1926

1926

After the holiday at Oare, Lewis went to Belfast on 13 September to visit his father. This time they were easy together, and when Jack left on 1 October Mr Lewis wrote in his diary: ‘Jacks returned. A fortnight and a few days with me. Very pleasant, not a cloud. Went to the boat with him. The first time I did not pay his passage money. I offered, but he did not want it.’

By the time Michaelmas Term began in October 1925 Lewis had moved into Magdalen College, and into one of the most beautiful parts of one of the most beautiful colleges of Oxford. He was given three rooms in New Buildings—No. 3, Staircase 3. ‘My external surroundings are beautiful beyond expectation and beyond hope,’ he wrote to his father on 21 October. ‘To live in the Bishop’s Palace at Wells would be good but could hardly be better than this. My big sitting room looks north and from it I see nothing, not even a gable or spire, to remind me that I am in a town. I look down on a stretch of level grass which passes into a grove of immemorial forest trees, at present coloured with autumn red. Over this stray the deer . . . Some mornings when I look out there will be half a dozen chewing the cud just underneath me, and on others there will be none in sight . . . My smaller sitting room and bedroom look out southward across a broad lawn to the main buildings of Magdalen with the Tower across it.’

Beginning in October, Lewis divided his time between Magdalen and ‘Hillsboro’. During term he slept in College and visited the ‘family’ during the afternoons, and when term ended he spent the nights at ‘Hillsboro’ and came into College during the day. One sees why the President of Magdalen spoke of Lewis as the ‘strongest and most acceptable’ candidate for the post he now held. Lewis was giving tutorials to those reading English as well as Greats and the course in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Most of the pupils who began coming to him in October 1925 were the ones he had when the diary picks up again in April 1926.

Tuesday 27 April: One of the new people, Waddington, appeared on my list this morning, but never turned up. I don’t know whether it is his mistake or mine. I went on with Seebohm’s Oxford Reformers in the morning. It is very bad in style, mean without being simple, and silly in sentiment: the arrangement on the other hand is almost the best I have ever seen.

I also drafted a letter to Miss Perham of St Hugh’s on a rather ticklish business. She wrote the other day asking me to take one pupil for her this term. I replied refusing and suggesting Ewing, with Hardie as a possible fallback if Ewing was full up. She answered saying ‘If I were unscrupulous I should ask Mr H. at once, but as I have not yet seen Dr Ewing I suppose I can’t. Next term I will approach Mr H. early—’ I wanted, if I could without blundering, to say that I would be very sorry if any word of mine had induced her to prefer Hardie to Ewing. But I didn’t succeed, and left it.

After 12 it became almost too dark to see: a dead black sky came down behind the trees in the grove. Went out to return books to the Union and met Rowse of All Souls in Chaundy’s. I met him first last term when dining with Coghill to meet De la Mare and have been intending to follow him up ever since; I asked him to dine next Wednesday.

From the Union I went out home and found all well there. So far D seems to be very satisfied with Winifred. I went for a walk with Pat up Shotover through Quarry and along the Plain: then down nearly to Wheatley, crossing the railway by the footpath. It was still the same dark, strangely coloured, suspended, end of the world kind of day: but I am very insensible to the country and sky just at present.

After tea back to College and went on with Seebohm till hall. In the evening looked up language and was just settling down to Skeat’s introduction when Weldon came in. This meant whiskey and talk till 12.30, greatly to my disappointment. We somehow got on the historical truth of the Gospels, and agreed that there was a lot that could not be explained away. He believes in the Hegelian doctrine of the Trinity and said the whole thing fitted in: in fact he is a Christian ‘of a sort’. I should never have suspected it. Then we turned to the self. Got to bed v. late at last with a headache, regretting a wasted, tho’ interesting evening.

Wednesday 28 April: Another very dark, clouded day—less apocalyptic, but more depressing. Pupils in the morning. Yorke for language. Then Betjeman and Valentin to stumble through the Voyage of Ohthere: last of all Hamilton and Hetherington who look as if they would be very good indeed. Hamilton read the Simon Perrott oration in hall the other night.

I then bussed out home, had lunch, and took a walk in Cuckoo Lane and the Private Rd., getting home for an early tea.

I then went to Lady Margaret Hall for my class. Seven girls turned up. Colborne (dignified and fairly sensible), Scoones (lanky, dark), Grant (a very massive, lumpy person who never opened her mouth), Thring (the most talkative), House (nervy, a trifle soulful, and worried), Johnston (who is perhaps the best) and Carter who came very late because she had been looking for her tame tortoise. She is the prettiest and perhaps rather a b****. As hardly any of them had read the Dialogues [of Plato] it was a bit difficult to get discussion started, but once they began it went fairly well. Miss Scoones and Miss Thring joined in snubbing Miss House, very acrimoniously I thought: so I did the best I could for her, but she had become sulky and frightened by them.

On my way I looked into Keble Hall for the first time since I was a cadet: it was not v. like what I remembered.

In the evening I finished Seebohm and began Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. It is pleasant enough—‘drinking down milk and ale in country cans’ and ‘transporting the whole ninniversity by boat to Southwark’. I must remember ‘ninniversity’.

Thursday 29 April: Percival and Waterfield came this morning. Waterfield was here first and I had a little conversation with him. He is an attractive, sturdy, humorous personage—a dark Celt I think—and read an essay on Mill: too poetical and I objected to some blank verse lines which he was unaware of—I hope it will act as an inoffensive check on rhapsodising in future. In discussion he was good. Percival was bored and boring. Also he won’t open his mouth when he speaks and I have to say ‘What?’ each time, which doesn’t help matters.

Worked on Skeat’s Introduction (open and close ‘e’ and such dainties) for the rest of the morning. Home to lunch and then out for a walk over the fields in the direction of Forest Hill. It was a very warm day, and misty, the prevailing colour being greyish blue. The fields are in full trim with dandelions and one-o-clocks, and a row of catkins struck me particularly. Home again and had a knock up at badminton with Maureen and Dotty. Poor old Trapp came and asked me not to make a noise: his wife appears to be worse. After that we played in perfect silence, scoring by signs.

For tea came Mrs Wilbraham (who has been very kind during D’s illness), her daughter, her nephew Wittall of Oriel—whom I don’t much care for—and Diz. After tea D and I got Diz’s advice about my income tax returns and life insurance: it was half an hour’s horror to me, as such discussions are: moving about in worlds unrealised among ‘covers’ and ‘policies’ and what not. I suppose it is wholesome to know by acquaintance the miseries of not being able to understand.

When I got back to College I went and had a talk with Hardie, who is near enough to my helplessness to be able to give me some vague lights. Finally we both went to Thompson and at last I have some points definitely fixed in my mind. The notice from him the other day is of moneys paid me since my election up to the end of this taxable year: it is on that year I pay tax during the coming year: I pay a premium of a 5th of my fellowship towards the insurance.

Dined in and didn’t go to Common Room. When I came back to New Building [I] found battells for £38 odd and am not sure whether they are for the term before last or for last term. If for last, my economies don’t seem to have been much use. A worrying day—which seems nothing to worry about now; but that is because I have been reading The Spectator since 9 o’clock with great delight. It has been raining. A nice soft rain, just audible through drawn curtains, and a pleasant sound to read to. Twinges of tooth all day.

Friday 30 April: No pupils this morning. Wasted an hour or so on my ‘Outline of History’ poem to very little purpose: then walked to the Turl and bought Trevelyan’s England Under the Stuarts in order to make up Queen Anne politics with a view to doing Swift with Yorke this term. I also looked in at the Clarendon Press to see if de Selincourt’s Prelude was there, but could not find it. I read an exciting review of it in Common Room at breakfast this morning. Back to College and read Trevelyan till one with great interest. I wonder is he true?

Bussed out home. D tells me that Dotty was rather offensive yesterday, talking big for the benefit of Diz and then staying up late to work as a result of the time she had wasted. Maureen too has a grouse about Dotty ‘bossing’ her in her punt, for which I don’t give a fig. Being in her own house Maureen has far more opportunities of doing that sort of thing than Dotty, and does it. On the whole, if they both must domineer, I prefer Dotty’s loud, hoydenish, slapdash method to Maureen’s patient, endlessly repeated prim nagging.

It was quite hot today, but with the same dull sky—working up for a thunderstorm I suppose. D in good form. Walked with Pat over the fields to Stowe Woods: extraordinarily beautiful and full of fresh summerlike smells. We had tea in the garden and enjoyed ‘our thrush’ who sings there every day . . .

Saturday 1 May: Called at 5 a.m. to do ‘my observances to the May’. A cold, dark morning. I drank what was left of last night’s milk, shaved, dressed and went over to the Tower in surplice and hood. There were crowds going up and it was a slow business. The Latin hymn was beautiful: the Vaughan Williams that followed it, inappropriate. In spite of bad weather I was impressed with the landscape towards Marston, the low slopes and the gleam of the river. It began to rain before I left the top of the tower, but I did not get really wet. There was a crowd of visitors, Maureen and Dotty among them.

Came back to New Building at about 7, had a long hot bath, drank a cup of tea, and read Trevelyan. At 8 I had breakfast alone with Benecke and then the ordinary day began.

I had De Peyer and Clark (a desperately stupid pair), Yorke on Steele and Addison, and then Glasgow on Lydgate. . . .

In the afternoon I walked over the fields with Pat to Stowe Woods. Was led somehow into a train of thought in which I made the unpleasant discovery that I am becoming a prig—righteous indignation against certain modern affectations has its dangers, yet I don’t know how to avoid it either.

After tea worked on Aristotle. Supper at home and then back to College to spend the evening with Hardie on Aristotle. To bed about 11.30, very tired, and had a terrifying dream in the night which I can’t remember.

On the bus this evening I heard that the miners had gone out.

Sunday 2 May: Everyone talking about the strike at breakfast. Craig says that the V[ice] C[hancellor] is anxious to prevent the undergraduates volunteering in the town by forming some separate University framework. This has already got abroad in a garbled version. Craig had prevented Boddington from putting up a notice on the subject, because he did not want people to get the idea that Oxford was a ‘strike breaking’ gang. He was very strong on the necessity of the undergraduates keeping their heads and not becoming provocative. Chute’s idea was that some of the miners’ leaders ought to be cut up into small bits. Hardie and I hoped we might now realise a boyish dream and drive railway engines.

A very fresh day, grey-skied and windy. I walked out home after breakfast. Spent a good deal of the morning reading the papers. The right seems to be mainly on the miners’ side if it is true that the Commission prescribed ‘reorganisation and reduction’ and that the miners were then asked to submit to reduction without any guarantee of reorganisation . . .

After tea I had a delightful walk to Stowe Woods by road to Elsfield and home by the fieldpath. I haven’t done that round for a long time. After a few more reflections on priggery I pretty well stopped thinking. The wind, specially in the deep beds of heather, with their white flower, was very fine.

Home again and had supper. Worked on Aristotle afterwards, tracking a passage down. D was listening in: the others at the Cathedral. News came through that the Fascists and the Communists had had a row in Hyde Park. These Fascists will spoil the whole thing. As long as it was rowdies on the one side only, we cd. weather a lot without coming to real trouble: once we have moneyed rowdies (without a grievance) acting as agents provocateurs on the other rowdies (who have a grievance) there is bound to be a good deal of trouble . . .

