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They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963), ed. Walter Hooper (1979), letter of 10 June 1917, p. 191.
See Biographical Appendix.
They Stand Together, p. 187.
See Biographical Appendix.
Letters of C. S. Lewis, edited with a Memoir by W. H. Lewis (1966). Revised and Enlarged Edition edited by Walter Hooper (1988), p. 64.
See Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis, eds. Clyde S. Kilby and Marjorie Lamp Mead.
Letters of C. S. Lewis, p. 28.
Lewis Papers, vol. V, pp. 241–42.
C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (1955), ch. XII.
They Stand Together, p. 206.
Letters of C. S. Lewis, p. 79.
Letters of C. S. Lewis, p. 30.
Letters of C. S. Lewis, p. 84.
Letters of C. S. Lewis, p. 98.
Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography (1974), ch. 11.
Letters of C. S. Lewis, p. 100.
Letters of C. S. Lewis, p. 33.
They Stand Together, p. 241.
Letters of C. S. Lewis, pp. 103–4.
Letters of C. S. Lewis, p. 111.
Lewis Papers, vol. VI, p. 118.
Lewis Papers, vol. VI, p. 123.
They Stand Together, p. 200.
Since Lewis returned to Oxford in 1919 with the Moores they had lived in a good many places, of which 28 Warneford Road was the one they liked best. It was owned by Miss Featherstone who had moved out for a while to give them more room, and was now thinking of returning.
See John Hawkins Askins in the Biographical Appendix.
When he was nine years old Lewis was sent to Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire. It’s the school referred to as ‘Belsen’ in Surprised by Joy (1955).
Charles à Court Repington, After the War: A Diary (1922).
The pass book to Mrs Moore’s bank account in Ireland, into which account her husband was expected to make regular payments.
Robert Adamson, The Development of Greek Philosophy, eds. W. R. Sorley and R. P. Hardie (1908).
See Arthur Greeves in the Biographical Appendix.
‘Paddy’ is Mrs Moore’s son Edward Francis Courtenay Moore (1898–1918) who died in the War. See the Introduction.
See William Force Stead in the Biographical Appendix.
John Collings Squire (1884–1958), poet and man of letters, founded and edited the London Mercury 1919–34.
Mrs Moore’s sister, Mrs Sarah Horan, was married to a Dublin solicitor.
Mrs Moore’s name for her husband, Courtenay Edward Moore, from whom she was separated.
Lady Gonner (née Nannie Ledlie) was the widow of Sir Edward Carter Kersey Gonner (1862–1912) who had been Economic Adviser to the Ministry of Food and Professor of Economic Science in the University of Liverpool. Their one child, Sheila, was at Headington School with Maureen. ‘Red Gables’ was on Headington Road, the first house on the right side of ‘The White Horse’ public house.
See Rodney Pasley in the Biographical Appendix.
In the Preface to the second edition of Dymer of 1950 Lewis defined ‘Christina Dreams’: ‘In those days the new psychology was just beginning to make itself felt in the circles I most frequented at Oxford. This joined forces with the fact that we felt ourselves (as young men always do) to be escaping from the illusions of adolescence, and as a result we were much exercised about the problem of fantasy or wishful thinking. The ‘Christina Dream’, as we called it (after Christina Pontifex in Butler’s novel), was the hidden enemy whom we were all determined to unmask and defeat . . . By the time I wrote Dymer I had come, under the influence of our common obsession about Christina Dreams, into a state of angry revolt against that spell. I regarded it as the very type of the illusions I was trying to escape from. It must therefore be savagely attacked.’
The Rev. Alured George Clarke became the Vicar of All Saints, Highfield, Headington in 1920.
See Lily Suffern in the Biographical Appendix.
Arthur Stevenson and his two sisters, Sylvia and Sydney, lived on Headington Hill with their mother of whom we hear much in the diary.
See Frederick Walker Macran in the Biographical Appendix.
This is a term given the fifty years of Greek history between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars (480–430 bc), the period in which Athens realised her greatest literary and artistic eminence.
Miss Kathleen Whitty had been Maureen’s music teacher in Bristol before they moved to Oxford in 1917.
Leonard Whibley, Political Parties in Athens During the Peloponnesian War (1889).
‘Collections’ is a college examination held at the end or the beginning of every term in Oxford and some other universities.
See George Hope Stevenson and Edgar Frederick Carritt in the Biographical Appendix.
Henry Pyot Blunt, Basil Platel Wyllie, Edward Fairchild Watling, Philip Overend Simpson, John Eric Montagu, John Maurice Hastings, Edward Felix Gray Haig and Harold Keith Salvesen—all of University College—were reading Greats, except for Salvesen who read Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
See Leo Baker in the Biographical Appendix.
See Owen Barfield in the Biographical Appendix.
See Alfred Kenneth Hamilton-Jenkin in the Biographical Appendix.
Henry George Ley (1887–1962) was Organist and Choirmaster of Christ Church Cathedral 1909–26, and Precentor and Director of Music at Eton College 1916–45.
E. R. Appleton was the editor of The Beacon.
See Basil Charles Allchin in the Biographical Appendix.
Edward John Wallis was reading Greats at University College and took his BA in 1923.
Roy McKay, who read Law at Magdalen and took his BA in 1923.
Reginald Walter Macan (1848–1941) was a Fellow and Tutor of History at University College 1884–1906 and Master of the College 1906–23. Something of the ‘modernist essay’ may have gone into his book The Resurrection of Jesus Christ (1877).
Herbert David Ziman (1902–83) took a second in Greats and received his BA in 1924. He was leader-writer for The Daily Telegraph 1934–39, and literary editor 1956–68.
See William Douglas Robson-Scott in the Biographical Appendix. Lewis and Robson-Scott were both members of a literary society in University College called the Martlets. As Lewis had not been to a meeting in some time, there was a question of whether or not he was still entitled to go.
This group contains many of the great men whose books and lectures Lewis had read or heard during his years in Oxford. Cyril Bailey (1871–1957), a well-known teacher of the Classics and notable Oxford personality, was a Fellow of Balliol College; Alexander Dunlop Lindsay (1879–1952) was Fellow and Classical Tutor at Balliol 1906–22, and Master of Balliol 1924–49; Harold Henry Joachim (1868–1938) was Wykeham Professor of Logic 1919–35; Geoffrey William Seymour Curtis read Greats at University College and took a BA in 1925.
