by A. N. Wilson
He went back to Cambridge at the beginning of October, ready for another happy round of lectures punctuated by long delicious days in his college rooms. No undergraduate here would knock at his door or read him an essay beginning ‘Jonathan Swift was born … ’. But on 19 October he received a telephone call to say that Joy’s rheumatic pains had been investigated at the Wingfield Orthopaedic Hospital in Headington. The call was from Havard, whom he went to see as soon as he could get back to Oxford. Preliminary X-rays had revealed that Joy had broken her left thigh bone, and that she had a lump on her breast.
He went to see her. She was plucky, and good-humoured. Jokes were inevitably made about the Useless Quack; but there was a problem of much more practical concern. She had entered the hospital as Mrs Gresham, an American citizen. As Mrs C. S. Lewis, of course, she could have claimed free treatment on the National Health, but her true marital status was still a secret. Lewis was prepared to pay the bill – but that was not the point. What was now at issue was whether he was prepared to acknowledge as his wife the woman he loved and who might, for all they knew, be suffering from a mortal illness. They did not have to wait long. She was moved half a mile down the road to the Churchill Hospital, an unutterably bleak collection of Nissen huts and makeshift buildings put up at the end of the Second World War for Canadian servicemen, and used ever since as a cancer hospital for Oxford’s residents. A biopsy revealed that her tumour was indeed malignant and her chances of survival were, as Warnie said, ‘put at evens’. ‘I have never loved her more than since she was struck down,’ he added. ‘Her pluck and her cheerfulness are beyond praise, and she talks of her disease and its fluctuations as if she were describing the experiences of a friend of hers.’23
On 14 November, Jack wrote to one of the many correspondents whom he had never met, ‘I wish you would pray very hard for a lady called Joy Gresham and me … I am shortly to be both a bridegroom and a widower, for she has cancer. You need not mention this till the marriage (which will be at the hospital bedside if it occurs).’24 This positively Wagnerian blend of love and death could not, however, be accomplished without Lewis’s flying in the face of his own church.
He went to see Harry Carpenter, the Bishop of Oxford. (The front door was opened for him on this occasion by the bishop’s son, a little boy called Humphrey who would one day write a book about him called The Inklings). Harry Carpenter, who was a fairly old-fashioned high churchman was quite as clear in his mind as Archbishop Fisher and Princess Margaret had been in theirs when faced with a parallel dilemma.
‘Mindful of the Church’s teachings’, as they then stood, he said that there was no possibility of allowing Mrs Gresham, a divorced woman, to be given a church marriage. The fact that her bridegroom was a famous Christian apologist made the case all the more impossible, for the marriage would undoubtedly attract publicity, and if it should be known that it had received the bishop’s sanction, he would have been flooded with requests by couples in similar positions, anxious to bend the rules to fit their own particular cases. Lewis left the bishop’s house in a state of very great anger. Austin Farrer, as an obedient priest in Carpenter’s diocese, could not oblige his friend by performing the ceremony. It was not a matter of charity; it was a matter of canon law. Such a marriage would simply be illegal. But Lewis was by now desperate that Joy should be able to come home – that is, to The Kilns – to die, and he wanted her to do so ‘without scandal’. The irony is that if they had been Roman Catholics, it would almost certainly have been possible by Roman canon law for them to be united in the eyes of the Church. In his near-despair, he looked to the Church to fulfil a higher law, the law of love, and he felt that he was having the door slammed in his face.
