1927
Sunday 9 January: Called at quarter to seven on the Fleetwood boat, by which W and I crossed last night from Ireland. We had single berth rooms each on deck, but terribly stuffy because the steward had insisted on screwing up the windows in anticipation of a storm which never happened. I had a poor night and a nightmare—a thing I never had at sea before. If sea water, even, won’t protect a man from bogies, it’s a hard case.
Boat train left Fleetwood at 8 and was very slow all the way, probably because of bad foreign coal. We had both breakfast and lunch on the train. I read Erewhon Revisited and thought it poor. The ideas are sometimes capital, but it suffers (as even Gulliver does to my mind) from far too much working out wh. you could do for yourself, once the idea has been given you. Hanky’s sermon and the Sunch’ston newspaper are at least as dull as they would be in real life.
Reached Euston 2.45 (timed for 1.30), left my luggage at Paddington and then went by taxi with W. to the R.A.M.C. Mess at Millbank where he left his things. I thought the mess a very sound sort of building. He and I walked back to Paddington across the Park, glad to stretch our legs after the long morning in the train.
Left Paddington at 4.10 I had sent D a wire from Fleetwood saying that I shd. not arrive till about 6, and it now occurred to me that on a Sunday the wire might not be delivered and she would be frightened, as I usually turn up about 1.30. This made me quite miserable and spoiled a journey wh. I shd. otherwise have loved, being almost alone in my carriage and looking out on a wild crimson sunset over low black hills and woods, with an occasional gleam of water amidst them reflecting the red of the sky.
Thank goodness D really had got my wire and I found her well and in good spirits, despite the very hard time she has had while I was away—Maureen being laid up with German measles and Winifred unable to help because she hadn’t had it herself. D was called as a juror some days ago, and tho’ not actually included in the jury, retained in court, as a sort of understudy I suppose. She was too interested (she says) to be uncomfortable and passed the time during the only case very characteristically, holding the hand of the prisoner’s wife.
To bed about eleven after a very pleasant evening of chat and talk. I woke once in the night and imagined myself still in Ireland—then, oh, the relief! Best of all I find term begins on Friday week, not on Thursday next as I had feared.
Monday 10 January: Slept very well and took Pat out before breakfast as usual. I spent the morning setting exam papers for the L.C. and polished off Story, Dictation, and Sidgwick. I also wrote to J. Betjeman.
After lunch I look my walk through Barton and over the fields, coming back by the Crab Apple Road. It was a most extraordinary afternoon. Most of the sky was very pale creamy blue, and there were clouds about, of the coldest shade of dark blue I have ever seen. The further hills were exactly the same as the clouds in colour and texture. But near the sun the sky simply turned white and the sun itself (its outline was invisible) was a patch of absolutely pure white light that looked as if it had no [more] power of heating than moonlight—tho’ it was quite a mild day in fact.
I got into a tremendously happy mood, what with the joy of being home again and certain vague anticipations of good things beginning and a general sense of frosts breaking up—like the beginning of the Prelude. Some few birds were making a great noise as if it was spring . . .
In the evening all three of us had a talk about Dotty and the trouble which her late hours and lavish entertaining throws on D. I wanted to decide once and for all what we could rightly demand of her and then insist on it—instead of continuing forever to be alternately enraged and indulgent: but D thought me quite unpractical, and I’m afraid I only worried her . . .
Tuesday 11 January: Read Guy Mannering all morning, which I remember only confusedly from my last reading. In spite of the crazy construction and the absurd gushing letters, it is a good yarn.
Walked after lunch, with Pat. On my way up to Shotover I met Mrs Hinckley who tells me she is trying to get Dymer from the Times Book Club, but has failed. I promised to send her a copy. I went up Shotover by the little path on the edge of Pullen’s Gap and along the ‘Plain’ to the end. A very dark grey day, looking like snow but feeling too warm.
