by C. S. Lewis
Sunday 8 July: . . . After lunch I lay on the lawn reading Boswell while Harwood and Maureen played duets to their great satisfaction. Just before tea I had gone into the house when I saw someone at the hall door and opening it found Stead. I talked to him in the drawing room for a few minutes and then brought him out and introduced him to Harwood and disappeared to get tea. He talked philosophy to Harwood and I threw in impertinent interruptions whenever I came out to put a cup or a cake on the table. Presently D came and we had tea.
Stead, fresh back from Venice and Rome, gave as his verdict that ‘Italy was a pleasant surprise to him. He had always imagined the Italians a degenerate people but found that they were really quite go ahead and up to date.’ They were also more patriotic than the English, for they were always waving flags and went mad over the name of Italy whereas ‘he had never found that Englishmen showed any great enthusiasm over the mention of England’. They and their landscape were, he said, hardy and vigorous whereas one always felt the softness of England. Stead is an American and has not been to the war.
We also talked of Fascismo. We were all inclined to favour it except Harwood who said it was only a more successful version of the Ku Klux Klan and that Mussolini had the face of a villain. Asked if he believed in Fascist atrocities, Stead said that they committed atrocities only when they were deserved.
Harwood and I then bussed in to Long Wall and went for another delightful bathe at Parson’s Pleasure: thence to the Cathedral to hear the organ recital. The organ is a thing I cannot learn to like.
After supper we played croquet—all four of us. Later Harwood read ‘Dymer’ up to date and covered me with enough praise to satisfy the vainest of men.
Monday 9 July: Harwood went off immediately after breakfast: I think we all enjoyed his visit. In the morning I sat in the garden and made an attempt at looking up odd points for my viva—but it was a gloriously hot day, I was very sleepy and the net result was pretty small. After lunch I continued the experiment. In the morning I had been idle because I was half asleep, in the afternoon I was equally idle for the opposite reason, because my brain teemed with new and fascinating projects for the next canto of ‘Dymer’ . . .
After tea I rode in to the Union where I read nearly all of Turner’s Journey to Cytherea, a very second rate production in the erotic-metaphysical manner tho’ some of the imitations of Yeats were pleasant and there was occasionally a bright thought—but give me the Lays of Ancient Rome for choice.64 Afterwards I took out Raleigh’s excellent Six Essays on Johnson and read them in the Union Garden . . .
Tuesday 10 July: Up betimes and dressed in sub fusc and white tie. Arrived at the Schools at 9.30 and met Martley and Lloyd Jones who were also vivaed today: Smudge, who was up today too, was not to be seen. At 9.30 we entered the viva room and after the names had been called, six of us were told to stay, of whom I was one.
I then sat in the fearful heat, in my gown and rabbit skin, on a hard chair, unable to smoke, talk, read, or write, until 11.50. I had plenty of leisure to examine my examiners. Brett-Smith seemed a pleasant man:65 so, in his grim surgical manner, was Craigie, the Scotchman.
Most of the vivas were long and discouraging. My own—by Brett-Smith—lasted about two minutes. I was asked my authority, if any, for the word ‘little-est’. I gave it—the Coleridge-Poole correspondence in Thomas Poole and His Friends.66 I was then asked if I had not been rather severe on Dryden and after we had discussed this for a little Simpson said they need not bother me any more.
I came away much encouraged, and delighted to escape the language people—one of whom, not a don, was a foul creature yawning insolently at his victims and rubbing his small puffy eyes. He had the face of a pork butcher and the manners of a village boy on a Sunday afternoon, when he has grown bored but not yet quite arrived at the quarrelsome stage.
From Schools I went to the Union and took out The Egoist:67 thence home and read a good deal of it in the garden before lunch. It is worth twenty of Beauchamp’s Career and I think I shall like it immensely . . .
Wednesday 11 July: Hotter than ever. D was in very bad form today. She and I spent most of the morning working putting up blinds—a very troublesome job. Just after lunch I finished what I think is the last picture for her room.
