by C. S. Lewis
We had lunch (as before) in the ‘round house’ and afterwards sat in a small walled garden surrounded by fig trees, outside the smoking room. We were all rather sleepy and the talk did not go well: indeed I always find it hard to establish much contact with Beckett, tho’ I both like and admire him.
At about 3 we left and Harwood looked to see if Bodley had a copy of Traherne’s Christian Ethics wh. he thinks of reprinting. We walked home by Mesopotamia and Cuckoo Lane, stopping at every bridge to watch the water. It bore down infinite hordes of drowned and drowning insects. We talked of the horrors that occurred in one square mile of the insect world every month. Harwood thought that their consciousness might be so rudimentary that their death struggles might mean no more than a confused malaise. At the rollers the Cherwell was very flooded and turbid.
Reaching home we found not only the boys but Joy Holmes here for tea. D told me that Mrs H. had died this morning: after the last few days it was a great relief to know that she was safely out of the reach of pain. From what was said at tea I gathered that the two boys were leaving us this evening: but I soon discovered that they were taking the elder one and leaving the younger—wh. seemed an extraordinary arrangement. After I had washed up the tea things I came out to the lawn where Harwood was still gallantly amusing the children: at their age how I would have rejected grown up interference as an interruption of my own endless drawing and soliloquies. Presently however the Holmes’ car appeared and I found that they had changed their minds and were going to take both the children away. I was very relieved, chiefly for D’s sake, and then for Harwood’s and my own. When they were gone Harwood told me a wonderful example of childish obtuseness: Bobbie (aged seven) had come up and asked him ‘Guess who died today?’ But I think this argues a defect in mental age.
D and I then went out shopping and later Harwood and I took Pat for a stroll. In the evening we enjoyed blessed peace and leisure free from the boys and Norah.
After supper Harwood read most of ‘Dymer’ and gave me a budget of his new poems to read—‘Epitaph on Sudden Death’ in which he really touches sublimity and classical perfection . . . a little poem about a lark which is almost perfect too, tho’ in a much slighter style: octosyllabics to ‘R.M.’ a most interesting poem containing real titbits (‘The table spread / Lacked all things lacking common bread’—‘A triple fate designed / Jump with the chord our eyes aligned’) but still in need of revision: ‘At ille labitur’ wh. fails at the end: ‘A modern journey’ wh. is good: and two other pieces of less interest.36
He has advanced splendidly. I still think my poetry better than his, but I envy his grace, his courtliness, and a certain choiceness and nicety. It is all so clean, so dapper, so humorous, so exquisitely ‘right’ in his good things.
He approved strongly of ‘Dymer’ VI. Of VIII he said that the whole thing was overshadowed by the ‘natural history’ difficulties of the brute as Dymer’s son: he wd. prefer a Caliban sort of person.
Late to bed in the attic. Pains a good deal better.
Sunday 25 May: A cool, grey skied summer day. Harwood and I with Pat had a delightful walk—to Stanton St John where we lunched off bread and cheese and shandy, thence through the woods and by field path to Beckley, passing one of the loveliest country ‘places’ I ever saw (at Woodferry I think)—a Georgian house with great gates, smothered in lilic, and far retired from a lane that was far retired itself: surrounded by deep meadows overhung with chestnut trees and full of black pigs that were as clean and strokeable as young horses. Home by Stowe Woods and Barton End. Harwood left us after supper.
Sunday 1 June: Up betimes and did the hall and dining room before breakfast. It had rained all night but was now a bright morning. After breakfast I went out with Pat and crossed the fields to Stowe Woods and thence by road down the hill towards Islip. At the bottom of the hill I struck in to my left across the field I had reached on Wednesday and got to the corner of the wood after great difficulty and floundering in the mud. I then came home by Elsfield and Old Headington after a very unenjoyable walk—or rather ‘unenjoyed’ for there was plenty of beauty if I had been in the right mood.
After lunch I did my usual jobs and washed up and then took down all the pictures from the drawing room preparatory to the sweep’s coming tomorrow. D spent most of the afternoon making further preparations and would not let me help.
