All My Road Before Me

by C. S. Lewis

  Barfield refused to come to an opinion on Aeschylus’s moral view. I think he is a little inclined to apply his mythosophical principles in a rather Procrustean way.

  Forgot to say that I had shown him the ‘King of Drum’ before dinner and he approved: also thinks the story, so far as I could outline it, a very promising one. He has been experimenting in the Kalevala metre with variations, and read me a passage from a non-existent story. It has some real dewy freshness about it (like the Kalevala) and I believe he might make a good metre of it: tho’ I am in favour of more variations still. To bed with my headache gone, and had a much better night.

  Wednesday 26 January: Slept sound till I was called at 8. After breakfast Barfield and I went for a stroll thro Mesopotamia. He told me of a friend to whom he had sent Dymer and who had returned it with the comment ‘The metrical level is good, the vocabulary is large: but Poetry—not a line.’

  We talked about night fears and whether the death of a person one really cared for wd. abolish the horror of the supernatural or increase it. He also spoke of the reaction that comes after an evening of laughter among your best friends, when the sort of mental security wh. you had among them goes out of you, and you realise that no one but yourself can give you that security.

  After coffee at the Cadena he went off to pick up his wife at ‘Hillsboro’ and drive to London. I was sorry to see him go—these meetings are always beyond expectation.

  Just before lunch Parker came into my room to discuss Waterfield: but he had no plan of action and only came for the pleasure of looking grave and wallowing in the sense of responsibility.14

  Lunched in Common Room and attended a meeting of the T.B.15 As the President was not there, and Craig in the chair we got through v. quickly. It was decided that Wood (who came to see me the other day) could change from Botany to English without losing his Demyship. I am v. glad: it wd. be delightful to have a real enthusiast as a pupil, and he may turn out to be one.16

  Got back to my rooms soon after three, and found I had no money, so had to walk home, wh. I did by the back way. The high wind was still blowing, and there was a very intense light, making long and clear shadows. I saw the first snowdrops in the garden as I passed, and oh the comfort of it! My spirits seemed to rise continually all the way home.

  Found D rather depressed, just having been to the Studer funeral. Walked out to the garden to see if the new year had begun there: there was nothing up, but I felt quite inexplicably delighted with everything. Mrs B[arfield] has apparently been having a heart-to-hearter with D. She ‘hates, hates, hates’ Barfield’s Anthroposophy, and says he ought to have told her before they were married: wh. sounds ominous. She once burnt a ‘blasphemous’ anthroposophical pamphlet of his, wh. seems to me an unpardonable thing to do. But I think (and so does D) that they really get on v. well, better than the majority of married people. Mrs Barfield is always glad when Barfield comes to see me because I have ‘none of those views’.

  Talked income tax with D after supper and then general chat till 10.15 when she and Pat walked to the bus with me. A lovely starry night.

  Went to bed as soon as I got back (after glancing at Saurat’s Milton wh. I found waiting for me). Felt better in mind than I have done for ages. Pulled up my blind to see the stars, thought suddenly of Bergson: then of how I have been playing the devil with my nerves by letting things I really don’t believe in and vague possibilities haunt my imagination. I had a strong conviction of having turned a corner and soon getting all the ‘nurse and grandam from my soul’. Soon to sleep and had an excellent night. No headache today.

  Thursday 27 January: Started the Apology for Smectymnuus today and read it all morning till 12.30 when I went out to the Davenant to order a copy of Aristotle’s Metaphysics.

  From there, home by bus. It was more like a March day, high wind still, and alternate rain and sunshine. Found all well at home.

  Walked over the fields to Stowe Woods after lunch, to see if any flowers were up there, but found none. It was all I cd. do on the way back to walk against the wind or keep my eyes open against the sun. How one enjoys nature’s violences up to the very moment at wh. they become actually painful or dangerous. Went behind a haystack for a moment to get my breath and had a wonderful sudden change into silence, calm, and strong smell of hay—like stepping into a kind of bath.