Monday 3 May: A beautiful bright windy day. Worked on Aristotle all morning for Boddington who came at 12.

At one o’c. I went to Merton and lunched with Lawson and Keir. The news in The Times this morning had been that negotiations had broken down. Lawson had seen a midday paper which told that the printers of the Daily Mail, offended at its leading article, had already gone out and it had not appeared today. Merton had a notice up giving leave to all who wished to go down and volunteer for service in their home areas—rather premature of Merton. Keir disapproved of the V.C.’s idea of a special University organisation as promoting class warfare. Lawson defended the Merton notice on the ground that the undergraduates would be dangerous and troublesome as a body, but easily dealt with if dispersed in their own districts.

We left Merton together. The street was full of cars and motor bicycles. Undergraduates in great excitement and glee were blowing up tyres, pouring in petrol, and strapping on suitcases. Oxford very crowded. We were amused at everyone’s idea that the way to help was to keep everyone in movement—from anywhere to anywhere. After looking into the Union (where there was no news) I left them and went home.

D sat up last night till one o’c. and heard the later news. Apparently other people besides the Daily Mail’s printers had gone out prematurely and the situation was that the Government refused to continue negotiations unless the T.U.C. repudiated this. I had a delightful walk up Shotover and came back to tea in the garden with D.

Back to College about 5.30 and found in the Porch the V.C.’s notice saying that he did not want undergraduates to volunteer in the town and that opportunities would be given them of doing so through their colleges.

In my rooms I found the new de Selincourt Prelude and at once began to read it. Many of the fragments rescued from note books are interesting and important: specially the one distinguishing between the images and things recognised as thoughts wh. are ‘the littleness of life’ and our real selves: leading on to the passage about the cloudless east and the cloudless west. This is almost the distinction between . . . contemplation and enjoyment.

Masonic dinner on tonight so we non-Masons made a small party in Hall. In Common Room Craig gave us an outline of policy. The undergraduates are to be divided into four classes: (a) those who are free to leave and are volunteering at once for service in their home areas. (b) Those who ‘for one reason or another’ are not free, at the moment. Their papers will be sent in to the Oxford centre, but they will not be called upon until the town has exhausted its own resources. This is to avoid the provocation of ‘imported labour’ as long as possible. (c) Those with cars etc. who will volunteer for messenger service in this district, wh. (on Craig’s view) will not come under the head of ‘imported labour’. (d) Those taking Schools this term. They may fill up forms for service with the town but the forms will be withheld by College until the situation is desperate.

Some very amusing talk in the smoking room, chiefly by Dixon and Benecke, on their war experiences. After that Hardie and I went out for a walk in the Grove, which is most beautiful in twilight. We found a deep pit that we could not account for and also wandered in among the stores in the temporary stonecutting shop. They were very impressive, these pale bulky creatures among the dark trees. How Jenkin would have appreciated the feeling on the scene! Hardie knows very little about that kind of thing, tho’ in other spheres he is more than clever and really wise. Back to my rooms by about 9.30 and read the new Wordsworth till bedtime, except for a few minutes on my Outline of History. I was a long time in going to sleep.

Wednesday 5 May: Up at 7.45, very dizzy and wretched. Waddington and Sykes came at 9. They are quite a good pair . . . At 11 I took Valentin and Betjeman on O.E. Valentin translated ‘twentig hryðera’ ‘twenty hydras’.

They told me that Fascists had broken into the Labour Club last night where speeches were being made about strikers’ wives and children: and tho’ they heckled, before they left they contributed a good sum to the relief of the said wives and children. How gloriously English!

At 12 came Hamilton and Hetherington. The former read an essay: to my surprise, not nearly so good as Hetherington’s last week.

Lunched in Common Room: then to Balliol at 2. Meeting in the old Common Room with the V.C. in the chair. Discussion chiefly turned on efforts to shorten the notice: I wonder that they should hold paper so much more precious than time. I was finished by about 2.30 and I went to the English Library and took out Dunbar. Back to College: wrote up my diary, worked at my Outline, and wrote a note to Driver.

Tea in Common Room and then to L.M.H. to take my class. Miss Scoones read a paper: really astonishingly good for an amateur. She and Miss Colborne were very good in discussion. Left them at 6.15 and bussed home.

After a dreamlike morning I had begun to feel better about tea time and was now almost myself. I was worried to hear that D had had a return of the pain she felt at Oare: otherwise all well and a pleasant, idle evening . . .

Thursday 6 May: Began correcting Spencer’s English paper—history of language. He raised points I was uncertain about and I went out to buy Wyld’s Mother Tongue, but I couldn’t find out what I wanted.

A bright cold day with a blue and white sky. Home to lunch as usual. D seemed well. I read the papers—Times 2 sheets and the Govt. Gazette. I had been surprised myself at the party tone of its first number, it certainly ought to have aimed at a colourless and official tone. This has come in for severe and just criticism in the House . . .

At dinner time I heard that the Govt. had raided the Daily Herald office. Weldon said that if they continued as they had begun they would probably succeed in making trouble where no trouble would have been. They had done three very provocative things: declared a state of emergency before negotiations had broken down, used the Gazette for propaganda, and raided an opposition paper. About the Gazette anyway I thoroughly agreed. In the smoking room Brightman was in great form, proposing to go with any one who wd. volunteer and make hay of Carter’s new building.

Reports of rioting in Scotland. I came back to my rooms and worked on Dunbar. Hardie came in about 10.30 and we made hot toddy. Bitterly cold.

Friday 7 May: Went on correcting Spencer’s paper. Waterfield and Percival came at 12. The latter read an essay of a very vague, aimless kind.

Out home by about 1.30. After lunch I walked over the fields towards Forest Hill: it was a beautiful mild afternoon with a blue sky and I sat down for some time: when I turned to come home I saw wonderful effects. Above and behind me was still bright: ahead of me was a huge bank of clouds with almost black under-side and enormous white pinnacles above, driving fast towards me and making the plain bright blue underneath it. It squirted a hailshower at me just before I reached Barton: big firm hailstones, very painful to the nose and ear.

Changed and had tea. Baldwin’s speech in the House (today’s Times) says that a message demanding repudiation of the Daily Mail strike and withdrawal of strike notices in general was sent to the T.U.C. on Sunday evening and not answered and this was the breakdown. They seem to have been nearly in agreement before that.

Back to College by 5.30 and worked on Hoccleve. In the smoking room after dinner Wrong circulated the Petition expressing the hope ‘that nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of resumption of the negotiations’. It had been signed by Sadler, Gilbert Murray, Lindsay, Wrong, Weldon, Lee and others. Segar said it was like sending a petition to Haig asking him to sign an armistice at a moment when his whole business was to frighten the Germans.

I protested against the idea that the Premier during a strike was in the same position as a general at war, or that his business was to frighten. In the end I didn’t sign myself because it seemed to me that, if taken loosely, the Petition only meant ‘Aim at peace’, which was not helpful: if taken strictly, it meant ‘Re-open negotiations on any terms whatever happens tomorrow’, which I didn’t agree with.

Craig said it was equivalent to a vote of censure on the Govt. That seems untrue. What has really annoyed him and many others is that the Bishop announced a religious meeting in the Town Hall and used it for passing this resolution. The general feeling is that this was dishonest.

Back to my rooms and worked on the Chaucerians (making notes on ‘aureation’) till about 11. Then to bed, but not for a long time to sleep, after tidying my room. Raining hard.

Saturday 8 May: News of rioting from many places today.

De Peyer and Clark at 12. Home for lunch at 1.30 or so. Read the papers: the big item today is Sir John Simon’s speech on the illegality of the present strike. I am not sure that anything is gained by telling the workmen that they are all ‘liable to be sued’ (that was the headline).

Knight was here mending the lock on the scullery door. He told us the Worker’s Gazette version of the break off. They had nearly come to agreement on a basis for further discussion when the news of the Daily Mail strike reached Baldwin. He then wrote to the T.U.C., practically assuming that the General Strike had begun and asking for some statement. They knew as little of the Daily Mail strike as he and wrote back to say so: to which he answered that the door was now closed. The Worker’s Gazette pertinently asks if he would have behaved in the same way if the premature strike had been in the Daily Herald printers. Baldwin’s account was (in today’s papers) that he wrote asking for a repudiation of the printers’ strike and none was given.

It is impossible to discover of what fact these two stories are the colouring. There may be something in Craig’s idea that Baldwin was being hustled by Birkenhead and Churchill . . .

We were rather early for the bus, and it was cold, which didn’t improve matters, as D is apparently still bothered with the pain in her back. She seemed a little better in the Playhouse. The Vaughan Williams Shepherds of the Delectable Mountains was above praise: words, music, acting and lighting all really unified and the result quite unearthly. In the interval I found Benecke, Chute, and Hardie waiting on the off chance of getting in. I also met C. K. Allen and got from him a whiff of solid Univ. Toryism—sarcastic, frightened, worldly-wisdom. The Bach Coffee Cantata and the Purcell ballet of the Gentleman Dancing Master were both delightful and one didn’t really mind the descent from the heights. Altogether a splendid show. All home by taxi, the others dropping me at Magdalen gate.

Sunday 9 May: A bright and beautiful morning. The walks by the Cher as I went out home after breakfast are now ‘tunnels of green’ and hawthorn, full of singing, or, rather, shouting birds, and bluebells.

D seemed none the worse for last night. I spent a very idle day: unconsciously one makes the strike a pretext for dropping all regular habits. Played badminton in the afternoon: beaten by Maureen and beat Dotty. I re-read some of the best stories in H. G. Wells’ Country of the Blind. One never re-reads an old favourite without finding that it has contributed more than one suspected to one’s habitual stock in trade.

Back to College about 5.30. Met Valentin in the cloisters who told me he is going down tomorrow and therefore wd. not come to me. Attended Chapel and read a very relevant lesson, Deuteronomy VIII.

Sat beside Weldon in Hall. He thinks we shall be free of all pupils by the end of this week and shall have to begin thinking of strike jobs for ourselves. He proposes to join with others of our mind and try to get into stevedore’s work or something comparatively neutral: we would co-opt Hardie into our company as he is innocent and doesn’t know how to look after himself: e.g. on hearing of the new C.C.R., to be issued with tin hats, he said he would refuse to wear a tin hat! . . .

In the Smoking Room there was much interesting talk. Jellicoe says the police and the poor ordinary people (typists and the like) in London are really great. The police and army will break if it really comes to fighting: which he thinks it will.

What he would like (Chute and I eagerly endorsed this) is that the Govt. should win the strike, in the sense of producing a return to work without disorder, and lose the peace, in the sense that the country would, in the Govt’s teeth if need be, confirm Trades Unions in their legitimate powers and protect the miners.

Weldon said this was utterly impossible. Birkenhead and Joynson Hicks had deliberately provoked a hostile situation in order to crush Trades Unionism once and for all: if the general strike failed (and it was bound to) Trades Unions would be dead in England, and as there would be no general election, it would be impossible to prevent Birkenhead and Co. from mutilating the corpse. The result would be that moderate Labour wd. be forced to go red. Jellicoe says that Euston parish was enraged by the use of undergraduate labour at Euston. Wrong and I maintained the right to feed oneself and others regardless of the industrial issue: Weldon wd. not hear of it. One had no choice but to be a T.U.C. partisan or to be a blackleg as such.

