All My Road Before Me

by C. S. Lewis

  After a stiff climb over spongy, rabbitty grass with grey stone showing through here and there, I reached the castle. Its appearance and position are more like a boy’s dream of a mediaeval castle than anything I have ever seen. After I had walked all over the shaved turf of the courtyard and been into the roofless keep and watched the clouds hurrying across the circle of open sky at the top, I came out into the wind again and continued my walk on a path which runs along the very top of this long hill, so that I had a good view of the valleys on each side . . .

  Thence by road to my left till I struck the coast and began coming homewards across fields that sloped down through gorse to the water’s edge. In a field inhabited by two horses and a donkey (they all moved together at intervals, carefully synchronising movements) I ran down nearly to the rocks and sat down for a moment amid the gorse. I was out of the wind. The sun grew hot. A big tramp was anchored just below me. I have seldom had a better moment . . .

  Friday 28 March: My cough was so bad this morning and my temperature so far below normal that I took a day in bed. I ate enormous meals, read a good deal in an English translation of Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit—wh. I began to read in the original with Kirk a long time ago. It was rather charming. I also read Thoreau’s essay on Walking and his really noble speeches on John Brown: but I can’t quite say what it is that is wrong with all that Bostonese set. I tried the White Doe of Rylstone and found the first canto really delightful, the second tolerable and the next unreadable.

  In the evening I collapsed into George Moore’s Confessions of a Young Man. It may have merits of style to which I am insensible. In matter it is just the idea which any eightyish, Frenchified prig of an undergraduate would like to have of himself. In fact one cannot read it impersonally. I have met so many people exactly like George Moore and they bore and irritate me in life or in ‘confessions’ equally. In other words the book produced just that effect wh. the author wanted it to have on people like me. But it doesn’t follow that the laugh is on his side.

  Saturday 29 March: . . . In the morning I did odd jobs and then, at D’s suggestion, that it would please Edie, I walked along to the church to look at the Doc’s grave. It is of course a kind of office to the dead which I would never pay to anyone of my own free will—‘wherefore all this wormy circumstance?’ It was a morning of bright sunlight and wind. The church between its two cliff hills is certainly beautiful: though the glaring ugliness of the grave stones—the crosses, the scrolls, and the female angels—rather spoils it.

  Home and to lunch. Afterwards Maureen and I walked up past the post office and along a really delightful road to Strawberry Hill . . . In the little village at the bottom Maureen and Pat left me and I went on alone up the wooded side of the next hill. After a delightful ascent through thick and steep woods I came out on to a level and rabbitty place dotted with gorse and clusters of trees, with a long green path on the ridge of the hill. I followed this. On my left lay the long valley which divided me from Walton Castle and its beautiful roll of Downs: on my right a flat plain stretching out to low, but peaked, blue hills a long way off. I passed a horse that whinnied at me and rolled on its back . . .

  Sunday 30 March: . . . I . . . walked out along Highdale Road past Strawberry Hill and from East Clevedon up the Court Hill. Here I spent a long time wandering in and out of the woods all round this end of the hill. The sun came out when I was at the top: the sun broke out and suddenly changed the whole landscape—the pointed tree tops of the further woods jutting out like needles where they had been flat a moment before. I became every minute more enamoured of this country. The steepness of the slopes on which I scrambled, the trees hiding the ground below me, and the suddenness of my changing views of the valleys all produced, in little space, a real mountain feeling. Sed omnia nisi vigilaveris in venerem abitura.23

  Home for a late tea and afterwards all three of us to call on Miss Rimington whom Mary calls ‘Dogs’—a pleasant old lady with seven cats who all have biblical names as Peter, Moses and the like. We found her in a room overlooking the sea from which we watched a fine, tho’ frosty sunset. We came home by a delightful path above the sea, all enjoying it, and had a kingly supper of sausages, fried tomatoes and chips. In the evening I worked on ‘Dymer’.

  Tuesday 1 April: . . . After my jobs I finished fair copying the canto which will stand last in ‘Dymer’ when he is finished and pleased myself greatly over it.

