All My Road Before Me

by C. S. Lewis

  Walked home to lunch . . . Back again to Magdalen at 3 to write a Latin Prose. This afternoon one courageous candidate set the precedent of lighting a cigarette and we all followed. I sit beneath the portrait of Lord Selbourne and wonder what he thinks of it.

  Home by bus to find D very busy mending clothes for Moppie and teaching her how to pack. I sat and wrote ‘M. Blake’ on tapes with marking ink, as Moppie has decided to use Moira Blake (my invention) as a professional name . . . I wrote out some notes for Maureen as an introduction to the Aeneid—a few picturesque details about Vergil’s life and an explanation of what an epic is. Late to bed at quarter to one.

  Thursday 28 September: In to Magdalen as usual after breakfast—a bright, autumnal morning. We did a paper on Ancient History and Political Philosophy with which I was fairly satisfied. I answered at great length a question as to whether the Greeks recognised the difference between East and West: also one on the mixture of obligation and violence in sovereignty.

  I walked home rather late to find that the others had already lunched and Moppie was on the point of departure. She went off firmly but D tells me that she had cried at saying good bye to her before I came back.

  I hastened over my lunch so as to be able to wash up before I went and was just starting to do so when D asked me to get out some old rolls of carpet which Miss Featherstone wanted and for which she might call any day . . . I finally unearthed them with some difficulty from the cupboard beneath the stairs, hurriedly completed my washing up and bussed back to Magdalen.

  Here we did Philosophical Unseens—a piece of Plato, one of Aristotle, and one of Tertullian. I could make very little of the latter and had to leave it unfinished . . .

  I bussed home to find D tired and in rather poor form. As soon as I had written my diary for the previous day I laid supper. Without disrespect to Moppie it is delightful to be by ourselves again, almost for the first time this summer which seems, as I look back, to be time lost, full of vanity and vexation of spirit. We were finished and washed up by half past eight.

  In the evening at D’s request I read to her my diary for June from the beginning of this volume. We were early to bed.

  Friday 29 September: Walked into Magdalen after breakfast. Meeting some of my rivals in the cloister, I discovered that it was Greek prose this morning and decided that I would do myself no good by going in and spoiling paper. I therefore came away to the Union.

  I now decided to act as though I had not got the fellowship and make such beginnings as I could for the English School by making up Milton, whom I shall take for my special subject. After looking through some old papers—which seemed pretty easy—I took out Mark Pattison’s Milton and the second volume of Masson’s edition, which looks possibly out of date, but contains a chronological table of the early works . . .

  In the afternoon I returned to do French Unseens. The first was a criticism by Rostand on Borrier ‘Fille de Roland’. This is the first prose of Rostand I have seen, and it impressed me very favourably. The second was a passage in Alexandrines by Victor Hugo about the boyhood of Palestrina (who was Palestrina?) rather influenced by the Prelude and quite good. Both contained several words I did not know but I made hardly guesses and, from the purely literary point of view, I was rather pleased with my rendering of the Rostand.

  I came out soon after tea and bussed home. Supper early. Before lunch I had finished an analysis of the Aeneid up to the point where we begin, for Maureen.

  I now applied myself to ‘Dymer’ and worked hard. I began to feel with Rasselas that ‘it is impossible to be a poet’: not so much a dissatisfaction with my own powers in particular as a conviction in general that good poetry is beyond the reach of human endeavour altogether. I know that it has been written but that doesn’t alter the feeling somehow. Sometimes I fancy that the English language has completed its cycle.

  After Maureen had gone to bed I read to D my diary for July. She was less tired tonight . . .

  Saturday 30 September: I forgot to record in its place a singularly beautiful dream which I had yesterday morning. I seemed to be reading an Irish fairy tale, but passed gradually from the position of reader to that of actor. I and another—who was at first labelled Warnie but became a nonentity—were visiting a brother and sister: their house looked rather like Leeborough, but I understood that it was a house in faery and that our hosts were Danaan people. I was floating to and fro in the air in and out through the branches of a tree with very feathery leaves which I kept shredding off and throwing at the girl who lay on her back in the long grass. She was very fair and dressed in blue I think—or possibly yellow. The whole thing was extraordinarily luminous and airy and a delight to remember.

