by C. S. Lewis
Friday 7 May: Went on correcting Spencer’s paper. Waterfield and Percival came at 12. The latter read an essay of a very vague, aimless kind.
Out home by about 1.30. After lunch I walked over the fields towards Forest Hill: it was a beautiful mild afternoon with a blue sky and I sat down for some time: when I turned to come home I saw wonderful effects. Above and behind me was still bright: ahead of me was a huge bank of clouds with almost black under-side and enormous white pinnacles above, driving fast towards me and making the plain bright blue underneath it. It squirted a hailshower at me just before I reached Barton: big firm hailstones, very painful to the nose and ear.
Changed and had tea. Baldwin’s speech in the House (today’s Times) says that a message demanding repudiation of the Daily Mail strike and withdrawal of strike notices in general was sent to the T.U.C. on Sunday evening and not answered and this was the breakdown. They seem to have been nearly in agreement before that.
Back to College by 5.30 and worked on Hoccleve. In the smoking room after dinner Wrong circulated the Petition expressing the hope ‘that nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of resumption of the negotiations’.27 It had been signed by Sadler, Gilbert Murray, Lindsay, Wrong, Weldon, Lee and others. Segar said it was like sending a petition to Haig asking him to sign an armistice at a moment when his whole business was to frighten the Germans.
I protested against the idea that the Premier during a strike was in the same position as a general at war, or that his business was to frighten. In the end I didn’t sign myself because it seemed to me that, if taken loosely, the Petition only meant ‘Aim at peace’, which was not helpful: if taken strictly, it meant ‘Re-open negotiations on any terms whatever happens tomorrow’, which I didn’t agree with.
Craig said it was equivalent to a vote of censure on the Govt. That seems untrue. What has really annoyed him and many others is that the Bishop announced a religious meeting in the Town Hall and used it for passing this resolution. The general feeling is that this was dishonest.
Back to my rooms and worked on the Chaucerians (making notes on ‘aureation’) till about 11. Then to bed, but not for a long time to sleep, after tidying my room. Raining hard.
Saturday 8 May: News of rioting from many places today.
De Peyer and Clark at 12. Home for lunch at 1.30 or so. Read the papers: the big item today is Sir John Simon’s speech on the illegality of the present strike. I am not sure that anything is gained by telling the workmen that they are all ‘liable to be sued’ (that was the headline).
Knight was here mending the lock on the scullery door. He told us the Worker’s Gazette version of the break off. They had nearly come to agreement on a basis for further discussion when the news of the Daily Mail strike reached Baldwin. He then wrote to the T.U.C., practically assuming that the General Strike had begun and asking for some statement. They knew as little of the Daily Mail strike as he and wrote back to say so: to which he answered that the door was now closed. The Worker’s Gazette pertinently asks if he would have behaved in the same way if the premature strike had been in the Daily Herald printers. Baldwin’s account was (in today’s papers) that he wrote asking for a repudiation of the printers’ strike and none was given.
It is impossible to discover of what fact these two stories are the colouring. There may be something in Craig’s idea that Baldwin was being hustled by Birkenhead and Churchill . . .
We were rather early for the bus, and it was cold, which didn’t improve matters, as D is apparently still bothered with the pain in her back. She seemed a little better in the Playhouse. The Vaughan Williams Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains was above praise: words, music, acting and lighting all really unified and the result quite unearthly. In the interval I found Benecke, Chute, and Hardie waiting on the off chance of getting in. I also met C. K. Allen and got from him a whiff of solid Univ. Toryism—sarcastic, frightened, worldly-wisdom. The Bach Coffee Cantata and the Purcell ballet of the Gentleman Dancing Master were both delightful and one didn’t really mind the descent from the heights. Altogether a splendid show. All home by taxi, the others dropping me at Magdalen gate.
Sunday 9 May: A bright and beautiful morning. The walks by the Cher as I went out home after breakfast are now ‘tunnels of green’ and hawthorn, full of singing, or, rather, shouting birds, and bluebells.
D seemed none the worse for last night. I spent a very idle day: unconsciously one makes the strike a pretext for dropping all regular habits. Played badminton in the afternoon: beaten by Maureen and beat Dotty. I re-read some of the best stories in H. G. Wells’ Country of the Blind. One never re-reads an old favourite without finding that it has contributed more than one suspected to one’s habitual stock in trade.
