by C. S. Lewis
Robert William Hamilton (1905–) read Classics at Magdalen and took his BA in 1928. He was Senior Lecturer in Near Eastern Archaeology at Oxford 1949–56, and Keeper of Antiquities, Ashmolean Museum, 1962–72.
William Dixon Hetherington (1905–) was a Commoner 1924–28 and read Classical Moderations and Greats. He took a BA in 1931 and went to work in Kingston, Jamaica.
8 These ladies matriculated at Lady Margaret Hall in 1924 and read English. Lewis’s weekly classes were not in English, but Philosophy. His students’ names are: Joan Elizabeth Colborne, Diana Dalton Scoones, Violet Augusta Grant, Monica Rose Thring, Bridget Johnston, Nancy Carter and Elizabeth House.
9 David Athelstane Percival (1906–87) read Classics 1914–18 and took his BA in 1928. He afterwards went to Nigeria where he worked in College Administrative Service.
Thomas Edward Waterfield (1905–) read Classical Moderations 1924–27, and later made a special study of the birds of Oxford.
10 ‘Diz’ was Sydney Cecil William Disney (1892–), who read Law at Magdalen and was with the Inland Revenue Service 1921–28.
11 The Rev. James Matthew Thompson (1878–1956) was a Fellow of Magdalen 1904–38. He was Dean of Divinity 1906–15 and Home Bursar 1920–27.
12 Ernest de Selincourt’s edition of Wordsworth’s Prelude.
13 Dorothea ‘Dotty’ Vaughan, a day pupil at Headington School, was boarding at ‘Hillsboro’.
14 Magdalen Tower is one of the jewels of Oxford. It was completed in 1504 and it is customary on May Day to greet the sunrise with a concert on the roof of the Tower.
15 See Paul Victor Mendelssohn Benecke in the Magdalen College Appendix.
16 Eric Clarence Evelyn De Peyer (1906–) read Classical Moderations 1925–27 and English 1927–29. He took his BA in 1931.
Leonard Ernie Clark (1906–64), of New Zealand, read Classical Moderations 1925–28. He became an aeriel surveyor, and made a solo flight from the U.K. to N.Z. in 1936. He served in the RAF 1939–46.
Paul John Weade Glasgow (1902–), a Canadian, read English and took his BA in 1926. He took a B.C.L. from McGill University in 1930 and was admitted to the Quebec Bar.
17 This was the beginning of the General Strike. The Samuel Committee had recommended cuts in miners’ wages. The mine owners, however, while accepting a cut in wages, insisted on longer hours, and at the end of April they locked the miners out of the pits. The General Council of the Trades Union Congress called a meeting and agreed a ‘national strike’. It was their hope that the threat would force the Government to settle, but Stanley Baldwin called off the talks because printers refused to print an anti-union article in the Daily Mail. Beginning on 3 May workers in transport, iron and steel, electricity, gas, building and newspaper printing all stopped work. In every town there was a local strike committee which tried to keep essential supplies moving. Although the miners refused to give in, after nine days the TUC called off the strike.
18 See Edwin Stewart Craig in the Magdalen College Appendix.
19 The Rev. Anthony William Chute (1884–1958) was Fellow and Dean of Divinity 1925–29.
20 Hubert Cecil Boddington (1903–74) matriculated in 1922 and read Classics, taking Schools in 1926. He took his BA in 1934 and was a Member of the London Stock Exchange.
21 See Arthur Lee Dixon in the Magdalen College Appendix.
22 Thomas Elliot Waddington (1907–77) was a Commoner of Magdalen 1925–28 and read Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He was a Director of Investments and other companies, and served with the K.R.R.C. 1939–45.
Richard Laurence Sykes (1906–77) was a Commoner 1925–29, and took his BA in 1930. He worked as an advertising agent.
23 The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, 49; ‘twenty cows’.
24 (Sir) Godfrey Driver (1892–1975) was a Fellow of Magdalen 1919–62, and Professor of Semitic Philology at Oxford 1938–62.
25 Charles Richard Spencer (1903–41) read Classical Moderations and then English 1922–26 and took his BA in 1926. He became the Assistant Master at Stowe.
26 Frank Edward Brightman (1856–1932), liturgiologist, was an original librarian of Pusey House 1884–1903, Fellow of Magdalen 1902–32, and author of The English Rite (1915).
Cyril Robert Carter (1863–1930) was Dean of Divinity 1896–1902 and Bursar of Magdalen College 1910–30—thus having much to do with the new buildings being erected at Magdalen.
27 Edward Murray Wrong (1889–1928) became a Fellow of Magdalen in 1914. He was Vice-Principal of Manchester College of Technology 1916–19 after which he returned to Magdalen.