  Home and had tea and a chat and then into College. The Metaphysics hadn’t come so I went on with Milton. A lot of people in to dinner tonight, including that old humbug Mallam.17 J.A. told me in the smoking room afterwards that I wd. find Craigie’s Icelandic Reader in his room and wd. I care to take it, which I did v. gladly against the re-opening of the Kolbitár.18

  Came back to New Building and after reading through Ohthere went on with Smectymnuus and finished it and then read Saurat. I also copied various parallel passages from the Bishop pamphlets into my Paradise Lost as Notes. To bed about quarter to twelve and slept well . . .

  Friday 28 January: Radice, Betjeman & Wood in morning.19

  Home for lunch. The greatest gale was blowing ever I remember and I had a lovely walk up Shotover in the roaring of the trees. Went up thro’ Quarry, along to the end of the plain, down thro’ the bracken, and back up the muddy path. Stopped at the stile before the wooded bit to eat an apple and reflected how much I was enjoying it.

  Back to College after tea and took Waterfield. Did some Icelandic after dinner, hammering my way thro the first chapter of the Younger Edda, except the Skaldic trimeters (Gefjun dró fra Gylfi) of wh. parts proved untranslatable. Forgot to say that all three pupil hours were good this morning and for once I felt fairly satisfied with myself. Spent the rest of the evening on Bentley and Milton.

  Saturday 29 January: Hood, Wood & Valentin in the morning.20 The latter’s essay on Milton’s Minor Poems was pure Raleigh: I told him I preferred it neat and gave him a sort of viva from wh. he emerged v. badly. He is a useless lump.

  Home for lunch. Poor D compelled to be out afternoon at some show of Maureen’s. Walked along the Forest Hill path and up Shotover thro’ the Park: beautiful wind and sun and many effects of varying light. I got back for tea about 4.30, wh. I had alone, and then worked on Aristotle. D came back about 6. Dotty (a v. unwelcome arrival) turned up. I stayed out at home for supper, came back to college and did some more collating with Bentley—a good mechanical sedative occupation to round off a day of quite astonishing pleasure.21 Letter from Harwood today promising a visit and asking me to entertain one Kruger, an anthroposophist.

  Sunday 30 January: Called at 8. Out home by the back way after breakfast. The snowdrops and celandines in the walks have made no visible progress, but a lovely morning. Worked on Aristotle all morning, with those unexpected gleams of the real joy wh. sometimes come while one is reading, full of memories you can’t identify.

  Washed up after lunch and Maureen took Pat out. Continued work and after tea went for a little walk with D. Very pleasant, and looked at the Studers’ house wh. she thinks we might possibly buy if Mrs S. goes back to Switzerland. The birds were very noisy all day and even now in the twilight were giving delicious chuckles. Washed up again after supper and stayed at home till about 10, beginning now to feel a little tired.

  Back here on top of a bus under the most wonderful sky of stars. Looked over Wulfstan and read half a chapter of the Edda.

  Monday 31 January: Wrote up arrears of diary after breakfast. Then came Hetherington with an essay on Aristotle’s criticism of the Ideas, not one of his best, but we put in (I hope) a fairly good hour. After him, Valentin for O.E., in which I was glad to see at last some improvement. Campbell, the new Greatsman, came at 12 and read his first essay, on Mill: it was all about Christianity and took the view that you couldn’t have any ethics independent of your general Weltanschauung. I didn’t tell him how true this was in the long run but criticised the cruder connections between the two and I think he saw.

  Then to Univ. to lunch with Keir, who volunteered to accompany me on my aft
ernoon walk. A bright afternoon. From my windows all morning I had seen our backwater running at a furious speed and the fields are flooded, giving a v. beautiful sheet of water studded with trees.

  I just looked in at home to fetch Pat and then went on with Keir up the hill. I enjoy his slow conversation quite well and he professes (sincerely) to enjoy nature, but he is not one of those few in whose company one can continue to get the feel of the day as if one were alone. He told me about David’s reign at Rugby and the various fads he had taken up—including the retaining of a pet psychoanalyst to analyse the boys, wh. ought to be a criminal offence.22

  Home about four with a smart headache. Had tea and a chat with D, then back to College to take Hamilton at five: a better essay than Hetherington’s but I am afraid I was not much good. At 6 came Betjeman on O.E.—very bad. I don’t know what to do with him.

