by C. S. Lewis
I spent the afternoon and evening between spells of working on ‘Sigrid’ (which I did with incredible difficulty, but finally pleased myself) and beginning to re-read The Well at the World’s End. I was anxious to see whether the old spell still worked. It does—rather too well. This going back to books read at that age is humiliating: one keeps on tracing what are now quite big things in one’s mental outfit to curiously small sources. I wondered how much even of my feeling for external nature comes out of the brief, convincing little descriptions of mountains and woods in this book.
Monday 5 July: Still raining this morning. D and Maureen went into town after breakfast to shop. I went up to the back room and wrote about ten more lines of ‘Sigrid’ with unexpected ease: then became disgusted with the whole thing. I had meant to work if I couldn’t write, but gave way to the temptation of continuing The Well at the World’s End, which I did with intense enjoyment till the others came back at lunchtime, and again after lunch till tea time, when it cleared.
After tea I walked down Cuckoo Lane and into College by the back way. I was a good deal bothered by the ease with which my old romantic world had resumed its sway. I shall know another time not to try to establish my conceit by patronising Wm. Morris!
In College I found letters from Waddington & Sykes asking what they shd. do in the Vac: also from Craig, inviting me to a tea fight in Common Room. Brought out the folios of Erasmus wh. I recently borrowed from the library. Restrained Pat in the garden from the gross impropriety of chasing that very respectable animal, the Common Room Cat, and gave him a clip for his pains. Home and answered Waddington & Sykes before supper.
D had a headache—probably from wearing a hat too long this morning . . .
Tuesday 6 July: Woken up about five by D having a nightmare. She had had a good night and got rid of her headache, but still felt sick.
I spent the morning on Erasmus’ Institutio Principis Christiani and noting parallels with Elyot. It is not very exciting but wd. be tolerable if the folio were less worm eaten and more clearly printed—it is a beautifully formed type, but blurred.
After lunch I went for a walk, the first real one for many days. I went through Headington Quarry, along Shotover, down the fir tree lane beyond Shotover House, turned right over fields, crossed the railway line, and so back. It was a grey windy day, sometimes raining, with low clouds. I got very wet in the fields: the smell, and earthiness, and various sounds shook me into a pretty receptive state of mind. Home for tea, with a sharp headache at 4.30 and changed socks and shoes. Poor D felt too ill to take even a cup of tea.
Afterwards I went over the revised proofs of ‘Dymer’ wh. arrived today from Canto I, 30, to the end of the whole. I never liked it less. I felt no mortal could get any notion of what the devil it was all about. I am afraid this sort of stuff is very much hit or miss, yet I think it is my only real line . . .
Wednesday 7 July: Up to my own room after breakfast, as Dotty now occupies the back room, and worked on Erasmus, finishing the Institutio. It is a very different book from Elyot. It is all fine, free, cosmopolitan irresponsibility, while he is homely and almost fussy. I spent the last half hour of the morning trying to work on ‘Sigrid’, but to no purpose. I think couplets are beyond me.
After lunch I walked: over the fields to Stowe Woods, resting just this side of the road, where there was a fine misty landscape down the valley: then on to Elsfield, with a glance at Otmoor, across the fields to the big house with pigs in the orchard, and then home, with one more halt, which I cut short because of flies.
D feeling very sick and headachy all day—and the usual infernal jam making has begun . . .
Thursday 8 July: D had a good night and felt much better this morning. It was a beautiful misty summer morning. After breakfast I went into town, bought an Everyman Quentin Durward (which I examine on for Lower Certificate) and then went to the Camera to order Patrizi’s De Regno, but was sent to Bodley. Went on to College to answer Craig’s invitation but finding I did not know where I’d be on that date, brought it out with me instead, after wasting a pleasant half hour in the smoking room over Godley’s Unpublished Works . . .
Friday 9 July: Up very late and allowed myself foolishly to indulge in the hope that one of the girls might have taken Pat for his morning run. It has happened once or twice. Of course they hadn’t and, annoyed at this further delay, I became grumpy and offensive—a typical business-man-at-breakfast in fact!