After tea I wrote to my father and finished the first part of the Pilgrim’s Progress. The end is poor: indeed nothing shows the lowness (in one respect) of the original Christians so much as their idea of Heaven wh. they have handed down. Compare this glummery of golden streets and hymn singing with Vergil’s ‘largior hic campos’37 or the isle of the Hesperides or Isaiah or even Nirvanah . . .
Wednesday 4 June: Raining all day, as usual now. Worked in the attic after breakfast at my essay on Locke. In the afternoon, it being too wet for walking, I bussed in to the Union where I read with great delight in Oddenowski’s Man and Mystery in Asia. It is extraordinary to read the mixture of Rider Haggard and Algernon Blackwood and know that it is true. The story of the Black Monk at first struck me as a capital theme for a poem—but really there is nothing left for the poet to do.
Home again and up to the attic after tea where I worked on my paper for Mind, turning, as I thought, a very difficult corner where I have stuck this long time.
Then, after an early supper, we all went: D and Maureen to the staff play at the school and I to the Martlets. Arriving early in King’s rooms I found only Ware and King present and had a little talk with the latter about the Crock of Gold. Presently others turned up, Carritt, Fasnacht, Dawson, Ewing, Allen, Carlyle, Stevenson. Carritt read a delightful paper on Arnold, of which he announced that I was ‘the begetter’. The discussion afterwards was not very good.
I walked home with Ewing. He asked me if I knew what was happening about Carritt’s pupils. I said, ‘They have asked me to take some of them.’
EWING: ‘How many?’
SELF: ‘About thirteen.’
EWING: ‘How many does that leave?’
SELF: ‘I’m not sure but I’m afraid the Farq is taking them.’
EWING: ‘Oh, I had hoped to get some of them.’
SELF: Yes. I always feel this position is degrading for all of us, but we can’t help it. I’m very sorry.’
EWING: ‘Congratulations.’
A horribly uncomfortable dialogue . . .
Thursday 5 June: Worked on my essay on Locke in the morning. D woke up today with a shocking headache but it got better during the morning.
After lunch I walked out with Pat along the lane that turns off to your right and so over the fields nearly to Horsepath. When I was in sight of it I turned up to my left and so through the bracken to my favourite fir grove where I sat down for a long time and had the ‘joy’—or rather came just within sight of it but didn’t arrive.
In the evening to Touche’s and King’s rooms in Beaumont Street where the Phil. Soc. met and Fasnacht read a paper on the General Will.38 In the interval I asked how the habit of applauding at these societies had arisen—for it was unknown when I first came up. King said it had started with Curtis who had gone to sleep one night, and, waking up suddenly as the paper stopped, applauded through mere force of habit. Carritt agreed with me that it was a bad habit.
Saturday 7 June: Letter from the Pres. of Trinity saying that they had made their decision.39 . . .
Monday 9 June: . . . I dined with Carritt in hall. While I was waiting about in the Lodge, having arrived rather too early, I had a conversation with Rink. We were joined by the Master who first of all asked if I were in for Schools—thus showing how little he remembers me: which is very natural and by no means culpable. Then came Raymond the doctor, who was up here in old days.
With him I went into Common Room. It was a big night. Poynton was in the chair: with him was Miles of Merton, Leys, Bowen,40 two unknowns, Allen, Farquharson, Raymond, a third unknown, Carritt and myself made up the party. B
ut there must have been one more whom I can’t remember.
Poynton was in great form. He told us that the only people who really pronounced the Latin AE as AI came from Praeneste and spoke through the nose. Farquharson told us some stories about the late Master at golf. I had some talk with Leys and also with Allen about Antic Hay.41
In the Common Room afterwards Poynton rose to hand the wine and then observed, ‘I am for the outward passage. We are thirteen and I got up first. It was just how it happened with poor Emmet. The only thing to do is to drink as much port as possible.’ After that he became very good and gave us an imitation of his idea of a Greek chorus. Leys, Carritt and I had a really good little talk about Wordsworth. Later on I went up to Carritt’s rooms and he gave me a lot of wrinkles for my forthcoming duties . . .
Thursday 12 June: Started Berkeley this morning. After an early lunch Maureen and I bussed in to Oxford and joined the queue outside the Sheldonian for the Bach choir. We had a very hot wait, the sun being for that moment out and strong, and I was rather worried by catching sight of Aunt Lily: but I think she did not see us.