This was Herbert Henry Asquith (later Earl of Oxford and Asquith, 1852–1928), a statesman who had been Prime Minister 1908–16. Margot Asquith (1864–1945), his second wife, had a magnetic personality which was sometimes a political liability.
Sir Hugh Allen (1869–1946) was the Professor of Music at Oxford 1918–46, and obtained the creation of the music faculty.
‘The Oxford Musical Festival ended in a blaze of colour . . . The chief novelty of the Festival, three historical ballets, took place in the Corn Exchange on Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings. The ballets were entitled “A Masque at the Court of Queen Elizabeth”, with music from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, “The Gentleman Dancing Master”, with music by Henry Purcell and “J. S. Bach and Frederick the Great”, set to music taken from the orchestral suites of Bach . . . The Music for the dances was selected from the works of Marchant, Byrd, Robert Johnson, and Giles Faranby, who took the B.Mus. degree at Oxford in 1592. “The Gentleman dancing Master”, arranged by F. R. Harris, is based on Wycherley’s play of the same name . . . The . . . third ballet . . . illustrated a meeting between Frederick and the composer and the festivities given at the Court in Bach’s honour. The several dances were gone through with a joyous abandon that was very inspiring and made a lively finish to a really enjoyable programme.’ The Oxford Times (19 May 1922), p. 8.
By Elias Henry Jones (1920).
See Sir Walter Raleigh in the Biographical Appendix.
See Arthur Blackburne Poynton in the Biographical Appendix.
In the letter to his father of 18 May Lewis said: ‘The actual subjects of my own Greats school are a doubtful quantity at the moment: for no one quite knows what place classics and philosophy will hold in the educational world in a year’s time . . . What is wanted everywhere is a man who combines the general qualification which Greats is supposed to give, with the special qualifications of any other subjects. And English Literature is a “rising” subject. Thus if I cd. take a First or even a Second in Greats, and a First next year in English Literature, I should be in a very strong position indeed.’
The Master of University College.
Mr Tubbs was one of the Masters, and Miss Cowie the Matron, at Cherbourg School, Malvern, when Lewis was a pupil there in 1910–12.
By Sir James Barrie (1902).
See Cecil Harwood in the Biographical Appendix.
See Arthur Spenser Loat Farquharson in the Biographical Appendix.
There is a small area just north-east of Magdalen College where two branches of the River Cherwell come together. It is called ‘Mesopotamia’ after the ancient country between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and on one of the branches is a pool reserved for men where the custom is to bathe nude—‘Parson’s Pleasure’.
See 3 June 1922.
By ‘tea fight’ Lewis meant those occasions in which, just as you are getting to the intersting part of a conversation with someone, all the guests are shuffled about.
See Vida Mary Wiblin in the Biographical Appendix.
These were some of the other members of the O.T.C. which Lewis came to know when he was billeted in Keble College. He shared a room with Paddy Moore, but the one he admired most was Martin Ashworth Somerville (1898–1918) of King’s College, Cambridge, who served in Egypt and Palestine and died of wounds received in action.
See Jane ‘Janie’ McNeill in the Biographical Appendix.
Charles Wilfred Mackenzie took his BA in 1922, and John Alexander Currie took a B.Sc. in 1924.
This was Edwin Arlington Robinson’s ‘For a Dead Lady’ quoted in Conrad Aiken’s ‘A Letter from America’, The London Mercury, vol. VI (June 1922), pp. 196–98.
Carleton Kemp Allen (1887–1966) was Praelector in Jurisprudence at University College 1920–29, Professor of Jurisprudence 1929–31, and Warden of Rhodes House 1931–52.
Francis Herbert Bradley (1846–1924).
Lewis came up to University College in the Hilary Term of 1917 when Butler and Dodds (both Irish) were taking Schools.
Theobald Butler (1894–1976) achieved distinction as a lawyer. He was called to the Bar, Inner Temple, in 1921, became Master of the Bench in 1960.
Eric Robertson Dodds (1893–1979) was Lecturer in Classics at University College, Reading, 1919–24, Professor of Greek in the University of Birmingham 1924–36, and Regius Professor of Greek in the University of Oxford 1936–60.
By Robert Browning (1840).
‘Nous n’irons Plus’ is found in The Voice of Cecil Harwood, ed. Owen Barfield (1979).
The advertisement appeared in The Oxford Times of 23 June, 30 June and 7 July and reads: ‘Undergraduate, Classical Scholar, First-class in Honour Moderations, University Prizeman will give TUITION, Philosophy, Classics, to Schoolboy or Undergraduate in Oxford, August, September. Highest references—Write, D.3, 183, “Times” Office, Oxford.’
William Macbride Childs (1869–1939) was Principal of University College, Reading, 1903–26, and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Reading 1926–29.
William George de Burgh (1866–1943) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading 1907–34.
See Eric Beckett in the Biographical Appendix.
John Norman Bryson (1896–1976) was also from Northern Ireland. He was a lecturer at Balliol, Merton and Oriel Colleges 1923–40, and Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Balliol 1940–63.
Maurice Leonard Jacks (1894–1964) was a Fellow and Dean of Wadham College 1919–22, Headmaster of Mill Hill School 1922–37, and Director of the Department of Education, Oxford University, 1938–57.
By Thomas Stewart Omond (1903).
John David Mabbott (1898–1988) was Asst. Lecturer in Classics at Reading University 1922, after which he became a Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford, 1924–63, and then the President of St John’s College 1963–69.
Lady Margaret Hall.
The Greeves family were Plymouth Brethren.
Marianne Cecile Gabrielle Hugon (1881–1952) had been an undergraduate at Somerville College, and in 1923 she became Tutor in French at the Society of Oxford Home-Students (St Anne’s College). She was the author of Social France in the XVII Century (1911).
Bernice de Bergerac’s Glorious England (1922) was performed in the Priory gardens of Christ Church on 31 July.
Émile Coué (1857–1926), a French chemist, developed a system of psychotherapy by which he claimed that auto-suggestion could be used to cure disease. His formula, which had a wide vogue, was ‘Every day, in every way, I am becoming better and better’.
