All My Road Before Me

by C. S. Lewis

  Later on we went out for a stroll on the golf links. Coming back we found D and Maureen already at home, with the unexpected news that there are three purchasers after the Raymonds’ house and that Father Raymond has come down in his price and is probably going to settle it. I was very disappointed and realised that D wd. be very much more so—tho’ of course, from the money point of view, it is a momentary relief . . .

  Monday 2 April: W departed by the 10.50 to attend a football match at Aldershot between the A.S.C. and some Scotch regiment. I bussed in with him and saw him off. Before leaving he told me to write to him in a few days and tell him whether the Raymonds’ house was definitely ‘off’: if not, he would set about trying to realise his elusive £60 . . .

  I came home and sat in the back room with D, reading Colvin’s Keats till lunchtime. I must admit that the sense of being to ourselves again was very pleasant. Afterwards the sun came out and we both sat in the alley way. I finished Colvin and read Isabella, St Agnes, and the Odes. I am a bit scared of Keats for he could resume complete dominion over me with very little trouble . . .

  Wednesday 4 April: Another warm day. By the first post came a letter from Harwood enclosing a proposed Epithalamion for Barfield and asking my opinion of it by return. I thought it quite tolerable tho’ far below his best, and replied telling him so.43

  There was also a card from Aunt Lily changing our engagement for today . . . I rode to Headington and saw Aunt Lily and explained that I couldn’t go today. We arranged for tomorrow instead and she kept me a considerable time. She talked about mutation. In her typical Hamilton way she thinks she has the secret of it—just as uncle Gussie thinks he anticipated Einstein. She says Bateson will never find it out by vivisection.44 As far as I understood her she thinks that a species gets into a low state through lack of differences, and then mutates producing variations whose wide diversity gives good crosses for healthy reproduction: it is best studied in corn . . .

  Thursday 5 April: A very much colder day. Worked on O.E. all morning and succeeded in concentrating, but without interest . . . D had spent the morning boiling marmalade and was very tired and had a headache . . .

  I went on to Stile Rd. and had supper with Aunt Lily. We talked of a great many subjects—I forget most of it—I am tired of her inhumanity.

  Got home after ten and found D in the depths of despair, having had a particularly tantalising disappointment over the house. If we had gone yesterday we might have had it!—and for the amazingly low rent of £45 a year. It was every way delightful and we should have saved £60 a year. To add to our troubles Dorothy had come in with news that Miss Featherstone had spoken to her mother expressing a hope that we would let her have the house for three months in the summer. To bed late, after lamenting our luck.

  Friday–Wednesday 6–11 April:45 On Friday I worked getting into shape a prospectus of my ethical work to show to Carritt. On Saturday morning there came by the second post a letter from Rob announcing the death of the Doc the day before from heart failure. I forget most of that day. Rob had said that the funeral would be at Richmond on Tuesday, but we heard later that it would be at Clevedon on Wednesday. Rob said that he had been unconscious at the end . . .

  Tuesday was a bitterly cold day: I had an ear ache. Had great difficulty in getting together black things: I borrowed a black overcoat from Mr Taylor and had to get a new bowler from Walters. D and Maureen went at about six and I saw them off. Had a pretty miserable evening here: read Byron’s Beppo and Vision of Judgement (both good).

  As I was to go by the 9.30 in the morning I told Dorothy to call me at 7.15 which turned out to be much too early. I had finished breakfast before eight and had to fill up the time by walking to the station . . .

  Arriving at Bristol station I met Cranny who was coming to the funeral. His daughter was with him . . . I sat with them until D, Edie, Maureen and Grace turned up with wreaths and other grisly things—it is a natural idea of course, but why should lilies be spoilt for ever by these associations?

  With them came a most distinguished man in a tall hat and clerical frock coat, with a white moustache: D’s brother Willie from Cavan where he has a parish.46 He is rather a hero in his own way, and his name has been twice on the death list of the irregulars.

  Ourselves and the flowers took up so much room that we had to divide on getting into the train. I was with Willie and Cranny who talked clerical shop. It was half sleeting, half raining. We seemed to be a long time getting to Clevedon . . .

