All My Road Before Me

by C. S. Lewis

  Came back to College and dined in, having a talk with Webb, whom I rather like despite his oddity.28 Back to my rooms, fair copied what I had written, and read a little Quarles.

  Monday 7 February: A very raw grey day that soon turned to rain. Hetherington came to read on Mεσοτης29: his essay was mostly Spengler and not very good or not good from such a good man. Then I had a break as Valentin got leave off for relations.

  Went out v. foolishly to buy a copy of the Theaetetus (against Hardie’s caucus) and only realised when I got to the Davenant that it was already in one of the volumes I have. By good luck, however, I caught sight of a new Everyman (Trench on Study of Words) wh. I immediately bought and began to read at once. He is quite a pioneer, very ignorant of course as he couldn’t help being then, a little prosy: but he has real enthusiasm and the feeling of life, and occasional eloquence in spite of the over elaborated style.

  Campbell came at 12, and for the second time all philosophical discussion was held up by his religious views. I have never had such a case before . . .

  Home on top of the bus in pouring rain. D dissuaded me from taking Pat out and I went on with Trench in the dining room. D had to go out to tea.

  Back to College to take Hamilton at 5 and then Betjeman on O.E. who was a little, a very little, better. After dinner began the Theaetetus and read about 10 pages, then Trench. To bed at 12 after a very pleasant evening . . .

  Tuesday 8 February: . . . Spent the morning partly on the Edda . . . Hammered my way thro’ a couple of pages in about an hour, but I am making some headway. It is an exciting experience, when I remember my first passion for things Norse under the initiation of Longfellow (Tegner’s ‘Drapa’ & ‘Saga of K. Olaf’) at about the age of nine: and its return much stronger when I was about 13, when the high priests were M. Arnold, Wagner’s music, and the Arthur Rackham Ring. It seemed impossible then that I shd. ever come to read these things in the original. The old authentic thrill came back to me once or twice this morning: the mere names of god and giant catching my eye as I turned the pages of Zoega’s dictionary was enough . . .

  Had an interesting conversation after dinner in the smoking room with Segar (Weldon & Tansley also there) about the fate of virtuous heathen, whom Segar declares capable of salvation according to the doctrine of his Church. If this is true I shall be greatly surprised. The whole point of the Trajan story, in the Middle Ages, surely is that it was an exception.30

  Back to my rooms and went on with the Theaetetus and a little more Trench. Also read the myth from the Politicus in Jowett’s crib, wh. worried me by being so anthroposophical, till it occurred to me that of course Steiner must have read Plato. A pest on all this nonsense which has half spoiled so much beauty and wonder for me, degraded pure imagination into pretentious lying, and truths of the spirit into mere matters of fact, slimed everything over with the trail of its infernal mumbo-jumbo! How I wd. have enjoyed this myth once: now behind Plato’s delightful civilised imagination I always have the picture of dark old traditions picked up from mumbling medicine-men, professing to be ‘private information’ about facts.

  To bed and had a much worse night than I have had for a long time. (N.B. It all comes to this. Once you have got into your head the notion of looking for the wrong sort of truth in imagination (i.e. occult matter-of-fact) you have lost utterly the truth that really is in imagination (i.e. rightness of feeling—the ‘affective’ side of a cognition without the cognition) and made good food into poison. Just to be delighted with the feel of the nymph in the tree is to share emotionally that common life of all living things wh. you can’t fully comprehend intellectually: to believe that by certain ceremonies you can make a girl come out of the tree, is to put yourself a thousand miles further from any spiritual contact with the real tree-life than you were before—and a good many miles nearer the asylum.)

  Wednesday 9 February: . . . Bought a copy of the Volsunga Saga, having had a card last night to say that the Kolbitár are reading it this term and I am put down for Chapter I and II at the next meeting. Began working on it. Felt v. poorly and depressed all morning. It was one of those days when the cold is an intense positive sensation—wind blowing over black frost and a sky full of snow that won’t fall . . . Looked at Morris’s translation of Volsunga Saga in the Union . . .

