Letters of C. S. Lewis

by C. S. Lewis

  I came home with Minto, drank a cup of tea, put on my great coat, took some biscuits, smokes, a couple [of] apples, a rug, a waterproof sheet and two cushions, and returned to the fatal road. It was now twelve o’clock. The crowd of neighbours had now melted away: but one (neither vulgar nor a stranger) had had the rare good sense to leave some sandwiches and three thermos flasks. I found the brave little woman actually eating and drinking when I arrived. Hastily deciding that if I were to lie under the obligations of a man I wd assume his authority, I explained that we should be really hungry and cold later on and authoritatively put a stop to that nonsense. My next step was to provide for my calls of nature (no unimportant matter in an all night tête-àtête with a fool of an elderly woman who has had nothing to do with men since her husband had the good fortune to die several years ago) by observing that the striking of a match in that stillness wd easily be heard in the Studer’s house and that I wd tiptoe to the other end of the road to light my pipe.

  Having thus established my right to disappear into the darkness as often as I chose—she conceded it with some reluctance—I settled down. There had been some attempt at moonlight earlier, but it had clouded over and a fine rain began to fall. Mrs Wilbraham’s feminine and civilian vision of night watches had apparently not included this. She was really surprised at it. She was also surprised at its getting really cold: and most surprised of all to find that she became sleepy, for she (after the first ten minutes) had answered to my warning on that score with a scornful ‘I don’t think there’s much danger of that!’ However all these hardships gave her the opportunity of being ‘bright’ and ‘plucky’ as far as one can be in sibilant whispers.

  If I could have been quit of her society I wd have found my watch just tolerable—despite the misfortune of finding my greatcoat pockets stuffed with camphor balls (Minto is very careful about moths) which I flung out angrily on the road and then some hours later forgetting this and trying to eat one of the apples that had lain in those pockets. The taste of camphor is exactly like the smell. During the course of the night my companion showed signs of becoming rather windy and I insisted on playing with her the old guessing game called ‘Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral’. (Incidentally I thought I would find it more interesting than her conversation.) After assuring me that she was thinking of an animal, a live animal, an animal we had seen that night, she had the impudence to announce in the end that ‘it’ was the ‘voice of an owl we had heard’—which shows the working of her mind. However my story is over now, and when I have added that the crows had been ‘tuning up their unseasonable matins’ a full half hour before any other bird squeaked (a fact of natural history which I never knew before) I may dismiss Mrs-Ruddy-Wilbraham from my mind . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from Magdalen College

  29 July [1927]

  I am a little surprised at your response to the programme of being ‘boiled in mud’. Neither of us of course would choose Harrogate or any similar place for pleasure: that may be taken as a starting point to any discussion on the subject—tho’, I repeat, the unpleasantness must not be exaggerated. (Damme Sir, are we to be frightened of some retired colonels and rich old maids?) I suggested it purely and simply on medical grounds and your reply strikes me rather as if I had said to a man with toothache ‘Why not go to a dentist?’ and he had answered ‘You’re quite right—I will go out. But I won’t go to a dentist. I’ll go and get fitted for a new pair of boots.’ However, I am so pleased at your agreement on the main issue, that of going away, that I must not press the other too hard . . .

  I am just in the few days lull between my two ‘fittes’ of summer examining. I have finished reading the boy’s answers in Oxford, and next week I go to Cambridge for the pleasanter (and more profitable) business of awarding. I had rather a heavy dose of it this time, and the strain took the form of giving me neuralgia. At least my dentist, after striking probes into me, punching me in the face, and knocking my teeth with small hammers—accompanied with the blatantly impertinent question ‘Does that hurt?’ (to which the proper reply seems to be a sharp return blow at his jaw with the words ‘Yes, just like that’)—my dentist I say, assured me that there was nothing wrong with my teeth and therefore it must be neuralgia . . .

  My labours were rewarded by some good things from the candidates (who are school boys under sixteen). The definition of a Genie as ‘an oriental spirit inhabiting bottles and buttons and rings’ is a rather rare example of a correct answer which is funny. ‘A Censer is one who incenses people’ is more of the familiar type. In answer to a question from a paper on Guy Mannering ‘Would you have liked Colonel Mannering as a father? Support your answer by an account of his behaviour to Julia’, one youth sagely replied that he would. It is true that Mannering was cold, suspicious, autocratic etc., ‘but he was very rich and I think he would have made an excellent father’. That boy should be sent to the City at once: he has the single eye . . .