Went to Craig’s room with Wrong and Weldon (Chute came in later) to drink whiskey and talk. An obstinate argument by Weldon and me against Craig and Wrong who maintained that one had a duty to support one’s country or ‘the state’ even when it is wrong. Craig kept on saying he agreed with me, which he doesn’t. Largely because I held that Govt. has a right (by the rules of all negotiation—ius gentium) to demand a repudiation of the Daily Mail strke. Wrong said ‘Craig & Lewis think God was a moderate Whig.’ I only demanded ‘is’ instead of ‘was’ . . .

Monday 10 May: . . . Went to lunch at Univ. with Keir and Lawson. They came in late, both having been listening-in in Univ. Common Room. They had heard that all had been quiet at Hull for the last 48 hours: on the other hand Keir heard from a pupil just back from Hull that martial law is being proclaimed. But as he heard that in the sergeants’ mess and late at night, perhaps it ought not to weigh very much.

I then bussed home. There were half a dozen Lancashire miners in the bus, very drunk. They said they had all been soldiers and knew how to shoot: if they couldn’t break our pockets they would break our hearts etc. etc. Someone began arguing with them and they answered him (quite sensibly) by saying ‘Are you a miner?’—‘’Oo the ’ell are you?’—‘You’re a bloody shop assistant.’ Not a pleasant journey, tho’ I think they were probably quite decent drunks and not so bad as they sounded.

Told D we should all have to go by the end of the week if the strike was still on, which naturally worried her. Miss Baker to tea. Raining. All very depressing.

Back to College for dinner and afterwards with Hardie to ‘the pictures’ where I saw Felix (excellent) and Harold Lloyd for the first time in my life.

We decided to go and see Weldon and have further discussion about our plans. Finding his rooms empty we went to Chute’s where we found Craig, Chute, Weldon, Jellicoe and some undergraduates. We found that Weldon had fixed up a party of his own to go docking, and given us the slip. I said I had always cherished a belief that under his cynical demeanour he concealed a good heart. He replied ‘Now you know.’

Jellicoe’s statement that he wanted men for a canteen, however, opened a new door: and the more I thought of it the more I liked it. I am quite muddled about the rights and wrongs of the thing now, but it seems that one can’t be doing harm by distributing food in a canteen. It also seems fairly safe and one is not being tied up by Govt. London also attracts because of Barfield and Harwood.

Hardie and I went to Weldon’s rooms to drink toddy and try Sortes Virgilianae. We got ‘At regina pyra penetrali in sede sub auras’. That didn’t seem very explicit, so we tried the Bible and got a line, not of text but of editorial matter, about ‘the fall of great empires’. That was much too explicit so we tried Milton. He gave the passage about ‘all Hell broke loose’ and ‘anger infinite provoked’. Worse and worse! We gave Virgil two more tries: one was about the return of Saturnian kingdoms in Latium, but like fools we didn’t stop there, and trying again got ‘Miscuerunt herbas et non innoxia verba.’ No more oracles for me! . . .

Tuesday 11 May: . . . I meant to get out home early this morning but Hetherington came to see me and we were presently joined by Hardie. Hetherington is for the Archbishop’s Appeal and the Balliol Independant whose object is the entirely worthy one of finding as soon as possible some means of rapprochement which will save both parties’ faces. That is the only way in which the thing can be ended without great evil . . .

In to Merton for the ‘English tea’ at 4. Here there was hardly any talk of the strike. Discussion turned on Fletcher’s proposal to co-ordinate the lecture list with the ordinary course of tutorial work. Everyone agreed, tho’ Gordon spoke of the danger of making the thing too much of ‘an easily running engine that can give no pleasure to anyone except the engineer’. Miss Lee talked a lot of nonsense about the need for lessons in pronunciation and beginners’ ‘outlines of literature’.

Tolkien managed to get the discussion round to the proposed English Prelim. I had a talk with him afterwards. He is a smooth, pale, fluent little chap—can’t read Spenser because of the forms—thinks the language is the real thing in the school—thinks all literature is written for the amusement of men between thirty and forty—we ought to vote ourselves out of existence if we were honest—still the sound-changes and the gobbets are great fun for the dons. No harm in him: only needs a smack or so. His pet abomination is the idea of ‘liberal’ studies. Technical hobbies are more in his line.

Home again. Debate in Times today very interesting. There seems to be no adequate answer to the question why the Archbishop’s appeal was excluded from the Gazette. Churchill is the editor. The Labour report of a collapse of the O.M.S. at Newcastle was repeated with circumstance. Had a quiet evening with D after supper: pleasant home-life again—there is so little of it now.

Back to College by 10.15. Had a talk with Hardie and to bed before eleven. News today reports fewer riots and tonight’s broadcasting sees some hope of re-opened negotiations. But thanks to the Govt’s behaviour I share with everyone I meet (of any class or party) a profound distrust of the official news.

Wednesday 12 May: Wrote a few more lines of my Outline, and was interrupted by Hardie. We discussed our going to London: he wanted to go tomorrow, I, on Friday. We wrote to Jellicoe and I then went home at 11.30.

I dropped into the bank and got the figures for my last year’s income, filled in my forms and posted them. Thank heavens that is off my chest . . .

I decided to go with Hardie tomorrow. At one o’clock I listened to the unexpected news that the T.U.C. had called on Baldwin and said they were terminating the General Strike today. I am at a loss to understand this sudden, unconditional surrender. It was a great relief: ordinary life flowed back into one’s mind delightfully as after a dream.

Lunch of cold chicken and tongue. I took Pat out for a walk in Cuckoo Lane and got drenched in a sudden shower.

Back into College about 3.30, and changed. Met Hardie and Mabbott of St Johns. We commented on the fact that J.A. had kept silence all through the strike and enunciated no moral doctrine: we thought the portent ‘J.A. tacuit’ (cf. bos locutus est) ought to be sent in to the augurs.

Tea in the Smoking Room with Benecke, and thence to L.M.H. for my class, thro’ the Parks in a sudden burst of wet heat, heavy sunshine, and bright colours on the dripping trees . . . My class was completely unruffled by the strike and still very interested in Berkeley. Miss Thring read a paper. The discussion turned on the self. I told them about Alexander’s distinction of contemplation and enjoyment and they all (I think) got it quite clear. Miss Colborne was specially good, saying to Miss Grant (who wanted to ‘know’ the self) ‘It is as if, not content with seeing with your eyes, you wanted to take them out and look at them—and then they wouldn’t be eyes.’ . . .

Thursday 13 May: . . . The news in this morning’s Times and by the wireless is bad. Most of the companies are refusing to take back their staffs as a whole, and most of the men are refusing to go back until they are promised that all will go back together. I fear this may still wreck the whole show. In so far as it is not necessary, but a mere reprisal, I blame the masters very much.

D seemed a little better today. After lunch I walked up Shotover: very hot and bright between the showers. The deep colours and threateningly clear outlines of the plain seen from Shotover almost woke me for a moment from the inattentive lethargy in which I usually walk now . . .

To the Union where I took out Gavin Douglas and Robert Graves’ Poetic Unreason . . . Read Graves’ book in the evening. He explains poetry on psychoanalytic principles and does not explain where its poetry lies: i.e. it resolves a conflict, so may a dream. But a dream is not poetry and where is the differentia? A stupid fellow who has been knocked off his feet by psychoanalysis because he hadn’t thought enough before he met it. I suppose that is the prig in me again! . . .

Friday 14 May: Read Gavin Douglas’ Prologues to Vergil. Poor stuff. I was quite surprised and rather shocked by the arrival of a pupil this morning—Betjeman. He has been in Oxford all the time, ‘driving people round to villages to speak, in his car’—I suppose that means people like my miners in the bus.

Home by 1.15. D seems better today. Read the papers: hardly anyone seems to have gone back yet. Baldwin made rather a great speech in the House yesterday, disclaiming all intention of reprisals and pointing out that he had himself induced some employers to meet the men and hold discussions about reinstatement. Thomas made a good speech too, drawing attention to the action of some Govt. departments and also to the difference between Baldwin’s tone and that of the ‘surrender’ number of the Gazette . . .

After tea I read (at home) The Palice of Honour which, in spite of the barbarous diction, is rather good. The horror of the waste is well done and I got a real thrill out of the music that ‘distant on far was carryit by the deip’. It is nice too to have Venus and her court knocked out for once.

Back to College at seven, feeling fit for nothing. Took Chesterton’s Club of Queer Trades from the smoking room library after dinner: read in it, made tea, and to bed by eleven or before . . .

Saturday 15 May: De Peyer alone this morning (Clark is still away) for a sticky hour on Butler. Then came Yorke for O.E. He has had amazing adventures. He travelled by a lorry to Bristol, found the docks shut up (it was a Saturday evening) and went to a hotel. Here he met a man who for some reason decided he was running away from home and talked to him on that hypothesis till midnight. On Sunday (he was dressed like a tramp) he went out for a walk and was accosted by a girl of about 12 with the question ‘’Ave you got a Sunday?’ ‘A Sunday’, apparently, means some one to walk out with on Sundays. Next day he went to a Labour exchange—why on earth he didn’t go to one of the ordinary organisations, I don’t know,—and could get no work: which is odd. Whereupon he was clapped on the back by another tramp and told ‘’Ard luck old man.’

I told him about the death of Dent—wh. I am hoping does not affect the publication of ‘Dymer’. Pocock has an agreement signed by me, but I have yet none signed by them.

Home by one. So far I had been feeling the better for my quiet and early evening last night but no sooner had I set out for my walk after lunch than the old headache and feeling of unreality descended on me. Had only a short stroll in the fields below Shotover.

Spent the rest of the day at home lazily, reading the life of Hannah More by William Roberts Esq. (1838). He is a deliciously pompous and peppery evangelical, but the letters (which make the most part of it) are v. interesting. One is glad to see Johnson with Sir Joshua’s macaw on his wrist . . .

Sunday 16 May: . . . I continued to read about Hannah More. The account of her work in the Clevedon, Blagdon and Wrington neighbourhood recalls a pleasant jaunt with W and throws a lot of interesting light on the Jacobin and anti-Jacobin period.

It is grim to see the humanist gradually withering in her, and funny to hear the author describing the society of such men as Johnson as the snares of ‘the world’—‘leagued against her’—from wh. she escaped. The diaries are like those of Frances Havergall: one sees the self examination taking a form in which it is bound to become worse and worse: the more you scratch you more you itch. The problem raised is this: how to be seriously concerned with goodness without letting the ‘empirical ego’ become the absorbing object. Perhaps it is insoluble.

Winifred went home to see her people today and I washed up after lunch: went for a short walk after tea and escaped headache etc. So far it had been a pleasant day: the rest was unpleasant. Maureen offered to wash up after supper. Like a fool (or a knave) I acquiesced and she began, not according to D’s fundamental principles. D rushed into the scullery and took the implements out of her hands and a violent altercation followed, Maureen claiming to be judged by results, and D saying that if every servant had to learn her ways she didn’t see why her daughter shouldn’t etc. etc. I kept out of it.

We then got into the dining room and had only a few minutes quiet before another row began. I forget how it started. Maureen said she hadn’t forgiven Dotty and me for Friday night. I discovered this meant that D had gone to meet Maureen on her return from the Ladies’ Musical and waited for three buses. I can’t really see that this was my fault. At any rate Maureen went on to protest against D’s imprudence in her usual tactless way, and of course, all in a flash, D was in a raging temper, and became so unjust that I ventured to say something on Maureen’s side.

