1919–1927
1919–1927
Deceptions and Discoveries: The Making of an Oxford Don
With the ending of the Great War, Oxford was flooded with new students. More than 1,800 ex-servicemen either began or resumed their studies in the first year after the war ended. One of them was C. S. Lewis, who returned to Oxford to take up his scholarship at University College on 13 January 1919. To his surprise, the college porter—almost certainly the legendary Fred Bickerton[186]—recognised him immediately, and took him straight back to his old rooms in Radcliffe Quadrangle from the summer of 1917. Oxford University made a significant concession to their admission requirements in response to the postwar influx of students with military or naval service. Having served as a commissioned officer in the British army, Lewis found that he was now exempt from the prewar requirement to pass Responsions.[187] His lack of basic mathematical skills would no longer stand in his way to an Oxford degree.
Lewis had already fallen in love with Oxford, on account of both its stunning architecture and its rich intellectual heritage. It was a city based on culture and learning, not on Britain’s imperial exploitation of its colonies nor industrial desecration of the local landscape. As Lewis put it in Spirits in Bondage, Oxford was one of the few great cities
That was not built for gross, material gains,
Sharp, wolfish power or empire’s glutted feast.
For Lewis the undergraduate, as for the later Lewis, Oxford was a beautiful city that encouraged and affirmed the empires of the mind. It was
A clean, sweet city lulled by ancient streams,
A place of visions and of loosening chains,
A refuge of the elect, a tower of dreams.[188]
For Lewis, those visions and dreams were best fostered and nourished by returning to the fountainhead of Western civilization—the culture of ancient Greece and Rome. As part of the process of the “expansion of his mind,” Lewis would immerse himself in the languages and literature of the classical age.
The Student of Classics: University College, 1919
Lewis had already made the all-important decision that he wanted to pursue an academic career at Oxford.[189] There really was no plan B. Lewis knew what he wanted to be, and the demands that this career choice would make of him. He had chosen to study classical languages and literature, referred to in Oxford as Literae Humaniores. This was the diamond in Victorian Oxford’s academic crown, and was still seen as the intellectual flagship of Oxford’s undergraduate academic degrees up to about 1920.
4.1 Radcliffe Quadrangle, University College, as photographed by Henry W. Taunt (1860–1922) in the summer of 1917. Lewis was given a set of rooms in this quadrangle on his arrival at University College in April 1917, and returned to those same rooms in January 1919.
In 1912, William Archibald Spooner (1844–1930), the celebrity classical scholar and Warden of New College, Oxford—whose fame may have led Lewis to apply originally to New College—summed up the purpose of Literae Humaniores as an “immersion in the civilization and thought of the ancient world.” Often abbreviated as Lit. Hum., this Latin term is not easily rendered into English. Literally translated as “more humane letters,” it alludes to the Renaissance humanist vision of an enlarging and civilizing education, brought about through a direct engagement with the riches of the intellectual and cultural past.
Although the origins of Literae Humaniores at Oxford can be traced back to 1800, its social roots lie firmly in the concerns of the earlier eighteenth century. England had emerged, badly bruised yet not destroyed, from the civil war and revolution of the seventeenth century. Every effort was made to reconstitute a stable social order within the nation by emphasising the virtues of reason, nature, and order. The classical age was seen as a rich source of wisdom to enable the English to consolidate political and social stability, and encourage the emergence of shared cultural standards and norms.
Oxford undergraduates studying Literae Humaniores were required to engage directly with the literary, philosophical, and historical riches of the classical age in the original languages—not simply as a subject of academic interest, but as a means of ensuring England’s survival and prosperity. Lit. Hum. was seen as a gateway to wisdom, rather than the mere accumulation of knowledge. It was about moral and cultural preparation for life, not simply the acquisition of factual information. Where other courses of study might aim merely to fill undergraduate minds, this one set out to shape them.
Because of the considerable linguistic demands that it made of students, Lit. Hum. required four years (i.e., twelve terms) of study, whereas other courses needed a mere three. The course was divided into two parts. After five terms, students would take the examination known as “Honours Moderations” (usually abbreviated to “Mods”); if they passed this, they were then permitted to continue with the remainder of the course, universally referred to by students as “Greats,” eventually sitting for the final examination seven terms later. Each of these two examinations was “classified,” in that students would be placed in the first, second, third, or fourth class.[190] Outstanding students might thus be said to have achieved a “Double First in Literae Humaniores,” meaning that they were placed in the First Class in both Moderations and Greats. It does not mean that they obtained two degrees, simply that they achieved the highest possible classification at both assessment points of this single-degree course.
Oxford’s academic year 1918–1919 was already under way when Lewis arrived. He had missed the first term of study. Oxford divided its academic year into three eight-week teaching terms: Michaelmas (usually October to early December), Hilary (January through March), and Trinity (April through June). However, having already been registered as a student at University College for the Trinity Term of 1917, Lewis was treated as a normal second-term student. He would have been behind with his Homer, but soon caught up with everyone else.
Full Term formally started on Sunday, 19 January 1919,[191] with the opening lectures of the term beginning the next day. Lewis set to work on his studies with obvious enthusiasm. After a week of studies, Lewis set out his daily routine in a letter to Arthur Greeves:
Called at 7.30, bath, chapel and breakfast. . . . After breakfast I work (in the library or a lecture-room which are both warm) or attend lectures until 1 o’clock when I bycycle out to Mrs. Moore’s. . . . After lunch I work until tea, then work again till dinner. After that a little more work, talk and laziness & sometimes bridge then bycycle back to College at 11. I then light my fire and work or read till 12 o’clock when I retire to sleep the sleep of the just.[192]
Lewis was obliged to live in college to meet Oxford University’s residence requirements; absence from breakfast would be regarded as suspicious, and would prompt inquiries with potentially awkward outcomes.
But who “called” Lewis at 7.30? At this point, we need to mention the “scouts” of Oxford University. Lewis refers to these as “servants” in his correspondence, presumably to avoid having to translate Oxford jargon for his father or Arthur Greeves. At University College, scouts—who were invariably male—served long working days.[193] Each was assigned to a staircase or group of staircases, and was responsible for the care of both the rooms and their occupants. The scouts would typically begin work at 6.00 a.m., wake up students (who were always referred to as “gentlemen”) from about 6.45, serve them breakfast in Hall or in their rooms, clean up their rooms, and finally serve dinner in Hall. Outside university terms, most scouts would find employment at English seaside hotels. While Lewis himself makes little reference to scouts in his correspondence or diaries, other students formed close relationships with their scouts and kept in touch with them.
