Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

Yesterday (Wednesday) we went for a paper chase. Mears and I were the hares, which was rather absurd, seeing that we are the two worst runners in the school, and know less about the country than the others. Both you and I know that I have got hardly any ‘puff, and so you will be surprised to read as I was to find, that I kept up all right. We ran for a good long way, and however got caught in the end. I can tell you I slept well afterwards. Today we are all very, very stiff.

As the end of term draws nearer and nearer, we must soon decide all about the journey home. I think I had better go by Liverpool; for if I could arrange to meet Warnie at Lime St. Station, it would no longer be necessary for you to come over.

Now I must stop: with much love,

your son,

Jacks

TO HIS FATHER (LP III: 209-10):

[Wynyard School]

Postmark: 21 May 1910

My dear Papy,

I am writing to you today (Saturday) because we are going to St. Alban’s to see Wyn ordained tomorrow.

We have quite settled down to the term here, and the time is beginning to fly: I hope it will go quickly with you too.

I have been thinking about the school question, but the more I think the more difficult it seems to arrive at any definite conclusion. Of course half formed, nebulous, impossible ideas will bubble up spontaneously.

Yesterday (Friday) we went to church in the morning and afternoon; in the afternoon a great many boy scouts were present. Somehow I don’t think ‘Wee Georgie’ (minus the Wood) will be very popular at first: but what is this to Shakespearian students like you and I who know what happens–

‘After a well graced actor leaves the stage.’

(#ulink_ebce60d5-e79f-5d5a-8b22-7ca07b0fca9a)

The other day we had a general knowledge examination: it was very exciting. I got 62 marks out of 100, and was second, Bowser was first. Thank goodness Squiffy came out miles below Bowser and I. If I cannot triumph over Squiffy in games and out of school, I will do my level best to triumph over him in work (which I can do), and which is perhaps a far better way of getting my own.

If you are ‘thinking long’ because this is a long term, remember that the holidays are long in proportion.

your loving

son Jacks

P.S. Have you seen the comet? We have not.

1 (#uf81ccf6e-0cb5-5c7e-925c-b0ba09b5a610) See Albert James Lewis in the Biographical Appendix.

2 (#ulink_22e94cd9-b424-5bd9-8ed3-4b0c9ca7db02) See Florence Augusta ‘Flora’ Lewis in the Biographical Appendix.

3 (#ulink_a3563437-edf1-56d5-aa45-22f64821dd3d) See Warren Hamilton ‘Warnie’ Lewis in the Biographical Appendix.

4 (#ulink_a3563437-edf1-56d5-aa45-22f64821dd3d) See Robert Capron in the Biographical Appendix.

5 (#ulink_1ca641e7-050a-500d-8e65-0d12fe66617e) Miss Annie Harper was governess to the Lewis boys from 1898 to 1908.

6 (#ulink_a44cfbd7-ff8b-5be8-893d-51cb172e3c0b) Jack’s canary.

7 (#ulink_a44cfbd7-ff8b-5be8-893d-51cb172e3c0b) Maude and Martha were housemaids at Little Lea.

8 (#ulink_d527036b-7b9e-5365-bfb9-ab72364f293f) Tim was the family dog of whom Lewis said in SBJ X: ‘He may hold a record for longevity among Irish terriers since he was already with us when I was at Oldie’s [1908-10] and did not die till 1922…Poor Tim, though I loved him, was the most undisciplined, unaccomplished, and dissipated-looking creature that ever went on four legs. He never exactly obeyed you; he sometimes agreed with you.’

9 (#ulink_fd9f460f-67ae-5861-baad-c923a035b0f8) Grandfather was Richard Lewis (1832-1908), the father of Albert. See The Lewis Family in the Biographical Appendix.

10 (#ulink_5e309540-60b4-5717-b889-35d39497966c) Boxen was a world invented by Jack and Warnie a year or so before this time, and about which Jack was to write many stories and histories involving the characters mentioned here–King Bunny, General Quicksteppe and others. Much of this juvenilia has been published as Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C.S. Lewis, ed. Walter Hooper (1985).

11 (#ulink_e2b74e7c-b56a-51b6-a037-541bef0584db) See the Biographical Appendix for Joseph Arthur Greeves, a boy who lived across the road from the Lewises.

12 (#ulink_70f747d2-73ba-5915-84d2-efd0a294c11e) This ‘History of Mouse-Land’ is found in Boxen, op. cit, pp. 39-41.

13 (#ulink_e0543fab-523b-5ab0-bbd8-2e9c859e51b2) This was to be the last holiday Jack and Warnie took with their mother. They travelled to London, and from there they went on to Berneval in France, where they were on holiday from 20 August until 18 September.

14 (#ulink_89d98b67-4bfd-5b35-9b80-e12bb33ce7ae) Jack was here on holiday with his mother.

