by C. S. Lewis
Next day [23 April] we struck south across the vale of Pewsey. We expected to be bored in this low ground which divides the Berkshire Downs from Salisbury Plain: but it turned out a pleasant morning’s tramp through roads with very fine beech trees and a tangle of footpaths. Even if it had been dull, who would not make sacrifices to pass through a place called Cuckold’s Green. (We passed Shapley Bottom two days before.) I myself was for tossing a pot of beer at Cuckold’s Green, which we might have done by going two hundred yards out of our course, but the other two being both married, ruled that this was no place to rest a moment longer than we need. So did literary associations render possible a joke that the illiterate would hardly venture on. (In passing, if one had lived in the 17th century, what a horrible fate it would have been to live at Cuckold’s Green. ‘Your servant sir. Your wife tells me that you are carrying her to the country in a few days. Pray sir where do you live?’ ‘Cuckold’s Green.’ By the age of forty one wd be quite definitely tired of the joke.)
We lunched this side of the climb on to the Plain, and crawled up on to that old favourite afterwards. It pleased me as much as ever: more than all, after being given tea by a postmistress, with boiled eggs and bread and jam at lib., for which she wanted to take only 6d. Oddly enough, up there in the chalk of the plain, that village was almost completely under water. Our evening walk, up and down mile and mile of unfenced chalk road with smooth grey grass all round and sheep and young lambs (so numerous that in places they were deafening), and a mild setting sun in our faces, was heavenly.
But what no one can describe is the delight of coming (as we came—) to a sudden drop and looking down into a rich wooded valley where you see the roofs of a place where you’re going to have supper and bed: specially if the sunset lies on the ridge beyond the valley. There is so much mixed in it: the mere physical anticipations as of a horse nearing its stable, the sense of accomplishment and the feeling of ‘one more town’, one further away into the country you don’t know, and the old never hackneyed romance of travelling (not of ‘travel’ wh. is what you are doing and wh. no doubt has its own different pains and pleasures). It always seems to sum up the whole day that is behind you—give it a sort of climax and then stow it away with the faintly melancholy (but not unpleasant) feeling of things going past. This town I am gassing about was Warminster . . .
Next day [24 April] we walked all morning through the estates of the Marquis of Bath, in a very old and fine forest on a hillside. About a mile and a half below us on the hillside we saw the house—a rather tiresome place on the lines of Blenheim, with three lakes—and we emerged at one o’clock into a village just outside one of the park gates. The atmosphere here is feudal, for the hostess of our Mittagessen pub would talk about nothing but His Lordship, who apparently lives here all the year round and knows everyone in the village. We asked how old he was. ‘O, we don’t think ’im old’, she replied, which stumped me. The rest of that day was so intensively complex in route and so varied in scenery (also we were so embroiled in conversation) that I give no account of it . . . Next day we all returned home by train . . .
And now for Lamb’s final division of a letter—‘puns’. I think I have only two. (1). The story of a man who was up with me, and who was the only genuine maker of malapropisms I ever met: but this one I never heard till the other day. It appears that while having tea with the ‘dear Master of University’ he conducted a long conversation with the ladies, chiefly re places to stay for one’s holidays, under the impression that the word ‘salacious’ meant ‘salubrious’. You can imagine the result. But what you can’t imagine is that when the Mugger himself, whose brow had been steadily darkening for some minutes (during which he had heard his daughters told that they wouldn’t like Devonshire very much because it wasn’t very salacious) finally decided to cut it short and broke in with ‘Well Mr Robson-Scott, how do you like Oxford?’ Robson-Scott turned to him with imperturbable good humour and said ‘Well to tell you the truth sir, it isn’t so salacious as I had hoped.’129
This fellow Robson indulged also—as I well remember—in a kind of complicated misfire of meaning: rather like a rarefied or quintessential p’daitaism. Two I can vouch for. When arriving with me late somewhere he observed panting, ‘We might have known that it wd take us longer than it did.’ Another time, in a debate, he said, ‘I quite agree with Mr So-and-So’s point as far as it goes but it goes much too far.’ You will see how easily this sort of thing wd pass for sense in the heat of the moment.
(2). I don’t know if this can rank as a pun, but I’ll put it down. When S. P. B. Mais (whose Diary of a Schoolmaster we have both read) got a 3rd in English here, the examiners told him they were very sorry, but added by way of consolation that he ‘was the very best Third they had ever examined’. On which Raleigh remarked ‘It is bad enough for a man to get a Third: but to be pointed out as the most brilliant Third of your year is damnable.’
TO HIS FATHER: from Magdalen College
[28 May 1927]
Your wire, which arrived this morning, contributed more to my grandeur than to my peace of mind. It contributed to my grandeur because it happened to be the third communication of an urgent nature which I had received during that hour, and the pupil who was with me, seeing me inundated with these messages and telegrams, must doubtless have supposed that I was the hub of some mighty academical, or even national intrigue. I am sorry you were bothered. I had not thought my silence had been long enough to give you serious anxiety, though it was longer than I wished. If I had written before I could only have given you a line, for the summer term is always the busiest and my days are very full . . .
