Letters of C. S. Lewis

by C. S. Lewis

  [On 16 July the examination results of the English School were posted and the next day Jack sent a wire to his father saying ‘A First in English’. The next few weeks he made a little money correcting English essays for School Certificates. This was followed by a visit to his father in Belfast during 22 September—10 October.]

  FROM HIS DIARY: at ‘Hillsboro’

  11 October 1923

  I crossed last night from Ireland after nearly three weeks at ‘Little Lea’. In two respects my compulsory holiday was a great improvement on most that I have had, for I got on very well with my father and held the usual mental inertia at arm’s length by working steadily at my Italian . . . In revenge, I was never really well, suffering from headaches and indigestion. In the loneliness of that house I became hypochondriacal and for a time imagined that I was getting appendicitis or something worse. This worried me terribly, not only chiefly for its own sake but because I didn’t see how I could manage to get back here in time. I had one or two dreadful nights of panic.

  I did many long walks hoping to make myself sleep. I was twice up the Cave Hill where I intend to go often in future. The view down the chasm between Napoleon’s Head and the main body of the cliffs is almost the best I have seen. I had one other delightful walk over the Castlereagh hills where I got the real joy—the only time for many years that I have had it in Ireland.

  This morning I was called at 7 . . . On getting out at Oxford I found myself in a crisp wintry air and as I bussed up to Headington I felt the horrors of the last week or so going off like a dream . . . So home, full of happiness, and early to bed, both being very tired and sleepy.

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  22 November [1923]

  I have a certain amount of news to give you, all of an inconclusive character. To get the least agreeable item over first, I am afraid old Poynton has proved a broken reed in the matter of pupils: I believe, because he put off the job too long. He is an oldish man and habitually overworked so I do not judge him hardly, tho’ I was rather disappointed . . .

  I have got quite recently one pupil, tho’ not through Poynton. He is a youth of eighteen who is trying to get a Classical scholarship. I am to coach him in essay writing and English for the essay paper and general papers which these exams always include. I fear we shall win no laurels by him. I questioned him about his classical reading: our dialogue was something like this:

  SELF: ‘Well Sandeman, what Greek authors have you been reading?’

  SAND (cheerfully): ‘I never can remember. Try a few names and I’ll see if I get on to any.’

  SELF (a little damped): ‘Have you read any Euripides?’

  SAND: ‘No.’

  SELF: ‘Any Sophocles?’

  SAND: ‘Oh yes.’

  SELF: ‘What plays of his have you read?’

  SAND (after a pause): ‘Well—the Alcestis.’

  SELF (apologetically): ‘But isn’t that by Euripides?’

  SAND (with the genial surprise of a man who finds £1 where he thought there was a 10/-note): ‘Really. Is it now? By Jove, then I have read some Euripides!’

  My next is even better. I asked him if he were familiar with the distinction that critics draw between a natural and a literary epic. He was not: you may not be either, but it makes no difference. I then explained to him that when a lot of old war songs about some mythological hero were handed down by aural tradition and gradually welded into one whole by successive minstrels (as in the case of ‘Homer’) the result was called a natural epic: but when an individual poet sat down with pen in hand to write Paradise Lost, that was a literary epic. He listened with great attention and then observed ‘I suppose Grey’s Elegy is the natural kind.’

  What idiots can have sent him in for a Scholarship? However, he is one of the cheeriest, healthiest, and most perfectly contented creatures I have ever met with . . .

  FROM HIS DIARY: at ‘Hillsboro’ (part of a summary of events from 22 October to the end of December 1923)

  [December 1923]

  It was shortly after this that I read Flecker’s Hassan. It made a great impression on me and I believe it is really a great work. Carritt (whom I met at the Martlets shortly after) thinks that its dwelling on physical pain puts it as much outside literature as is pornography in another: that it works on the nervous system rather than the imagination. I find this hard to answer: but I am almost sure he is wrong . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  4 February [1924]

  You will explain your long silence as an answer to mine—at least I hope there is no more serious reason for it than that and the desultoriness in correspondence which you claim as one of the penalties, if it is not rather one of the privileges, of the years beyond fifty. I, like the judge, have other reasons.

  As soon as I had met people here I heard of a new will-o-the-wisp, a poor Fellowship at St John’s now vacant and calling out for candidates. The warning that preference would be given to ‘founder’s kin and persons born in the County of Stafford’ did not seem sufficient to deter me from trying my luck. At first I thought of sending them my old dissertation which I had written for Magdalen: but no man cares greatly for his own things when once the bloom is off them, and I decided in the end to write a new one. I was in pretty good form, but I was pressed for time: and of course there is a waste of time when one flings oneself back into work which one has abandoned for a few months—the old harness will not at once sit easily.

