All My Road Before Me

by C. S. Lewis

  Tuesday 13 March: Awake once or twice in the night and had the delightful experience of imagining that I heard the Doc and then realising that all that was over: then turning luxuriously to sleep, with the sound of heavy rain.

  Mary, of course, had breakfast in bed: D and I had ours alone downstairs. It was delightful to be able to make a noise. Worked on M.E. in the drawing room all morning till Smudge came at 12, and I did Anglo Greek with her. Tho’ horribly overworked, she seemed in excellent form at lunch . . . Sidney came at three with a much better prose. I worked with her till after five . . .

  After tea Jenkin appeared on his bike and I gladly went out with him. We rode round by Elsfield. I talked nonsense all the time and he commented on the outrageous joy which I emanated. I said what we had been through was almost worth it for the relief I now felt: to wh. he replied that one could and did get just as much relief out of the smaller troubles which one imagines to be bad at the time. We were extraordinarily merry. I said I should like to motor to London and there dine. We expiated on this theme for some time—our mental age, for the nonce, being about twelve.

  A grey cold evening. Home and had an enormous supper alone with D in delightful privacy, peace and jollity. Finished my paper for Miss Wardale afterwards.

  Wednesday 14 March: Woke lateish after an excellent night and read a few pages of Hazlitt’s essay on ‘Going a Journey’ over my tea with extraordinary gusto.

  After breakfast biked to Margaret Rd. and had my last tutorial with Miss W. A cold morning. Home again and was presented with a woolly waistcoat left for me by Mary: really very good of her and I must in fairness say that, tho’ American and tho’ poor, she is not mean. But I cannot help remembering some other facts . . .

  After a fish lunch I went in by bike to Merton St., where I found Jenkin reading De la Mare’s Return. He said it produced exactly the atmosphere of flu. I thought this a sound criticism. He had heard De la Mare read a paper on ‘Atmosphere’ the day before yesterday to the Plantagenet Club in Oriel, which was really good. They had had a good evening otherwise, for Jenkin had retired afterwards to hear ghost stories in a select company, of which the leading light was an army officer aged about fifty and recently become an undergraduate, who had learned some very primitive kind of magic from the blacks in Jamaica. This man also indulges in the Oriental habit of obtaining ecstasies by the contemplation of his own navel.

  In pursuance of my light headed mood I proposed we should go to the pictures as Jenkin had suggested yesterday. This however was vetoed, and we rode out instead: Jenkin remarking maliciously ‘You’ll be very cold without a coat’ as he put on his own and turned up the collar. We rode through Kennington, up the Bagley Woods road and so to the pretty village of Sunningwell which he has quite recently discovered . . .

  We separated in Iffley Road and I came home. Mrs Hume-Rothery and Betty were with D when I got in, but soon left. Before supper I read The Battle of the Books—very good in its way, but not much in my line.38 Maureen back tonight: three of us (and no more) at supper so that we are now really back to the normal again . . .

  Friday 16 March: D had a long letter from Mary with nothing new about the Doc, except the opinion given by Rob that he would be kept in hospital for a long time and we must hope for the best. He went, by the by, to Richmond in the end, and not to Henley.

  Maureen had a temperature of 101 this morning and was kept in bed: presumably flu, which she may have caught from Lady Gonner . . .

  After lunch I bussed into town and went to Merton where Gordon was reading to a joint meeting of the male and female discussion classes. It was held in the Senior Common Room—a comfortable place, but without the dignity of our own . . .

  Gordon talked about the writing of literary papers. He complimented us on those which had been written, as everyone expected him to do, and then went on to attack several critical heresies, introducing them artfully as ‘things which he was glad to see we had not done’. He was particularly down on the sentimental, esoteric school, as represented by Mackail. What was most interesting, he claimed that Couch’s chapter on jargon has been largely taken without acknowledgement from Chapman and himself.