  At dinner J.A. remarked that our new fellow Tansley (one of these professors who comes to us ex officio whether we will or no) ‘fancied himself as a psychologist’ so we may expect good Socratic irony from J.A.23

  In the evening read the speech of Michael at the end of Paradise Lost—i.e. most of XI and all XII. Wonderful stuff—I don’t read and think of this end part enough. I also read some of Bridges’ New Poems wh. Betjeman has lent me: they are full of passages of extreme beauty and pathos, and the metre (I mean the ‘New-Miltonic syllabics’) is very successful. The general upshot of the longer pieces, specially ‘Come si Quando’ wh. is the best, I couldn’t understand.

  To bed about 11 and had a good night. Had some rather unpleasant (but not bogeyish) dream in the night wh. I’ve forgotten.

  Tuesday 1 February: A bright frost and bright pale sunshine this morning. I have started keeping the bathroom window open again for the pleasure of looking out on the Grove with the level rays between the trees and an occasional deer.

  Letter from Aunt Lily, or rather two letters, the earlier v. enthusiastic about Dymer, the latter not. She explained her former cryptic utterance about cancer very candidly and courageously. She seems to be safe for the present, but has caught mange from one of the cats. Her bravery is astonishing—all these things are mentioned by the way, while the main part of the letter is criticism and philosophy.

  Read the Doctrine and Discipline all morning. Home to lunch and found all well there. Went for my walk afterwards by road to Stowe Woods and home across the fields. The sun had gone and it was a greyish day, very cold, but the incessant chuckling and chattering of the birds kept up the sense of spring. Enjoyed it greatly—I had forgotten to say yesterday that while out with Keir I saw and heard a lark, the first one this season . . .

  At 7.5 there was a meeting in Common Room to admit Tansley. As I came into the room, wh. was crowded, Craig said to me ‘I don’t think you know Tansley,’ then turning towards the hearthrug said ‘This is Lewis.’ I thereupon performed the most ludicrous act of my life by walking forward in the direction wh. seemed to be indicated and warmly shaking hands with Manley, who of course has been here for years and whom I have met dozens of times, but in the heat of the moment I didn’t realise it.24 Soluuntur tabulae risu!25

  Hardie dined tonight and I arranged to go to his Thursday show on the Theaetetus. Went to Peacock’s room at Oriel afterwards to the Mermaids.26 I don’t know why I am in this society. They are all (except Brett-Smith) rather vulgar and strident young men, who guffawed so at every suggestion of obscenity in the White Divel wh. we were reading as to ruin the tragic scene. There’s no doubt at all when one passes from the Greats to the English crowd, one leaves the χαριέντες for the τυχουτες, the men of taste and wit and humanity for a mere collection of barbarians. It is a great pity . . .

  Wednesday 2 February: Thick snow and a dull sky this morning. Worked till lunchtime on the Divorce pamphlets. By then a brilliant sunshine had come out and every roof was dripping.

  Lunched in Common Room and went at 2 to the College meeting. Craig was in the chair, as the President is still in bed—an exchange so eminently desirable that we were finished by 3.30. An announcement was made about the boy who accidentally shot another boy at the School (Carter had already told me of it during lunch)—a nasty business.27 The rest of the meeting was mainly taken up with a question of grants for buying books not worth putting into the library wh. occasioned a sort of duel between Driver and Weldon, the latter surpassing even himself in disagreeableness. It is a sort of hobby with him, as he once confessed to me, to make himself as offensive as possible in debate on points that he cares nothing about, to people he has no quarrel with. I never hear him speak at such times without being converted to the other side: there’s something threatening in his logic that rouses one to say ‘Damn it I will be inconsistent if I want to!’

  Bussed home and found a lot of papers sent me by some people calling themselves the Panton Arts Club, asking me to join . . . D came in about 4, having been into town to buy a cinder riddler, and seemed in excellent form.