We got seats in one of the windows—the best place to be, but still very uncomfortable. They gave us first of all the Kyrie, Credo and Agnus from Beethoven’s Mass in D. I was bored with the Credo but enjoyed the rest pretty well: they then proceeded to the Choral Symphony. The first three movements I enjoyed greatly—the second ‘even to rapture’: the fourth with its choir I didn’t care for. The finale—such is my ignorance—sounded to me like something from a Revue.
Maureen then bussed out and I wrote a note for Coghill in the Union, saying that I would come in after dinner on Sunday: I left this in Exeter and bussed home to find Jenkin at tea with the others in the kitchen. I was delighted to see him. He is just home from Switzerland and the Italian lakes—terque quaterque beatum!42 He has also been to Wembley and denounces my lack of interest in exhibitions as a fashionable affectation . . .
We had supper in good time and I bussed into town and went to W. H. Sutton’s rooms in Christ Church to attend a meeting of the Postgraduates. I was the first there. Presently Stout and some others arrived. Stout was the only person I knew and as he neither spoke to me himself nor introduced me to anyone else (not even to our host) I was reduced to the entertainment of my own thoughts. This did not matter at first, but by the time the others had stood talking in semi whispers about jobs and the famous men they had met for half an hour, and my head had begun to ache and my tobacco had run out, I began to think I might have meditated more comfortably elsewhere.
I was seriously thinking of getting up and saying ‘Good night. Thank you for a pleasant evening’ when at last they showed signs of starting the meeting proper. The reader turned out to be Mr Catlin whom I met at the Encaenia in 1921 when we were both prizemen. The man before him on that occasion had read rather too long an extract from his composition, and Catlin had whispered to me with a shake of his head, ‘Much too long’. He had then risen and read twice as long himself in a very parsonical voice with strong rhetorical rhythm.
He is pale and slight with a long yet bulbous nose and very thick pale lips: his hands, which are large, he holds before him and washes ‘in invisible soap’. His smile is the most fascinating thing about him: when he is spoken to he suddenly twitches his head over to one side till his nose is nearly horizontal. Then there is a rapid extension of his mouth as far as possible in each direction: this grin begins and ends quite suddenly and does not affect any other part of his face. He varies the intensity of the smile by maintaining the contortion for a longer or shorter time: thus when someone asked him to tea it lasted for about forty seconds. He stands sometimes on one leg, sometimes on the other: never on both. The continued contortions of face, hands and body reminded me of Uriah Heep.
He read a paper called ‘Prometheus’, modelled on Haldane’s Daedalus. Just as he was starting a man (the most gentlemanly one there I am sorry to say) came and squashed himself in between me and my neighbour on a Chesterfield, so that I was in great discomfort. It was at this point that I really got angry: I can stand mental isolation but not physical proximity.
Catlin’s paper however gave me intense enjoyment—tho’ not of the sort he had intended. I don’t know what his thesis was: only that we must avoid the prejudices of the ‘vulga—a—a’, and that ‘there is no permanent social evil’ (not evil but iv-il—pronouncing all your letters) ‘for that would mean a normal abnormality’, that we should distinguish between ‘the adultery of the heart and the passing peccancy of the body’ and ‘that the future of religion lay between Christianity, and some religion yet unknown’. I was hard put to it to keep a straight face at times—tho’ there was sense in the paper and plenty of it amid the affectation.43
A man near me—a great coarse blackish thing, negroid or Jewish, I don’t know which—gave up the attempt and lay face downwards with his face in a cushion. My neighbour put his feet up on the sofa on which I was sitting.
As soon as the paper was over I went over to Sutton and said ‘Thank you. I have a bus to catch. I’m afraid I must go.’ Sutton looked up and made no answer at all: so I went out and home by bus from Carfax. The only other people there I can remember were Mr Dickie (one feels that all of them should always have the ‘Mr’ somehow) and the ‘crooning’ man whom I met there before.
Friday 13 June: This morning was a good deal colder and the sky full of clouds: but a strong damp wind from the North West had chased away this horrible heaviness that has hung over us so long. This exhilarated me so much that I went out after breakfast with Pat and walked on Shotover.