  My only other recent adventure was a purely literary one—that of quite accidentally picking up The Woman in White and reading it: a book of course now practically unknown to anyone under forty. I thought it extremely good of its kind, and not a bad kind. But what spacious days those were! The characters, or at least all the wicked ones, flame in jewels and the hero is so poor in one place that he actually travels second class on the railway. I have decided to model my behaviour for the future (socially I mean, not morally) on that of Count Fosco, but without the canaries and the white mice.

  Another curious thing is the elaborate descriptions of male beauty, which I hardly remember to have seen since Elizabethan poetry: or do the ‘noble brow’, the ‘silky beard’ and the ‘Manly beauty’ still flourish in fiction which I don’t happen to have read? Of course only third rate people write that kind of novel now, whereas Wilkie Collins was clearly a man of genius: and there is a good deal to be said for his point of view (expressed in the preface) that the first business of a novel is to tell a story, and that characters etc. come second . . .

  TO HIS BROTHER: from Perranporth, Cornwall

  3 September [1927]

  I returned from Cambridge and almost immediately set out with Minto, Maureen, Florence de Forest and Baron Papworth [a dog] for Perranporth (Cornwall) where I am now writing. On Sunday (it is now Friday) I set out for P’daitaheim: whether to spend my days interminably strolling in the cemetry-like walks of a hydro garden or drinking two o’clock buckets of sherry in the study, I don’t yet know: for of course it is still quite uncertain whether he can be got to move or not . . .

  The only Cornish city I have been to is Truro. The town is an ordinary little market town, much less pleasing than any in the ‘homely’ counties between Morlockheim and the West Country: in fact so true is the Co. Down element in my Cornish recipe that Truro has more than a flavour of Newtownards about it. The Cathedral is the poorest, almost, that I have ever seen . . . The main object of my visit was to get a book, having finished Martin Chuzzlewit which I brought down.

  And here let me digress for a moment to advise you v. strongly to make one more effort with Dickens and make it on Martin Chuzzlewit, if only for the sake of an account of 19th century America . . . Of course to enjoy it, or any other Dickens you must get rid of all idea of realism—as much as in approaching William Morris or the music hall. In fact I should say he is the good thing of which the grand Xmas panto. is the degeneration and abuse: broadly typical sentiment, only rarely intolerable if taken in a jolly after dinner pantomime mood, and broadly effective ‘comics’: only all done by a genius, so that they become mythological . . .

  But this is all by the way. I had assumed that as Truro was a cathedral city, it must have at least a clerical intelligentsia: and if that, a decent bookshop. If appeared to have only a Smith’s and a faded looking place that seemed half a news agents. At the door of this I stopped an elderly parson and asked him whether this and Smith were the only two booksellers. He said they were: then a few moments later came back walking on tip toes as
some parsons do, and buzzed softly in my ear (he had a beard) ‘There is an S.P.C.K. depot further down this street’. This almost adds a new character to my world: henceforth among my terms of abuse none shall rank lower than ‘he’s the sort of man who’d call an S.P.C.K. depot a bookshop’.

  I discovered however that my unpromising bookshop had a second hand quarter upstairs. This at first was depressing as it appeared to consist entirely of two sections: one labelled ‘books on Cornwall’, the other ‘Second hand rewards’. That also is a valuable new idea . . . However in the end I discovered an upper garret where there were at last some books. I had v. little money and the selection was poor. I got inter alia the poetical work of ‘Armstrong, Dyer, and Green’ . . . As for my poets, Dyer you will remember as the author of The Fleece, perhaps the best example of that curious 18th century growth, the commercial epic—cf. Also Cyder and The Sugar Cane. Armstrong wrote a similar poem in Miltonic blank verse on The Art of Preserving Health. I have read it with huge enjoyment. It is beyond all parody as the specimen of the noble art of making poetry by translating ordinary sentences into ‘Miltonic’ diction. Thus ‘some people can’t eat eggs’ is rendered,

  Some even the generous nutriment detest

  Which, in the shell, the sleeping embryo rears.

