If this interpretation is correct, the final stages of Lewis’s conversion from believing in God to commitment to Christianity might be pieced together as follows:
19 September 1931: A conversation with Tolkien and Dyson leads Lewis to realise that Christianity is a “true myth.”
28 September 1931: Lewis comes to believe in the divinity of Christ while being driven to Whipsnade Zoo in a motorbike by his brother, Warnie.
1 October 1931: Lewis tells Arthur Greeves that he has “passed over” from belief in God to belief in Christ.
Following this scenario, Lewis’s process of conversion to Christianity is quite rapid, its critical elements having taken place over a period of ten days (19–28 September 1931). This is the traditional understanding of Lewis’s gradual rediscovery of Christianity, and it fits in well with the evidence of his writings.
Lewis’s conversation with Tolkien and Dyson allowed him to catch a glimpse of the imaginative potential of the Christian story, illuminating questions that had troubled him for some time. Having experienced the “imaginative embrace” of Christianity, Lewis began the rational exploration of its landscape. This rational exploration, expressed in terms of Christianity’s doctrines, follows on from the captivation of the imagination through its images and stories.
As has often been observed, Lewis sees theory as secondary to reality347—in effect, as intellectual reflection that arises after something has been apprehended or appreciated, primarily through the imagination. Lewis grasped the reality of Christianity through his imagination, and then began to try and make rational sense of what his imagination had captured and embraced. The traditional account of Lewis’s conversion suggests that this process was essentially complete within ten days. Yet Lewis’s correspondence suggests that it may have been a more extended and complex process, taking months rather than days.348 So how confident can we be that Lewis’s Christological insight took place on the way to Whipsnade Zoo in September 1931?
Lewis’s account of the significant visit to Whipsnade Zoo in Surprised by Joy is traditionally held to refer to 28 September 1931, when he was driven to Whipsnade Zoo by Warnie in the sidecar of his motorbike. There is no doubt that Lewis visited Whipsnade on this occasion. But is this the occasion on which Lewis’s views on Christ were resolved? It is important to note that the narrative of Surprised by Joy makes no reference to Warnie, nor to a motorbike, nor to September, nor to 1931. Furthermore, Lewis wrote a long letter to his brother shortly after that visit, briefly recalling their day at Whipsnade—but making no reference to any religious transformation or significant theological adjustment on his part.349
A closer examination of Warnie’s recollections of that day in September 1931 also raises some doubts about the traditional interpretation.350 Warnie’s reflections on that day are clearly not based on any personal and privileged disclosures from his brother, but from his own correlation of that journey with the narrative in Surprised by Joy. What some have interpreted as Warnie’s memory of a conversation with Lewis is clearly Warnie’s later interpretation of an event. And, as we shall see, this interpretation of that event is open to question. What if Lewis had been driven to Whipsnade on another occasion, when Warnie was not present? What if that was the occasion for his theological clarification?
Lewis’s memory of that critical day at Whipsnade Zoo, as set out in Surprised by Joy, includes a lyrical passage recalling “the birds singing overhead and the bluebells underfoot,” commenting that this scene at “Wallaby Wood” had been quite ruined by more recent construction work at the zoo.351 Yet the English bluebell (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) blooms from late April into late May (depending on the weather), and its leaves wither and disappear by the late summer.352 Bluebells flower later than usual at Whipsnade, due to the slightly colder climate on the elevated downs on which the zoo is located.353 There would have been no sign of “bluebells underfoot” at Whipsnade in September. But they would have been blooming in profusion there in May and early June.
Perhaps the significance of this fact has been overlooked by some, or the English bluebell has been confused with its Scottish counterpart (Campanula rotundifolia, known as the “harebell” in England), which continues to flower into September. Lewis’s “Edenic” recollection of the birds and bluebells at Whipsnade Zoo recorded in Surprised by Joy is clearly a memory of a late spring or early summer day, not a day in early autumn.
