All My Road Before Me

by C. S. Lewis

  In the evening we were all in the kitchen where a couple of new visitors—a young man and his wife—were sitting. The young man said of something that it couldn’t be because it wasn’t useful. ‘Ha,’ said I, half joking, ‘that might lead to an interesting discussion.’ Greatly to my surprise it did. He is a designer of furniture, well primed with Morris and Ruskin and a worthy person. I don’t know which of us was more surprised to find that the other knew of such writers. We had a long and lively discussion which soon cleared the room. After we’d been at it for an hour and a half and were just settling down to the conflict between the artist and the nature of industrial society (or some dear old stager of the same sort) old Lock suddenly turned up.

  His family, by the by, had been looking for him all day and when I left him at Brendon he had come out after me to say ‘You can say you’m an’t seen me’—a direction I scrupulously obeyed. Finding his own kitchen empty save for two young men in earnest conversation, one each side of the great open peat fire, Lock surprised me (for he is a most retiring man) by drawing up a small chair for himself between us and saying ‘Ah . . . you’re talking politics. I like a bit of politics now.’

  We were a little nonplussed at this totally unexpected demand on our conversational powers, but we managed to rally and bring the talk into the channels that were expected of us. Lock summed up the state of the nation by saying ‘Things were a bit too much one way in the old days and now they’re a bit too much t’other.’ Ada came and said ‘What ever have you been to all day, Dad?’ to which Lock replied with great deliberation ‘One thing and another, you know, one thing and another.’ The whole scene reminded me strongly of Tristram Shandy.

  Saturday 29 August: Poor D had a bad night again with rheumatism; I hope it is not going to become chronic.

  It was a grey morning with a light damp wind but Lock said it would probably clear up and I decided to realise today my old project of walking to Simonsbath. Starting at 10.30 I walked due south up the Badgworthy by the ordinary path. The woods and hills all look different when one passes them in a good stride with a day’s new country before one. Everything was soaking with dew. Once past the Doone Valley I was in unknown waters. The gorge of the Badgworthy became narrower and the hills on either side lower. Heather soon gave place to rough grass and bracken. There was still a tolerable path. The gorge wound about so much that I was almost at once out of sight of all I knew. There was not even a sheep to be seen and an absolute silence until little by little in the narrowing valley the wind began to make itself heard—a curious muffled blustering round the corners.

  In the solitude, the sound of Pat scampering after me sometimes sounded like a whole bunch of sheep or ponies and made me turn round. After I had passed Hoccombe Water (coming in from my right) I was bothered with a dry stone wall a few feet from the water’s edge. The ground seemed better on the river side but every now and then there would be hardly any space between the wall and the water. The path had quite disappeared. When the next tributary came in from the right I left the Badgworthy: after a halt at the meeting of the streams in a flat stony valley. I felt already as if I had been all day in this wilderness. A heron rose quite close to me.

  I continued my journey up this new stream till the ground became so marshy that I was driven up to walk on the hills to my right. I was now on Trout Hill. I presently rejoined the stream and followed it pretty close as my only guide to the point at which I should cross the next ridge. The water soon became red and curdled and stank abominably: dead sheep I think. I now got into a bad bog, right on top of the ridge. It was the usual business: three steps forward and then my stick would sink up to the handle in front of me: then what looked like an obvious path to the right or left which I followed joyfully, only to be stopped in the same way after a few paces. This went on for about half an hour. The bog was covered with beautiful white flowers and red mosses and inhabited with the most enormous slugs I have ever seen. I was dripping with heat. The view behind sticks in my memory more than anything this day: the absolutely bare grey land sloping away from me as far as I could see without any variation except the little creases which were really deep valleys.

  At last I managed to get on to firmer, tho’ still soaking, ground, and began to go downward. I saw two deer about three hundred yards off on my right. A long greyish green valley across my path came into sight, and a road eastward which I rightly took to be the way from Warren Farm to the main road. I was so tired of bogs and turning my ankle on hummocks that I gave up my plan of coming out at Cloven Rocks and made for the road. It was a relief to hear one’s feet on the metal. The remainder of the walk into Simonsbath was rather tedious: tho’ the country—white roads here, not red, and very like northern Ireland—was very pleasant.

