1922

Warnie arrived at Little Lea on 7 April 1922, having been awarded a leave of six months.

TO HIS FATHER (LP VII: 129–30):

[University College]

May Day [1 May 1922]

My dear Papy,

Many thanks for your letter and also for the allowance which Cox have duly acknowledged. Also convey to the Maga Endoricana (that’s scholarship) the thanks of the humblest of her servants: the rain of satisfaction has descended on the desert of appetite and the palate of enjoyment has signed the contract of marriage with the incarnation of perfect plumcakes, and the adamantine strength of sugar has been the Cadi. In the name of Allah (the compassionate, the all powerful)–‘thus far into the bowels of the cake have we dug down without impediment’. It has been praised of many and eaten of not a few, so if your unexpired portion is less than a ton, put it in your trench mortar and igniting the fuse, take cover and poop it in the direction of Oxford. With examinations in my head this at once leads to suggestions–curious the way the mind works–‘Trace the probable path of a plum cake projected from Strandtown to Oxford, noting any archeological or other etc.’

The news of Warnie’s return is good and surprising. The news of his irreduced tissues is neither good nor surprising. But here is a good story for a tropical veteran. Coming the other day to a stream bridged by a single plank, I was just going to cross when, Lo, a khaki and black snake as long as my arm and as thick as the handle of a cricket bat. Yah! Where are the tropics now? It’s my belief that this Sierra Leone business has been greatly exaggerated. As a matter of fact my snake was dead: it can’t have been naturally as fat as that, but it would be accounted for by mortification. The colonel will tell you about dead ‘balloon’ horses in France. I hope you will both believe my snake story and thereby show your originality, for no one else has. The popular theory is that it was a toy one, put there by little boys, and that the little boys were watching behind a hedge while I threw stones at it (à la Willie Jaffé) to see if it was dead.

In a country pub the other day I had a wonderful conversation with an old ranker who got a commission during the war and was at Drumshambo, Co. Leitrim: though sentenced to death twice by the I.R.A., ¹ he thinks the Irish ‘very nice people’ and rather inclines to the view that the English are to blame for most of the trouble. These old soldiers of fortune who have been everywhere are surely a unique and pleasing feature of our time? And does not his view–whether right or wrong–of the Irish question, illustrate the extraordinary fairness of the English masses. I should like to hear a French or a German Tommy after being in a similar situation.

It keeps very cold here, and mocks one with spring sunshine without heat. I am very busy, but very fit. I hope you have been reading about the Royal Commission on Oxford in the papers, and that the pundits are ‘satisfied’ with it. What the papers don’t mention is that the Commission is composed entirely OF OXFORD MEN. However, Geddism is beginning to be felt in other ways. People who are trying for the Home Civil tell me there is not one vacancy this year and probably none next. Yet in the lower ranks it is full of conscientious objectors who got there during the war. The ‘Grand Guignol’ has been here, but I did not go. I hope you are well and in good form.

your loving son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP VII: 140–1):

[University College]

May 18th [1922]

My dear Papy,

Many thanks for your letter. Your news of a post at our back gate was, I must admit, rather a shock to the imagination when I first read it. I hope it will not ‘draw the enemy’s fire’. You will be in a position of the front area people in France, when they used to put up a notice for the benefit of Warnie’s friends ET HOC GENUS OMNE, ‘Don’t raise a dust: we live here, you don’t’! Are you searched every morning on your way into town?

And now I want to talk about my plans. You will remember a talk we had when I was last at home. On that occasion I repeated to you a conversation which had taken place some time before between one of my tutors and myself. I had asked him for a testimonial, preparatory to giving my name to the employment agency. Instead of giving me one he advised me very earnestly not to take any job in a hurry: he said that if there was nothing for me in Oxford immediately after Greats, he was sure that there would be something later: that College would almost certainly continue my scholarship for another year if I chose to stay up and take another school, and that ‘if I could possibly afford it’ this was the course which he would like me to take. He ended with some complimentary remarks.

I was not particularly keen at the time about doing so: partly on your account, partly because I did not care to survive most of my contemporaries. At that time there seemed to be one or two things in view–a vacant fellowship at Lincoln, another at Magdalen. Soon however it ‘transpired’ (I know you love the word) that one of these was to lapse and the other be filled from its own college without open election. I thought of the Civil Service: but as my tutor says, ‘There is no Civil Service now’. Thanks to the Geddes axe there will be none next. ²

The advice of my first tutor was repeated by my other one: and with new points. The actual subjects of my own Greats school are a doubtful quantity at the moment: for no one quite knows what place classics and philosophy will hold in the educational world in a year’s time. On the other hand the prestige of the Greats school is still enormous: so that what is wanted everywhere is a man who combines the general qualification which Greats is supposed to give, with the special qualifications of any other subjects. And English Literature is a ‘rising’ subject. Thus if I cd. take a First or even a Second in Greats, AND a first next year in English Literature, I should be in a very strong position indeed: and during the extra year I might reasonably hope to strengthen it further by adding some other University prize to my ‘Optimism’.