  Best of all was his discussion of the large audience of the semi-educated people who ‘never would know’ to whom critics and ‘bribed poets’ were now always talking.39 Such people wanted to be told about beauty, sensibility etc: in fact about all that side of literature which men of letters took for granted and never mentioned. I was delighted with this. Afterwards there was some discussion on the method of conducting the classes, and Coghill (backed by several others including myself) suggested that they shd. be more formal . . .

  Saturday 17 March: D had a letter from Mrs Stevenson announcing that Sidney had complained of feeling ill and might not come this morning—news which I received with great equanimity. The same letter contained a lot of Job’s comfort about the Doc: she said that his ego was now eclipsed, but we must hope that it would soon assert itself. Even if it did not do so in this life, we must look forwards to the happy time when he would have an etheric body. Then followed a long rhapsody on the delights of spiritualism.

  This was rather unfortunate as spiritualism, together with Yoga and undigested psychoanalysis seem to have hastened and emphasised the Doc’s collapse. On the very first Friday he said himself that Baker had told him long ago he was a fool to have any thing to do with them. I at any rate am scared off anything mystical and abnormal and hysterical for a long time to come.

  Maureen still in bed today, but her temperature only 99. After breakfast I finished Gulliver. It does not give me the horrors which the critics say it ought to—I fancy because it overshoots the mark. We know things aren’t so bad as all that. Just before lunch I tried my hand at some fourteeners—the idea of a Gulliver like poem having developed in that way. They were not a great success. If you make them regular, they deafen you: if not, the possible variations are so rich that it would take a better man than I to make order out of the chaos.

  After lunch I bussed into town (a most beautiful afternoon) and went to the Union where I read most of the first book of Chapman’s Iliad. I had no idea what splendid stuff it was—tho’ it didn’t help me much in my metrical problem . . .

  Saturday 18 March: . . . After lunch I sat down to work on ‘Dymer’. I had just started in high hopes, when I was called upstairs to help in fixing up the curtains in D’s rooms: which, having been fixed with rawlplugs, come down in an avalanche about once a week.

  While I was doing this Dorothy announced that Sidney had come for a lesson. Heartily wishing her in Hong Kong I came down and did Latin with her for two hours. While we were working, Sheila Gonner called to see Maureen. After tea I heard that she had brought news that I need not take the Gonners’ mattress up this evening: of which I was very glad, as I was afraid the whole day would be lost . . .

  Monday 19 March: Maureen still in bed . . . After supper I had to work very hard to get my essay done. Before going to bed D and I fell into a conversation about my position—not knowing whether I should stay in Oxford, whether we could get the Walters’ house, or whether we shd. take the Raymonds’. As the latter is in urgent need of repairs and as Raymond proposes to leave all repairs to us for three years and then return to the house, which we should almost have rebuilt, I regarded that as a trap. We agreed that I should go into town tomorrow to try and get information about the house in Woodstock Rd. from Brooks; and also see Carlyle and Stevenson about my prospects. D has a headache again—from darning stockings in the bad light in her room where she is now sitting with Maureen all afternoon and evening . . .

  Wednesday 21 March: Pouring with rain this morning. I forgot to say that a copy of James Stephens’ Insurrections came for me yesterday, sent by Rob who has two and promised me one. They are very odd and in one sense not poems at all, but some of them have a good, tho’ eccentric flavour of their own: in matter they are chiefly easy pessimism of the sort I did in Spirits in Bondage, only I reall
y think I did it better!

  During this morning I went on with the Prelude. The drop after the fourth book is appalling . . .

  In the Union I met Robson-Scott. He is up till Saturday and has moved into College, which he says is almost as full as in term time, with school boys up for Entrance, Responsions and Scholarships. He said that the rumour went that the new Mugger would certainly not be one of the fellows, as they all hated one another too much: nor would it be Carlyle, who was very unpopular, and, for that reason, had not been re-elected to his own fellowship. I suddenly conceived a violent loathing for all these creepy old charlatans—Allen with his sneer, Carlyle a mere sink of facts, the Farq. with his rather cruel looking face, flattering us all and a bit mad, the sentimental Mugger and all the rest: except Carritt and Steve whom I still think to be good fellows in their different ways . . .

