30 (#ulink_198d289a-2087-5b8b-90ca-ad4e4f5dfa3f) A didactic poem in four books of hexameters by Virgil on the various forms of rural industry. It was written between 37 and 30 BC.
31 (#ulink_19a68d50-3572-567d-b72d-702479168eeb) Naomi Mitchison, Black Sparta (1928).
32 (#ulink_baf711fa-5e32-57fd-b29d-33b008897650) Jean Froissart’s Chroniques (c. 1373–1400) is a lively, though sometimes inaccurate, record of Europe in the fourteenth century with particular emphasis on the first half of the Hundred Years’ War between France and England. The best-known translation is that by Lord Berners, published 1923–5. Lewis was using the Globe Edition of The Chronicles of Froissart, trans. John Bouchier, Lord Berners. ed. and reduced into one volume by G. M. Macaulay (1924).
33 (#ulink_37ec5c32-dda0-5260-a591-079d1c285257) Sir Walter Scott, The Heart of Midlothian (1818).
34 (#ulink_37ec5c32-dda0-5260-a591-079d1c285257) Scott, The Antiquary, ch. 35. After remarking that he never tastes anything ‘after sun-set’, Mr Oldbuck says to Lord Glenallan: ‘A broiled bone, or a smoked haddock, or an oyster, or a slice of bacon of our own curing, with a toast and a tankard or something or other of that sort, to close the orifice of the stomach before going to bed, does not fall under my restriction, nor. I hope, under your Lordship’s.’
35 (#ulink_496cc77b-e004-50df-a7e1-e9572e73de92) Anthroposophy is a religious system founded by Rudolf Steiner (1861–1925). Steiner’s aim was to develop the faculty of spirit cognition inherent in ordinary people and to put them in touch with the spiritual world from which materialism had caused them to be estranged. Owen Barfield and Cecil Harwood became Anthroposophists in 1923. Lewis was later to write in SB/, ch. 13. p. 161: ‘Barfield’s conversion to Anthroposophy marked the beginning of what I can only describe as the Great War between him and me…it was an almost incessant disputation, sometimes by letter and sometimes face to face, which lasted for years.’ Perhaps the most important of the ‘Great War’ documents is Lewis’s unpublished Metaphysices contra Anthroposophos- better known as the Summa after its model by St Thomas Aquinas. For an account of the ‘Great War’ see Lionel Adey, G S. Lewis’s Great War with Owen Barfield (British Columbia, University of Victoria, ELS Monograph Series no. 14, 1978; new edn, Rosley, Ink Books, 2002). Lewis eventually got over his disagreement with Barfield and Harwood.
36 (#ulink_729bcd52-9767-5957-9562-6d60dbe1af2e) Barfield was taking the examinations required for practice as a solicitor.
37 (#ulink_729bcd52-9767-5957-9562-6d60dbe1af2e) ‘The Tower’ is a long poem by Owen Barfield, much admired by Lewis. It has never been published.
38 (#ulink_db3c2848-de0c-5b02-9479-6432f753a83d) Geoffrey Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, The Nun’s Priest’s Tale, 474: ‘But I ne kan nat bullet it to the bren’: ‘But I cannot sift the chaff from the grain.’
39 (#ulink_db3c2848-de0c-5b02-9479-6432f753a83d) ‘pain’.
40 (#ulink_db3c2848-de0c-5b02-9479-6432f753a83d) ‘vexation’.
41 (#ulink_a3d038ca-7e76-59f3-b4cd-9162643e6661) Kenneth Bruce McFarlane (1903–661 took a BA from Exeter College, Oxford, in 1925 and was Tutor in Modern History at Magdalen College, 1927–66.
42 (#ulink_a3d038ca-7e76-59f3-b4cd-9162643e6661) Edward Hope (1866–1953) took a Sc.D. from Manchester and in 1919 was elected Fellow and Tutor in Natural Science at Magdalen and Lecturer in Chemistry. Lewis provides a portrait of him in the Magdalen College Appendix to AMR: ‘This is one of those men in whom knowledge and intellect have taken up their abode without making any difference: they are added on to a decent drab nonentity of character, and the character has not been transformed. If you wiped out his technical knowledge there would be nothing left to distinguish him from any respectable shopkeeper in Tottenham Court Road…’
43 (#ulink_f39a22cd-1ab1-5641-b87c-7410878a6ea6) Nothing is known of Mr Kenchew except that he was a teacher of geography who failed to win Maureen’s affections.
44 (#ulink_8ca2b61a-78e8-5827-a988-c86559296c30) John Gibson Lockhart, Memoirs of the Life of Scott, 10 vols. (1839).
45 (#ulink_8ca2b61a-78e8-5827-a988-c86559296c30) Una Pope-Hennessy, The Laird of Abbotsford; an Informal Presentation of Sir Walter Scott (1932).
