by C. S. Lewis
114 The lectures, Monday and Friday, were on ‘Shakespeare’.
115 Lewis was wrong about the name. He was in the little Church of St Margaret, Binsey (built c. 730), confirmed as belonging to St Frideswide Priory in 1122, and which is today held in plurality with St Frideswide Church, Osney.
116 ‘The fear of death is troubling me’, the refrain from William Dunbar’s poem ‘Lament for the Makaris’.
117 Chaloner Thomas Taplin Kemshead (1854–1929) was a Lecturer in French and German at Magdalen College 1905–23.
118 Lewis’s ‘Cousin Mary’ was his mother’s first cousin, Lady Ewart (1849–1929) who lived in Belfast. While it seems most unlikely that Lady Ewart would be in Oxford, Lewis was worried about his family discovering that he shared a house with Mrs Moore.
119 This day 1917 I arrived first in the front line at Monch le Preux—C. S.L.
120 ‘The Soldier’s Coat’ and ‘The Empty Room’ are found in The Voice of Cecil Harwood: A Miscellany, ed. Owen Barfield (1979).
121 The poems of Thomas Wade Earp (1892–1958) and Wilfred Rowland Childe (1890–1952) were well known in Oxford, and both men contributed to the various volumes of Oxford Poetry.
122 George Eugène Fasnacht (1898–1956) took a First in Modern History and received his BA in 1922. After leaving Oxford he was a Tutor in Social History and Economics at the University of Sheffield 1925–28, head of the Department of History at the University of Leicester 1928–37, and in 1937 he returned to Oxford as a Lecturer in History at Nuffield College.
123 See David Lindsay Keir in the Biographical Appendix.
124 For a note on T. S. Darlow see 26 January 1923.
125 The sense of this is obscure. Perhaps we should read ‘hoped to be heard’.—W.H.L.
126 John Lyly, Endimion (1591).
127 They went to Christ Church Cathedral to see Maureen and other girls from Headington School confirmed.
128 Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Changeling (1653).
129 By Thomas Middleton (1657).
130 By Edward Abbott Parry (1922).
131 Miss Douie.
132 The Lewises were communicants of St Mark’s Church, Dundela. Jack and Warnie’s maternal grandfather, the Revd Thomas Hamilton, had been the Rector there.
133 See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.
134 Joseph ‘Joey’ Lewis (1898–1969) was the son of Albert’s brother, Joseph. His family lived near Little Lea.
135 Augustus Warren Hamilton ‘Uncle Gussie’ (1866–1945), a life long friend of Albert’s, was the brother of Jack and Warnie’s mother. After leaving school he had gone to sea, but he returned to Belfast and founded the firm of Hamilton & McMaster, marine boilermakers and engineers. In 1897 he married a Canadian lady, Anne Sargent Harley Hamilton (1866–1930).
136 Lewis probably had in mind these lines from Matthew Arnold’s poem:
The Gods laugh in their sleeve
To watch man doubt and fear,
Who knows not what to believe
Since he sees nothing clear,
And dares stamp nothing false where he finds nothing sure.
137 See Sir Robert Heard Ewart under The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.
138 Michael Cardinal Logue (1840–1924) was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. The following statement appeared in The Times of 27 December 1922 (p. 10): ‘No Midnight Mass: Cardinal Logue announced on Sunday morning that he had decided to abandon holding the midnight Mass which had been arranged. The authorities had declined to relax the curfew regulations to enable congregations to attend.’
139 By Thomas Hardy (1896).
140 Joseph Malcomson Greeves (1858–1925)—the ‘Thistle Bird’—was Arthur’s father. He was Director of J. & T. M. Greeves Ltd, Flax Spinners.
John Greeves (1892–1969), one of Arthur’s brothers, lived with his parents across the road from the Lewises in the house named ‘Bernagh’.
141 Miss Annie Harper was Warnie’s and Jack’s governess from 1989 to 1908.
142 This diary of the Revd Thomas Robert Hamilton (1826–1905) is reproduced in the unpublished Lewis Papers: Memoirs of the Lewis Family, vol. 1.
143 The failure of McGrigor’s Bank earlier that year.
1 The Revd Arthur William Barton (1881–1962) was Rector of St Marks, Dundela, 1914–25. All three of the Lewises liked him, and he was a frequent and welcome visitor at Little Lea.
2 By John Fletcher (1610).
3 The home of Gordon and Lily Ewart.
4 Ruth Hamilton (1900–), now Mrs Desmond Parker, is the daughter of Mr and Mrs Augustus Hamilton.
5 Kelsie had a hut on what is called Island Magee, which is a peninsula some eight miles long that joins Co. Antrim at the entrance to Belfast Lough. Mona Peacocke was the daughter of the Revd Gerald Peacocke, Rector of St Mark’s 1900–14.