Lewis’s heightened attention to the bluebells may well reflect their symbolic association with this moment of insight—after all, Lewis tells us that he had long been a self-confessed “votary of the Blue Flower” (page 16).354 The “Blue Flower” motif in German Romanticism has complex historical roots. It was first stated in Novalis’s posthumously published fragment of a novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802), and came to symbolise a longing for the elusive reconciliation of reason and imagination, the observed world outside the mind and the subjective world within. The bright blue European cornflower is often cited as the inspiration for this symbol.355 It is easily extended to bluebells.
Upon reflection, it is quite clear that this “Blue Flower” passage in Surprised by Joy refers not to the autumn of 1931, but to a second visit to Whipsnade, made in the first week of June 1932, when Lewis was again driven to the zoo—but this time in a car on a “fine day” by Edward Foord-Kelcey (1859–1934). On 14 June, shortly after this trip, Lewis wrote to his brother, specifically noting the “masses of bluebells” he had seen during this visit to Whipsnade, and commenting on the state of “Wallaby Wood.”356 The phrasing of this section of the letter is very similar to that of the critical passage in Surprised by Joy. Might this later date mark the occasion when Lewis finally came to believe in the Incarnation, perhaps as the apex of his exploration of the Christian faith? If so, it would clearly represent a deepened understanding of his faith from within, as Lewis had clearly identified himself as a Christian by this time. This would require a revision of the traditional chronology of events, as follows:
19 September 1931: A conversation with Tolkien and Dyson leads Lewis to realise that Christianity is a “true myth.”
1 October 1931: Lewis tells Arthur Greeves that he has “passed over” from belief in God to belief in Christ.
7(?) June 1932: Lewis comes to believe in the divinity of Christ while being driven to Whipsnade Zoo in a car by Edward Foord-Kelcey.
So did Lewis’s restless, questing mind finally bring everything together in a journey to Whipsnade Zoo in September 1931, a week or so after his conversation with Tolkien? Or was the process of reflection and crystallisation more extended, only being completed during a later journey to Whipsnade in June 1932? Lewis’s letter of 1 October 1931 to Greeves, in which he speaks of now “definitely believing in Christ,” could certainly be interpreted as an embryonic realisation of the significance of Christ that needed extended exploration and formulation, culminating in June 1932. Yet his correspondence of this later period—including a letter of 14 June 1932 to Warnie—makes no explicit reference to such a development. Nor can we eliminate the possibility that Lewis may have confused individual aspects of these two visits to Whipsnade in writing Surprised by Joy. He may even have fused them in his memory, bringing together the imagery and themes of two different visits, and telescoping them into one. So which of these two visits marks the true moment of illumination? We noted earlier how Lewis was not totally reliable concerning dates, and it is possible that the narrative in Surprised by Joy involves blurring of the boundaries between similar events.
We are left here, as so often in relation to this most tantalising of Lewis’s works, wishing for more, yet forced to work with what we have. The best solution at present is to allow the traditional date of Lewis’s conversion to Christianity—September 1931—to stand, while noting the ambiguities and uncertainties that surround it. Lewis’s letter to Greeves of 1 October 1931 makes most sense if a decisive Christological step has already been taken, even if the full unfolding and exploration of this i
nsight continued into the following year.
Yet whenever Lewis’s insight is to be dated, it is to be seen as bringing to a conclusion an extended process of reflection and commitment, which proceeded in a series of stages. We cannot seize on a single moment—such as this one—as defining or dating Lewis’s “conversion” to Christianity; instead, we can trace an ascending arc of reflection, of which the conversation with Tolkien represents a critical imaginative transition, and the trip to Whipsnade Zoo its logical outworking.
One point on this ascending arc of Christian commitment merits special comment. Lewis attended a service of Holy Communion for the first time since his childhood at Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, on Christmas Day 1931. In a long letter to his brother, Lewis briefly yet explicitly mentions attending the “early celebration”357 on that day at Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry—in other words, a service of Holy Communion. Lewis would have no doubt that his brother would have understood the significance of this development, given the traditions of the Church of England at this time.