From eating indiscreetly on a rather tough bit of bacon at breakfast I had set my left jaw and the whole of that side of my face aching: and tho’ the pain was slight in itself, the fear that it would localise into a definite toothache and the effort of will to prevent this kept me from enjoying my walk. On reaching home I took some aspirin and wrote up my diary: by lunch time I was alright. After lunch D went into town and I, after washing up and usual jobs, went to my attic and worked on Berkeley.
Maureen, Aideen and I had tea alone in the kitchen at 4.45. Shortly afterwards D came back in very good form and loaded us as usual with presents for everyone. The dining room table was soon covered up with foodstuffs, new dressing slippers, notebooks and paper fasteners for me, shoes and umbrella for D, pads, toilet paper and what not.
I did a little more Berkeley before supper: after wh. I washed up and took Pat down Cuckoo Lane. In the evening I read a little in Th. Browne’s Urn Burial. All very merry and earli-ish to bed.
Saturday 14 June: A great drop in the temperature this morning. After breakfast I finished Berkeley’s Principles44 and wrote a little critique on it. I then began Hume: and greatly enjoyed the perfect clarity, ease, humanity and quietness of his manner. This is the proper way to write philosophy.
After lunch I half expected Jenkin to turn up, but when I had finished my jobs and still he had not appeared, I set off alone with Pat. The sun had now come out with a sudden autumn like intensity and it was hotter than it has been for many days. The heat quivered on the grass: I went through Quarry and up Shotover. There was a sort of whiteness over the landscape. I strolled along ‘the plain’ and down the little alley that leads to the railway bridge—enjoying everything very much. On my return journey I went down into the bottom of Pullen’s Gap and rested for a long time under a clump of young silver birches wh. made around me a curiously crisp rustling.
Reaching home I found tea set on the lawn and Jenkin there with D. He showed us many photos collected in his travels—Lemone, Benacus, Venice, and places in the mountains. He had just been reading Masefield’s Philip the King. He said that the part in which rumour of victory arrives is a failure, because, knowing the history, one feels all the time that this is only being done to heighten the climax. I said I didn’t feel that myself. He told me of a new letter of Sir Thomas Browne’s recently discovered and quoted a fine passage—‘every hour so addet
h to that dark society’.
He also talked of Oxford—how quickly he had got out of touch with it. ‘When I lunched with Ziman and Curtis the other day,’ he said, ‘I felt firstly that everything they said was silly: and secondly that there was an intellectual gloss which I had absolutely lost in a few months.’ He was afraid that he was really ‘rusticating’ but I told him (wh. was the truth) that I found no change and that to talk with him was like slipping into a well worn shoe.
When he left I found that Maureen and D had disappeared somewhere, so I brought Wordsworth out to the garden and there in the delicious coolness I read Book I of The Prelude. This poem is really beginning to replace Paradise Lost as my literary metropolis. D and Maureen turned up from shopping in Headington with loads much too heavy for them. D of course made light of it: but I was rather sickened to find that my hour or so’s talk and read, enjoyed all innocently, had led unawares to this. So exacting is ordinary life: one cannot turn aside for a moment . . .
Sunday 15 June: . . . After supper I bussed into Exeter and went to Coghill’s rooms where, after a short wait, I was joined by Coghill and Morrah.45 The latter is very dark, slight, and vivacious: such a man as might be begotten by the marriage of a firefly with a rat. He is a Fellow of All Souls. He told me of some Canadian university who wants a young man as Professor of English and offers £1000 a year: they need not elect anyone and are in no hurry. He gave me an address to write to about it.
The talk fell on Catlin, whom Morrah had examined when he tried for an All Souls Fellowship. Catlin had filled his papers with quotations from the Vulgate. ‘It was his misfortune,’ said Morrah, ‘to fall into my hands, who am the only Papist in the society. I saw at once what he was doing—taking the Authorised Version and translating it into Latin: but the trouble was that he did it in Ciceronian Latin.’ I then remembered how Catlin had quoted a Papal Bull in his paper the other night: and felt ‘sudden glory’.