Home again to tea for which the others came in, having been calling on the Schofields. He is a don at Ruskin and knew Fasnacht, whom he described as being ‘far too polite’. Finished Guy Mannering after supper and set an L.C. paper on it—an irritating little job at which I made several false starts. During supper Maureen remembered ‘I’m beginning to get excited about term. Are you?’ As she knows very well that D and I both hate the coming of term, and that it means a great deal of overwork for D, it is hard to see why she says these things. I suppose it is intended to be a kind of joke. Letter from Warnie today to tell me that he has got seats for Hansel and Gretel on Saturday week: but as that is now going to be collection Saturday I shan’t be able to go.
Wednesday 12 January: After breakfast I set a paper on Macbeth, wrote to Attenborough about the L.C., and to W about Hansel and Gretel . . . I next went to the Davenport to see about a set of Milton’s Prose Works and found to my annoyance that there is none on the market, Masson being wholly and Bohn partly, out of print . . .
Home and read Wyld’s Mother Tongue (a curse be on Wyld) till lunchtime. Had a good long walk in the afternoon, over the fields to Elsfield, along the road and home over the fields through Barton. An absolutely dead grey day but without the grandeur or suspense that grey days sometimes have. I, at any rate, was v. insensible and walked along ‘thinking’ as it’s called: i.e.—mooning . . .
Thursday 13 January: Into town after breakfast where I got my hair cut, paid for my Milton, and brought home one volume, ordering the rest to be sent to College. Began Reformation in England and read a good deal of it before lunch—with great enjoyment. For a certain kind of humour, the prose Milton beats anyone I know. He abuses like an inspired coster—like Falstaff.
Hot roast for lunch. Walked up Shotover through Quarry in the afternoon and along the Plain. A very cold day with a beautiful feel in the air, a pale blue sky and bright sunlight. On my way back I had a look at the digging operations in Quarry . . .
Worked hard on Language for the rest of the day, finding out what Wyld says in spite of all Wyld does to prevent me. I made notes of the ‘West Germanic to Primitive O.E.’ and wrote a Mnemonic poem on it—this is going to be great fun. I also got well into ‘Primitive O.E. to O.E.’ But it seems impossible to find out anything about Consonants. It’s also v. annoying that, having been given an account of what vowels change to under J-mutation, when you come to U-mutation you are told that they change but not what they change to. Are all philologists mad? . . .
Friday 14 January: D brought me in bed this morning an advertisement from a Press Cutting Agency wh. contained, at last, the T.L.S. review of Dymer. Fausset wrote to me in September to say that he had reviewed it, but thought it might not appear for a few weeks and was writing to let me know: a very enthusiastic letter, and a very kindly act on the part of a complete stranger. Ever since then I have been on the lookout for it, and I think yesterday was the first Thursday on wh. I forgot all about [it]. The Review was very satisfactory indeed and cheered me greatly.
All of us slept v. late this morning. Worked till lunch on vowel changes in O.E., hitching Fracture and J-mutation into rimed octosyllabics, with equal pleasure and profit. Wrote to Fausset thanking him for the review and repeating my invitation.
It was very dark and raining but I put on my mac. and went out—along Windmill Rd. and its continuation to the turn for the Barracks: thence left across the fields and up Shotover by Pullen’s Gap, and home through Quarry. A very slippery soggy walk, but I quite enjoyed it. Maureen had a girl to tea. Went on with Language till supper time and read Milton afterwards. Finished Reformation in England and nearly all of Prelaticall Episcopacy. He is not, at this stage, a great prose writer: the exuberance of some passages is too overwhelming, and the argument not really very powerful. I remembered it as being better. Hooker’d have made mincemeat of him.
Saturday 15 January: . . . Worked all morning on the change from O.E. to M.E., with great difficulty but some enjoyment. Wyld’s best (that is, his worst) trick is to say that a certain vowel did this or that except, say, in Kentish: but what it did in Kentish he doesn’t tell you, and you may read thro’ the whole book to find out. Another pretty quip is the example that doesn’t exemplify. ‘Ā in the North, through 
, reached ē. Example, Bruce rimes schame (short ă in O.E.) with blame.’ One can usually work it out in the end, but after maddening waste of time.
