The Year 1940 (219)
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The Year 1940 (219) Summary: The first regular weekly Thursday meeting of the Inklings takes place on an April evening, perhaps on April 4, although they may have met occasionally on Thursdays prior to this date. On July 14 in a worship service, Jack got the idea for The Screwtape Letters. On October 18, The Problem of Pain was published. In November, Jack made his first confession to Father Walter Adams, the Society of St. John the Evangelist. Probably in this year, Jack took up duties with the Local Defense Volunteers. On November 14, Jack delivered his last paper to the Martlets on “The Kappa Element in Romance.” Because of the war, there is no walking tour for Jack and Warren. Three evacuee schoolgirls, Margaret Leyland, Mary, and Katherine, arrive at the Kilns from London in January and stay until July. They come from the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Hammersmith near London. A review of Lewis’s A Preface to Paradise Lost appears in English, 4. (?) In this year, Jack’s poem “Hermione in the House of Paulina” appears in Augury: An Oxford Miscellany of Verse and Prose.1 Lewis’ poem, “Essence,” addresses the nature of the individual.2 “Why I Am Not a Pacifist” is given to a pacifist society in Oxford in 1940 but not published before appearing in The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses. Warren Lewis’s diaries contain no information about 1940-1942, probably because of his service in the war. Out of the Silent Planet is reissued as “The First Cheap Edition.”3 At some point during this decade, Jack has been alleged to have written to Jesuit Father Guy Brinkworth, requesting prayers that God might give him light to understand whether or not to convert to Catholicism.4 January 1940 January 2 Tuesday. Presumably, the Inklings meet at the Eagle and Child at 11:30 a.m. in the morning. January 4 Thursday. Presumably, the Inklings meet in Jack’s rooms at Magdalen in the evening. January 5 Friday. In the morning Maureen drives Jack as far as Bath, stopping briefly at Bibury. She drops him at the Bath train station. Jack waits for an hour, enjoying a glass of sherry, a pork pie, and a cup of coffee. He takes the train to Bristol and from Bristol to Taunton. He arrives at Minehead to meet Harwood for a walking tour at about 6:30 p.m. Jack dines with the Harwoods and returns to his hotel at about 10:30 p.m. in Harwood’s car. While both are at Minehead, Harwood gives Jack a copy of The Fleeting: and Other Poems, authored by Walter de la Mare.5 January 6 Saturday. Jack walks to Harwood’s home, and they leave together for Porlock. They arrive first at 1:00 p.m. at Luccombe, a village without a pub. They find a place for tea, bread, cheese, and jam. They walk through the valley of the Horner, eventually arriving in Porlock. After hot baths, they have tea in the lounge of the hotel. They invite the master at Charterhouse to dine with them. In the evening Jack and Harwood read to one another from Jane Austen’s The Watsons. January 7 Sunday. They leave with Porlock Bay in front of them and eventually walk into Selworthy for lunch. They sit in the drawing room until 3:00 p.m. Then they walk back into Minehead, and Jack returns to his original hotel. Jack reads Charles Gore’s Philosophy of the Good Life in front of a fire. In the evening Jack treats Harwood and Walter Field to dinner in his hotel. January 8 Monday. Jack looks for the house in which Dyson is allegedly staying with his in-laws, but he never finds it. He lunches in a pub, then dines with Cecil and Daphne Harwood that evening. January 9 Tuesday. Jack leaves in the morning for home and finishes Charles Gore’s book, Philosophy of the Good Life, on the journey. Jack writes to Warren about his brief walking tour with Harwood on January 5-7. 1 Light on C. S. Lewis, 138. 2 Don King, ed., The Collected Poems of C. S. Lewis, 223, thinks the poem was written in 1929. 3 Edwin Brown, In Pursuit of C. S. Lewis, Part 2, 35. 