Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

We left Liverpool this time by the 2.40 instead of the 12, and I think we will do so next time; it is a better train. your loving son Jack

The Lewis Papers contain no letters from Jack written between that of 5 May 1912 and the one below. The lacuna is possibly explained by the fact that whatever letters he wrote have not survived. However, a more likely explanation is that his energies were being poured into writing of a different sort. His personal ‘Renaissance’ began when he came across the Christmas issue of The Bookman for December 1911 and saw the words Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods, with a picture by Rackham illustrating the first part of Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung saga. ‘Pure “Northernness” engulfed me,’ he said, ‘a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight of Northern summer’ (SBJ V). This love of myth led him between the summers of 1912 and 1913 to write 819 lines of an epic called ‘Loki Bound’ which was Norse in subject and Greek in form. He was as well a frequent contributor to The Cherbourg School Magazine, in which his articles are remarkable achievements for one so young. But for the moment, however, he had his mind set on winning a Scholarship to Malvern College.

It was also at this point that Jack became an unbeliever. A major cause was the ‘Occultist fancies’ he had picked up from the matron of Cherbourg, Miss G.E. Cowie. He got into his head that ‘No clause of my prayer was to be allowed to pass muster unless it was accompanied by what I called a “realisation”, by which I meant a certain vividness of the imagination and the affections. My nightly task was to produce by sheer will-power a phenomenon which will-power could never produce’ (SBJ IV). There were also unconscious causes of doubt.

One came from reading the classics. Here, especially in Virgil, one was presented with a mass of religious ideas; and all teachers and editors took it for granted from the outset that these religious ideas were sheer illusion. No one ever attempted to show in what sense Christianity fulfilled Paganism or Paganism prefigured Christianity…Little by little, with fluctuations which I cannot now trace, I became an apostate, dropping my faith with no sense of loss but with the greatest relief. (SBJ IV)

1 (#ulink_3916e3e8-0926-5323-a59b-8b457cde82b1) Arthur Clement Allen (1868-1957), the headmaster, was educated at Repton and New College, Oxford, where he read Classics. After taking a BA in 1891 he was a teacher at Silloth School from 1902 until 1907 when he founded Cherbourg School. In 1925 he moved the school to Woodnorton, Evesham, and the school closed officially when he retired in 1931.

2 (#ulink_8e9f1c64-4d78-5dc8-bef2-96f6631839c8)Messiah, an oratorio by George Frideric Handel, was first performed in 1752.

3 (#ulink_67008f1e-9ecf-553c-8f83-db9872b8781d) Sir Frank Robert Benson (1858-1939), English actor-manager, founded his own Shakespearean company. Beginning in 1883 he took his company on tours, producing all Shakespeare’s plays with the exception of Titus Andronicus and Troilus and Cressida.

4 (#ulink_67008f1e-9ecf-553c-8f83-db9872b8781d) William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice (1600).

5 (#ulink_71113620-5753-517e-91e1-781f7a3deaf7) Jack Ernest Clutterbuck (1898-1975) went from Cherbourg School to Malvern College where he was a pupil from 1912 to 1915. After training at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, he received a commission in the Royal Engineers and served in the First World War. He went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and took a BA in 1922. After more than twenty years in the army, during which he reached the rank of brigadier, he was Chief Engineer of the G.I.P. Railway in Bombay, 1946-47. He retired in 1950. The photograph is reproduced in Walter Hooper, Through Joy and Beyond: A Pictorial Biography of C.S. Lewis (1982), p. 31.

