C. S. Lewis: A Biography. Walter Hooper

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СКАЧАТЬ this time Lewis lunched on most days of the week with F.H. Lawson, the law tutor at Univ.^‡ and D.L. Keir, the historian,^§ whom he found a more entertaining companion than the erudite lawyer: ‘The usual brisk but not really interesting conversation’,¹⁶ Lewis confided to his diary after one of these meals.

But he had very few other entertainments. To go to the theatre was a rare event indeed – and then also perhaps from a sense of duty, as for example the visit to the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS) production of Peer Gynt on 10 February 1925 of which he records: ‘I was very disappointed in the play. The general idea of a history of the soul is all right, but Peer’s soul hasn’t enough in it to last for four hours: most of him is mere Nordic windbagism. No good making a story of Peer: you only want to kick his bottom and get on. The Troll parts from the visual point of view were the best stage devilment I’ve ever seen.’¹⁷

He and Warnie had spent three weeks over Christmas 1924 in Belfast, and on their return toured on the motorcycle via Shrewsbury and Ludlow – ‘an orgy of woods, hills, broad rivers, grey castles, Norman abbeys and towns that have always been asleep’. But almost as soon as he got back to Oxford he went down with flu: ‘I am very much afraid my organism is acquiring the habit of getting this troublesome complaint every time it becomes prevalent,’ he wrote to his father on 11 February 1925.¹⁸ Diary writing lapsed again from March till August, most of the time being taken up between his tutorial duties and domestic life at Headington. On 7–8 April he was away on the motorcycle with Warnie, visiting Salisbury, Wells and Stonehenge.

‘This is my last term “in the bond” at Univ.,’ he wrote to his father after returning to Oxford, ‘and there is still no word of the Fellowship. I begin to be afraid that it is not coming at all. A Fellowship in English is announced at Magdalen and of course I am applying for it, but without any serious hopes as I believe much senior people are in for it.’¹⁹

The chances of getting the Magdalen fellowship seemed remote at first. Oxford’s School of English was in its infancy, the subject having been officially recognized only in 1899 and given its first Chair as recently as 1904. It was to be a part of the Modern Languages Board until 1926 when a separate English faculty board was firmly established. Now, as it turned out, Lewis had been well advised to read both Greats and English for he suddenly found himself a candidate for the fellowship. He was soon left with only one serious rival, J.N. Bryson (later a Fellow of Balliol and a leading authority on the Pre-Raphaelites);^* but a satisfactory dinner to be ‘looked-over’ by the other Magdalen Fellows and several interviews with Sir Herbert Warren, the President, tipped the scales in his favour – doubtless aided by the good offices of Gordon; and on 20 May 1925 he was elected.

‘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 25, Mr Clive Staples Lewis, MA (University College)’, ran the gratifying announcement in The Times of 22 May, and the long prologue was over.^†

Lewis was not altogether sorry to leave Univ., feeling – rightly or wrongly – that the college might have done more to keep him, had it wanted him. But he kept up his connections with friends there, was later made an Honorary Fellow, and near the end of his life (though he may never have known) there was a suggestion, if not a firm proposal, that he should be elected Master. He also gave up philosophy for English with few regrets, feeling already that the former led nowhere: ‘I have come to think that if I had the mind, I have not the brain and nerves for a life of pure philosophy,’ he wrote to his father on 14 August. ‘A continued search among the abstract roots of things, a perpetual questioning of all the things that plain men take for granted, a chewing the cud for fifty years over inevitable ignorance and a constant frontier watch on the little tidy lighted conventional world of science and daily life – is this the best life for temperaments such as ours? Is it the way of health or even of sanity?’²⁰ But the philosophical training was not wasted. Lewis had to be always ready to ‘fill in’ with a philosophy tutorial or lecture if required. Of the sixteen pupils Lewis had in 1926 only five were reading English. Lewis’s philosophical training also gave weight to his later theological writings, and in particular such a purely philosophical work as The Abolition of Man (1943).

Lewis’s first reaction on gaining the fellowship was to write to his father a moving letter of gratitude for the faith and the financial support that had made it possible for him to hold on at Oxford until he achieved his goal, while others less fortunate or less persevering had been forced to drop out of the lists. He then went on, with a gaiety that showed better than protestations of his relief and happiness, to describe the ‘admission’ ceremony at Magdalen: ‘English people have not the talent for graceful ceremonial.’ He concluded, ‘They go through it lumpishly and with a certain mixture of defiance and embarrassment as if everyone felt he was being rather silly and was at the same time ready to shoot the first man who said so. In a French or Italian University now, this might have gone off nobly.’²¹

      Lewis seems to have had a deep craving for ritual and pageantry all his life, a craving that finds expression in most of his works of fiction, notably the cosmic celebrations near the end of both Perelandra and That Hideous Strength. But he fought shy of it, felt ‘lumpish and embarrassed’ when he came across it in actual experience – from university ceremonies to ritual in religious services – and avoided it whenever possible.

      Before setting to work on the necessary preparation for his first term at Magdalen, Michaelmas 1925, Lewis spent a few days with the Barfields in London (as soon as he had finished the exam correcting for which he had already signed on) and then went with Mrs Moore and Maureen for three weeks’ holiday, 17 August to 6 September, at Oare on the borders of Exmoor. There he spent many days walking, usually alone, in the Doone country, reading for enjoyment, and only towards the end turning to works that he might be teaching the following term.

Lewis visited his father in Belfast during the last two weeks of September. It was a great success, partly because Jack was no longer dependent on his father. Mr Lewis wrote in his diary on 1 October 1925: ‘Jacks returned. A fortnight and a few days with me. Very pleasant, not a cloud. Went to the Boat with him. The first time I did not pay his passage money. I offered, but he did not want it.’²²

      While in Belfast during this same Long Vacation Jack discussed the furnishing of his rooms in Magdalen, for he was writing to his father on 21 October in dismay over the quantity of furniture he was expected to supply – far more than they had planned on transporting from Ireland. ‘At one time I thought I should have to take pupils in my bedroom as the bed was the only thing to sit down on,’ he remarked ruefully. But

my external surroundings are beautiful beyond expectation and beyond hope. To live in the Bishop’s Palace at Wells would be good but could hardly be better than this. My big sitting-room looks north and from it I see nothing, not even a gable or spire, to remind me that I am in a town. I look down on a stretch of grass which passes into a grove of immemorial forest trees, at present coloured with autumn red. Over this stray the deer. They are erratic in their habits. Some mornings when I look out there may be half a dozen chewing the cud just beneath me, СКАЧАТЬ