All My Road Before Me

by C. S. Lewis

  Friday 7 March: Worked on the Hippolytus in the morning and just before lunch looked into Gilbert Murray’s Greek Epic—a great piece of imaginative work which I like as much as ever in spite of its detractors.

  After lunch Ewing called for me and we walked over Shotover and thence by Horsepath and Cowley to his digs in Iffley Road where we had tea. It was a beautiful sunny day with a blue mist on the valley and I would have enjoyed it had I been alone or in congenial company. We spoke of Ziman’s paper. I said I didn’t think much of it. Ewing replied, ‘One mustn’t expect too much of an undergraduate paper.’ We spoke of Kant. I said I had not read him since Greats. Ewing tittered and said, ‘I look back with horror on the ideas I had of Kant when I took Greats.’

  I found that Ewing (who was unfit for active service) had also been approached about the next war, but I was flattered to find that Farquharson had dealt with him and me rather differently, asking me simply if I would serve and pointing out to Ewing that if he would put his name down for civil service he would be safe from being put into work ‘unsuitable for him’ if conscription came in . . .

  Saturday 8 March: D waked me suddenly this morning saying ‘You’ll have to get up at once.’ It turned out to be a card from Carritt asking me whether I could dine on Monday to meet Prichard and needing an immediate answer.18 I jumped up, flung some clothes on, wrote an acceptance, and ran to the post . . . There was also a card from Barfield asking me to meet him outside the Cadena at 11.0 today . . .

  I went to the Cadena and waited. Just there, and at that time of a sunny morning, one sees the worst of Oxford—the splendid children with ‘plus fours’ and long cigarette holders, walking insolently and talking loudly with the intention of being overheard, and the corresponding girls.

  After I had waited for half an hour I found Fasnacht at my elbow. We began to talk philosophy. He was very sceptical and almost an ‘instantaneous solipsist’ tho’ he denied it. After a little Rink came past with a bicycle and joined us. He told us about the paper he had written for the Jowett. He had tried to combine a sort of Bergsonian view of reality wh. was ‘not harmonious nor rational’ with a separate ‘knowable’ such as we find in mathematics. I said this left out the fact that mathematics did conform to experience wherever the nature of the case allowed them to touch it and that this was in fact the reason why we called them true.

  A policeman came past and told Rink to take his bicycle off the pavement. We, as good Heracliteans, told Rink not to worry since it was impossible to step twice into the same policeman and the bicycle was already off the pavement. He preferred to act in the vulgar sense. Our argument continued and was at its height when an enormous man with a white moustache appeared behind Rink. Rink told us in a whisper, ‘This is the greatest bore in Oxford and I know he is going to catch my eye’ and continued edging his nose into the middle of us and keeping his back to the big man, explaining the while that tho’ the sense datum of two marbles plus the sense datum of two more marbles gave the datum of four marbles, none of them were really marbles in the conceptual sense.

  The big man however edged round and round and finally plucked him by the sleeve saying in a hearty voice ‘I have three tickets for Katinka and I don’t know how to get rid of them so I’m going about like a fairy godmother’—at this moment I saw Barfield’s face in the distance and fled.

  He had missed his train from Long Crendon and biked, calling at ‘Hillsboro’. We put his bike into the Union and walked into St John’s garden. We talked of the function of the Greek chorus, of Squire (in spite of all, Barfield advises me to send up ‘Dymer’ when it is done), of Henry More and of the difference between Dionysiac and Apolline art.

  He had got from some book the idea of Dionysiac as mere wish fulfilment. I tried to formulate my own very different view, but was defeated on particulars, since whenever he asked me in which class I put a particular work I had to say ‘Oh, Dionysiac of course—well no, perhaps it is really Apolline’ or the like. This led to some talk about Steiner’s ‘polarity’. Barfield has given up the chance of a permanent £500 a year on the staff of Truth in order to have leisure for his own work. We lunched at the Cadena where his wife, who had been giving a music lesson, joined us. After lunch we did some shopping all together and then separated to meet again in Wadham gardens.