  This morning, as there was only Greek and Latin verse to do, I did not go in to Magdalen. After breakfast I washed up and did the dining room. I then went to my room and started to work again on the VIth Canto of ‘Dymer’. I got on splendidly—the first good work I have done since a long time . . .

  After supper I worked on ‘Dymer’, bringing it to the end of the storm. I was so transported with what I considered my success that I became insolent and said to myself that it was the voice of a god.

  After Maureen had gone up I continued reading my diary to D up to date. Then read some Pattison and late to bed.

  I forgot to mention an absurd episode during lunch. Maureen had started saying she didn’t mind which of two alternative sweets she had: and D, who is always worried by these indecisions, had begun to beg her to make up her mind in rather a weary voice. Thus developed one of those little mild wrangles about nothing which a wise man accepts as in the nature of things. I, however, being in a sublime mood, and unprepared for jams, allowed a silent irritation to rise and sought relief in jabbing violently at a piece of pastry. As a result I covered myself in a fine shower of custard and juice: my melodramatic gesture was thus deservedly exposed and everyone roared with laughter.

  Sunday 1 October: . . . After washing up I went to sit by an open window and work on ‘Dymer’. What I wrote was not as good as yesterday but I thought that resulted from the difference of subject and since there must be ups and downs in a narrative poem, I was not dissatisfied . . . D was pretty busy all day with sewing, but in pretty good form . . .

  Monday 2 October: . . . I . . . looked into a book on Mozart and read the story of the Magic Flute which I found very suggestive. The opposition of Sarastro and the Queen and the meeting ground in the girl makes a good myth—as already used by Lowes Dickinson, but he left most of his opportunities untouched.88 I thought curiously of how this might be used for a big poem some day. I believe a modern poem about Ultimate must not be, like Paradise Lost, about good and evil but must exhibit what Hegel calls dialectic: and a poem on Sarastro gives the opportunity for this . . .

  Smudge came for lunch and afterwards, till four o’clock, I did Unseens with her. Miss Featherstone came but did not stay for tea. Ivy, tho’ unasked, is staying till tomorrow—an arrangement which D and I—hungry for peace and quiet after all these months—do not much care for . . .

  When the others were in bed we had a long talk together, D and I, about Moppie. Baker’s letter in wh. he asked me ‘for the nicest motives and in the strictest confidence’ for Moppie’s own account of her day in London, together with the fact that she had spent an unaccountable lot of money, suggested that she told us at least a silent lie . . .

  Tuesday 3 October: Worked all morning in the drawing room at Milton making notes on the earlier poems and writing down quotations to remember . . .

  D was in very poor form in the afternoon. During my absence she had made an unwilling third to a quarrel between Ivy (who went today) and Dorothy who came back this morning. The details are hardly worth recording but it seems to have been a silly business. After tea I went repeatedly over some Virgil which Maureen is to prepare for tomorrow: then, alone, I wrote out a vocabulary containing almost every word in it and a few explanatory notes. This took me till supper time . . .
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  Wednesday 4 October: To my room immediately after breakfast and continued my notes on Milton. Coming as far as Il Penseroso, I got up the Anatomy of Melancholy89 from the dining room to look at the prefatory poem. I was snared in Burton and wasted some time reading his passage about scholars: but finally recovered myself and finished L’Allegro and Il Penseroso—greatly struck by the nonsensical discussions in Masson, trying to locate all the scenery. Critics are past praying for. After lunch I walked to the Union to get out some book which would give me a historical background for the times.

  I looked into Clarendon’s History of the Great Rebellion90—a most attractive work which I hope I shall some day find time to read. I took out the 3rd volume of Green’s Short History91 and Vol. II of Hamilton’s Gallipoli Diary in a hope of being (at last) able to finish reading it to D. I then walked home again.

  A wet afternoon. After tea I read a good deal of Green, of whose profundity and style I do not somehow think very much. Later I read to D till supper time. For supper came Smudge and afterwards I worked with her on Tacitus’s Agricola which she is reading for Pass Mods. We got on well. After she had gone I read to D again. Lateish to bed. Every night this week I have enjoyed wonderful moonlight in my room.

