Paddy Moore, who had been with the 2nd Battalion of the Rifle Brigade, had taken part in resisting the great German attack which began on 21 March 1918. He had last been seen on the morning of 24 March, and by September 1918 he was known to have died at Pargny on that day.* When definite news of his death had come through Albert Lewis wrote to commiserate. Mrs Moore replied on 1 October 1918: ‘I just lived my life for my son, and it is very hard to go on now … Of the five boys who came out to us so often at Oxford, Jack is the only one left. I feel that I can never do enough for those that are left. Jack has been so good to me. My poor son asked him to look after me if he did not come back. He possesses for a boy of his age such a wonderful power of understanding and sympathy.’35
Meanwhile Lewis’s first literary venture was taking shape. The embarkation leave in October 1917 had been so curtailed by illness that he was probably able to do little in the way of assembling and copying out his poems during his visit to Belfast. But as soon as he was able to do so in the hospital in London, he set to work on preparing a fair copy that could be typed and sent to a publisher – now with several recent poems to add to those written during the Bookham and Oxford periods – and continued to do so even more industriously when he got to Ashton Court. On 12 September, Lewis wrote to Greeves from Mrs Moore’s home in Ravenswood Road, Bristol:
The best of news! After keeping my MS. for ages Heinemann has actually accepted it … You can imagine how pleased I am, and how eagerly I now look at all Heinemann’s books and wonder what mine will be like. I’m afraid the paper will be poor as it always is now in new books. It is going to be called ‘Spirits in Prison’ by Clive Staples and is mainly strung round the idea that I mentioned to you before – that nature is wholly diabolical and malevolent and that God, if he exists, is outside of and in opposition to the cosmic arrangements.36
On 6 October he was writing to Arthur from Pelham Downs Camp, Ludgershall (near Andover): ‘No, you were wrong, I have not gone on my leave; I was only out for a night at Mrs Moore’s. I have now, however, had my Board, over a month late I’m glad to say, and have been sent for further convalescence to a camp here.’37
‘It is terrible to think how quickly an old order changes and how impossible it is to build it up again exactly the same,’ he wrote on 2 November 1918.
I wonder will there be many changes when we meet again? Maureen told me the other day that I was greatly changed since she first knew me, but, with the impenetrable reticence of a child, declined to say in what way … I made a journey to London to see Heinemanns.* C.S. Evans, the manager, was very nice to me and quite enthusiastic about the book and especially about one piece. John Galsworthy, he said, had read the MS. and wanted to put this piece in a new Quarterly which he is bringing out for disabled soldiers and sailors called Reveille: of course I consented … So at last dreams come to pass and I have sat in the sanctum of a publisher discussing my own book.38
Spirits in Bondage (the name was changed on account of A Spirit in Prison (1908) by Robert Hichens) was delayed in publication on account of a shortage of cloth for binding, and did not come out until 20 March 1919, after the appearance of ‘Death in Battle’ in the February number of Reveille – Lewis’s first publication, other than contributions to school magazines. He was in good company in the third number of Reveille, which included poems by Robert Bridges, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves and Hilaire Belloc; his own poem appeared under the pseudonym ‘Clive Hamilton’ on which he had finally decided – his own Christian name and his mother’s maiden name.
It received no special attention (‘graceful and polished’, said The Times; ‘the work is strongly imagined and never unhealthy, trifling or affected’, according to the Scotsman), and Lewis seems to have been rather unduly disappointed. He certainly almost ceased writing lyrics, but turned back none the less to his real literary love, the long narrative poem. While Spirits in Bondage was still in the press he was writing to Greeves (on 2 December 1918, from Officers’ Command Depot, Eastbourne, to which he had been moved a couple of weeks earlier): ‘I have just finished a short narrative, which is a verse version of our old friend “Dymer”, greatly reduced and altered to my new ideas. The main idea is that of development by self-destruction, both of individuals and species … I am also at work on a short blank verse scene (you can hardly call it a play) between Tristram and King Mark, and a poem on Ion, which is a failure so far.’39
There is no further reference to either the Arthurian or the classical poem, and Dymer in any form seems soon to have been set aside, not to be resumed until 1922.
For great changes were coming, though they threw no shadows before. On 8 December, Lewis wrote to his father: ‘As you have probably seen in the papers, we are all going to get 12 days “Christmas leave”. I use the inverted commas advisedly, as mine seems likely to be in January … I see that we are not to be “discharged”, but “demobilized” and kept on the leash for the rest of our lives.’40 His fear was of being kept in ‘Class Z Reserve’, as he had volunteered and not been conscripted; but physical unfitness due to his wounds procured him a complete discharge. Over twenty years later the piece of shrapnel had to be removed from his chest, and a further result of his experiences at the front seems to have been a ‘distressing weakness’ of the bladder from which he suffered for the rest of his life.
Meanwhile Warnie, who had been in France all this time, and promoted to captain on 29 November, returned to Belfast on leave on 23 December, bitterly disappointed to find that he had once again missed seeing his brother, since their leaves would not overlap. But he was able to record in his diary for 27 December: ‘A red letter day. We were sitting in the study about eleven o’clock this morning when we saw a cab coming up the avenue. It was Jack! He has been demobilized, thank God. Needless to say there were great doings. He is looking pretty fit … In the evening there was bubbly for dinner in honour of the event: the first time I have ever had champagne at home.’41
The festivities over, Lewis was able to return to Oxford early in January to take up his life as an undergraduate where he had left after his one term in the summer of 1917. He wrote to his father on 27 January:
It was a great return and something to be very thankful for. There is of course already a great difference between this Oxford and the ghost I knew before: true, we are only twenty-eight in College, but we do dine in Hall again, the Junior Common Room is no longer swathed in dust sheets, and the old round of lectures, debates, games, and whatnot is getting under weigh. The reawakening is a little pathetic: at our first J.C.R. Meeting we read the minutes of the last – 1914. I don’t know any little thing that has made me realize the absolute suspension and waste of these years more thoroughly.42
On account of his war service, Lewis was ‘deemed to have passed’ Responsions and Divinity, and could have proceeded directly to Literae Humaniores or ‘Greats’. But in view of his ambition of obtaining a Fellowship in one of the Oxford colleges, his tutor, A.B. Poynton,* advised against doing this. Consequently Lewis embarked at once on the ‘Honour Mods’