C. S. Lewis – A Life Page 10

  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.