  I then began David Copperfield. I read part of it at Wynyard about 1910 and I find I remember a good deal. I can remember too how much grimmer the Salem House parts were when I myself was at a school not at all unlike it . . .

  Afterwards I went out alone. I walked up towards the Castle and down between the quarries and across the valley. I climbed the Court Hill range at the place beyond the lodge where I came down the other day and continued along the top by the telegraph posts. Huge clouds kept rolling up from the Bristol direction and I was alternately met by sleety rain and by bursts of brilliant sunshine—during which the grass and moss on the downs assumed a more jewel like glittering green than I ever saw in my life. Once I had to take refuge in a small wood. I reached Cadbury camp wh., as a camp, is not to be compared to the Malvern one. But the landscape from there is wonderful: the Welsh hills (now much closer), the channel, Avonmouth and more hills, and a valley flat as a pancake reaching to the Mendips on my right. The blues and the pale, pale almost yellow greens and the reds were almost unimaginable—and changing every minute with the movement of the clouds.

  I came home along the hills all the way in great delight and, arriving at 10 to 6, found the flat empty and had tea alone. Read David Copperfield till suppertime and after. At suppertime D was called down to speak to a Mrs Clarke who lives in the flat below. We call her and her little daughter the Gollywogs on account of their quite unprecedented coiffure . . .

  Saturday 5 April: By this morning’s post came a letter from Wilkinson giving me some examining work in July—God be praised:24 also the proofs of ‘Joy’ from The Beacon.25 After breakfast I returned the proofs, replied to Wilkinson and wrote to Carritt for a testimonial, and also did my ordinary jobs.

  In the afternoon I walked with Maureen up to Walton Castle and into the wood beyond it where I dawdled about (very little bored considering) while she picked primroses and white violets. There are so few in the woods this year that it seems wanton to take them. We then went down into Walton-in-Gordano and came home by the shore path. It was sunny and very warm out of the wind and we sat down for some time in my lately discovered alcove. After tea the others went to the churchyard: I was glad I did not know in the wood for what purpose these flowers were being picked.

  I walked down into the squalid streets beyond the station to interview the gas people, and to explain that Mary was in America and would pay her bill when she came back in May. D had been afraid that they might suddenly cut off our gas for her sins. Much warmer tonight.

  Sunday 6 April: For the first time since we came there was no wind blowing this morning. The channel was glassy smooth, tapering away into mist with no horizon line: and there was sunlight everywhere tho’ slightly blunted by mist, and promising a warm day.

  After usual jobs (i.e. ‘run’ with Pat before breakfast, fetching earth for the cats, cleaning the bath and cleaning potatoes) I sat in the front room. I did a few minutes’ work on a new Canto VII of ‘Dymer’ and looked into Mrs Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. They looked very good and I felt not the slightest inclination to read one of them to the end. Spent the rest of the morning over The Sunday Times and David Copperfield. The Dora parts are odious . . .

  D had said at lunchtime ‘Do let’s have tea in good time today’ and as I wished particularly, and have wished all along, to get her out earlier before the sunlight is gone, I cut my walk short and was home soon after four. D however was writing letters when I arrived and we did not have tea for over an hour. Afterwards we all went out and D dropped in to say a few words to Miss Rimington.
Maureen, Pat and I sat on the wooded bank opposite for about half an hour until the sun had set and it had grown chilly. When D at last reappeared I discovered that she and ‘Dogs’ had been talking on that perennial subject, the selfishness of Grace and Rob and the sufferings of Edie . . .

  Tuesday 8 April: A windy morning. After fetching clay for the cats and fetching a pail of salt water for Maureen’s foot from the shore—there are forty steps to this flat—I went to Rowles the coal merchant and finding that they cd. not send today, carried home the third part of a hundred-weight on my back. D had decided to go into Bristol today, so we had lunch almost as soon as I had finished coal heaving. Maureen says I remind her of Christian with his burden in Bunyan. She and D departed after lunch and I washed up . . .