‘While I yet pondered’ came the news of a substantial alteration in the English Schools. That course had formerly included a great deal of philology and linguistic history and theory: these are now being thrown over and formed into a separate school, while what remains is simply literature in the ordinary sense–with the exception of learning to read a very few selected passages in Anglo-Saxon, which anyone can do in a month. In such a course, I should start knowing more on the subject than some do at the end: it ought to be a very easy proposition compared with Greats. All these considerations have tended to confirm what my tutor advised in the first place.

You may probably feel that a subject of this sort ought to be left for discussion by word of mouth: but, while I do not want to hurry you, my decision must be taken in the near future, as, if I stay up, I must apply to College for permission to do so and for the continuation of my scholarship; if not, I must beat up the agency at once. And after all, I do not know what discussion can do beyond repeating the same points over again. The facts–I hope my account is intelligible–naturally suggest all the pros and cons. I ought, in fairness, to say that I am pretty certain I can get a job of some sort as I am: but if it comes to schoolmastering, my inability to play games will count against me. Above all, I hope it is clear that in no case will Greats be wasted.

The point on which I naturally like to lean is that the pundits at Univ. apparently don’t want me to leave Oxford. That is rather a loathsome remark for any man to make about himself–but no one overhears us, and it really is relevant. Now if, on all this, you feel that the scheme is rather a tall order and that my education has already taken long enough, you must frankly tell me so, and I shall quite appreciate your position. If you think that the chance thus offered can and ought to be taken, I shall be grateful if you will let me know as soon as may be. It is just possible that I might be able to help towards this extra year by getting a thing called the John Locke scholarship, but I have not yet discussed this with my tutor, and, as it is quite in the air, it can hardly be taken into account in what military men call ‘appreciating the situation’.

My only bit of news is the adventure, if so you can call it, of seeing the Asquiths. ³ It happened while I was waiting in a queue to see a ballet to which I went because several of my friends were performing. She–Mrs Asquith–is much, much worse than even the memoirs or the photographs have made me believe. But the joke of the thing–for which I mentioned it–was the buzz of the crowd ‘Mrs Asquith–Mrs Asquith’ and the total indifference of everyone to poor old Asquith himself, flopping heavily out of the car behind her. How are the mighty fallen!

I enclose some old papers from the History Schools on which the Colonel may test how much knowledge of his period he has gained from these years of memoir reading. ⁴ I have got a poem accepted by a periodical called the Beacon–but I don’t know when you’ll see it. The usual plan is to wait one month for a reply, three more for the proofs, two more for its appearance, and Lord-knows-how-many-more for payment. ⁵

your loving son,

Jack⁶

 

Lewis took his examination for Literae Humaniores or ‘Greats’ during 8 to 14 June, and he was now waiting to hear the results.

TO HIS FATHER (LP VII: 163):

University College,

Oxford

Wednesday [21 June 1922]

My dear Papy,

I have waited for some days to try and get a bird’s eye view from a distance before telling you anything–only to find how difficult it is to form or keep any opinion of what I’ve done. With the history papers where I can look up facts and see how near or far I was, it is easier: and on these I think I have done pretty fairly–in one case, very much better than I expected. But my long suit is the philosophy and here it is like trying to criticize an essay you wrote a week ago and have never seen again, nor ever read over. Sometimes I feel I have done badly, sometimes that I have done brilliantly. Last night however I got a little light from my tutor who repeated the following conversation he had had with one of the examiners. ‘One of your young men seems to think that Plato is always wrong’–‘Oh! Is it Simpson?’ ‘No.’ ‘Blunt? Hastings?’ ⁷ ‘No, man called Lewis: seems an able fellow anyway.’ So that is good as far as it goes.

On the whole I may sum up: I don’t at all know whether I have got a first or not, but at least I know that there was nothing in the nature of a debacle. Of course the VIVA ⁸ is still ahead, and there the family ability to bluff on paper will be no use. The Runic Salda will never do across the viva table. Luckily we had a spell of cool weather for the exam, which for six hours writing a day for six days is a great blessing. I hope you are keeping well.

your loving son,

Jack

TO HIS FATHER (LP XI: 263–4):

Univ. Coll.

