All My Road Before Me

by C. S. Lewis

  After lunch I rode out to Stanton St John and tried to find my way into the woods where I once went with Baker. The fields were very beautiful with the yellow weed. I could not find the wood. I was depressed: full of worries and near the kingdom of Wanhope—or Dulcarnon.58 I went into a church in the village and in quite a whimsical mood tried Sortes Virgilianae out of a Prayer Book.59 The answer well repaid me for my tomfoolery, for the first thing I saw was an injunction to administer the sacraments in the sense etc. etc. I came out: surveyed with interest the tomb of Mary Annie Lewis, whoever she was, and rode home.

  Found D and Dorothy polishing in D’s room. Had hardly left them when I heard an awful crash and rushed back thoroughly frightened and half believing that the wardrobe had fallen on D. I found however that it was only she herself who had fallen and hurt her elbow: she was badly shaken. All attempts to get her to stop polishing and rest on her laurels were treated in the usual way. After tea she went on again and said I could not help: finally she came down quite breathless and exhausted.

  This put me into such a rage against poverty and fear and all the infernal net I seemed to be in that I went out and mowed the lawn and cursed all the gods for half an hour. After that (and it was about as far down as I have got yet) I had to help with rolling linoleums and by the time we got to supper a little before ten, I was tired and sane again.

  Decided at whatever cost of labour to start my diary rigorously again, wh. has been dropped during Schools, as I think the day to day continuity helps one to see the larger movement and pay less attention to each damned day in itself . . .

  Thursday 21 June: After breakfast I wrote up arrears of diary since the 9th. When I had finished that I went upstairs and laid linoleums in the odd corners of D’s room which were still bare. This took me till lunch.

  Immediately after lunch I went round to Stile Road and saw Aunt Lily. She is not going to Stratford after all but has taken an unfurnished house beyond Gt. Milton for £25 a year: the curious thing being that her landlord will turn her out in three months if his beloved agrees to marry him, but he has proposed so often before that he thinks Aunt Lily will have every chance of staying.

  I remarked, in answer to some question, how rushed I had been by the shortened time in wh. I had taken this School. She said ‘Why did you?’ and that it wasn’t fair either to my father or myself, who had nothing to do with his money and only wanted to keep me there. I said that, on the contrary, he wanted to retire: she said that W and I had been provided for and my father had been in a position to retire long ago before my mother’s death but she (my mother) had persuaded him to continue his police court work and make more. Who knows? She then told me some very funny yarns about the Suffern family. . . .

  After tea I walked through old Headington, down the cemetery lane and joining Elsfield Rd. near the bridge and cross road: then up to Elsfield and home across the fields with great pleasure. When I emerged into Western Rd. again it was beginning to rain and I almost ran into Aunt Lily who stood looking into the shop window at the corner. I passed straight on and trusted to luck that she would either not look round or would not recognise my back. I ‘fetched a compass’ thro’ Windmill Rd. and round again and this time succeeded in getting home . . .

  Friday 22 June: In the morning I read Venice Preserved60 which contains more loathsome sentimentality, flat language, and bad verse than I should have imagined possible.

  Later I scraped and began to stain the exposed passages of floor in the hall, which was work both hot and hard. After lunch I finished the hall and did the same for the drawing room and helped D with some changes of furniture in the dining room. Sheila Gonner and Helen Munro were here for tea and I made a fourth at croquet with them afterwards. It was a warmish day with a pleasant wind.

  At six I walked out to find a new field path that I had heard of . . . This brought me up hill beside a very fine hedge with wild roses in it. This, in the cool of the evening, together with some curious illusion of being on the slope of a much bigger hill than I really was, and the wind in the hedge, gave me intense pleasure with a lot of vague reminiscences . . .

  Saturday 23 June: A glorious summer day at last. After breakfast I biked to Margaret Rd. and saw Miss Wardale and went over my language papers. She thought them ‘unexpected’ and had been making representations to Craigie.61 His question, ‘Give the definite forms of the adjective’ was unintelligible to her. She said I ought to come through alright on my translation and thought I should probably be viva’d on my literary papers, while advising me to look up the grammar as a precaution . . .