  I had some tea and set to work on ‘Dymer’ and pleased myself fairly well, tho’ I now think I was writing rubbish. I had finished David Copperfield earlier in the day. I am rather glad to be quit of it. I think the bad parts outweigh the good. The set funniness of Micawber etc. is very mechanical and really I think fit only for children. The really good parts are the semi-funny little trivialities and the town scenery—but the storm is good. What a pity that it is but the overture to such claptrap!

  I read some of Alice Meynell’s essays—v. good indeed—and then started to put up curtains in the kitchen. The others came back before I had finished. A flat is the worst place to be alone in and our cheerful supper and evening was a pleasant contrast.

  Wednesday 9 April: . . . It was a day of bright sunshine alternating with sleety showers. I walked by road to Walton-in-Gordano and up the hill beyond it. I was then at once in unknown country and owing to the curve of the hill could not see far ahead. I was under as bright a sky of blue and white as I have ever seen. On my right hand I saw a succession of ridges like waves—their intervening valleys being invisible—getting bluer as they receded to the horizon and giving a feeling of enormous space.

  Once again I was impressed with the almost dreamlike brightness of the landscape—the transparent arsenic green of the grass, the bright red of the clay. My little circle of hilltop horizon advanced as I moved and the scattered beginning of a wood began to come up above it. I passed through the outskirts into a little red path with the trees very close on each side—winding every minute so that I could never tell what I was coming to. The intense silence (once broken by a jay) increased my excitement. The path gradually led me to my left and out of the wood across a field on to the Portishead Road.

  Here I saw a splendid sight. The nearer half of the channel was in brilliant sunshine and in it lay a big tramp steamer with all its shadows very sharply picked out. About a mile beyond it was a huge dust coloured cloud with very ragged edges, in the very act of stumbling face forward into the water: and behind it the Welsh coast, miraculously near, with woods and the divisions of fields visible as never before. The wind was already tearing round me and the sand banks in mid channel had a white cud of foam round them.

  I walked along the Portishead Rd. till I found another running inland to my right, up which I turned. As I got over the crest of the hill I had a sudden view of the hills and valleys ahead, all chaotic from this new angle—and suggesting much bigger valleys between them than there actually are.

  By now the first scudding rain was going past me. Presently I came to a notice ‘To the White Harte Inn’ and just here I found a ruined cottage where I took shelter. There was no roof left. One gable was thickly overgrown with ivy and there were brambles in the opposite corner. I got a very comfortable seat in the fireplace. The rain turned to snow. The whole thing—the rushing wind, the view of an old orchard framed in one of the empty windows, the ducks at the bottom of the orchard, and the big flakes of snow drifting over my feet while I sat in the greatest comfort—all might have been arranged to suit my taste down to the smallest detail. The snow melted as soon as it fell. After about a quarter of an hour the sun came out as bright as ever.

  The various delights of my walk home—through Weston-in-Gordano, up hill to the same wood I started in and home by the sea path, are too long to describe. All was as good as can be anywhere or any time: and for the whole afternoon I was soaked in mere seeing and free from all thought and wish . . .

  Thursday 10 April: Jobs and diary writing in the morning. I read through ‘Dymer’ VIII26 and was more satisfied than when I wrote it . . .

  Edie was down today and went with D and Maureen to the churchyard. She had not time to come in for tea—tho’ I saw them all talking at the door for a space that would have done me for tea. D and Maureen went out again after tea.

  I sat in the front room working at ‘Dymer’ VII—rather more successfully than before but not really well. I have always assumed that I could go back to my romantic Avalon-Hesperides-Western business whenever I wanted. Now that I need it I find it difficult . . .

  Friday 11 April: . . . Had a walk on the hill beyond Walton. In the wood full of sorrel, where I met a cock pheasant, I had a wonderful moment of indefinable memories. I began Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil.

  Saturday 12 April: Jobs in the morning. After lunch I set in and made a fresh start on ‘Dymer’ VII—this time much more hopefully. There was rain and a wonderful stormy sky all day . . .

