All My Road Before Me

by C. S. Lewis

  We had a bread and cheese lunch as we shall always do now on Saturday. Poor D still worried with indigestion but less than yesterday. Jenkin arrived and he and I went for a walk to the copse this side of Stowe Woods. Taking example from the autumn sky we fell into a conversation on the difficulty of describing all save the most blatant and obvious sky effects. We also talked of ‘homeliness’ in landscape, which he hardly appreciates.

  Home to tea and afterwards D went out alone: not before an accident in the kitchen—the clothes horse falling into the soup pot. Jenkin helped me to clean the stove while D mopped up the floor. D came back rather late after Jenkin had gone, having had a nasty fall in the dark. She was covered with mud and a little hurt, but there seems no harm done. She said (and I agreed with her) that Jenkin had been rather dull today.

  This evening we sat in the dining room. I continued reading The Ring and the Book wh. I began in Ireland—I am now at Pompilia’s monologue. The whole poem is strangely above Browning’s other work and contains, I am certain, some of the very greatest poetry I have ever read. The Prologue and ‘Caponsacchi’ are the best books so far . . .

  Sunday 14 October: . . . Before lunch I started gilding an old frame for a reproduction of Leyden’s portrait of a young man, which we have cut out of the Queen. From the same source we have already cut out and framed a ‘Gentleman’ by Vandyke and a ‘Head of a Poet’ by Palma Vecchio.

  After lunch I went on with the job for half an hour or so and then helped D to give Pat a bath—my first experience of dog bathing, and a very memorable one. Miss Baker came for tea and Maureen came downstairs for the first time and lay on the drawing room sofa. After tea, when I had removed the things (Ada being out) I went back to my picture framing and finished the job . . .

  Tuesday 16 October: A note from Stevenson this morning saying that the Master would see me at 9.30. I bussed in after a very hasty breakfast. I found that the new Master, Sadler, is living in poor Emmet’s old rooms in the Radcliffe Tower. Allen was with him when I arrived and I was shown on to his dining room where I waited for a few moments. When I came back he greeted me very kindly indeed, congratulating me on my past career and adding ‘We will do whatever we can for you.’ He is a short, clean shaven, white headed man, honest looking I think, and very easy in his manners: also very direct and economical in his speech. I was very well impressed with him.

  He asked me if I wanted journalism as a career. I said that I did not: [he] said he thought I was wise: but that reviewing etc was a good thing as it put one in touch with many important people. He said that at my age ‘he had got a great deal out of it’: He asked me what paper I would prefer: this rather nonplussed me and I said that I had been wishing rather than willing in the matter and made no plans. He gave me Garrod’s Wordsworth (which I have been wanting to read for some time) and asked me to bring him a trial review of it. He would then talk it over with me and see which paper I was nearest the ‘tang’ of.

  After leaving him I went to see Stevenson and thank him for opening the thing. We had about ten minutes’ talk. He exclaimed ‘I don’t mind telling you that it will be a scandal if this College or some College doesn’t give you a fellowship soon.’ We compared notes over examining for the Higher Oxford [Certificate]. He ended up by saying that he was now going to give a Pass Mods. lecture and hadn’t thought a word about it yet. I felt like adding, from my recollections of his style, ‘I can quite believe it.’ . . .

  In the drawing room I began Garrod’s book and read it for most of the afternoon and evening. It seems pretty good . . .

  Wednesday 17 October: Rather warmer today. After breakfast I went to my own room and got to work on a first draft of Garrod’s book. I continued the same after lunch and by four o’clock had produced what I think will have to do . . . I took up Herodotus and read a good deal of the first book with much enjoyment. I find that the words whose English I wrote in the margin in 1920 (when first reading Herodotus) are still those I don’t know! . . .