28 The Rev. John Basil Lee Jellicoe (1886–1935) was Head of the Magdalen College Mission 1922–27, and Chairman of St Pancras House Improvement Co.
29 ‘The right of nations’, i.e. Natural Law.
30 Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 504—‘But the Queen [Dido], having erected a pyre in the inmost heart of her home, in the open air.’
31 Virgil, Georgics, III, 283—(of stepmothers) ‘they have mixed together herbs and harmful spells’.
32 The Rev. Ronald Frank William Fletcher was Chaplain and Tutor in English Language and Literature at St Edmund Hall.
33 Margaret Lucy Lee was Tutor in English at the Society of Oxford Home-Students (later St Anne’s College).
34 See John Ronald Reuel Tolkien in the Biographical Appendix.
35 ‘kept silent’.
36 ‘an ox uttered words’—a familiar Roman portent recorded by historians such as augurs were given to interpret.
37 See James Alexander Smith in the Biographical Appendix.
38 In Space, Time, and Deity (1920).
39 ‘Dymer’ had been finished during the Summer of 1925, and it was accepted for publication by J. M. Dent Ltd on 1 April 1926. However, with the death of Mr Dent, Lewis was worried that the contract might not be honoured. He was given assurance by Guy Pocock.
40 William Roberts, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More (1834).
41 Bryan Greg Fell matriculated at University College in 1924 and took his BA in 1933.
42 See Robert Segar in the Magdalen College Appendix.
43 Shapurji Saklatvala (1874–1936) was M.P. (Communist) for North Battersea 1922–23 and 1924–29, and a member of the General Workers’ Union.
44 The first version of this sonnet sequence survives in the same notebook as the last portion of the Diary. A revised version of it, entitled ‘Infatuation’, is found in Lewis’s Poems (1964).
45 Samuel Alexander, author of Space, Time, and Deity.
46 Rodney Pasley was Vice-Principal of Rajkumar College at Rajkot 1926–28.
47 John Oliver Harwood, the first of Cecil and Daphne Harwood’s five children, was born on 31 May 1926. After service in the Royal Navy during World War II he came up to Oxford and read English at Magdalen College 1947–50.
48 This idea expanded into a twice-weekly course of lectures during Michaelmas Term 1926 entitled ‘Some English Thinkers of the Renaissance (Elyot, Ascham, Hooker, Bacon)’.
49 Hermann George Fiedler (1862–1945) was a Fellow of Queen’s College and Professor of German Language and Literature 1907–37.
50 Count Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von Moltke (1848–1916), a German general, was Chief of Staff in World War I.
51 Col. Alan Geoffrey Dawnay (1888–1938), an old member of Magdalen, was in the Coldstream Guards. He commanded the Oxford University O.T.C. 1922–26, and had been given command of the 1st Battalion 1928–30.
52 Herschel Maurice Margoliouth (1887–1959) was Secretary of Faculties, Oxford University 1925–47.
53 Eliot’s ‘paper’ was The Criterion, a literary journal he founded in 1922.
54 Janet Spens (1876–1963) was Fellow of English at Lady Margaret Hall 1911–36.
55 Eleanor Willoughby Rooke (1888–1952) took her BA from Lady Margaret Hall in 1908 and was Tutor in English at St Hilda’s College 1920–41.
56 ‘Cecil of Wadham’ was Lord David Cecil (1902–86) who was a Fellow and Lecturer in Modern History at
Wadham College 1924–30, Fellow of New College 1939–48, and Goldsmith Professor of English 1948–69.
57 Archibald Hunter Campbell (1902–) read Classics at University College. He was a Fellow of All Souls 1928–30 and Fellow of University College 1930–35.
58 Harold Henry Cox took his BA in 1927.
59 Keith David Druitt Henderson (1903–88), who had been tutored by Lewis in 1925, entered Sudan political service in 1926 and was Governor of the Kassala Province, Sudan, 1945–53. In 1953 he was made Secretary to Spalding Educational Trust and Union for the Study of Great Religions, and in 1966 Vice-President of the World Congress of Faiths.
60 Sir James Craig (1871–1940), later Viscount Craigavon, was the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, 1921–40. During the War, when Craig was M.P. for County Down, Albert Lewis had appealed to him for help in getting his son transferred from the Infantry to the Artillery.
61 By Oliver Goldsmith (1762).
62 ‘There is no truth in flatterers, as Democritus said’.
1 By Samuel Butler (1901).
2 Hugh Fausset’s review of Dymer appeared in The Times Literary Supplement (13 January 1927), p. 27.
3 Joseph and Elizabeth M. Wright, Old English Grammar (1908; 1925).
4 The books referred to are Sir Walter Raleigh’s Milton (1900), Denis Saurat’s Milton: Man and Thinker (1925), and Lascelles Abercrombie’s Principles of English Prosody (1923).