After lunch I walked out and put a copy of Dymer thro’ Mrs Hinckley’s letter box: then on and up Shotover. It was an afternoon of absolute silence, a feeling of thinness in the air, and a very pale blue sky with white marestails in it. Walked to the end of the Plain and then down thro the bracken, not in Pullen’s Gap but in the open place next beyond it, where my grove is. Coming down into the fields I heard the ‘burr’ of some birds suddenly rising quite a distance off. The winter sun on the bracken and woods was indescribably mild and pure. Home by the very muddy way.
D’s cold still v. heavy at tea time. Went on with my Language till supper and after and began the next stage of my mnemonic. Each day as I set out for my walk I repeat it as far as it has gone, which I find quite easy: it also prevents me sliding into a day dream in the first half mile, and leaves me (when the repetition is done) really receptive.
Maureen out tonight at the theatre to see the Ghost Train. Letter from my father today enclosing a bad review from the Westminster Gazette and (what’s much worse) saying that the Heynes are visiting Oxford and will ‘look me up’.
Maureen came in about 11 and a rather unfortunate conversation took place (I forget the early stages) in wh. I said that D made a great mistake in always concealing anything that was wrong with her until it was really bad. Maureen chimed in with something about D’s eyes wh. I didn’t fully understand but wh. means, I suppose, that they were bad while I was away. This infuriated D. I tried to pour oil on the waters, and said laughingly that D didn’t approve of criticism. Maureen said ‘When you criticise me, I don’t fly into a flaming temper’—wh. tactless, but by no means untrue, expression, of course made things much worse.
Sunday 16 January: D still v. annoyed this morning. I sat in and worked on the first chunk of the ‘King of Drum’, wh. is to consist, I hope, of three short chunks—about 130 lines each. This chunk is a new version of a piece I began writing about two years ago, wh. itself was a re-writing of the ‘Wild Hunt’ (about 1920), which in its turn was based on something I started at Bristol in 1918.
Washed up after lunch, this being Winifred’s Sunday for going home to Appleton: then took Pat for a short stroll in Cuckoo Lane. A very cold, dark, deadly afternoon. After tea I went on writing till supper, finished the first chunk to my satisfaction, and tried unsuccessfully to begin the second. Washed up after supper and re-read some of Raleigh’s letters. D is reading Forster’s Passage to India . . .
Monday 17 January: A heavy white frost this morning. I worked from breakfast to lunch on language, mainly constructing a Mnemonic for ‘O.E. to M.E. (Vowels)’. I am beginning to enjoy this stuff and have certainly got further this time than in any of my innumerable previous attempts to cosm that chaos. What a brute Wyld is—no order, no power of exposition, no care for the reader. It is satisfactory to see that no amount of learning can save a fool.
It began to snow before lunch. In the afternoon Pat and I walked down Cuckoo Lane and into College by the back way. The snow was at that stage when it gives the greatest variety of colours—the paths wet brown, the grass half white (like gooseberry fool with cream) and an occasional streak of real white on a loaded branch. The river was a very dark green, all but black. Found the fire lit in my room and clothes and blankets airing.
Home for tea and went on at the language, doing the consonants: where I half forgave Wyld for introducing me to the beautiful words ‘yeave’ and ‘yeavey’.
A letter from Barfield to say that he is at Air Hill and will come over—always good news. After supper I finished Prelaticall Episcopacy and read the whole of the first book of Reason of Church Govt. Full of great things—the passage on Discipline (v. Platonic) and chaps. VI and VII . . .
Tuesday 18 January: A frost and white fog this morning. Worked after breakfast on Norman influence in M.E., besides learning my mnemonics up to date.
A splendid walk in the afternoon, the fog having cleared. I went up Shotover thro’ Quarry and along the top to the Horsepath lane which I went down. A winding lane going down hill before one thro’ steep banks, with trees, but not too many, so that you can see the further reaches of the lane below you, is one of the best sights. The sun was straight ahead of me, a watery looking sun, and below it in the valley the mist was collecting again—very faint purple. As often, there was a great silence, emphasised by the occasional springlike chuckling of a bird quite close, or the very lazy crowing of a cock further off. Went through Horsepath and up again by the field path into the bracken.