  Thursday 18 October: After breakfast I looked over my review again and wrote up my diary and so into town where I went to see the Master. He read the review and pronounced it ‘much to the point’ and really suitable for any of the papers he had mentioned. He advised me to see Gordon about the Times Literary Supplement: in the meantime I was to get my review typed and he would send it, with a personal letter, to five editors. He agreed with my main view over Garrod. He asked me about my previous education and when I told him of Kirk exclaimed ‘Oh, then you are the Lockian private pupil! Now that’s very interesting.’ He advised me to read Locke’s On Education (I had already done so at Grendon in 1921) and Rousseau’s Emile in the light of my own experience. I left him, took Locke from the College library, did some shopping and came home after leaving the review to be typed in Cornmarket . . .

  Friday 19 October: Soon after breakfast I went into town and taxed the typists office with not having sent my MS to Univ. as was promised but they insisted that they had. I went round to College and there found to my relief that it had, after all, come yesterday and the Master had already taken it to his own room . . .

  I had an early tea and caught the 4.30 to Paddington, Harwood having invited me up for the week end. The country about the Chilterns where it is most wooded was far gone in autumn colours and was very delightful. Reaching Paddington I came by Metro to Victoria and there waited in a downpour of rain, until, in despair of the bus, I took a taxi and so came to 2 Lupus St., Pimlico, S.W.1.

  It was very good to see Harwood again. The flat which he shares with Beckett is very nice and furnished, tho’ sparsely, with great taste and comfort. Harwood was cooking potatoes when I arrived and told me there would be a guest for dinner—Miss Olivier, one of his folk dancing friends whose father was formerly Governor of Jamaica.

  The lady when she arrived proved very pleasant. About 40 I should imagine, good looking, and well able to talk.74 After dinner (which was eaten in the white kitchen) we had coffee in the study and read Comus together—each taking a part. Miss Olivier (Harwood addresses her as Ariel) reads well: Harwood himself not so well. They made me Comus. When this was done we had some tea and talked—mainly about Steiner, both the others being disciples.

  He and I then accompanied her home: our route lay mostly along the Embankment. The rain had stopped: on the far side of the river we saw the tree tops of Battersea Park. We became very merry. On the return journey I told Harwood how much I liked his friend: he said ‘I am very fond of her.’ We got back at 12.45 and so to bed. Beckett’s bed in which I slept was very luxurious, but I was wakeful for some time.

  Saturday 20 October: Was called by Harwood and we breakfasted at 8.45. A beautiful morning and as we are above the surrounding houses it has the effect of being on a mountain top—I never before realised the beauty of garret landscapes. After breakfast Harwood went out to his ‘breadwinning’.

  I went by bus to Hyde Park corner and walked through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens to Arthur’s studio at 119 Westbourne Terrace. Arthur was away for the week end. Having walked and bussed back, I began to read Barfield’s faery tale ‘The Silver Trumpet’ in which with prodigality he squirts out the most suggestive ideas, the loveliest pictures, and the raciest new coined words in wonderful succession. Nothing in its kind can be imagined better.75

  Harwood returned and after lunch and a smoke we went for a walk. He took me along the embankment to Westminster, our main objective being Rodin’s group of the Burghers of Calais. The individual figures are very strong but we agreed that it is not much of a group. We were forced to walk through the Houses of Parliament in order to reach Westminster Hall—as Harwood said ‘we had sugar cake shoved down our throats before we were allowed to eat our honest bread and butter’. The Hall was very like my recollection of it and as ‘cool, sweet, sudden’ as you could ask for.

  We walked on and leaned over Westminster Bridge a long while looking at the County Hall—by a new architect in almost a new style. We crossed and invest
igated it closer. It is the finest modern building I have seen and, as I said, almost realises one’s Babylonian dream. We also attached ourselves to a party that was being guided through it: the interior is very nearly as good—specially the courtyard. On the front to the river there is a monster of a new kind—all arms wh. gave me an idea for Dymer’s son.

  We had tea and so home to the flat. After an early supper we set out to wait in the pit queue for Hassan: but we found that there was no possibility of getting in and went instead to Munro’s At Mrs Bean’s which had been recommended to him by Barfield. It turned out to be the worst play we had ever seen and we were amazed at Barfield. We had beer after the first act. Harwood said ‘We have tried it sober and we have tried it drunk but it’s no use.’ I said ‘like the Persians in Herodotus’. We walked home, probably deriving as much pleasure from damning it as we would have had from the recollection of a good play. Then a glass of whiskey and a chat and to bed.