  (Where ‘rears’ I suspect is a misprint for ‘bears.’) If one eats too much fat,

  The irresoluable oil

  So gentle late and blandishing, in floods

  Of rancid bile o’erflows: what tumults hence

  What horrors rise, were nauseous to relate.130 . . .

  I enclose some photos and good wishes from all.

  TO HIS BROTHER: aboard the S.S. Patriotic, about to leave Belfast (where he had been with his father from 6 September to 5 October)

  5 October 1927

  [posted with letter of 12 December]

  Tho’ I am uncertain when my next proper letter to you will be written, I should be unpardonable if I failed to salute you on an occasion over which your spirit so emphatically presides . . . The cry of ‘Any more for the shore’ has gone round. Arthur, who saw me off and drank with me (nay! at his expence) has just gone. The ‘flip, flip’ of the boots of Belfastians on the rubber floor of the saloon deck is heard on all sides. In a moment we shall shove off. I gave the P’daytabird four solid weeks and a day: tomorrow I shall be in Oxford. Of course it proved impossible to get him away . . . So the attempt to get him boiled in mud, which I made sincerely and even importunately, was a complete failure. A usual P’daytaborough holiday took its place, with an inordinate number of P’dayta Days. It is cruellest of all when he comes home on Monday at 11.30. To be given just enough time to decant the brisk liquour of Monday morning and then to have the cup dashed from your hand.

  It was specially annoying this time because I wanted to be very busy putting into action my project of an Encyclopedia Boxoniana. I have worked through the texts down to The Locked Door and at Christmas hope to be able to begin the actual encyclopedia . . . I find the work fascinating: the consistency between the very early texts and the ones we usually read is much greater than I dared to hope for: and an odd sentence in the Locked Door or the Life of Big will fit into a narrative written in Wynyard or pre-Wynyard days in the most startling way. I suppose it is only accident, but it is hard to resist the conviction that one is dealing with a sort of reality. At least so it seems to me, alone in the little end room. How it will appear tomorrow in Magdalen Common Room or a month hence to you in How Kow is another matter. We’re off. The screw turns. I had stewed steak for lunch today and boiled mutton for supper dinner. I am going to eat some supper. Can you forget the flavour of one’s first non-P’dayta meal. (I was mistaken. The screw has stopped again.)

  TO HIS FATHER: from Magdalen College

  [29? November 1927]

  They had great fun at the Union last week. Birkenhead [F. E. Smith] came to speak. The first thing that worried him was the private business in which two gentlemen got up and discussed the library list—additions to the library of the Union being a subject which naturally comes up in private business. On this occasion the merits of Psmith Journalist by P. G. Woodhouse, That Ass Psmith by the same author, and The Wreck of the Birkenhead were hotly canvassed. The noble lord was understood to make some observations to those around him in which the word ‘schoolboys’ figured.

  Then the debate began. The first speaker produced the good old ancient Wadham story of how Smith and Simon had decided what parties they were to follow in their political careers by the toss of a coin the night before they took schools. You will hardly believe me when I tell you that Smith jumped up: ‘baseless fabrication’—‘silly, stale story’—‘hoped that even the home of lost causes had abandoned that chestnut, etc. etc.’—and allowed himself to be sidetracked and leg pulled to such an extent that he never reached his real subject at all. It seems to me impossible that a man of his experience could fall to such frivolous tactics: unless we accept the accompanying story that he was drunk at the time, or the even subtler explanation that he was not . . .

  TO HIS BROTHER: from Magdalen College

  12 December [1927]

  I enclose a fragment written when and how, you will see. I had hoped to continue it in reasonable time: but the monthly letter has proved an impossibility during the term. My evenings for the fortnight in term run thus. Mon. Play reading with undergraduates (till Midnight). Tue. Mermaid club. Wedn. Anglo-Saxon with undergraduates. Thurs.—Frid.—Sat.—Sunday. Common room till late. Mon. Play reading. Tue. Icelandic Society. Wedn. Anglo-Saxon. Thurs. Philosophical supper. Fri.—Sat.—Sunday.