Was thinking about imagination and intellect and the unholy muddle I am in about them at present: undigested scraps of anthroposophy and psychoanalysis jostling with orthodox idealism over a background of good old Kirkian rationalism. Lord what a mess! And all the time (with me) there’s the danger of falling back into most childish superstitions, or of running into dogmatic materialism to escape them. I hoped the ‘King of Drum’ might write itself so as to clear things up—the way ‘Dymer’ cleared up the Christina Dream business.
Home lateish for tea and found to my disgust that D’s visitors (Mrs Studer and the Thomas’s) hadn’t yet turned up. They came about 5 and Mr Thomas stayed till 6.30, thus ruining my evening’s work.
Went on with Norse influences before and after supper, finding them unexpectedly difficult. Wyld hates foreign influences and wants to account for everything by sound laws—consequently tells you as little as possible. Wright has plenty to say about Norse vowels etc, but will use no examples (hardly) except dialect words. In the end I had to fall back mainly on the popular books—Bradley and Pearsall Smith. Finished the day by reading a good bit of Reason of Church Govt. D’s cold seems better.
Wednesday 19 January: I intended to go into town this morning but changed my mind and sat in to my Language—starting the M.E. inflexions and making out a map of dialectal areas, which I think I’ve got all wrong . . .
I went for my walk across the fields to Stowe Woods and home by road. Still puzzled about imagination etc. As I was crossing the big field into Barton on the way back, I suddenly found myself thinking ‘What I won’t give up is the doctrine that what we get in imagination at its highest is real in some way, tho, at this stage one can’t say how’: and then my intellectual conscience smote me for having got to that last pitch of sentimentality—asserting what ‘I won’t do’ when I ought to be enquiring what I can know.
Decided to work up the whole doctrine of Imagination in Coleridge as soon as I had time—and the thought of Wordsworth was somehow very re-assuring. That’s the real imagination, no bogies, no Karmas, no gurus, no damned psychism there. I have been astray among second rate ideas too long . . .
I left soon and bussed into College, to look out Collection papers. Found the papers in great confusion. There is not a complete Ethics among them all. What’s worse I can’t remember how much Ethics my lambs are to have done! While in College I was rung up on the telephone by Betjeman speaking from Morton in the Marsh, to say that he hasn’t been able to read the O.E., as he was suspected for measles and forbidden to look at a book. Probably a lie, but what can one do? . . .
Thursday 20 January: Into town immediately after breakfast. There was a thick frost, a bright sky, and it was biting cold. Went to the printers and left my O.E. paper. They undertook to let me have proofs at 3 tomorrow. Bought some butter for D, paid my bill at the Davenant (£22) and came home. D had been to see Hedges who has been in communication with the income tax people about my 1925–26: the upshot is that I have to tackle the Bursar again. I begin to fear this wretched business will never be settled.
Spent the rest of the morning on Raleigh’s Milton wh. is full of good things and not a good book. Saurat and even Abercrombie are miles beyond him. Raleigh is always complaining about Milton’s God not being kind and loving, and saying that Satan is the real sympathetic character—and all that dear old pap. He has no notion of the real theme of individual will against the structure of things, and no notion that Milton might appreciate and sympathise with the individual and yet think that the Universal must be more right and more real. In fact Raleigh is really in the same position as the people who think that if Milton appreciates Comus he can’t appreciate the Lady more: they never can see that the man who really likes toffee best is also the man who understands brown sherry and knows that it’s nicer than toffee.
Walked into Old Headington after lunch and met Percy Simpson wheeling his two children in a pram: he looked a rum figure, bustling along at about a mile an hour, with his watery eye and his perfectly circular little hat. Accompanied him as far as the corner of Barton, anathematising phonetic-maniacs.