Lewis’s days as a student at Oxford thus revolved around his studies and—rather more surreptitiously—Mrs. Moore. After his morning’s study, Lewis cycled over Magdalen Bridge, up Headington Hill, and into the village of Headington.[194] Mrs. Moore had found lodgings at 28 Warneford Road, a house owned by Miss Annie Alma Featherstone. Lewis would spend the afternoon and evening with Mrs. Moore before returning to spend the night at college. This arrangement was far from regular for Oxford undergraduates, and Lewis appears to have told nobody about it other than his confidant Arthur Greeves. (When Lewis spoke of “the family” to Greeves, he meant Mrs. Moore and Maureen.)[195] From July 1919, Lewis used the term “the Minto” (note the definite article) to refer to Mrs. Moore in his correspondence with Greeves, never offering an explanation of the origin of this curious nickname.[196] It is possible that this nickname is a variant of Maureen’s pet name for her mother, “Minnie”; however, there may also be some connection with “the Minto,” a boiled sweet that was hugely popular at the time, invented in 1912 by the Doncaster confectioner William Nuttall.[197]
Lewis tried to keep his father in the dark about his double life through an elaborate campaign of deception. For example, Mrs. Moore wrote daily to Lewis during his rare visits to his father. These letters were addressed to Arthur Greeves, who lived nearby, giving Lewis an additional reason to visit his old friend on these trips to Belfast.
Albert Lewis’s Concerns about His Son
While Lewis lived out this double life in Oxford, Albert Lewis was campaigning on his behalf with the War Office. His son, he insisted, was entitled to compensation for his war wounds. Worn down both by Albert’s persistence and his force of argument—one suspects primarily the former—the War Office eventually gave in. Grudgingly, they finally awarded Lewis a “wound gratuity” of £145 16s 8d. Delighted and encouraged by this victory, Lewis’s father pressed the War Office still further; they eventually, and still more grudgingly, gave him a “further wound gratuity” of £104 3s 4d.
Yet relations between father and son were not good, and were becoming worse. Albert was increasingly worried about his son’s cultural alienation from his native Ireland, the atheism he saw expressed in Spirits in Bondage, and perhaps most significantly his son’s apparent lack of affection for him. Lewis wrote his father relatively few letters, was disinclined to spend any of his vacations with him, and showed virtually no interest in his well-being. Indeed, Lewis ended one of his letters to Greeves in June 1919 by remarking that he had not heard from his “esteemed parent for some time,” and wondered whether he had “committed suicide yet.”[198]
But beyond these worries, it is clear that Albert Lewis’s chief concern about his younger son around this time was his perplexing relationship with Mrs. Moore. Initially inclined to put his suspicions down to an overactive imagination, Albert Lewis gradually (and reluctantly) came to the view that something serious was afoot. What were the financial implications of “Jack’s affair”?[199] Albert was maintaining Lewis financially at this time, and was beginning to realise that it was not merely his son whom he was supporting. Mrs. Moore’s absent husband (whom she referred to as “The Beast”) provided her with an erratic income. It was not difficult to work out her main source of income. The direct source was, of course, Lewis. Yet the indirect source was Albert Lewis himself.
A showdown was inevitable. Lewis returned to Belfast on 28 July 1919, having spent the previous week on holiday in England with his brother, Warnie. In a tense meeting, Albert Lewis asked Lewis to explain his financial situation. Lewis replied that he had about £15 to his credit. Like many former army officers, Lewis banked with Cox & Co, of Charing Cross Road, London. The bank had been formed during the Napoleonic wars to pay soldiers’ wages and act as regimental agents. Albert Lewis then found an opened letter from Cox & Co addressed to his son, informing him that he owed them £12. He challenged Lewis, who admitted that he had lied to his father about his financial situation.
In what appears to have been a forceful and unpleasant exchange, Lewis informed his father that he had no respect or concern for him. As Albert Lewis confided to his diary, Lewis “deceived me and said terrible, insulting, and despising things to me.” It was “one of the most miserable periods of my life.”[200] Perhaps it was just as well that Albert Lewis never saw his son’s earlier letter to Arthur Greeves, wherein Lewis described himself as a “habitual liar,” and gently chided Greeves for being so naive as to “swallow” his “lies with avidity.”[201]
Yet however much Lewis might react with revulsion to his father, he still had no means of supporting himself, and was not in any position to assert his financial independence. To Lewis’s relief, his father did not cancel his allowance. Despite their deep personal estrangement, Albert Lewis continued to support his son, knowing full well the purposes to which Lewis would put most of this allowance. Lewis’s letters to his father around this time were polite. Yet it would be some time before their relationship returned to the way it was.
Lewis spent the academic year 1919–1920 living out of college, on Windmill Road, Headington, where Mrs. Moore had found new lodgings. It was normal for some undergraduates to choose to live in “digs” after their first year in college, and Lewis could now easily maintain the fiction that Mrs. Moore was his landlady. His second year was dominated by the prospect of examinations—Honours Moderations—which were due to take place in March and would be the first indication of Lewis’s academic prowess. In the end, Lewis was one of thirty-one students to be placed in the First Class. Lewis wrote to tell his father the good news, casually mentioning that he was vacationing “with a man” who had been asking him “for some time to go and ‘walk’ with him.”[202] In fact, Lewis was continuing to deceive his father. He spent the vacation with Mrs. Moore and Maureen.
Academic Distinction: The Chancellor’s Essay Prize, 1921
In Trinity Term 1920, Lewis began the study of Greats, being taught ancient history by George H. Stevenson (1880–1952) and philosophy by Edgar F. Carritt (1876–1964). His letters home grumble about the high cost of books. However, it soon became clear that Lewis had set his sights on a new project. He had been “recommended to try for the Chancellor’s Essay Prize” in April 1921. This was to be awarded for the best English essay by an undergraduate on a topic set for discussion—in this case, “Optimism.” It would, Lewis told his father, be a “splendid advertisement” if he could win it, but he recognised that the competition would be “very keen.”[203]
In the end, Lewis produced a manuscript of about eleven thousand words, and complained bitterly to his father about both the cost of having it typed and the many typing errors that resulted. The declaration of the result was delayed until Lewis’s nerves were close to breaking. Finally, on 24 May, it was announced that Lewis had won the prize. He was invited to read an extract chosen by the Professor of Poetry and the Public Orator at the annual Encaenia—the honorary degree ceremony at the Sheldonian Theatre. At this ceremony, the guests of honour included Georges Clemenceau, prime minister of France from 1917 to 1920. Lewis spoke for all of two minutes, and wrote to his brother of his delight in being able to make himself heard in the large building.[204]
4.2 The Sheldonian Theatre, the site of Oxford University degree ceremonies, in 1922. The Sheldonian was completed in 1668 to a design by Sir Christopher Wren.