Several months went by, and Joy’s condition was visibly deteriorating. Since no help was at hand from any of his normal circle of friends, Lewis turned to an acquaintance of twenty years’ standing called Peter Bide. Bide had come up to Oxford slightly late in his life to read English Literature just before the war, having started out as a chemist. He was not a pupil of Lewis’s, and his tastes were very different, but he attended his lectures. He had, for example, tried to persuade Lewis to like the poetry of T. S. Eliot, but as Lewis had written:
For twenty years I’ve stared my level best
To see if evening – any evening – would suggest
A patient etherized upon a table;
In vain. I simply wasn’t able.25
Subsequently Bide had become a Christian, got married, been ordained and discovered that he had a gift of healing. Lewis asked him to intercede for Joy, and to lay hands on her. He also put to Bide their dilemma about the illegality of a marriage service. ‘Joy’s first marriage [had been] to an already divorced man and therefore in the eyes of the church, no such marriage was possible,’ Lewis forcefully argued. For the Church to deny their request for marriage was now ‘to try to have your cake and eat it’. Father Bide agreed. ‘Joy desperately wanted to solemnize her marriage before God and to claim the grace of the sacrament before she died,’ he wrote afterwards: a statement which more than implies that Joy, since her register office marriage, had dutifully excommunicated herself. ‘It did not seem to me in the circumstances possible to refuse her the outward and visible sign of grace which she so ardently desired and which might lead to a peaceful end to a fairly desperate situation.’26
On 21 March, the doctors pronounced the death sentence and said that Joy’s condition was beyond hope of recovery. At 11 a.m., Warnie accompanied Jack to Joy’s ward at the Churchill. There was only one other witness – the ward sister. Bide said mass and gave Holy Communion to those present. Warnie knew that ‘to feel pity for anyone so magnificently brave as Joy is almost an insult,’ but her eagerness for ‘the pitiable consolation of dying under the same roof as Jack [was) heartrending.’27 The two of them made their vows, ‘as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgement when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed’. They promised to keep themselves only unto themselves, in sickness and in health, so long as they both should live. In The Times the next day, Jack’s oldest friends read with astonishment an announcement of which they had been given absolutely no warning: ‘A marriage has taken place between Professor C. S. Lewis of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and Mrs. Joy Gresham, now a patient in the Churchill Hospital at Oxford. It is requested that no letters be sent.’
–EIGHTEEN–
MARRIAGE
1957–1959
Maureen Blake, Minto’s daughter, did not read The Times, but she heard from Jack that his friend Mrs Gresham was ill in hospital. When she arrived at the Churchill, Maureen was told by the nurse that ‘Mrs Lewis was very ill’. ‘Mrs Lewis?’ queried Maureen. ‘Who is Mrs Lewis? There must be some mistake.’
She was shown into the ward to meet Joy. Jack was too distraught to apologize or explain why he had not bothered to tell Maureen of his plan to marry even though she was in some senses ‘family’. After a sad, short encounter with Joy in the ward, Maureen returned to The Kilns with Jack, and asked what was happening to Joy’s children. The answer appeared to be that no one knew what to do with the Gresham boys, so Maureen put the children in the back of her car and drove them to her own house in Malvern, where she and her husband both taught music. Douglas Gresham, the younger boy, was a sunny, cheerful child; David, the elder, was morose and profoundly disturbed. Maureen was not to know that David and Douglas had been on poor terms all their lives. David had reacted very vulnerably to the break-up of his parents’ marriage, and profoundly resented his mother’s decision to become a Christian and to emigrate; still more, to marry again. His disturbance was to take the form, a little later, of declaring himself to be a Jew (which ethnically was the case, though his parents had never practised the Jewish faith), refusing to eat with the family, and insisting on kosher food (not an easy requirement in Headington, bur Lewis was eventually to find acceptable comestibles for David at Palm’s Delicatessen in the Covered Market in Oxford).1
Maureen Blake herself had two children a little younger than the Greshams. The first sign of trouble was when she took them for a walk on Barnard’s Green, Malvern, near where the Blakes lived, and David began to bully her daughter, attacking her physically. During his entire stay with the Blakes, David was impossible; he either refused to take part in conversations and meals, or he entered upon them with rudeness and ferocity. His violence was never far beneath the surface. Some money disappeared, and Maureen had reason to believe that David had stolen it. At this point, she lost her temper and went up to see him in the bath, dragged him out of the tub and gave him a sound thrashing. After this, there was not much hope, as she had half-supposed there would be, of the boys’ coming to live with her on any permanent or semi-permanent basis.