I then bussed in to the station where I met Arthur. We took, or rather he took, a taxi out, stopping for some shopping of mine at Eaglestone’s. I was delighted to see him: we renewed our earlier youths and laughed together like two schoolgirls. We arrived out here and both had cold baths—I am keeping off bathes since 4d a day would soon counterbalance any saving effected by my big reductions in smoking. Afterwards we all had tea in the drawing room—the garden being much too hot to sit in.
Arthur and I were alone for a long time and he told me his various adventures since we last met, particularly round about last Christmas. It was a depressing story and in many ways not easy to sympathise with but, I suppose ‘Homo sum etc.’68 We had supper outside and after watering, Arthur, Maureen and I had an uproarious game of croquet.
Thursday 12 July: Arthur said he was faint and called for brandy in the morning. Today was the hottest for twelve years. Bathed this evening with Arthur after tea and met Wilson on the way back. He said that he had been told that Coghill and I were the best men in Schools this year. Earlyish to bed.
On the 16th July the examiners’ awards for the English School were published—the only two Firsts going to Lewis and Nevill Coghill.
Sometime later, when compiling the Lewis Papers Warren Lewis had this to say about his brother’s achievement: ‘When we reflect on the circumstances of Clive’s life during the time he was reading this School—the shortness of the period at his disposal, his ill health, the constant anxiety inseparable from supporting a family out of an undergraduate’s allowance, his fears for the future, the unceasing domestic drudgery, the hideous episode of Dr John Askins’ final illness, and the move to Hillsboro—we are astounded at the extent of an achievement which must rank as easily the most brilliant of his academic career’ (vol. VIII, p. 140).
Friday–Wednesday 13–25 July: Arthur was with us for a fortnight. He is greatly changed . . . Someone has put into his head the ideal of ‘being himself’ and ‘following nature’. I tried on one occasion to point out to him the ambiguity of that kind of maxim: but he seems to attach a very clear meaning to it—namely that the whole duty of man is to swim with the tide and obey his desires . . . He has taken over from psychoanalysis the doctrine that repression is bad and cannot be brought to see that repression in the technical sense is something quite different from self control. I tried to put him on to Baker’s distinction between will-men and desire-men but he took no interest in it.
I argued that immortality—which he believes in—was not likely to fall to the lot of everyone, since ‘gift is contrary to the nature of the universe’. He on the other hand is confident that we should all be immortal anyway: he gave me the impression of believing in Heaven but not in Hell, nor in any conditions attaching to Heaven. On morals he thought that our whole duty consisted in being kind to others. I pointed out that a man who was ‘natural’ could not be kind except by accident.
I soon introduced him to Parson’s Pleasure and after that he spent a good deal of his time there bathing and sketching. He showed a remarkable facility for picking up new acquaintances. One day when we were lying on the grass, Thring of Univ., whom I had quite forgotten, came up and spoke to me. I had to ask him his name before I introduced him to Arthur. When he left us I saw that Arthur had something on his mind. It came out gradually. ‘I say Jack, that man had a tennis racquet. Pity we didn’t . . . Och well I may meet him tomorrow. I might get talking to him about tennis and he might give me an invitation.’ I devoutly hoped he would not meet Thring again, as I hardly knew the man myself and did not want him exposed to such naked cadging . . .
His old besetting sin of greed came out several times at our table. Like other poor families, we usually eat margeri
ne with jam—except Dorothy of course, who ‘CAN’T’ eat margerine. Arthur soon made his position plain, stretching across to the butter and remarking that he much preferred it.
Another good example of ‘nature’ occurred in the first two days of his visit when we had tropical weather. D, being the most free and easy of mortals, had made no objection to Arthur wearing pyjamas till lunch time. It was left to Arthur to take the one step further from freedom to beastly familiarity by taking off his slippers in the dining room and laying his bare feet on the table. His feet are very long and he perspires freely. After that I did not repeat the pyjama stunt.
