by C. S. Lewis
Kelsie bored me to death: and made one horribly revealing remark. She said it was a pity that the Rolls Royce people had started making small cars: for in the old days ‘to have a Rolls Royce meant that you were Someone, but now anyone would ask, which sort?’ After this we left.
A rather grey afternoon. We walked down to Tillysburn and went to town by rail motor: at the station we had drinks and I sent off a post card to D. One of the bright spots of a holiday like this is the schoolboyish sense of escape and delight wh. W. and I feel in our otherwise prosaic little jaunts. We then rail motored back to Sydenham and arrived at Leeborough to find our father out: after tea—at wh. we now get plum cake alone—I began Jude the Obscure139 and read this most of the evening: having read and hated Burke’s Present Discontent in the morning. Jude is splendid. I heard today or yesterday that Arthur is away in Surrey—a piece of news which for more than one reason did not increase my cheerfulness. Early to bed.
Wednesday 27 December: Up late again. W spent most of the morning in the little end room making out a ‘programme’ of gramophone records for the evening. I sat in the study and read Jude. My father took short strolls in the garden, fidgeted, and read a little before lunch. W and I played croquet after lunch (which my father ordered for ‘2.30 sharp’). W and I went into town. Back lateish and gramophone in the evening.
Thursday 28 December: My father went back to town today. He came into our room to say good morning fully dressed and we were not up till he was out of the house. After breakfast we repaired at once to the little end room where we have had no chance to be yet. It is the only part of the house where we have any sense of possession or of being at our ease. I spent a busy and laborious morning making up my diary from the time when I left home. During the morning Janie McNeill rang up and invited us to lunch.
W suggested a walk and in the afternoon we set out. We went up to the hills by the usual route and along to the turn before Craigagantlet. Thence down by the waterworks into Holywood. It was most enjoyable: there was white frost on the road and a cold sky, grey with yellow patches deepening into mauve near the horizon. The country with its bare trees, tumble down cottages and glimpses of the Mournes was very fine: but sad. In the hotel at Holywood we drank and sat for a long time by a fine fire in the smoking room, talking pleasantly on indifferent subjects.
We then caught the rail motor and, getting out at Sydenham, reaching Leeborough just at the same time as my father whom we met at the gate. He was depressed and fidgety. He talked of the possible invasion of Ulster by the southerners in a cowardly strain that annoyed us.
When we had sat down to dinner news was brought that a lady was outside with a message for me. Going out, I found Mrs Greeves who greeted me with surprising affection, pressing my hand between hers. She then handed me a letter from D. She said I was not to worry about it at all and not to protest, and would I come over and see her. I was a little worried at finding her as my confidante, for I had never thought her very discreet, but I was very pleased and grateful on the whole. Her husband (the notorious Thistle Bird) is in hospital in London for anaemia and she is alone with John.140 When I returned to the table I was surprised to find that no pressing enquiries were made.
Afterwards I finished Jude which is certainly a great tragedy. I looked into Yeats’ later poems: they are too obscure. In Two Kings he interested me by using a story I had wanted to write on myself. I then took up De la Mare’s Veil: unwisely, for I was already lonely and depressed and they made a very vivid impression on me. W and I were late to bed. In D’s letter I read that the tooth had begun bothering again. Hardly any headache tonight.
Friday 29 December: After breakfast we repaired to the little end room where I wrote to D, giving an account of Mrs Greeves’ visit and directing that letters should be sent to Bernagh, but not too frequently. I then wrote up my diary: and we had got up so late that this, together with some reading of an old MS from the playbox (‘The Sailor’) and some chat over our morning beer, took us till 12.30 when it was time to change to go to lunch at the McNeills.
Here we had the usual lively and outrageous conversation and some very excellent coffee after lunch. Janie told us a scandalous story about Bob [Ewart]: his mother had been considering the purchase of a new car, but said that she was so old now that it would be hardly worth while. Bob replied ‘Oh well a Ford lasts about four years,’ and had suggested that they should use the doctor’s advice in buying it. W and I both disbelieved the tale. We had a great deal more of chaff and scandal and some mildly literary conversation.