It was not possible, however, for the Blakes to ignore Lewis’s marriage, since it affected their future most directly. Neither Leonard nor Maureen had any money; they were both poor teachers. Maureen’s mother Minto had been a joint owner of The Kilns with Jack and Warnie. Minto’s will and a gendemen’s agreement between the Blakes and the Lewises both recognized that when Jack and Warnie were dead, The Kilns should pass to the Blakes as their retirement home.
It was therefore a shock for Maureen, in one of her very first conversations with Joy once she was back at The Kilns, to be told, ‘When I die, and Jack dies, this house will belong to the boys.’
Maureen faltered. ‘I think not … You see, by the terms of my mother’s will … ’
‘You evidently did not hear what I said,’ said Joy very firmly. ‘This house belongs to me and the boys.’
‘I think if you asked Jack-’ Maureen began.
‘I’ve told Jack,’ said Joy, looking at her shamefaced, silent husband.*
Joy had come home to die, and these questions of what would happen when she did so were of urgent practical importance. Who would look after the children? The obvious answer was their father. When Bill Gresham learnt how ill Joy was, he wrote to express his concern, adding: ‘Naturally I shall want [Doug and Davy] to be with me in the event of your death.’ The letter caused Joy great distress. Scenes of marital horror returned to haunt her – Bill drunk, Bill violent and terrifying the children. On 6 April 1957, Lewis wrote two letters to Gresham. The first read:
Joy is too ill to write and has asked me to answer yours of the 2nd. This is a ticklish job. If through clumsiness, in the effort to put things strongly, I sound like one who writes with animosity, believe me this is not so. I think there has never been any ill-feeling between you and me, and I very much hope there never will be.
Your letter reached Joy after a day of agony. The effect was devastating. She felt that the only earthly hope she now has has been taken away. You have tortured one who was already on the rack; heaped extra weights on one who is being pressed to death. There is nothing she dreads so much as the return of the boys to your charge. You perhaps do not understand that certain scenes (when you were not yourself) came early enough in their lives to make you a figure of terror to them. Their return to the U.S.A. when their education is finished is of course quite a different matter. Now, bitterly against their will, coming on top of the most appalling tragedy that can happen to childhood (I was put through it and I know) tearing them from all that has already become familiar and shattering all sense of security that remains to them, it would be disastrous. If you realise the cruelty of what you are proposing to do, I am sure you would not do it.
If you do not relent, I shall of course be obliged to place every legal obstacle in your way. Joy has, legally, a case. Her (documented) desire for naturalization (which there may still be time to carry out) and the boys’ horror of going back, will be strong points. What is certain is that a good deal of your money and mine will go into the lawyers’ hands. You have a chance to soothe, instead of aggravating, the miseries of a woman you once loved. You have a chance of recovering at some future date, instead of alienating forever, the love and respect of your children. For God’s sake take it and yield to the deep wishes of everyone concerned except yourself.
You may suspect that the letter you will get from David was ‘inspired’ by Joy or me. In reality, it was expurgated, i.e. the letter he meant to send was much stronger and Joy made him tone it down. Douglas burst into tears on hearing your plans. I assure you that they have never heard a word against you from me. No propaganda at all has ever gone on.