  Thursday 5 October: . . . I called on Walsh in St Aldate’s and showed him the new agreement which Miss Quinlan has sent us, in which D instead of the Commander appears as guarantor of the £50 payable in the case of Moppie’s breaking the contract. I explained that she could not possibly raise £50 and he replied—as he had before replied to D—that this was all the more reason for signing. He said that the document was only there to impress us and that the clause in wh. Moppie is forbidden to teach in Cardiff within three years of the expiration of her contract is illegal according to the latest decisions . . .

  I found D and Dorothy busy getting the back room ready. A P.G. [paying guest] is expected tomorrow. Lady Gonner asked us to take this woman for a few days, and we could not well refuse. We now find that the few days is to be two or three weeks. I need not write down my feelings at thus having our long deferred privacy taken away from us before we have had time to taste it—I shall remember them well enough.

  I put in some good work in my own room before lunch. In the afternoon I sat with D in the dining room and continued Milton, finishing Comus and Lycidas. Comus I think I have never enjoyed more . . .

  Friday 6 October: . . . I . . . worked pretty well and got half way through the 2nd Book of Paradise Lost. I find it rather hard to spot possible gobbets as hardly any line raises conscious difficulties. I enjoyed the reading of it immensely—I have lost some of the old thrills but there are other new ones . . .

  At six o’clock came Mrs Hankin, our compulsory P.G. She is best described by recording that when D and I came in the evening to ask each other what we thought about her we found that neither of us had thought anything.

  I went to my room till supper time and read part of the Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and the whole of the Tractate on Education, both of which are interesting. Poor D had a good deal of extra fixing up for supper—and I, of course, some extra washing up afterwards—as both Smudge and Mrs Hankin were here. This was our first real winter night and we had a fire in the drawing room. Mrs Hankin went early to bed—a very laudable practice which we devoutly hope she will continue. I read Keat’s letters in the evening.

  This whole day is overshadowed by the news in the evening papers. Our negotiations with the Turks have broken down and I cannot for the life of me see how a war can be avoided. Miss Featherstone has heard from some big wig that such a war wd. involve taking on all Islam and that conscription would be applied at once—not that that matters much, for I suppose one would have to go anyway. Late to bed, with a headache.

  Sunday 8 October: . . . After tea I walked to College and found Carlyle out again. The town looked so fine in the wintry evening light that I decided to walk down Holywell, where by good luck I saw a light in the windows of the Carlyle house. I rang and his daughter came to the door—the family having returned unexpectedly without maids. I was with Carlyle for about three quarters of an hour.92 He said he was glad to hear that I had managed the Magdalen exam comfortably. I said I thought that I had done pretty badly, but he told me that, to his knowledge, the Magdalen dons were ‘favourably impressed’.

  We then discussed my idea of taking English if I do not get the Fellowship. He said I should get private tuition for the Anglo-Saxon . . . He said he didn’t know who my regular tutor would be, but that most of them were ‘good literary men you know, but a bit foolish’ . . .

  Speaking more generally he said that, with due respect to other poets, Wordsworth was the Romantic Movement, and the great odes were Wordsworth’s. He thought no one in his century was worth reading except Malory. He also drew my attention to the continental influence of Goldsmith, Sterne and the other sentimentalists. Came away and walked after a very pleasant and useful time . . .

  Mrs H. has by this time shown herself a talker very much of old Raymond’s type. She spent all supper time telling us of some woman who founded a church in Zanzibar on six pence half-penny and prayer. She is a little, sweet, upright, prim old lady—very much of an officer’s widow—very patriotic—very unemotional—high church—highly correct—a regular pattern of a ‘nice’ old woman. A greater bore I have never met: passions and sympathies I fancy she has never known. Worst of all, she has given up her habit of going to bed immediately after supper.

  Monday 9 October: Another cold morning. I went to my room and finished fair copying Canto IV of ‘Dymer’. I read the whole thing through and felt fairly satisfied with the general movement of the story, the faults being, thank goodness, mainly in matters of detail. Some of it seemed too concise.