Back to College about 5.30. Met Valentin in the cloisters who told me he is going down tomorrow and therefore wd. not come to me. Attended Chapel and read a very relevant lesson, Deuteronomy VIII.
Sat beside Weldon in Hall. He thinks we shall be free of all pupils by the end of this week and shall have to begin thinking of strike jobs for ourselves. He proposes to join with others of our mind and try to get into stevedore’s work or something comparatively neutral: we would co-opt Hardie into our company as he is innocent and doesn’t know how to look after himself: e.g. on hearing of the new C.C.R., to be issued with tin hats, he said he would refuse to wear a tin hat! . . .
In the Smoking Room there was much interesting talk. Jellicoe says the police and the poor ordinary people (typists and the like) in London are really great.28 The police and army will break if it really comes to fighting: which he thinks it will.
What he would like (Chute and I eagerly endorsed this) is that the Govt. should win the strike, in the sense of producing a return to work without disorder, and lose the peace, in the sense that the country would, in the Govt’s teeth if need be, confirm Trades Unions in their legitimate powers and protect the miners.
Weldon said this was utterly impossible. Birkenhead and Joynson Hicks had deliberately provoked a hostile situation in order to crush Trades Unionism once and for all: if the general strike failed (and it was bound to) Trades Unions would be dead in England, and as there would be no general election, it would be impossible to prevent Birkenhead and Co. from mutilating the corpse. The result would be that moderate Labour wd. be forced to go red. Jellicoe says that Euston parish was enraged by the use of undergraduate labour at Euston. Wrong and I maintained the right to feed oneself and others regardless of the industrial issue: Weldon wd. not hear of it. One had no choice but to be a T.U.C. partisan or to be a blackleg as such.
Went to Craig’s room with Wrong and Weldon (Chute came in later) to drink whiskey and talk. An obstinate argument by Weldon and me against Craig and Wrong who maintained that one had a duty to support one’s country or ‘the state’ even when it is wrong. Craig kept on saying he agreed with me, which he doesn’t. Largely because I held that Govt. has a right (by the rules of all negotiation—ius gentium)29 to demand a repudiation of the Daily Mail strke. Wrong said ‘Craig & Lewis think God was a moderate Whig.’ I only demanded ‘is’ instead of ‘was’ . . .
Monday 10 May: . . . Went to lunch at Univ. with Keir and Lawson. They came in late, both having been listening-in in Univ. Common Room. They had heard that all had been quiet at Hull for the last 48 hours: on the other hand Keir heard from a pupil just back from Hull that martial law is being proclaimed. But as he heard that in the sergeants’ mess and late at night, perhaps it ought not to weigh very much.
I then bussed home. There were half a dozen Lancashire miners in the bus, very drunk. They said they had all been soldiers and knew how to shoot: if they couldn’t break our pockets they would break our hearts etc. etc. Someone began arguing with them and they answered him (quite sensibly) by saying ‘Are you a miner?’—‘’Oo the ’ell are you?’—‘You’re a bloody shop assistant.’ Not a pleasant journey, tho’ I think they were probably quite decent drunks and not so bad as they sounded.
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bsp; Told D we should all have to go by the end of the week if the strike was still on, which naturally worried her. Miss Baker to tea. Raining. All very depressing.
Back to College for dinner and afterwards with Hardie to ‘the pictures’ where I saw Felix (excellent) and Harold Lloyd for the first time in my life.
We decided to go and see Weldon and have further discussion about our plans. Finding his rooms empty we went to Chute’s where we found Craig, Chute, Weldon, Jellicoe and some undergraduates. We found that Weldon had fixed up a party of his own to go docking, and given us the slip. I said I had always cherished a belief that under his cynical demeanour he concealed a good heart. He replied ‘Now you know.’
Jellicoe’s statement that he wanted men for a canteen, however, opened a new door: and the more I thought of it the more I liked it. I am quite muddled about the rights and wrongs of the thing now, but it seems that one can’t be doing harm by distributing food in a canteen. It also seems fairly safe and one is not being tied up by Govt. London also attracts because of Barfield and Harwood.