Now for a more important matter. W and I both agreed that heaven and earth must be moved to get you out of Ireland this summer—preferably to some place where rheumatics are cured. The Colonel’s parting instructions were given with characteristic emphasis ‘Take him to Droitwich and just get him boiled in mud or whatever it is they do to people there.’ And I agreed, and promised to do my best. I don’t insist on the boiling and the mud: but I do frankly think that it would be absurd for a man who has otherwise a very tolerable constitution to sit down with ‘close lipped patience, sister of despair’ under rheumatism while all the natural cures (muds, waters etc.) and all the modern electrical cures remain untried. Confess that the man who could be induced to wearing zinc in his boots and drinking (what was it you were advised to drink—an onion soaked in gin, or port or mustard?) but who could not be induced to try what has cured hundreds, is in an indefensible position.
I therefore propose that part or all of my annual holiday should be spent in some such places as I have suggested with perhaps a few days here in Oxford—as our jam after our powder. I know there are difficulties. What have you ever done in which there was not? A man of your age and in your position cannot really be the slave of business engagements. I know too that the thought of an hotel in a ‘spa’ does not fill you with rapture: but even a troglodyte can’t find the presence of strangers as painful as sciatica. And after all, once the plunge is made, would there not be a sort of holiday spirit that would descend on us in such a place and make us no unpleased spectators of the ‘stir’. The change of diet alone, and of hours and of way of life is I think a pick-me-up. I know I have always found it so. Monotony is no better for the body than for the mind. Now the first essential of this scheme is to concert our movements. August would be impossible for me. That leaves September and the early part of October. Whether you have time or inclination to write me a long letter or not, please let me have a line soon giving me at least the outline of a scheme possible for you. I have really set my heart on the plan and very earnestly hope that an indulgence of my wishes and a reasonable care for yourself will combine to persuade you to the effort (it cannot really be a very great one) of making arrangements and removing obstacles. If you will fix a time for getting away I will start finding out details at once (I wish W. were here, he’d do it far better and serve you up five alterna
tive operation orders worked out to a half minute at every station, while you waited. But alas—!)
Yes. There is no good balking the fact that this China journey is a bad business, a piece of rotten luck. I confess that when he sailed I was horribly uneasy. By this time (if I can judge at all from the papers) the chance of a war in China is greatly lessened and I am more cheerful. If the trouble clears up I don’t see why he might not be home again in eighteen months or so . . .
His letters are of the greatest interest and very good. How the travels of anyone we know suddenly light up the waste places of the Atlas. I suppose the Red Sea coast is described in hundreds of books: but we had to wait till Warnie went East before we ever heard about it. (I always imagined it flat and sandy myself.)
There is no need to bother about my health, and, even when busiest, I usually get my daily walk. I work as a rule from 9 till 1, from 5 till 7.15 (when we dine) and then after dinner till about 11 or 12. This you see gives me time for a good long tramp every afternoon. Nightmares I am afraid are hereditary in more senses than the one you meant. The thing, or what is stands [for] is in the blood of not one family but of the creature called Man . . .
TO HIS BROTHER (now in China): from ‘Hillsboro’
9 July 1927
The Term has now been over some weeks, for which I am not sorry. It produced one public event of good omen—the carrying in Congregation of a Statute limiting the number of wimmen at Oxford. The appalling danger of our degenerating into a woman’s university (nay worse still, into the women’s university, in contradistinction to Cambridge, the men’s university) has thus been staved off. There was fierce opposition of course, our female antagonists being much more expert than we in the practice of ‘whipping’ in the parliamentary sense.
Since the victory the papers have been full of comment from such people as Sybil Thorndike, Lady Astor, Daisy Devoteau, Fanny Adams and other such notable educational authorities. They mostly deplore (especially in the Daily Mirror and the Little Ha’penny Sketch) one more instance of the unprogressiveness of those ‘aged Professors’. The word ‘academic’ is also worked hard: tho’ how the politics of an academy could, or why they should, cease to be ‘academic’, ‘might admit of a wide conjecture’.
But the question of the age of the anti-feminists is an interesting one: and the voting (we have no secret franchise) revealed very consolatory facts. First came the very old guard, the octogenarians and the centurions, the full fed patriarchs of Corpus, the last survivors of the days when ‘women’s rights’ were still new fangled crankery. They were against the women. Then came the very-nearly-as-old who date from the palmy days of J. S. Mill, when feminism was the new, exciting, enlightened thing: people representing, as someone said, ‘the progressiveness of the “eighties”.’ They voted for the women. Then came the young and the post-war (I need not say I trust that I did my duty) who voted solid against. The arrangement is quite natural when you think it out. The first belong to the age of innocence when women had not yet been noticed: the second, to the age when they had been noticed but not yet found out: the third to us. Ignorance, romance, realism . . .