I then went over the fields, round to the stile, and home by road. I was very unreceptive and devoted myself to repetition of mnemonics. Went on with language after tea. A maddening example of Wyldism:—he suddenly remarks in a parenthesis ‘The normal development of feaht wd. be faught.’ You remember him saying that ea became e. Look it up and find you’re quite right, nothing about au there. Then you try it the other way round and look up ‘New Diphthongs in M.E. Sources of au.’ Not a word about ea + ht. After half an hour I ran the real explanation to earth in Wright.
After supper I discussed the tax muddle with D and got together the facts wh. I’ve got to write to the Bursar about. When that beastly business was done I scouted as absurd an inner suggestion that I might do some more work and solved a crossword puzzle instead . . .
Friday 21 January: Woke up to a very cold morning and found that a good deal of snow had fallen in the night. Decided not to lose my last day’s liberty in work and settled down after breakfast to ‘The King of Drum’. Produced about 20 lines for the opening of the next chunk, in a metre I have never struck before (rhythm of O.E. verse, but rhyming), with very little effort and greatly to my satisfaction. I also began to simmer with ideas for the further development of the story.
Took Pat out for a short walk down Cuckoo Lane, where the snow greatly excited him. After lunch I bussed in to College where I found the reliable Baxter’s proofs of my O.E. paper waiting. Also a note from Barfield in rhymed Latin and a letter from Fausset, saying he cldn’t. come at present but asking to be allowed to come at two days notice later on . . .
Home to tea. I had been looking forward all day to resuming the ‘Drum’ poems, but when I came to it after tea I found myself completely dried up. Hammered out about seven bad lines with great labour and gave it up.
After that, a pleasant slack evening by the fire—crossword puzzle and chat with D—marred by the thought of term beginning tomorrow.
Saturday 22 January: Up rather earlier and bussed into town after breakfast for Collections. I found Weldon lolling in the smoking room and learned from him that I am to keep the Greats men this term (whom I thought I was to hand over) and to take them through Aristotle, which is a nasty surprise. Held my Collections in Hall greatly to the annoyance of the College servants.
Lunched in Common Room and then back to my own room where Valentin and Betjeman came to do an O.E. paper. I sat by the chimney corner and corrected papers while they sat at the table and muttered and worked themselves into contortions intended to be expressive of mental agony. They stopped at about 4, saying they had done all they cd. I said something about the uses of imagination in guessing words to wh. Valentin replied with unusual sense ‘Oh, I could write a story all right.’
Bussed home. The snow was beginning to thaw and there was a heavy mist. D was out calling on the Studers when I arrived. Had tea and a chat by the fire, feeling rather languid and head-achey.
Back to College for dinner and sat down to finish Collection papers afterward—the Aristotle one raising points wh. took me a good deal of time. I shd. have finished it, however, if Weldon had not come in shortly after 10: this meant hot toddy and bawdy conversation till 1 o’clock. He tells me that his brother is master in a Borstall institution and from that source (1) that among the boy-criminals the murderers are much the pleasantest fellows and those whom careful treatment can make the most of, because they have some character; (2) that it is quite a common thing for people to make £50 a week in town or at Brighton by laying traps and then blackmailing people for sodomy. Bishops seem to be the best prey . . .
Sunday 23 January: Up late. Put my washing under my arms and Sweet’s Reader in my pocket and set out after breakfast on my walk home. It was more ‘yeavey’ than ever and one had to pick ones steps carefully to avoid a fall. The ‘walks’ were very fine in a sombre way, with the river looking like green ink and the further bank only a strip of white, clearest at the water’s edge and then melting almost immediately into a dark grey fog, with a few ghosts of pollards. I was greatly taken by the antics of a water rat, who sat up (apparently on the water, really, I suppose, on some branch just below the surface) to look at me and then in an access of coyness dipped right upside down like a duck.
Reached home very hot from the struggle of shuffling up hill in the slush: felt so heavy all day and had such a headache that I began to think I was getting one of the many current epidemics—but I suppose it is the sudden change from my regular Headington hours and diet.
Spent the morning re-reading Wulfstan’s Sermon, with some enjoyment. I am really getting into this language at last. All well at home, D in good form.