  It was only after I had sent this in that I discovered how small my chances must necessarily be. I had supposed—and who would not—that the preference for natives of Staffordshire etc., meant only a preference, other things being equal. I find however that if any candidate appears who claims such preference and who has in addition either a Second in Greats or a First in any other final school, he must be elected. I do not of course know in fact whether there is such a candidate in the field, for Stafford is a large county, and we may be sure that the founder was some philoprogenitive old fellow who, like Charles II in Dryden, ‘scattered his Maker’s image through the land’. In short we may expect a defeat with almost complete certainty . . .

  This then occupied my first weeks. And I had hardly looked about me when a most irritating thing happened. I got chicken pox and am only now out of quarantine. I have of course been quite well enough to write for some time but I don’t know whether you have had this complaint and thought it better not to chance infecting you: I am told that the older you are the less likely it will be to ‘take’, but the worse if it does. I had a pretty high temperature at the beginning and some very uncomfortable nights of intense perspiration, but it soon passed off. The danger of cutting any of the spots on my face of course made shaving impossible till this very day and I had a fine beard. I have left the moustache which would excite ‘poor Warren’s’ envy, but I shall probably get tired of it in a few weeks. It is very stiff, and all the hairs grow in different directions and it is thicker on one side than on the other . . .

  You know of course that my Scholarship is at an end. It was nominally a scholarship of £80 a year. What I actually got out of it was about £11 a term. Sometimes it would be a little more or a little less, but it generally averaged out to £33 a year . . . I had hopes of being able to make up that in other ways—pupils and the like—but they have not been realized and I am afraid I must ask for help. I do not like increasing your charges—but as Kirk said, ‘All this has been said before’.

  I have lost Sandeman. He got good marks in his English in the Scholarship he tried for near Christmas and his mother and his other coach said the nicest things of me, when dash it if the fool doesn’t go and break his leg . . .

  FROM HIS DIARY: at ‘Hillsboro’

  29 February 1924

  Shortly after tea, which was very late, I went up to dress, preparatory to dining with Carritt . . . At dinner Carritt put into my hand the notice of the vacancy at Trinity—an official Fellowship in Philosophy, worth £50
0 a year . . . I walked home, looking at the details of the Trinity Fellowship as I passed the lamps. For some reason the possibility of getting it and all that would follow if I did came before my mind with unusual vividness. I saw it would involve living in [Trinity College] and what a break up of our present life that would mean, and also how the extra money would lift terrible loads off us all. I saw that it would mean pretty full work and that I might become submerged and poetry crushed out. With deep conviction I suddenly had an image of myself, God knows when or where, in the future looking back on these years since the war as the happiest or the only really valuable part of my life, in spite of all their disappointments and fears. Yet the longing for an income that wd free us from anxiety was stronger than all these feelings. I was in a strange state of excitement—and all on the mere hundredth chance of getting it . . .

  17–25 March 1924

  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.

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  27 April [1924]

  I have been exercised in the slightly unpleasant duty of getting all things in readiness for my application for the Trinity Fellowship—getting testimonials and talking to one or two people who will write unofficially for me. I also went to a dinner where I met the present philosophy man from Trinity whose successor I should become if I were elected. This was done no doubt to give me an opportunity of impressing him with my unique social and intellectual qualifications.

  Unhappily the whole conversation was dominated by a bore who wanted to talk (and did talk) about the state of India, and I suppose I hardly exchanged ten words with the Trinity man. However, it may have been just as well. A man who knows he is on show can hardly be at his best: and I am told that this Trinity man is a very shy, retiring, moody old man and difficult to talk to. In the meantime I send in my application and wait—reminding myself that the best cure for disappointment is the moderation of hopes . . .

  I can’t remember if I told you about my last visit to Aunt Lily. I went out by bus. The conductor did not at once understand where I wanted to stop, and a white bearded old farmer chipped in, ‘You know, Jarge—where that old gal lives along of all them cats’. I explained that this was exactly where I did want to go. My informant remarked, ‘You’ll ’ave a job to get in when you do get there’. He was as good as his word, for when I reached the cottage I found the fence supporting a wire structure about nine feet high which was continued even over the gate. She does it to prevent her cats escaping into the main road. On this occasion she presented me with a print of an old picture: ‘St Francis preaching before Pope Honorius’ because, she said, the Pope was a portrait of me. It is not one of her fads, for I do really see the likeness myself. I suppose nature has only a limited number of faces to use after all . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  [11 May 1924]

  I have a bit of good—or fairly good—news. Some nights ago I was summoned to call on the new Master after dinner, there to meet Farquharson and my old philosophy tutor Carritt, and when I arrived the following ‘transpired’. Carritt it appears is going for a year to teach philosophy in the University of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and it was suggested that I should undertake his tutorial duties here during his absence and also give lectures. As soon as I heard the proposal I said that I was already a candidate for the vacancy at Trinity. To this they replied that they had no intention of asking me to sacrifice the possibility of a permanent job: it would be understood that if I were elected to Trinity I should be released from my engagement to Univ.—unless indeed Trinity were willing to let me do both tasks and I felt able to do so. This being settled, I of course accepted their offer.