  At quarter to five Jenkin arrived for tea, bringing his mother as had been arranged. She is a very cheery old soul and was soon going off in fits of ‘inextinguishable laughter’. After tea we sat in the garden and I tried to teach Jenkin croquet. Time passed on and after a very complicated discussion they agreed to stay to supper—I mean there was some difficulty which induced them to stay on as they wd. not probably otherwise have done, but what it was all about I couldn’t gather. Supper was an uproarious meal, recalling Arthur’s visits . . .

  Monday 25 June: After making up my diary I had a look at the fourth canto of ‘Dymer’ and got some ideas for a better ending. As I had promised to paint this morning, I then had to leave it. It took me till lunch time painting the two hall doors and some things in the bathroom.

  After lunch I set out to bike to Aunt Lily’s new abode at Lower Farm, Thame Road. It was a case of ‘heaven uphalt but ugly thereunder’ when I started and had developed into a Scotch mist before I arrived. Her new cottage is in rather dull and flat country, but being absolutely surrounded by meadow, is rather attractive. The railway is in sight, and Aunt Lily agrees with me about the romance of a train in a lonely place.

  She had provided strawberries and cream. We talked chiefly about Archibald Allan and she showed me the letter he had written her—a letter very like the book except that it was much more dogmatic and appeared to be the work either of a fool or of a confident genius.

  I biked home in torrents of rain. Later I played croquet with Maureen. She got an enormous lead but threw most of it away and I nearly won in the end. After supper I wrote two new stanzas for ‘Dymer’—I think they will do. D in good form.

  Tuesday 26 June: This morning I biked into town and called on Wilson whom I found newly returned from a long week end. We discussed Schools. Apparently the Spenser question in the Age of Shakespeare was marked compulsory by a printer’s error and the examiners have their tails very much between their legs over it. He agreed that this was a rotten question. He promised to try and get me some work examining for the Oxford Local, but warned me that it was probably too late. He is to come to tea on Thursday . . .

  Wednesday 27 June: Went to my own room after breakfast and re-copied the whole of Canto V with the alterations and additions. It is I hope very much improved: at any rate it was delightful to have a whole morning’s self pleasing work on poetry after so long . . .

  After lunch I went out. It was now very warm after a misty morning and the flies were troublesome. I walked nearly to Forest Hill by the field path and then turned into the road and left it again at the stile on my right beyond the turn to Forest Hill. From here the path led up through a field where the mowers were at work and there was a first rate smell: then up by the side of a spinney through a field alive with rabbits, most of them mere babies who let me get quite close to them. Of the full grown ones I was amused to notice how some would always sit out and face me a good minute after the commonalty had galloped into the spinney . . .

  I came home after a very enjoyable walk, but disappointingly tired and with a headache—wh. I thought a poor reward for my recent drastic reductions in smoking . . .

  Thursday 28 June: To my own room after breakfast where I began an opening for a new Canto introducing the semi-Kirkian character who has been in my mind lately.62 Some stanzas of colloquial dialogue wrote themselves with extraordinary ease and for the times I was pleased
with them . . .

  Wilson came shortly before five and he and I had tea in the garden. We talked of wounds, pensions, income tax, and Farquharson: Wilson agreed with the usual view of the latter’s insincerity, but doubted if he were quite sane. I asked him if he cared for Doughty. He had read only The Cliffs and thought poorly of it. Of Childe Harold he said he had enjoyed it very much as a kind of verse guide book after visiting some of the scenes. He is a great admirer of Bridges. He asked me if I wrote poetry and I said that I did. I wondered if this was an opening made for me at Coghill’s mediation but I hardly felt justified in taking it that way . . .

  Friday 29 June: A glorious day and the best we have had yet. After breakfast I sat in the garden and tried to go on with ‘Dymer’: I was soon displeased with the colloquial dialogue and judged the Kirkian figure both beyond me and unnecessary—I must beware of too much philosophy . . .