This only made matters worse: and poor D made it a moral issue and said she would always do her duty no matter what all of us said, and she had a splitting headache and if we bothered her any more she’d leave the room. I suppose the headache was at the bottom of the whole thing: I am afraid she is still very poorly. In these cases one can be sure only that any line one takes will be wrong.

Back to College at 9, feeling miserable. Spencer met me and came up to my room. He has been a special in London and has had a very good time: only four hours’ duty a day, no rows, and much fun. People were driving along the embankment at 70 miles an hour. He confirms the story about the T.U.C. asking for police protection. We were joined by Hardie. Spencer didn’t go till 11.45 and I then went to Hardie’s room to warm my feet at his fire having got cold in my own room without one. To bed 12.30 with a headache—but possibly slept better than if I had gone there straight on the top of the home troubles.

Monday 17 May: Valentin seems to be still away. Boddington called and arranged to come tomorrow. I worked a little on Aristotle in the morning and read Marlowe’s Edward II: nothing so good or so bad.

Lunched in my own rooms with Keir and Lawson: the latter as usual stayed for some time and was very boring.

Got home by 2.30 and found a car standing outside ‘Hillsboro’. It turned out to be the Blacks come to take D for a drive. I saw D herself only for a moment, she was suffering from a headache again. Read for half an hour in a new library book I found on the hall table—Rose Macaulay’s Potterism. I wd. probably have enjoyed it more a few years ago, but it is very good still.

I then took Pat for a saunter down Cuckoo Lane and the Private Road and, not expecting or intending anything more than a dutiful half hour of exercise, became very happy and more myself (that is, less myself) than I have been this long time.

Reached home just as D was returning from her drive: I saw her for only a few minutes alone (as the Blacks were staying for tea). She had enjoyed the run and seemed v. much better.

Back to College soon after five: finished Edward II and read some Tamburlaine. After hall I looked at Boddington’s Aristotle gobbets. Then Hardie came and read me Dr Brown’s paper on Personality to which he has to reply at the Jowett on Wednesday night. Parts of it very vague and mythological, but it improved at the end. I agree with what he means to say, tho’ not with most of his attempts to say it.

Tuesday 18 May: Boddington at 10 on Aristotle, then Spencer on Lydgate and Hoccleve: the latter a good hour I hope.

I then went home (at 12) chatted and had lunch. They had had a restless night owing to Maureen’s being ill & D was rather poorly in consequence, tho’ cheerful.

I bussed back to College at two to meet Ewing and go for a walk with him, my termly penance. We went through the walks to Marston Road and up by the cemetery to Headington. He has just won the Green prize. The poor fellow was as dull as ever. He sails for New York on June 19th to give summer lectures at Ann Arbor.

Forgot to mention yesterday Keir’s account of Ewing turning up at Univ. to dine with Carritt, wearing full evening dress with a made-up bow tie of which a great tail stuck up perpendicularly behind his neck—and brown boots. We had tea at ‘Hillsboro’ and by the grace of God he had to go almost at once.

D and I walked round to Phippy’s. This was the first walk D has taken since her illness and great was the excitement of Pat. On the way back we were called in by old Knight to see his pigs which we duly admired: and indeed they are very personable pigs . . .

Wednesday 19 May: Worked on Ascham’s Toxophilus . . . Hetherington and Hamilton came at 12, and Hetherington read on the Moral Faculty. He was quite good, Hamilton not very. I was very bad.

Home for lunch. Read a little more of Potterism—it is not really very good—walked in Cuckoo Lane and came in after an early tea to my class at L.M.H. Our usual room was occupied and they led me to Sir Charles’ Library. Here again I was very bad and muddling: so they were, or seemed to be.

Back to College, propounded a few questions for the Fellowship general paper & then dressed and went to the Martlets dinner at Univ. I sat next to Fell who is one of the black sheep of the College, but a pleasant fellow enough. Farquharson and Carlyle were pulling each others’ legs and both were very great. I had forgotten how good Univ. conversation was.

After dinner John Freeman read us some of his poems. I knew nothing of him but the name and two of the poems in Poems of Today which I had looked up this afternoon. He is a man past middle age with spectacles and a lisp: a rather weak chin: not much of a face altogether. Poets ought not to read their work aloud as an after dinner entertainment: it is extremely uncomfortable . . .

Thursday 20 May: Yorke came for O.E. and we did the Fall of the Angels together. He tells me he met Siegfried Sassoon and other literary men during the strike. Siegfried spoke of the civil war wh. (he said) wd. begin, and then, sitting down on a tub in which a tree grew, laid his head against the tree, shut his eyes, and agonised in silence.

Are all our modern poets like this? Were the old ones so? It is almost enough to prove R. Graves’ contention that an artist is like a medium: a neurotic with an inferiority complex who gets his own back by attributing to himself abnormal powers. And indeed I have noticed in myself a ridiculous tendency to indulge in poetical complacency as a consolation when I am ill at ease thro’ managing ordinary life worse than usual . . .

After Yorke had gone I went to Alfred Street—of hated memory, for there I enlisted in 1917—to see a man about my income tax. It appears the College return does not tally with mine. No doubt mine is wrong.

Bought a Berner’s Froissart and bussed home. D in good form. Short walk and back again to find Mrs Wilbraham there for tea. She and her undergraduate nephew and friends appear to be coming again on Sunday. There is one who doesn’t play badminton and D very obligingly said I would like to talk to him. This thing threatens to become a nuisance. I resolved that whatever happened I wd. not let it be a custom for me to amuse strange undergraduates (for whom I am not paid) on the one day in the week when I look to be at home and at ease . . .

Friday 21 May: A really fine day at last. Waterfield and Percival in the morning. I shall have to separate these two: W. is quite good and that grinning nonentity Percival only acts as a drag on him.

Home and had a delightful walk in the fields by Marston. The hawthorn smells strongest in these low lying sun traps and the path in a field is a long green line ahead dividing an almost solid yellow of buttercups. Back to tea . . .

Saturday 22 May: Betjeman, Clark and De Peyer, Yorke (v. good, on Swift) and Glasgow this morning: home for the rest of the day.

D in good form. Another lovely day. I walked to Elsfield by the fields, my first good walk for many days. ‘Mountings of the mind . . . came fast upon me.’ Came home and read Descartes’ Meditations with much interest. Played a game of badminton with Dotty: after supper with her and Maureen. The latter then gave Winifred a lesson in the game. She takes it quite well, tho’ her guffaws and gestures are very odd. We all sat in the dining room very idly and talked in the twilight till ten when I came back to College.

Wrote a short note on ‘A paralogism in Berkeley’. Hardie came in and pronounced my argument valid.

Sunday 23 May: Out home immediately after breakfast. The walk thro’ Mesopotamia gets more beautiful every week. All well and cheerful at home . . .

Came into College, attended chapel and read the first lesson. J.A., Hardie and I left the smoking room together and stayed for a long time in the cloister of New Building talking about books. This is almost the first time I have ever conversed with J.A.—tho’ I have often propounded theses to him and listened to his answering (but never quite answering) expositions. As Cox said at Univ. the other night, it is a mark of the Italian school—and J.A. is wholly Italianate in philosophy—never to argue.

To bed at 11.30 and read The Lunatic at Large in bed for half and hour.

Monday 24 May: Not having made up my diary for two days, I forget what happened this morning. I presume it was spent in profound thought. Just this moment I remember. It was: I was writing a note on what is meant by ‘present to the mind’.

Lunched in Merton with Lawson and Keir, and separated early. Went home. It was very hot and I had only a short walk. Later on I had a strenuous game of badminton with Dotty. Had supper at home: back to College late and to bed.

Tuesday 25 May: Boddington came this morning and we discussed his collections paper on Logic. A note from Spencer to apologise for not coming . . .

Left home after tea and worked on Descartes with much interest. In the Smoking room Segar presented me with a free ticket (but I must pay for it) for tonight’s Ruddigore, some arrangement of his own having fallen through. I went off at once and arrived about ten minutes after the rise of the curtain. It is years now since I have seen a Gilbert and Sullivan, and this, which I never saw before, was delightful. Sheffield as Despard was particularly good, and also the ghost song. Home with moonlight down Holywell, thinking how jolly it all was (touch wood) and to bed by twelve.

Wednesday 26 May: Sykes and Waddington this morning, later Hetherington and Hamilton: very interesting discussion with both.

Home for lunch. Afterwards I took my walk over the fields to the row of firs on the way to Forest Hill, and sat down at the foot of one where there was a pleasant breeze. The place is smothered in daisies and buttercups and hedged with hawthorn. I thought a little—all my ideas are in a crumbling state at present—but, thank goodness, stared more. I suspect that the mystical contemplation of a particular external object, if carried out formally, is a spoof and leads to an inferior mode of consciousness, but just a whiff of it—moment’s concentration on a tree or something—usually gives you something you hadn’t got before. I enjoyed myself.

Home for early tea and then in to L.M.H. A good hour on Hume’s theory of causation. Miss Colbourne has shut up.

Back to College and worked on Descartes. Dined and went into Common Room afterwards. J.A. had an American guest who sat on my left. I said, as I passed the decanter, ‘This is port.’ ‘Tell him what it is,’ said Cowley, ‘It’s ’96. Before you were born.’ I passed on this important information. ‘What, 1906?’ said the American, ‘Wall, really.’

At about 10.30 Weldon who had been tutoring Elliston, came in and ‘carried’ me for a stroll round the walks: very cool and dark, with the pleasant sound of the weir and a yellow moon. He talked about the absurd financial position here. A third of our net revenue goes to the University and it is thus to our interest to spend as much of the gross as we can: hence this continual succession of walls and ugly and unnecessary buildings with which we are gradually surrounding ourselves. Came back and drank whiskey in my rooms, talking of the ideal state, eugenics, Raymond and astral tobacco, and why the witch hunts came in the 17th century . . .

Thursday 27 May: A cooler day with a fresh wind. Betjeman and Valentin came with O.E. Betjeman appeared in a pair of eccentric bedroom slippers and said he hoped I didn’t mind them as he had a blister. He seemed so pleased with himself that I couldn’t help replying that I should mind them very much myself but that I had no objection to his wearing them—a view which, I believe, surprised him. Both had been very idle over the O.E. and I told them it wouldn’t do.

Home for lunch, after working for the rest of the morning on The Dunciad. Went for a walk towards Stowe Woods: with the wind and changing sky it wd. have been pleasant, but for the number of children everywhere. Back to tea and all three of us went shopping in Headington afterwards.

I then returned to College and attended a meeting of the Fellowship examiners in the smoking room. I was much struck by the hangdog look of Weldon who keeps up a look of ostentatious boredom on these occasions that must really be more tiring than a show of interest. He’s an odd fish. The President amused everyone by suddenly saying ‘Oh but, Hardie, you’re a philosopher, too, aren’t you?’

Dined and came away almost at once to work on Courthope, but failed miserably to concentrate. Going down into the cloister I met Hardie and Brightman returning from The Pirates of Penzance. The reverend and aged gentleman was in great spirits, striking the attitudes of a pirate king and proclaiming his wish to embrace both the leading ladies. I then went up to Hardie’s rooms and talked for a while. Late to bed.