July 20th [1922]

My dear Papy,

I am now close to my viva and of course on that subject I have nothing new to tell you. The details of the examination for the Magdalen Fellowship have however been published at last. The subjects are, as was expected, identical with those of Greats: but it is also notified that candidates may send in a dissertation on any relevant subject in addition to competing on the papers. I felt at once that this gave me a great pull. To choose your topic at your ease, to strike out your own line and display a modicum of originality–these, for men of our ilk, are more promising roads to victory than mere answering of questions. Indeed this condition is a rare bit of luck and of course I am all agog to begin. Naturally I shall not sit seriously to the work until my viva is over.

Under these circumstances you will understand that I cannot promise an early return home. I must see how I get on. No doubt this is disappointing for us all: but apart from that–on the score of health–you need have no misgiving. I am in excellent form at the moment and I shall not play the fool: midnight oil and ten hours a day were never my passion, and I am careful about the daily walk. Being confident on that score I feel it would be folly to throw away any chance for the sake of an immediate holiday. Also–odious factor–in my present position it is advisable to be on the spot, to be seen, to let people remember that there’s a young genius on the look out for a job. In the meantime I find the financial water a trifle low. I have had examination fees and a few odd wardrobe repairs to pay and I look forward to more expenses, including tipping, when I take my degree. The dates of terms naturally make a long interval between my spring and autumn allowances, but it has not been worth bothering you about before, and last year the Chancellors Prize helped to fill up. I had hoped to combine a little light tutoring with my own work–which would have been useful experience apart from the shekels–but I was too late and the possible jobs in Oxford were filled up.⁹ Could you then let me have £25? I am sorry to ‘cut and come again’ but you will understand the reasons.

I thought I had got hold of a temporary job for next year the other day. It was before I knew full details of the Magdalen fellowship, and consisted of a classical lectureship at University College, Reading. For geographical reasons I had hoped that this would combine–by means of a season ticket–the diplomatic or ‘advertisement’ advantages of keeping in touch with Oxford with the advantages of a salaried post. This however turned out impossible. As well, pure classics is not my line. I told them quite frankly and they gave the job to some one else. Perhaps also I was too young. My pupils would nearly all have been girls. The funny thing was that the head of their classical department and one of the committee who interviewed me was Eric Dods. I had lunch with him in Reading and some talk. He is a clever fellow, but I didn’t greatly take to him somehow.¹⁰

Arthur has been staying in Oxford.¹¹ He was painting and I was working, but we saw a good deal of one another. He is enormously improved and I didn’t feel the qualms which I once should have about introducing him to people. He is not a brilliant talker and he seldom sees a joke but his years in London are brightening him up amazingly. His painting is getting on and he did one landscape here which I thought really good.

I hope you all do well. Belfast now figures less in the Daily Mail and silence, I suppose, is now best news.

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

28 Warneford Rd.,

Oxford

[25 July 1922]

My dear Arthur,

We were all glad to get your letter and not only for the enclosure as you might maliciously say! Although we may seem to you at times ribald spectators we really feel the greatest sympathy for your present restoration to the paternal roof tree.

We all miss you very much and so, no doubt, do our neighbours. Veronica¹² is so heart broken that she has not sent us any word since. We duly delivered your message to Miss Wibelin¹³ who has her exam. to morrow and is in an awful state of nerves. Baker is rehearsing for his play but is out nearly every day: it is going to be perfectly absurd and we are trying to arrange for Miss W., Maureen and me to go to it together.¹⁴ The Doc is not very well and is going to Brittany in a few weeks.¹⁵ Baker, by the bye, met an American woman in London who has devoted the last twenty years of her life to astrology. Without the least knowledge of his intended career she told him that he was going on the stage and prophesied early success.¹⁶ I fancy this is telepathy and that the ‘astrology’ is all rot. I don’t and won’t see what stars have to do with it.

Ever since you left, it has been beastly weather, but to day was beautiful. We have the french window open in the dining room and a glorious night outside–there was a fine sunset awhile ago over the church tower.

Such a tragedy! On Friday we found the poor ‘dam’ Vee’ lying dead in the hall, poisoned apparently. Before we were out of mourning for him a tiny fluffy black kitten from across the way began to visit us–and we really believe it is his son, for Vee led the devil of a life.

Do you remember my mentioning the Chanson de Roland in the old days? It is the Norman epic about Charlemagne etc, written in the eleventh century: I have been reading a copy with the Norman on one page and the French translation opposite.¹⁷ It is exceedingly fine.