John Linton Myers (1869–1954) of New College was Wykeham Professor of Ancient History 1910–39, and Examiner in Final Classical School 1920–23.
Horace William Brindley Joseph (1867–1943) was the Senior Philosophical Tutor of New College 1895–1932.
Their intention was to visit Wynyard School, which both had attended and hated about equally. Their story is told in the chapter entitled ‘Concentration Camp’ in Lewis’s Surprised by Joy.
A weir divides the upper Cherwell from the lower: near it there is an inclined concrete ramp, furnished with steel rollers, by which device punts and canoes can be landed and hauled up to the upper river.—W.H.L.
Thomas Edward Lawrence (1888–1935)—Lawrence of Arabia. He took a BA from Jesus College in 1910 and was made a Fellow of All Souls College in 1919.
A colloquial name for the priests of St. John the Evangelist, an Anglican monastic order founded in the parish of Cowley, Oxford. They have since moved to London, but after he became a Christian this was where Lewis went for confession.
Francis de Zulueta (1878–1958), an academic lawyer, was All Souls reader in Roman Law 1912–17, and Regius Professor of Civil Law 1919–48.
Daisy Perrott was Maureen’s godmother.
A similar apology for his behaviour to me was made by the Bitch when Andrée called in the morning.—C. S.L.
Of the many places that Lewis and the Moores had lived since 1919 the most horrible was a flat over a butcher’s shop in 58 Windmill Road. Mrs John Jeffrey was both butcher and landlady.
See Isabella Kelso Ewart and Mary Gundred Ewart under The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.
Mrs Mary Gribbon Greeves (1861–1949), originally from Brooklyn, New York, was Arthur Greeves’s mother.
See Sir Thomas Herbert Warren in the Biographical Appendix.
Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, The Magic Flute: A Fantasia (1920).
By Robert Burton (1621).
Edward Hyde Clarendon, The True Historical Narrative of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (1702–4).
John Richard Green, Short History of the English People (1874).
See Alexander James Carlyle in the Biographical Appendix.
See Robert ‘Rob’ Askins in the Biographical Appendix. Edith ‘Edie’ Askins (1873–1936) was Mrs Moore’s sister, and she lived in Bristol near their brother ‘Rob’.
See Henry Habberley Price in the Biographical Appendix.
See Frank Percy Wilson in the Biographical Appendix.
He was referring to the fact that Lewis planned to read English in nine months.
See Edith Elizabeth Wardale in the Biographical Appendix.
See Henry Cecil Kennedy Wyld in the Biographical Appendix. The series of lectures Lewis was attending was called ‘Outlines of the History of English’ and they were given every Monday and Tuesday in Michaelmas Term.
Percy Simpson (1865–1962) was Librarian of the English School 1914–34, Fellow of Oriel College 1921–36, and the editor of Ben Jonson. His lectures this Michaelmas Term 1922 were on ‘Chaucer’.
See Charles Talbut Onions in the Biographical Appendix.
‘Literary Introduction to the Poetry of the Anglo-Saxon Reader’, which lectures were given every Friday during this term.
This was Vol. II of The Autobiography of Margot Asquith (1922).
Keith Maitland Davie matriculated in 1919 and took a BA in 1922.
Audley McKisack matriculated in 1921 and took a BA in Modern History in 1924.
John Hill Mackintosh Dawson matriculated in 1921 and took a First in Classics in 1925.
Arthur Basil Sutcliff Mort matriculated in 1919, read Modern History, and took a BA in 1923.
‘Middle English Texts.’
She probably meant William Bateson (1861–1926) who had been Professor of Biology in Cambridge.
A Short History of English (1914).
See George Stuart Gordon in the Biographical Appendix.
William Hugh Patterson (1835–1918) was an ironmonger in Belfast and a friend of the Lewis family. A liberal curiosity and love of punning caused him to take up intellectual hobbies, and in 1920 he published a volume of poems.
Walter de la Mare, The Return (1910), ch. XVI.
The Rev. Cyril William Emmet (1875–1923) was Chaplain and Fellow of University College 1920–23.
The lectures, Monday and Friday, were on ‘Shakespeare’.
Lewis was wrong about the name. He was in the little Church of St Margaret, Binsey (built c. 730), confirmed as belonging to St Frideswide Priory in 1122, and which is today held in plurality with St Frideswide Church, Osney.
‘The fear of death is troubling me’, the refrain from William Dunbar’s poem ‘Lament for the Makaris’.
Chaloner Thomas Taplin Kemshead (1854–1929) was a Lecturer in French and German at Magdalen College 1905–23.
Lewis’s ‘Cousin Mary’ was his mother’s first cousin, Lady Ewart (1849–1929) who lived in Belfast. While it seems most unlikely that Lady Ewart would be in Oxford, Lewis was worried about his family discovering that he shared a house with Mrs Moore.
This day 1917 I arrived first in the front line at Monch le Preux—C. S.L.
‘The Soldier’s Coat’ and ‘The Empty Room’ are found in The Voice of Cecil Harwood: A Miscellany, ed. Owen Barfield (1979).
The poems of Thomas Wade Earp (1892–1958) and Wilfred Rowland Childe (1890–1952) were well known in Oxford, and both men contributed to the various volumes of Oxford Poetry.
George Eugène Fasnacht (1898–1956) took a First in Modern History and received his BA in 1922. After leaving Oxford he was a Tutor in Social History and Economics at the University of Sheffield 1925–28, head of the Department of History at the University of Leicester 1928–37, and in 1937 he returned to Oxford as a Lecturer in History at Nuffield College.
See David Lindsay Keir in the Biographical Appendix.
For a note on T. S. Darlow see 26 January 1923.
The sense of this is obscure. Perhaps we should read ‘hoped to be heard’.—W.H.L.
John Lyly, Endimion (1591).
They went to Christ Church Cathedral to see Maureen and other girls from Headington School confirmed.
Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, The Changeling (1653).
By Thomas Middleton (1657).
By Edward Abbott Parry (1922).
Miss Douie.
The Lewises were communicants of St Mark’s Church, Dundela. Jack and Warnie’s maternal grandfather, the Revd Thomas Hamilton, had been the Rector there.
See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.