Friday 28 May: Percival and Waterfield this morning. I am getting rather tired of the latter’s domestic similes in his essays: long and pointless examples beginning ‘Once there was a little boy’.

Home to lunch where we had a telegram from W hoping that we could put him up for the week end. I walked as usual and came back to College after tea. Tutorial meeting in the Chaplain’s room after hall, where I attended and made reports.

Saturday 29 May: Betjeman came at 9 and surprised me with a very creditable essay. Then Clark and de Peyer on Descartes, both stupid, but we hammered out a good discussion all the same. Then Yorke on Pope, really good work: he is coming on in the most encouraging way. Finally Glasgow—a tough morning.

W came at 1 o’clock and ‘carried’ me to the Mitre to drink beer. He had a good deal to say about the strike and had had some unpleasant experiences: as he took a convoy through London the crowd shouted to the Tommies ‘Why don’t you bayonet the b——r?’ He says the troops are very solid and the recent events have done much to restore their old contempt for civilians: we must be in a desperate state when one feels grateful for this useful insolence, as I am afraid I did. The men call Saklatvala ‘Mr Sack-lavatory’ . . .

Here is a good story of a Guardee Colonel, who, when some superior opened an interview by saying that the situation was much more serious than they had thought at first, replied fervently ‘Yes sir, it is—they tell me at my Turkish bath club that the supply of coal may be cut down!’

We went to Leighton’s in Holywell where we had left the byke for a small repair, but they had done nothing to it and the men would not be back till two. We were amused by a man who, being asked if he were in charge, asked what we wanted, and when he had heard the grievance, said ‘No, I am not in charge.’

Went and had lunch at the Town & Gown, then retrieved the byke and went home. Played two sets of badminton with W before tea, and afterwards walked down to Mesopotamia with him and gave Pat a bath. After supper, the girls being in, all four had some amusing badminton. W biked me back to College, came in for a drink, and left me for Headington at eleven.

D tells me that Dotty is rather inclined to ‘practise’ on W: with all her other faults I thought she was free from this. This was the starting point of an idea and I wrote the first sonnet and a half of a sequence which was to be put into the mouth of a man who is gradually falling in love with a bitch, tho’ quite conscious of what she is. I don’t care for sonnet sequences and it is not the sort of thing I ever imagined myself writing: but it would be jolly if it shd. come off. . . .

Sunday 30 May: After breakfast re-cast what I wrote last night into a stanza I have long had in my mind (a a b c c b blank b). It is still not very satisfactory.

W came at about 10 and took me home in his side car. We spent the morning walking down to Mesopotamia and gave Pat another dip: had some beer in Headington when we came back. Winifred went home after lunch and I washed up . . .

Had an early supper and came back to College whence Hardie took me to Hertford to hear Alexander at the Philosophical Society. We met Price in Hertford quad and remained there chatting till presently the great man, bearded and deaf and very venerable, appeared supported by Pritchard, Carritt and others. Cox was there as Carritt’s guest. It was a great evening.

The first part of A’s paper, on artistic creation, was an admirable and, to me, a satisfying attack on all Croce’s nonsense: the second part, ‘cosmic creation’, was largely beyond me. He has great humour, as when he remarked, after a dark saying, ‘I have not time to add the qualifications wh. make this statement true.’ In discussion a chair was placed beside him to which the disputants came one by one, because of his deafness. Carritt who opened the discussion, was very good: not so the various lawyers and divines who followed, till J.A. took the matter in hand. Back to College with Hardie about 11.

Monday 31 May: Valentin came this morning: pretty poor. I spent the rest of the time before lunch on my new poem and made eight stanzas, doing far better than I hoped. I really begin to think that something will come of it.

To Univ. for lunch with Keir alone, Lawson being away at Stow-in-the-Wold by his doctor’s orders.

Bussed home. D had been into town shopping and had a headache. Walked between lunch and tea time, then settled down to Elyot’s Boke of the Governour for the rest of the day. A good book: the brief description of football is worth remembering.

Had supper at home and came into college at 10: went on with Elyot till 11.30: then read January, February & March in Spenser’s Calendar and went to bed. I had quite forgotten the pleasant earthy flavour of the Briar and the Oak and was delighted with it. A good day, but shaky and headachy at the end of it.

Tuesday 1 June: . . . Forgot to mention yesterday a letter from Pasley in India, fairly cheerful, but complaining of Anglo-Indian society and with a Pasleyish undercurrent of schemes for the future, implying that he has not yet quite found himself. He has two children now.

Went home and lunched (after spending the rest of the morning on Elyot: Titus & Gisippus is a good novella).

D was better today. Walked up Shotover in the afternoon thro’ Headington Quarry, where I have not been for a long time. Back to tea at which arrived a letter from Harwood announcing the birth of a son. We were both glad, tho’ it is rather dreadful to think of a child born into a house full of educational theories!

D is more and more discontented with Dotty who gives her an hour’s work every morning making up meals for her and her friends to take on the river. I am afraid she is one of our many mistakes.

Back to College where I wrote to Harwood (enclosing a note from D) and read Elyot again till hall. Went into Common Room afterwards and sat next to J.A. who was in great form, tho’ one of his stories was a familiar chestnut.

I then walked to the Union to return Gavin Douglas—a beautiful clear evening with a cold look about the stone. In Market Street I met Hardie and foolishly allowed myself to be persuaded to go to the Cinema. I was rewarded by a very bad Harold Lloyd. Back to his room to discuss whether one knew of one’s own selfhood by knowing other selves (my theory) or vice-versa, till 12.30. He had the best of the argument. A mis-spent evening.

Wednesday 2 June: Waddington & Sykes at 9 o’clock. I felt very tired and dull at the beginning but a lively discussion developed . . . Hetherington and Hamilton came at twelve. Hetherington is an extraordinary man and seems to see the whole of modern idealism by nature. He began on the subjective level but accepted the distinction of the I and the me and thence mounted on his own wings to the back of beyond. What is one to do with him for the rest of his career? . . .

To hall, during which Segar told me of his experiences when torpedoed in the Mediterranean. It was a story of panic and bad conduct worse than any I have heard in the war. The Captain shot himself. Segar, in the water, approached a boat with three men in it: one a man with his jaw shot away, the other a padré temporarily mad, the third unhurt. This one said ‘Go away, you’re making me sea sick’ and taking off his boots hammered Segar’s hands till he let go of the ropes. He was afterwards picked up by a tug . . .

Thursday 3 June: . . . Yorke on O.E. this morning followed by Betjeman and Valentin who did better. I tried to do something on my new poem but made nothing of it. I am afraid nothing more can be made of it.

Home for lunch. D was rather affairé making up sandwiches for all three girls (drat ’em) to take on the river for Eights. Went for a short walk down by the cemetery and home for tea.

. . . After tea I came back to College and worked on Spenser, after finishing Elyot’s Governour. Stayed for some time in the smoking room after dinner doing an impossibly difficult crossword puzzle with J.A. and Wrong. Back to my rooms and spent the whole evening on Spenser with great satisfaction. To bed about 11.30 and heard many sounds of revelry.

Friday 4 June: . . . A beautiful misty warm morning, the mist all transparent and luminous with concealed sunshine, wood pigeons making a noise in the grove, and a heavy dew. It suggested autumn and gave me a shudden whiff of what I used to call ‘the real joy’.

Tried to write after breakfast and copied out four new stanzas, including the swallow one. This poem must wind itself up or else take an unexpected development. Betjeman came this morning, followed by Percival and Waterfield, both very silly.

Home for lunch, walk and back to College after tea, where I began to read Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity (in the library copy) with great enjoyment, having conceived the idea of giving a lecture next term on Elyot, Ascham, Hooker and Bacon.

After dinner, at which very few were present, I got into an interesting conversation with J.A. on the Norse mythology in which he is well informed.

Saturday 5 June: Another beautiful day. Went out after breakfast and bought the Everyman Hooker in two volumes. Clark & de Peyer, Yorke and Glasgow all came this morning.

Home for lunch. D suffering badly from stiffness after clipping and brushing Pat. I stayed in all afternoon reading Hooker, who is certainly a great man. After tea went for a pleasant walk with Pat, up the crab-apple road as far as the stile and home by the fields: soft afternoon sunshine, improved by a mild wind . . . D and I had a quiet evening to ourselves and I finished the first book of Hooker, coming back to College about 10.30.

There I found a long letter from P[apy]. which I answered at once, and went to bed.

Sunday 6 June: A glorious summer morning. Walked home after breakfast and found all well: D much better today. Took my walk in the morning despite the heat, in order to have the afternoon free, when D would be able to sit out and the chairs wd. be unoccupied by girls. I went to the field with the fir trees and sat in the grass and buttercups for a while, then back to drink beer in Headington, and so home for lunch.

After lunch the girls all went off to the river. We had an enlightened conversation in which Valerie and Dotty explained how one can cry on purpose. One begins at the psychological end by a representation of one’s wrongs and desolation, and it is soon quite easy. Valerie is specially instructive because she is more naïf than Dotty and says the most appalling things without knowing it. She admits that she feels ‘respect’ or ‘feels small’ in the presence of girls with really good hats: and as for clothes, she feels ready to ‘tear them off’ their possessors. She said it was very complicated: I said I thought it was the simplest feeling I had ever heard anyone put into words.

D and I spent the afternoon in the garden under the plum tree, which looks as if it will bear some fruit this year. I read Abercrombie’s Idea of Great Poetry which I borrowed from J.A. He is not a great mind but he knows more about poetry than most of those now writing—understands what a long poem is—and combats the hectic theory of poetry as existing only in momentary lyrical impressions. Let us hope the tide is turning.

Left home about 5.30 and came in to go to chapel but missed it . . . A big crowd dining in. Onions introduced me to his guest, Fiedler, and plunging himself into conversation with Brightman, left me to entertain the Bosche. The best thing I got out of him was his statement that before the war he used to delight Farquharson by telling him he looked rather like Moltke. Dawnay was in and Weldon tells me he is going to get a Guards battalion and that he is ‘far too nice for a soldier’. (A good early blank verse line, as we observed.)

As Hardie and I were coming across to New Building we were overtaken by J.A. who proposed a stroll in the walks. We went and sat in the garden till it was quite dark. He was very great, telling us about his travels in the Balkans. The best things were (a) the masterful ladies (English of course) on a small Greek steamer who made such a nuisance of themselves that the Captain said ‘Have you no brothers? Why have they not got someone to marry you?’, and went on muttering at intervals for the rest of the evening ‘It ought to have been possible to get someone.’ (b) The Austrian minister at some unearthly town who took J.A. and his party out for a walk on the railway line, which was the only place level enough to walk on, and beginning to balance himself on the rails, remarked sadly ‘C’est mon seul sport.’ (c) The Greek clergyman who asked J.A. and his sister to tea and, when they departed, accompanied them back to their hotel, repeating ‘You will remember me?’ ‘Yes, certainly,’ said J.A. The clergyman repeated his touching request about fifteen times and each time J.A. (tho’ somewhat surprised) assured him with increasing warmth that he would never forget him. It was only afterwards they realised that the reverend gentleman was asking for a tip.

We began to be troubled with midges and as J.A. had used all my matches it was impossible to smoke, so we returned. I read a few of Emily Brontë’s poems and went to bed.

Monday 7 June: Valentin and Boddington this morning.

