C. S. Lewis: A Biography

2 OXFORD: THE WAR AND AFTER (#ulink_4bfa134f-f42e-5ae4-bfcd-f5c3cd3d1d43)

Jack Lewis returned to Oxford on 20 March 1917, lodged in the same digs as before, and presented himself to take Responsions. In this exam he was ‘handsomely ploughed’,

(#ulink_1ec2a205-3a59-5cd1-ba8d-6bdcad48cc23) on account of his inability to cope satisfactorily with mathematics – in particular algebra. In spite of this, however, he was allowed to come into residence in the Trinity Term so as to be able to pass into the Army by way of the University Officers’ Training Corps. From the academic point of view he was supposed to be reading for Responsions, and even went for algebra lessons to J.E. Campbell of Hertford College. But he never, in fact, passed Responsions; and after the war was able to take up his scholarship at Univ. without having done so, ex-servicemen being exempted from any need to pass it. ‘Otherwise,’ he commented, ‘I should have had to abandon the idea of going to Oxford.’

(#ulink_78b8dc34-f82e-50f6-8670-9fe4ee0ec866)

On Thursday, 26 April, after a three-week holiday in Belfast, he arrived at University College for his brief interlude before going into the Army. He matriculated on 28 April and joined the Officers’ Training Corps on 30 April. By this time Lewis was under the spell of Oxford, writing long, lyrical descriptions to Arthur Greeves of all that he was doing and seeing and reading.

He had Room 5 on Staircase XII of Radcliffe Quad, a suite filled with the furniture of some pre-war member of the college still at the front, or perhaps long dead. ‘It is getting to be quite homely to me, this room,’ he wrote on 28 April after only two days, ‘especially when I come back to it by firelight and find the kettle boiling. How I love kettles! Dinner is not in Hall now, as there are only twelve men in College, but in a small lecture room, and the dons don’t turn up. For all other meals the scout brings you your cover in your rooms.’

(#ulink_4cd7d5c7-ee48-50e1-a793-cc671a61220a) ‘The place is on the whole absolutely ripping,’ he wrote on 6 May. ‘If only you saw the quad on these moonlit nights with the long shadows lying half across the level perfect grass and the tangle of towers & spires beyond in the dark!’

(#ulink_3e104e55-e275-5829-83f6-fab97d16c78d)

Very soon Lewis discovered the river, going boating on most afternoons, bathing at Parson’s Pleasure ‘without the tiresome convention of bathing things’,

(#ulink_a141fcae-86d3-5c9a-b02e-d62dc247f6bf) and generally revelling in the usual delights of a first Summer Term. Soon, too, he discovered the bookshops – of which there were many more than there are now, and all still independent. In his letter of 6 May he told Arthur he had made the acquaintance of the College library, and ‘still better is the Library of the Union Society (a club everyone belongs to)’.

(#ulink_3e7cc7ec-3278-57fe-91ab-d37239e3ca77) ‘It has a writing room of strictest silence,’ he wrote to Arthur on 13 May, ‘and an admirable library where I have passed many happy hours and hope to pass many more.’

(#ulink_647ae414-b39d-58d1-9cec-30823a5e89d1)

The happy time at Univ. came to an end on 7 June when Lewis joined a cadet battalion. He was, however, fortunate in that the battalion was quartered in Keble College, so that he was to remain in Oxford for another three months. Writing to his father on 10 June, he said,

at first when I left my own snug quarters and my own friends at Univ. for a carpetless little cell with two beds (minus sheets or pillows) at Keble, and got into a Tommy’s uniform, I will not deny that I thought myself very ill used … My chief friend is Somerville, scholar of Eton and scholar of King’s, Cambridge, a very quiet sort of person, but very booky and interesting. Moore of Clifton, my room companion, and Sutton of Repton (the company humorist) are also very good fellows. The former is a little too childish for real companionship, but I will forgive him much for his appreciation of Newbolt.*

‘Though the work is very hard and not very interesting, I am quite reconciled to my lot. It is doing me a lot of good,’ he confided to Greeves that same day:

I have made a number of excellent friends … My room-mate Moore (of Clifton) is quite a good fellow, tho’ a little too childish and virtuous for ‘common nature’s daily food’. The advantages of being in Oxford are very great asI can get weekend leave (from 1 o’clock Saturday till 11 o’clock p.m. Sunday) and go to Univ. where I enjoy the rare luxury of sheets and a long sleep …

I am in a strangely productive mood at present and spend my few moments of spare time in scribbling verse. When my four months course in the cadet battalion is at an end, I shall, supposing I get a commission all right, have a four weeks leave before joining my regiment. During it I propose to get together all the stuff I have perpetrated and see if any kind publisher would like to take it. After that, if the fates decide to kill me at the front, I shall enjoy a nine days immortality while friends who know nothing about poetry imagine that I must have been a genius – what usually happens in such cases. In the meantime my address is – No. 738 Cadet C.S. Lewis, ‘E’ Company, Keble College, Oxford.