  We had another long wait at the church—it is up on a hill and Arthur Hallam is buried there. At last the hearse arrived, and shortly after, the others. Cranny and Willie read the service. While we were waiting Cranny had been talking with me about immortality—neither of us very optimistic. Rob had remarked ‘a ditch at the back of Ypres is better than this’—I think he was right. Mary behaved very bravely. When it was over Rob and Willie stayed, the others went back to the flat by taxi: Cranny and I found our way back to the station and had tea in a stuffy little cake shop beside it . . .

  Here followed a period of laziness, depression, irritation and constant anxiety about the future during which I gave up my diary together with most other things. D was very tired and depressed and had several sick turns. I had an interesting talk with Carritt, who preferred to my ethical scheme my other idea of a metaphysical critique of modern psychology. After several days of very hard work I made out a scheme from this which I submitted to J. A. Smith.47 He has not yet answered me—which adds to the fidgety atmosphere I have got into.

  Preparations for moving to Hillsboro have meanwhile been going on. The furniture removers’ tender, under pressure from Rob, has come down to £28 and Willie has lent D £30. We are therefore able to do without W’s loan, for which, with great generosity, he raised, or prepared to raise, a mortgage on his life insurance. Wall papers have been selected—the other evening I turned over 2000 odd patterns for D in a huge book.

  I have been working at O.E. and have also read Richard III, Twelfth Night, Timon of Athens, and The Phoenix and the Turtle. At the beginning of this time I finished my fair copy of ‘Foster’ to my satisfaction. Since then poetry has been below the horizon.

  I have disgracefully accumulated arrears of correspondence—wh. is a fool’s game and leaves a permanent background of small worry in one’s mind. Maureen and I are taking phospherine. All this time the weather has been colder than during the winter, dust and wind alternating with foggy frosts. The spring blossom on the trees has disappeared.

  Everything now depends on my getting the Exeter Fellowship.

  Lewis kept no diary during 12–19 April.

  Friday 20 April: A very cold day. I finished Beowulf and worked on the Battle of Maldon all morning . . .

  I had meant to go into town: but I realised that I should have to go after tea anyway and as it was now a little sunny and pretending to be like spring again I walked to Iffley instead. My hope thus to cast off some of this idiotic stupid mood was disappointed and I did not much enjoy my walk . . .

  Came back and found poor D busy darning—she also in pretty poor form. Maureen seems cheerful—but I think the giggly mood she is in is also another kind of collapse: for I get into it now and then myself and it is really very different from optimism . . .

  I got into Hillsboro: the garden with the grass grown long and the general desertion was rather attractive. I found Tolley—a protégé of the fish mongers who is doing the paper—and plied him with innumerable questions from D. I then walked home by the barracks and the golf links. I had a Wordsworthian adventure—being asked for a penny in a woeful voice by two gypsy children who had been playing happily the minute before. Home again and after supper I finished The Battle of Maldon (good stuff) and began The Fall of the Angels.

  In the evening I happened to tell D that I had dropped my diary pro tem. She was very opposed to it and urged me to begin again.

  Saturday 21 April: Another cold morning. After breakfast D, Maureen and I w
ent into Oxford taking with us Baker’s book of patterns from the shop. We went first to Elliston and Cavell’s and ordered paper for the hall, then to Baker’s and ordered paper for the bathroom. We then proceeded to the gas office in St Aldate’s to see about hiring a stove. Here they had nothing but elaborate new stoves with very small ovens, all of which could be had only on the hire purchase system. Apparently they are trying gradually to kill the established practise of hiring stoves. D tackled the man with her customary vigour and he admitted in the end that they had some older models for hire, which could be seen at the works in Speedwell St.

  Thither accordingly we went through dreadful slums in clouds of driving dust. We came first into a yard full of the most appalling smell: then waited endlessly before a little window until D took the bull by the horns and opened a door marked private. We were thus finally taken some notice of and led into a place of sheds, steam, leaking pipes, and smells and scrap iron, where Maureen and I sat on a bench while D negotiated with the attendant spirits . . .