Wrote a few couplets for another part of the poem, describing the settlers’ town, as an opening to the story of the wood in which the people parodied human action. The idea is expanding and may find room for many things including my old poems of Foster.

Lawson and Keir came for lunch. We considered the Everyman list with a view to suggesting additions, as Pocock had invited me to do: after lunch we sat in the grove—very beautiful with light and shadow this hot afternoon—and continued the job till about three.

I then bussed home: all well there, except that D seems to be more and more worried by Dotty. I did not go out till after tea and then took only a short walk past Mrs Seymour’s to sit among the trees by Bayswater brook. There is almost a spinney of pollards among the flat grass and buttercups beside the stream . . .

Tuesday 8 June: Finished setting a Literature and Criticism paper for the Fellowship examination this morning. Rang up the theatre and got three tickets for the Coriolanus tonight. Wrote to Spencer in answer to his apologies, to Margoliouth giving him Yorke’s name for the English fund, to Driver telling him I had set my paper, to Fell saying I wd. join the Mermaid Club, and to Joan Colborne changing tomorrow’s class to 5.30 as she had requested . . .

I skimmed Coriolanus until dinner time and glanced at Stead’s Shadow of Mt Carmel, just published, which he has sent me. He had already shown it me in proof and I had criticised pretty plainly, but it rolled off like water from a duck’s back . . .

The performance was bad beyond description. They had only two ways of speaking, to whisper or to shout, and both inaudible. Coriolanus had every trick of the traditional barn stormer, and one wonders how this kind of acting has survived a hundred years of parody. I met Carter in one of the intervals. He thought it good: but to such a beaming Friar Tuck as Carter all things are good. It was a real relief to get out at the end and to be bellowed and grimaced at no longer . . .

Wednesday 9 June: A busy day. Waddington and Sykes came at 9 and we had a good, tho’ exhausting, hour.

I then wrote to Stead thanking him for the book and enclosing for his criticism a parody of T. S. Eliot wh. I had just scribbled off: very nonsensical, but with a flavour of dirt all through. My idea is to send it up to his paper in the hope that he will be taken in and publish it: if he falls into the trap I will then consider how best to use the joke for the advancement of literature and the punishment of quackery. If he doesn’t I shall have proved that there is something more than I suspected in this kind of stuff . . .

Then came Hamilton and Hetherington, and we had a most vigorous and gruelling hour . . .

I went . . . at 3.45 to the board room in old Clarendon for a meeting of the sub faculty. Met Miss Spens who seems to think my class a great success and agrees with most of my report, tho’ she is surprised at my thinking Miss Colborne so good. The meeting was rather ridiculous. The air was electric with ‘sex antagonisms’, Miss Rooke being the eloquent and ironic exponent of women’s wrongs (‘In that term most of our students are doing the XIXth century, and hardly any men take it, and there are no lectures on it that term, so I suppose that’s all right.’).

Didn’t get away till 4.30. Had tea in the smoking room and went to L.M.H. for my class, where Miss Colbourne read a paper on Scepticism and a lively discussion followed.

Home by bus in torrents of rain. Letters from Pocock (1) Acknowledging my list of proposed Everymans (2) Asking me if I wanted any alterations made in the design of the title page of ‘Dymer’, by one Knowles, which came in a separate cover. It is not a bad thing, but there is too much of Beardsley in the faces. After supper I wrote complimenting it as much as I cd., but begging for something more classical and less ninetyish in the faces . . .

Thursday 10 June: Betjeman came this morning and shifted his tutorial to Monday. Then came Yorke and after doing O.E. I broached to him the idea of my literary dragonnade: a series of mock Eliotic poems to be sent up to the Dial and the Criterion until, sooner or later, one of these filthy editors falls into the trap. We both looked into T. S. Eliot’s poems (which Betjeman had lent me) and Yorke was pleased with the idea. He struck out a good opening line ‘My soul is a windowless façade’: then we hunted for a rime and of course ‘de Sade’ turned up, with the double merit of being irrelevant and offensive. We decided to bring Coghill into the scheme . . .

Home at one in a storm of rain and found the whole house buzzing with deliberations about the badminton tournament on Saturday . . .

Back to College where I found a letter from Stead. It was encouraging to find that tho’ I told him my ‘Cross-Channel Boat’ was a parody, it has quite impressed him. Poor fellow, he finds in it ‘a robust and rollicking flavour’! Yorke turned up with a finished poem, all about de Sade and furniture covered with pink rep and drinking mint-julep. I think it will do . . .

Friday 11 June: . . . I . . . enlisted Hardie in the anti-Eliot group. Betjeman came, having done practically no work, and I had a row with him: he is v. conceited which makes him vulnerable.

Bussed home. Proofs of ‘Dymer’ (I, 1–30) arrived from the Temple Press at Letchworth. Back to College after tea. Corrected my proofs and posted them. Wrote another rag poem—very sad and desperate and disillusioned, cheap as dirt. Hardie came in after hall and read me his ‘A Portrait’: good fun, but too funny for a beginning.

Saturday 12 June: A crowded day. Pupils from 9 till 1. Home, to lunch off sandwiches in a topsy-turvy kitchen. Party from 2.30 till 6 . . . For the last half hour the conversation of Dotty and Valerie was maddeningly silly. D stood the day pretty well. I hope it has not done her much harm.

More proofs of ‘Dymer’ and a letter from Pocock agreeing with me about the title page design. Back to College at 10.30 fagged out with the unwholesome weariness of long hours’ grimacing and pretence. Got rid of that atmosphere over some whiskey and a detective story and went to bed. I am told the party was a success: at any rate it is over.

Sunday 13 June: Woke up feeling very tired and stiff. Got drawn into an argument with J.A. on aesthetics after breakfast and was late getting home.

A beautiful morning which I spent partly in the garden correcting proofs, partly in the kitchen helping D. The girls took Pat out. I washed up after lunch.

Spent a quiet and sleepy afternoon, and re-read some of Hewlett’s Lore of Proserpine. The simile of the three men on the three floors of the house affected me strangely. I began to think that I had let my ‘forensic’ dominate my ‘recondite’ too long and too severely. Of course that was a necessary reaction against the rule of the ‘recondite’ out of his own sphere, which means Christina dreams. Perhaps now that I have learned my lesson I can begin to encourage the recondite a bit more. One needn’t be asking questions and giving judgements all the time. This very crude psychology put me into a mood I have not enjoyed for years: it was like melting, as if I were a man of snow, or having doors open in one’s back.

Came back to College about 6.30 and gazed out of my windows on to an extraordinary evening light in the Grove. The old white horse was transfigured in it. In Common Room sat next an aged parson who talked to me of the Great Eastern, the first bicycle, and English feeling during the American civil war . . .

(D tired but I hope none the worse. The chief excitement today was over Henry, Dotty’s tortoise, who was discovered about two hundred yards from the gate working his passage towards the London road. He was brought back and tethered by a cord round his body, and supplied with lettuce leaves and snails in which he took no interest. He escaped repeatedly during the day. When I buy a tortoise I shall say I want a quiet one for ladies.)

Began G. K. Chesterton’s Eugenics and Other Evils.

Monday 14 June: Betjeman and Valentin for O.E.: both had worked (according to their lights) pretty well. I corrected and sent off the second bunch of ‘Dymer’ proofs . . .

Bussed home. D rather tired and the girls working her hard: they kept her up late last night and there were four river lunches to be got for Dotty today. They certainly intend to get ‘real value’ out of anyone who will let them. A letter from Pocock saying he sent me my copy of the contract on the 7th of April. It certainly never reached me. Took Pat for a short walk in Cuckoo Lane.

Back to College at 5 to attend a fellowship meeting in Benecke’s rooms, with Weldon and Hardie. It was interesting to see again, as I used to see when I was his pupil, Benecke’s mantelpiece full of pigs—stone pigs, china pigs, stuff pigs, and brazen pigs. The meeting lasted till 6.30 when Hardie and I rushed off to dress . . .

We bussed out to the Prichards and found that dinner jackets would have done. It was a most rational dinner. The guests were all men—Mabbott, Harrod (?) of the House, Hardie and myself. The daughters were not there and Mrs Pritchard retired almost at once. We then talked philosophy till 11.30, a very good discussion . . .

Tuesday 15 June: Woke up in the early morning from an abominable dream. It began innocently and absurdly enough with W and me walking on a pier and inquiring whether certain minute points of light which we held in our hands were ‘merely time signals’ or something more. But then we were seated by an old man, whom we dared not offend, listening to his triumphant account of someone he had buried alive or was going to bury alive. At least that is as near as the waking mind can get to it: it was really I think a corpse wh. was buried, and decaying, but somehow also alive—the life in death of the poem in MacDonald’s Lilith. I was just saying with fiendish approval (real or feigned?) ‘Yes. Just think what it would feel like by about the third day,’ when I woke up. I was ‘half dead with nothing’ and took some time to get to sleep again.

Valentin on Spenser this morning, pretty poor. Wrote another Eliot-parody . . .

Coghill came for dinner. He told me what Gertrude Stein’s ‘gift of repartee’ (as the Mag. calls it) was really like at the meeting in her honour the other night. Cecil of Wadham rose to ask her what she meant by the same things being ‘absolutely identical and absolutely different’ to which Stein (she is a dowdy American) replied ‘Wall, you and the man next you are abso-o-lute-ly identical the way you both jump up to ask questions, but abs-o-lute-ly different in character.’ This nonsense was greeted with rounds of approving laughter by the crowd.

After coffee we came over here and were joined by Yorke and later by Hardie. We all read our Eliotic poems and discussed plans of campaign. Coghill thought that if we succeeded it would always be open to Eliot to say that we had meant the poems seriously and afterwards pretended they were parodies: his answer to this was to make them acrostics and the ones he had composed read downwards ‘Sham poetry pays the world in its own coin, paper money.’

Then came the brilliant idea that we should be a brother and sister, Rollo and Bridget Considine. Bridget is the elder and they are united by an affection so tender as to be almost incestuous. Bridget will presently write a letter to Eliot (if we get a foothold) telling him about her own and her brother’s life. She is incredibly dowdy and about thirty five. We rolled in laughter as we pictured a tea party where the Considines meet Eliot: Yorke wd. dress up for Bridget and perhaps bring a baby. We selected as our first shot, my ‘Nidhogg’ (by Rollo) and Hardie’s ‘Conversation’ and Yorke’s ‘Sunday’ (by Bridget). They are to be sent from Vienna where Hardie has a friend. We think Vienna will decrease suspicion and is also a likely place for the Considines to live in.

Our meeting broke up about 12. Hardie and Coghill are in it for pure fun, I for burning indignation, Yorke chiefly for love of mischief. Went to bed, feeling for some reason very nervy and worn out—perhaps this morning’s dream, or perhaps the exhaustion of so much laughter.

Wednesday 16 June: Corrected proofs all morning till 12 o’clock and made (I hope) some good corrections. Feeling very stale and shaky and beginning to develop a cough. At 12 came Hamilton and Hetherington on Berkeley: we had a most lively and obstinate discussion which lasted till 1.30.

Bussed home. Poor D seemed tired and depressed. Dotty is out all day and every day this week wh. means that D has to spend two hours or so every evening making up four picnic meals. It enrages me. Took Pat a short walk down Cuckoo Lane and home for an early tea. More proofs today and a letter (not from Pocock) to warn me that I shall have no opportunity of making second corrections for the American edition.