Yours,
Jack2
It was an extraordinary letter to have composed, and reveals how deeply the knowledge of Joy’s imminent death revived in Lewis all the traumas and horrors of August 1908, not least among them an irrational dread of his own father. The odd impertinence of the letter makes sense if we think that Lewis was subconsciously identifying Bill with the P’daytabird. The Gresham boys’ dread of their father was not wholly irrational. As Lewis put it in the second letter that he wrote and posted that day:
The boys remember you as a man who fired rifles through the ceilings to relieve his temper, broke up chairs, wept in public, and broke a bottle over Douglas’s head. David knew, and resented the fact, that you were living with your present wife while still married to his mother. Children have indelible memories of such things and they are (like us adults) self-righteous.3
All this may very well have been the case, but the fact that the boys were crying in the week they heard their mother would soon be dead is hardly surprising. Had Bill Gresham’s lawyer wished to contest the case, it could have been said that life with their first cousin once removed (Renée) and their own father (if alcoholic), in the land of their birth, offered a more stable continuity with the past than life with their stepfather, whom they had only known in school holidays for a little over a year, and his elderly brother (again alcoholic). But Lewis was not, strictly speaking, thinking. As he said in another context, ‘it was a yell rather than a thought.’4 The wildness of the suggestion that their own father should wait until they had grown up before being allowed access to his own sons revealed, as well as pain, a generous love. The last thing that many men in the circumstances would have been prepared to do was to take on responsibility for the future of the boys. In the event Bill Gresham agreed, as a result of receiving these letters, that he would not press for custody of Douglas and David. By the time they did in fact lose their mother, they were teenagers and the whole situation was different. (Bill did not then insist on their returning to the States with him.)
For, as the weeks went past in The Kilns, Joy mysteriously did not die. She was still incapable of walking in August 1957, when she was visited by her college friend Bel Kaufman, but she was radiant. Bel was pleasantly surprised by Lewis himself-‘so much handsomer than his photos!’ – and she was very much struck by what Joy said concerning her love for her new husband – ‘The movies and the poets are right: it does exist!’ Lewis himself was to write something very similar in The Four Loves; ‘Years ago when I wrote about medieval love poetry and described its strange half make-believe “religion of Love” I was blind enough to treat this as an almost purely literary phenomenon. I know better now.’5
The miraculous, the literally miraculous, appeared to be happening. Joy, very slowly, but quite discernibly, was getting better. The pain in her bones was vanishing. Bel Kaufman noted that Jack, too, had ‘osteo-something, a degenerative disease – lack of calcium – back pains’.6
Both these testimonies from Joy’s old friend from New York days are corroborated by confidences Lewis made to his old friend Nevill Coghill. In the happiness of his love for Joy, pathetically fragile as he knew her physical condition still to be, he was boy-like, exuberant. ‘Do you know,’ he said to Coghill and Peter Bayley as they were crossing a quadrangle at Merton, ‘I am experiencing what I thought would never be mine. I never thought I would have in my sixties the happiness that passed me by in my twenties.’
At the same time, there was the eerie phenomenon of his apparently being allowed to bear Joy’s suffering and pain. The doctrine of Substitution,
that we can, in the most literal sense, opt to ‘bear one another’s burdens’, had been an idea dear to the heart of Charles Williams. In 1949, over a drink in the Eagle and Child, J. R. R. Tolkien had told Warnie a remarkable story about his own dentist, Mr Pelger. A child was brought to him with an inflamed gum and a bad tooth. Pelger warned her that it would be necessary to cut away the diseased tissue and that this would be extremely painful. As he began to cut, Pelger felt a pang of such severity in his own jaw that he dropped his lancet and stomped up and down the surgery. ‘When the agony had worn off a little, he returned to his patient sitting in the chair with a slash in her jaw – and asked her if she was in much pain. The child laughed and replied that she had felt nothing at all.’7
Lewis had a directly comparable experience with his wife. By September, she could move about in an invalid chair. By the end of 1957, she was walking with a stick, and by the time a year had elapsed from her hospital wedding day, when the doctors had pronounced her case hopeless, she was told that the cancer had been arrested. X-rays revealed that the cancerous spots in her bones had disappeared. Lewis, on the other hand, had developed osteoporosis, not a fatal bone disease, but one which brought with it excruciating pain. He had to wear a surgical belt and sleep on a board for four or five months of 1956. This he confided to Coghill, and to another Christian intimate, Sister Penelope. ‘I am very crippled and had much pain all summer, but am in a good spell now,’ he told the latter in November. ‘I was losing calcium just about as fast as Joy was gaining it, a bargain (if it was one) for which I am very thankful.’