  I turned along Cowley Road and went on beyond Garsington to a turn to Cuddesdon. By the roadside I met a man hedging who had a white beard and a scarlet face. He shouted out to me ‘It’s a warm day sir!’ and burst into roars of laughter. I said yes, but we wanted rain. He said ‘That we do sir!’ and went off into huge guffaws again. It did one good to look at him . . .

  Saturday 30 June: I dreamed several people in the English School, of whom Martley was the most conspicuous, including myself, had done very badly in the exam and been imprisoned in a kind of barracks as a punishment. The dream was chiefly occupied by my adventures in a strange town into which I got leave to go for a few hours.

  After breakfast I cleared out all the furniture from the dining room and sand papered the varnish off the floor preparatory to staining . . . Just as I was finishing D’s room I was brought down in a great fright by a noise in the garden and found that D had had a bad fall in the garden: having tripped over some bundles of pea stakes. Providentially she had not hurt her ankle. She was badly shaken and I begged her to stop gardening—uselessly of course. I then went back and finished my staining. After that I had the garden to water. Supper about 10.45. I was very tired and had a bad headache.

  Today came a very decent letter from my father discussing the future and offering to keep me here some years longer if I thought it advisable.

  The post-war ‘bulge’ of men reading for degrees and looking for jobs was at its worst, and Lewis had already failed to secure a Fellowship in Philosophy at two colleges. He was now facing the prospect that even with a Double First in Classics and a possible First in English it might be some time before a Fellowship fell vacant. Because of this, his tutor, F. P. Wilson, suggested that he work towards a post-graduate degree. Albert offered to extend his son’s allowance for some time longer, and Jack wrote to him on 1 July explaining his position:

  ‘The number of other hungry suitors with qualifications equal to mine, tho’ not very large, is large enough to put up a well filled “field” for every event: and the number of vacancies depends, as in other spheres, on all sorts of accidents.

  ‘What it comes to is that there is a pretty healthy chance here which would, on the whole, be increased by a few years more residence in which I should have time to make myself more known and to take some research degree such as B.Litt. or Doc. Phil. and which would be, perhaps, indefinitely or permanently lost if I now left. On the other hand, even apart from the financial point of view, I very keenly realise the dangers of hanging on too long for what might not come in the end. Speaking, for the moment, purely for myself, I should be inclined to put three years as a suitable term for waiting before beating a retreat,’ Letters of C. S. Lewis (Revised Edition), p. 185.

  Tuesday 3 July: Woke very tired this morning and with some headache: a cool grey day. There was no job to be found for me after breakfast so I sat in the garden hoping to get over my tiredness. This of course was the worst thing I could do, and I tried to write ‘Dymer’ and read Wordsworth equally in vain. I managed however to read the next story in Rubezahl. I find German, particularly in fairy tales, a language saturated with romance—it smells good . . .

  Read a little more Ovid in the evening and am now in the middle of Orpheus’ song. I feel that Ovid’s powers are much greater than he shows: if only he had bucked up and kept clear of dirt and rhetoric and stuck to the pure fabling at which he is unsurpassed: he is a literary waster.

  Wednesday 4 July: I spent most of the morning with D seeing to the stair carpet. We were chiefly concerned with the mathematical problem of making a right angled corner in a straight strip of carpet. D managed it in the end by the help of a model in folded paper—very cunningly I thought. Later on I gave first coatings to the worst parts of the stairs.

  After lunch I biked to town via Divinity Road and Cowley Road in order to change a cheque at Robertson’s. As I came down past Warneford Road I thought how quickly those parts had changed . . . I wondered that they had not been more unpleasant to live in than they were—for indeed they looked very squalid today.

  (This set me thinking of all our different homes, and most of them vile, since 1919. They were, (1) Miss Featherstone’s at 28 Warneford Rd. when I first came up and was living in College. That was during the very cold winter when Miss Drew was coming to teach Maureen.

  (2) Mrs Adam’s, Invermore, a very jolly little house, but very small and with no bathroom. We did a lot of gardening there that summer. There Rob came to stay with us in a very bad state of nerves, contemplating suicide, and used to keep D up nearly all night talking. Arthur also came and got ill and that was the first time he and D met. There I wrote and destroyed over seven hundred lines of a poem on Medea.