  Shortly after 4 turned up at the Driver-MacKeith at home in hall.31 At first found no one I knew except Manley and his wife, who seems a very common old woman, poor soul. Then got onto the Carlyles. He told me a lot more about the murderer of Rasputin,32 who had been incapable of passing any exam and had suggested to the Fark that ‘of course, he presumed, there wd. be no difficulty in arranging these things in the case of a person of quality’. Being told that the organisation of our exams was inflexibly democratic he exclaimed ‘But what am I to do? My parents will not let me marry unless I get some sort of certificate or diploma—they will only send me on to some other university.’ Finally Farquharson & Carlyle made him out on parchment v. solemnly a sort of certificate of their own.

  Got away about five, Mrs Driver saying to Craig, Chute and me as we all came up together for handshaking ‘I have been timing you all. You have all done very well and stuck it for a good long spell.’ . . .

  Thursday 10 February: . . . Home for lunch. D seemed rather tired and depressed today tho’ she denied it. Went for a delightful walk after lunch, along the Forest Hill path, up through Shotover House Park and home along the hill. I was not so receptive as sometimes, but quite enjoyed it, specially the peculiar cold, sweetness of the air.

  After tea came back to College. Waterfield didn’t turn up and I read Troilus. Went into Common Room after dinner, an unusually jolly evening. We all taxed J.A. with his proposal (it is to be made at the next meeting) of introducing women into the Philosophical Society. He said he was the greatest anti-feminist in Oxford and had really done it because the Society had had no private business for so long.

  I went on to Corpus—Hardie having sent me a note to say that the Theaetetus was off, but would I come round and talk. We had an evening of pleasant and desultory tomfoolery, enriched later on by the arrival of Weldon. Someone started the question ‘Whether God can understand his own necessity’: whereupon Hardie got down St Thomas’s Summa and after ferreting in the index suddenly pronounced, without any intention of being funny, ‘He doesn’t understand anything.’ This lead to great amusement, the best being an imaginary scene of God trying to explain the theory of vicarious punishment to Socrates . . .

  Friday 11 February: . . . Radice, Wood & Betjeman in the morning. Wood a little more interesting, but I am afraid he has much more good will than power and will retain his schoolboy mind. I discovered however that Fiona Macdonald is his favourite author, wh. is a very illuminating and useful thing to know. It will be good to have a romantic after all these scoffers: and it’s a good basis. A man can rise from fairies to Paradise Lost (I ought to know), but never get from Restoration Comedy to anything of the sublime. Betjeman fairly good.

  Bussed home, still feeling poorly. D thought it was probably a touch of the ’flu and took my temperature which was about 99°.

  Spent the afternoon dozing over the fire with Laurence Housman’s Trimblerigg, wh. is v. amusing but quite machine-made and one laughs but never for a moment dreams of believing in Trimblerigg and Dividina. Housman knows that the clear headed, perfectly conscious hypocrite of earlier literature is artificial, but he thinks that he uses that knowledge sufficiently by just telling us that Trimblerigg believed in himself: he doesn’t make us feel him doing so. He writes in hate, hate of an external object: he ought to have drawn on the hypocrisy he found in himself. That’s the only kind of satire that is literature—the method by wh. Willoughby Patterne & Soames Forsythe were projected.

  Back to College and took Percival & Waterfield together . . .

  Saturday–Sunday 12–13 February: A good deal better on Saturday morning. After pupils, home for the week end, wh. I spent out there in great e
ase and comfort, all very jolly. Was quite cured when I returned to College on Monday morning. Had one very nice walk on Saturday in the frost, the heaviest I ever saw. Noticed on many branches up Shotover that the frost does not coat the twig round but lies all on one side of it in a strip edgewise to the branch.

  Monday 14 February: Still heavy fog today as it has been all the week end. Hetherington, Valentin, and Campbell in the morning. Gave Valentin a dose of Socratic questions, wh. I seldom do, and found he really didn’t know what he meant by most of the things in his essay. He needs this sort of exposé every now and then.

  Lunched with Keir. Home for a short walk and tea: then Hamilton & Betjeman. Dined at 7.30 in New Room with Benecke, Driver, Parker, Blockley and the Torpids. Quite a pleasant lot.33

  Had a conversation with Slade, who gave up Greats a year ago.34 He tells me I was successful (when I was his tutor) of demolishing all his original beliefs in morals but not in replacing them. I don’t know how seriously he meant this . . .

