C. Lewis - That Hideous Strength

‘Well, wouldn’t there have been one section of society that was almost purely Roman? People wearing togas and talking a Celticised Latin–something that would sound to us rather like Spanish: and fully Christian. But further up country, in the out-of-the way places, cut off by the forests, there would have been little courts ruled by real old British under-kings, talking something like Welsh, and practising a certain amount of the druidical religion.’

‘And what would Arthur himself have been?’ said Jane. It was silly that her heart should have missed a beat at the words ‘rather like Spanish’.

‘That’s just the point,’ said Dr Dimble. ‘One can imagine a man of the old British line, but also a Christian and a fully-trained general with Roman technique, trying to pull this whole society together and almost succeeding. There’d be jealousy from his own British family, and the Romanised section–the Launcelots and Lionels–would look down on the Britons. That’d be why Kay is always represented as a boor: he is part of the native strain. And always that under-tow, that tug back to druidism.’

‘And where would Merlin be?’

‘Yes…He’s the really interesting figure. Did the whole thing fail because he died so soon? Has it ever struck you what an odd creation Merlin is? He’s not evil; yet he’s a magician. He is obviously a druid; yet he knows all about the Grail. He’s “the devil’s son”; but then Layamon goes out of his way to tell you that the kind of being who fathered Merlin needn’t have been bad after all. You remember, “There dwell in the sky many kinds of wights. Some of them are good, and some work evil.”’

‘It is rather puzzling. I hadn’t thought of it before.’

‘I often wonder,’ said Dr Dimble, ‘whether Merlin doesn’t represent the last trace of something the later tradition has quite forgotten about–something that became impossible when the only people in touch with the supernatural were either white or black, either priests or sorcerers.’

‘What a horrid idea,’ said Mrs Dimble, who had noticed that Jane seemed to be preoccupied. ‘Anyway, Merlin happened a long time ago if he happened at all and he’s safely dead and buried under Bragdon Wood as every one of us knows.’

‘Buried but not dead, according to the story,’ corrected Dr Dimble.

‘Ugh!’ said Jane involuntarily, but Dr Dimble was musing aloud.

‘I wonder what they will find if they start digging up that place for the foundations of their NICE,’ he said.

‘First mud and then water,’ said Mrs Dimble. ‘That’s why they can’t really build it there.’

‘So you’d think,’ said her husband. ‘And if so, why should they want to come here at all? A little cockney like Jules is not likely to be influenced by any poetic fancy about Merlin’s mantle having fallen on him!’

‘Merlin’s mantle indeed!’ said Mrs Dimble.

‘Yes,’ said the Doctor, ‘it’s a rum idea. I daresay some of his set would like to recover the mantle well enough. Whether they’ll be big enough to fill it is another matter! I don’t think they’d like it if the old man himself came back to life along with it.’

‘That child’s going to faint,’ said Mrs Dimble, suddenly jumping up.

‘Hullo! What’s the matter?’ said Dr Dimble, looking with amazement at Jane’s face. ‘Is the room too hot for you?’

‘Oh, it’s too ridiculous,’ said Jane.

‘Let’s come into the drawing room,’ said Dr Dimble. ‘Here. Lean on my arm.’

A little later, in the drawing room, seated beside a window that opened onto the lawn, now strewn with bright yellow leaves, Jane attempted to excuse her absurd behaviour by telling the story of her dream. ‘I suppose I’ve given myself away dreadfully,’ she said. ‘You can both start psycho-analysing me now.’

From Dr Dimble’s face, Jane might have indeed conjectured that her dream had shocked him exceedingly. ‘Extraordinary thing… most extraordinary,’ he kept muttering. ‘ Two heads. And one of them Alcasan’s. Now is that a false scent…?’

‘Don’t, Cecil,’ said Mrs Dimble.

‘Do you think I ought to be analysed?’ said Jane.

‘Analysed?’ said Dr Dimble, glancing at her as if he had not quite understood. ‘Oh, I see. You mean going to Brizeacre or someone of that sort?’ Jane realised that her question had recalled him from some quite different train of thought and even –disconcertingly–that the problem of her own health had been shouldered aside. The telling of her dream had raised some other problem, though what this was she could not even imagine.

Dr Dimble looked out of the window. ‘There is my dullest pupil just ringing the bell,’ he said. ‘I must go to the study, and listen to an essay on Swift beginning, “Swift was born.” Must try to keep my mind on it, too, which won’t be easy.’ He rose and stood for a moment with his hand on Jane’s shoulder. ‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to give any advice. But if you do decide to go to anyone about that dream, I wish you would first consider going to someone whose address Margery or I will give you.’

‘You don’t believe in Mr Brizeacre?’ said Jane.

‘I can’t explain,’ said Dr Dimble. ‘Not now. It’s all so complicated. Try not to bother about it. But if you do , just let us know first. Good-bye.’

Almost immediately after his departure some other visitors arrived, so that there was no opportunity of further private conversation between Jane and her hostess. She left the Dimbles about half an hour later and walked home, not along the road with the poplars but by the footpath across the common, past the donkeys and the geese, with the towers and spires of Edgestow to her left and the old windmill on the horizon to her right.

‘This is a blow!’ said Curry standing in front of the fireplace in his magnificent rooms which overlooked Newton. They were the best set in College.

‘Something from NO?’ said James Busby. He and Lord Feverstone and Mark were all drinking sherry before dining with Curry. NO, which stood for Non-Olet, was the nickname of Charles Place, the Warden of Bracton. His election to this post, some fifteen years before, had been one of the earliest triumphs of the Progressive Element. By dint of saying that the College needed ‘new blood’ and must be shaken out of its ‘academic grooves’, they had succeeded in bringing in an elderly civil servant who had certainly never been contaminated by academic weaknesses since he left his rather obscure Cambridge college in the previous century, but who had written a monumental report on National Sanitation. The subject had, if anything, rather recommended him to the Progressive Element. They regarded it as a slap in the face for the dilettanti and Diehards, who replied by christening their new Warden Non-Olet. But gradually even Place’s supporters had adopted the name. For Place had not answered their expectations, having turned out to be a dyspeptic with a taste for philately, whose voice was so seldom heard that some of the junior Fellows did not know what it sounded like.

‘Yes, blast him,’ said Curry, ‘wishes to see me on a most important matter as soon as I can conveniently call on him after dinner.’

‘That means,’ said the Bursar, ‘that Jewel and Co. have been getting at him and want to find some way of going back on the whole business.’

‘I don’t give a damn for that,’ said Curry. ‘How can you go back on a Resolution? It isn’t that. But it’s enough to muck up the whole evening.’

‘Only your evening,’ said Feverstone. ‘Don’t forget to leave out that very special brandy of yours before you go.’