Joseph ‘Joey’ Lewis (1898–1969) was the son of Albert’s brother, Joseph. His family lived near Little Lea.
Augustus Warren Hamilton ‘Uncle Gussie’ (1866–1945), a life long friend of Albert’s, was the brother of Jack and Warnie’s mother. After leaving school he had gone to sea, but he returned to Belfast and founded the firm of Hamilton & McMaster, marine boilermakers and engineers. In 1897 he married a Canadian lady, Anne Sargent Harley Hamilton (1866–1930).
Lewis probably had in mind these lines from Matthew Arnold’s poem:
The Gods laugh in their sleeve
To watch man doubt and fear,
Who knows not what to believe
Since he sees nothing clear,
And dares stamp nothing false where he finds nothing sure.
See Sir Robert Heard Ewart under The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix.
Michael Cardinal Logue (1840–1924) was the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. The following statement appeared in The Times of 27 December 1922 (p. 10): ‘No Midnight Mass: Cardinal Logue announced on Sunday morning that he had decided to abandon holding the midnight Mass which had been arranged. The authorities had declined to relax the curfew regulations to enable congregations to attend.’
By Thomas Hardy (1896).
Joseph Malcomson Greeves (1858–1925)—the ‘Thistle Bird’—was Arthur’s father. He was Director of J. & T. M. Greeves Ltd, Flax Spinners.
John Greeves (1892–1969), one of Arthur’s brothers, lived with his parents across the road from the Lewises in the house named ‘Bernagh’.
Miss Annie Harper was Warnie’s and Jack’s governess from 1989 to 1908.
This diary of the Revd Thomas Robert Hamilton (1826–1905) is reproduced in the unpublished Lewis Papers: Memoirs of the Lewis Family, vol. 1.
The failure of McGrigor’s Bank earlier that year.
The Revd Arthur William Barton (1881–1962) was Rector of St Marks, Dundela, 1914–25. All three of the Lewises liked him, and he was a frequent and welcome visitor at Little Lea.
By John Fletcher (1610).
The home of Gordon and Lily Ewart.
Ruth Hamilton (1900–), now Mrs Desmond Parker, is the daughter of Mr and Mrs Augustus Hamilton.
Kelsie had a hut on what is called Island Magee, which is a peninsula some eight miles long that joins Co. Antrim at the entrance to Belfast Lough. Mona Peacocke was the daughter of the Revd Gerald Peacocke, Rector of St Mark’s 1900–14.
Mrs Edith Thompson and her lover murdered Mrs Thompson’s husband in Ilford, Essex, in October 1922. They were executed on 9 January 1923.
‘The Witch of Endor’—Mary Cullen—combined the work of cook and housekeeper at Little Lea from 1917 until the brothers left it in 1930.
Now that she was confirmed, Maureen was receiving the Holy Communion for the first time.
Beginning 22 January, Gordon gave a series of eight lectures, Mondays and Fridays, on Shakespeare’s Tragedies.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
This very popular ‘Discussion Class’ had been inaugurated earlier by Sir Walter Raleigh, and was continued under George Gordon. Each college tutor was allowed to send one or two of his pupils to the class, and in order that they be small enough for discussion, there was one for men and another for women. Beginning in the Hilary Term 1923 the minutes of the men’s class were written in Chaucerian verse, and those for 1923–24 have survived. Lewis’s reminiscences of the Discussion Class are found in The Life of George S. Gordon 1881–1942 by M. C. G[ordon] (1945), p. 77.
This colourful undergraduate was Thomas Sherrock Darlow. He was born on 5 December 1901 and was the son of the Rev. Thomas Herbert Darlow who published a number of theological works. He was educated at Gresham’s School in Holt and matriculated at Magdalen College in 1920, where he read Natural Science before changing to English in 1922.
Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) taught on the English Faculty at Oxford. His many books include three volumes of Trivia (1918, 1921, 1933).
Philip John Terry read Law and took his BA from University College in 1923.
On ‘Middle English Texts’.
See Nevill Coghill in the Biographical Appendix.
Harry Vincent Lloyd-Jones of Jesus College, who took a BA in 1923.
Fateh Singh of St John’s College, who took his BA in 1923.
This was Richard Boase Kelynack Strick of Wadham College, who took his BA in 1923.
On ‘Middle English Dialects’ every Monday and Tuesday at 10 o’clock.
The minutes of this meeting were written in Chaucerian verse by Nevill Coghill, and most of them can be found in the Preface to Lewis’s Selected Literary Essays (1969). Nevill Coghill gave this description of Lewis:
Sir Lewis was ther; a good philosópher
He hadde a noblé paper for to offer.
Well couthe he speken in the Greeké tongue;
And yet, his countenance was swythé yong.
Nevill Coghill’s minutes:
Daun Darlow answerde ‘What of allegory,
What meneth swevnés in Daun Spenser’s story
Why useth he swich women’s artifice
Al vigourless, effeminate, and nice
As Daun Catallus doth in al his wirche?’
‘I wold not end in the Byzantine Chirche’ (Kirk)
Quod Lewis, ‘And Catullus, I dar seyn
Hath nought to do with Spenser, to be plain.’
Nevill Coghill’s minutes:
Daun Darlow was there of a high corage
Whan he to speken wyslye wolde beginne
There was noon auditour conde on him wynne.
Ful byg he was, of brawn and eke of bones
Ful oft he spak in high and noblé tones
Of historye: he hadde a purplé tye
And in his button-hole a dayës eye.
Averell Robert Martley of Hertford College, who took his BA in 1923.
Sir Jocelyn Ambrose Cramer Coghill, 1st Lieut., South Wales Borderers 1922–25.
George William Nevill Wynn of Worcester College, who was also in the Discussion Class.
John Edward Anderson of University College took his BA in 1925.
Frederick Lewis Payne of Queen’s College took his BA in 1923.
Robert Macdonald of Lincoln College, who took his BA in 1925.
This was the last thing Lewis was to record about T. S. Darlow. This may have been because he left the Discussion Class. In any event, he left Oxford fairly soon after this, without a degree, and settled in London. Sometime later he began working for the Daily Herald and at the outbreak of World War II he became a very successful war correspondent for the Daily Herald in France. He was sent on an assignment to the RAF headquarters in France, became ill, and died shortly afterwards on 10 November 1939.