  I took Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity out of the Union and went to Wadham where I sat and walked in the garden reading the introduction, enjoying the beauty of the place, and greatly interested by my author’s truthful antithesis of enjoyment and contemplation.

  When the others turned up we had some talk about memories of childhood and then went to tea at Yeats’ tea rooms. I promised to come over for the night on Thursday week, and so left them after a thoroughly enjoyable day . . .

  Monday 10 March: In the morning I read some more of Alexander, who grows more and more difficult as I proceed. I also started tentatively an essay on the ‘Whole’ which I thought might be a more systematic exposition of my theory of potentiality.

  After lunch came a letter from Pasley to say that he had dined with Baker at Beckett’s and the former had tackled him about me. Pasley had replied as vaguely as possible and tells me that I must expect a letter from Baker.

  Ever since the Doc’s death, when we heard nothing of him, our friendship has been suspended. Unfortunately, tho’ his silence on occasion was the efficient cause of the present break, my coolness, thus occasioned, was retrospective. For a long time I had been troubled by his egoism and his hardly hidden contempt of D and everyone else he met in our house. Irrespective of D’s wishes I really do not want to in any way renew my intimacy with him: but how to answer his letter when it comes, I cannot imagine. D and I had a good deal of talk about it. She urged me, and of course sincerely, not to consider her feeling about him, but that is only one chapter in the story . . .

  I went to Senior Common Room where I met Carlyle who promised to write to the Trinity people about me. Carritt soon came in, ‘undressed’ because Prichard (who soon followed him) was also so. Prichard is a little weak-looking man with a straw coloured moustache. It was a very dull evening. Carlyle talked all the time about India and South Africa: and even in the pauses I failed to get into any sort of conversational touch with Prichard. Poor Carritt!

  Wednesday 12 March: . . . As my old flannel trousers have worn beyond shabbiness to indecency, I have to wear my ex-best brown suit whenever I go out now and it chafes me . . .

  After lunch I went to Headington cross roads and waited for the Aylesbury bus to take me out to Aunt Lily’s. As soon as I was on board I asked the conductor where I should get down for Lower Farm. He didn’t know where it was. I explained that ‘Lower Farm, Thame Road’ was the full postal address: whereupon a very respectable white whiskered man of the small farmer class exclaimed to the conductor, ‘Why, Jarge, don’t you know—it is that old girl who lives all alone.’ ‘That old girl!’ said the conductor. ‘Yes, that’ll be the place,’ said I. The white whiskered man said ‘You’ll have a job to get in there when you do get down’: and explained to the passengers in general that I was going to see ‘The old girl who lives all alone with them cats’.

  The bus was very hot and very unsteady. After a while the conductor came and sat down beside me, producing a cigarette from behind his ear and remarking ‘There’s one thing about that old girl, she’s a very good sort.’

  SELF: ‘Oh yes. She has her little peculiarities but she’s very decent.’

  COND.: ‘That’s right. I know her very well. There’s a cat of hers I was taking in and out to the vet every day for a while. But I don’t know how she sticks it, living there all alone.’

  SELF: ‘She’s very busy. She spends all her time writing.’

  COND.: ‘I suppose she’d be very clever then?’

  SELF: ‘Oh yes, very.’

  We then had some further talk about his job and about the strike they had some time ago. When I left the bus I was struck by the ‘sweet sudden silenc
e’ on the lonely strip of road, the clear blue sunshine and the pale, almost white beauty of the fields.

  Aunt Lily came out to meet me—looking, in spite of differences, strangely like what I remember of my mother. Her cottage is now furnished and very pleasant inside. The walls of her sitting room are entirely covered with prints—mostly of the early Italians. She talked of the ‘incredible folly’ of the Socialists’ last proposal of giving full unemployment pay to every child that left school—as if this were not simply to encourage all the worst to breed like rabbits. I heartily agreed with her. We had a very rambling talk—touching hardly at all on the subjects of our recent rather fierce controversies by letter. She said that she found Lear too painful to read. We talked of Meredith, of inspiration, and of Mr Allen. She mentioned as something that had often been in her mind, the fact that we cannot be sure that consciousness really ceases in what we call a dead body.