  I was a little disappointed that they only offered me £200—specially as I anticipate that when living in and dining at high table I shall hardly be able to economise as much as I do now. I am afraid that I shall still need some assistance from you. Of course Carritt’s job must be worth more than that: I imagine he is keeping his fellowship and I am getting his tutorial emoluments and of these, Farquharson, who is ‘taking a few of the senior men’ is getting a share.

  Being under Farquharson’s superintendance will be in some ways troublesome: and indeed I have already had a specimen of his fussy futility. I sent in to the Master as the title of my proposed lectures for the next term ‘The Moral Good—its place among the values’. Within an hour I had a notice brought out to my digs by special messenger ‘Farquharson suggests “position” instead of “place”. Please let me know your views at once.’ There’s glory for you, as Humpty Dumpty said! Well, it is poorly paid and temporary and under the shadow of Farquharson, but it is better to be inside than out, and is always a beginning. The experience will be valuable.

  You may imagine that I am now pretty busy. I must try to get through most of the Greats reading before next term and do it more thoroughly than ever I did when I was a candidate myself. I must be ready for all comers and hunt out the bye ways which I considered it safe to neglect in my own case. There can be no throwing dust in the examiner’s eyes this time. Preparing my lectures will however be the biggest job of all. I am to lecture twice a week next term, which comes to fourteen hours’ talking in all. You who have been so much on your legs, can tell better than I what a lot of talking a man can do in one hour. I rather fancy I could really tell the world everything I think about everything in five hours—and, Lord, you hear curates grumbling because they have to preach for twenty minutes a week. However, as Keats remarks somewhere, ‘Demme, who’s afraid?’: we must learn that slow deliberate method dear to the true lecturer. As Farquharson remarked (without the ghost of a smile) ‘Of course your first lecture would be introductory’. I felt like replying, ‘Of course: that’s why I always skipped your first lectures!’

  As a perspective candidate I dined at Trinity the other night . . . I was very favourably impressed with the Trinity people. In the smoking room after dinner we were just of a number for conversation to be general and I had one of the best evenings imaginable, the ‘crack’ ranging over all things . . . So if Trinity don’t give me a Fellowship, at least they gave me a very good time . . .

  FROM HIS DIARY: at ‘Hillsboro’

  15 June 1924

  After supper I bussed in to Exeter and went to Coghill’s rooms where, after a short wait, I was joined by Coghill and Morrah.109 The latter is a Fellow of All Souls . . . He told us a good story of how H. G. Wells had dined at All Souls and said that Oxford wasted too much time over Latin and Greek. Why should these two literatures have it all to themselves? Now Russian and Persian literature were far superior to the classics. Someone (I forget the name) asked a few questions. It soon became apparent that Wells knew neither Greek, Latin, Persian, nor Russian. ‘I think’, said someone, ‘I am the only person present here tonight who knows these four languages: and I can assure you, Mr Wells, that you are mistaken: neither Russian nor Persian literature are as great as the literatures of Greece or Rome’ . . .

  3 July 1924

  Today I went to Colchester in order to travel back in W[arnie]’s sidecar . . . A brisk shower of rain came down as I reached Colchester where I was met at the station by W. and driven to the Red Lion where I had tea. This is one of the oldest hotels in England, curiously and beautifully beamed. W. tells me that the American who insulted Kipling a
t the Rhodes dinner in Oxford has made a great name for himself (of a sort) in the army. W. had just been reading Puck of Pook’s Hill for the first time: he praised it highly and I agreed with him.

  While we were sitting under the roof of a kind of courtyard after tea waiting for the rain to stop, a Major came up, to whom W. introduced me, telling me afterwards that he was a very well preserved specimen of the real old type of army bore. When it cleared a little we walked out to see the town which is a very pleasant sprawling old world place, not unlike Guildford. The Roman castle is very fine in a kind quite new to me, as also the remains of the old gate of Camolodunum. There is also a pleasant old house (now an office but it ought to be a pub) bullet marked from the civil wars. After all this we motored up out of the town to a higher, windy land, full of camps. W.’s camp consists of a small old country house (‘a Jorrocks house’ he called it) and its park, now filled with huts. The C.O. lives in the Jorrocks house.

  I was taken to the Mess (Lord, how strange to be in such a place again!) and of course given a drink. The ‘Orficers’ were really very nice to me. It was odd to me to see a mess full of people in mufti. We then motored back to town to a civilian club of which W. is a member, where he had provided a royal feast of the sort we both liked: no nonsense about soup and pudding, but a sole each, cutlets with green peas, a large portion of strawberries and cream, and a tankard of the local beer which is very good. So we gorged like Roman Emperors in a room to ourselves and had good talk . . .