After this Maureen was sent to stay with Lady Gonner for the rest of the time her uncle was at ‘Hillsboro’.
Later: I am convinced that the whole story, like that of the syphilis and the hell complex, were all equally delusions.—C. S.L. This note, judged from internal evidence, appears to have been made some years after the text on which it comments.—W.H.L.
‘Forsan et haec olim meminisse invabit”—‘Perhaps even these things it will be a delight one day to remember’. Virgil, Aeneid, I, 203.
Lewis’s minutes pick up from Coghill’s reading of his, and begin with Gordon’s choice of another speaker:
But whan that Coghille had his tale ytold
Our Professoúr gan round about bihold
And lough and seyde ‘Unbokeled is the male!
Let see now who shal tell another tale;
And namély Sir Burns as thou art able
Telleth anon som matere profitable.’
This was Gilbert Talbot Burns of Christ Church, who took his BA in 1924.
General paralysis of the insane.
Earthenware hot water bottles.
By Jonathan Swift (1704).
1933. He has since become one of the chief caterers for this public.—C. S.L.
Robert Benedict Bourdillon (1889–1971) was Fellow and Praelector in Chemistry at University College 1913–23.
Robert Ranulph Marett (1866–1943) was Tutor in Philosophy at Exeter College 1891–1928, after which he became Rector of the College.
After Gryll, the hog in The Faerie Queene (II. xii. 86) who was unhappy at being changed back into a man.
Owen Barfield and Cecil Harwood had been members of the English Folk Dancing Society, and it was through this Society that they became part of a song and dance company organised by the Radford Sisters to tour the villages of Devon and Cornwall. It was while Owen Barfield was with this company in St Anthony in Roseland, Cornwall, in the summer of 1920 that he met his wife, Matilda ‘Maud’ Douie (1885–1982), a professional dancer who had worked with Gordon Craig. They were married on the 11th April 1923.
The biologist, William Bateson (1861–1926).
During this time Lewis and Mrs Moore discovered that it was possible to rent Mr Raymond’s house, ‘Hillsboro’, after all.
See William James Askins in the Biographical Appendix.
See John Alexander Smith in the Biographical Appendix.
Sir Michael Sadler (1861–1943) was an educational pioneer and a patron of the arts. He was Master of University College, 1923–34.
Alfred Cecil Ewing (1899–1973) took a First in Greats from Oxford in 1920 and a D.Phil. in 1923. He was a Lecturer in Moral Science in the University of Cambridge 1931–54 and Reader in Philosophy at Cambridge 1954–66.
Virgil, Aeneid III, 495. ‘You [Andromache and Helenas, survivors from the sack of Troy] have won your test [unlike me, Aeneas, who has to sail to Italy].’
By Robert Henryson (1593).
Formerly attributed to Chaucer.
‘forgetting my anxieties.’
Averell Robert Martley of Hertford College, who took his BA in 1923, was Secretary of the Discussion Class.
Fredrick Wilse Bateson (1901–78) was an undergraduate at Trinity College, Oxford, and Fellow of English Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1946–69. He was founder and editor of Essays in Criticism.
His Aunt Lily lived in Stile Road, which runs parallel to Holyoake Road and, so, is only a very short distance away.
Following his examination for Honour Mods, Lewis had a holiday in Old Cleve with Mrs Moore and Maureen during March–April 1920.
‘I am, til God me bettere mynde sende,
At dulcarnon, right at my wittes ende.’
(Chaucer, Troylus and Cryseyde, III, 881.)
‘Sortes Virgilianae’ is the attempt to foretell the future by opening a volume of Virgil at hazard and reading the first passage lit on.
Thomas Otway, Venice Preserv’d (1682).
William Alexander Craigie (1867–1957), lexicographer and philologist, was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon 1916–25 and one of those who set the examination Lewis had just taken. The other examiners were Percy Simpson, H. F. B. Brett-Smith, and A. Mawer.
‘Kirkian’ means like his old friend and tutor William T. Kirkpatrick (1848–1921). He is described in Chapter IX of Surprised by Joy.
‘Courtfield Cottage’ is in 131 Osler Road, Headington.
By Thomas Babington Macaulay (1842).
Herbert Francis Brett-Smith (1884–1951) took his BA from Corpus Christi College in 1907, and was lecturer in English Literature in several of the colleges of Oxford. He was Goldsmith’s Reader in English, and editor of Thomas Love Peacock.
By M. E. Sandford (1888).
By George Meredith (1879).
‘Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.’—‘I am a human being: I think nothing to do with humans irrelevant to me.’ Terence, Heauton Timorumenos, line 79.
School Certificates have disappeared, but they were a kind of miniature ‘Schools’ which had been introduced by the Board of Education in 1905. Every boy or girl who had reached the age of sixteen, and who had not left school at the age of fourteen, was allowed to sit for these examinations. The universites of Oxford and Cambridge had a large say in the matter of the certificates. To obtain a Certificate one was required to pass a minimum of five subjects of which English, Maths and Latin were mandatory. Upon completing the Certificate to the satisfaction of the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board one could, if one wished to enter Oxford or Cambridge, take either the Board of Education’s Higher School Certificate or Responsions—the ‘entrance examination’ administered by the two universities. Lewis was earning some money by marking English Essays from the Higher School Certificate.
Mr Moore.
Readers will discern here the germ of Lewis’s novel Till We Have Faces (1956). The only thing which survives of these early attempts at writing the story is a fragment of 78 couplets. They are in the Lewis Papers, vol. VIII, pp. 163–64.
One of the books Lewis chose as a College prize was Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered.
Sir Hugh Allen (1869–1946) was the director of the Royal College of Music 1918–37, director of music, University College, Reading 1908–18. In Oxford, where he was Professor of Music 1918–46, he obtained creation of the music faculty in 1944.
Daphne Olivier (1889–1950) was one of the four daughters of Sydney Haldane Olivier (Lord Olivier), who was Governor of Jamaica 1907–13. She was a member of Newhnam College, Cambridge, where she read Medieval and Modern Languages, taking a BA in 1913. During the summer of 1923 Cecil Harwood and Owen Barfield attended an Anthroposophical conference at which Rudolf Steiner spoke, and it was there they met Miss Olivier, who was already a convinced Anthroposophist. Cecil Harwood married Daphne Olivier on 14 August 1925, both having taken a leading part in setting up the first Rudolf Steiner school in this country at Streatham.