  She showed me the three prints which she had long since destined for me. The two smaller ones are a head unknown and a head of Vergil: the larger is Giotto’s Francis before Honorius. She is giving me this one because she says Honorius is a portrait of me. I could easily see what she meant, and to look at my pre-natal portrait was a very strange experience.19 As I could not take all three, it was arranged that I should take this one today and come back for the other two.

  It is certainly a magnificent . . . present. I am only partially able to appreciate such things—I can get the satisfying, unwearying decorative effect and the sentimental pleasure and a little of the naïf pleasure in the mere seeing things wh. the people for whom they were painted had in them. Perhaps a fuller appreciation will come when I have lived with them. Just before I left we fell into a close argument on the Self, wh. she considers capable of actual coalescing with other selves or with Spirit.

  I came home holding my picture on my knees: it was so high that I cd. not see over it . . . Poor D had a bad head again tonight. Early to bed, dog tired.

  Thursday 13 March: . . . I . . . bussed into College to the Philosophical Society. In Ware’s beautifully panelled room I found Ware (who turns out to be the man I walked home with from Allen’s the other night) and King.20 The latter has just started reading The Crock of Gold and is pleased tho’ puzzled with it. Carritt, Ewing, Price of Magdalen, Rink, Ziman, Fasnacht, Curtis and several others came in. Carritt read a paper on the ‘Moral Faculty’: it was rather disconnected and hard to follow. He seemed tired and abstracted.

  In the interval I had some good talk with Price, mainly about the distinction of essence and existence, with a digression on Croce’s aesthetics. We look at things from rather similar standpoints. I should like to see more of this man. He opened the discussion in a style that amused me—it was so characteristically Oxfordish and donnish. Perhaps he will outgrow it. He took up (I think only for dialectical purposes) the line that the distinction between willing, judging etc., was only ‘sophistication’: that when one said one was hungry one simply contemplated attractive food without ‘enjoying’ in Alexander’s sense, the act of wanting it. This led to some good discussion.

  Later on I trotted out my ‘antinomy of the practical reason’ which also gave good sport between Allen, Ziman, Rink, and myself. Came away at 11.20 and walked home by moonlight in half an hour . . .

  Friday 14 March: I spent most of the morning at my essay on the Whole, trying to tackle the question of essentia and exisentia. After lunch I washed up while D washed Maureen’s hair.

  Later on I played croquet with Maureen for the first time this year, greatly to the excitement of Pat who regards the slow rolling and resonant balls with a religious feeling . . .

  Sunday 16 March: Poor D had a very uneasy night and was still suffering from sickness and headache this morning.

  After breakfast I set off at once and, finding no bus, walked to All Souls. It was a delicious morning with the road sparkling between the long shadows and no mist visible per se but a faint blueness and haziness over the more distant trees. The High in all its early emptiness, cleanness, light and space was a thing to make a man shout.

  I went up to Sir John Simon’s rooms (very good oak panelling) wh. Beckett uses and waited there reading Russell’s Icarus till Beckett turned up from breakfasting elsewhere, followed shortly afterwards by Harwood. We were all, I hope, delighted to meet, and soon set out on our walk.

  We went under the railway bridge and thence to Ferry Hinksey. I discovered that Beckett had been a brass hat in the war, first in Macedon and later in the Caucasus where he had a military government and was really a satrap and even condemned a man to death—who escaped. From Hinksey we struck into fields and went up the hill dropping down to where the three factory chimneys are, into Cumnor and so by the Long Leas down to Bablock Hythe. There was no good talk, but excellent chat all the way. At Bablock Hythe we sat down on the grass this side of the river and talked more at large of Hassan and whether the cinema could ever become an art: but the ‘clop-clop’ of the choppy water and the sunlight are more memorable.

  After some time we went on to Stanton Harcourt where we were to lunch. Before we reached it the sun suddenly disappeared and the sky got white and a cold wind sprang up. In the inn parlour we consumed large quantities of bread and cheese and draft cider. Harwood found a delightful book here—a History of Rome ‘related in conversations by a father to his children with instructive comments’. The children made such comments as ‘How pleasing is filial piety, Papa!’ and ‘My dear Sir, surely you have been too indulgent in describing the vices of Honorius as weakness.’