46 (#ulink_8ca2b61a-78e8-5827-a988-c86559296c30) John Christie, The Oxford Magazine, L (10 March 1932), pp. 570–1: ‘In truth Dame Una seems less interested in the author of Waverly than, to use her own phrase, in “spicy gossip”…It was bound to come, this bright, inquisitive, anything but intimate portrait of Sir Walter, with his foibles, his snobbery, and his subterfuges touched in with loving care, and most of the deeper traits left out.’
47 (#ulink_936ee868-555f-5f25-b95e-89e7499c440f) Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh (1903).
48 (#ulink_bb0ef138-94c7-5663-85cf-d8405efc5ce4) Robert Bridges (1844–1930), Poet Laureate from 1913. Lewis had enjoyed his poetry when he was younger.
49 (#ulink_bb0ef138-94c7-5663-85cf-d8405efc5ce4) Martin Tupper (1810–89), whose four series of Proverbial Philosophy 11838–761, maxims and reflections couched in rhythmical form, were the favourite of many who knew nothing about poetry.
50 (#ulink_981ac7fc-3cb0-5aeb-b55d-7e86390bd6f8) The Baron of Bradwardine is a character in Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley (18141; Soames Forsyte is a character in John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga (1922); Arthur Kipps is a character in H. G. Wells’s Kipps (1905).
51 (#ulink_0d8d391c-7f5f-5949-a8ca-2e55f4454d46) Arthur Denis Blackford Wood (1907–92), after liking his BA in 1929, joined the family firm of William Wood & Son Ltd., landscape gardeners, Taplow. He served with the RAF, 1941–5. Later he published a number of books on gardening: Terrace and Courtyard Gardens for Modern Homes (1965], (with Kate Crosby) Grow it and Cook It (1975), and Practical Garden Design (1976). Mr Wood, on being shown this letter, said he was ‘engaged in one, continuing, happy love-affair’ as an undergraduate, and that he thinks Lewis may have confused him with someone else.
52 (#ulink_1f7290b0-c399-5db5-ab5c-5b3d8ac8a276) Arthur worked for his brother Thomas Jackson Greeves (1886–1974), a linen merchant, 1915–17.
53 (#ulink_b7066b6a-3288-5519-b9dc-a8ebded3cef0) Charles Morgan, The Fountain (1932).
54 (#ulink_0f16cd18-a0d8-513c-a922-321c4dcf09ff) Their mother’s sister, Mrs Lilian ‘Lily’ Suffern (1860–1934), the eldest daughter of the Rev. Thomas Hamilton. An ardent suffragette, she quarrelled with everyone in her family. Following the death of her husband. William, in 1913 she was constantly on the move, but wherever she lived she bombarded Jack with books and a pseudo-metaphysical correspondence. After her widowhood the poetry of Robert Browning became her chief intellectual solace.
55 (#ulink_c62463d9-809f-587f-8090-253fece76f34) Torquato Tasso, Gerusalemme Liberata (1581).
56 (#ulink_c62463d9-809f-587f-8090-253fece76f34) Singlestick was a method of fighting or fencing with a wooden stick provided with a large basket-handle and requiring only one hand. It was used by young boys and people of ‘inferior quality’ or social standing. A good description of it is found in Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857).
57 (#ulink_51a5738c-222c-5f6e-9fe0-8ddb1682a80a) Pearl Buck, The Good Earth (1931).
58 (#ulink_51a5738c-222c-5f6e-9fe0-8ddb1682a80a) William Douglas Robson-Scott (1900–80) was at University College, Oxford, at the same time as Lewis. He took his BA in 1923, and went on to teach German Language and Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London. Lewis mentions his malapropisms ¦n his letter to Warnie of 18 April 1927 (CL I, p. 694).
59 (#ulink_339e8566-2138-5085-8974-6b4f022ddcff) John 10:16.
60 (#ulink_339e8566-2138-5085-8974-6b4f022ddcff) Indian Civil Service.
61 (#ulink_5d67ab35-ef85-5af0-9bcb-6933fc98949c) (Sir) Eric Beckett (1896–1966), who sometimes walked with Lewis and the others, was a particular friend of Barfield. He was educated at Wadham College, where he took a First in Jurisprudence in 1921. He was a Fellow of All Souls., Oxford, 1921–8. He was called to the Bar in 1922 and was Assistant Legal Adviser to the Foreign Office, 1925–45, and Legal Adviser, 1955–8.
62 (#ulink_5d67ab35-ef85-5af0-9bcb-6933fc98949c) Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1783, vol. IV, p. 197: ‘I shall never forget the indulgence with which he treated Hodge, his cat…I recollect him one day scrambling up Dr. Johnson’s breast, apparently with much satisfaction, while my friend smiling and half-whistling, rubbed down his back, and pulled him by the tail; and when I observed he was a fine cat, saying, “why yes, Sir, but I have had cats whom I liked better than this;” and then as if perceiving Hodge to be out of countenance, adding, “but he is a very fine cat, a very fine cat indeed.”’