The Oxford publisher and bookseller Basil Blackwell immediately got in touch, offering to meet Lewis to discuss publishing the essay. Yet the essay was never published, and the manuscript has now been lost. In any case, Lewis seemed to have little faith in the literary merits of the work. It would, he suggested to his father, “soon be forgotten.” It was the fact of winning the prize, rather than the essay itself, that really mattered.[205] We can only hope that Lewis is right. No copy remains in the Lewis family papers, nor in the archives of Oxford University.[206] We do not know what Lewis had to say on “Optimism,” nor how he said it. All that we know is that it impressed the panel of judges, and helped shape the perception that Lewis was a rising star in Oxford’s firmament.
Lewis’s academic career might now be showing distinct signs of promise; his relationship with his father, however, remained distant and tense. Their simmering differences over Mrs. Moore threatened to come to the fore in July 1921, when Albert Lewis wrote to let his son know that he would be travelling to England, and intended to visit Oxford to see Lewis and his college rooms. Alarmed at the prospect of his father meeting Mrs. Moore, Lewis invented a “friend” who would make such a visit impossible. Lewis claimed that he had been “moved out of College,” and that he was now sharing a room with a man who was “up to his eyes in work” and would resent visitors interrupting him.[207]
In a magnificent act of theatrical deception, Lewis hastily transformed the back room of Mrs. Moore’s house to look like “an undergraduate’s digs.” He managed to persuade his fellow student Rodney Pasley to move in with him for the duration of this unwelcome paternal visit, pretending to be his overworked and unsociable roommate. However, in the end his father contented himself with a substantial lunch at the Clarendon Hotel in Oxford’s Cornmarket, and showed no interest in seeing either Lewis’s rooms or his college.[208]
Success and Failure: Academic Distinction and Unemployment
Lewis’s final academic year (1921–1922), studying Greats at University College, saw him focussing on two goals: excelling in the final examinations in June, and finding employment afterwards. His diary for this period presents an extraordinary record of books read, household chores accomplished, Mrs. Moore’s friends and family engaged in conversation, job possibilities explored, and unsuccessful attempts to check his growing anxieties about his future academic employment prospects.
4.3 Cornmarket Street, one of Oxford’s busiest shopping areas, in 1922. The Clarendon Hotel is clearly visible on the left-hand side of the street.
Those doubts crystallised into near certainty in May 1922, less than a month before he was due to sit for his final examinations. Edgar Carritt, his college philosophy tutor, made it clear that there were no academic jobs for him in the near future. He suggested to Lewis that there was only one realistic option if he was set on an academic career: he must spend a further year in Oxford and “take another school.”[209] What Carritt meant by this was that Lewis ought to make himself as employable as possible by studying for a second Final Honour School. Lewis should expand his fields of competency by going beyond Greats and studying English literature.
Reginald Macan (1848–1941), the master of University College, gave him similar advice when they met later that month. Macan had just been asked by an American colleague to recommend a promising young scholar for a one-year studentship at Cornell University in New York. Lewis was his first choice for the position. However, the somewhat modest stipend would not have covered even Lewis’s travelling expenses, and would have had a devastating impact on Lewis’s private life. Lewis chose to draw the former point, but not the latter, to the master’s notice.
Macan asked Lewis what he proposed to do next. After Lewis had set out his hopes of securing a fellowship at Oxford, Macan tried to explain to him how times had changed. The old, prewar days, in which brilliant students were offered a college fellowship immediately after their final examinations, were long gone. The Royal Commission on Oxford and Cambridge Universities, often known as the “Asquith Commission,” set up in November 1919, had made a number of recommendations on how Oxford should modernise to meet the needs of the postwar age. University College would have no option other than to implement these reforms, which would include the abolition of certain types of college fellowships.[210] Lewis would have to adapt to the new realities of academic life. He would need to prove himself by studying for another Honour School and try to pick up another university prize. Macan hinted that the college would renew his scholarship if he chose to do this; he would not need to worry about paying tuition fees.
Lewis wrote to his father, explaining the advice he had been given and its possible implications. In his sober letter, Lewis tried to explain how the postwar world was changing, so that there might no longer be a place for someone who was an expert in the increasingly arcane world of classical languages and literature, or even philosophy. If he could not find an academic position at Oxford, his only realistic future occupation was “schoolmastering”—a desperate strategy of last resort, which Lewis regarded with a total lack of enthusiasm. In any case, Lewis knew that he would not be seen as an especially attractive prospect by English public schools. His “inability to play games”—which had made his time at Malvern College so miserable—would count decisively against him. His only serious option was to become an Oxford don. Nobody expected them to be any good at sport. Yet it was becoming increasingly clear that, to make himself employable in the university world, Lewis would need to supplement the general excellence of Greats with the specialist knowledge of a distinct field. Lewis had no doubt what this additional subject ought to be. There was one “‘rising’ subject” at Oxford, and it was English literature.[211]
Further reflection on this matter was postponed, as Lewis had to spend every available moment studying for his final examinations, which took place from 8–14 June. Lewis faced papers including Roman history, logic, an unseen Greek translation from Philostratus, and an unseen Latin translation from Cicero. Lewis was unsure of how he had performed, although he was at least clear in his own mind that he had not failed.
The exams over, Lewis tried to calm himself while he waited for the results by penning some cantos for his poem Dymer. This was conceived as an epic poem in the tradition of Homer, Milton, and Tennyson. Although Lewis began sketching this work while at Great Bookham, its proper inception dates from 1922. Lewis’s diary from 1922 to 1924 contains frequent short statements along the lines “worked on Dymer this afternoon.” We shall return to this work, published in 1926, later.
While he waited, Lewis also tried to remedy his somewhat precarious financial situation. To raise more funds, he took out an advertisement in the local newspaper, The Oxford Times, offering to tutor schoolboys or undergraduates in classics during the months of August and September. He explored an opening as a lecturer in classics at Reading University, a thirty-minute train journey from Oxford. Yet it was made clear to him at the interview that he would have to move to Reading if he secured the position. This was out of the question, given Lewis’s domestic situation. Maureen was happy at Headington School, and Lewis had no desire to disrupt either her education or her social life. He withdrew his application. As might be expected, he offered a quite different explanation of the situation to his father. He was not really the “pure” classicist that Reading was looking for.[212]
Then another possibility emerged: a fellowship in classics was being offered at Magdalen College. Lewis put in an application for this position out of a sense of duty rather than with any real hope of securing the position, having been forewarned that his application would probably come to nothing. The outcome would be settled by a competitive examination in September. There was nothing Lewis could do to improve his chances before then.