Janie told us that Cousin Mary thinks I am ‘greatly improved’—whatever that means: perhaps it is her way of saying (what everyone else has said) that I have got fatter. Janie pulled my leg and said I was ‘getting to look fearfully adequate’ . . . As W and I walked back we laughed at Janie for pretending to have read Rabelais. W said it was a pity she was so proud of her little bit of literature and her little bit of emancipation.
On the way back we met Mrs Calwell and her sister, fat Miss Robertson, whom I should not have known. They delayed us for a long time but told us one good bit of news, that Miss Harper is now living with Hanie Hewson and her husband near the Curragh and looking after the children: so we may hope the poor old thing is in an atmosphere of comfort and cheerfulness.141
Having got back to Leeborough we changed and had some tea: after which we walked down to Tillysburn and there took the rail motor for Holywood. When we came out from Holywood station on the ‘front’ there was a faint mist of level blue grey with a few lights here and there and a break in the clouds out to sea. It was beginning to rain. W remarked on the insensibility of nearly everyone to beauty: ‘How many would notice that?’ he asked. I said nobody (almost) looked at the sky.
We then went to our usual hotel where we found the smoking room inhabited by a very old man and two fine dogs. We had our drink. He talked of immortality: he said all he wanted was this world improved. I argued that whatever else happened, that part of you couldn’t be immortal. He complained that reality never came up to our dreams. I propounded my condemnation of dreams, and he understood me better than most—for I have never been able to explain this decently, except to Baker and to him only because he had thought it himself. I don’t think W agreed with me at all. We then came back by rail motor, getting out at Sydenham.
After dinner I began to read grandfather Hamilton’s diary of his voyage to Calcutta in 1852.142 My recent interest in eugenics and some vague smatterings of the Mendelian Law etc, made me feel a new interest in community of blood. It was strange to feel that I had really been there on the old East Indiaman. An interesting book, this diary, despite the awful picture of my grandfather as a pompous and conceited evangelical boy.
After I had read for some time, John Greeves came in. He said almost nothing: but my father became very interesting and agreeable and we had some fairly good talk. I felt I could get on with him splendidly if he would always be as he was that evening. This showed me that it is a change in him and not the mere process of my growing older which makes things so increasingly difficult—for I seem to remember him once being usually as he was, exceptionally, tonight. Fairly early to bed, much less depressed than last night.
Saturday 30 December: A fine morning: after breakfast to the little end room. Yesterday Mollie Boyd had rung up on the telephone and invited us both to play bridge for some evening a fair way ahead. W had answered that he was going to England tonight and that I was going on the 7th. At first I was delighted at this escape, but soon realised that they would be almost sure to see me here later than the 7th. After some hesitation I wrote this morning a letter to Molly Boyd explaining that W had made a mistake: adding, however, that they must not change their tables again on that account and deprecating my powers as a bridge player. After this I wrote up my diary and was preparing to write a letter to D when W pressed me to come out. As it was late and his last day, I wrote a card to D and came.
We walked to Tillysburn by the
High Holywood road and the ‘sandy loaning’, thence by rail motor to Holywood. Here we sat a good while in the smoking room: I forget what we talked of. We came back by rail motor to Sydenham and arrived at Leeborough to find my father already there. During the afternoon I went on with my grandfather’s diary.
By afternoon post there came a letter to me addressed in Arthur’s hand and containing one from D. Arthur had included a small note of his own—so ridiculously small in comparison with the whole that I could not read it in the presence and had to leave the study abruptly. Arthur writes that the people with whom he was staying in Sussex have got ill and he is now back at 4, Cleveland Terrace, Hyde Park, London, W.2. I was of course unable to read D’s letter and for some absurd reason I felt a conviction that it wd. contain bad news: this kept me very anxious all evening.
Just before dinner an unpleasant episode occurred. W was complaining of the expense of a small mess such as they have in Colchester and my father began, as usual, to make fun of the army and of army troubles. W, who is morbidly sensitive on this score, was stung into retorting ‘It’s all very well for you, living in the study and spending £1400 a year on yourself.’