6.3 Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, Oxford, seen from the south, showing the entrance porch, as photographed by Henry W. Taunt (1842–1922) in 1901.
Up to this point, Lewis had attended Matins, a “service of the word,” often leaving—to the irritation of the vicar, Wilfrid Thomas—during the last hymn, before the service had ended properly. But Lewis was clear that, while anyone could attend Matins, Holy Communion was only for the committed. By informing his brother of his decision to attend such a communion service, Lewis wanted to let his brother know that he had moved on significantly in his journey of faith.
What Lewis did not know was that Warnie had made a similar journey of faith, and had received communion for the first time since his childhood at the Bubbling Well Chapel in Shanghai358—also on Christmas Day 1931. The two brothers, unknown to each other, had made a public profession of commitment to Christianity on exactly the same day.
In the end, it is not so much the precise date of Lewis’s conversion to Christianity as its implications for his future writings that is of ultimate importance. His conversion might, after all, have been an inner event, of importance to Lewis, but without any obvious impact on his literary work. For example, T. S. Eliot converted to Christianity in 1927, generating much publicity in doing so. Yet many would suggest that Eliot’s subsequent writings were less shaped by this conversion than might be expected.
Lewis is different. From the outset, Lewis seems to have realised that if Christianity was true, it resolved the intellectual and imaginative riddles that had puzzled him since his youth. His youthful “treaty with reality” had been his own attempt to impose an arbitrary (yet convenient) order on a chaotic world. Now he began to realise that there was a deeper order, grounded in the nature of God, which could be discerned—and which, once grasped, made sense of culture, history, science, and above all the acts of literary creation that he valued so highly and made his life’s study. Lewis’s coming to faith brought not simply understanding to his reading of literature; it brought both motivation and theoretical underpinning to his own literary creations—best seen in his late work Till We Have Faces (1956), but also evident in the Chronicles of Narnia.
It is simply not possible to make sense of Lewis’s work as a scholar and author without grasping the ordering principles of his inner world, which—after a period of incubation and reflection—finally began to fall into place in the early autumn of 1931, and reached their final synthesis by the summer of 1932. When Lewis went to spend a holiday with Arthur Greeves between 15 and 29 August 1932, he was ready to map out his new and essentially complete vision of the Christian faith in the work that became The Pilgrim’s Regress (discussed on pages 169–174). Although Lewis would continue to explore the relation of reason and imagination in the domain of faith, the fundamental features of his settled understanding of Christianity were now in place.
In this chapter, we have explored the trajectory of Lewis’s complex and extended conversion to Christianity, raising concerns about some traditional datings and interpretations of this development. We must, however, avoid portraying Lewis’s as a representative or typical conversion. As Lewis later remarked, his specific way of coming to faith was “a road very rarely trodden,”359 and could not in any way be regarded as normative. His account of his conversion represents it as an essentially private affair, marked by understatement and a studied evasion of any dramatic gestures or declarations. Yet gradually, Lewis’s faith would become both public and prominent, as we shall see when we consider his wartime role as an apologist.
But there is much more that needs to be said about Lewis as an Oxford don, above all about his approach to literature—the topic of the next chapter.
CHAPTER 7
* * *
1933–1939
A Man of Letters: Literary Scholarship and Criticism
By 1933, Lewis’s Oxford world seemed to be a stable place. He had been reelected to his tutorial fellowship in English, a position he retained until December 1954, when he moved to Cambridge. His family life was settled. The Kilns had been extended, and its grounds were being tamed and replanted. Warnie, now retired from the British army, had settled in with Lewis and Mrs. Moore at The Kilns for good. To Lewis, it seemed as if the “old days” had been restored. After the arrival of Warnie, Lewis increasingly came to see The Kilns as a re-creation or extension of Little Lea. It was as if everything that had happened between 1914 and 1932 had been reversed.360
That sense of continuity with bygone days was reinforced by Warnie’s decision to edit the Lewis family letters, papers, and diaries, cataloguing them and finally typing them up on his old Royal typewriter. The result of Warnie’s efforts, originally intended simply as a record of “ordinary, undistinguished” people, became the eleven volumes of The Lewis Papers: Memoirs of the Lewis Family, 1850–1930. They have since become an essential research tool for Lewis scholars.