In any case, Lewis had other things to worry about. On 28 July, he presented himself at the Examination Schools in Oxford’s High Street for the viva voce examination. He recalled it taking no more than five minutes. He was called upon to defend some statements he had made in his examination papers, including a possibly unwise reference to “poor old Plato,” before the examiners. A few days later, Mrs. Moore moved again, having found a new home (“Hillsboro”) for the summer at 2 Western Road, Headington,[213] which they could enjoy rent-free. Mrs. Moore was just as anxious about their financial situation as Lewis himself, and had arranged to sublet Warneford Road to Rodney Pasley and his wife, while also taking in a paying guest at Western Road. They needed every shilling they could save. She also took in sewing work to raise money. By November of that year, Lewis confided to his diary that she was taking on too much.[214] The strain caused by their faltering financial situation was becoming increasingly difficult to bear.
On 4 August, Lewis took a bus into Oxford, and went to the Examination Schools to find out when the results of the final examinations would be posted. To his surprise, he discovered that they were already displayed. He was relieved to discover that he was one of the nineteen students who had secured First Class Honours. But what was he to do next?
In the end, Lewis threw all his hopes and efforts into winning the fellowship in classics offered by Magdalen College.[215] The fellowship would be one of three offered by the college that year which would be awarded by open competition through an extended written examination. On 29 September, Lewis turned up with ten other hopefuls at Magdalen for the first examination.[216] He was discouraged when he realised the calibre of the other candidates, including future academic stars such as A. C. Ewing (1899–1973) and E. R. Dodds (1893–1979). (Dodds went on to become Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford in 1936.) Aware of how slim his chances were, Lewis confided to his diary that he would “act as though” he had “not got the fellowship,” and prepare to study for the School of English.[217] It was not until 12 October that Lewis finally learned that the Magdalen fellowship had been awarded to another candidate.[218] But by then, Lewis had already followed his tutors’ advice and thrown himself fully into the study of English.
Sir Herbert Warren (1853–1930), president of Magdalen College, wrote personally to Lewis in November, confirming that he had not been elected to the fellowship in classics and offering some feedback. Magdalen had elected three new fellows around that time, and Warren explained that Lewis had come close to being one of them. The fact remained, however, that the college had offered the fellowship in classics to another candidate:
I am afraid you cannot have done yourself full justice, whatever may have been the reason, although you came well up, and were one of six especially mentioned to the College as having reached the Fellowship standard, and worthy of election, you were not one of the three finally recommended.[219]
Warren’s letter mingled affirmation and criticism in about equal measure. Yet the shrewd reader of that letter quickly realises that its covert message was ultimately encouraging. The talent was there, but the moment was not right. There might be another opportunity.
Lewis’s diaries and correspondence of 1920–1922 bear witness to his personal anxieties and plans for the future, not least concerning his employment prospects. If he could not secure an academic position in classics, might he find one in philosophy instead? His undergraduate studies had given him a firm grasp of the subject. Yet Lewis’s preoccupation with his own future seems to have blinded him to other matters, most notably the serious tensions in his native Ireland. Lewis makes curiously little reference to the momentous events of 1920–1923, in which Ireland was convulsed by political turmoil. The political struggle for Irish independence, given new energy by the Great War, had erupted into violence in 1919. The British began to lose control of rural areas of Ireland to the Irish Republican Army (IRA). On “Bloody Sunday” (21 November 1920), the IRA shot dead fourteen British intelligence operatives and informers in Dublin. Later that day the British authorities retaliated at Croke Park, also killing fourteen people. Violence spread to the northern cities of Londonderry and Belfast. The Protestant community felt under threat from Republican gunmen.
In 1920, the British government offered limited home rule to Ireland. It was not enough. The Irish wanted political and national independence, not some form of devolved government. The violence continued. On 11 July 1921, a truce was declared. Yet it did not stop the violence in Belfast. Finally, the British government agreed to the creation of the Irish Free State on 6 December 1922. The six predominantly Protestant northern counties were given a month from that date to decide whether they wished to remain part of the Irish Free State or rejoin the United Kingdom. A day later, the parliament of Northern Ireland requested that it be allowed to become part of the United Kingdom again. Ireland was now partitioned.
Lewis seems to have been curiously indifferent to and disengaged from these developments, despite their momentous implications for his family and friends in Ireland. According to Lewis’s diary entry for the critical date of 6 December 1922, the big question on his mind was not Irish independence, nor the political future of Belfast, nor the safety of his father, but whether the word breakfast was to be understood as “a cup of tea at eight or a roast of beef at eleven.”[220] So why this astonishing lack of interest in the biggest political and social upheaval in Ireland during his lifetime? Perhaps the most obvious answer is also the most persuasive: Lewis did not see himself as belonging there anymore. His home, his real family, and his heart were in Oxford. Mrs. Moore, not Albert Lewis, was the lodestar of his family life.
Mrs. Moore: The Cornerstone of Lewis’s Life
At this point, we need to explore Lewis’s relationship with Mrs. Moore in a little more detail. Lewis’s unusual domestic arrangements were not well known at Oxford. During the 1930s, most of his acquaintances had the impression that Lewis was a typical bachelor don, who lived with his “old mother” in Headington. Few knew that his mother had died in his childhood, and that the so-called “mother” in question played a rather more complex role in Lewis’s life.
Many accounts of Lewis’s personal life take their cue from Warnie’s frequently expressed dislike of Mrs. Moore, leading them to characterise this relationship in quite negative terms. She is portrayed as a domineering, selfish, and demanding woman, who often treated Lewis like a servant or errand-boy, and offered him little in the way of intellectual stimulation.
There are good reasons for accepting some such evaluation of the situation in the late 1940s, when Mrs. Moore’s health began to fail and she became increasingly difficult as dementia set in. Yet Lewis’s difficulties at this later stage were probably caused as much by Warnie’s alcoholism as by the ailing Mrs. Moore’s petulant demands. But we must not read the situation of two decades later back into these early days. A younger Mrs. Moore was there for him when Lewis needed the emotional support and comfort which no other member of his family seemed able or willing to provide—at the time of his departure to war in France (his father’s absence being especially hurtful to Lewis), during his convalescence from his war wounds, and as he sought to secure an academic position at Oxford. It is arguable that Mrs. Moore created an environment of relative structure and stability for him on his return from combat, easing his transition into academic life.
Lewis, it must be remembered, was separated from his mother by death, and from his family through his father’s ill-considered (if well-intentioned) decision to send him away to boarding school in England. In 1951, the British psychologist John Bowlby (1907–1990) produced a study for the World Health Organization dealing with the mental health problems of children displaced by war. His main conclusion was that childhood experiences of interpersonal relationships were crucial to their psychological development.[221] Bowlby went on to develop the notion of a “secure base,” from which the child could learn to cope with challenges, develop independence, and mature emotionally. But Bowlby’s research came too late to influence Albert Lewis’s decisions. Lewis clearly possessed such a “secure base” as a young boy; it was, however, shattered by the death of his mother and his enforced attendance at boarding school.