Tho’ just, this was really rather rude after W has been drinking his whiskey for a week and especially since my father told him yesterday that he need not repay the £20 lent him at the time of McGrigors failure.143 My father took it very well, all things considered.
After an excellent cold supper (the only meal I like in this house) my father and I went in to the Liverpool boat to see W. off and returned in the same taxi. I felt thoroughly miserable. My father remarked that it ‘made him sick’ to think of a man of W’s ability wasting his time in the army.
After he had gone to bed I opened D’s letter and found to my great relief a most cheerful, homely and comforting letter wh. bucked me up a good deal. One more example of the vainness of premonitions. I then read Boswell till fairly late and, after I was in bed, a little of Morris’s Jason wh. is an old friend. My eye was caught by his poem ‘In Prison’ in the same volume, which exactly expressed my own feelings at present. I was a long time getting to sleep.
Sunday 31 December: Up late as usual. A desperately long day. After breakfast we went to church which, on these occasions, is a refuge to me: for at all other times, shut up alone with my father, I am on the qui vive for something or other to turn up, and the end of the day finds me quite demoralised as if I had been walking over a precipice or smelled the wrong end of a machine gun. Lily walked back with us from church.
I decided that this would be a good opportunity of tackling Meredith and accordingly began Beauchamp’s Career in which I made considerable progress before nightfall. I got little pleasure from it: it is obviously written for a person of quicker, subtler and maturer mind than I—perhaps for a person of finer technical breeding too.
‘Dinner’ at 2.30. I also read The Faerie Queene in my big edition by Dent, beginning at the VIth Book. After that I announced that I would go out: my father, tho’ I know he didn’t want to, accompanied me. We met the McNeills on the road and I was asked to lunch again on Tuesday. I didn’t want to go, but I had no excuse ready and so accepted.
We then walked nearly to Holywood along the high road and back the same way. It was frosty, with a thick white mist and a moon over the hills and a continual sound of boats horning from the Lough. If I had been alone it would have been sheer ecstasy: as it was, it was a relief from all day confinement in the study.
After he had gone to bed I sat up for a long time reading Spenser, till it almost carried me away from Leeborough. I find I am fit for phantasy these days, but hardly for real imagination. After I was in bed I heard the horns and sirens at the docks blowing and the bells ringing for the old year. Found it very hard to sleep, being all uneasy in my mind and feeling isolated: I was also threatened with toothache but when I lay on my back so as to keep my cheek cool, it went away. A frosty, moonlight night and I left my curtains open.
1923
Lewis remained with his father in Belfast until 12 January when he crossed to England by cross-channel boat, arriving in Oxford on 13 January. Because he had decided to read English in one academic year, instead of the usual three, he had only two terms to prepare for his final examinations in June. He was primed to get the most out of this, with the welcome addition of Professor George Gordon’s ‘Discussion Class’, when Dr John Askins came to ‘Hillsboro’ and went mad. Thus began a very miserable period for Lewis and Mrs Moore. They were so poor that they continued to take in Paying Guests, and Lewis began correcting School Certificate essays. By midsummer a college fellowship was still eluding him, and his father offered to extend his allowance so that he could begin a research degree while waiting for something to turn up.
Monday 1 January: Early awake and began wondering whether New Year’s Day was a business holiday in Belfast: however, my father came in fully dressed and was out before I came down. A very frosty morning. Breakfasted alone, reading Beauchamp’s Career, and went afterwards to the little end room. Here I wrote up my diary and also wrote a letter to D. I was rung up, first by Molly Boyd, who made me promise to go to progressive bridge on Friday next, and then, a few minutes later, by Mrs Greeves. She asked me to come out for a walk with her and lunch at Bernagh afterwards. I did not much enjoy the prospect but felt it absolutely necessary to go, in common decency, and went over as soon as I had finished my writing.