  I spent the rest of the day at home in great peace and comfort, going on with my Milton—except for a rather unpleasant discussion with Dotty who came to appeal against D’s decision against her giving mixed parties. The point is that we can’t really give up one of the sitting rooms whenever she happens to want it, as Maureen’s practising in the drawing room makes the rooms permanently needed. Of course we kept a firm front and I am all in favour of resisting her continual impositions on D—but I wish our resistance cd. have come over a less seemingly churlish point. That’s the devil of it with D’s good nature: if one won’t resist really outrageous demands (as the daily sandwiches) from the start, one has to take up a less pleasant S.O.S. line later . . .

  Thursday 3 February: . . . Home for lunch. A beautiful day of sunshine and all the birds singing. D has got hold of some snow drops for the dining room.

  After lunch I walked up Shotover, down the field into Horsepath, and home by road. There was a good deal of snow about, and some beautiful sights: specially looking north from the top of the hill across a field of unbroken snow in the foreground, and beyond that the very pale blue of the half-snowed country on the horizon. Enjoyed my walk immensely, even the tramp home, where the current of snow water flowing deep and fast in the ditches, gave a new liveliness to the road.

  Home for tea and then back to College on the top of a bus. This ride down the hill towards the sunset is always pleasant: this time it put me in a rare exaltation, recovering huge feelings (it was all mixed up with Plato’s Ideas on wh. Waterfield was coming to read me an essay) that I have lost for months.

  Finished working out in my Lydgate a ‘tree of Troy’ wh. I’d begun in the morning. Waterfield at 6.15, not very good.

  Dined in and sat in Common Room beside J.A. who told me of a lady who had long worried him by coming up at the end of lectures to ask questions, and finally wrote offering him her hand. ‘She pretended it was a joke afterwards,’ he said, shaking his white head, ‘but it wasn’t. And she wasn’t the only one either. A man who lectures to women takes his life in his hands.’ . . .

  Friday 4 February: Radice, and Wood in the morning, Radice v. good and interesting. Wood was disappointing, tho’, poor fellow, he had done a prodigious amount of mere horse work. His idea is to put down every fact he is able to find out and venture on no exercise of his own judgement.

  Home to lunch and found the Panton Magazine had arrived, containing a very eulogistic and quite silly review of Dymer. The rest of the magazine was on the same level, except for the deeper depth reached by a selection from some woman’s Modern Book of Proberbs wh. is rather like Tupper. I am glad I didn’t rush hastily into such a mess.

  After lunch walked down by the cemetery and across the field path, with Marston on my left, to meet the road: then up the hill to Elsfield and home across the fields. It was a bright calm afternoon, birds singing, and the stream flowing gloriously full under the bridge by the turn to Water Eaton . . .

  Back to College after tea and sat down to the ‘King of
Drum’, when I was most annoyingly interrupted by the arrival of Valentin who said I had told him to come at that hour. Wrote again after dinner and made about twenty lines describing the King’s ‘Levee’. To bed, rather fidgety and discontented.

  Saturday 5 February: Pupils all morning including Betjeman who read an excellent essay wh. I soon discovered to be a pure fake, for he knew nothing about the work when we began to talk. I wish I cd. get rid of this idle prig.

  Home for lunch. Started out for a walk afterwards but yielded to rain and came in to waste time doing nothing particular till tea, and after tea made the attempt again. This time I persevered in spite of rain and had a wet but not unpleasant walk in the twilight.

  Supper was v. late because both Winifred and Maureen were going to dances: for the same reason I had to wash up afterwards. Had hoped to get on with the ‘King of Drum’, but lost the vein, as one usually does when the general order of the day doesn’t pan out as you expect. Wordsworth got it right—the ‘spirits that refuse to flow when plans are lightly changed’.

  Sunday 6 February: A beautiful day. Walked home after breakfast, enjoying the mild air and the sunshine, and the birds and the noise of water. Found all well at home, except that D had a headache. I spent the morning writing, got over the King’s first interview with the Queen and made a start on the ‘College meeting’.

  After lunch walked thro Quarry up Shotover, nearly down to Wheatley, then over the fields to the railway line and up again by the top of the tunnel. In spite of the presence of Sunday walkers, it was v. delightful and every moment almost was full of elusive suggestions. Home to tea.