All My Road Before Me

 Earlier in the summer I read a book called All My Road Before Me which was CS Lewis's diary from his twenties.  At the time he was a student at Oxford and then a graduate trying to get a teaching position, and he was sharing a house with Mrs Moore, the mother of his war friend Paddy Moore, who had died in combat.    He was an atheist and was writing a long narrative poem.    The diary was just that, a daily or near-daily account of what transpired that day, including what he read and wrote, people he encountered, conversations and social events he engaged in.   

I don't think he would have wanted the diary published, and indeed, it only came out after most if not all of the people he mentions in the pages had come to the end of their days.   His brother Warnie also kept a diary, and I've read some of it, but didn't find it quite as interesting.   I suppose some of the interest in Jack's diary comes from having read many of his books, and already knowing a bit about his life; but also, I think it helped that he wrote it somewhat narratively.   He often read the entries aloud to Mrs Moore at least in the first years, and so perhaps he tried to make it more like one of the long letters people used to write to each other when they were separated.   

CS Lewis was a reader.   He read constantly and variously.   Whenever he had a few moments he would pick up a book -- sometimes reading a few pages of an old favorite, sometimes whatever was on the shelf at a place where he was staying.  He had to read a lot as a student and then as a tutor, and he read far, far more than he was required to and it seems there were few genres he wouldn't spend at least some time with.    If I had to sum up his life as described in the diaries I would say:  he read, he wrote, he walked, he talked to people.  And he tried to scrape up money to provide for himself, Mrs Moore, and her daughter (plus occasional longterm visitors who needed a place to stay).  And he did household chores which Mrs Moore assigned him.   I think the last two things, which enraged his brother and some of his friends who would find him replacing the linoleum or walking the dog after a grueling day of classes, probably kept him from being a little too comfortable, just another Oxford bachelor scholar.   

IT was admirable to see how he could get through a long list of things he had to do in the day and then sit down and work on his poem, Dymer, in the few minutes he had left at night.   

There is something mysterious about a diary -- an on-the-ground account of daily things.