6 (#ulink_46e51067-1192-593b-a17b-e187a58de20b) The school matron, Miss G.E. Cowie, had been forced to leave, and she was now replaced by Miss Gosling. Writing about Miss Cowie in SBJ IV, Lewis said: ‘No school ever had a better Matron, more skilled and comforting to boys in sickness, or more cheery and companionable to boys in health…We all loved her; I, the orphan, especially. Now it so happened that Miss C, who seemed old to me, was still in her spiritual immaturity, still hunting…She was…floundering in the mazes of Theosophy, Rosicrucianism, Spiritualism; the whole Anglo-American Occultist tradition…Little by little, unconsciously, unintentionally, she loosened the whole framework, blunted all the sharp edges of my belief. The vagueness, the merely speculative character, of all this Occultism began to spread–yes, and to spread deliciously–to the stern truths of the creed. The whole thing became a matter of speculation.’

7 (#ulink_46e51067-1192-593b-a17b-e187a58de20b) We meet Percy Gerald Kelsal Harris again in the letter of 16 February 1918, but it should be noted that Harris is the master referred to in SBJ IV as ‘Pogo’ and about whom Lewis said: ‘Pogo was a wit, Pogo was a dressy man, Pogo was a man about town. Pogo was even a lad. After a week or so of hesitation (for his temper was uncertain) we fell at his feet and adored. Here was sophistication, glossy all over, and (dared one believe it?) ready to impart sophistication to us…After a term of Pogo’s society one had the feeling of being not twelve weeks but twelve years older.’ P.G.K. Harris was born in Kinver, Staffordshire, on 31 August 1888. From King’s School in Taunton he went up to Exeter College, Oxford, in 1907. That he left without a degree may be explained by those very qualities which delighted his pupils at Cherbourg. But he was to show an entirely different sort of mettle in the approaching war. For a photograph of Harris see Walter Hooper, Through Joy and Beyond: A Pictorial Biography of C.S. Lewis (1982), p. 30. Harris is the man standing on the left in the back row.

1913 (#uc2941ee1-0da4-5daf-8557-41f4d35aa1b1)

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 1):

Cherbourg.

Sunday.

Postmark: 6 January 1913

My dear Papy,

This scholarship question is going to be settled then once for all, in the coming week; the best or the worst will soon be known. It always seems to me a comforting fact before any important event concerning whose result one is anxious, that one’s own varying expectations about it can make no difference to the event. At any rate, I have tried, and the rest must remain to be seen. Tubbs was talking to our friend S.R. James

(#ulink_2edb3bd2-7597-58a6-9d99-00f888bd1815) the other day about the affair, and we learn thence that Greek, which has been somewhat of a bugbear, is not a very important subject–that the most necessary things are French and English; my French of course is rather poor, but I think I can do alright in English. But perhaps we had better not think too much about the event until it is over. What shall happen shall happen, and in the mean time we hope.

I expect I shall see W. down at the Coll. when I am there, which will be a good thing, as I have not heard from him for a long time.

On Wednesday we went to see Benson’s company in ‘Julius Caesar’

(#ulink_8c5261b4-153d-5d94-863b-a29066b92504) which was very enjoyable. Benson himself as Mark Anthony acted as badly as anyone possibly could, overdoing his part exceedingly, and in places singing rather than speaking the words. Thus in the famous speech to the people we hear ‘all’ pronounced with four syllables in the passage–‘So are they all, all honourable men’. The rest of the company were however good, especially a man called Carrington as Brutus, and Johnston as Caesar. Although I do not join with Warnie in condemning Shakespeare, I must say that in a good many plays he has missed alike the realism of modern plays and the statliness of Greek tragedies. Julius Caesar is one of his best in some ways.

The cricket trousers arrived thank you, and fit excellently. Will you please send me some envelopes.

your loving

son Jack.

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 26-7):

[Cherbourg School]

June 7, 1913

Saturday.

My dear Papy,

As you say, it was most unfortunate, more than unfortunate, that I should fall ill just now.

(#ulink_f93b19a4-88ca-5fcf-8da1-f45be5fd0a58) I had, as I thought, discussed the coming exam with myself in every possible light, but just the one thing I had not taken into account happened. For a while I thought I should not be able to do the papers at all, so that even the chance of doing them in bed was a relief. I did not start till late on Tuesday evening when I did Latin and Greek grammar and Latin Prose: I am afraid I did horribly badly in the Greek, though tolerably well in that days Latin and in the Latin translation and verses which came on Wednesday.

