C. S. Lewis: A Biography. Walter Hooper

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       2 OXFORD: THE WAR AND AFTER

Jack Lewis returned to Oxford on 20 March 1917, lodged in the same digs as before, and presented himself to take Responsions. In this exam he was ‘handsomely ploughed’,¹ on account of his inability to cope satisfactorily with mathematics – in particular algebra. In spite of this, however, he was allowed to come into residence in the Trinity Term so as to be able to pass into the Army by way of the University Officers’ Training Corps. From the academic point of view he was supposed to be reading for Responsions, and even went for algebra lessons to J.E. Campbell of Hertford College. But he never, in fact, passed Responsions; and after the war was able to take up his scholarship at Univ. without having done so, ex-servicemen being exempted from any need to pass it. ‘Otherwise,’ he commented, ‘I should have had to abandon the idea of going to Oxford.’²

      On Thursday, 26 April, after a three-week holiday in Belfast, he arrived at University College for his brief interlude before going into the Army. He matriculated on 28 April and joined the Officers’ Training Corps on 30 April. By this time Lewis was under the spell of Oxford, writing long, lyrical descriptions to Arthur Greeves of all that he was doing and seeing and reading.

He had Room 5 on Staircase XII of Radcliffe Quad, a suite filled with the furniture of some pre-war member of the college still at the front, or perhaps long dead. ‘It is getting to be quite homely to me, this room,’ he wrote on 28 April after only two days, ‘especially when I come back to it by firelight and find the kettle boiling. How I love kettles! Dinner is not in Hall now, as there are only twelve men in College, but in a small lecture room, and the dons don’t turn up. For all other meals the scout brings you your cover in your rooms.’³ ‘The place is on the whole absolutely ripping,’ he wrote on 6 May. ‘If only you saw the quad on these moonlit nights with the long shadows lying half across the level perfect grass and the tangle of towers & spires beyond in the dark!’⁴

Very soon Lewis discovered the river, going boating on most afternoons, bathing at Parson’s Pleasure ‘without the tiresome convention of bathing things’,⁵ and generally revelling in the usual delights of a first Summer Term. Soon, too, he discovered the bookshops – of which there were many more than there are now, and all still independent. In his letter of 6 May he told Arthur he had made the acquaintance of the College library, and ‘still better is the Library of the Union Society (a club everyone belongs to)’.⁶ ‘It has a writing room of strictest silence,’ he wrote to Arthur on 13 May, ‘and an admirable library where I have passed many happy hours and hope to pass many more.’⁷

      The happy time at Univ. came to an end on 7 June when Lewis joined a cadet battalion. He was, however, fortunate in that the battalion was quartered in Keble College, so that he was to remain in Oxford for another three months. Writing to his father on 10 June, he said,

       at first when I left my own snug quarters and my own friends at Univ. for a carpetless little cell with two beds (minus sheets or pillows) at Keble, and got into a Tommy’s uniform, I will not deny that I thought myself very ill used … My chief friend is Somerville, scholar of Eton and scholar of King’s, Cambridge, a very quiet sort of person, but very booky and interesting. Moore of Clifton, my room companion, and Sutton of Repton (the company humorist) are also very good fellows. The former is a little too childish for real companionship, but I will forgive him much for his appreciation of Newbolt.*

      ‘Though the work is very hard and not very interesting, I am quite reconciled to my lot. It is doing me a lot of good,’ he confided to Greeves that same day:

      I have made a number of excellent friends … My room-mate Moore (of Clifton) is quite a good fellow, tho’ a little too childish and virtuous for ‘common nature’s daily food’. The advantages of being in Oxford are very great as I can get weekend leave (from 1 o’clock Saturday till 11 o’clock p.m. Sunday) and go to Univ. where I enjoy the rare luxury of sheets and a long sleep …

I am in a strangely productive mood at present and spend my few moments of spare time in scribbling verse. When my four months course in the cadet battalion is at an end, I shall, supposing I get a commission all right, have a four weeks leave before joining my regiment. During it I propose to get together all the stuff I have perpetrated and see if any kind publisher would like to take it. After that, if the fates decide to kill me at the front, I shall enjoy a nine days immortality while friends who know nothing about poetry imagine that I must have been a genius – what usually happens in such cases. In the meantime my address is – No. 738 Cadet C.S. Lewis, ‘E’ Company, Keble College, Oxford.⁸

      While he continued to see Martin Somerville and his other friends, a close bond developed quickly between Lewis and his room-mate, Edward Francis Courtenay ‘Paddy’ Moore. Paddy was exactly Lewis’s age, and his sister Maureen was eleven. Their mother, Mrs Janie Askins Moore, was born in Pomeroy, County Tyrone, on 28 March 1872, the daughter of a Church of Ireland clergyman. In 1897 she married Edward Francis Courtney Moore. They lived in Dublin, where Mr Moore was an engineer. Mr and Mrs Moore separated in 1907 and Mrs Moore moved with the children to Bristol to be near one of her brothers. Paddy had been educated there at Clifton College, and when he was sent to Oxford for training with the Officers’ Training Corps, Mrs Moore and Maureen came with him. They took rooms in Wellington Square, a short distance from Keble College, and almost at once Lewis was a favoured guest. He, in turn, was able to show Paddy and his family the hospitality of Univ., СКАЧАТЬ