  At 10.30 Smudge came and I went with her to the drawing room to do the Agricola until shortly before lunch. She seems to make progress. D brought us tea and biscuits in the middle of the morning . . .

  I also looked again into the book on Mozart where I read that Goethe had written a continuation to the story of the Magic Flute. It is really extraordinary how much this subject has been in my mind lately.

  Walked home to find D engaged with a woman who wants her to make a jumper out of two most hideous shades of red silk. In the drawing room I found the Doc and Mary, who returned yesterday. The Doc seemed pretty cheerful. When D’s client had gone we came into the dining room and had tea. The Doc told us some amusing stories of Cranny’s cowardice. Once they had been walking together and met a dog with a loud bark: at which Cranny thrust his stick into the Doc’s hands, saying ‘Do you think you can hold him Johnnie?’ and then took to his heels . . .

  Then followed the usual muddled, but enthusiastic talk about psychoanalysis, suggestion and so forth. I made one or two temporary retirements to my room where I started a poetical epistle to Harwood in a super-Augustan style. The Askins did not go till late: a lot of talk about Rob and Grace King, their flirtations together and their joint selfishness towards Edie. Maureen says Grace was detestable at Bristol.93 . . .

  Tuesday 10 October: . . . I settled down to Milton. I read Books II and III of P.L. and went through Masson’s notes to them, finding many new points. D gave me some tea during the morning—very grateful and comforting in this bitter spell of cold.

  After lunch I went for a walk. It was by now a beautiful afternoon, cool, but absolutely still: the colouring grows better every day. I walked up Shotover and on to the far end: thence by the bridlepath to meet the main road beyond the railway, then home through Horsepath and along the road turning into the woody lane before Cowley and finishing up through the golf links. Whether my eyes were unusually open I don’t know, but the country was full of good bits . . .

  I . . . went to the drawing room myself to do the IV Book of Paradise Lost. Coming to the first entry of Adam and Eve, I was struck by the absolute necessity in poems of the largest sort, of having a subject already familiar and very simple, so that there may be room f
or a fine obviousness. This rather dashed my recent dream of a Sarastro poem.

  D remained with Mrs H. in the other room for a very long time. When I at last heard the other go upstairs I came in to console with D. She however had not been bored. Mrs Hankin had (like everyone else) been making D the confidante of her troubles and D’s sympathy had conquered ennui. Apparently Mrs H. is very poor and really to be pitied: like her I cannot . . . Later I sat with D: we talked of Mrs H’s troubles and of the terrible poverty among the people we know.

  Wednesday 11 October: The temperature this morning was 42°. To my work after breakfast and finished the Vth Book of P.L. with much delight. At about 11.30 I started to do Vergil with Maureen. She was readier to think and more intelligent than I have found her before—tho’ she would insist on calling Aeneas ‘Ananias’. We continued till lunch time . . .

  I finished my epistle to Harwood and read part of the VIth Book of P.L. I must be losing some of my old powers of accepting an author’s premises with loyalty, for it wrung several laughs from me . . .

  Thursday 12 October: Immediately after breakfast I started Virgil with Maureen and continued till 10.30, at which Miss Brayne came to give her a violin lesson. I then retired to my own room where I put on my dressing gown and thus continued comfortable enough, though it was, for the first part of the morning, intensely cold. I finished Book VI and began Book VII: then, after a cup of tea, not feeling very Miltonic, I turned to Chaucer. I read the whole of the Book of the Duchesse, looking out all the words that I didn’t know. I liked it very well—not only the prologue and the dream scenery, but even the speech which is an example of that very rare thing—a panegyric on a woman which really conveys some sense of beauty and freshness.

  During lunch D quite unexpectedly found in the Times and read out that the Magdalen fellowship had been given to Price of New College.94 I find that this has affected my spirits very little.

  I then walked into town. In the Union I met Carlyle. He was sorry about my news, but spoke encouragingly about the English School. I then went to College to report, according to Farquharson’s instructions. Term began today and there was a great bustle of cabs at the gate, and luggage and plenty of people.