  At Simonsbath I lunched in Exmoor Forest Hotel: a miserable house where they keep ‘only wines’ or stone ginger. There were three residents at lunch: one a very well bred looking old man with a dry, peevish voice, whom I took to be mentally deranged. He had a grown-up daughter with him (or a nurse) and the talk ran something like this.

  HE: ‘Look at this ham. It’s all cut in chunks.’

  SHE: ‘Oh do be quiet.’

  HE: ‘Anyone would think they were cutting it for coal heavers (pause) or stonebreakers. It’s . . . it’s . . . wasteful you know, so wasteful.’

  SHE: ‘Well you needn’t worry about that, need you?’

  HE (savagely): ‘Look at that. It’s abominable.’

  SHE: ‘Oh do be quiet. Get on with your lunch. I want to get out.’

  HE: ‘What’s it like out?’

  SHE: ‘It’s lovely.’

  HE: ‘Oh yes, I know it’s lovely. What I want to know is, is it cold or hot?’

  SHE: ‘It was cold when I first went out, but—’

  HE (interrupting): ‘There you are. Cold. I knew it was cold.’

  SHE: ‘I was going to say, if you’d let me, that it was very hot before I got back.’

  HE (after a pause): ‘Look at that. It’s really disgraceful to cut ham like that. It was a nice ham too. Well smoked, well cured and a good fibre. And they go and spoil it all by cutting it in chunks. Chunks. Just look at that!’ (stabbing a piece and holding it up in mid air).

  SHE: ‘Oh do get on.’

  HE: (something inaudible)

  SHE: ‘Well they’ve as much right here as we have. Why can’t you get on and eat your lunch?’

  HE: ‘I’m not going to be hustled over my lunch. Hustled. I won’t let you hustle me in this way.’ (a pause) ‘Why don’t you ask Mrs Ellworthy to let you make some of that nice porridge of yours?’

  SHE: ‘How could I in a hotel?’ (They had a long argument over this.)

  Then HE (almost pathetically): ‘Why don’t you eat some of this salad? It’s beautifully flavoured’ (here his voice broke and he added almost in a whisper) ‘—with cucumber. If it wasn’t for the ham . . .’

  And so they went on. I had a cup of coffee and a rest in the garden and left about 2.30. I came home by the main road across the moors. For the first hour or so the broad white road with its high hedges and glimpses of big fields on interminable but gentle slopes, and a white cottage here and there, supported the illusion of being in Ireland. The roaring of the wind in the crisp beech hedge on my left had a homely feeling.

  After crossing the ‘stripling Exe’ I came on to open moor and everything changed. The sun came out and shone for the rest of the day. The road, unfenced, wound across the heather to the horizon. To left and right the ground dropped into long and many coloured valleys and then rolled away to the sky, ridge after ridge, blue, purple, grey and green. Instinctively I walked faster: and so, after a long halt at Brendon Two Gates and another on Tippacott Ridge, I came home in a dream and only discovered at tea how footsore I was.

  I admit I was annoyed when later on I had to turn out with Maureen and her pony. A day’s walking should never be undertaken unless the evening lounge—the crown of the day—is safe. In other words famil
y life is incompatible with real walking. I began Joseph Conrad’s Chance—one of the very best novels I have read. D seemed much better in the evening.

  Sunday 30 August: Poor D had a worse night again and had to wake me for fresh jars—after hours of miserable wakefulness for her—at five o’clock. After breakfast I walked by road to Rockford and saw the doctor. He gave me a new bottle. There seems very little to be done for a rheumatic attack. Very footsore. D much better during the day. Went on with Chance.

  Monday 31 August: Thank goodness D had a very much better night, probably owing to yesterday’s fine sunshine.

  It was arranged that I should go to Lynton to do some necessary shopping and Maureen decided to accompany me. We set out at 10.30 or so and went by the road over the moor. The first ascent from the Malmsmead lane, between high hedges, was very muggy and hot and I was afraid we were in for a close thundery day, unpropitious for walking.