6 Mrs Edith Thompson and her lover murdered Mrs Thompson’s husband in Ilford, Essex, in October 1922. They were executed on 9 January 1923.
7 ‘The Witch of Endor’—Mary Cullen—combined the work of cook and housekeeper at Little Lea from 1917 until the brothers left it in 1930.
8 Now that she was confirmed, Maureen was receiving the Holy Communion for the first time.
9 Beginning 22 January, Gordon gave a series of eight lectures, Mondays and Fridays, on Shakespeare’s Tragedies.
10 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
11 This very popular ‘Discussion Class’ had been inaugurated earlier by Sir Walter Raleigh, and was continued under George Gordon. Each college tutor was allowed to send one or two of his pupils to the class, and in order that they be small enough for discussion, there was one for men and another for women. Beginning in the Hilary Term 1923 the minutes of the men’s class were written in Chaucerian verse, and those for 1923–24 have survived. Lewis’s reminiscences of the Discussion Class are found in The Life of George S. Gordon 1881–1942 by M. C. G[ordon] (1945), p. 77.
12 This colourful undergraduate was Thomas Sherrock Darlow. He was born on 5 December 1901 and was the son of the Rev. Thomas Herbert Darlow who published a number of theological works. He was educated at Gresham’s School in Holt and matriculated at Magdalen College in 1920, where he read Natural Science before changing to English in 1922.
13 Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) taught on the English Faculty at Oxford. His many books include three volumes of Trivia (1918, 1921, 1933).
14 Philip John Terry read Law and took his BA from University College in 1923.
15 On ‘Middle English Texts’.
16 See Nevill Coghill in the Biographical Appendix.
17 Harry Vincent Lloyd-Jones of Jesus College, who took a BA in 1923.
18 Fateh Singh of St John’s College, who took his BA in 1923.
19 This was Richard Boase Kelynack Strick of Wadham College, who took his BA in 1923.
20 On ‘Middle English Dialects’ every Monday and Tuesday at 10 o’clock.
21 The minutes of this meeting were written in Chaucerian verse by Nevill Coghill, and most of them can be found in the Preface to Lewis’s Selected Literary Essays (1969). Nevill Coghill gave this description of Lewis:
Sir Lewis was ther; a good philosópher
He hadde a noblé paper for to offer.
Well couthe he speken in the Greeké tongue;
And yet, his countenance was swythé yong.
22 Nevill Coghill’s minutes:
Daun Darlow answerde ‘What of allegory,
What meneth swevnés in Daun Spenser’s story
Why useth he swich women’s artifice
Al vigourless, effeminate, and nice
As Daun Catallus doth in al his wirche?’
‘I wold not end in the Byzantine Chirche’ (Kirk)
Quod Lewis, ‘And Catullus, I dar seyn
Hath nought to do with Spenser, to be plain.’
23 Nevill Coghill’s minutes:
Daun Darlow was there of a high corage
&nbs
p; Whan he to speken wyslye wolde beginne
There was noon auditour conde on him wynne.
Ful byg he was, of brawn and eke of bones
Ful oft he spak in high and noblé tones
Of historye: he hadde a purplé tye
And in his button-hole a dayës eye.
24 Averell Robert Martley of Hertford College, who took his BA in 1923.
25 Sir Jocelyn Ambrose Cramer Coghill, 1st Lieut., South Wales Borderers 1922–25.
26 George William Nevill Wynn of Worcester College, who was also in the Discussion Class.
27 John Edward Anderson of University College took his BA in 1925.
28 Frederick Lewis Payne of Queen’s College took his BA in 1923.
29 Robert Macdonald of Lincoln College, who took his BA in 1925.
30 This was the last thing Lewis was to record about T. S. Darlow. This may have been because he left the Discussion Class. In any event, he left Oxford fairly soon after this, without a degree, and settled in London. Sometime later he began working for the Daily Herald and at the outbreak of World War II he became a very successful war correspondent for the Daily Herald in France. He was sent on an assignment to the RAF headquarters in France, became ill, and died shortly afterwards on 10 November 1939.
31 After this Maureen was sent to stay with Lady Gonner for the rest of the time her uncle was at ‘Hillsboro’.
32 Later: I am convinced that the whole story, like that of the syphilis and the hell complex, were all equally delusions.—C. S.L. This note, judged from internal evidence, appears to have been made some years after the text on which it comments.—W.H.L.
33 ‘Forsan et haec olim meminisse invabit”—‘Perhaps even these things it will be a delight one day to remember’. Virgil, Aeneid, I, 203.
34 Lewis’s minutes pick up from Coghill’s reading of his, and begin with Gordon’s choice of another speaker:
But whan that Coghille had his tale ytold
Our Professoúr gan round about bihold
And lough and seyde ‘Unbokeled is the male!
Let see now who shal tell another tale;
And namély Sir Burns as thou art able
Telleth anon som matere profitable.’