I have just read Smollet’s Roderick Random which, as you probably know, is our chief literary document for the life of the navy in the 18th century . . . By the way, can you suggest why it is that when you read Boswell, Walpole’s letters, or Fanny Burney’s diary you find the 18th century a very delightful period, differing from ours chiefly by a greater formality and ‘elegance’ of manners, whereas when you turn to the novel (including Evelina), you suddenly step into a world full of full-blooded, bawdy, brutal, strident, pull-away-the-chair barbarity? The sea captain in Evelina who supplies the comic element does so by playing a series of tricks on an elderly French lady, whom he addresses as ‘Madam Frog’, throws into ditches, and trips up in the mud. What is the common denominator between this and Johnson’s circle? And what is true? Perhaps both are and one sees what the Doctor meant when he said that in a jail the society was commonly better than at sea.
But I mustn’t spend too long on books for I have the ludicrous adventure of my own to tell. Unfortunately it needs a good deal of introduction to render it intelligible, but I think it is worth it. Mme Studer is the widow of M. Studer who died recently under distressing circumstances. She had been temporarily insane once during his lifetime: and tho’ there was no serious fear of a relapse, her state of mind after his death, together with some traces of hysteria and more depression than even the death of a husband seemed to justify, led most of her friends to keep an eye on her. Minto [Mrs Moore] went to see her pretty regularly. So did (the heroine of my story) a Mrs Wilbraham. She is what is called ‘a brave little woman’ (tho’ it is not known what dangers she ever had to encounter) and is never idle. She brings up her daughter in the light of lectures on child psychology delivered by professors whose own children never get born at all or are notable puppies. She is a spiritualist: a psychoanalyst, but does not believe in the theories of Freud because they are so horrid: she weighs the babies of poor women: her business in fact is universal benevolence. ‘If only one feels that one can be of some use in the world . . .’ as she often says.
Well, the other night I was just settling down to translate a chapter of the Edda, when suddenly Minto called me out of the dining room and said ‘Mrs Wilbraham is here. She says Mrs Studer has twice tried to commit suicide today. She’s got a taxi here and wants me to go and see the doctor at the Warneford [Asylum]. We shall have to get a nurse for Mrs Studer.’ I said I’d come along, because Minto has been rather poorly and I didn’t know what she might be let in for. So Mrs W., Minto and I drove off to the Warneford. I remained in the taxi while the two ladies went in to see the Doctor. It was about half past nine, dusk and raining. At an unlighted window just opposite stood a very pale man with a long beard who fixed his eyes on the taxi with insane steadiness for half an hour without ever blinking or moving as far as I could see: to complete the picture (you’ll hardly believe it) a large black cat sat on the window sill beneath him. (I always imagined they kept the patients in back rooms or something, or at any rate had bars on the window.) I liked this so little that in desperation I tried to start a conversation with Griffin the taximan (also your garager when you are at Headington). ‘This is an unpleasant place, Griffin’, said I. He replied promptly ‘You know sir you can’t put her in without a doctor and a magistrate.’ I then realized that he thought we were there for the purpose of ‘putting in’ either Minto or Mrs W. In my dismay, not quite decided what I meant, I blurted out ‘Oh I hope that won’t be necessary’ and when he replied ‘Well it was the last time I got one put in ’ere’ I realized that I had hardly improved matters.
The others emerged at last with a Nurse Jones and we started off for the Studer’s. But now the question was what to do? Madame would certainly refuse to have a strange young woman thrust upon her for the night for no apparent reason: as her husband was dead and her relatives abroad, no one had any authority over her. And even if we wished, no doctor would certify her as insane on the evidence of a child—the only person who ever claimed to have seen the attempt at suicide. Mrs Wilbraham said it was all perfectly simple. She would stay hidden in Mme Studer’s garden all night. Nurse would be put up in the bungalow of a stranger opposite Madame’s house. She must herself stay in the garden. It was no good arguing. It was her duty. If only her nephew was here! If only she could have a man with her, she confessed, she would feel less nervous about it. I began to wish I’d stayed at home: but in the end of course I had to offer.
No one raised the question as to why the Nurse had been prevented from going to bed at the Warneford in order to be carried half a mile in a taxi and immediately put to bed in another house totally unconnected with the scene of action, where she could not possibly be of the slightest use. The girl herself, who was possibly in some doubt as to who the supposed lunatic might be, remained in a stupefied silence.
I now suggested as a last line of defence t
hat nothing wd be more likely to upset Mme Studer than to find dim figures walking about her garden all night: to which Mrs W. replied brightly that we must keep out of sight and go very quietly. ‘We could put our stockings on outside our boots you know.’ At that moment (we were all whispering just outside a house further down in the same street as Madame’s, and it was now about eleven o’clock) a window opened overhead and someone asked me rather curtly whether we wanted anything, and if not, would we kindly go away. This restored me to some of the sanity I was rapidly losing, and I determined that whatever else happened, four o’clock should not find me ‘with my stockings over my boots’ explaining to the police that I was (v. naturally) spending the night in some one else’s garden for fear the owner might commit suicide.
I therefore ruled that we must keep our watch in the road, where, if we sat down, we wd be hidden from the window by the paling (and, I added mentally, wd be open to arrest for vagabondage, not for burglary). Several neighbours had now turned up (all women, and nearly all vulgar) to revel in excitement and Mrs W. (while insisting on the absolute necessity of letting no one know—‘it would be dreadful if it got about poor thing’) gave each newcomer, including the total strangers, a full account of the situation.