Got in to Bodley about 10.30 and spent the morning on Patrizi’s De Regno. It is a deplorable work, the subject of Kingship being only a peg on which to hang every story from the Classics which the old blether can remember. Thus a chapter on flatterers begins ‘Nullum veri assentatoribus inest, ut dixit Democritus’62—and then you are off for five pages of what Agesilaus did and what Philopernon said. I suppose it would be pleasant enough to read in snippets, but it is heartbreaking if you are trying to trace Elyot in it. There is one rather jolly bit about digging up antiques.
Just before I came away for lunch Onions suddenly came upon me and said ‘You don’t mean to say you’re reading something. I thought you never read.’ Went to College for lunch where I met Onions who expressed equal surprise at my being there. I got it back on him by asking whether, reasoning as he did about my reading, he assumed I never lunched except on the days he saw me lunching . . .
Saturday–Wednesday 10–14 July: I abandoned my diary under the influence of the heat wave. Saturday morning and afternoon I spent in Bodley, lunching in College, and bathed after tea.
On Sunday I began to read Rose Macaulay’s Lee Shore, wh. at first I hated. I now think it almost a great work. It has shaken my mind up a good deal and, so far, done good.
That afternoon Mrs Wilbraham came and played badminton—it was the greatest heat I have yet played in.
On Monday I again spent the day in Bodley. It was hot enough in Duke Humphreys under the roof of copper, but even that seemed cool compared with the streets. The beauties of architecture are for winter. During these days Oxford seemed a sort of desert of burning stone. The water in Parson’s Pleasure went up to 73°. That day I bought Fielding’s Amelia and began to read it. It is odd how such a monotonous succession of misfortunes—in wh. the continual assaults on Amelia’s impregnable virtue become ludicrous—ballasted with such shoddy rhetoric in the dialogue, can be made palatable by dint of sheer narrative power. The born story teller can really do what he likes in literature . . .
On Wednesday I began to write my first lecture in the garden. The sun was a sort of omnipotent fiend penetrating the whole house and even the shadiest spaces on the lawn. I made poor progress.
D has been overworked all these days, partly because of the uncertainty of the Vaughans who are always sending Dotty back for meals when she is not expected or taking her away when she is, partly—the Lord knows why. Having a maid seems to make strangely little difference and I sometimes doubt if anything will ever make any difference . . .
Thursday–Saturday 15–17 July: I spent most of my time composing a Latin oration which I have to deliver at the Gaudy—a laborious undertaking, not only for the language (I have written none of it since Mods.) but for the researchers in fact wh. one has to make. I wasted two whole days in College turning the leaves of Who’s Who and the Magdalen Register, or Godley’s presentation speeches to find the Latin for things like K.C.B. and K.C. S.I. It is rather a futile and tiring occupation.
I finished Amelia and began to read the Kalevala which I bought years ago and have never read through. It is rather good—a pleasant atmosphere of salmon, ducks, willows, salt ponds, magic, and copper-smith’s work: also, there is what in the original must be real poetry in some of the similes: and real good myth as where Ilmarinen watches the strange things that come up out of his furnace and dislikes them and never knows what will come next, tho [it] is his own magic furnace.
Sunday 18 July: Woke up late, heavy and headachy after a gruelling day and restless night. Spent a fidgety morning
reading the Kalevala, bathing Pat’s paw, and going round to Hewitt’s every now and then to see if the papers had come yet. Mr Thomas, a dry little old Egyptologist, whom Maureen has picked up somewhere, came for tea, and after tea the Wilbrahams. We played badminton. Mr T. stayed an unconscionable time, and talked a lot. An agreeable man, but a fool. A very fine thunderstorm in the night accompanied (which I have never met before) with a high wind.
Lewis’s diary breaks off here and is not resumed until 9 January 1927. He had been attempting to get his father to travel to Oxford and stay in Magdalen as his guest, but when Mr Lewis failed to come, he went to Belfast for a holiday, 11–20 September. He had been working on his narrative poem, Dymer, since 1922, and it was published by J. M. Dent & Sons on 18 September. It had many favourable reviews, but few readers.
