C. S. Lewis: A Biography. Walter Hooper
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and best-informed man in that class – was a Christian and a thoroughgoing supernaturalist.’82 Professor Coghill wrote in 1965:
We used to foregather in our rooms, or go off for country walks together in endless but excited talk about what we had been reading the week before – for Wilson [whom they both had as tutor] kept us pretty well in step with each other – and what we thought about it. So we would stride over Hinksey and Cumnor – we walked almost as fast as we talked – disputing and quoting, as we looked for the dark dingles and the tree-topped hills of Matthew Arnold. This kind of walk must be among the commonest, perhaps among the best, of undergraduate experience. Lewis, with the gusto of a Chesterton or a Belloc, would suddenly roar out a passage of poetry that he had newly discovered and memorized, particularly if it were in Old English, a language novel and enchanting to us both for its heroic attitudes and crashing rhythms … his big voice boomed it out with all the pleasure of tasting a noble wine … His tastes were essentially for what had magnitude and a suggestion of myth: the heroic and romantic never failed to excite his imagination, and although at that time he was something of a professed atheist, the mystically supernatural things in ancient epic and saga always attracted him … We had, of course, thunderous disagreements and agreements, and none more thunderous or agreeing than over Samson Agonistes, which neither of us had read before and which we reached, both together, in the same week; we found we had chosen the same passages as our favourites, and for the same reasons – the epic scale of their emotions and their over-mastering rhythmical patterns … Yet when I tried to share with him my discovery of Restoration comedy he would have none of it …83
The brief, concentrated English course drew to an end in June 1923. On 1 June Lewis attended Gordon’s last class held in Nevill Coghill’s rooms at Exeter, when they discussed tragedy: ‘There was some good discussion … Later we drifted to talking of Masefield and then to War reminiscences … Coghill then produced some port to celebrate our last meeting, and we drank Gordon’s health. I for one drank with great sincerity, for he is an honest, wise, kind man, more like a man and less like a don than any I have known. My opinion of him was rather low at first and has gone up steadily ever since.’84
The actual examination took place from 14 to 19 June. ‘The English School is come and gone,’ Lewis wrote to his father on 1 July, ‘though I still have my viva to face. I was of course rather hampered by the shortened time in which I took the School and it is in many ways so different from the other exams that I have done that I should be sorry to prophesy.’85
The viva took place on 10 July, the oral examiners being W.A. Craigie, the Icelandic scholar,* and H.F.B. Brett-Smith, the editor of Peacock.† ‘Most of the vivas were long and discouraging,’ wrote Lewis in his diary. ‘My own … lasted about two minutes … I came away much encouraged, and delighted to escape the language people.’86
The results appeared on 16 July, Nevill Coghill and C.S. Lewis being among the six to obtain ‘First Class Honours in the Honour School of English Language and Literature’.
* Martin Ashworth Somerville became a member of King’s College, Cambridge in 1917. The others were Edward Francis Courtenay ‘Paddy’ Moore of Clifton College, Bristol, and Alexander Gordon Sutton of Repton School. After their training all three served in the Rifle Brigade.
* The authors are grateful to Dr Robert Clarke for his help with this medical record. He has provided the following commentary: ‘Lewis was probably struck from behind and received a penetrating injury to the left side of his chest, resulting in a fractured 4th rib (and coughing up blood), but escaped with no significant loss of lung function. While he had good air entry in his lung (which would have excluded a collapsed lung), there was dullness on percussion (which would reflect evidence of fluid accumulation around the foreign body [shell fragment] lodged in the upper lobe of his left lung). The injuries to left leg and left wrist were superficial involving soft tissue damage only.’
* Second Lieutenant E.F.C. Moore is buried in the British Cemetery at Pargny. On 2 December 1918 he was awarded the Military Cross for ‘conspicuous gallantry and initiative’. A full account of the battle he took part in is found in William W. Seymour’s History of the Rifle Brigade in the War of 1914–1918, Vol. II (1936).
* On 26 October 1918.
* Arthur Blackbourne Poynton (1876–1944) was Lewis’s tutor in Greek. He distinguished himself as an undergraduate at Balliol College. In 1890 he was elected a Fellow of Hertford College, and in 1894 he became the Fellow and Praelector in Greek at University College. He was Master of University College 1935–7.
† Cyril Bailey (1871–1957) was Classical Tutor at Balliol College.
† George Gilbert Aimeé Murray (1866–1957) was known as ‘the most accomplished Greek scholar of the day’. He was from Sydney, Australia, and after being educated at St John’s College, Oxford, he was Professor of Greek at Glasgow University, 1889–99, and then Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, 1908–36.
* John Robert Edwards (1897–1992) grew up in Manchester. He graduated from University College in 1920, after which he held a number of appointments. He taught Classics at Chigwell School and Merchant Taylor’s School, Crosby, until 1931. He was afterwards headmaster of Grove Park Grammar School, Wrexham, until 1935, and headmaster of Liverpool Institute High School until his retirement in 1961.
† Cyril Hughes Hartmann (1896–1967) came up to University College in 1914. He read Modern History and after leaving Oxford became a successful writer. His books on literary and historical subjects include The Cavalier Spirit and its Influence on the Life and Work of Richard Lovelace (1618–1658) (1925).
† (Sir) Rodney Pasley (1899–1982) took his BA from University College in 1921, after which he taught in a number of schools. He was headmaster of Barnstaple Grammar School, 1936–43, and headmaster of Central Grammar School, Birmingham, 1943–59.
§ Edward Fairchild Watling (1899–1990) matriculated in 1918 and took his degree in 1922. On leaving Oxford he went to King Edward VII School, Sheffield, where he taught classics for thirty-six years. He will be remembered for his idiomatic and highly readable translations of the classics.
* Edgar Frederick Carritt (1876–1964) was Fellow of Philosophy at University College, 1898–1941. He was the first member of the faculty to lecture on aesthetics, and his books include Theory of Beauty (1914) and Philosophies of Beauty (1931). An argument he had with Lewis years later is mentioned in Lewis’s ‘Christianity and Culture’, found in Christian