63 (#ulink_aad72558-c29e-5fab-92f6-82e4f3a0f93f) Charles and Mary Lamb, Letters 1796–1820, vol. I (1912), letter from Charles Lamb to Samuel T. Coleridge of 13 February 1797: ‘1 have had thoughts of turning Quaker…Unluckily I went to [a meeting] and saw a man under all tile agitations and workings of a fanatic, who believed himself under the influence of some “inevitable presence.” This cured me of Quakerism…I detest the vanity of a man thinking he speaks by the Spirit, when what he says an ordinary man might say without all that quaking and trembling’ (p. 97).
64 (#ulink_e3619f08-6719-5921-9fe1-6dce35d3e117) Arundel Castle, the chief seat of the Duke of Norfolk.
65 (#ulink_516bfa28-cc35-56dd-9e01-8d750de41874) Hillsboro-not ‘Hillsborough’—is the house at 14 Holyoake Road, Headington, where Lewis and the Moores lived most of [he time from April 1923 until they moved into The Kilns in October 1930.
66 (#ulink_c5de3c38-a598-5da9-98a1-20a90af7df6c) Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, Anthropology: An Introduction to the Study of Man and Civilization (1881; Thinker’s Library. 1930).
67 (#ulink_c5de3c38-a598-5da9-98a1-20a90af7df6c) See W. T. Kirkpatrick (1848–1921) in the Biographical Appendix to CL I. Kirkpatrick, ‘the Great Knock’, was a friend of the Lewis family and prepared Jack for Oxford. He is the subject of SBJ, ch. 9.
68 (#ulink_c5de3c38-a598-5da9-98a1-20a90af7df6c) Molière, Comedies, trans. Henry Baker and J. Miller, with an introduction by Frederick C. Green, Everyman’s Library (1929).
69 (#ulink_4b9e0194-a63e-57fc-8ea7-92a4e9f44feb) The Reverend Frank Edward Brightman FBA (1856–1932), who died on 31 March 1932, was a distinguished liturgiologist and a Fellow of Magdalen College since 1902. His publications include The English Rite, 2 vols. (1915). For more on Brightman see note 5 to the letter of 5 January 1926 (CL I, p. 658).
70 (#ulink_7a4e0527-dc13-5bfb-8b58-11e10888dde4) In SBJ, ch. 5, Lewis recalls the moment he came across a reference to Richard Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen. Lewis came to love the entire Ring cycle on gramophone records, but it was not until this occasion (Monday 16 May 1932) that he saw Siegfried performed on stage.
71 (#ulink_81bf35d8-5321-5d4f-9ab7-45935d0347f2) This is the only surviving portion of the autobiographical poem Lewis wrote.
72 (#ulink_da326dfe-fad3-5630-a026-64c579b03aaf) In the end Lewis went to Siegfried alone on 16 May 1932. The cast included Lauritz Melchior as Siegfried, Eduard Habich as Alberich, Frida Leider as Brunhild and Friedrich Schorr as Wotan. An account of the performance was given in The Times (17 May 1932) p. 8.
73 (#ulink_e1a84ca5-e064-5079-9a5e-78686104d1da) When students were taking their final examinations or ‘Schools’ in the Examination Schools building in the High Street, dons took turns ‘invigilating’, that is, keeping watch over the students.
74 (#ulink_79545309-d587-5164-8882-0a5405b51968) This was Lewis’s nickname for Percy Simpson (1865–1962) who with his wife, Evelyn M. Simpson, and C. H. Herford, edited the eleven volumes of Ben Jonson’s Works (1925–52). He was the librarian of the new English faculty library, and a lecturer on textual criticism.
75 (#ulink_424dbc4a-13ba-560d-94c7-9e030cf3f249) William Makepeace Thackeray, Pendennis (1848–50).
76 (#ulink_894c5e3b-b4c3-5291-bdc0-96beb3904857) Dante Alighieri (1265–1321), The Divine Comedy (comprising Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso).
77 (#ulink_265ef9f3-456f-55f2-8837-b910f7b0962c) Lewis was remembering the visit he and Warnie took to Whipsnade Zoo in Warnie’s motorbike and sidecar on 28 September 1931. The part that visit played in Lewis’s conversion is recounted in the last chapter of SBJ. See CL I, p. 972.
78 (#ulink_5573f4bc-7b55-5985-b137-a32945ab5633) Charles Lamb, Letters, ed. William Macdonald, with notes and illustrations. Introduction by Ernest Rhys (Everyman’s Library, 1909).
79 (#ulink_5573f4bc-7b55-5985-b137-a32945ab5633) Lewis was planning a trip to Ireland in August, and he hoped to visit the village of Ardglass in Co. Down known for its interesting lighthouse.