  Tuesday 15 February: Spent the morning on Trevelyan’s England in the Age of Wycliffe and partly in reading Gower, a poet I always turn to for pure, tho’ not intense pleasure. It’s a rum thing that Morris shd. have wanted so desperately to be like Chaucer and succeeded in being so exactly like Gower . . .

  Walked after lunch up Shotover, down into Horsepath, and up again by the field—in my foolishest state of mind at my old game of thinking out great attacks on all sorts of things, such as Steiner and J. C. Squire (really because Squire hasn’t reviewed me, but the pretence was on various grounds). Got rid of all this on the way back for a bit and opened my eyes . . .

  Back to College and read Gower till dinner time: after dinner to meet D and Maureen at the theatre where the O.U.D.S. were doing Lear. We decided that we wd. give up going to them hereafter. It was all that sort of acting wh. fills one at first with embarrassment and pity, finally with an unreasoning personal hatred of the actors. ‘Why should that damned man keep bellowing at me?’ They nearly all shouted hoarsely and inarticulately.

  Bussed with the others to Magdalen gate, all v. cheery in spite of our wasted evening. Looked into the smoking room and found Benecke with whom I talked for a while. Then over to New Building, made tea, and to bed. Slept very sound.

  Wednesday 16 February: Worked on my ‘task’ (a pleasant one) of the first two chapters of the Volsunga Saga and finished them, except for some obstinate phrases. Walked to the Union to consult W. Morris’s translation. The day had begun with the usual mist but half way through the morning there was a faint brightening, just the ghost of a shadow here and there in the Grove, and at last an actual ten minutes of sunlight. The birds were chattering and there was a great sense of stirring after so many days of dark.

  Bussed home: D seemed none the worse for a very short night owing to being late to bed and up early on account of Dotty. After lunch I walked my familiar round, out through Elsfield and home through Barton. The suggestion of sunlight had disappeared but the air remained deliciously mild and the birds very loud. In the flat fields beyond Mrs Seymour’s, the mist still hanging, there was a wonderful mixture of warmth and hush and freshness. Enjoyed my walk v. much . . .

  After dinner Waterfield came in to talk to me about universals. He proved a persistent and not unskilful dialectician, but all in defence of outrageous paradox which he doesn’t really believe. He stayed till 10 to 12 and I think we both enjoyed our tussle . . .

  Thursday 17 February: News that Harwood can’t come. To Corpus in the evening to read the Theaetetus with Hardie and his three pupils Erskine, Green and Shewring. All very good fellows. Discovered in Liddell and Scott the glorious word ‘porwizzle’.

  Friday 18 February: To the Kolbitár at Exeter in the evening. Very pleasant. Followed a good deal better than before.

  Sunday 20 February: Home all day and did a good deal of the ‘King of Drum’, not much to my satisfaction.

  Back to College afterwards and went to the Philosophical. Hardie read a good paper and got a ‘moral reproof’ from J.A. of exactly the same kind that I got, only worse. J.A.’s motion for admission of female guests defeated but only by one vote.

  Monday 21 February: Usual pupils. Betjeman came, but v. ill and I sent him away. Spent evening answering philosophical letter from Prichard & reading Gower.

  Tuesday 22 February: Valentin for O.E. this morning. He is greatly improved and seems to be reading a book about myths and taking an interest in primitive poetry which is a very good sign. I think all real interest with boys (as opposed to vanity and cotterie posing and the desire to be up-to-date) must begin from the romantic end. Introitus sub specie infantis.35 . . . Hamilton turned up to talk about the practical syllogism . . .

  After dinner read the Knightes Tale: then came Weldon to drink whiskey and chat till 12.15. Told me an excellent story of the President’s writing to some American (totally unknown to him) about a testimonial for an overseas student and saying ‘When I heard of your distinguished father’s murder I was so moved that I wrote a sonnet wh. I enclose.’

  Note from Coghill today saying that the ‘V.O.’, whose favourable review of Dymer in the Irish Statesman had seemed to me not ‘good’ in any sense except that of being favourable, is really A. E. (Russell).