It was during the first week of his stay that I discovered that I had got a First in English. Shortly after this I went to tea with Wilson. He asked me if I had a book in my head. I said at first ‘No—unless you mean an epic poem,’ but afterwards trotted out various schemes which have been more or less in my mind. He thought my idea of a study of the Romantic Epic from its beginning down to Spenser with a side glance at Ovid, a good one: but too long for a research degree. For that, he liked rather my idea of a study of the German element in the Romantic movement—tho’ that depends of course on the speed with which I can learn German.
All this time D has been very overworked, worried and miserable. Dorothy it appears has turned out very badly since we moved up here. Poor D complains that she has to keep a dog and bark herself: and indeed Dorothy has been the exclusive subject of conversation when we are alone together. I do not blame D for this in the least, but of course it makes things very miserable. D has also done a lot more painting: and I, tho’ very seldom allowed to help, have had a day sandpapering the stairs.
I continued some work on ‘Dymer’, but coming across my old poem on ‘Sigrid’, I began to turn it into a new version in couplets with great and wholly unexpected success. Next morning Arthur and I walked up Shotover . . . He talked about the Ring and said how, with all its huge attraction, it left you discontented and ragged—not satisfied and tuned up as by Beethoven. We agreed that this was because the Ring was pure nature, the alogical, without the human and rational control of Beethoven. I am almost sure this is what he was trying to say, though of course he expressed it quite differently. The only good talk I had with Arthur was this one and some discussions for the design of his summer picture. But he was quite obviously discontented from the first day of his visit till the last, and often (unintentionally) very rude and objectionable—miserably changed since last year.
On Saturday last after bathing I walked through the Park—the first time I think since 1917—and happened to meet Poynton in the Parks Road. He had a long talk with me: he is far honester than the other dons. He told me he was very doubtful how the vacancy at Univ. would be filled up . . . He promised to try and get me some tutoring among the women and seemed confident of doing so.
When I left him and come up I was pleasantly surprised to find Harwood here—he, D, Arthur and Maureen being all on the lawn. Harwood had been at Long Crendon seeing the Barfields: but B had been called unexpectedly up to town and Harwood had biked hither. Arthur and he were alone together for some time while I was getting up the supper and they didn’t much take to each other.
Afterwards Harwood and I walked up and down the lawn and talked—or rather he did most of it. He said he had recently met the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life.
He said ‘I was asked by some people whom I hardly knew to come and sing glees and told to “come just as I was”. When I got there I found everyone else dressed. They were quite beyond me in music and I made rather a fool of myself. This was where the lady was so sympathetic. She was about forty—very beautiful and with an extraordinary graciousness—you know how they sometimes are at that age. About a week later I was asked quite unexpectedly to go somewhere where I should have seen her. Do you know, I refused, tho’ my wishes were quite opposite the minute before I spoke. Do you understand that?’
SELF: ‘I suppose something subconscious takes you in hand . . . ?’
HARW.: ‘No, no. It is when something you have longed for intensely but considered impossible is suddenly put into your hands—you can’t believe it.’
SELF: ‘Speaking purely for myself, I can’t quite imagine a case in which that language would not be hyperbolical—for me, mind you.’
HARW.: ‘Are you like Dymer—do you always know what you want and go for it?’
SELF: ‘No, I am not like Dymer.’
HARW.: ‘I admit my story is rather mediaeval. I don’t suppose that anyone who has not had such an experience can even begin to understand the Divine Comedy.’
This was said without the least element of a snub, tho’ it looks rather like one, written down. The whole episode was a revelation to me. Harwood stayed till Monday afternoon and was a real sunbeam—perpetually cheerful, interesting and companionable. D likes him immensely and he and Maureen are great friends.
Monday–Tuesday 30–31 July: The whole of this week end I was working all day correcting English essays—about 150—for the Higher Certificate.69 As I had never done the work before I could get my standard only by going through the whole lot and dividing them into three classes, and then going through each class and so sorting them into a final order. The work was of course interesting in a way but very tiring when done against time. There were very few really good essays and much ridiculous blundering, with ignorance and vulgarity beyond what I would have expected: I was particularly ill impressed with the almost illiterate Upper VIth of Lancing.