Hardie and I went to Weldon’s rooms to drink toddy and try Sortes Virgilianae. We got ‘At regina pyra penetrali in sede sub auras’.30 That didn’t seem very explicit, so we tried the Bible and got a line, not of text but of editorial matter, about ‘the fall of great empires’. That was much too explicit so we tried Milton. He gave the passage about ‘all Hell broke loose’ and ‘anger infinite provoked’. Worse and worse! We gave Virgil two more tries: one was about the return of Saturnian kingdoms in Latium, but like fools we didn’t stop there, and trying again got ‘Miscuerunt herbas et non innoxia verba.’31 No more oracles for me! . . .
Tuesday 11 May: . . . I meant to get out home early this morning but Hetherington came to see me and we were presently joined by Hardie. Hetherington is for the Archbishop’s Appeal and the Balliol Independant whose object is the entirely worthy one of finding as soon as possible some means of rapprochement which will save both parties’ faces. That is the only way in which the thing can be ended without great evil . . .
In to Merton for the ‘English tea’ at 4. Here there was hardly any talk of the strike. Discussion turned on Fletcher’s proposal to co-ordinate the lecture list with the ordinary course of tutorial work.32 Everyone agreed, tho’ Gordon spoke of the danger of making the thing too much of ‘an easily running engine that can give no pleasure to anyone except the engineer’. Miss Lee talked a lot of nonsense about the need for lessons in pronunciation and beginners’ ‘outlines of literature’.33
Tolkien managed to get the discussion round to the proposed English Prelim.34 I had a talk with him afterwards. He is a smooth, pale, fluent little chap—can’t read Spenser because of the forms—thinks the language is the real thing in the school—thinks all literature is written for the amusement of men between thirty and forty—we ought to vote ourselves out of existence if we were honest—still the sound-changes and the gobbets are great fun for the dons. No harm in him: only needs a smack or so. His pet abomination is the idea of ‘liberal’ studies. Technical hobbies are more in his line.
Home again. Debate in Times today very interesting. There seems to be no adequate answer to the question why the Archbishop’s appeal was excluded from the Gazette. Churchill is the editor. The Labour report of a collapse of the O.M.S. at Newcastle was repeated with circumstance. Had a quiet evening with D after supper: pleasant home-life again—there is so little of it now.
Back to College by 10.15. Had a talk with Hardie and to bed before eleven. News today reports fewer riots and tonight’s broadcasting sees some hope of re-opened negotiations. But thanks to the Govt’s behaviour I share with everyone I meet (of any class or party) a profound distrust of the official news.
Wednesday 12 May: Wrote a few more lines of my Outline, and was interrupted by Hardie. We discussed our going to London: he wanted to go tomorrow, I, on Friday. We wrote to Jellicoe and I then went home at 11.30.
I dropped into the bank and got the figures for my last year’s income, filled in my forms and posted them. Thank heavens that is off my chest . . .
I decided to go with Hardie tomorrow. At one o’clock I listened to the unexpected news that the T.U.C. had called on Baldwin and said they were terminating the General Strike today. I am at a loss to understand this sudden, unconditional surrender. It was a great relief: ordinary life flowed back into one’s mind delightfully as after a dream.
Lunch of cold chicken and tongue. I took Pat out for a walk in Cuckoo Lane and got drenched in a sudden shower.
Back into College about 3.30, and changed. Met Hardie and Mabbott of St Johns. We commented on the fact that J.A. had kept silence all through the strike and enunciated no moral doctrine: we thought the portent ‘J.A. tacuit’35 (cf. bos locutus est)36 ought to be sent in to the augurs.37
Tea in the Smoking Room with Benecke, and thence to L.M.H. for my class, thro’ the Parks in a sudden burst of wet heat, heavy sunshine, and bright colours on the dripping trees . . . My class was completely unruffled by the strike and still very interested in Berkeley. Miss Thring read a paper. The discussion turned on the self. I told them about Alexander’s distinction of contemplation and enjoyment38 and they all (I think) got it quite clear. Miss Colborne was specially good, saying to Miss Grant (who wanted to ‘know’ the self) ‘It is as if, not content with seeing with your eyes, you wanted to take them out and look at them—and then they wouldn’t be eyes.’ . . .