Owen Barfield’s The Silver Trumpet was published by Faber and Gwyer (now Faber and Faber) of London in 1925. It was reprinted by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. of Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1968, and by Bookmakers Guild of Longmont, Colorado, in 1986.
Warnie was still stationed at Colchester. He and Jack arrived at Little Lea together on 9th December and were with their father until 28th December 1923.
An Antidote Against Atheism (1652; 1655).
Thomas Henry Huxley, ‘Ethics and Evolution’ (1893).
By William Morris (1867).
J. B. S. Haldane, Daedalus or Science and the Future (1924).
Hamlet performed by the Oxford University Dramatic Society.
By James Stephens (1912).
Rodney Pasley was Assistant Master at Alleyn’s School, Dulwich, 1921–25.
It was published as Private Sea Journals, 1778–1782, Kept by Admiral Sir Thomas Pasley, ed. R. M. S. Pasley (1931).
Mr Lewis’s letter to his son of 24th February has not survived, but in his diary for that day he said: ‘Wrote Jacks a long letter in reply to one from him asking for an increased allowance: “What I shd. like is to have an annual sum fixed for the remainder of your stay at Oxford so that I shd. know where I am and what I must provide for. If instead of lodging £67 a term to your account I lodged £85 a term to cover everything, would that be sufficient? You must be quite frank with me etc. etc.”’ Lewis Papers, vol. VIII, p. 186.
Henry More, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (1660).
From memory of Suetonius, Life of Emperor Vespasian, xx: ‘vulta veluti nitentis’—‘with an expression as if of one straining’.
All Souls College was founded by Henry VI in 1438. It is unique in that it consists of a Warden and Fellows (originally 40), and no undergraduates. Lewis was thinking of the advantages of being able to enjoy a life of scholarship without having to teach.
‘Not to have tried does harm.’
Lewis was replying to his father’s letter of the 24th February, which reply is found in the Lewis Papers, vol. VIII, pp. 193–95. After going into detail about his many small expenses he said: ‘You ask me whether £85 a term to “cover everything” would be sufficient. If by “covering everything” you mean covering my books, shoes, shirts, socks and other items that I have hitherto sent you, I am afraid it would not. As I said, if you wish it, I will try to undertake my own books in the future, and, at any rate to cut them down . . . If on the other hand you see fit to lodge £85 a term and to pay for such extras in the way of clothing etc. as may occur, I will try to make them as little as I can . . .
‘I have made a change in my work. I started work experimentally on Dr Henry More—a 17th Century theologian—with the idea of “doing” him for a D.Phil. . . . I had not however gone very far in this naïf wonderland without deciding that I was on a fool’s errand. The D.Phil. would add very little to my Firsts in the way of qualification: and in the mean time I should be letting my knowledge of philosophy and above all my Greek rust. I have determined instead to go on vigorously improving my philosophy and classics and also to learn some history—history being the gate to an All Souls fellowship.’
Ernst Troeltsch (1865–1923), theologian and philosopher, was Professor of the History of Philosophy and Civilisation at Berlin from 1915 to 1923.
Alan Ker Stout (1900–83) took his BA from Oriel College in 1922 after which he became a Research Scholar. He was Lecturer in Philosophy at University College of North Wales 1924–34, and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney 1939–65.
William David Ross (1877–1971) was Fellow in Philosophy at Oriel College 1902–29, and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy 1923–28.
Mr Carritt was anxious for Lewis to meet Harold Arthur Prichard (1871–1947) who was the Philosophy Fellow of Trinity College 1898–1924. Prichard was later White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy 1928–37, and he was already well known for his Kant’s Theory of Knowledge (1909) and an influential paper, ‘Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?’ (Mind, 1912).
The picture now [1933] hangs in Clive’s rooms in Magdalen College; the Honorius is remarkably like Clive as he was in 1924.—W.H.L.
Robert Remington Ware and Richard Henry King read Greats at University College and took their BAs in 1925.
This is T. E. Lawrence, whom Lewis met in All Souls on 11 August 1922. In September 1922 Lawrence joined the RAF, changing his name to T. E. Shaw.
This is a seaside town west of Bristol in Somerset. Lewis and the Moores were spending a holiday in Mary Askins’ flat in ‘Osborne House’, Elton Road, Clevedon, while she was in the United States.
‘But everything, unless you are vigilant, will go off into sex.’
Cyril Hackett Wilkinson (1888–1960), Vice-Provost of Worcester College 1920–47, was the Oxford Secretary of the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board and the one to whom Lewis was answerable regarding the School Certificates.
‘Joy’ was published in The Beacon, vol. III (May 1924), pp. 444–51. This was probably the first work Lewis published about ‘Joy’ as intense longing, the experience that was to become the subject of Surprised by Joy.
i.e. IX.—C. S.L.
This motor tour is described in Lewis’s letter to Warnie of 7 August 1921, and is found in the Letters of C. S. Lewis, pp. 142–156.
The Rev. Herbert Edward Douglas Blakiston (1862–1942) was President of Trinity College, Oxford, 1907–38.
Lewis pays a handsome tribute to Harry Wakelyn Smith (1861–1918) in ch. VII of Surprised by Joy.
Philip Aislabie Landon (1886–1961).
Melville Watson Patterson (1873–1944) became a Fellow of Trinity in 1897 and was Vice President and Senior Tutor until his retirement in 1938.
The Rev. Kenneth Escott Kirk (1886–1954) was Chaplain and Lecturer in Theology at Trinity College 1922–33, Professor of Moral and Pastoral Theology and Canon of Christ Church 1933–37, and Bishop of Oxford 1937–54.
Lewis was beginning to get in his Greats reading before he started teaching in October 1924.
John Macmurray (1891–1976) was Tutor in Philosophy at Balliol College 1922–28, and Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University of London 1928–44.
Virgil, Aeneid, II, 710. Aeneas to his father, whom, with his young son Iulus, he is leading away from the sacking of Troy—‘There will be one [way of] deliverance for us both.’