  Afterwards we went into the bar (delightfully warm after the tomb-like parlour) where Beckett talked to a discontented farmer about co-operation in a masterly manner which showed the budding man of affairs.

  After investigating the church we walked back, pretty fast, and arrived for tea in Beckett’s rooms after about 15 miles of walking. I was rather footsore.

  During tea Beckett talked of his mysterious colleague Lawrence. He started the Hejaz business and got a job in the Foreign Office, which he held for a time, refusing to take any salary, but soon dropped it. He then took his Fellowship, but again refused the money and hung about All Souls, never dining in Hall, and haunting the Common Room of evening in ordinary clothes, talking very well when he did talk, but far more often silent. Now he has gone back to the army as an infantry private soldier under an assumed name. He is believed to have no private means to speak of: no man is intimate with him.21

  I then asked Beckett for advice and information about an All Souls Fellowship. I find that it is only £200 a year and that you can never sleep anywhere else in Oxford while you hold it. This pretty well spoils it for me. He said I would have been ‘almost certain’ to get it after Greats, but that my age was now rather against me. On the whole however he spoke optimistically. He thought that Pasley had v. little chance of it. I said that Pasley was ‘dead’: Beckett said that he thought him ‘still struggling—struggling very hard’.

  I left them and bussed home. D still feeling pretty rotten but not so bad as in the morning. It was unfortunate that old Taylor should select this evening to visit us, tho’ otherwise we should have been glad to see him. He stayed to supper and the conversation ranged over all things.

  Monday–Tuesday 17–25 March: During this time it was unfortunate that my first spring flood of ‘Dymer’ should coincide with a burst of marmalade making and spring cleaning on D’s part which led without intermission into packing. I managed to get in a good deal of writing in the intervals of jobbing in the kitchen and doing messages in Headington. I wrote the whole of a last canto with considerable success, tho’ the ending will not do. I also kept my temper nearly all the time. Domestic drudgery is excellent as an alternative to idleness or to hateful thoughts—which is perhaps poor D’s reason for piling it on at this time: as an alternative to the work one is longing to do and able to do (at that time and heaven knows when again) it is maddening. No one’s fault: the curse of Adam.

  W
ednesday 26 March: Up early and finished packing. We set off by taxi at 11.30 with our two cats and Pat and all the rest. We had a very good journey. A ‘jolly’ person of the usual professional buffoon type travelled with us to Wantage Road. He knows Cranny and told us a delightful yarn of Cranny saying to him in his queer brogue gobble ‘You know I’ve been over here so long now that no one would think I was Irish.’

  We got to Clevedon22 much earlier than we had hoped for and found Edie at the flat, who had been working like a slave or a saint to get all snug for us and had brought us edible presents enough to feed a garrison. I was delighted with the flat. As you walk into the sitting room you are faced with a window which gives you an oblong of pure sea and sky with nothing else at all. As you come nearer to it, it is spoiled by the usual pier below: yet the pier is not so vulgar as might be feared, and the little Japanese pavilion on the end is almost pretty at times. During tea Edie told us a lot about Willie and Carrie. Poor Edie, she is very run down and her rapid conversation is quite incoherent and rather reminiscent of Miss Bates’s ‘That would be so very—’ in Emma.

  Lateish to bed, v. well pleased with everything. D and I both suffering from colds and coughs.

  Thursday 27 March: . . . I went eastward and had almost begun to despair of ever escaping the residential streets beyond Dial Hill when suddenly as in a vision the whole thing, so to speak, fell to pieces before me. Ahead was a smooth grassed down with a ruined castle on top—Walton Castle they call it. To my right was a long level bank of wooded hill with a sudden sheer gorge through whose V shape I could see the inland country, flat as a table and blue with distance. I scrambled up the green hill to my left, which is occupied by a golf links and open to all men: that is the one good thing I know of golfers, that they keep stretches of fine country from being spoiled.