 5.30 for Liverpool: what between dinner, drinks, and conversation the journey passed very quickly: we succeeded in sitting in the dining car the whole way. We had two single berth rooms in the boat, with a communicating door. I was greatly worried all day by the pain in my armpit. A rough night, but we both slept well.

  Sunday 24 December: We got out to Leeborough in the grey of the morning, not in the best of spirits. My father was not up yet. When he finally appeared, he was in poor form and rather shaky—for whatever reason. He approved of my new suit. Then followed breakfast and the usual artificial conversation. We vetoed churchgoing and went out for a walk at twelve o’clock.

  My father chose his favourite route ‘round the river bank’: that is, crossing the railway at Sydenham, we walked in the black and leafless park which lies between the slums and the shipyards, separated from the latter by an impure channel in which they are at work building an island of garbage. The path was so narrow that the other two walked ahead and I was left, not to my own thoughts, for in Ireland I have none, but to the undisturbed possession of my own lethargy.

  We came back and had some sherry: W and I have often remarked on the extraordinary effect of this sherry. Last night I drank four whiskies without any undue result: today, in the study, my one glass of sherry led to a dull and cheerless shadow of intoxication. We had a heavy midday dinner at 2.45. The rest of the day was spent entirely in the study: our three chairs in a row, all the windows shut. I remember little of it. I read a certain amount of Inge’s 1st Series of Outspoken Essays. I talked with W for some time after we were in bed.

  Monday 25 December: We were awakened early by my father to go to the Communion Service.132 It was a dark morning with a gale blowing and some very cold rain. We tumbled out and got under weigh. As we walked down to church we started discussing the time of sunrise; my father saying rather absurdly that it must have risen already, or else it wouldn’t be light.

  In church it was intensely cold. W offered to keep his coat on. My father expostulated and said ‘Well at least you won’t keep it on when you go up to the Table.’ W asked why not and was told it was ‘most disrespectful’. I couldn’t help wondering why. But W took it off to save trouble. I then remembered that D was probably turning out this morning for Maureen’s first communion, and this somehow emphasised the dreariness of this most UNcomfortable sacrament. We saw Gundrede, Kelsie and Lily.133 W also says he saw our cousin Joey.134 . . .

  We got back and had breakfast. Another day set in exactly similar to yesterday. My father amused us by saying in a tone, almost of alarm, ‘Hello, it’s stopped raining. We ought to go out,’ and then adding with undisguised relief ‘Ah, no. It’s still raining: we needn’t.’ Christmas dinner, a rather deplorable ceremony, at quarter to four.

  Afterwards it had definitely cleared up: my father said he was too tired to go out, not having slept the night before, but encouraged W and me to do so—which we did with great eagerness and set out to reach Holywood by the high road and there have a drink. It was delightful to be in the open air after so many hours confinement in one room.

  Fate however denied our drink: for we were met just outside Holywood by the Hamilton’s car and of course had to travel back with them.135 Uncle Gussie drove back along the narrow winding road in a reckless and bullying way that alarmed W and
me. We soon arrived back at Leeborough and listened to Uncle Gussie smoking my father in his usual crude but effective way, telling him that he should get legal advice on some point. The Hamiltons did not stay very long.

  Afterwards I read Empedocles on Etna wh. I read long ago and did not understand. I now recognised Empedocles’ first lyric speech to Pausanias as a very full expression of what I almost begin to call my own philosophy.136 In the evening W played the gramophone. Early to bed, dead tired with talk and lack of ventilation. I found my mind was cumbling into the state which this place always produces: I have gone back six years to be flabby, sensual and unambitious. Headache again.

  Tuesday 26 December: The same sort of morning in the study. W is reading Dill’s Roman Society and he started discussing it with me. We wondered whether the pay for the legions was carried in gold from Rome or whether they possibly had some credit system. At this moment my father suddenly cut in, observing derisively ‘No, it was taken in specie.’ Not even an ‘I think’ or a ‘Probably’: and he has never to my knowledge read a word about the Roman Empire!

  We were invited by telephone to lunch at Glenmachan and while we were changing Kelsie called and we walked up with her. Gundred was out hunting: we met Bob137 and Cousin Mary. The latter, despite my real respect for her, made me indignant by supporting the Ulster government’s prohibition of Midnight Mass and describing Cardinal Logue’s very moderate letter as an incitement to rebellion.138 But one can’t argue with old ladies and I said ‘Yea, yea and nay, nay’.