  (3) Mrs Morris’s in [76] Windmill Road where we had two rooms and I slept on a sofa. The Morris’s had been in India—he was an engine driver. She was mad I think, and gave us an account of the centaur (she didn’t call it centaur of course) ‘with the most beautiful face you ever saw’ that came begging round her bungalow in India.

  (4) Rooms (called a flat) at Mrs Jeffrey’s in [58] Windmill Road, where we were bullied and slandered and abused and so haunted by that butcher woman with her stone coloured funny face that D and I dreamed of her for months afterwards. Here Cranny came to see us first and here I first read The Prelude. Just before I left this I took Mods.

  (5) Then came one month at Old Cleeve in a cottage smothered in flowers, where I walked every day on the big moors and this was the happiest four weeks of my life. There I wrote the blank verse version of ‘Nimue’.

  (6) Courtfield Cottage where we had rooms with that filthy whore Mrs Marshall and her daughter got diphtheria.63

  (7) Lindon Cottage on the other side of Headington where we were very happy for a time.

  (8) Old Cleeve were we had rooms with the Hobbs. It was a cold summer and D had a very miserable time there while I was ‘doing time’ in Ireland.

  (9) Miss Featherstone’s again where we remained until the beginning of this diary.) . . .

  Thursday 5 July: A glorious summer day. In the morning I read Rubezahl in the garden. A Miss Bone, a possible P.G., had written to say she would come and see D this evening so our afternoon was spent in clearing out the yellow room and putting it to rights—hanging pictures and curtains, airing blankets and the like. We had tea late, after I had had a cold bath and changed.

  Later on Jenkin appeared. He has been up again since Saturday but protested that he had not had a moment to come to Headington. Our talk was not very exciting. He said that the authorities here loved nothing better than to keep young men who were promising hanging on for research degrees and so forth all their life, if possible, with vague promises of work in the future, as this secured a supply of theses which kept up an appearance of activity in the outer world . . .

  Afterwards D and I started hanging photos over Paddy’s desk . . .

  Saturday 7 July: Another exquisite day: best of all there had been a little rain very early in the morning, when I was awake for a few minutes and there was a delicious cool and freshness reminding one of the appropriate passage
in The Ancient Mariner . . .

  I went in by bus . . . to the Station where I met Harwood. He is working on a temporary job connected with the British Empire Exhibition and says that he is becoming the complete business man. He was in excellent form. Our easy wandering conversation and our perfect satisfaction in it was a glorious contrast to the disappointment of my recent meetings with Baker. We walked to Parson’s Pleasure to bathe. It was the first time I have been there this year. They had finished mowing in the meadows beyond the water: all was cool and green and lovely beyond anything. We had a glorious bathe and then lay on the grass talking of a hundred things till we got hot and had to bathe again.

  After a long time we came away and back to the Union where he had left his suitcase and thence bussed up to Headington. D and Maureen had of course got home before us and we all had tea on the lawn.

  Afterwards Harwood and I lay under the trees and talked. He told me of his new philosopher, Rudolf Steiner, who has ‘made the burden roll from his back’. Steiner seems to be a sort of panpsychist, with a vein of posing superstition, and I was very much disappointed to hear that both Harwood and Barfield were impressed by him. The comfort they got from him (apart from the sugar plum of promised immortality, which is really the bait with which he has caught Harwood) seemed something I could get much better without him.

  I argued that the ‘spiritual forces’ which Steiner found everywhere were either shamelessly mythological people or else no-one-knows-what. Harwood said this was nonsense and that he understood perfectly what he meant by a spiritual force. I also protested that Pagan animism was an anthropomorphic failure of imagination and that we should prefer a knowledge of the real unhuman life which is in the trees etc. He accused me of a materialistic way of thinking when I said that the similarity of all languages probably depended on the similarity of all throats.

  The best thing about Steiner seems to be the Goetheanum which he has built up in the Alps: Harwood described to me its use of the qualities of concrete which everyone else has treated in imitation of stone till Steiner has realised its plasticity and made it flow. Unfortunately the building (which must have been very wonderful) has been burned by the Catholics . . .