Went out for a long heavy tramp after lunch to try and get rid of the oppression that was on me. The weather had at least one advantage—it had cleared the countryside of the usual mob of walkers-in-their-Sunday-best. I went to Stowe Woods by road and home over the fields to Barton. The mist v. thick. Occasionally two bushes and a patch of grass wd. be quite free from snow and these, doubly framed both with fog and snow surrounding them, had a curiously aloof appearance.
Home about 4.30 very tired but feeling much better. Read some of the Fall of the Angels and then bussed in to College. Sat next to Onions after dinner and told him about Wyld’s iniquities over the word fought. He agreed that that W had no method—but also mentioned the real difficulty, that you have to treat W[est] S[axon] as the Norm for ‘business purposes’, and yet it is least important for the history of the language . . .
Monday 24 January: Overslept myself this morning: was just aware of Hatton coming in to call me, and then, next moment as it seemed, it was 8.30 and my tea was cold.
A good review from G.K’s Weekly arrived by the morning post, signed by a man called Crofte-Cooke, where Dymer figures as ‘a great poem’ for the first time in print.
This morning came Hetherington, then Valentin whom I hounded through some pages of Wulfstan, translating myself and then getting him to do it over again—as Kirk taught me Greek at Bookham.
A new Greats pupil called Campbell came to interview me, a languid youth with half-shut eyes and a drawl—what Parker calls ‘La-de-da.’ I was also rung up on the telephone by Betjeman who invited me to tea this afternoon. A damned nuisance but of course one has to accept.
Bussed out home and heard from D that poor M. Studer is dead. It is the best thing for him, but with no money and a wife who has already been out of her mind, the prospect for his children is dreadful.
Walked up Shotover after lunch. The snow has almost disappeared tho the landscape, seen from the hill, is still decorated with a few streaks and splashes of white—often at the edges of fields. It was a sunless afternoon but very pleasant with a loud warm wind blowing, and the colours of grass and hedges, after the recent white and dirty grey, were very refreshing and soft.
Bussed back into town and to Betjeman’s rooms in St Aldates—a v. beautiful panelled room looking across to the side of the House. I found myself pitchforked into a galaxy of super-undergraduates, including Sparrow of the Nonesuch Press. The only others I remember are Harwood of the House (no relation) and an absolutely silent and astonishingly ugly person called McNeice, of whom Betjeman said afterwards ‘He doesn’t say much but he is a great poet’. It reminded me of the man in Boswell ‘who was always thinking of Locke and Newton’. This silent bard comes from Belfast or rather Carrickfergus. The conversation was chiefly about lace curtains, arts-and-crafts (wh. they all dislike), china ornaments, silver versus earthen teapots, architecture, and the strange habits of ‘Hearties’. The best thing was Betjeman’s v. curious collection of books.
Came away with him and back to College to pull him along thro’ Wulfstan till dinner time. In spite of all his rattle he is really just as ignorant and stupid as Valentin.
Came straight back to my rooms after dinner (where Cowley was dining in and lecturing on the cruelty of women) and got rather a shock at getting my Battels for last term—£47. Worked till 11 finishing the Collections papers and thank heaven they are now off my chest. Read Milton for three quarters of an hour and went to bed, v. tired, and did not go to sleep for a long time.
Tuesday 25 January: Worked on Milton (Minor Poems) in the morning, with considerable interest despite a feeling of tiredness and a headache.
Home to lunch where I found D in v. good form but tremendously busy with cooking: I helped to fry the grill for lunch. Went for a walk afterwards, over the fields to Elsfield and home by Barton. A gale blowing, Oxford and the hills beyond it very blue and occasional gleams of yellow sunlight over the nearer landscape.
My walk took me longer than I intended, and when I got home and ate a hasty tea I was very late for meeting Barfield, whom (I now remembered) I had asked to come to College at 3. He had left a note saying he was gone to tea, but presently came in. It was delightful to see him. After a confused chat of philosophy and jokes, we settled down to read Aeschylus’ Prometheus together, as we had promised ourselves to do.