  Wednesday 23 February: . . . Lunched in and was able to become an evangelist to all men by telling them that I had met the President in the morning and he was not coming to the T.B. We met at two. The main question was the election of (nominally) a lecturer but (really) an official fellow in Physics: Johnson, who is now up here, to be made a ‘lecturer’ but not to lecture so that there may be a means of financing him for a year’s work abroad before he becomes a fellow—a sort of lecturer in partibus. Parker led the opposition and I agreed with him, as no one had had the opportunity of considering possible rivals and the account of Johnson’s work was not very encouraging. His chief qualification seemed to be that he was a blue and a ‘very good fellow’ wh. as far as I was concerned ‘cast ominous conjecture on the whole’ election. We defeated it, and it is to be postponed.36 . . .

  Bussed home for tea. D was well, but rather tired after a disturbed night owing to the noise of wind. Took Pat for a short stroll after tea. Did a good deal of work on ‘Drum’, including the Chancellor’s speech . . .

  Thursday 24 February: This morning the German whom Harwood asked me to be civil to, named Kruger, arrived, looking more like a war cartoon of a German than I wd. have believed possible. As he was already engaged to dine at the House and was leaving Oxford early in the morning, I couldn’t entertain him. He stayed till about 12.30 and departed, promising to come and see me in the evening. He made one glorious remark, when he described his war experience by saying ‘I could not connect myself with that life—I could not grasp the reality of that war, that soldier: so I became v. ill.’

  Bussed home in the steady rain, feeling rather flat and jaded—not so much from Kruger as from having worked at ‘Drum’ before he came. D has got a book of 12 crossword puzzles out of wh. we are all to make our fortunes, and I tried the first after lunch. Took a short, wet and uninteresting walk in Cuckoo Lane.

  Back to College after tea. Waterfield came, pretty good hour, I hope. Went into Common Room after dinner and got into an argument with Benecke on the difference between poetry and rhetoric. Then back to my rooms and began to read Waller while waiting for Kruger. He didn’t turn up and I read Waller till midnight: the couplets on public events are ‘stark naught’ but all the Amoret and Sacharissa stuff is delicious, sometimes nearly faultless. I am surprised how much I like it.

  Friday 25 February: Radice, Valentin and Wood in the morning: the latter is improving.

  Home to lunch in cold and heavy rain. Too wet to go for a walk in the afternoon so I began Rose Macaulay’s Mystery at Geneva—v. readable.

  Back to College after tea and took Percival. After dinner I read some more Waller and Johnson’s Life of Waller, which is full of good things. I then began Denham and was abo
ut half way thro Cooper’s Hill when J.A., who had been tête-à-tête with himself all day owing to ’flu, looked in and asked me if I wd. come up and ‘pay him a short visit’. So I did, and quite enjoyed [it] tho he is (in the photographic sense) v. positive and one cannot influence the course of the conversation oneself. He told me all about Sweet: how he was the son of a tyrannic father who put him into a bank and tried to prevent him from becoming a philologist (wd. God he had succeeded), and how Sweet made so many enemies that he was put up for the Philological Society simply in order to be blackballed . . .

  Saturday 26 February: Pupils in the morning, and home for lunch. Everything pretty beastly at home: D v. tired from being continually kept up late by Dotty and suffering from headache, and everything upside down in preparation for the arrival of the de Forest girl. Raining again after a lovely morning.

  Back into town at 7 to meet the Barfields for dinner and theatre. We fed at the Good Luck—he and Mrs B. and his two sisters. They are not beautiful and extremely dowdy in dress but both v. nice and intelligent—I believe I wd. have thought them so even if they had not had the crowning grace of being admirers of Dymer!

  The play was Munro’s Rumour, wh. I enjoyed enormously. It is nearly a great work: great in conception, admirable in construction, and failing only because the characters remain too confined to their particular settings—I mean, except in the case of one of the financiers, one hardly felt the universal evil or pathos showing through the individual.

  Sunday 27 February: Talked to Thompson at breakfast about the Rumour, wh. he thinks one of the worst plays he has seen.

  Trudged home thro’ a hot, wet, clammy day. D still tired and poorly and things upset. Tried desperately hard to re-write the Queen’s speech in the ‘Drum’ poem, all morning, without the slightest success. The old difficulty of smelting down a nasty little bit of factual stuff (the Queen’s conviction of the others) into poetry: one only succeeds in expanding it into rhetoric.37 Washed up after lunch. The rain stopped and a great wind began: I got a good blow walking over the fields to Forest Hill, among waving hedges and deep racing brooks—the best period of a not v. nice day.