  Got home very tired and depressed: D made me have some tea. I told her (what had been on my mind all afternoon) that I didn’t feel very happy about the plan of staying here as a more or less unattached tutor. I do not want to join the rank of advertisements in the Union—it sounds so like the prelude to being a mere grinder all my days. If it wasn’t for Maureen I think I should plump for a minor university if possible. We had rather a dismal conversation about our various doubts and difficulties . . .

  Thursday 22 March: After breakfast I walked into town. I went to Carritt’s room and returned his Aristotle. I then went and saw Stevenson, whom I found sitting in his rooms by a hot fire, very miserable with a bad throat and not able to talk much. I asked him what prospects there were of my being able to exist as a free lance tutor until something turned up. He said there was practically no such work to be had in my subject. Pupils were now so well looked after by their colleges that the thing was dying out . . .

  He said he thought I was pretty sure to get a fellowship soon and went on to remark that Bourdillon was resigning his, and that it was quite possible that I might get it.40 In the mean time he advised me to get a job at a minor university: this would not put me out of the running for a fellowship, and if I were elected in September after being established elsewhere, I could still accept it and either defer my residence or put in a modicum at week ends etc. as he had done while holding a lectureship at Edinburgh. He thought it likely that College, after Bourdillon’s resignation, might decide to have an English don now that the English School was getting so popular. I remarked that I might very easily fail to get a first in English: he thought that would not matter with my previous record.

  I left him and went to the Appointments Committee, now in Broad St., and asked about the Nottingham job . . . I then came home . . . and discussed the situation with D. We were both greatly depressed. If one cd. be sure of my coming back to a fellowship after a term or two at some minor University we could take the Woodstock Rd. house—but if not? And then again, if we all moved to some unearthly place and had to come back again after a short time, we should have lost the chance of a house here, interrupted Maureen’s work and had many expenses for nothing. It was certainly a damnably difficult situation.

  Thence we drifted into the perennial difficulty of money, which would be far more acute if we had to separate for a time. When I began to work after lunch I was thoroughly bothered and found it hard at first to concentrate . . .

  D and I had another very miserable conversation. She was afraid it might be her duty to stay at Oxford for Maureen’s music, wherever I went: I did not know how to answer this . . .

  Sunday 25 March: A most delightful day—very mild—blue sky with moving clouds and a faint south wind . . . After lunch I rode out again. I went back to Prattle Wood by way of Marston and Water Eaton . . . I explored the wood much more fully today, and it is splendid. If I hadn’t been bothered with the short lived headache which comes on so often when I am out, I should have been in the seventh heaven. As it was I enjoyed it very much. I picked and brought home as many primroses as I could, but they are very few . . .

  I found to my delight that D had been out on the golf links with Maureen and was in very good form. After tea I wrote to my father. As it was impossible to tell him what had really been happening during the Askins trouble, I had to account for my silence by a lie. I said I had had flu—which I consider justifiable because I have been going through something very much worse . . .

  Monday 26 March: Another beautiful day. In the morning I read in Sweet and finished three acts of Othello. After lunch I biked into the Union where I read the whole of Santayana’s article on Lucretius . . . In my present mood, still remembering the Doc, Santayana’s almost aggressive sanity is very attractive, but I suspect it is but one more cul de sac . . .

  In the evening there was an announcement in The Times inviting applications for a Research Fellowship at Exeter. Touch wood, but this looks a less wispy will-of-the-wisp than the others.

  Tuesday 27 March: Worked on O.E. in the morning. After lunch I went up to Stile Rd. in Headington where Aunt Lily is now living and saw her . . . She is full of a recent ‘discovery’ which has carried her further, she says, than Bergson and Plotinus ever went. The discovery is that time consists in sacrifice: the continual annihilation of A to create B, the continual ‘making room’. But the essence of the world is also sacrifice: ergo time is the very essence of the world. She seemed to use God, Time and Being as synonymous . . .