(#ulink_66ecc55a-8941-5ebd-9a88-d88a94d61726)

While he continued to see Martin Somerville and his other friends, a close bond developed quickly between Lewis and his room-mate, Edward Francis Courtenay ‘Paddy’ Moore. Paddy was exactly Lewis’s age, and his sister Maureen was eleven. Their mother, Mrs Janie Askins Moore, was born in Pomeroy, County Tyrone, on 28 March 1872, the daughter of a Church of Ireland clergyman. In 1897 she married Edward Francis Courtney Moore. They lived in Dublin, where Mr Moore was an engineer. Mr and Mrs Moore separated in 1907 and Mrs Moore moved with the children to Bristol to be near one of her brothers. Paddy had been educated there at Clifton College, and when he was sent to Oxford for training with the Officers’ Training Corps, Mrs Moore and Maureen came with him. They took rooms in Wellington Square, a short distance from Keble College, and almost at once Lewis was a favoured guest. He, in turn, was able to show Paddy and his family the hospitality of Univ., and Lewis clearly liked their company.

The Dean of Univ. soon made Lewis’s double life impossible, and he was forced to give up his room. ‘This week end, as you gather, I am again spending in Univ.,’ he wrote to Greeves on 8 July. ‘Do you know, Ami, I am more homesick for this College than ever I was for Little Lea. I love every stone in it.’

(#ulink_1a05dbca-2804-5571-97ff-414ef0bd07cf)

After a brief leave in Belfast (9–11 August) Jack wrote to his father on 27 August 1917:

You must have been wondering what had come over me, but I hope that the crowded time I have been having since I left home will serve as someexcuse. First of all came the week at Warwick, which was a nightmare … We came back on Saturday, and the following weekend I spent with Moore at the digs of his mother who, as I mentioned, is staying at Oxford. I like her immensely and thoroughly enjoyed myself. On Wednesday as you know, Warnie was up here and we had a most enjoyable afternoon and evening together, chiefly at my rooms in Univ. How I wish you could have been there too. But please God I shall be able to see you at Oxford and show you my ‘sacred city’ in happier times.

(#ulink_f4d0c6c3-13b1-5e02-93c9-9e774740357c)

‘The next amusement on our programme’, he wrote again on 10 September, ‘is a three-day bivouac up in the Wytham hills. As it has rained all the time for two or three days, our model trenches up there will provide a very unnecessarily good imitation of Flanders mud. You know how I always disapproved of realism in art!’

(#ulink_76dbb299-725c-5b30-bc24-f8a7b5600b9c)

This was followed by an exam on 25 September 1917, which seems to have been little more than a formality. The next day Jack was given a temporary commission in the Army and a month’s leave. Albert Lewis waited in vain for Jack to come home, and he was saddened and puzzled to learn that Jack had gone to Bristol to visit Paddy Moore and his family. ‘I suppose you must have been wondering what had become of your prodigal son,’ Jack wrote to his father on 3 October. ‘We got away from Keble on Saturday, and instead of staying in Oxford with the Moores I came down here to their home in Bristol … On Monday a cold (complete with sore throat) which I had developed at Oxford, went on so terribly that Mrs Moore took my temperature and put me to bed, where I am writing this letter.’

(#ulink_9510951e-ccf7-5c58-871b-f6e7baf9e201)

This stay in Bristol was to have far-reaching consequences. Lewis and Paddy, and indeed Mrs Moore too, would have known that the slaughter of young officers at this period in the war was very great and that their chances of surviving the war were slim. However, despite Paddy’s conviction that he would come back, Maureen was to recall hearing her brother and Jack promise one another that if only one survived the war the survivor would look after Paddy’s mother and Jack’s father. Mrs Moore was to mention the promise to Albert Lewis after the war. While Jack was still with the Moores in Bristol Paddy learned that he had been placed in the Rifle Brigade, and he crossed to France ahead of Lewis.

In the end Jack didn’t reach Belfast until Friday, 12 October, and he was with his father for only a few days. On the 16th he was gazetted into the Somerset Light Infantry, and on Thursday, 18 October he left home to join his regiment at Crownhill, South Devon.

While at home Jack had talked with Arthur Greeves, and the first suggestion that Lewis’s feelings for Mrs Moore approached infatuation comes in the letter he wrote Arthur from his army base at Crownhill on 28 October.