‘An Epitaph on a Sudden Death’, ‘A Meeting with R.M.’, ‘At Ille Labitur’ and ‘A Modern Journey’ are found in The Voice of Cecil Harwood (loc. cit.).
‘Here a more abundant ether clothes the plains with brilliant light’—Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 640—talking of the abode of the blessed in the underworld.
George Lawrence Capel Touche matriculated at University College in 1921. He took a first in Greats and received his BA in 1925.
Lewis must have found it painfully ironic that the man who won the Fellowship at Magdalen which Lewis had applied for in 1922—H. H. Price—had now been given the Fellowship at Trinity.
Sir John Charles Miles (1870–1963) was the Tutor of Law in Merton College 1899–1930, Domestic Bursar 1904–23, and Warden of Merton College 1936–47.
Kenneth King Munsie Leys (1876–1950) was Fellow of Modern History at University College 1911–42.
By Aldous Huxley (1923).
‘O three times, four times blessed!’ (are those who died in battle at Troy). Virgil, Aeneid, I, 94.
(Sir) George Catlin (1896–1979) took his BA from New College in 1924. Upon leaving Oxford he was Professor of Politics at Cornell University 1924–35, after which he became concerned with Atlantic Community policy and was the founder of the Movement for Atlantic Union (UK). Besides lecturing all over the world, he wrote numerous books on philosophy and politics and he published an autobiography, For God’s Sake, Go (1972).
George Berkeley, Principles of Human Knowledge (1710).
Dermot Macgreggor Morrah (1896–1974) was a Fellow of All Souls College 1921–28. He was a leader writer for a number of newspapers, and he published a number of books on the Royal Family.
An account of Lewis’s paper from the Martlets’ minutebook is reproduced in ‘To the Martlets’ in C. S. Lewis: Speaker and Teacher, ed. Carolyn Keefe (Grand Rapids, 1971; London, 1974).
Douglas Alexander Donald matriculated in 1922 and received his BA in 1927.
Sir Charles Blake Cochran (1872–1951), the showman who promoted boxing and wrestling matches, and music-hall acts such as Houdini, as well as introducing onto the popular stage such people as Sarah Bernhardt and Diaghilev’s ballet.
Cecil Harwood had taken Lewis there to hear George Adams von Kaufmann (1894–1963). Kaufmann was born in Poland and for some years he had been one of the leading lights of the Anthroposophical Movement in England.
Plans were being made at this time for the setting up of a school in Streatham, London, ‘to educate boys and girls in the light of the educational teaching of Dr Rudolf Steiner’. Miss Olivier was expected to be one of its teachers, and she and Cecil Harwood went down to Torquay during 9–23 August 1924 to hear Rudolf Steiner lecture on ‘True and False Paths of Spiritual Investigation’. It was at this conference that Cecil Harwood met Steiner, and so bowled over was he by Steiner that he at once became totally committed to Anthroposophy, and remained so for the rest of his life. Michael Hall School, the first Steiner school in the country, was founded in January 1925 with Cecil Harwood and Daphne Olivier, who married on 14 August 1925, as two of its original five teachers. See Owen Barfield’s ‘Cecil Harwood’, Anthroposophical Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 2 (Summer 1976), pp. 36–39.
‘Make us grieve with thee.’ The poem is called ‘The Repentant City’ in The Voice of Cecil Harwood (loc. cit.).
From a walk in Kensington Gardens.—C. S.L.
In Lewis’s Dymer, Canto VI, 18.
By John Masefield (1913).
Eight miles from St Albans, in Watford, the brothers had suffered for several years in Wynyard School. Before its demise in 1910 it had been run by Robert ‘Oldy’ Capron and his son Wynyard, and it is the school referred to as ‘Belsen’ in chapter II of Lewis’s Surprised by Joy.
‘There is no greater pain’ (than to remember times of happiness when in wretchedness). Dante, Inferno, V, 121.
‘preparing to say many things’—Aeneas trying (and failing) to answer Dido’s reproaches on his leaving her. Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 390.
‘mind also Venus herself gave’. Virgil, Georgics, III, 267—changing the meaning from Virgil’s, which is about sexual passion seizing mares.
By Jonathan Swift (1704).
Charles Douglas Buckley took his BA in 1925.
Robert Heuzé Hogg took his BA in 1926.
Michael Robert Swanwick took his BA in 1926. These pupils were reading Kant, and Swanwick was using The Philosophy of Kant as Contained in Extracts from His Own Writings, selected and translated by John Watson (1888).
The Rev. Frank Nightingale had gone to the University of London after being a priest in the Church of England since 1894, and he had now retired to Oxford.
Gerald Wynne Hawker of University College took a BA in 1923.
Frederick Henry Lawson (1897–1983) was Lecturer in Law at University College 1924–25. From there he went to Merton College as Fellow of Law 1925–30, after which he became Professor of Comparative Law and a Fellow of Brasenose College in 1948.
By Henri Bergson (1896).
George Liddell Caruthers Beattie matriculated at University College in 1923.
Douglas Alexander Donald took his BA in 1927.
By Robert Louis Stevenson (1879).
Edward Handasyde Buchanan took his BA in 1928.
Eric Francis Nash took his BA in 1926.
Ralph Abercrombie Campbell matriculated in 1924.
By F. H. Bradley (1893).
Kenneth Grenville Bradley and John Stanley Gordon-Clark took their BAs in 1925.
Kenneth David Druitt Henderson took his BA in 1926, and James Alexander Ross took his in 1925.
Edward Michael Tyndell Firth took his BA in 1926.
The philosophy of Giovanni Gentile (1875–1944).
By Sir James Barrie (1920).
This was Harold Henry Cox, who was able to stay up and take his BA in 1927.
By George Edward Moore (1922).
Marcus Warren Low took his BA in 1926.
Harold Cottam Johnson matriculated in 1922.
Herbert James Paton (1887–1969) was Fellow and Praelector in Classics and Philosophy at Queen’s College, Oxford, 1911–27, and White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, Oxford, 1937–52.
‘other things being equal’.
By Sir Walter Scott (1819).
Miss Margery Freda Perham was Tutor in Modern History at St Hugh’s College.
See William Francis Ross Hardie in the Biographical Appendix.