You have made a mistake about the cheque which should have been only £4-10s., and Minto remembers she owed you 2/1 so I enclose the balance of 12/2 with many thanks. Minto was most distressed at forgetting the 2/1 when you were going & we both hope you were not short for the journey.

Everyone sends best love (except Tibbie who is in a bad temper because of the intrusions of ‘Vee’s’ son who ate all her supper and you should have seen her face). Minto specially asks me to say how much we enjoyed your being here & to add both our hopes that you will soon repeat your visit.

Yrs. ever

Jack

 

P.S. Miss Wibelin says she’s going to write to you. Lucky Choseph! Maureen has finally decided to leave school & devote her time entirely to music.

TO HIS FATHER (LP VII: 184–5):

University College,

Oxford.

July 26th [1922]

My dear Papy,

Very many thanks for the enclosure.¹⁸ ‘There’s a power of wash-boards in that’ as Meehawl Macmurrachu said when he found the crock of gold.¹⁹ It is very kind of you to tell me to possess my soul in patience, when the patience has rather to be practised on your side. But let us hope that my unique merits will soon be appreciated and that I shall be able to rely on the inexhaustible patience of the tax payer and the sainted generosity of dead benefactors. In the meantime thank you and again thank you.

I have wondered, as you suggest in your letter, whether I unduly decried my own wares before the Readingites. I think, on the whole, that I behaved wisely: I am, after all, nothing remarkable as a pure scholar, and there is no good hiding what is so easily in their power to find out. As well one produces only misery for oneself don’t you think, by taking on jobs one is not up to. Biting off more than you can chew is about the most poisonous sensation I know. As for the girls, if one considers only their faculties, it might seem an easy task. But then they would be reading for the same exams as the men: and that being so, the ‘weakness of the sex’ (assuming that they are dunces) would make the proposition all the tougher. It is a strange irony that Dodds who is a born pure scholar, spends his time lecturing on philosophy. As you say, however, the loss is hardly to be regretted: but there is a mean spirit somewhere in most of us that strives under all circumstances to explain away the success of the other fellow. The other jobs I hear of are mostly in America. In the wild west they seem to have a passion for young classical and other lecturers from English Universities, and offer what seem good salaries too: but of course that would be a counsel of desperation.

A curious little case was brought to my notice by a man the other day. A large asylum has sold some ground to Magdalen College. On the ground stand some cottages inhabited by tenants of whom the asylum wishes to be rid, but can’t. The only access to these cottages is a path running through the ground bought by Magdalen. The Asylum, in selling, mentioned no right of way. Neither buyer or seller will allow the cottagers to go across, and they are in a desperate state. The interesting point is that a story goes that any road by which a body has once been carried out to burial becomes a legal entry to the house from which it was carried out. This is ‘the custom of the country’. Have you ever heard it? It sounds pretty good rot, but such things usually have an origin, and England’s full of quaint old survivals.

This is certainly the most miserable attempt at summer that I remember. I don’t know if it’s the same with you, but here we have perfectly autumnal mornings with mist and that indescribable thin smell that you get in October.

The storm centre seems now thoroughly shifted to Dublin. Long may it continue so!–a wish not so malevolent as it may sound. I hope you are keeping in the pink.

your loving son,

Jack

 

On 28 July Lewis had his viva for ‘Greats’. On 1 August he and the Moores moved into a house they came to know well over the years–‘Hillsboro’, at 14 Western Road, Headington, which road has since been renamed Holyoake Road. They remained there until 5 September when they returned to 28 Warneford Road. On 4 August Jack learned that he had taken a First in Greats, and he straight away wired his father this good news.

Warnie arrived in Oxford for a visit on 3 August and took a room at the Roebuck Hotel in Cornmarket. Jack had begun keeping a diary ( AMR) on 1 April 1922 and we are able to follow in detail Warnie’s main purpose in coming to Oxford–an attempt to persuade his brother to visit Little Lea in September. At the same time, Warnie refused to go out and meet Jack’s ‘family’. He later changed his mind, and he met Mrs Moore and Maureen for the first time on 5 August. The next day he moved into ‘Hillsboro’ where he remained until 26 August.

In October Lewis began reading for the English School. On 13 October he had his first meeting with his English tutor, F.P. Wilson,²⁰ and on the day following he had his first tutorial in Anglo-Saxon with Edith Elizabeth Wardale²¹ of St Hugh’s College.