  As soon as we were on top of the moor we got into fresh breezes and heat and cold kept on alternating with the ups and downs of the country for the rest of the way . . . Through a gate we had a glimpse of fields piled upon hills up to some peak in the distance, and sprinkled with cottages. We then went on and down a hill so steep that it was equally comfortless whether you stood, sat or walked, and into Lynton.

  We lunched at the Cottage Hotel. The view from the balcony was beyond everything I have seen—not for sublimity or ‘sober certainty of waking bliss’ but for mere luxuriousness and sensual beauty. Straight ahead and across the gorge, the hillside rose hundreds of feet above us into a big cap of well shaped rock. Behind that the Lyn valley opened out in long perspective of winding water and many coloured woods, heather and grass. To the left was the bay, not deeply blue but of a strangely pure clear colour and beyond it a line of surf between the water and the cliffs which fell away East and North, sometimes reddish, sometimes almost purple, and topped with a great perfectly white cloud that covered the whole foreland and sent a few smoky shreds down the hillsides . . .

  Tuesday 1 September: D had a good night until six o’clock: which I suppose is better than none at all. It poured with rain all day and I was not out except for five minutes before supper. We had our peat fire (I got the peat) and were quite comfortable.

  I finished Chance. It is a good book: even great. Whether the denouement has any justification I don’t know. He seems to kill Anthony for no reason except the whimsical one of avoiding a happy ending, and then to marry Flora to Powell in a moment of sentimental repentance. Perhaps I have misunderstood it.

  Wednesday 2 September: I sat in the morning and read The Bride of Lammermoor26 which I bought in Lynton. The early parts are a little mechanical, I thought, but it becomes great as it goes on. It has done what it intended and the hags are excellent of their kind: so is the scene of Ravenswood’s return.

  In the afternoon I walked by the shortest route to the light house at Foreland. I had a headache when I set out but it left me after a while. It was a bitterly cold day with a strong wind, the sea steel coloured, the sky white and dark grey and the further hills black. I usually enjoy such weather and the bleakness of the point when I reached it ought to have pleased me, but somehow I found the whole walk tedious.

  I had tea at Combe Farm on my way back—a fine stone house built round three sides of a square and well back from the roads. The spacious beamed kitchen with a bright hearth and much bread and butter largely cured me of my dull humour.

  D had had a good night and was much better today.

  Thursday 3 September: Another wet day. I had only a short walk after tea when I explored Southern Wood for the first time; the evening sunlight, bright but very cold, was breaking out by now after a day of cloud. I left the ordinary path as soon as I had reached the top of the hill above Malmsmead.

  In a moment I was out of sight of everything in a wood of nothing but oak, very low and tangled like a grove of sea weed. There was not a blade of grass to be seen, but the undisturbed moss grew deep on the ground and over the highest branches. The sunlight came slantwise through the trees and the wind roared. Then there were clearings where the path seemed to run straight up into the sky, and others from which I caught glimpses of the surrounding hills, new and hard to recognise from this position. In spite of all my glorious walks round here, it was in this little saunter only (so far) that I got the real joy . . .

  Friday 4 September: Read some of the Kingis Quair in the morning—a very second rate poem: not to be compared with poor old Lydgate’s Story of Thebes which everyone mocks. I read it shortly before we left home and thought it a very pleasant romance. All we read about these authors in modern critics usually boils down to this: that the critics are too sophisticated to enjoy romance unless it is helped out by some extraneous interest. They feel no curiosity as to what will happen to the knight when he gets into the garden: this is not a virtue in them but ‘their necessity in being old’.

  In the afternoon I went to Rockford to pay the Doctor. I went by road to Brendon and then struck up on the road past Combe Farm. It was a changeable day with occasional sunshine. When I reached the open heather near Countisbury I had a halt to look my last (I suppose) on the most beautiful landscape I know. The Brendon valley was on my left and in front the lower Lyn gorge with its complicated woods winding on to Lynmouth.

  I then went westward across the moor, with the telegraph posts on my right and began to descend from such a point that the long straight reach on whose upper end Rockford stands, was straight in front of me. After a steep scramble down bracken and heather I got into thick and silent woods. Every kind of tree grows here, all at an acute angle on the steep hillside. There is plenty of moss and ivy and biggish rocks and boulders, some covered with green, some sticking through like bones of the hill. I sat there and again came very near the real joy, but did not quite arrive.