Lewis’s comments in Surprised by Joy about the impact of his mother’s death deserve close attention: “It was all sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis.”[222] Lewis’s rich language uses geographical imagery to describe his emotional loss of stability and security, inevitably leading to a longing for their future restoration. He was like someone doomed to sail the seas, unable to find a safe and permanent harbour. Lewis’s writings of the 1920s provide strong evidence that Mrs. Moore’s extended family came to provide that secure base for him. She offered him emotional support and encouragement as he explored career options, and coped with his early failure to secure them. However, she was no intellectual, and was unable to function as his academic soul mate—a point which helps us understand Lewis’s later attraction to intelligent women, capable of writing serious books. Yet Mrs. Moore arguably provided Lewis with vital elements of the context he needed at this formative stage of his scholarly career.
Perhaps most obviously, Mrs. Moore provided Lewis with a ready-made family. His diaries from 1922 to 1925 show him to have developed a settled and secure family life—something he thought he had lost after the death of his mother at Little Lea. Maureen became a sister to him, and he became a brother to her. Maureen is too easily neglected in accounts of Lewis’s development; his diaries make more appreciative reference to her than many realise.
4.4 “The Family”: Lewis, Maureen, and Mrs. Moore on the balcony of a tea shop in St. Agnes Cove, Cornwall, in 1927.
There is no doubt that Lewis ended up doing all kinds of menial household chores—running to get margarine from a corner store, retrieving Mrs. Moore’s purse from the bus station, or responding immediately to the sudden collapse of Mrs. Moore’s bedroom curtain rails. But he was the only man in the household, and appears to have willingly pulled his weight to ensure its smooth running. These things had to be done, and Lewis did them. In any case, Lewis came to see such tasks as examples of the tradition of “courtly love,” which he declared to be a noble and honourable code of conduct by which a young man might “leap up on errands” or “go through heat or cold, at the bidding of one’s lady.”[223] Lewis might have been able to invest such household chores with dignity and significance by conceiving them as ennobling expressions of “courtly love.”
Mrs. Moore also extended Lewis’s social circle. She was hospitable to a fault, regularly inviting family and friends to supper. Lewis found himself developing the relational skills and emotional intelligence that he might never have acquired had he remained cloistered within the walls of University College. As he himself was the first to admit, his own circle of friends was somewhat restricted. “I am apt to regard my own set, which consists mainly of literary gents,” he told his father, as being “central, normal and representative.”[224] Lewis made relatively few friends while studying Greats; indeed, he seems to have earned the nickname “Heavy Lewis,”[225] in that he was perceived to be “heavy going” by other students. (The unflattering name was probably a play on the Lewis Light Machine Gun of the Great War.) Lewis’s ability to relate to people may have been late in developing, but it was encouraged more by Mrs. Moore’s circle than by his own.
The Moore household was also visited regularly by Maureen’s friends from Headington School. One of these—Mary Wiblin—features prominently in Lewis’s diary entries of the early 1920s. Wiblin (affectionately known as “Smudge”) was Maureen’s music teacher; by way of payment, Lewis taught her Latin. There are hints here of a possible romantic relationship with Lewis. Yet nothing ever developed, possibly due to Lewis’s complex relationship with Mrs. Moore.
The Student of English Language and Literature, 1922–1923
Oxford was late in recognising the importance of English literature as a subject worthy of serious academic study. Both University College London and King’s College London offered undergraduate courses in the subject from the 1830s. The growing importance of the subject was catalysed by a number of factors. The long reign of Queen Victoria had helped create a strong sense of English national identity. Just as important, many shrewd politicians realised the importance of emphasising how the English shared a rich literary tradition. A landmark in this development was the establishment of a Chair in English Language and Literature at Oxford in 1882. Yet no School of English existed until 1894, despite growing demand for such a development.[226]
The simple truth is that Oxford resisted any such development. Indeed, the establishment of the School of English in 1894 was mired in controversy and bitterness. Some derided its introduction as a way of giving weaker students something easy and pointless to study. Others were alarmed at the danger of creating a new degree that would be seen as second-rate. Greats were meaty and substantial; how could English be anything other than subjective reflections on novels and poems? How could “mere chatter about Shelley”[227] be taken with academic seriousness? It was impressionistic and superficial—not the sort of thing that Oxford University would wish to encourage.
Nevertheless, the pressure for the academic study of English literature mounted.[228] It was still seen by many traditionalists at Oxford as an undemanding subject, suitable for less able male students destined for the ranks of schoolmasters in England’s public schools—and, of course, for women. Many women, excluded from the study of the sciences and humanities at Oxford, saw the study of English literature as one of the few means of entering an educational career open to them. From 1892, the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women in Oxford organised a series of lectures and classes for their students, in which English literature featured prominently.
A second group for whom the study of English literature became important in the later Victorian period was civil servants. The Indian Civil Service, anxious to ensure it recruited and promoted the best people, introduced examinations in English from 1855 onwards. Prospective imperial civil servants among Oxford’s undergraduates noted the way the wind was blowing and began to study English literature with their future career prospects in mind. Yet the emphasis at Oxford was clearly more on English than on literature. As British imperialism flourished in the later Victorian and Edwardian periods, the study of English literature came to be seen as a means of affirming and asserting English cultural superiority over the upstart Americans and the rebellious colonials.
England’s final victory over Germany in the Great War of 1914–1918 provoked a minor surge of nationalism, which gave added patriotic motivation to the study of English literature. Yet the study of English literature at Oxford was augmented by factors other than a renewed nationalism. For many more thoughtful souls, literature offered a way of dealing with the trauma and destruction of the war, allowing them to frame their questions in new ways and find deeper spiritual solutions that went beyond the mere jingoism of the Establishment.
The rise of the “war poets” is perhaps the most important of these developments. Many found comfort in their writings, allowing them to see the nightmare of the war in new and helpful ways. Others saw these poets as expressing a legitimate anger about the violence and futility of war, and sought to channel this anger in politically and socially constructive ways. The motivations for the study of English literature in the immediate postwar era may have been complex. They were, however, real, and led to a new interest in a field once regarded as culturally and intellectually inferior to the study of classics.
By the 1920s, Oxford’s School of English Language and Literature was expanding, benefitting from a resurgence of interest in the subject after the war. For the historical reasons just noted, it was still initially dominated by women students and those with an interest in serving in the Indian Civil Service. As the Oxford school expanded, colleges began to take note of this trend. Tutorial fellowships in English Language and Literature began to be established. Lewis could hardly have failed to have been aware of this development. If he could not secure a position in classics or philosophy, there was now an alternative possibility.