  Sunday 21 October: Began reading Butler’s Erewhon in bed this morning. After breakfast wh. we had v. late, we set out for a walk. We took the Metropolitan to Richmond, in the streets of which we were held up by rain for ten minutes. How delightful all expeditions are with people who don’t mind rain! We then went into Richmond Park. I was quite unprepared for it. There was hardly anyone to be seen. In a few minutes we were in an absolutely deserted open rolling country full of bracken, standing pools and all kinds of woods and groves under a splendid grey autumn sky. We had as good a walk as ever I have had, coming down at about 2 o’clock into Kingston on Thames. Here we were overtaken by sharp rain and finding all the hotels shut were reduced to a very hasty lunch for ten pence each in ‘a low eating house’—a phrase I never really understood before.

  After lunch we walked into Hampton Court Park. This was at first less beautiful than the other: then gradually we came to the end of a very long sheet of water with huge trees in autumn colouring on each side and Wren’s ‘back’ of Hampton Court just visible at the end. At the same moment the sun broke out: the grass (very level) and the dead leaves on it, the trees, the swans, and one little stag that did not run away, took on glorious colours. We were alone: the silence was intense. It was all just like one of those luminous dreams I have so seldom dreamed. We walked up the whole length of the water to the fine old ironwork gates—still not a soul about and into the Palace gardens. This approach will be a great memory to me

  The diary breaks off here, the last sentence uncompleted. Lewis supplied the following ‘Note’, but did not resume his diary until 1 January 1924.

  NOTE

  My last diary, after fluttering for some time on a broken wing, came to an end on 21 October 1923 when I was with Harwood at his flat in Pimlico. On that Sunday evening he read and condemned in no measured terms the two new cantos of ‘Dymer’ (VI and VII) which I had brought to show him. After discussion I largely agreed with him and decided to cut them out: in spite of the work I had put into them I felt surprisingly little disappointment at giving them up. I suppose that in the expulsion of anything bad from the mental system there is always pleasure.

  Sometime after my visit to Harwood I cycled to Long Crendon to spend a night at Barfield’s cottage there, thus meeting his wife and mother in law for the first time. His wife is plain, and undistinguished in manner—which I take for a good sign in a marriage so unequal in age. She is very quiet, a little shy, I think: ‘homely’ both in the good and the bad sense of the word. I like her, and I think I should like her more, the more I saw of her. His mother in law, Mrs Dewey [Douie], is a ‘character part’: a very caustic old Scotch lady.

  Barfield has, if anything, improved by marriage. I enjoyed my little stay greatly. We talked a great deal, about Steiner, the Douglas Scheme, and the changes we had gone through even in the short time we had known each other.

  He made one excellent remark. ‘I am not bored,’ he said. ‘I still have always a waiting list of things to do, even if it’s only walking to the bottom of the garden to see how a bud is coming on.’ He saw me as far as Stanton St John on the way back. While I was with him I saw several of his new poems, some of which are very fine. He approved of ‘Dymer’ V and tolerated my new version of VI.

  I saw little of Jenkin this term. D began to be very poorly about this time and started a course of medicines for indigestion at the advice of Dr McCay. The latter was often here doctoring Maureen’s mysteriously damaged ankle: he soon proved himself a fool, promising her that it would be all right next week and changing his promises often.

  Harwood came down for a very jolly week end, during which we played Boys’ Names, walked, talked and laughed, keeping entirely free from shop. D and Maureen both like him very much, and indeed, in many ways, he is an ideal companion. It was during this stay that he met Jenkin again and they became friends—Jenkin having been rather repelled by his manner when they met before.

  Later on Barfield came to stay for one night. He and I talked till three o’clock: one of the most satisfying conversations I have ever had. Although the subject of his marriage was naturally never mentioned, a lot was understood and we each saw that the other felt the same way about women and the home life and the unimportance of all the things that are advertised in common literature. He agreed that, as I said, ‘either women or men are mad’: he said we could see the woman’s point of view absolutely at times—as if we had never had any other—and this was a sort of relief.