Thursday 13 May: . . . The news in this morning’s Times and by the wireless is bad. Most of the companies are refusing to take back their staffs as a whole, and most of the men are refusing to go back until they are promised that all will go back together. I fear this may still wreck the whole show. In so far as it is not necessary, but a mere reprisal, I blame the masters very much.
D seemed a little better today. After lunch I walked up Shotover: very hot and bright between the showers. The deep colours and threateningly clear outlines of the plain seen from Shotover almost woke me for a moment from the inattentive lethargy in which I usually walk now . . .
To the Union where I took out Gavin Douglas and Robert Graves’ Poetic Unreason . . . Read Graves’ book in the evening. He explains poetry on psychoanalytic principles and does not explain where its poetry lies: i.e. it resolves a conflict, so may a dream. But a dream is not poetry and where is the differentia? A stupid fellow who has been knocked off his feet by psychoanalysis because he hadn’t thought enough before he met it. I suppose that is the prig in me again! . . .
Friday 14 May: Read Gavin Douglas’ Prologues to Vergil. Poor stuff. I was quite surprised and rather shocked by the arrival of a pupil this morning—Betjeman. He has been in Oxford all the time, ‘driving people round to villages to speak, in his car’—I suppose that means people like my miners in the bus.
Home by 1.15. D seems better today. Read the papers: hardly anyone seems to have gone back yet. Baldwin made rather a great speech in the House yesterday, disclaiming all intention of reprisals and pointing out that he had himself induced some employers to meet the men and hold discussions about reinstatement. Thomas made a good speech too, drawing attention to the action of some Govt. departments and also to the difference between Baldwin’s tone and that of the ‘surrender’ number of the Gazette . . .
After tea I read (at home) The Palice of Honour which, in spite of the barbarous diction, is rather good. The horror of the waste is well done and I got a real thrill out of the music that ‘distant on far was carryit by the deip’. It is nice too to have Venus and her court knocked out for once.
Back to College at seven, feeling fit for nothing. Took Chesterton’s Club of Queer Trades from the smoking room library after dinner: read in it, made tea, and to bed by eleven or before . . .
Saturday 15 May: De Peyer alone this morning (Clark is still away) for a sticky hour on Butler. Then came Yorke for O.E. He has had amazing adventures. He travelled by a lorry to Bristol, found the docks shut up (it was a Saturday evening) and went
to a hotel. Here he met a man who for some reason decided he was running away from home and talked to him on that hypothesis till midnight. On Sunday (he was dressed like a tramp) he went out for a walk and was accosted by a girl of about 12 with the question ‘’Ave you got a Sunday?’ ‘A Sunday’, apparently, means some one to walk out with on Sundays. Next day he went to a Labour exchange—why on earth he didn’t go to one of the ordinary organisations, I don’t know,—and could get no work: which is odd. Whereupon he was clapped on the back by another tramp and told ‘’Ard luck old man.’
I told him about the death of Dent—wh. I am hoping does not affect the publication of ‘Dymer’. Pocock has an agreement signed by me, but I have yet none signed by them.39
Home by one. So far I had been feeling the better for my quiet and early evening last night but no sooner had I set out for my walk after lunch than the old headache and feeling of unreality descended on me. Had only a short stroll in the fields below Shotover.
Spent the rest of the day at home lazily, reading the life of Hannah More by William Roberts Esq. (1838).40 He is a deliciously pompous and peppery evangelical, but the letters (which make the most part of it) are v. interesting. One is glad to see Johnson with Sir Joshua’s macaw on his wrist . . .
Sunday 16 May: . . . I continued to read about Hannah More. The account of her work in the Clevedon, Blagdon and Wrington neighbourhood recalls a pleasant jaunt with W and throws a lot of interesting light on the Jacobin and anti-Jacobin period.
It is grim to see the humanist gradually withering in her, and funny to hear the author describing the society of such men as Johnson as the snares of ‘the world’—‘leagued against her’—from wh. she escaped. The diaries are like those of Frances Havergall: one sees the self examination taking a form in which it is bound to become worse and worse: the more you scratch you more you itch. The problem raised is this: how to be seriously concerned with goodness without letting the ‘empirical ego’ become the absorbing object. Perhaps it is insoluble.