Lewis began his studies in English Language and Literature on 13 October 1922, when he met with A. S. L. Farquharson at University College to discuss his programme of study. Farquharson advised him to go to Germany and learn the language; the future, in his view, lay in European literature, and that was where the jobs would be. For obvious reasons, Lewis decided not to follow this advice. Neither Mrs. Moore nor Maureen would have had any enthusiasm for a visit to his former enemy, or for his extended absence when there was so much that needed to be done around the house.
Lewis found the study of English exhausting. It demanded not merely a total immersion in a vast literature, but the acquisition of the linguistic skills needed to read some of its classic texts. But the real problem was that Lewis was doing a course in less than nine months that was designed to be studied over three years. Normally an undergraduate would spend the first year studying the basic literature and then move on to a more detailed study for the final two years of the course. Lewis was exempted from the first year of the course through having “senior status”—he already had an Oxford degree. But he would still need to cram the work of the final two years of the course into one; otherwise, he would have been “overstanding for Honours,” and could have been awarded only a pass degree. He desperately needed to win First Class Honours to make his scholarly mark and secure an academic job.
A major gulf began to open up between the approaches to English literature at England’s two ancient universities at this time. Where the Oxford school focussed on historical, textual, and philological questions throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Cambridge school—shaped by scholars such as I. A. Richards (1893–1979) and F. R. Leavis (1895–1978)—adopted a more theoretical approach, treating works of literature as “texts” or “objects” that could be subjected to scientific literary criticism. Lewis felt perfectly at home in the Oxford context. His focus was on texts and authors, and he developed an aversion to literary theory—a characteristic of his scholarly writings for the remainder of his career.
Lewis’s study of English pressed him to his limits. He wrote relatively few letters during the academic year 1922–1923; many of these refer to his growing interest in Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and the demands that mastering this language made on him. He also became aware that there was a clear sociological distinction between his fellow students in Greats and those in English literature: the latter, he confided to his diary, consisted mainly of “women, Indians, and Americans” and possessed “a certain amateurishness” in comparison with Greats students.[229] His diary for Michaelmas Term 1922 exudes a tangible sense of intellectual loneliness, occasionally alleviated by interesting lectures and stimulating conversations. But for the most part, Lewis derived his mental pleasures from books, often working to midnight to get through his reading list.
Yet friendships began to emerge, to complement (though never displace) his long-standing relationship with Arthur Greeves. Two are of especial importance. Lewis originally met Owen Barfield (1898–1997) in 1919. Barfield was then studying English at Wadham College. Lewis quickly recognised him as someone who was both intelligent and well read, even though he disagreed with him on virtually everything. “Barfield has probably forgotten more than I ever knew,” he ruefully confided to his diary.[230]
Lewis dubbed Barfield the “wisest and best of my unofficial teachers,”[231] and was willing to be corrected by him. As an example of this, Lewis notes his early error of referring to philosophy as “a subject.” “It wasn’t a subject to Plato,” retorted Barfield, “it was a way.”[232] Barfield’s interest in Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy of “anthroposophy,” which aimed to extend the scientific method to human spiritual experiences, began to develop after he heard Steiner lecture in 1924, and became a particular matter of contention with Lewis, then an atheist. Lewis jokingly referred to the “Great War” that developed between them on this and other matters. “Everything that I had labored so hard to expel from my own life seemed to have flared up and met me in my best friends.”[233] Lewis began to feel embattled and threatened by questions that Barfield was posing, which he seemed unable to answer entirely to his own satisfaction.[234]
Yet despite his differences with Barfield, Lewis credits him with bringing about two fundamental changes in his own thinking. The first of these was the demolition of Lewis’s “chronological snobbery,” which Lewis defined as “the uncritical acceptance of the intellectual climate common to our own age and the assumption that whatever has gone out of date is on that account discredited.”[235]
The second change related to Lewis’s way of thinking about reality. Lewis, like most of that age, tended to assume that “the universe revealed by the senses” constituted “rock-bottom reality.” For Lewis, this was the most economical and commonsense way of thinking about things, which he took to be thoroughly scientific. “I wanted Nature to be quite independent of our observation; something other, indifferent, self-existing.”[236] But what of human moral judgements? Or feelings of joy? Or the experience of beauty? How did such subjective ways of thinking and experiencing fit into this?
It was no idle thought. As an undergraduate at Oxford, Lewis had been influenced by what he styled the “New Look,” a rationalist way of thinking which led him to believe that he must abandon any notion that his fleeting experiences of “Joy” were clues to the deeper meaning of life.[237] Lewis went with the flow, immersing himself in this then-fashionable way of thinking. He came to believe that his boyhood desires, longings, and experience had been exposed as meaningless. Lewis decided that he was “done with all that.” He had “‘seen through’ them.” He was “never going to be taken in again.”[238]
Yet Barfield persuaded Lewis that these lines of argument were inconsistent. Lewis was relying on precisely the same inner patterns of thought that he had dismissed in order to secure his knowledge of an allegedly “objective” world. The consistent outcome of believing only in “the universe revealed by the senses” was to adopt “a Behaviouristic theory of logic, ethics, and aesthetics.” Yet Lewis regarded such a theory as unbelievable. There was an alternative, which gave full weight to the importance of human moral and aesthetic intuitions and did not discount or dismiss them. For Lewis, this led to only one conclusion: “Our logic was participation in a cosmic Logos.”[239] And where might that line of thought take him?
This theme is explored in a short story titled “The Man Born Blind,”[240] which has particular significance since it is thought to be the earliest piece of prose fiction that survives from the adult Lewis. It is not well written, and has little sign of Lewis’s mature style or powerful imaginative vision. It is a parable, told in less than two thousand words, from before his conversion to Christianity. Its basic theme is that of a man born blind who regains his sight. He expects to see light, but he fails to appreciate that light is not something seen, but something that makes seeing possible. It is not something we see, but something by which we see.
For Lewis, human thought depends upon a “cosmic Logos,” which is not itself seen or understood, or even capable of being seen or understood, but is nevertheless the condition necessary for human sight and understanding. This idea can be interpreted in a Platonic way. However, early Christian writers steeped in the Platonic tradition—such as Augustine of Hippo (354–430)—were able to show that this was easily adapted to a Christian way of thinking, which understood God as the one who illuminates reality and enables humanity to discern its features.