  More Nietzsche. So far there is nothing new about it—just what the ordinary egoist has always believed and acted on. I had a dream last night. I went out with W and saw a moon about the size of a cathedral rolling rapidly along the sky. Tho’ shining intensely, it cast no light on the landscape which remained a perfect black blank, except for the silhouettes that came up in succession against the moving moon. There were ruins, spars of rock and crosses. We were climbing among pits and broken things. I was given to understand that it was the end of the world and there was a great sense of sublimity and awe about it all.

  Sunday 13 April: Today the house was turned upside down in the morning to prepare for the arrival of Ruth and Willie. After lunch I went out with Pat and got soaked with rain, tho’ sheltering for a long time in a delightful cave on the shore. Home and found the guests already here. The rest of the day is a nightmare of greasy washing up, never ceasing voices, wet clothes, headache, housemaid’s jobs, and intense heat. Got ‘down to it’ on the sofa at about quarter past two—cold and tired. Poor D, this is her ‘holiday’! Willie has many sterling qualities. His talk is of bullocks and bishops.

  Monday 14 April: Woke up feeling as if I had been on a debauch for a week. Washed up after breakfast and went down to the coal merchant expecting to have to carry coal home. Luckily they agreed to send today. Home and made up my diary. Lunch very late, and I washed up after it and after tea wh. followed immediately. The guests departed after it. V. tired all evening.

  Wednesday 16 April: The others went up to Bristol by an early bus. I filled my claybox, took Pat for a run, carried the blankets back to Miss Rimington, did shopping, cleaned the bath, washed up the breakfast things and got to my writing at about quarter past twelve. I got on rather better, but as soon as I reach the dialogue part the old difficulty crops up—a little hard irreducible pellet of connecting narrative that must somehow be made into an end in itself.

  Lunched about two, fed the animals, wrote a little more and walked out at 3.30 along the shore with Pat, finding many soaking machines and dawdling so that I did not reach home till 6.15. I began Erewhon which is very good fun.

  Friday 18 April: On this day W arrived from Colchester by motor bike, having lain the night at Oxford. I had proposed to go and meet him at Bristol, but as it was Good Friday there was no means of going there. This I discovered on the Thursday and sent him a card telling him to pick me up between two and four o’clock at Clapton-in-Gordano.

  I set out shortly after breakfast to walk to this rendezvous. It was a glorious glittering day and I never felt better in my life. I walked to East Clevedon and up through the woods on Court Hill, thence along the top to Cadbury Camp where I ate an apple and lay for a smoke on the dyke of the camp. The walk
down into Clapton was lovely beyond expectation: through very young fir plantations into a landscape even more shining than all the others I have seen here.

  At the solitary pub of Clapton I ate my sandwiches and had a pint of beer, and tho’ I was not very long there the conversation of the villagers included one infanticide and one indecent assault.

  I waited for W. in the village for two hours—very little bored, for it was quite a satisfying place. It consists of one deep cut lane with primros’d banks and a stream at the side, a few cottages, a walled rectory with a castellated gate house, and a church up on a little hill. It was here that I found W at last, seated under a tree. He had gone as far as East Clevedon before thinking to look for Clapton and then come back: thus entering the village from the home end, not the Bristol end where I naturally looked for him. He is fatter than ever before. We had tea in the village and I came home in the sidecar.

  Saturday-Saturday 19–26 April: W’s visit was on the whole a pleasant time: tho’ there are always little discomforts when anyone but ourselves is in the house. Maureen left on Saturday to stay with Valerie Evans at Chipping Norton. The manner of our life was this. In the morning I did my usual jobs and shopping if necessary, and then walked out with W and Pat, usually along the coast, stopping to soak in a cove and stopping for beer at the Pier Hotel on the return journey. They keep there one of the best beers I have ever drunk.

  In the afternoon W generally read: I often went out to get something, or else read and wrote. After tea all three of us went for a most excellent ride in divine weather. We rode through Yatton and Wrington into the Mendips, passing within sight of D’s well beloved Winscombe—a steeple on a hillside seen for a moment in the heart of a beautiful long ridged wooded crooked country. After that we ran through a small gorge out on to the barer southern slope of the Mendips and down into the narrow little streets and beetling houses of Axbridge—glory! what a town and how placed!