Back to College, thence through the Grove where I saw the O.U.D.S. rehearsing Midsummer Night’s Dream and out to L.M.H. Miss Colborne was away, Miss Scoones surprisingly dull, and the paper read by the lumpy Miss Grant. The hour was a failure and I am rather ashamed of getting a pound for it.

Back to College where I began correcting the new Proofs. Yorke came in with two new and excellent Bridget poems.

Dressed and went to Univ. at 7.45 for the Greats dinner. Sat next to Campbell who is still a great admirer of T. S. Eliot tho’ he has transferred some of his admiration to Gertrude Stein. I asked him if he had heard of the Considines—a brother and sister, I believed, who lived in Vienna and wrote remarkable stuff: but I doubted if any of it appeared in England. He hadn’t heard but was quite interested.

After dinner I had talk with Cox and also with Henderson, who is going to the Sudan. He is a splendid fellow, a ‘sound man’ who would delight the ‘hearty’, a very tolerable philosopher, a wide and enthusiastic reader of books old and new, a fine athlete, an authority (almost) on sculpture, and without the slightest taint of brilliance, just wise and normal and fully developed in all directions. He has all the virtues of a regular subaltern, a country gentleman, and an aesthete, with the faults of none of them. This is the best thing Oxford does. . . .

Friday–Tuesday 18–22 June: My cold was heavy and I was thick headed during the week end. On Friday came a selection of covers from Dents for ‘Dymer’, sent for my remarks. So far they are certainly a pleasanter house than Heinemann’s to deal with. Dined in and went into Common Room where the talk turned on schooldays and boyhood in general. Nearly all joined in exploding the myth of happy childhood: we are all conscious of being much better off as we are. Read John Buchan’s Path of the King afterwards and went early to bed feeling very poorly.

Spent an idle and headachy morning on Saturday and sent off the last gallies of ‘Dymer’. At 2 o’clock went to the Schools to invigilate, first with Miss Spens (who wants me to take some of my L.M.H. people for ordinary tuition in 19th Century. I shelved.), and then with Miss Wardale. It was very hot, my cold bad, and a long three hours . . .

Back to College by 5.15 and had some tea in the smoking room. Bussed home—for the Vac—taking Conrad’s Lord Jim. It wd. have been pleasant thus coming out home after the term and a beastly day, if I had been feeling at all well. Went to bed immediately after supper and stayed there all Sunday. Read Lord Jim, a great novel, especially Marlow’s conversation with Stein, and the whole picture of Stein, where the incredible is made convincing. But alas, philosophy spoils one for all these literary ‘reflections on life’ except in Wordsworth, Meredith, MacDonald and a few more . . .

Could not get up till midday on Monday as Griffin had not brought out my luggage from College. Corrected revised proofs (which came on Saturday) of ‘Dymer’ I, 1–30. Sat in the garden most of the afternoon reading Wells’s Modern Utopia: fairly good but—ugh! No dogs, no windows in your bedroom, and practically the whole world full of scattered villas. He also thinks he has ‘discovered uniqueness’ by reading Bosanquet, which is a pity.

Took Pat for a short stroll after tea and drank some stout in Old Headington. Early to bed. It is very pleasant to be at home and D and I rejoice to have the house rid of the Dotties and the Valeries . . .

Wednesday 23 June: Up very late feeling more fit than I have done for some time. Sat in in the morning, finished re-reading Trollope’s Warden (I had forgotten how good it was) and read The Times. Also wrote a longish letter to Pasley. I have practically nothing in common with him now and it did not come easily, but one must, of pure charity, write to a poor devil of an educated man isolated in Indian society.

The prospect of dining with the Warrens tonight and meeting Sir James Craig (I was afraid I might be let in for home politics & get entangled in my talk) cast rather a shadow over the day, and when D discovered that so far I had only £300 odd from College, and suspected that the whole thing ‘was a do’ and ruled that I must see Thompson at once and find out everything, I began to look forward to a really bad afternoon and evening . . .

The dinner, tho nothing brilliant in the food line, was quite pleasant. I took in Mrs James Murrell who was quite easy to talk to as we disagreed about everything, specially public schools and the services. She thinks me a horrid crank. On my left I had Mrs Pickard-Cambridge, a woman of a fine old fashioned dignity, whom I liked.

In the port period after the ladies had cleared off, conversation turned entirely on University politics which was rather dull for Sir James. I had no conversation with him: he seems a little bit uncouth. Got away about 10.35 after a few moments conversation with Lady Craig and quite a long talk with Mrs Webb about animals. She is nice.

Watched the O.U.D.S. from the grass between cloisters and New Building for a few minutes in company with Benecke and then walked home in the bright moonlight. The others were in bed when I got back.

Thursday 24 June: Up rather late and into College . . . I spent the morning on Raleigh’s preface to Hoby. I also left instructions with the librarian to find me Patrizi, who is wrongly catalogued, and went up into the Founder’s Tower to get Erasmus’ Institutio Regis Christiani, both being mentioned by the D.N.B. as sources for Elyot’s Governour. From the silent sun-and-dust book rooms in the tower I went up and out upon the leads to enjoy for a moment some jumbled and foreshortened views of the College.

Coming back to the Library I was pleasantly surprised by Jenkin who had come up to take his M.A. We arranged to meet at 7.30 . . . Went to Merton Street and found Jenkin in his old digs. The very pictures on his walls were full of pleasant memories. We had supper together at the George, in great contentment. He is engaged on four or five different small jobs, including an effort to raise money for Exeter University, wh. involves a lot of touring in the West country and expenses paid. He has written a book (on the mining business in Cornwall) which is now in the hands of some agency. He is also going to see a specialist: not, I gather, that his health is any worse than it has always been, but as he says ‘I had made up my mind to it—to live on that basis—but people have advised me to make one bid for better health and then, if I like, settle down to it.’ We went to Magdalen where we sat till 10.30 when I caught the last bus. He has not changed, and we had a fine talk. Home by moonlight, ate a saucer of strawberries and cream and went to bed.

Friday 25 June: Up to the back room after breakfast and did a little more work on my paper. At about 11 I went in to College and found a note from Benecke in the lodge saying that the fellowship meeting at 12 was still on.

Went to Hardie’s room and read with him Yorke’s new Bridget poem. It is about a dentist’s waiting room and rather good.

We were joined unexpectedly by Lawson (I didn’t know that he knew Hardie) and later by one Fordyce. At 12 we repaired to the New Room and met the President, Benecke, Driver, and Weldon. The meeting was very silly and there was needless revision of most papers leading to an unholy hash wh. is going to be finally set. A particularly bad essay subject of Benecke’s on the rights of minorities was approved—bad, because only philosophers can really say anything about it. The great triumph was the philosophy paper by Weldon, Hardie and myself. We three sat tight during five minutes pregnant silence while the others looked very wise and finally passed it without alteration.

Got away at 1.10 and hurried to the Good Luck to lunch with Jenkin: afterwards we sat in the garden of the Union. We had a rambling and effortless conversation of the most profitable sort.

Home by three and went on with my paper, till I got myself tied up. I began to see unexpected difficulties. After tea I walked in the fields towards Forest Hill, neglecting a beautiful coloured evening in favour of idle Christina dreams about refuting Eliot and Stein. Returned in a dissatisfied mood and began to re-read MacDonald’s Lilith.

After supper I went back to College . . . Went into the smoking room, had a cup of coffee, talked and read in the T.L.S. the review of a new long poem published by Heinemanns. How bitter this wd. be if Dent’s had not taken ‘Dymer’! It is called Two Lives, by one Leonard, and sounds almost great in quotation though the reviewer is not very favourable . . .

Sunday 27 June: Up to the back room after breakfast to write. My idea was to begin the new poem with an account of an old landlady sitting in the basement: then to the ground floor where we should have the ‘swallow’ man: then to old Foster on the first floor.

D came up to ‘do washing’ and I found that the quiet of College has nearly robbed me of my old power of working in a bustle. It was impossible to go downstairs as Maureen’s piano playing there made poetry out of the question. Poor D had difficulties with the washing and was moving about and in and out of the room till 12 o’clock, by wh. time I was rather fidgeted. As soon as I began to get going, I was called down to lunch. After lunch and washing up I renewed the attempt, but what was intended to be a mere exhortation to the reader to use his imagination turned itself into long reams of philosophical gas, quite irrelevant and very mediocre . . .

Monday 28 June: In to College in the morning. I found Hardie on one of the seats in front of New Building sunning himself. We drifted into conversation and agreed to have a game of bowls—Wrong having presented us with a set. We played on the grass in cloisters, much to the interest of tourists, and were presently joined by Thompson and Weldon. I have seldom been anywhere more beautiful. About a quarter of the quadrangle was in shadow—a deep, sharp shadow, ending in the shapes of battlements: the rest was still faintly grey for the dew was not quite dried: overhead was the Tower, enormous and dazzlingly bright, occasionally striking the quarters and the hours, and beyond it a blazing blue sky with huge white clouds, twisted and swelled into every lavish shape you could ask for. Then there was the pleasant noise of the bowls and now and then cool, echoing sounds in the cloisters themselves.

I saw Segar for a minute or two and he is disposed to consider dividing the house in Merton Street. Home and worked till tea time. Played badminton with Maureen, had a bath and a walk, down beyond the cemetery. The swampy places are actually dry at last. Read Dauber in the evening. It’s as great as ever but Lord!, how incredibly bad in single lines and stanzas. To bed early and lay awake till 12.30

Tuesday 29 June: Went in to College after breakfast and to Wrong’s beautiful house over the weir. I asked him about the house (belonging to College) in Merton St., and he sent me to Carter. We had thought of trying to share it with Segar if Raymond turns us out of this. Carter was out and I saw Teden who told me that it was inhabited and that I shd. go and ask the tenant to show me over. I bussed home and returned with D to Merton St., where, after a wait of course, we were met by Maureen. A fat, amiable and vulgar woman showed us over the house. The stairs make it impossible for D and it would be hard to divide between two families: also there is no garden to speak of. The view from its back windows, over gardens and cedar trees to Magdalen Tower and beyond to Headington Hill, struck us all . . .

Read Dauber again in the evening and got some vivid impressions, giving me a good realistic shock to counterbalance my growing idealism in metaphysics. All the part about the wind from the Pole drives home the sense of ‘an other’ . . .

Wednesday 30 June: Spent the morning working on Hoby’s Courtyer, besides writing a stanza. After lunch, deciding to get at least one beastly job off my chest, I changed and went in at 3.30 to pay my dinner call on Lady Warren. I found Price and Hardie playing bowls and talked with them for a while. Thanks to heaven Lady W was out. Bought a copy of the Forsyte Saga and came home.

After tea I walked over the fields towards Forest Hill—frightfully hot but beautiful colours. Maureen came in at supper in great indignation about Miss Woods having introduced some very vulgar people—the Franklins—at the tennis club. After supper D and she went round to see the Disneys about it. As these fools have started a club without any arrangements about the election of new members, they have only themselves to thank. I wrote to Carter, moved by this, to ask if I could get Maureen one of the College courts during the Vac. There’s one more beastly job over . . .

Thursday 1 July: In to College by 9.30 to consult Thompson (at D’s instance) and find out what is still coming to me. Everyone was at breakfast when I arrived. After sitting for some minutes in the smoking room I saw Thompson and also Carter. Apparently, after all deductions have been made, I still have only about £55 to come. It was less than I expected and I rather dreaded bringing the news home.

