LITMIR.BIZ

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before chapel at 8. ‘Dean’s Prayers’—which I have before described to you—lasts about quarter of an hour. I then breakfast in common room with the Dean’s Prayers party (i.e. Adam Fox,⁴⁶ the chaplain, Benecke⁴⁷ and Christie) which is joined punctually by J. A. Smith⁴⁸ at about 8.25. I have usually left the room at about 8.40, and then saunter, go to the stool, answer notes etc till 9. From 9 till 1 is all pupils—an unconscionable long stretch for a man to act the gramaphone in. At one Lyddiatt⁴⁹ or Maureen is waiting for me with the car and I am carried home.

      My afternoons you know. Almost every afternoon as I set out hillwards with my spade, this place gives me all the thrill of novelty. The scurry of the waterfowl as you pass the pond, and the rich smell of autumnal litter as you leave the drive and strike into the little path, are always just as good as new. At 4.45 I am usually driven into College again, to be a gramaphone for two more hours, 5 till 7. At 7.15 comes dinner.

On Tuesday, which is my really shocking day, pupils come to me to read Beowulf at 8.30 and usually stay till about 11, so that when they have gone and I have glanced round the empty glasses and coffee cups and the chairs in the wrong places, I am glad enough to crawl to bed. Other standing engagements are on Thursday when a man called Horwood⁵⁰ (another English don) comes and reads Dante with me, every second Monday when the College literary society meets. When you have thrown in the usual irregular dinner engagements you will see that I am lucky when I have two evenings free after dinner.

The only exception to this programme (except of course Saturday when I have no pupils after tea) is Monday when I have no pupils at all. I have to employ a good deal of it in correcting transcripts done by B. Litt. pupils, and other odd jobs. It has also become a regular custom that Tolkien⁵¹ should drop in on me of a Monday morning and drink a glass. This is one of the pleasantest spots in the week. Sometimes we talk English school politics: sometimes we criticise one another’s poems: other days we drift into theology or ‘the state of the nation’: rarely we fly no higher than bawdy and ‘puns’.

What began as an excuse for not writing has developed into a typical diary or hebdomadal compendium. As to the last two week ends, they have both been occupied. The one before last I went to spend a night at Reading with a man called Hugo Dyson⁵²—now that I come to think of it, you heard all about him before you left. We had a grand evening. Rare luck to stay with a friend whose wife is so nice that one almost (I can’t say quite) almost regrets the change when he takes you up to his study for serious smoking and for the real midnight talking. You would enjoy Dyson very much for his special period is the late 17th century: he was much intrigued by your library when he was last in our room. He is a most fastidious bookman and made me (that same occasion) take out one of the big folios from the bottom shelf of the Leeboro bookcase because they were too tightly packed. He disapproved strongly of the method (wh. I confess I had always followed) of taking books out of the shelf by putting a finger at the top so—and adopts a different one: which you will find described in ‘Portrait of a Scholar’ in that book of essays you took away with you.⁵³

      At the same time he is as far from being a dilettante as anyone can be: a burly man, both in mind and body, with the stamp of the war on him, which begins to be a pleasing rarity, at any rate in civilian life. Lest anything should be lacking, he is a Christian and a lover of cats. The Dyson cat is called Mirralls, and is a Viscount. That accounts for one week end.

Last Saturday Barfield came down. He arrived unexpectedly for lunch in College—Saturday being my day for a rotatory lunch with Keir⁵⁴ and Lawson.⁵⁵ As it happened, Keir didn’t turn up, and the bore Lawson was neither here nor there. Barfield remarked afterwards that he went away feeling that Lawson had contributed most valuably to the conversation, though when he came to think it over he could not remember his having made a single rational remark. You know the type—the man who has an air of saying something interesting, which often carries you away.

Barfield and I then motored to the Kilns, took our packs (or rather your pack and mine) and set out to walk to the Barley Mow.⁵⁶ We failed to get any four o’clock [tea] at Marsh Baldon, but being both tired of work, and badly in need of a jaunt, we were too delighted to find ourselves on the road again and in each other’s company, to be dampened even by that. It was dark before we reached the B.M., and after a noble supper of ham and eggs and a little yawning at the fire in that panelled room (shared with the same couple whom you and I saw there) we went to bed. We lay in one room, mighty snug, and had a good deal of talk before it drifted off into prodigious yawns. We didn’t stir till about 9 the Sunday morning, he being delighted with the unaccustomed absence of a restless child (how do married men live?) and I glad enough not to have chapel at 8.

      That day we walked up Didcot Clumps (Sinodun Hills? Wittenham Clumps?) and crossed the Thames, not at Shillingford but at a ferry near Shillingford. As we reached the bank a torrent of dogs and one cat burst from the ferryman’s house on the far shore and got as near as they could on the bows of a barge: and when finally we were ferried across they all (cat included) leaped aboard us before we were well alongside with the frantic haste of porters or customs officials. The ferryman’s only explanation was the cryptic sentence ‘Brought us all together’ which he repeated about four times.

      The rest of the day was spent tramping along the route Warborough—Stadhampton-Denton-Cuddesdon-Wheatley-Kilns. It was a colourless autumn day—about a quarter of the leaves still hanging on the trees: you know—just a yellow freckle on the black timber. We had tea at Wheatley, Barfield denouncing birth control. I could not help thinking, though I hardly cared to say, that a man married to an obviously barren woman was in this matter an arm chair critic. We were both home for supper, both feeling enormously the better for our jaunt. It is curious how the actual length of a holiday and the feeling of length are almost in inverse ratio. We had the sensation of having been away from our routine for an almost endless time.

      Looking back on our own last trip I feel the same. I can believe that we were only a day and two nights at Larne: as for Castlerock, we seem we have been there for weeks, in all kinds of weather and at different seasons of the year. Did we really walk only twice to the tunnel? In retrospect, by the bye, the thing that wears best of all in my mind is the narrow gauge journey: the journey back, of course, is—like a lane by a brickyard on a hot day. Before Barfield went to bed that night (in your room) I gave him your will and he is doubtless now re-writing it in unintelligible language.

Which reminds me—I have had a letter from Condlin⁵⁷ about the Templeton family: but what he is saying about them, or whether he has found them, I can’t for the life of me make out. Did I tell you that his acknowledgment of the £100 tip was not very enthusiastic? I don’t say it was definitely chilly—nor, by the way, do I know how far Condlin’s epistolary style is adapted for registering surprise or pleasure—or, for the matter of that, anything whatever on any subject.

I have also heard from the Tower of Glass⁵⁸ to say that they have at last got the Bishop’s authority (he doesn’t kill himself with work, does he? Prissy prelatical dog!) and also-which pleased me less, that the Rev. Chevasse⁵⁹

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