  After this I went down to the water’s edge. The stream was smooth here and the valley bottom quite flat (on this side) with big forest trees dotted at wide intervals . . . There was one quite awesome place where I looked down through dead fir trees into a black hole lighted with foam at the bottom: and suddenly a swallow flew out just above the water.

  I saw the Doctor and had tea at Rockford. I came home by Southern Woods. Here I struck up to my right and after a beautiful walk through the wood came out on the moor. A dazzling yellow sunshine was coming from the west. I crossed the upper road to Brendon and went straight across the moor for home—with an enormous shadow in front of me. The oddest thing happened here. A swallow came and for ten minutes or so flew to and fro in front of me, so low that it was almost in Pat’s mouth, so fast that you could hardly follow its flickering black and white.

  In the strange bright evening the view just before I came down into Badgworthy valley was indescribable: the hills were full of colour and shadows away towards Porlock and the little bit of sea which showed above County Gate was burning. It all died out before I reached Cloud and became one uniform grey . . . Read Hans Anderson in the evening.

  Saturday 5 September: As we had not heard from the garage at Porlock to whom we wrote for a taxi on Monday, it was arranged that I should go there today . . .

  I walked up the valley past Oare, then through the wilder and narrower valley past Oareford, then up the wooded hill to Oare Post. It had been misty all day and was now raining pretty hard. I continued on the main road with a blurred view of Porlock valley and the strangely yellow, bald looking hills beyond Porlock. Just beyond Whit Stones I went down over the moor into Shillett Wood: as lovely as all the glens in this country and lonelier than most. My face had been lashed with the rain so long that it was a relief to be in shelter. The rest of the walk, constantly crossing and re-crossing the river down Hawk Combe was delightful.

  After arranging for a taxi to come to Cloud at 8.45 I had an excellent lunch at the Castle Hotel (where, alas, I lost my stick). I began the homeward journey. At a point mid way between West Porlock and Porlock Weir I found a path going up into
the wood. This was the wildest one I have been in: the road was really a sort of trench about three feet deep, full of red stones, and tunnelled through the trees. I saw a weasel quite close. It is not a good place to sit in, being given over to that race of super-ants whom I met before at Old Cleeve.

  As I went on I had one or two nice glimpses at the highly coloured valley behind me: but it soon began to rain and blow. It did both, more and more violently, for the rest of the afternoon. I have seldom been in such a storm. As long as I was in the deep dark wood path (so dark in places that the opening of the next tree-tunnel, as you caught sight of it, sometimes looked like, not an opening, but a big solid black object) it was tolerable. Going up Small Combe however, it became impossible to see ahead of me: my feet were soaked through and to look at the map was out of the question. I got up to the Lodge and came home down Deddy Combe—rather enjoying it all in a way I luckily have.

  I was lazy for the rest of the day after a change and tea by a good fire. Slept in another bed room tonight to let three stranded women have my room.

  The diary breaks off here, and is not resumed until 27 April 1926.

  1926

  After the holiday at Oare, Lewis went to Belfast on 13 September to visit his father. This time they were easy together, and when Jack left on 1 October Mr Lewis wrote in his diary: ‘Jacks returned. A fortnight and a few days with me. Very pleasant, not a cloud. Went to the boat with him. The first time I did not pay his passage money. I offered, but he did not want it.’

  By the time Michaelmas Term began in October 1925 Lewis had moved into Magdalen College, and into one of the most beautiful parts of one of the most beautiful colleges of Oxford. He was given three rooms in New Buildings—No. 3, Staircase 3. ‘My external surroundings are beautiful beyond expectation and beyond hope,’ he wrote to his father on 21 October. ‘To live in the Bishop’s Palace at Wells would be good but could hardly be better than this. My big sitting room looks north and from it I see nothing, not even a gable or spire, to remind me that I am in a town. I look down on a stretch of level grass which passes into a grove of immemorial forest trees, at present coloured with autumn red. Over this stray the deer . . . Some mornings when I look out there will be half a dozen chewing the cud just underneath me, and on others there will be none in sight . . . My smaller sitting room and bedroom look out southward across a broad lawn to the main buildings of Magdalen with the Tower across it.’