We walked to Knocknagoney by the High Holywood Rd., then down and back by the low road. Mrs Greeves annoyed me very much by bewailing the hard times wh. had fallen on the linen business since the war. I was not in a position to tell her (as I wished) that only shame ought to prevent her from giving thanks for the success with which her family had shirked the war. When once this subject was over, we got on very well. She is very simple (up to a point) and humble. We discussed the possibility of Arthur’s coming home and I promised to write and urge him, drawing his attention to the reduced fares which she had forgotten to mention in her letter.
She referred openly to ‘this lady whom Arthur calls Minto’ and asked how she was: she told me she would not bring any letters over, but I was to come to Bernagh for them—which relieved me, for I have been very nervous of her doing something foolish. She also went up 100% in my opinion by speaking sensibly about the enormous families among the lower classes.
In answer to their plea that ‘God never sends a mouth but he sends the means to fill it,’ she said roundly that ‘God isn’t such a fool.’ I could hardly believe my ears: of course she tried to take the sting out of it afterwards and ‘Hoped it wasn’t irreverent’, but still—the words must remain to her credit. We met Gundrede and talked to her for a few minutes before we went into Bernagh.
After lunch Mrs Greeves asked me with delightful naivety what philosophy was: Arthur had told her I did philosophy. I declined to answer, as nice as I could. She said she wished she could talk like my father and me—a truly dreadful ambition! I tried to enlighten her and make her believe how very different really good talkers (Yeats for instance) are. I then came away and wrote a short letter to Arthur: urging the reduced fares, his mother’s solitude, his father’s absence, my presence . . .
After having posted this I read W’s W. African diary for a few minutes until tea was ready: and after tea walked down to Strandtown to buy some cigarettes. Coming back, I settled down to Sweet’s Anglo-Saxon Reader and continued with a break for dinner, until my father went to bed at 10.30.
My father brought home tonight the two volumes of Donne wh. I asked for as a Christmas present. I think I shall love Donne: surely the only old poet who understands love in the modern sense? After my father had gone to bed I read two more cantos of the Faerie Queene and was in bed by 11.30. I find that when I think of D in the evenings there is nearly always some anxiety mixed with it—wh. doesn’t increase the pleasures of Little Lea. A very wet night: went to sleep sooner than usual.
Tuesday 2 January: Up rather late and after break
fast to the little end room where I wrote to D and made up my diary. Janie rang me up to remind me that I was lunching with her today and to ask me to come out for a walk with her and Gundrede: which I refused to do, on the pretext of work. By the time I had finished my writing and had my morning beer it seemed hardly worth while to begin. I rummaged about the books and things in the little end room rather aimlessly for half an hour and then changed and went to the McNeills.
A very aged great aunt of Janie’s was there when I arrived, but soon departed. Mother and daughter both talked to me about the Glenmachan atmosphere, wh. they said was the cause of Bob, and about the Irish atmosphere in general. They seemed to feel it as I do: tho’ I doubt if they have ever been out of it long enough to see it objectively. The rest of the talk was mainly about books.
I mentioned I was going to the Boyds and wished that I could have a little practice first. Janie suggested that we should both go to Schomberg and make Lily and Gordon play with us in the afternoon. She then remembered that Lily would be out: and very decently asked me to come round after dinner tomorrow and she would find two others.
I left soon after lunch, came back, and started Anglo-Saxon. After tea I went out for one of the finest walks I have ever had. As I left the house the full moon was just rising behind the hills, the ‘shepherd’s hut’ and its neighbouring trees standing out in black against it. The rest of the sky was almost entirely covered with dark grey clouds and only one break, to the west. A terrific wind was blowing, however, and this soon began to tear huge gaps in the cloud, leaving cold looking bits of sky and sending the clouds packing in such odd, hostile looking shapes.
As I got further up the hill the wind became so tremendous that I thought it might bring a tree down. My special luck was that I saw two moonrises: the horizon having risen so, as I approached the hills, that the moon was out of sight again for a time. I walked as far as Sandy Loaning on the high road, then turned up to the right, up again at the corner of Glenmachan Glen, down by the side of the Robber’s Glen, so and back.