TO HIS FATHER (LP VII: 263–5):

[University College,

Oxford]

28th [October 1922]

My dear Papy,

Your letter and wire both deserved an earlier answer, but you know when one is busy how easily tomorrow becomes the day after and that, the next week end. I judged that you would see my fate in the Times.²² This needs little comment. I am sorry for both our sakes that the ‘hasting days fly on with full career and my late spring no bud nor blossom showeth’.²³ But there’s no good crying over spilt milk and one must not repine at being fairly beaten by a better man. I do not think I have done myself any harm, for I have had some compliments on my work. One examiner, at any rate, said I was ‘probably the ablest man in for it’, but added that my fault was a certain excess of caution or ‘timidity in letting myself go’. I fancy this means that I do not sufficiently use the kind of answer which is typified in the ‘RUNIC SALDA’, and that should be easy to alter. For the rest, except for the extra drain on you, I should be glad enough of the opportunity or rather the necessity of taking another School. The English may turn out to be my real line, and, in any case, will be a second string to my bow.

I very much appreciate your enquiries about the adequacy of my allowance, and hasten to assure you that it leads to no such privations as you imagine. I will be quite frank with you. It is below the average, but that is balanced by the longer period of time over which it has been spread. It leaves no margin for superfluities, but I am lucky in having found cheap digs and, as my tastes are simple and my friends neither rich nor very numerous, I can manage alright–specially as you have been always very ready to meet any extraordinary charges. I am very grateful for the slow period of incubation which you have made possible–and have no mental reservations on the subject. On the contrary, I very often regret having chosen a career which makes me so slow in paying my way: and, on your account, would be glad of a more lucrative line. But I think I know my own limitations and am quite sure that an academic or literary career is the only one in which I can hope ever to go beyond the meanest mediocrity. The Bar is a gamble which would probably cost more in the long run, and in business, of course, I should be bankrupt or in jail very soon. In short, you may make your mind easy on this subject.

As to looking run down–I suppose I am turning from a very chubby boy into a somewhat thinner man: it is, at all events, not the result of a bun diet. Your letter explains the wire (for which, thanks). I don’t know whether my ear is getting very dull, but I must confess I did not notice the high lyrical strain until it was pointed out to me. Consequently I was completely baffled by the word ‘copyright’ and weighed the rival theories of a clerical error or a mental derangement on your part, with some interest. But now I catch the swing of it–oh that septennial spring!

I am drumming ahead like anything with my Anglo-Saxon, and it is great fun. One begins it in a Reader constructed on the admirable system of having nearly all the text in one dialect and nearly all the glossary in another.²⁴ You can imagine what happy hours this gives the young student–for example, you will read a word like ‘WADO’ in the text: in the glossary this may appear as WEDO, WAEDO, WEODO, WAEDU, or WIEDU. Clever bloke, ain’t he? The language in general, gives the impression of parodied English badly spelled. Thus the word ‘CWIC’ may baffle you till you remember the ‘quick and the dead’ and suddenly realize that it means ‘Alive’. Or again TINGUL for a star, until you think of ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’.

By the way I was quite wrong about Miss Waddell: it turns out to be Miss Wardale–an amazing old lady who is very keen on phonetics and pronunciation. I spend most of my hours with her trying to reproduce the various clucking, growling and grunted noises which are apparently an essential to the pure accent of Alfred–or Aelfred as we must now call him: as in that immortal work of Cornelius Jagenal’s ‘The upheaving of Aelfred’–‘Brother, what would you do if you felt a sudden etc., etc.’ There does not seem to be very much excitement here about the election. As a B.A., I shall have a vote for the University, which is rather comic. And, by the same token, when you’re next addressing a letter to me–and there is a propriety, a decency, an idoneity–Very cold these days!

I went to the Martlets the other night: now that I am doing English, I shall have to go regularly and take it seriously. We had a paper on Burns, read–of course–by a Scotsman: with libera-r-r-r-al quotations. I doubt if the Englishmen followed much of it. Of Burns I’m afraid I must say with Kirk ‘Ach, I’m no good at that sort of thing’.

This is bad business about McGrigor’s–I hope the Colonel had not much in it–I fancy not.²⁵ You remember the yarn about the officer who, being known to have a balance of £100, was tried for ‘conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman’.²⁶

I hope you are flourishing. Any more Artesian wells?

your loving son,

Jack

 

On 23 December, Jack met Warnie in London and they visited their father in Belfast for Christmas. Jack remained at Little Lea until 12 January 1923, when he returned to Oxford and his work in the English School. His holiday in Ireland is covered in AMR, pp. 156–78.