That afternoon came the essay paper which was one after my own heart, the three alternative subjects being ‘The qualities of a successful soldier’ ‘The possibility of an universal language’, and ‘West is west and East is east, and never the twain shall meet’. I chose the last and applied it chiefly to the Indian question. It was much admired by Tubbs and by some masters at the College.

On Thursday I had a ‘General paper’ including History and Geography, Scripture and English, in which I got on alright but had not time to finish, a rather difficult French paper, and as a finale, Arithmetic and Algebra, which I think I did rather better than I anticipated.

Thus you have a brief schedule of my three days in bed. Not what one would choose for pleasure, but still what might have been worse. And I hear you have written something to our common respected friend on the subject of a scholarship elsewhere, to the effect that I have some objection to going to any other school than Malvern but that you keep an open mind.

(#ulink_bd40a44d-2e4b-5b72-8aa7-c4070e2f8595) Very true. As a natural result I am honoured by the very well meant but rather importunate advice of the said respected friend that I should try for a scholarship elsewhere if I fail here. He is a great man for sticking to his guns; a man of purpose. I foresee that I shall find it very difficult to help taking his advice, which I by no means want to take. The good pedagogue has Uppingham at present in his eye for me. Now of this school I know absolutely nothing, good or bad. For this reason I do not like the idea of it–it is a leap in the dark. Of course for that matter Cherbourg, which has proved a success, was also a leap in the dark to a certain extent. But don’t write anything of this to the good pedagogue. I have so far looked with ostensible favour on Uppingham when talking with him of the matter, as, having been ill and working hard on scant food for some days, I do not really feel disposed yet to enter into a controversy which I know will prove sharp. I suppose by going in for an Uppingham scholarship I do not bind myself to go to that school.

I cannot help wanting to go to the Coll. For one thing for two years now–and two years recollect are quite a long time at the age of fourteen–I have been expecting to go to Malvern, not indeed with any great fervour, for I am happy here, but with as much pleasure as I look on any public school, and it has become rather a rooted idea. Then again, I know a good deal more of Malvern than I do of any where else, and it is in a sense familiar already. As well, I shall still be at the town of Malvern, and since I must needs spend the greater part of the year in England I had sooner do it here than anywhere else.

I am very glad indeed that Warnie has at last decided definitely on some career, as I know this will lift a great weight from your mind. I confess that I don’t know why you speak–as you have always spoken–so disparagingly of the Army Service Corps. It cannot be, can it, that you really liked the idea of putting W.

(#ulink_c96e351c-4d94-5612-a8dd-8839b48105bd) into the L.N.W.R.? I admit that there are great and lucrative posts to be gained in this company; greater than in the Army Service Corps. But the depths of drudgery for the less successful are also greater. In the A.S.C., W., it is true, may not follow a great career, but, what is far more important, he will be always doing congenial work and mixing with other gentlemen; not with every railway clerk who may wear loud spats and button the last button of his waistcoat.

(#ulink_183f861e-83ba-5aee-bb8b-94fae8a1387d)

I have got up today for a short time (Saturday), and am feeling almost all right. Hoping that your boils are better, and you are otherwise in good health, I am

your loving son,

Jack

TO HIS BROTHER (LP IV: 49-50):

Cherbourg.

Gt. Malvern.

[1? July 1913]

Dear old W.,

I have just heard from home the following statement, ‘I suppose you know that I am in further and worse trouble about Warnie’.

(#ulink_ed4ea812-6e8f-5ed2-a5ec-31a8fb10f3b0) What has happened? You haven’t been sacked have you? Whatever it is, I should be the last person to tell you that the plate is hot after you had burned your fingers, so we will look on the bright side as much as possible. After all we have always been justly famed for extracting the maximum of pleasure from the most depressing circumstances: let us live up to it.