C. S. Lewis: A Biography. Walter Hooper

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The only other events for the rest of the year were visits to Harwood in London and Barfield in the country, and three weeks at Little Lea: ‘My three weeks in Ireland, though improved by Warnie’s presence, were as usual three weeks too long.’⁸

      On returning to Oxford, Lewis tried for a fellowship at St John’s, apparently in philosophy since he submitted an essay on ‘The Promethean Fallacy in Ethics’ together with testimonials from Carritt and Wilson. Nothing came of this, and Nevill Coghill got the English fellowship at Exeter College in February. Lewis, still thinking that his future lay in philosophy, considered trying for a research fellowship at All Souls, and entering for a D.Phil. degree.

      On 28 February 1924 he dined at High Table in Univ. as Carritt’s guest, and his host told him of a fellowship in philosophy that was to be awarded at Trinity, worth £500 a year, and advised him to try for it. Walking home late that night, Lewis recorded in his diary,

looking at the details of the Trinity fellowship as I passed the lamps – for some reason the possibility of getting it and all that would follow if I did came before my mind with unusual vividness. I saw it would involve living in and what a break up of our present life that would mean, and also how the extra money would lift terrible loads off us all. I saw that it would mean pretty full work and that I might become submerged and poetry crushed out. With deep conviction I suddenly had an image of myself, God knows when or where, in the future looking back on these years since the War as the happiest or the only really valuable part of my life, in spite of all their disappointments and fears. Yet the longing for an income that would free us from anxiety was stronger than all these feelings. I was in a strange state of excitement – and all on the mere hundredth chance of getting it.⁹

      So the first few months of 1924 dragged along through disappointments and much enjoyment of his leisure when writing and revising Dymer, which was nearing completion. In April Lewis had a poem, ‘Joy’, accepted by a small literary magazine, The Beacon – an attempt to capture in verse the elusive experience he was again having from time to time, the meaning of which did not become clear until his conversion. The first stanza (of six) deals the most directly with spiritual ecstasy:

      Today was all unlike another day.

       The long waves of my sleep near morning broke

       On happier beaches, tumbling lighted spray

      Of soft dreams filled with promise. As I woke,

       Like a huge bird, Joy with the feathery stroke

       Of strange wings brushed me over. Sweeter air

       Came never from dawn’s heart. The misty smoke

       Cooled it upon the hills. It touched the lair

Of each wild thing and woke the wet flowers everywhere.¹⁰

      Lewis was still hoping for the Trinity fellowship when he dined at High Table with the President on 4 May, and met many of the other Fellows there and in the Senior Common Room – doubtless that they might consider his suitability if there was any chance of his election.

      Next day, however, Sir Michael Sadler offered him a temporary post at Univ. – to take over Carritt’s work as philosophy tutor during the coming academic year, which Carritt was to spend in America. After being assured that the appointment would not stand in his way if he got the Trinity fellowship, and that the emolument would be at least £200, Lewis accepted gratefully.

Much of his time was now taken up preparing for this, his first serious assault upon his chosen profession. But he found time for evenings of discussion with Coghill and other friends; for a week in London with Harwood when he paid his first visit to the Elgin Marbles – ‘what impressed me most was the Artemis among the reliefs of the other gods – the only one I have ever seen that is virginal – but not in the way that appeals to a man’s base love of virginity – and without being girlish and insignificant’¹¹ – and saw Leo Baker playing First Lord in a very bad production of As You Like It by the Old Vic Company.

He also spent several weekends and odd days with Warnie, who was now stationed near Colchester, and went on expeditions with him on his motorcycle. On a typical visit, 3 July 1924, Lewis records that after a drink in the Mess ‘we then motored back to town [Colchester] to a civilian club of which Warnie is a member, where he had provided a royal feast of the sort we both like: no nonsense about soup and pudding, but a sole each, cutlets with green peas, a large portion of strawberries and cream, and a tankard of the local beer which is very good. So we gorged like Roman Emperors in a room to ourselves and had good talk.’¹²

In this way they explored a good deal of the country within reach of Oxford and later much of Wiltshire and the counties north of London. An expedition on 4 July 1924 took them in search of Wynyard, at Warnie’s suggestion. ‘I assented eagerly,’ wrote Lewis in his diary that day. ‘I love to exult in my happiness at being for ever safe from at least one of the major ills of life – that of being a boy at school.’¹³

      Lewis was correcting local examination papers throughout July, and at the beginning of August press of work on these and on his lectures in philosophy for the coming term caused a break in his diary which finally widened to six months.

Lewis gave his first lecture, ‘The Good, Its Position Among Values’, on 14 October 1924 – to an audience of four, owing to a mistake in the lecture list and an important lecture by someone else at the same hour. However, he was able to report to his father on 15 October 1924 that it ‘went off all right … Otherwise everything goes well. All my new colleagues are kindness itself and everyone does his best to make me feel at home – especially dear old Poynton. I find the actual tutoring easy at the time (though I am curiously tired at the end of the day) and have already struck some quite good men among my pupils.’¹⁴ One of these first pupils, H.D. Ziman,^* recorded forty years later that he found him ‘the most stimulating of my tutors’.

      By February 1925 Lewis was well settled into his new duties, giving an average of four tutorials a day – three in the morning and one between tea and dinner – and lecturing twice a week on ‘Moral Good’, though sometimes the audience was so small that he took them to his college rooms for an informal discussion instead.

Though living at Headington, he frequently reached college in time for breakfast, returned home in the afternoon but was back for tutorial and Hall dinner, with often a meeting of a literary or philosophic society thereafter. He was most conscientious about attending such meetings, and seems to have gained much enjoyment from them. For example, on 12 February after Hall, ‘I went to Ware’s rooms in Worcester Street for a meeting of the Philosophical Society. Ziman read his paper on causality. I, having heard it all from him in the morning, was rather bored. The discussion afterwards drifted off on to Touche’s and Dawson’s favourite position and I had an enjoyable argument. Home late.’^†СКАЧАТЬ