  He has completely lost his materialism and ‘the night sky is no longer horrible’. I read to him in my diary the description of the talk I had with him in Wadham gardens when he was still in pessimism, and we enjoyed it. Although he agreed with several Bergsonianisms of mine (specially that ‘the materiality is the intelligibility’) he has not read Bergson. He was surprised that I shared most of his views on the nature of thought.

  It was shortly before this that I read Flecker’s Hassan. It made a great impression on me and I believe it is really a great work. Carritt (whom I met at the Martlets shortly after) thinks that its dwelling on physical pain puts it as much outside literature as is pornography in another: that it works on the nervous system rather than the imagination. I find this hard to answer: but I am almost sure he is wrong. At that same meeting of the Martlets Sadler read an excellent paper on Day, the author of Sandford and Merton.

  Soon after this I had to leave—at an unusually early date in order to conform with W’s time of leave.76 The usual wretchedness of going away was increased by D’s state of health: and to crown all, Maureen had to be sent to Bristol during my absence to have her foot properly seen to by Rob. Poor D, who was thus left alone had a dreadful time, and admits now that she was at times afraid it was going to be a gastric ulcer. Thank heavens she seems better now. My three weeks in Ireland, tho’ improved by W’s presence, were as usual three weeks too long. I had a good deal of toothache.

  On the return journey W and I stopped for a night in town. For the first time since we were children we visited the Zoo with great gusto: but the cages are too small, and it is cruel—specially for animals like foxes, wolves, dingoes and jackals. We also went to see a musical comedy called Katherine, wh. was very bad. We had meant to go to Hassan, but after reading it W decided that it would be too harrowing for his feelings.

  While I was in Ireland I read Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Masefield’s Daffodil Fields, J. Stephen’s new book Deirdre and Henry James’ Roderick Hudson.

  1924

  Jack Lewis was reading the works of Henry More (1614–87), the Cambridge Platonist, with the thought of writing about him for a D.Phil. degree. Despite the fact that Lewis was not a Christian, he had chosen Henry More because of his own interest in ethics. His belief in the importance of morals and ethics was very strong and in March he read a paper to the Philosophical Society called ‘The Promethean Fallacy in Ethics’. The scholarship from University College had run out, but his father promised to keep him in Oxford while he looked for a fellowship. He failed to get either of those he applied
for at St John’s College and Trinity College, and he continued to try and make ends meet by correcting essays for the School Certificate. In the spring University College offered Jack the chance to take over the tutorials and lectures of E. F. Carritt while he was spending a year at the University of Michigan. For this he was offered a salary of £ 200 a year, and in October he began tutorials and a series of lectures entitled ‘The Good: Its Position Among the Values’. Jack visited Warnie at the army base in Colchester during July, and they travelled to Belfast together in Warnie’s motorcycle to spend Christmas with their father.

  Tuesday 1 January: . . . After breakfast I bought a new MS book at Hewitt’s and settled down to read through the philosophical works of Henry More and to make an abstract of them. I spent the morning on the preface general and also wrote into my book the detail of the title page . . .

  Wednesday 2 January: I worked all morning on More’s Antidote to Atheism,1 reading and abstracting the first two books, which are very curious . . . After tea I went on with the third book of the Antidote.

  Shortly before supper time I went out to pay our Income Tax and house dues (the former is fortunately deducted from our rent by Raymond) to the local ‘publican’, old Mattock, who lives in a little cottage opposite the ‘Brittania’—a cheerful, respectful old body . . .

  Friday 4 January: . . . After breakfast I sat down to my work and finished Enthusiasmus and began More’s Latin correspondence with Descartes . . . I did various jobs and went to the Union where I looked at Campagnac’s Cambridge Platonists and decided it wd. be no use to me. I brought away Seth’s English Philosophers and came home by bus. It was a typical Oxford evening of frost and fog. After tea I went on with the Cartesian letters. The muddiness of poor old More’s mind becomes very striking when you see him at close quarters with a real thinker like Descartes. After supper I went on working. My throat was so sore that I did not read out to D . . .