Went to the Union where I read Chesterton’s Bernard Shaw and came home about 1. D seemed to consider the £55 all right. I hope that business is now over. Spent a lazy afternoon finishing Chesterton and the Merry Wives in the garden. Mrs Wilbraham and Miss Blaxland came for tea and we had a four at badminton. Afterwards D, who had never tried the game, decided to begin it and I initiated her. Then bath, walk and beer. After supper another game with D who gets on very well. To bed about twelve.

Friday 2 July: . . . After supper all three of us played badminton, and then D went to see old Knight who is suffering pretty badly from sciatica. I came up to the back room again and wrote a little more, with great difficulty. Listened in to ‘How beautiful they are’ from the Immortal Hour, my first taste of that work. I was not greatly impressed but it turned my mind to the Celtic atmosphere and I read a little of Yeats’ Wanderings of Oisin. It is ages since I looked at it and I wondered how I could ever have thought it anything more than mildly pleasant: it is far below Morris . . .

Saturday 3 July: Woke up at 4.30 from a nightmare about a formidable person suddenly coming in through the window of the little end room at home and saying ‘Now then, Guv’nor, what are you doing here?’ There was more in it which I have forgotten.

News today that Dotty and her father are coming to Oxford next week and she proposes to stay here, wh. doesn’t please me much and D still less. Finished Hoby in the morning and worked a little on ‘Sigrid’.

At tea time (in the garden) came a letter from Carter saying that Maureen could have a court—and that it would cost four pounds for the Vac. This was rather a shock to the others, and poor D was much distressed. I said ‘If you don’t mind making me ask for these things, which I hate, why should you bother about the money which doesn’t worry me?’—a churlish and useless remark which I afterwards regretted.

I then took Pat down to Parson’s Pleasure to bathe, but found a notice ‘no dogs admitted’—an innovation quite sensible in itself but a knock out for me as it means I shall never be able to bathe except on those rare occasions when I have time both to go to Parson’s Pleasure and then to take Pat for a separate walk . . .

Sunday 4 July: Went down to Parson’s Pleasure after breakfast alone and sat under a tree reading Citizen of the World. It was a cloudy morning with a breeze, not very hot. Diz was there and persuaded the man to keep Juno (the Alsatian, a beauty) in the office. Wished I had known the trick yesterday. I bathed at about 12.15, my first bathe this year, and did little more than swim twice up and down.

Walked home. It settled down to a steady rain which we need badly and which was pleasant both to hear and see as D and I sat in the dining room after lunch with the garden door open. It had its usual effect in bringing out all sorts of bird noises that one hadn’t noticed for the last few days. After tea I took Pat for his walk and got the only fine interval. I went up the crab-apple road to the stile and back to Barton over the fields. The streams were muddied, the birds chuckling, and a fine, wet-weather smell everywhere.

I spent the afternoon and evening between spells of working on ‘Sigrid’ (which I did with incredible difficulty, but finally pleased myself) and beginning to re-read The Well at the World’s End. I was anxious to see whether the old spell still worked. It does—rather too well. This going back to books read at that age is humiliating: one keeps on tracing what are now quite big things in one’s mental outfit to curiously small sources. I wondered how much even of my feeling for external nature comes out of the brief, convincing little descriptions of mountains and woods in this book.

Monday 5 July: Still raining this morning. D and Maureen went into town after breakfast to shop. I went up to the back room and wrote about ten more lines of ‘Sigrid’ with unexpected ease: then became disgusted with the whole thing. I had meant to work if I couldn’t write, but gave way to the temptation of continuing The Well at the World’s End, which I did with intense enjoyment till the others came back at lunchtime, and again after lunch till tea time, when it cleared.

After tea I walked down Cuckoo Lane and into College by the back way. I was a good deal bothered by the ease with which my old romantic world had resumed its sway. I shall know another time not to try to establish my conceit by patronising Wm. Morris!

In College I found letters from Waddington & Sykes asking what they shd. do in the Vac: also from Craig, inviting me to a tea fight in Common Room. Brought out the folios of Erasmus wh. I recently borrowed from the library. Restrained Pat in the garden from the gross impropriety of chasing that very respectable animal, the Common Room Cat, and gave him a clip for his pains. Home and answered Waddington & Sykes before supper.

D had a headache—probably from wearing a hat too long this morning . . .

Tuesday 6 July: Woken up about five by D having a nightmare. She had had a good night and got rid of her headache, but still felt sick.

I spent the morning on Erasmus’ Institutio Principis Christiani and noting parallels with Elyot. It is not very exciting but wd. be tolerable if the folio were less worm eaten and more clearly printed—it is a beautifully formed type, but blurred.

After lunch I went for a walk, the first real one for many days. I went through Headington Quarry, along Shotover, down the fir tree lane beyond Shotover House, turned right over fields, crossed the railway line, and so back. It was a grey windy day, sometimes raining, with low clouds. I got very wet in the fields: the smell, and earthiness, and various sounds shook me into a pretty receptive state of mind. Home for tea, with a sharp headache at 4.30 and changed socks and shoes. Poor D felt too ill to take even a cup of tea.

Afterwards I went over the revised proofs of ‘Dymer’ wh. arrived today from Canto I, 30, to the end of the whole. I never liked it less. I felt no mortal could get any notion of what the devil it was all about. I am afraid this sort of stuff is very much hit or miss, yet I think it is my only real line . . .

Wednesday 7 July: Up to my own room after breakfast, as Dotty now occupies the back room, and worked on Erasmus, finishing the Institutio. It is a very different book from Elyot. It is all fine, free, cosmopolitan irresponsibility, while he is homely and almost fussy. I spent the last half hour of the morning trying to work on ‘Sigrid’, but to no purpose. I think couplets are beyond me.

After lunch I walked: over the fields to Stowe Woods, resting just this side of the road, where there was a fine misty landscape down the valley: then on to Elsfield, with a glance at Otmoor, across the fields to the big house with pigs in the orchard, and then home, with one more halt, which I cut short because of flies.

D feeling very sick and headachy all day—and the usual infernal jam making has begun . . .

Thursday 8 July: D had a good night and felt much better this morning. It was a beautiful misty summer morning. After breakfast I went into town, bought an Everyman Quentin Durward (which I examine on for Lower Certificate) and then went to the Camera to order Patrizi’s De Regno, but was sent to Bodley. Went on to College to answer Craig’s invitation but finding I did not know where I’d be on that date, brought it out with me instead, after wasting a pleasant half hour in the smoking room over Godley’s Unpublished Works . . .

Friday 9 July: Up very late and allowed myself foolishly to indulge in the hope that one of the girls might have taken Pat for his morning run. It has happened once or twice. Of course they hadn’t and, annoyed at this further delay, I became grumpy and offensive—a typical business-man-at-breakfast in fact!

Got in to Bodley about 10.30 and spent the morning on Patrizi’s De Regno. It is a deplorable work, the subject of Kingship being only a peg on which to hang every story from the Classics which the old blether can remember. Thus a chapter on flatterers begins ‘Nullum veri assentatoribus inest, ut dixit Democritus’—and then you are off for five pages of what Agesilaus did and what Philopernon said. I suppose it would be pleasant enough to read in snippets, but it is heartbreaking if you are trying to trace Elyot in it. There is one rather jolly bit about digging up antiques.

Just before I came away for lunch Onions suddenly came upon me and said ‘You don’t mean to say you’re reading something. I thought you never read.’ Went to College for lunch where I met Onions who expressed equal surprise at my being there. I got it back on him by asking whether, reasoning as he did about my reading, he assumed I never lunched except on the days he saw me lunching . . .

Saturday–Wednesday 10–14 July: I abandoned my diary under the influence of the heat wave. Saturday morning and afternoon I spent in Bodley, lunching in College, and bathed after tea.

On Sunday I began to read Rose Macaulay’s Lee Shore, wh. at first I hated. I now think it almost a great work. It has shaken my mind up a good deal and, so far, done good.

That afternoon Mrs Wilbraham came and played badminton—it was the greatest heat I have yet played in.

On Monday I again spent the day in Bodley. It was hot enough in Duke Humphreys under the roof of copper, but even that seemed cool compared with the streets. The beauties of architecture are for winter. During these days Oxford seemed a sort of desert of burning stone. The water in Parson’s Pleasure went up to 73°. That day I bought Fielding’s Amelia and began to read it. It is odd how such a monotonous succession of misfortunes—in wh. the continual assaults on Amelia’s impregnable virtue become ludicrous—ballasted with such shoddy rhetoric in the dialogue, can be made palatable by dint of sheer narrative power. The born story teller can really do what he likes in literature . . .

On Wednesday I began to write my first lecture in the garden. The sun was a sort of omnipotent fiend penetrating the whole house and even the shadiest spaces on the lawn. I made poor progress.

D has been overworked all these days, partly because of the uncertainty of the Vaughans who are always sending Dotty back for meals when she is not expected or taking her away when she is, partly—the Lord knows why. Having a maid seems to make strangely little difference and I sometimes doubt if anything will ever make any difference . . .

Thursday–Saturday 15–17 July: I spent most of my time composing a Latin oration which I have to deliver at the Gaudy—a laborious undertaking, not only for the language (I have written none of it since Mods.) but for the researchers in fact wh. one has to make. I wasted two whole days in College turning the leaves of Who’s Who and the Magdalen Register, or Godley’s presentation speeches to find the Latin for things like K.C.B. and K.C. S.I. It is rather a futile and tiring occupation.

I finished Amelia and began to read the Kalevala which I bought years ago and have never read through. It is rather good—a pleasant atmosphere of salmon, ducks, willows, salt ponds, magic, and copper-smith’s work: also, there is what in the original must be real poetry in some of the similes: and real good myth as where Ilmarinen watches the strange things that come up out of his furnace and dislikes them and never knows what will come next, tho [it] is his own magic furnace.

Sunday 18 July: Woke up late, heavy and headachy after a gruelling day and restless night. Spent a fidgety morning reading the Kalevala, bathing Pat’s paw, and going round to Hewitt’s every now and then to see if the papers had come yet. Mr Thomas, a dry little old Egyptologist, whom Maureen has picked up somewhere, came for tea, and after tea the Wilbrahams. We played badminton. Mr T. stayed an unconscionable time, and talked a lot. An agreeable man, but a fool. A very fine thunderstorm in the night accompanied (which I have never met before) with a high wind.

Lewis’s diary breaks off here and is not resumed until 9 January 1927. He had been attempting to get his father to travel to Oxford and stay in Magdalen as his guest, but when Mr Lewis failed to come, he went to Belfast for a holiday, 11–20 September. He had been working on his narrative poem, Dymer, since 1922, and it was published by J. M. Dent & Sons on 18 September. It had many favourable reviews, but few readers.

Warnie learned in September that he had been selected to attend a six months course in Economics at London University beginning 4 October. He and Jack travelled together to Belfast on 21 December to be with their father for Christmas. This was to be the last Mr Lewis was to spend with both sons, and it is fortunate that at the end of it he could write in his diary of 8 January 1927: ‘Warnie and Jacks returned tonight by Fleetwood. As the boat did not sail until 11 o’c. they stayed with me to 9.30. So ended a very pleasant holiday. Roses all the way.’

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