  When I was going she spoke very strongly about the brute Carr in Univ., who had been fined for setting dogs on cats and watching them worried. She said that if it hadn’t been for her relationship to me she would have sought him out and beaten him, adding ‘I once broke a man’s wrist with a horse whip.’ On the subject of pit ponies I mentioned the days when young children had crawled about pulling trolleys in the mines. She said she much preferred that: she had no sympathy with the children because they all grew up, and would grow up to be brutes themselves. I asked her if she did not mind cruelty to human beings. She said it did not affect her as cruelty to animals did: humans were less helpless and also they were so vile that they deserved less sympathy. I was very disgusted with her abominable confession . . .

  Smudge was here for tea and told us that Walter’s house had been sold. This, coupled with last night’s will-of-the-wisp, inclined us again to the Raymonds’ house. I biked off at once into town and enquired at all the agents whether it was still easy to sublet houses in Headington. All the replies were favourable and after coming home again I went up and told Mrs Raymond that we wd. take it after all. Worked after supper and all merry.

  Thursday 29 March: . . . I had tea in the Union. I also met Carlyle . . . I mentioned the Exeter Fellowship. He seemed to remember it as something which had temporarily escaped his notice and said he was very glad to know that I was going in for it. He thought I was just the man, and proceeded to give me some hints.

  He said that what they particularly wanted in a candidate for a Research Fellowship was a definite programme. I told him the line I wanted to follow in Ethics: he seemed to approve . . . In the meantime he promised to see Marett of Exeter and get what he could out of him.41 . . .

  I now repaired to the station in heavy rain and met W[arnie]:—who had brought a Leeborough suitcase. We left this in the Union and went and had some beer in the Mitre . . . We came out by taxi. After supper W and I gossiped for a while, but he was so sleepy that he soon went to bed. I went too, reluctantly leaving D downstairs, and Lord knows when she went to bed.

  Friday 30 March: . . . After lunch I began Sidney Colvin’s Life of Keats and W also read a book. D sat alone in the dining room without a fire. This worried me and I came in to remonstrate with her. Unfortunately I asked her ‘not to make herself miserable’ and she misunderstood the words in a way that is easily understood but impossible to explain on paper. We came as near a quarrel as we ever do over this, which, coupled with the fact that she was thoroughly tired, made me very miserable.

  As well, for no assignable reason, certainly through no fault of his, I found W’s society, whi
ch I had looked forward to with some pleasure, quite unbearable this time. His contented cynicism, his rejection of everything warm and generous and ideal, above all his constant and self conscious assumption of this Gryll’s attitude42 as if it were something to be kept up every moment at all costs—well for some reason I couldn’t stick it.

  Saturday 31 March: This morning W and I walked into town. He had hoped for a ramble in the bookshops, but of course they were all shut. I got Typhoon (Conrad) and Havelock Ellis’s Kanga Creek out of the Union for him. He took me to have a drink at the Roebuck which they have completely altered since the old days when we used to frequent it.

  Sitting there and drinking, as usual at his expense, I was quite worried at the change of my feelings towards him, as I remembered so many jolly sittings in the same place. Perhaps it is only the recent upset I have been through and may pass . . .

  Sunday 1 April: . . . W took me to the Mitre and fed me with beer—for which, as it was now a very hot day, I was duly grateful. It is certainly a good trait in him that he puts up with our domestic life and he is always ‘generous’ in the narrower sense of the word: but I have been wretchedly strained and tired and depressed this time and can’t help feeling that I don’t want to see him soon again.

  We bussed home to lunch. Afterwards we sat in the garden and I wrote three stanzas of the VIth Canto of ‘Dymer’—who is a year old today.

  It was a delightful afternoon. D and Maureen went up to tea with the Raymonds. Later on W and I had ours alone in the garden. Afterwards I asked him whether he had any ready money and if he could lend us anything for the move. I heard to my amazement that (besides income) he had, or had had only £60 invested. The £500 which he had saved in the war had gone in the first year of peace when he had spent £1200: and had been paying off debts ever since . . . He said he was afraid the £60 was gone and all he could offer was a fiver in reply to an S.O.S. now and then. So closed one of the beastliest of the many beastly scenes I have been forced into by poverty.