Lewis’s second friendship to develop during his study of English literature was with Nevill Coghill (1899–1980), an Irish student who had served in the Great War. After taking a first degree in history at Exeter College, Coghill had chosen to study English. Like Lewis, he was attempting to manage the course in a single year. They first met at a discussion presided over by Professor George Gordon, and rapidly came to appreciate each other’s insights into the texts they were engaging. This reading of texts, Coghill recalled, was “a continuous intoxication of discovery,”[241] leading into discussion and debate which extended over long walks in the Oxfordshire countryside. Coghill would play an important role in shaping Lewis’s later ideas.
The long year of intense study came to an end in June 1923, when Lewis sat for the final examinations. His diary entries for these days reveal his frustration; he had not performed as well as he had hoped. He calmed himself down by mowing the lawn. The viva voce examinations were set for 10 July. Lewis duly dressed himself in sub fusc—a black gown, dark suit, and white bow tie—and presented himself with the other candidates. The examiners dismissed all but six of them, whom they wished to press further on some of their answers. Lewis was among those who had to stay behind for the potential ordeal of an oral examination.
More than two hours later, Lewis finally faced his examiners. They raised some concerns about his examination papers. He had used the word little-est in an answer to one question. How could he possibly justify using such a strange word? Without batting an eyelid, Lewis gave his reply. It could be found in the correspondence between Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Thomas Poole.[242] And surely he had been too severe on Dryden? Lewis thought not, and told them why. After less than three minutes, Lewis was dismissed. The viva was over. Lewis left the Examination Schools and returned home. He had other things to worry about—such as earning some money. For the remainder of that summer, he had agreed to act as an examiner for the Higher School Certificate, marking hundreds of generally dull schoolboy essays, while Mrs. Moore took in paying guests to help cover the bills.
On 16 July, the examination results were published. Only six of the ninety students entered for the examinations had gained First Class Honours, including
Coghill, N. J. A. (Exeter); and
Lewis, C. S. (University).
Lewis had now secured a “Triple First,” a rare distinction at Oxford. Yet Lewis still had no job prospects. He was highly qualified and highly learned, but he was, as he later told his father, “adrift and unemployed”[243]—at a time when economic recession was stalking much of the Western world. Things looked bleak. Lewis scrabbled around, desperately looking for students he could coach or articles he could write for newspapers or journals. He needed the money.
So why did University College itself not establish a tutorial fellowship in English at this time? After all, the college had appointed Ernest de Sélincourt as a lecturer in English in 1896, the first such college appointment in the university.[244] Yet Sélincourt was never appointed as a tutorial fellow of the college, and eventually moved to the University of Birmingham in 1908 to take up its newly established Chair of English. After the end of the Great War, more and more students wished to study the subject. Perhaps more important, the college had, in Lewis, an outstanding talent who would be more than capable of doing the job.
The answer lies in a bequest given to the college by one of its former members, Robert Mynors (1817–1895).[245] Mynors, a successful barrister, left the college funds to endow a college fellowship “for the study and teaching of the Social Sciences.” The funds were finally released to the college in 1920, and a decision was made in 1924 to create a Fellowship in Economics and Politics. This modest expansion of its fellowship was all that the college felt able to cope with. There would be no Fellowship in English until Peter Bayley was appointed to such a position in 1949.
Lewis’s hopes of securing a job anywhere else in Oxford regularly rose, and just as regularly fell. St. John’s College wanted a tutor in philosophy. Lewis was hopeful, but it came to nothing. By May 1924, Lewis was still unemployed, living on piecemeal, part-time earnings. His letters to his father spoke of cutting back to the bare essentials. He had hopes of securing a fellowship at Trinity College. But that might well crumble, like all his hopes to date.
Then fate stepped in. Reginald Macan had resigned as master of University College in April 1923, and was succeeded by Sir Michael Sadler.[246] Sadler had read Lewis’s work with approval in the summer of 1923, and had recommended him to various literary colleagues as a potential reviewer. On 11 May 1924, Lewis wrote to his father in some excitement. Edgar Carritt, his old philosophy tutor at University College, was going to teach in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a year. The college needed a temporary replacement. Sadler had offered him the job for a salary of £200. It wasn’t much, he conceded, but it was better than nothing. He would have to work under the supervision of his old tutor Farquharson. But it might lead to better things in due course. And if he got the fellowship at Trinity, he would be allowed to withdraw his acceptance of the position at University.[247]
Trinity liked Lewis. The fellows had invited him to dinner—a traditional Oxford way of allowing serious potential candidates to be evaluated by all the fellows. But they decided they didn’t like him as much as another candidate. Lewis had lost out again. This time, however, he had something to fall back on.
Lewis now had a job, even if it failed to satisfy his deepest longings. Lewis was obliged to teach philosophy, when he really wanted to be a poet. Dymer was the passion of his life, and the basis of his potential reputation. As things had worked out, Lewis was a frustrated poet who was obliged to teach philosophy to earn a living. He was not the only poet in such a situation. T. S. Eliot (1888–1965), whose poetry Lewis detested, had written his poetry while working in the Colonial and Foreign Department of Lloyds Bank in London.
Lewis’s dislike of Eliot led to his later attempting to perpetrate a hoax on the older poet, who edited the New Criterion. In June 1926, Lewis hit on the idea of sending a series of spoof poems, mimicking Eliot’s style, to the journal, hoping that the parody would be accepted for publication. Henry Yorke, one of Lewis’s coconspirators, came up with a superb opening line: “My soul is a windowless façade.”[248] Unfortunately, the only line Lewis could construct to follow it made a revealing mention of the Marquis de Sade. In the end, nothing came of the hoax.
Writing poetry eased Lewis’s tensions, even if it did little to further his employment prospects. Lewis’s poem Dymer, published in 1926, was a poetic rendering of an earlier prose work. It achieved neither significant commercial success nor critical acclaim. Indeed, it seems fair to suggest that its failure marked the end of Lewis’s dreams to be a recognised poet, whether English or Irish. There was always a possibility that Lewis might come to represent an Irish voice in poetry. Yet his early Oxford experience led him to realise that the appeal of Irish poetry was not universal. Why, he wondered, was W. B. Yeats not more admired in Oxford literary circles? “Perhaps,” Lewis remarked, “his appeal is purely Irish.”[249] Yet Lewis also came to understand that his own voice would not count as “Irish.” He was an atheist—more accurately, an Ulster Protestant atheist. This did not fit in with the strongly Catholic associations of being “Irish.” And he had in any case left Ireland for England as a young boy, selling his birthright (so his critics would say) for an English education. And finally, Lewis did not write on specifically Irish themes. Lewis’s inclination was clearly towards classical and universal themes, not those traditionally embraced by confessedly Irish poets. Lewis’s authorial voice might have been shaped by his Irish homeland; it did not, however, speak explicitly of those roots.