  As you will see this gives at the very best only three free evenings in the even weeks, and two in the odd. And into these two everything in the way of casual entertaining, correspondence and what we used to call ‘A-h-h-h!’ has to be crammed . . .

  I have done very little reading outside my work these last months. In Oman’s Dark Ages I have come up against a thing I had almost forgotten since my school days—the boundless self assurance of the pure text book. ‘The four brothers were all worthy sons of their wicked father—destitute of natural affection, cruel, lustful, and treacherous.’ Lewis the Pious was ‘a man of blameless and virtuous habits’—tho’ every other sentence in the chapter makes it plain that he was a sh*t. ‘Charles had one lamentable failing—he was too careless of the teaching of Christianity about the relations of the sexes.’ It is so nice too, to be told without a hint of doubt who was in the right and who was in the wrong in every controversy, and exactly why every one did what he did. Yet Oman is quite right: that is the way—I suppose—to write an introduction to a subject . . . I am almost coming to the conclusion that all histories are bad. Whenever one turns from the historian to the writings of the people he deals with, there is always such a difference . . .

  By the way, what a wonderful conceit of Thomas Brown’s referring to the age of the long lived antediluvians—‘an age when living men might be antiquities’. Query: Would a living man a thousand years old give you the same feeling that an old building does? I think there is a good deal to be said for Alice Meynell’s theory that one’s idea of antiquity and the standard one measures it by, is derived entirely from one’s own life. Certainly ‘Balbec and Tadmor’ (whoever they may be) could hardly give one a more weird sense of ‘ages and ages ago’ than some early relic discovered in the drawers of the little end room often does. One has one’s own ‘dark ages’. But I daresay this is not so for everyone: it may be that you and I have a specially historical sense of our own lives. Are you often struck, when you become sufficiently intimate with other people to know something of their development, how late their lives begin so to speak? . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from Magdalen College (after spending Christmas with his father)

  25 February 1928

  I have had one letter from Warnie since I left, but it largely duplicated his last to you. I cannot help envying him the richness of his subject matter. My own life is h
ard to turn into matters for letters. You make the same complaint I know of yours: but at least you have the advantage, that you can write trifles to me because I know the people and places concerned. If you tell me you had a very jolly evening’s chat with John Greeves or went and had a slap-up dinner with excellent champagne at Uncle Hamilton’s, that is of interest because I know who John Greeves and Uncle Hamilton are. If I, on the other hand, were to tell you how I enjoyed Bircham’s brilliant and original views on Hamlet last night, or what a pleasant talk I had the other day with Nicholl Smith (statements by the way as probable as those I have put in your mouth), it would convey nothing.

  However, I see that the main thing is to go on talking: for this wheeze brings into my head the fact that I did really have a very good evening the night before last when I exercised for the first time my newly acquired right of dining at Univ.—an exercise which must be rare because it is so damned expensive. Poynton, the Fark, Carritt and Stevenson, as luck would have it, were all in that evening, and it was delightful to revisit the whimsical stateliness of that particular common room. There’s no getting away from the fact that we at Magdalen are terribly ‘ordinary’ beside it. We are just like anyone else: there, every single one of them is a character part that could be found nowhere outside their own walls.

  I wonder is there some influence abroad now-a-days that prevents the growth of rich, strongly marked personal peculiarities. Are any of our contemporaries ‘characters’ as Queen Victoria or Dizzy or Carlyle were ‘characters’? I am not asking the ordinary question whether we produce greater or smaller men. ‘To be a character’ in this sense is not the same thing as ‘to have character’. For instance, I suppose Abraham ‘had character’, but no one ever thought of calling him ‘a character’: your friend in the Rocket, on the contrary, was lacking in character, but he distinctly was ‘a character’. There seems to be no doubt that the thing is growing rarer. Or is it that you need to be at least elderly to be a character? In that case, each generation, seeing the characters all among its elders, would naturally conclude that the phenomenon was passing away. Or perhaps it goes further yet. Perhaps the secret of being a character in the very highest degree is to be dead, for then the anecdotes cluster and improve unchecked.