  Sunday 22 April: . . . Immediately after breakfast Maureen and I set out for Hillsboro to paint . . . Tolley was painting the bathroom when I arrived and he abandoned it to me . . . The small quantity and bad quality of the work and the curious way in which he has done—nibbling now at one room and now at another has very much worried us: his behavior is so queer that we hardly know whether to call him dishonest or half witted. D decided that she must come up in the afternoon and investigate. After lunch I returned at once to the bathroom at Hillsboro and continued my painting, where I was presently joined by Maureen and later by D who had come up by bus.

  After looking at the state of the house D felt pretty hopeless and we went to Windsor Terrace where Tolley emerged grinning and blinking from his Sunday afternoon’s sleep. D told him that at the present rate he would never get the place done in time. He said he was getting a man in tomorrow who would finish the ceilings in two days . . .

  Tuesday 24 April: A glorious spring morning—very bright but cold—with a glass blue sky. Walked up to Hillsboro after breakfast and immediately began painting. They say everything will need two coats. I worked solidly till 1.15, by which time I had finished to the skirting, door, window sill and mantel piece of the drawing room. Tolley appeared at about noon, put in a stepladder through the cellar window and then disappeared. I came home to lunch and found that Dorothy had just cleared out the cupboard at the back of the stairs which D calls the ‘back of beyond’ . . .

  Smudge, who had been playing duets with Maureen in the morning, was here for lunch. She has found out that tho’ she failed in Mods. she has passed in Anglo Greek. After lunch I bicycled up to Hillsboro and began work on the drawing room . . .

  Wednesday 25 April: In the morning came a letter for D from Moppie. She is taking lessons in London and is apparently making no effort to get a summer job. Doubtless she intends to spend all her money and hang on us as a deadweight till September. I had a card from Jenkin acknowledging my apologies in the kindest possible terms—a contrast to the glum silence of the Bakers. It was a wet morning, but the greenery looked and smelled delightful in the rain.

  After breakfast I walked up to Hillsboro. I painted the hall door and most of my own room . . . Before leaving I again asked Tolley what he proposed to do about the holes in the ceiling of D’s room and of Andrée’s. He assured me that they would be done with ‘mortar and adamantine’—with which truly Aeschylean phrase I departed . . .

  Friday 27 April: I dreamed first that I was sitting in the dusk on Magdalen Bridge and there met Jenkin: then I went up a hill with a party of people. On the top of the hill stood a window—no house, a window standing alone, and in the sashes of the window a sheep and a wolf were caught together and the wolf was eating the sheep. The wolf then disappeared from my dream and one of my friends began to cut up the sheep which screamed like a human being but did not bleed. Afterwards we proceeded to eat it . . .

  This morning I worked on O.E. After lunch at about three o’clock, all three of us proceeded to go into town. I had to carry in the wringer, a miniature mangle which we have never used and which we are trying to sell to Eaglestons or give in part exchange for a lawn mower. It was a very heavy load and I had to carry it under my arm with its long crank projecting behind, rather like a bagpipe—greatly to Maureen’s delight. We got rid of the monstrosity at Eaglestons and went on to the gas office where we ordered the stove . . .

  I left the others and went to College where I found that Sadler had that day been made Master.48 I met Ewing in the porch—emerged from his burrow for the Exeter Fellowship no doubt.49 Thence I went to Manor Place, where I found Wilson and Robson-Scott finishing tea. Robson had been at Stratford to see the festival performance of Measure for Measure and Midsummer Night’s Dream, of which he spoke very highly indeed. We discussed the Birmingham performance of Cymbeline in modern clothes. Wilson thought it a mere freak. We decided that the Merry Wives would have worked best and had an amusing discussion of the proper costume of Falstaff—we fixed on a very old blazer and plus fours in the end. After Robson had withdrawn Wilson dictated a collections paper to me and arranged for a tutorial hour . . .

  Lewis kept no diary during 29 April–21 May.

  Tuesday 22 May: After my last entry there followed a period so busy and on the whole so miserable that I had neither time nor heart to continue my diary, nor poetry, nor pleasant effort of any sort.