On reading Dymer, I found myself from time to time delighted by the verbal elegance and philosophical acumen of some of its individual phrases or lines. Yet those moments of pleasure are rare and infrequent. The whole is somehow not equal to its parts. Its few shards of brilliance are not sustained and are overwhelmed by expanses of lacklustre and flat lines. Dymer, considered as a poem, simply does not work. As one of Owen Barfield’s friends remarked, “The metrical level is good, the vocabulary is large: but Poetry—not a line.”[250]
It is not clear when Lewis finally accepted that he would never achieve recognition as a poet. He would continue to write poems for his private enjoyment, as a way of clearing his mind. Yet the failure of Dymer on its appearance in 1926 does not seem to have precipitated any crisis of identity or loss of confidence. Lewis simply reinvented himself as a writer of prose. Paradoxically, Dymer points to the reason why Lewis has achieved such recognition and fame—his ability to write prose tinged with a poetic vision, its carefully crafted phrases lingering in the memory because they have captivated the imagination. The qualities we associate with good poetry—such as an appreciation of the sound of words, rich and suggestive analogies and images, vivid description, and lyrical sense—are found in Lewis’s prose.
The Fellowship at Magdalen College
Lewis spent the academic year 1924–1925 teaching University College’s undergraduate students philosophy, while giving lectures on philosophical themes. He was overwhelmed with work. His diary contains no entries between 3 August 1924 and 5 February 1925. He gave sixteen undergraduate lectures on “The Good, its position among the values.” His maiden lecture, given on Tuesday, 14 October at University College, was attended by a mere four people. (He faced stiff competition from H. A. Pritchard, and the university lecture list mistakenly informed its trusting readers that Lewis’s lecture would take place at a totally different location—Pembroke College).[251]
Alongside this, Lewis tutored college students in philosophy, and took on additional work to supplement his income—mostly correcting school examination papers. Yet Lewis’s busyness could not shield him from his own looming unemployment. His post was temporary and would expire at the end of the academic year. He would have no job beginning in the summer of 1925. Then Lewis heard the news that would prove to be a turning point in his life.
In April 1925, Magdalen College announced that it wished to elect a tutorial fellow in English. The announcement of the “Official Fellowship and Tutorship in English” specified that the successful candidate would be required to
act as Tutor, and give instruction, to all the undergraduate members of the College reading for the Honour School of English Language and Literature, to give Inter-Collegiate Lectures as the College representative for the Honour School of English, and also to supervise the work of any undergraduates who may read for the Pass School of English Literature.[252]
Lewis was already known to Magdalen, and was clearly seen by them as meeting the intellectual standards they required of their fellows. He lost no time in applying. However, as he informed his father in a somewhat dejected frame of mind, he had few hopes.[253] His own English tutor—Frank Wilson—was rumoured to be one of the candidates, reflecting the fact that Magdalen was far better endowed than most Oxford colleges. Lewis would not stand a chance against Wilson’s superior experience. However, Lewis could see a faint silver lining to this cloud: if Wilson got the job, he would have to give up teaching his students from University and Exeter Colleges. Someone would have to teach these students—and why should it not be Lewis?
Then his hopes were raised by an unexpected development. Wilson would not be a candidate! Encouraged and emboldened, Lewis wrote to Wilson and George Gordon, Professor of English Literature, asking if they would write in his support for the Magdalen fellowship. Both declined. They had already agreed to lend their support to Nevill Coghill. Neither of them, they informed him, had been aware that Lewis was interested in English literature, and had assumed that he was looking for positions in philosophy. They were both very apologetic, but they were now committed to supporting Coghill.
Lewis was devastated. Wilson’s and Gordon’s support was of vital importance in getting Magdalen to take him seriously. Without that backing, he would not stand a chance. It was “enough to make anyone despair,” he told his father. Then, in a second unexpected development, Nevill Coghill was offered a fellowship by his own college, Exeter. Coghill withdrew immediately from the Magdalen competition, allowing both Wilson and Gordon to pledge their full support to Lewis. Gordon, as Professor of English Literature, was consulted by Magdalen about the list of candidates, and made it clear that he regarded Lewis as the best.
Following a long tradition, Magdalen invited the preferred candidates to dinner in order that the fellowship as a whole could assess them. Lewis asked his colleague Farquharson about the dress code at Magdalen. Farquharson confidently and erroneously assured him that Magdalen was severely formal on this occasion. Lewis should wear a white tie and coat tails.
4.5 The tower of Magdalen College, Oxford, in the snow during the winter of 1910.
Lewis duly turned up wearing this excessively formal attire. To his embarrassment, everyone else turned out to be wearing the much less formal dinner jacket and black tie. But Lewis made a good impression, despite his unorthodox garb. A rumour reached him that there were only two serious candidates in the race: he was one of them; the other was another Irishman, John Bryson.
On the following Saturday, Lewis happened to meet the president of Magdalen, Sir Herbert Warren, in the street, and exchanged a few words with him. On Monday, Warren wrote to Lewis, asking to see him the next morning. It was, Warren declared, “most important.” Lewis was worried: had something gone wrong? Had they discovered something about him that had sunk his chances?
Apprehensive, Lewis arrived at the president’s lodgings at Magdalen. Warren informed him that they would be making the election the following morning. Lewis was their preferred candidate, and he wished to check that Lewis fully understood what the duties and responsibilities of a fellow were. Most important, he wanted to ensure that Lewis would be willing to teach philosophy as well as English. Hugely relieved, Lewis assured him that this would indeed be the case. That was it. Warren indicated that the meeting was over, and asked Lewis to be sure he was available to be contacted by telephone at University College the following afternoon.
The call came through. Lewis made the short walk to Magdalen, where Warren informed him that he had been elected. He would receive a salary of £500, rooms in college, a dining allowance, and a pension. The appointment was for five years initially, and if things worked out well, it would be renewed.[254] Lewis rushed to the post office and sent a telegram to his father: “Elected Fellow Magdalen. Jack.” A somewhat fuller announcement appeared on 22 May in the London Times:
The President and Fellows of Magdalen College have elected to an official Fellowship in the College as Tutor in English Language and Literature, for five years as from next June 15, Mr Clive Staples Lewis, M.A. (University College).
Mr Lewis was educated first at Malvern College. He won a scholarship in classics at University College in 1915, and (after war service) a first class in Classical Moderations in 1920, the Chancellor’s Prize for an English essay in 1921, a first class in Literae Humaniores in 1922, and a first class in the Honour School of English Language and Literature in 1923.[255]
Lewis would no longer be reliant on his father for support. His life suddenly seemed much more stable and settled. He thanked his father for his “generous support” over six long years, without complaint and always with encouragement. Lewis had arrived. He was finally an Oxford don.