Alfred Leslie Rowse (1903–), a Fellow of All Souls 1925–74, devoted a chapter to Lewis in his Memories and Glimpses (1986).
See Thomas Dewar Weldon in the Magdalen College Appendix.
It is impossible to be sure, but there is a chance that Lewis had this conversation with Weldon in mind when he said in Surprised by Joy, ch.XIV: ‘Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. “Rum thing,” he went on. “All that stuff of Frazer’s about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once.”’
Henry Vincent Yorke (1905–73) matriculated in 1924 and was reading English Literature. He was to write a good many novels under the pseudonym ‘Henry Green’ and an autobiography called Pack My Bag (1940).
John Betjeman (1906–85), the poet, was one of Lewis’s most difficult pupils. He matriculated in 1924 and read English, but went down from Oxford without a degree. The story of John Betjeman’s relationship with Lewis is told in Bevis Hillier’s Young Betjeman (1988).
Deric William Valentin (1907–) matriculated in 1924. He also read English, and also left without a degree.
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.
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.
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.
‘Diz’ was Sydney Cecil William Disney (1892–), who read Law at Magdalen and was with the Inland Revenue Service 1921–28.
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.
Ernest de Selincourt’s edition of Wordsworth’s Prelude.
Dorothea ‘Dotty’ Vaughan, a day pupil at Headington School, was boarding at ‘Hillsboro’.
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.
See Paul Victor Mendelssohn Benecke in the Magdalen College Appendix.
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.
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.
See Edwin Stewart Craig in the Magdalen College Appendix.
The Rev. Anthony William Chute (1884–1958) was Fellow and Dean of Divinity 1925–29.
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.
See Arthur Lee Dixon in the Magdalen College Appendix.
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.
The Voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, 49; ‘twenty cows’.
(Sir) Godfrey Driver (1892–1975) was a Fellow of Magdalen 1919–62, and Professor of Semitic Philology at Oxford 1938–62.
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.
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.
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.
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.
‘The right of nations’, i.e. Natural Law.
Virgil, Aeneid, IV, 504—‘But the Queen [Dido], having erected a pyre in the inmost heart of her home, in the open air.’
Virgil, Georgics, III, 283—(of stepmothers) ‘they have mixed together herbs and harmful spells’.
The Rev. Ronald Frank William Fletcher was Chaplain and Tutor in English Language and Literature at St Edmund Hall.
Margaret Lucy Lee was Tutor in English at the Society of Oxford Home-Students (later St Anne’s College).
See John Ronald Reuel Tolkien in the Biographical Appendix.
‘kept silent’.
‘an ox uttered words’—a familiar Roman portent recorded by historians such as augurs were given to interpret.
See James Alexander Smith in the Biographical Appendix.
In Space, Time, and Deity (1920).
‘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.
William Roberts, Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Mrs Hannah More (1834).
Bryan Greg Fell matriculated at University College in 1924 and took his BA in 1933.
See Robert Segar in the Magdalen College Appendix.
Shapurji Saklatvala (1874–1936) was M.P. (Communist) for North Battersea 1922–23 and 1924–29, and a member of the General Workers’ Union.
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).
Samuel Alexander, author of Space, Time, and Deity.
Rodney Pasley was Vice-Principal of Rajkumar College at Rajkot 1926–28.
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.
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)’.
Hermann George Fiedler (1862–1945) was a Fellow of Queen’s College and Professor of German Language and Literature 1907–37.
Count Helmuth Johannes Ludwig von Moltke (1848–1916), a German general, was Chief of Staff in World War I.
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.
Herschel Maurice Margoliouth (1887–1959) was Secretary of Faculties, Oxford University 1925–47.
Eliot’s ‘paper’ was The Criterion, a literary journal he founded in 1922.
Janet Spens (1876–1963) was Fellow of English at Lady Margaret Hall 1911–36.
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.
‘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.
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.
Harold Henry Cox took his BA in 1927.
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.
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.
By Oliver Goldsmith (1762).
‘There is no truth in flatterers, as Democritus said’.
By Samuel Butler (1901).
Hugh Fausset’s review of Dymer appeared in The Times Literary Supplement (13 January 1927), p. 27.
Joseph and Elizabeth M. Wright, Old English Grammar (1908; 1925).
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).
Some of these criticisms were to find their way into Lewis’s A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942).
W. K. Hatton, who joined the staff of Magdalen College in 1923, was Lewis’s ‘scout’ or college servant.
And last!—C. S.L.
John Colquhoun Campbell (1907–) read Greats 1926–30 and took a BA in 1930. He worked with Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. Ltd until 1952.
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.
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.
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.
Arthur Ernest Cowley (1861–1931) was Bodley’s Librarian 1919–31 and a Fellow of Magdalen.
Prometheus Vinctus 151. (Zeus is now destroying) ‘the former mighty ones’.
See Henry Michael Denne Parker in the Magdalen College Appendix.
Tutorial Board.
Arthur Denis Wood (1907–), after taking his BA in 1929, joined the family firm of William Wood & Son Ltd, landscape gardeners in Taplow.
Dr Ernest Mallam (1870–1946) had read Physiology at Magdalen 1888–92, and he had been Litchfield Lecturer in Medicine.
The ‘Kolbitár’ was an informal club of dons founded by Professor Tolkien for the purpose of reading Icelandic sagas.
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.
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.
Richard Bentley published a revised and augmented edition of Paradise Lost in 1732.
The Rev. Albert Augustus David (1867–1950) was Headmaster of Rugby School 1909–21, and Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich 1921–23.
(Sir) Arthur George Tansley (1871–1955) was a Fellow of Magdalen and Sherardian Professor of Botany 1927–37.
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.
‘The tablets [containing the legal charge] will be melted with laughter.’ Adapted from Horace, Satires, 2, 1, 86.
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.
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.
Clement Charles Julian Webb (1865–1954) was Tutor in Philosophy at Magdalen 1890–1922.
A middle or central position.
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.
See Malcolm Henry MacKeith in the Magdalen College Appendix.
Prince Youssopoff, of the Imperial House of Russia.—W.H.L.
The Rev. Thomas Trotter Blockley (1864–1950) was Chaplain of Magdalen 1897–1911.
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.
‘Entrance under the appearance of a child.’
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.
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).