4 Christopher Derrick, C. S. Lewis and the Church of Rome: A Study in Proto-Ecumenism, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981, 214f. 5 Wroxton College Library. January 10 Wednesday. Hilary Term begins. January 11 Thursday. Presumably, the Inklings meet in Jack’s rooms at Magdalen in the evening. January 13 Saturday. This is the date when Jack says in a letter to Warren that term begins. Sir Brian Hone dines with Jack this evening as a Rhodes scholar under his tutelage.6 Jack sleeps this night in College. January 14 Sunday. The scout Hatton brings Jack tea at 7:15, and Jack shaves. Jack reads some of Reinhold Niebuhr’s Interpretation of Christian Ethics. He has also been reading Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers. Humphrey Havard comes to the Kilns and skates in the afternoon. Leonard Blake, the future husband of Maureen, “threatens” to visit. Jack goes to 3:00 Evensong. Jack writes to Warren about his visit with Harwood on the walking tour, Hone, Hatton, and the war. January 16 Tuesday. Presumably, the Inklings meet at the Eagle and Child at 11:30 a.m. in the morning. January 17 Wednesday. Jack writes to Griffiths about Platonism, matter, Fascism, and Communism, having read The Scale of Perfection by Walter Hilton,7 Augustinian canon of Thurgarton Priory, Nottinghamshire, with an introduction by Dom Noetinger, R. W. Chambers’ On the Continuity of English Prose from Alfred to More and his School, and also Chambers’ Man’s Unconquerable Mind: Studies of English Writers, from Bede to A. E. Housman and W. P. Ker. He recommends John Galt’s The Entail. January 18 Thursday. Presumably, the Inklings meet in Jack’s rooms at Magdalen in the evening. January 19 Friday. Jack attends a meeting of the Tutorial Board, which ends at 3:00 p.m., and the pious Discussion Group, which starts at 4:00 p.m. It is part of the Student Christian Movement. He walks through Mesopotamia and Addison’s Walk afterwards. January 20 Saturday. Jack has tutorials in the morning and leaves Magdalen College at 1:00 p.m. In the afternoon he walks around Shotover.8 January 21 Sunday. Jack takes a walk in the morning, has coffee, and begins to write to Warren. Then he heads to church. Jack finishes writing to Warren about Warren’s illness, teetotalism, the caste system in India, a literary competition about Samuel Johnson, skating, and his walk to church. Jack attends the 3:00 p.m. service at Holy Trinity. January 22 Monday. Jack returns to College after breakfast and has a free morning. Tolkien comes to see Jack. January 23 Tuesday. Presumably, the Inklings meet at the Eagle and Child at 11:30 a.m. in the morning. January 25 Thursday. Jack writes to Alec Vidler, enclosing a copy of his article “Christianity and Culture.” Jack spends part of the afternoon in the old library, browsing through the works of Dr. John Dee, a mathematician and astrologer in the time of Queen Elizabeth. In the evening Jack attends the Inklings meeting in his rooms during which Tolkien reads a chapter of the new Hobbit. The Daily Mail runs a story about the Finns seeing angels during the war. January 26 Friday. Parker attends the Discussion Group that Jack attends in the afternoon at 4:00 p.m. January 27 Saturday. Warren is granted the temporary rank of Major. January 28 Sunday. Jack writes to Warren about Warren’s convalescence and letter-writing, Jack’s memories of his war experience, two religious parties he has attended this week, Dr. Dee, Mr. Laski, and Trevor-Roper’s book on Laud. Jack gives the paper “Psychoanalysis and Literary Criticism” to the English Adventurers Society, a literary society at Westfield College in Oxford, a college based in St. Peter’s Hall, later known as St. Peter’s College. Jack has been reading Joseph Hall, Virgidemiarum: First Three Bookes, of Toothless Satyrs and Cicero’s De Legibus. He notes that Weldon and Mackenzie have left Magdalen to serve in the armed forces. January 29 Monday. Charles Williams begins a series of lectures in the Taylorian Building on Milton, which Jack, Tolkien, and Hopkins attend. Jack and Tollers (Tolkien) meet at Magdalen at 10:45 a.m. and take Hopkins to the Divinity School.9 After the lecture, they retire to the Mitre with Charles 6 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_William_Hone 7 An English Christian mystic who lived during the fourteenth century, best known for The Scale of Perfection. 8 Collected Letters, II, 329, 313 9 To Michal from Serge, 42. Williams for sherry. In the afternoon Jack walks around the Kilns with Taylor, examining animal tracks. In the evening, Jack goes to St. Peter’s in New Inn Hall Street to dine and read the same paper he read on the previous day, “Psychoanalysis and Literary Criticism.” He sits next to the Principal, Mrs. Mary Stocks. After dinner, they drink coffee until it is time to go to the room where the paper will be read. Jack reads his paper. January 30 Tuesday. Presumably, the Inklings meet at the Eagle and Child at 11:30 a.m. in the morning. January 31 Wednesday. On approximately this night, Lewis and Tolkien attend a performance of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Playhouse.