  Our move to ‘Hillsboro’ was carried out according to plan: but our friend Tolley (whom we had to turn off) had left so much undone and so much to undo that we had to put off the arrival of the furniture for a fortnight. The interval of ‘camping’—helped by a spell of delightful weather—was not so uncomfortable as I expected and we sat down so seldom that the scarcity of furniture, borrowed from Miss Featherstone, was hardly noticed. The garden was a great joy and there were some pleasant moments when we saw our chosen wall papers going up and the Raymond atmosphere gradually defeated.

  We naturally hoped more and more intensely every day that we should get the Exeter Fellowship: but Carritt told me just before I sent my papers in that Joseph of New College said it was a dud election—they had a candidate of their own already picked out for it. This disappointment threw me into a very childish rage against the old men and I believe I really understood how the Queen Anne satirists used to feel. I have now got over it . . .

  So far I have not been caught by Aunt Lily. Warnie was here for the Whitsun week end and departed yesterday: this time I thoroughly enjoyed his visit, although it has unsettled me with acute envy of the comfortable, care free, pleasant life by which he has solved the problem of existence: vobis parta quies.50 I think I have the curse of something of my father’s luck and temperament and shall be in a fidget as long as I am above ground.

  On Sunday last I dined at the High Table at Magdalen. I have had a charming letter from Harwood. He and Beckett and Baker are going for a walking tour on the Sussex downs—which sounds to me like a rumour of heaven heard this side of the great gulf.

  The weather has been mostly cold and wet all this time. Today I worked all morning on a paper for Miss Wardale and on O.E. . . . I came home thinking of the possibility of a modern Ariosto: at first I thought of adventures in far lands but soon realised that London is really the modern equivalent of the forest of romances. I thought a story of impossible and complex adventures in London in the spirit of old romance, as modern as Don Juan but not so satiric, might be made very good. In the evening I read The Testament of Cresseid51 and part of The Flower and the Leaf52 with much enjoyment.

  D is naturally rather tired and worried these days.

  Wednesday 23 May: Biked to Miss W at 11.45 and had my usual tutorial . . . I then came home, having taken three volumes of Johnson’s Lives [of the Poets] from the English Library. I changed and sat down in the drawing room to read the life of Savage and wait for Ewing whom I have had to ask to tea.

  He was with me at Univ. in 1917, when he was known as the
Rabbit and was, I’m afraid, everyone’s butt. He is a First in Mods. and Greats, a John Locke scholar, a senior demi of Magdalen, and a Doctor of Philosophy. He is standing for the Exeter fellowship. He is a very small man, usually dressed in a neat, old fashioned style with a stiff collar and a watch chain, and a strange, quick, jerky action suggestive of a Robot, which results I believe from some nervous weakness and saved him from the war. He has a smooth pinkish face, prominent teeth and a little moustache and speaks in a shrill falsetto. He is a non smoker. No one has ever been able, to my knowledge, to establish a personal contact with him: he is the standing example of intellect in the narrowest sense and industry, but without wisdom, imagination, or humour. Perhaps I am misjudging him. We talked mainly about philosophy. He said he had met Pilly of Exeter who is supposed to be the pet candidate for the fellowship . . .

  Thursday 24 May: I spent the morning working on Johnson’s Lives and on Hurd in the drawing room, which I begin to like very much. After lunch I biked in to town, took Warton’s life of Pope from the English Library and went to the Union where I worked on Addison. I had tea there.

  Coming home I found Jenkin and allowed myself to be persuaded to accompany him up Shotover with bikes. Just before lunch I had thought of a new stanza (aabccbcb) which pleased me very much: this set me talking to him about the Ariosto idea. He disapproved of it saying that the only romance anyone would expect or tolerate in such a poem would be a sexual one, and anyway why not do it in prose.

  A very funny conversation followed. We rested at a gate on the Horsepath lane looking east. It was a sunny evening, the Chilterns very blue and transparent in the distance. Jenkin said he always perceived rather than felt this kind of scenery to be beautiful. He hinted at the danger he was now in of becoming a scholar, a mere potterer: I thought the danger rather real specially as he is a Celt and therefore chosen by nature to effect nothing. As it was now too late for him to get supper in Hall I asked Jenkin to sup with us. It is very strange that a man who is in every way so well bred should eat so noisily . . .