Warnie learned in September that he had been selected to attend a six months course in Economics at London University beginning 4 October. He and Jack travelled together to Belfast on 21 December to be with their father for Christmas. This was to be the last Mr Lewis was to spend with both sons, and it is fortunate that at the end of it he could write in his diary of 8 January 1927: ‘Warnie and Jacks returned tonight by Fleetwood. As the boat did not sail until 11 o’c. they stayed with me to 9.30. So ended a very pleasant holiday. Roses all the way.’
1927
Sunday 9 January: Called at quarter to seven on the Fleetwood boat, by which W and I crossed last night from Ireland. We had single berth rooms each on deck, but terribly stuffy because the steward had insisted on screwing up the windows in anticipation of a storm which never happened. I had a poor night and a nightmare—a thing I never had at sea before. If sea water, even, won’t protect a man from bogies, it’s a hard case.
Boat train left Fleetwood at 8 and was very slow all the way, probably because of bad foreign coal. We had both breakfast and lunch on the train. I read Erewhon Revisited and thought it poor.1 The ideas are sometimes capital, but it suffers (as even Gulliver does to my mind) from far too much working out wh. you could do for yourself, once the idea has been given you. Hanky’s sermon and the Sunch’ston newspaper are at least as dull as they would be in real life.
Reached Euston 2.45 (timed for 1.30), left my luggage at Paddington and then went by taxi with W. to the R.A.M.C. Mess at Millbank where he left his things. I thought the mess a very sound sort of building. He and I walked back to Paddington across the Park, glad to stretch our legs after the long morning in the train.
Left Paddington at 4.10 I had sent D a wire from Fleetwood saying that I shd. not arrive till about 6, and it now occurred to me that on a Sunday the wire might not be delivered and she would be frightened, as I usually turn up about 1.30. This made me quite miserable and spoiled a journey wh. I shd. otherwise have loved, being almost alone in my carriage and looking out on a wild crimson sunset over low black hills and woods, with an occasional gleam of water amidst them reflecting the red of the sky.
Thank goodness D really had got my wire and I found her well and in good spirits, despite the very hard time she has had while I was away—Maureen being laid up with German measles and Winifred unable to help because she hadn’t had it herself. D was called as a juror some days ago, and tho’ not actually included in the jury, retained in court, as a sort of understudy I suppose. She was too interested (she says) to be uncomfortable and passed the time during the only case very characteristically, holding the hand of the prisoner’s wife.
To bed about eleven after a very pleasant evening of chat and talk. I woke once in the night and imagined myself still in Ireland—then, oh, the relief! Best of all I find term begins on Friday week, not on Thursday next as I had feared.
Monday 10 January: Slept very well and took Pat out before breakfast as usual. I spent the morning setting exam papers for the L.C. and polished off Story, Dictation, and Sidgwick. I also wrote to J. Betjeman.
After lunch I look my walk through Barton and over the fields, coming back by the Crab Apple Road. It was a most extraordinary afternoon. Most of the sky was very pale creamy blue, and there were clouds about, of the coldest shade of dark blue I have ever seen. The further hills were exactly the same as the clouds in colour and texture. But near the sun the sky simply turned white and the sun itself (its outline was invisible) was a patch of absolutely pure white light that looked as if it had no [more] power of heating than moonlight—tho’ it was quite a mild day in fact.
I got into a tremendously happy mood, what with the joy of being home again and certain vague anticipations of good things beginning and a general sense of frosts breaking up—like the beginning of the Prelude. Some few birds were making a great noise as if it was spring . . .
In the evening all three of us had a talk about Dotty and the trouble which her late hours and lavish entertaining throws on D. I wanted to decide once and for all what we could rightly demand of her and then insist on it—instead of continuing forever to be alternately enraged and indulgent: but D thought me quite unpractical, and I’m afraid I only worried her . . .
Tuesday 11 January: Read Guy Mannering all morning, which I remember only confusedly from my last reading. In spite of the crazy construction and the absurd gushing letters, it is a good yarn.
Walked after lunch, with Pat. On my way up to Shotover I met Mrs Hinckley who tells me she is trying to get Dymer from the Times Book Club, but has failed. I promised to send her a copy. I went up Shotover by the little path on the edge of Pullen’s Gap and along the ‘Plain’ to the end. A very dark grey day, looking like snow but feeling too warm.