Lewis thus reestablished the “secure base” that had been taken away from him by the death of his mother and the scattering of his family. As Lewis remarked to Greeves late in 1933, “stability” was now his strong point.361 Having realised that he would never achieve fame as a poet, Lewis was now focussing on the world of literary scholarship, seeing this as the field in which he could achieve distinction, perhaps even eminence.
Lewis the Teacher: Oxford Tutorials
Lewis’s primary responsibility from 1927–1954 was tutorial teaching and university lecturing. He was a member of the Faculty of English by virtue of his teaching appointment at Magdalen. Membership in this faculty permitted him to give lectures open to all Oxford University students. Unlike his colleague J. R. R. Tolkien, Lewis was never a “professor” at Oxford University. He was always—as the painted college nameplate on his staircase in the Magdalen New Building attested—simply “Mr. C. S. Lewis.” Given the importance of tutorials and lectures for Lewis’s academic life, it is appropriate to reflect on what we know of these.
During the nineteenth century, Oxford University developed the weekly tutorial as the foundation of its pedagogy. Colleges established “tutorial fellowships” with the object of raising academic standards, particularly in Literae Humaniores. Typically, a tutorial was an hour long. To begin with, a student would read aloud an essay of his own composition. The remainder of the time was taken up with close discussion of the student’s ideas and arguments.
Lewis’s account of a typical working day during the eight teaching weeks of Oxford’s full term indicates how his faith was now woven into his life, along with his heavy teaching load. Apart from Mondays and Saturdays, his working days from 1931 onwards looked like this:
7.15 a.m. Woken by scout with cup of tea
8.00 a.m. Chapel
8.15 a.m. Breakfast with Dean of Chapel and others
9.00 a.m. Tutorials begin, continuing until 1.00 p.m.
1.00 p.m. Driven home to Headington (Lewis did not drive)
Afternoon:
working in garden, walking the dog, time with “the family”
4.45 p.m. Driven back to college
5.00 p.m. Tutorials recommence, ending at 7.00 p.m.
7.15 p.m. Dinner362
While at Great Bookham, Lewis had fallen into a set routine that continued, with appropriate adaptations to his circumstances, for the rest of his working life. The morning was set aside for working, the early afternoon was set aside for solitary walking, the late afternoon for more work, and the evening for talking. Lewis’s walks at The Kilns were often not strictly solitary; he was generally accompanied on these by whatever dog Mrs. Moore happened to own at the time. Yet the routine seemed to work, and Lewis saw little reason to change it.
Students having tutorials with Lewis at Magdalen in the early 1930s often commented on the “clacking” of the typewriter from behind a door, as Warnie worked on The Lewis Family Papers in the smaller sitting room, while their tutorial proceeded in the larger. Lewis himself never learned to type, always depending on pens. One reason for this was that the same “native clumsiness” arising from Lewis’s having only one joint in his thumbs prevented him from using a typewriter properly.
Yet there is more to it than this. Lewis actively chose not to type. This mechanical mode of writing, he believed, interfered with the creative process in that the incessant clacking of the typewriter keys dulled the writer’s appreciation of the rhythms and cadences of the English language. When reading Milton or other poets, or composing a work of one’s own, Lewis argued, it was essential to appreciate how the writing sounded. As he later advised anyone thinking about writing seriously, “Don’t use a typewriter. The noise will destroy your sense of rhythm, which still needs years of training.”363
C. S. Lewis – A Life Page 17
