He had Room 5 on Staircase XII of Radcliffe Quad, a suite filled with the furniture of some pre-war member of the college still at the front, or perhaps long dead. ‘It is getting to be quite homely to me, this room,’ he wrote on 28 April after only two days, ‘especially when I come back to it by firelight and find the kettle boiling. How I love kettles! Dinner is not in Hall now, as there are only twelve men in College, but in a small lecture room, and the dons don’t turn up. For all other meals the scout brings you your cover in your rooms.’3 ‘The place is on the whole absolutely ripping,’ he wrote on 6 May. ‘If only you saw the quad on these moonlit nights with the long shadows lying half across the level perfect grass and the tangle of towers & spires beyond in the dark!’4
Very soon Lewis discovered the river, going boating on most afternoons, bathing at Parson’s Pleasure ‘without the tiresome convention of bathing things’,5 and generally revelling in the usual delights of a first Summer Term. Soon, too, he discovered the bookshops – of which there were many more than there are now, and all still independent. In his letter of 6 May he told Arthur he had made the acquaintance of the College library, and ‘still better is the Library of the Union Society (a club everyone belongs to)’.6 ‘It has a writing room of strictest silence,’ he wrote to Arthur on 13 May, ‘and an admirable library where I have passed many happy hours and hope to pass many more.’7
The happy time at Univ. came to an end on 7 June when Lewis joined a cadet battalion. He was, however, fortunate in that the battalion was quartered in Keble College, so that he was to remain in Oxford for another three months. Writing to his father on 10 June, he said,
at first when I left my own snug quarters and my own friends at Univ. for a carpetless little cell with two beds (minus sheets or pillows) at Keble, and got into a Tommy’s uniform, I will not deny that I thought myself very ill used … My chief friend is Somerville, scholar of Eton and scholar of King’s, Cambridge, a very quiet sort of person, but very booky and interesting. Moore of Clifton, my room companion, and Sutton of Repton (the company humorist) are also very good fellows. The former is a little too childish for real companionship, but I will forgive him much for his appreciation of Newbolt.*
‘Though the work is very hard and not very interesting, I am quite reconciled to my lot. It is doing me a lot of good,’ he confided to Greeves that same day:
I have made a number of excellent friends … My room-mate Moore (of Clifton) is quite a good fellow, tho’ a little too childish and virtuous for ‘common nature’s daily food’. The advantages of being in Oxford are very great as I can get weekend leave (from 1 o’clock Saturday till 11 o’clock p.m. Sunday) and go to Univ. where I enjoy the rare luxury of sheets and a long sleep …
I am in a strangely productive mood at present and spend my few moments of spare time in scribbling verse. When my four months course in the cadet battalion is at an end, I shall, supposing I get a commission all right, have a four weeks leave before joining my regiment. During it I propose to get together all the stuff I have perpetrated and see if any kind publisher would like to take it. After that, if the fates decide to kill me at the front, I shall enjoy a nine days immortality while friends who know nothing about poetry imagine that I must have been a genius – what usually happens in such cases. In the meantime my address is – No. 738 Cadet C.S. Lewis, ‘E’ Company, Keble College, Oxford.8
While he continued to see Martin Somerville and his other friends, a close bond developed quickly between Lewis and his room-mate, Edward Francis Courtenay ‘Paddy’ Moore. Paddy was exactly Lewis’s age, and his sister Maureen was eleven. Their mother, Mrs Janie Askins Moore, was born in Pomeroy, County Tyrone, on 28 March 1872, the daughter of a Church of Ireland clergyman. In 1897 she married Edward Francis Courtney Moore. They lived in Dublin, where Mr Moore was an engineer. Mr and Mrs Moore separated in 1907 and Mrs Moore moved with the children to Bristol to be near one of her brothers. Paddy had been educated there at Clifton College, and when he was sent to Oxford for training with the Officers’ Training Corps, Mrs Moore and Maureen came with him. They took rooms in Wellington Square, a short distance from Keble College, and almost at once Lewis was a favoured guest. He, in turn, was able to show Paddy and his family the hospitality of Univ., and Lewis clearly liked their company.
The Dean of Univ. soon made Lewis’s double life impossible, and he was forced to give up his room. ‘This week end, as you gather, I am again spending in Univ.,’ he wrote to Greeves on 8 July. ‘Do you know, Ami, I am more homesick for this College than ever I was for Little Lea. I love every stone in it.’9
After a brief leave in Belfast (9–11 August) Jack wrote to his father on 27 August 1917:
You must have been wondering what had come over me, but I hope that the crowded time I have been having since I left home will serve as some excuse. First of all came the week at Warwick, which was a nightmare … We came back on Saturday, and the following weekend I spent with Moore at the digs of his mother who, as I mentioned, is staying at Oxford. I like her immensely and thoroughly enjoyed myself. On Wednesday as you know, Warnie was up here and we had a most enjoyable afternoon and evening together, chiefly at my rooms in Univ. How I wish you could have been there too. But please God I shall be able to see you at Oxford and show you my ‘sacred city’ in happier times.10
‘The next amusement on our programme’, he wrote again on 10 September, ‘is a three-day bivouac up in the Wytham hills. As it has rained all the time for two or three days, our model trenches up there will provide a very unnecessarily good imitation of Flanders mud. You know how I always disapproved of realism in art!’11
This was followed by an exam on 25 September 1917, which seems to have been little more than a formality. The next day Jack was given a temporary commission in the Army and a month’s leave. Albert Lewis waited in vain for Jack to come home, and he was saddened and puzzled to learn that Jack had gone to Bristol to visit Paddy Moore and his family. ‘I suppose you must have been wondering what had become of your prodigal son,’ Jack wrote to his father on 3 October. ‘We got away from Keble on Saturday, and instead of staying in Oxford with the Moores I came down here to their home in Bristol … On Monday a cold (complete with sore throat) which I had developed at Oxford, went on so terribly that Mrs Moore took my temperature and put me to bed, where I am writing this letter.’12
This stay in Bristol was to have far-reaching consequences. Lewis and Paddy, and indeed Mrs Moore too, would have known that the slaughter of young officers at this period in the war was very great and that their chances of surviving the war were slim. However, despite Paddy’s conviction that he would come back, Maureen was to recall hearing her brother and Jack promise one another that if only one survived the war the survivor would look after Paddy’s mother and Jack’s father. Mrs Moore was to mention the promise to Albert Lewis after the war. While Jack was still with the Moores in Bristol Paddy learned that he had been placed in the Rifle Brigade, and he crossed to France ahead of Lewis.
In the end Jack didn’t reach Belfast until Friday, 12 October, and he was with his father for only a few days. On the 16th he was gazetted into the Somerset Light Infantry, and on Thursday, 18 October he left home to join his regiment at Crownhill, South Devon.
While at home Jack had talked with Arthur