Home again to tea for which the others came in, having been calling on the Schofields. He is a don at Ruskin and knew Fasnacht, whom he described as being ‘far too polite’. Finished Guy Mannering after supper and set an L.C. paper on it—an irritating little job at which I made several false starts. During supper Maureen remembered ‘I’m beginning to get excited about term. Are you?’ As she knows very well that D and I both hate the coming of term, and that it means a great deal of overwork for D, it is hard to see why she says these things. I suppose it is intended to be a kind of joke. Letter from Warnie today to tell me that he has got seats for Hansel and Gretel on Saturday week: but as that is now going to be collection Saturday I shan’t be able to go.
Wednesday 12 January: After breakfast I set a paper on Macbeth, wrote to Attenborough about the L.C., and to W about Hansel and Gretel . . . I next went to the Davenport to see about a set of Milton’s Prose Works and found to my annoyance that there is none on the market, Masson being wholly and Bohn partly, out of print . . .
Home and read Wyld’s Mother Tongue (a curse be on Wyld) till lunchtime. Had a good long walk in the afternoon, over the fields to Elsfield, along the road and home over the fields through Barton. An absolutely dead grey day but without the grandeur or suspense that grey days sometimes have. I, at any rate, was v. insensible and walked along ‘thinking’ as it’s called: i.e.—mooning . . .
Thursday 13 January: Into town after breakfast where I got my hair cut, paid for my Milton, and brought home one volume, ordering the rest to be sent to College. Began Reformation in England and read a good deal of it before lunch—with great enjoyment. For a certain kind of humour, the prose Milton beats anyone I know. He abuses like an inspired coster—like Falstaff.
Hot roast for lunch. Walked up Shotover through Quarry in the afternoon and along the Plain. A very cold day with a beautiful feel in the air, a pale blue sky and bright sunlight. On my way back I had a look at the digging operations in Quarry . . .
Worked hard on Language for the rest of the day, finding out what Wyld says in spite of all Wyld does to prevent me. I made notes of the ‘West Germanic to Primitive O.E.’ and wrote a Mnemonic poem on it—this is going to be great fun. I also got well into ‘Primitive O.E. to O.E.’ But it seems impossible to find out anything about Consonants. It’s also v. annoying that, having been given an account of what vowels change to under J-mutation, when you come to U-mutation you are told that
they change but not what they change to. Are all philologists mad? . . .
Friday 14 January: D brought me in bed this morning an advertisement from a Press Cutting Agency wh. contained, at last, the T.L.S. review of Dymer. Fausset wrote to me in September to say that he had reviewed it, but thought it might not appear for a few weeks and was writing to let me know: a very enthusiastic letter, and a very kindly act on the part of a complete stranger.2 Ever since then I have been on the lookout for it, and I think yesterday was the first Thursday on wh. I forgot all about [it]. The Review was very satisfactory indeed and cheered me greatly.
All of us slept v. late this morning. Worked till lunch on vowel changes in O.E., hitching Fracture and J-mutation into rimed octosyllabics, with equal pleasure and profit. Wrote to Fausset thanking him for the review and repeating my invitation.
It was very dark and raining but I put on my mac. and went out—along Windmill Rd. and its continuation to the turn for the Barracks: thence left across the fields and up Shotover by Pullen’s Gap, and home through Quarry. A very slippery soggy walk, but I quite enjoyed it. Maureen had a girl to tea. Went on with Language till supper time and read Milton afterwards. Finished Reformation in England and nearly all of Prelaticall Episcopacy. He is not, at this stage, a great prose writer: the exuberance of some passages is too overwhelming, and the argument not really very powerful. I remembered it as being better. Hooker’d have made mincemeat of him.
Saturday 15 January: . . . Worked all morning on the change from O.E. to M.E., with great difficulty but some enjoyment. Wyld’s best (that is, his worst) trick is to say that a certain vowel did this or that except, say, in Kentish: but what it did in Kentish he doesn’t tell you, and you may read thro’ the whole book to find out. Another pretty quip is the example that doesn’t exemplify. ‘Ā in the North, through , reached ē. Example, Bruce rimes schame (short ă in O.E.) with blame.’ One can usually work it out in the end, but after maddening waste of time.