Since coming back and meeting a certain person, I have begun to realize that it was not at all the right thing for me to tell you so much as I did. I must therefore try to undo my actions as far as possible by asking you to try and forget my various statements and not to refer to the subject … And now to tell you all the news. I am quite fairly comfortable here, we are in huts: but I have a room to myself with a fire in it and so am quite snug.

(#ulink_980d08a0-2090-52f2-b189-27043e30a2a1)

But suddenly the dreaded summons to the front reached him. At 5.55 p.m. on 15 November 1917 Jack wired desperately to his father: ‘Have arrived Bristol on 48 hours leave. Report Southampton Saturday. Can you come Bristol. If so meet at Station. Reply Mrs Moore’s address 56 Ravenswood Road, Redlands, Bristol. Jack.’

(#ulink_1786a1b3-e811-5993-8dbc-37e9e35877ba)

‘No one in Great Britain getting Jack’s wire would have had a moment’s doubt that he was on the eve of embarkation for overseas service,’

(#ulink_fddd28ce-c646-5863-8d5e-12bbc557051b) wrote Warnie. But Albert Lewis simply wired back: ‘Don’t understand telegram. Please write.’

(#ulink_b1dbb106-49a3-5593-995e-f14bb7a6925f) Even more desperately Jack wired back at 11.20 the following morning: ‘Orders France. Reporting Southampton 4 p.m. Saturday. If coming wire immediately.’

(#ulink_d4b6c404-6e16-5af8-adc1-5fe2c0127d8b)

Albert Lewis did not come, and Jack crossed to France on 17 November 1917. ‘This is really a very sudden and unpleasant surprise,’ he wrote to his father from France on 21 November. ‘I had no notion of it until I was sent off on my forty-eight hours final leave, in fact I thought they were ragging me when they told me. I am now at a certain very safe base town where we live comfortably in huts as we did at Crownhill.’

(#ulink_8aa102ee-d72b-54a4-ab39-8e90380e2986)

Lewis arrived at the front-line trenches on his nineteenth birthday, 29 November. To his great surprise he found that the captain of his company, P.G.K. Harris, was none other than ‘Pogo’ who taught him at Cherbourg School. Years before, Lewis said, the flashy Pogo had instilled in him the desire for ‘glitter, swagger, distinction, the desire to be in the know’.

(#ulink_ac17430e-7f42-58ce-b391-70fc6543147b) The years since Cherbourg and the war had changed both pupil and master. Lewis says in Surprised by Joy, ‘As I emerged from the shaft into the dug-out and blinked in the candle-light I noticed that the Captain to whom I was reporting was a master whom I had liked more than I had respected at one of my schools. I ventured to claim acquaintance. He admitted in a low, hurried voice that he had once been a schoolmaster, and the topic was never raised between us again.’

(#ulink_d20e25b1-0a30-5f99-ace9-023cb3f8f15f) Lewis may never have known of Harris’s heroism. For his bravery at Verchain in October 1918 Captain Harris was awarded the Military Cross; his gallantry at Preseau on 1 November 1918 won him a glowing place in military histories.

(#ulink_e6e3f377-9d76-5e7d-99fd-07c4901bc73d)

Meanwhile, Albert Lewis was very worried about his son and, believing that he would be safer in the artillery than in the infantry, he contacted Colonel James Craig, MP for the East Division of Co. Down, asking if he could get Jack transferred. ‘I am at present in billets in a certain rather battered town somewhere behind the line,’ Jack wrote to his father on 13 December.

(#ulink_84003407-18f8-5d0d-babb-f5ca799ddf40) As Mr Lewis laboured to have his son transferred, Jack fell ill at the beginning of February 1918 with what the troops called ‘trench fever’ and the doctors PUO (pyrexia, unknown origin). He was sent for a pleasant three weeks at No. 10 British Red Cross Hospital at Le Tréport.

He remained in hospital for the rest of the month, with one slight relapse early on, writing more and more nostalgic letters to Arthur Greeves about their quiet days together in Belfast and his own brief stay in Oxford. Arthur was worried that, because of Lewis’s love for Mrs Moore, their friendship was imperilled. ‘I must admit,’ Jack wrote to him on 2 February 1918, ‘fate has played strange with me since last winter: I feel I have definitely got into a new epoch of life and one feels extraordinarily helpless over it … As for the older days of real walks far away in the hills … Perhaps you don’t believe that I want all that again, because other things more important have come in: but after all there is room for other things besides love in a man’s life.’

(#ulink_88774e4b-c2f6-5814-a06a-58f0f6b33aa2)

He returned to the front on 28 February, but was out of the immediate fighting area when the Germans launched their great spring offensive on 21 March utilizing all the additional troops withdrawn from the Eastern Front after the collapse of revolution-ridden Russia.