On Monday 30th I was still hard at it and D had to go into town to meet Maurice Delanges of Valenciennes who was coming to us as a paying guest. After she had been gone about half an hour, Dorothy came to my room where I was working and told me that the French gentleman had arrived—alone. I came down and found a very dark skinned, shockheaded youth in knickerbockers and Norfolk jacket. He spoke quite intelligible English—though nothing like so good as Andrée. He explained that he had come by an earlier train.
I sat with him for a few minutes in the dining room and we made conversation with fair success. Finding the work on which I was engaged, he asked me not to let him interrupt me, and after showing him to his room I left him to unpack and returned to my job fairly well satisfied with what I had seen of him. That afternoon I walked with him into town—we talked mainly of educational matters.
Next day I was still at my exams and he and Maureen went out otter hunting with the Rowells. They returned very tired after a boring day and poor Maureen had had a very uncomfortable time as Maurice showed his boredom very plainly. It was that evening that we began to wonder whether we could endure for five weeks the amazing noises he made over his food—chewing with his mouth open, smacking his lips, and sucking like a pig—but we still tried to put it down to the difference of foreign manners and hoped all was well.
Wednesday–Monday 1–6 August: This was a wasted and comfortless period. I finished my exam. work: I also finished Middlemarch (by far the best of G. Eliot’s books) and began Carlyle’s French Revolution. These three items, and these only, can be put down to the credit side. On the other there is a good deal.
In the first place Dorothy, after being sulky and idle for months, has given notice. How or when this state of affairs began it is impossible to say. She was out every evening and often till near eleven: she was treated as one of ourselves and I do not think it is our fault. D has been generous with her and all her family. Dorothy has however visibly been getting discontented for a long time and complained that D had ‘never been the same to her since Ivy was here’—whatever that may mean. Now she has revenged herself (I don’t know for what) by leaving us in this time of stress when we are saddled with Maurice. She is to go on Friday next—and may now be included with the Dud, Frank, and Moppie in the list of people who have never forgiven kindness from D.
Maurice, who behaved tolerably for the first few days, has now thoroughly settled down and shown his true colours . . . His bestial way of feeding was b
ad enough, but his habit of stretching across everyone to grasp everything on the table was worse. Then his familiarities began. He started pulling Maureen’s hair and digging her in the ribs and jeering at her during meals. We put a stop to this by setting them at different ends of the table: but he continues to be very offensive to her when they go out to tennis.
Then there was the evening of the sunset when we all went out to see a most beautiful crimson cloud effect from the lawn. The little blackguard presently came sidling out after us and finding me looking at the sky, prodded me in the stomach. I pretended to think that he was nudging me for the matches, and handed them to him with a look which said as plainly as words how dearly I should love to smack his face. As I continued to look at the sky he enquired ‘Have you never seen it before?’ This question really beat me: for I almost think it was asked in good faith.
Next day I took him out in the morning in Smudge’s sister’s punt from St Clement’s. I punted with fair success. He told me that English girls were very different from French. I said nothing.
BLACKGUARD: ‘Those girls at the otter hunting yesterday, they jump over streams, they lift their skirts up so—so high. In France now they would rather have stayed where they were than show their legs so.’
SELF: ‘A possible explanation is that in France the young men would have been looking at their legs more attentively.’
BLACKGUARD (after a grin that made me retch): ‘Ahh . . . They are not girls in England, they are boys. In France at that age they always thinks of love.’
We punted on . . .
On Friday Warnie arrived by the 5.58. I went in to meet him and we repaired as usual to the courtyard of the Mitre for a drink and a talk. We were there some time: the beer was good, we were both in fine humour and it was a cool evening—the whole scene a delightful moment’s relief from dancing attendance on the Blackguard. We bussed out to Headington and had time to turn round before Maureen came back from tennis with the Blackguard.