5 Some of these criticisms were to find their way into Lewis’s A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942).
6 W. K. Hatton, who joined the staff of Magdalen College in 1923, was Lewis’s ‘scout’ or college servant.
7 And last!—C. S.L.
8 John Colquhoun Campbell (1907–) read Greats 1926–30 and took a BA in 1930. He worked with Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. Ltd until 1952.
9 Mrs Moore’s friend Mrs Studer was the wife of Paul Studer (1879–1927) the Taylorian Professor of the Romance Languages in the University of Oxford who died 23 January. They were both Swiss, and had three children.
10 John Hanbury Angus Sparrow (1906–) of New College was elected a Fellow of All Souls College in 1929, called to the Bar in 1931, and was Warden of All Souls 1952–77.
11 George Harwood matriculated at Christ Church in 1926, and is mentioned in Bevis Hillier’s Betjeman, p. 188.
Louis MacNeice (1907–1963), writer and lecturer, was educated at Marlborough and Merton College. He published his first book of poems, Blind Fireworks, in 1930.
12 Arthur Ernest Cowley (1861–1931) was Bodley’s Librarian 1919–31 and a Fellow of Magdalen.
13 Prometheus Vinctus 151. (Zeus is now destroying) ‘the former mighty ones’.
14 See Henry Michael Denne Parker in the Magdalen College Appendix.
15 Tutorial Board.
16 Arthur Denis Wood (1907–), after taking his BA in 1929, joined the family firm of William Wood & Son Ltd, landscape gardeners in Taplow.
17 Dr Ernest Mallam (1870–1946) had read Physiology at Magdalen 1888–92, and he had been Litchfield Lecturer in Medicine.
18 The ‘Kolbitár’ was an informal club of dons founded by Professor Tolkien for the purpose of reading Icelandic sagas.
19 Edward Albert Radice (1907–) received a First in Mathematical Moderations in 1916, and a First in Literae Humaniores in 1929. He took a BA in 1929 and a D.Phil. In 1938. After a start as Asst. Professor of Economics at Wesleyan University at Middletown, Conn., 1937–39 he went on to become a very distinguished economic historian.
20 John Douglas Lloyd Hood (1904–), a Rhodes Scholar from Tasmania, took a First in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1929, and a BA in 1930. His career has been that of a diplomat.
21 Richard Bentley published a revised and augmented edition of Paradise Lost in 1732.
22 The Rev. Albert Augustus David (1867–1950) was Headmaster of Rugby School 1909–21, and Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich 1921–23.
23 (Sir) Arthur George Tansley (1871–1955) was a Fellow of Magdalen and Sherardian Professor of Botany 1927–37.
24 John Job Manley (1863–1946) had been an undergraduate at Magdalen. He was elected a Fellow in 1917 and was Curator of the Daubenay Laboratory 1888–1929.
25 ‘The tablets [containing the legal charge] will be melted with laughter.’ Adapted from Horace, Satires, 2, 1, 86.
26 The Mermaid Club was founded in 1902 ‘to promote the reading and study of the Elizabethan and post-Elizabethan drama’. Quite a lot of dons took an interest in it, or pretended to, and Lewis was President of the Mermaids during Michaelmas Term 1927. Conway John Peacock was an undergraduate member of Oriel College.
27 A cadet at Magdalen College School was accidentally shot by the captain of the school team while the latter was extracting what he thought was an empty cartridge case from his rifle.
28 Clement Charles Julian Webb (1865–1954) was Tutor in Philosophy at Magdalen 1890–1922.
29 A middle or central position.
30 Lewis no doubt had in mind the legend that St Gregory, through his prayers, brought the dead Emperor Trajan back from Hell and baptised him to salvation. This was known to Dante who mentions the virtuous Trajan in Purgatory X and Paradise XX.
31 See Malcolm Henry MacKeith in the Magdalen College Appendix.
32 Prince Youssopoff, of the Imperial House of Russia.—W.H.L.
33 The Rev. Thomas Trotter Blockley (1864–1950) was Chaplain of Magdalen 1897–1911.
34 Humphrey Slade (1905–) went on to read Law and took his BA in 1927. He became an Advocate in Kenya, and in 1963 he became Speaker in the Kenya House of Representatives.
35 ‘Entrance under the appearance of a child.’
36 Patrick Johnson (1904–) took a Second in Mathematical Moderations 1924 and a Second in Natural Science (Physics) in 1927. He took his BA in 1927 and was made a Lecturer at Magdalen that same year. He was a Fellow of Magdalen 1928–47 and University Demonstrator in Physics 1934–47.
37 Beyond what he says here, little is known about the development of this poem. By 1938, when he showed it to John Masefield, it had become The Queen of Drum. It was published in Lewis’s Narrative Poems (1969).