15 (#ulink_df2e6b44-b3d9-55c8-9bf3-3b0f9cbc5655) Lord Big, a frog, is the most memorable of the Boxen characters.

16 (#ulink_df2e6b44-b3d9-55c8-9bf3-3b0f9cbc5655) Warnie Lewis wrote: ‘“chains memorial” is a lighthouse at the entrance to Larne Harbour, erected to the memory of James Chaine, a prominent local landowner; he is buried in an upright position, in unconsecrated ground, overlooking the harbour’ (LP III: 105).

17 (#ulink_b90b0803-c56b-5b44-b87c-b80d3082d3d5) Robert Capron was assisted in his teaching by all the members of the family, his wife Ellen Barnes Capron (1849-1909), his son Wynyard Capron (1883-1959), and his three daughters, Norah, Dorothy and Eva. See Robert Capron in the Biographical Appendix.

18 (#ulink_fa4f308e-c889-5ce3-aeed-d264d90a575c) Annie Sargent Harley Hamilton (1866-1930) was the wife of Flora’s brother, Augustus ‘Gussie’ Hamilton, who undertook much of the care of Jack and Warnie following their mother’s death. A Canadian by birth, she married Augustus Hamilton in 1897, and was thereafter Flora’s best friend. Lewis said of her in SBJ III: ‘In her I found what I liked best–an unfailing, kindly welcome without a hint of sentimentality, unruffled good sense, the unobtrusive talent for making all things at all times as cheerful and comfortable as circumstances allowed. What one could not have one did without and made the best of it. The tendency of the Lewises to reopen wounds and to rouse sleeping dogs was unknown to her as to her husband.’

19 (#ulink_8460a025-67aa-561f-b28b-7f36af6981d6) On 22 October, Mr Capron wrote to Albert Lewis saying: ‘Not only is Clive an exceptionally bright, intelligent, and most lovable little boy, but he is also very keen and eager to learn. Would that I could write to you in the same strain of Warren! Ever averse to effort, physical and mental, he grows worse, and I am almost driven to regard his indolence in the light of a disease’ (LP III: 150).

20 (#ulink_d928b87d-b0b6-51e4-b1c2-4d5260f1142d) These were three magazines for boys. Pearsons Magazine ran from 1903 to 1936; The Strand Magazine was an illustrated monthly which aimed at ‘cheap, healthful literature’ in the form of stories and articles–Arthur Conan Doyle’s Adventures of Sherlock Holmes was among its first serials–and ran from 1891 to 1950; The Captain, another magazine for boys, ran from 1899 to 1924.

21 (#ulink_2476ada1-a342-5090-8ff6-9be0609e7412) ‘Sandycroft’ was the Belfast home of Albert’s brother, Joseph Lewis (1856-1908) who died on 3 September 1908. He was a marine consulting engineer. In 1880 he married Mary Tegart, and they had five children, of which Joseph or ‘Joey’ (1898-1969) was at this time Jack’s best friend. See The Lewis Family in the Biographical Appendix.

22 (#ulink_20a2812e-0e7c-5e39-bf4d-0731f8e68f4d) H.G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon (1901).

23 (#ulink_862f8391-a793-52ba-843e-c67d144ae5c2) Jack apparently got over his scruples about the microscope, for he received one for Christmas.

24 (#ulink_a23a0c87-8615-51a8-a749-a321c7d1979b) William Shakespeare, Richard II (1595), V, ii, 24.

1911-1912 (#uc2941ee1-0da4-5daf-8557-41f4d35aa1b1)

That was Jack’s last term at Wynyard. The school had been foundering for a long time, and now with too few pupils to provide him with a livelihood, it sank beneath the headmaster’s feet. Mr Capron wrote to Albert on 27 April 1910 to say he was ‘giving up school work’. After the boys left in July, Mr Capron was inducted into the little church at Radwell on 13 June 1910. It did not last. He began beating the choirboys, and had to be put under restraint. He died in the Camberwell House Asylum on 18 November 1911.

Jack spent one term, between September and December 1910, at Campbell College, Belfast. Then in January 1911 he and Warnie travelled together to Malvern, Warnie to Malvern College and Jack to the little preparatory school, Cherbourg School, which lay only yards from the College. It was made up of about twenty boys between the ages of 8 and 12, and had been founded in 1907 under the headmastership of Arthur Clement Allen (1868-1957). After the stultifying effects of Capron’s teaching, with its ‘sea of arithmetic’ and a ‘jungle of dates, battles, exports, imports and the like, forgotten as soon as learned’ (SBJ II), Jack experienced something like a renaissance at Cherbourg, which in Surprised by Joy he calls ‘Chartres’ after the most glorious cathedral in France. ‘Here indeed my education really began. The Headmaster, whom we called Tubbs, was a clever and patient teacher; under him I rapidly found my feet in Latin and English’ (SBJ IV).

TO HIS FATHER (LP III: 226-7):

[Cherbourg School,

Malvern