35 This was Gilbert Talbot Burns of Christ Church, who took his BA in 1924.
36 General paralysis of the insane.
37 Earthenware hot water bottles.
38 By Jonathan Swift (1704).
39 1933. He has since become one of the chief caterers for this public.—C. S.L.
40 Robert Benedict Bourdillon (1889–1971) was Fellow and Praelector in Chemistry at University College 1913–23.
41 Robert Ranulph Marett (1866–1943) was Tutor in Philosophy at Exeter College 1891–1928, after which he became Rector of the College.
42 After Gryll, the hog in The Faerie Queene (II. xii. 86) who was unhappy at being changed back into a man.
43 Owen Barfield and Cecil Harwood had been members of the English Folk Dancing Society, and it was through this Society that they became part of a song and dance company organised by the Radford Sisters to tour the villages of Devon and Cornwall. It was while Owen Barfield was with this company in St Anthony in Roseland, Cornwall, in the summer of 1920 that he met his wife, Matilda ‘Maud’ Douie (1885–1982), a professional dancer who had worked with Gordon Craig. They were married on the 11th April 1923.
44 The biologist, William Bateson (1861–1926).
45 During this time Lewis and Mrs Moore discovered that it was possible to rent Mr Raymond’s house, ‘Hillsboro’, after all.
46 See William James Askins in the Biographical Appendix.
47 See John Alexander Smith in the Biographical Appendix.
48 Sir Michael Sadler (1861–1943) was an educational pioneer and a patron of the arts. He was Master of University College, 1923–34.
49 Alfred Cecil Ewing (1899–1973) took a First in Greats from Oxford in 1920 and a D.Phil. in 1923. He was a Lecturer in Moral Science in the University of Cambridge 1931–54 and Reader in Philosophy at Cambridge 1954–66.
50 Virgil, Aeneid III, 495. ‘You [Andromache and Helenas, survivors from the sack of Troy] have won your test [unlike me, Aeneas, who has to sail to Italy].’
51 By Robert Henryson (1593).
52 Formerly attributed to Chaucer.
53 ‘forgetting my anxieties.’
54 Averell Robert Martley of Hertford College, who took his BA in 1923, was Secretary of the Discussion Class.
55 Fredrick Wilse Bateson (1901–78) was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Oxford, and Fellow of English Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1946–69. He was founder and editor of Essays in Criticism.
56 His Aunt Lily lived in Stile Road, which runs parallel to Holyoake Road and, so, is only a very short distance away.
57 Following his examination for Honour Mods, Lewis had a holiday in Old Cleve with Mrs Moore and Maureen during March–April 1920.
58 ‘I am, til God me bettere mynde sende,
At dulcarnon, right at my wittes ende.’
(Chaucer, Troylus and Cryseyde, III, 881.)
59 ‘Sortes Virgilianae’ is the attempt to foretell the future by opening a volume of Virgil at hazard and reading the first passage lit on.
60 Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv’d (1682).
61 William Alexander Craigie (1867–1957), lexicographer and philologist, was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon 1916–25 and one of those who set the examination Lewis had just taken. The other examiners were Percy Simpson, H. F. B. Brett-Smith, and A. Mawer.
62 ‘Kirkian’ means like his old friend and tutor William T. Kirkpatrick (1848–1921). He is described in Chapter IX of Surprised by Joy.
63 ‘Courtfield Cottage’ is in 131 Osler Road, Headington.
64 By Thomas Babington Macaulay (1842).
65 Herbert Francis Brett-Smith (1884–1951) took his BA from Corpus Christi College in 1907, and was lecturer in English Literature in several of the colleges of Oxford. He was Goldsmith’s Reader in English, and editor of Thomas Love Peacock.
66 By M. E. Sandford (1888).
67 By George Meredith (1879).
68 ‘Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.’—‘I am a human being: I think nothing to do with humans irrelevant to me.’ Terence, Heauton Timorumenos, line 79.
69 School Certificates have disappeared, but they were a kind of miniature ‘Schools’ which had been introduced by the Board of Education in 1905. Every boy or girl who had reached the age of sixteen, and who had not left school at the age of fourteen, was allowed to sit for these examinations. The universites of Oxford and Cambridge had a large say in the matter of the certificates. To obtain a Certificate one was required to pass a minimum of five subjects of which English, Maths and Latin were mandatory. Upon completing the Certificate to the satisfaction of the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board one could, if one wished to enter Oxford or Cambridge, take either the Board of Education’s Higher School Certificate or Responsions—the ‘entrance examination’ administered by the two universities. Lewis was earning some money by marking English Essays from the Higher School Certificate.
70 Mr Moore.
71 Readers will discern here the germ of Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces (1956). The only thing which survives of these early attempts at writing the story is a fragment of 78 couplets. They are in the Lewis Papers, vol. VIII, pp. 163–64.