After an hour or so we went out and dined at the Town & Gown. Coming back we sat up till half past one to finish our play, sometimes convulsed with laughter at our own literal translation—or those of Paley, wh. are even more exquisitely funny—but equally impressed with the poetry when we read it thro’ again in Greek. I understood the play better this time. The wild defiance at the end must definitely (for a Greek) have stamped Prometheus as one of 
—a ‘primitive’ properly superseded by Olympians.
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.
Lunched in Common Room and attended a meeting of the T.B. 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.
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. 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.
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.
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. 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. 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 afternoon 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.
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.
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. Soluuntur tabulae risu!
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. 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. 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.
Came back to College and dined in, having a talk with Webb, whom I rather like despite his oddity. 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 Mεσοτης: 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.
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. 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, 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 ease 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.
Had a conversation with Slade, who gave up Greats a year ago. 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. . . . 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. . . .
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 about 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. 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.
Read Plato’s Erastae after supper, wh. contains a v. comic little account of the ideal Gk. gentleman—v. like the renaissance one, in a way.
Back to College and think I was feverish in the night—always half awake and asleep in a skein of muddled dreams, v. thirsty.
Monday 29 [28] February: (the dates have got wrong somehow). Woke with a headache and feeling shaky. Got through the morning pretty well, discovering to my delight that Hetherington is an admirer of Phantastes. Home for lunch. Still raining. D was better today tho’ still tired. Back after tea to take Hamilton & Betjeman. After dinner decided to nurse myself and shake off this whatever-it-is. Sat over my fire with a detective story and hot toddy till about 10.45 and then went to bed.
Tuesday 1 March: Woke after a good night feeling much better. Spent the morning noting parallels between Donne, Milton and Burton.
Hudson came round from All Souls to give me the recipe for the punch, as I am entertaining the Mermaids tonight, drat ’em. They are nothing but a drinking, guffawing cry of barbarians with hardly any taste among them, and I wish I hadn’t joined them: but I don’t see my way out now.
Home for lunch. D seemed still v. tired. We all tried talking French at lunch. It was not raining when I set out for my walk, over the fields to Stowe Woods, but came on just as I turned homeward on the Crab Apple Road, and I got pelted.
Back to College, and had to spend most of the time getting things ready for the sons of Belial. The evening passed off all right I think: Tourneur’s Revenger’s Tragedy was read, a rotten piece of work, whose merits, pretty small to begin with, were entirely lost in the continual cackling wh. greeted every bawdy reference (however tragic) and every mistake made by a reader. If one spent much time with these swine one wd. blaspheme against humour itself, as being nothing but a kind of shield with which rabble protect themselves from anything that might disturb the muddy puddle inside them.
Put the room straight after they’d gone and sorted out clean from dirty things for the benefit of Hatton. Then to bed and slept well, and oh the beautiful silence and fresh air after all that evening!
Wednesday 2 March: A bright, beautiful morning. Read Courthope’s chapters on Wit. There’s nothing in them (‘She’s empty. Hark, she sounds’). Anyone can do this talk in generals about the break-up of scholasticism, and it gets you no further. What you want is something that will make you realise from inside how the break up of scholasticism might have made you yourself take to paradox. One can do it for oneself better without Courthope.
I also read some Dryden in the attempt to find out what he meant by wit. But he means something different each time. He’s a rum case of a man who was just a poet and nothing else—no magnanimity, no knowledge, no power of thought: just rhythm and gusto.
Went to Bodley and ordered the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Edns. of Paradise Lost for tomorrow to find out about ‘crouch’ or ‘couch’. Met Cowley there who bowed with his hand on his heart and invited me to make use of his services. Then set off home, in excellent spirits till I suddenly got something in my eye.
D still v. tired and bothered, having been dragged to the cemetery by Mrs Studer again this morning. I do hope Mrs S. leaves the country or quarrels with D before she has made her ill. And Dotty had kept D up, and Winifred had annoyed her, and a visitor came to tea—oh curse it all! Is there never to be any peace or comfort?