by A. N. Wilson
There is something verging on the farcical about reading such sad stuff in such a setting, where the figures revered seem so much at variance with the evidence contained in the sanctum. It produces the same feeling of shock that one derives from attending Walter Hooper’s meetings of the C. S. Lewis Society in Oxford, where a High Church, celibate C. S. Lewis is reverenced.
Evidence is only of peripheral interest when the idolatrous imagination gets to work. If you want to believe in a High Church, celibate Lewis, there were enough periods of his life when he was ‘High Church’ and celibate for it to be a plausible belief. The fact that he had two liaisons with married women need not really disturb the potency of the image. Similarly, one can sit in the Marion E. Wade Center believing that Lewis gave his life to support all that the firmly non-smoking and teetotal Wheaton College stands for, and one’s faith need not be diminished by reading stories of drunken evenings in Ireland and old gentlemen being carried out of the dining-room by the head waiter. As another of the authors in the Wheaton pantheon once observed, ‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality.’
Where spiritual truths are in question, what in any case constitutes reality? The matter is notoriously difficult to decide, as the whole history of metaphysics, from Plato to Wittgenstein, would attest. Since there is nothing in the universe to suggest that ‘rational’ explanations of life explain anything, the sceptic or mocker finds as much to disconcert him in the cult of C. S. Lewis as does the troubled believer. The ultimate idolatry would appear to be the eight-foot-high stained-glass window of C. S. Lewis in St Luke’s Episcopal Church, Monrovia, California. Does this not constitute a visible embodiment of what C. S. Lewis’s devotees have been doing to him ever since his death, transforming him into a sinless image? The answer is more complex than the question implies. Many perfectly sane religious believers have received insight and help from Lewis’s writings, and it seems a natural progression from here to commemorate him in a window. If the child’s definition of a saint is true (based on the belief that saints were people invariably depicted in windows), then C. S. Lewis could well have been a saint: ‘a man through whom the Light shines’. If people have found it so, it is so.
Moreover, there have been those points where simple devotion to Lewis has passed over into paranormal experience. The most striking of these are the apparitions of C. S. Lewis which were vouchsafed to the biblical scholar and translator J. B. Phillips. In his book Ring of Truth, Phillips tells the following anecdote to substantiate his belief in the authenticity of the Gospel accounts of Christ’s resurrection:
Many of us who believe in what is known as the Communion of the Saints must have experienced the sense of nearness, at some time, of those we love after they have died. This has happened to me several times. But the late C. S. Lewis, whom I did not know very well and had only seen in the flesh once but with whom I had corresponded a fair amount, gave me an unusual experience. A few days after his death, while I was watching television, he appeared sitting in a chair within a few feet of me, and spoke a few words which were particularly relevant to difficult circumstances through which I was passing. He was ruddier in complexion than ever, grinning all over his face and positively glowing with health. The interesting thing to me was that I had not been thinking about him at all. And I was neither alarmed nor surprised. He was just there. A week later, when I was in bed reading before going to sleep, he appeared again, even more rosily radiant than before and repeated to me the same message, which was very important to me at the time …
It would be churlish to point out that in a subsequent volume of autobiography Canon Phillips explained to his readers the nature of these ‘difficult circumstances’ through which he was passing: depressions and nervous breakdowns so severe as to constitute periodic bouts of lunacy; churlish because irrelevant. However we explain the experience, it was an experience. Phillips, an intelligent and truthful man, believed that he had seen Lewis in some sense of the word risen from the dead. He makes a very direct comparison in his book between the apparition of Lewis in 1963 with the Resurrection narratives in the Gospels.
While some might choose to conduct the metaphysical debate on the plane of intellectual enquiry, others might choose to recall Lewis’s momentous conversation with Hugo Dyson and J. R. R. Tolkien on that September night in 1931, when Tolkien pointed out to his friend that the human race receives truth through the medium of myth. C. S. Lewis has become a mythological figure, and it has therefore seemed legitimate to some to retell his story without too much regard for empirical evidence, just as poets have told and retold the tales of Greek or Norse mythology.
A good example of this was the brilliant television play Sbadowlands by Bill Nicholson, subsequently written up by Brian Sibley as a book, which tells the story of C. S. Lewis’s marriage to Joy Davidman. Lewis is played by Joss Ackland and Joy by Claire Bloom. In the play, her sons are still little boys at the time of her death; little boys of the same age that Jack and Warnie had been when they lost their own mother, even though David and Douglas Gresham were actually in their late teens. Lewis’s circle of friends are reduced to a single generic Inklings type, a man called Christopher who is a piece of fiction; so is the college chaplain called Harry, whose name was perhaps suggested by that of Harry Carpenter, the Bishop of Oxford who forbade Lewis a Christian marriage ceremony to Joy. Claire Bloom, graceful, beautiful and poised, is recognizable as Joy in her doughty courage and in her power to make Jack love her, but she lacks any of the ‘real’ Joy’s abrasiveness. There is nothing in the film which could explain why Lewis’s friends disliked Joy – and indeed this fact forms no part of the story. After her death, the script heightens those passages in A Grief Observed which make it seem that Lewis lost his religious faith, though he recovers it in time to enjoy rambles with his young stepson Douglas Gresham. The book based on the screenplay contains eight pages of illustrations whose captions make only passing reference to the fact that these are photographs of actors. Thus a photograph of Claire Bloom is captioned ‘Joy Davidman first corresponded with C. S. Lewis whose books greatly influenced her’. A picture of Claire Bloom, David Waller and Joss Ackland walking in the gardens of Magdalen College is captioned ‘Joy, Warnie and Jack in the botanical gardens with Magdalen College in the rear’.
Not only was the play extremely moving as drama. The fascinating thing about it was how vividly it conveyed some sort of reality about Lewis, not only to those who did not know him, but also to some of those who did. Douglas Gresham has told me how authentic it all felt, in spite of the fact that so many of the details were ‘untrue’. A pupil of Lewis’s has told me that although Joss Ackland looked nothing like Lewis, sounded nothing like Lewis, and was unable to convey Lewis’s cheeriness, there was an uncanny sense for him, while watching, that this was Lewis, that somehow the actor had, by means of untruth, conveyed the truth. It reminded me of how a medieval stained-glass window or tapestry can depict a biblical scene entirely within its own contemporary terms of reference – Mary and Joseph in fourteenth-century court costume, and views of a Burgundian town outside the window where the Angel of the Annunciation is appearing – without losing the essence of the story: indeed, perhaps coming closer to it than would a photograph of a Middle Eastern young woman engaged in domestic chores.
Shadowlands was more than a good play; it was an important landmark in the story of C. S. Lewis and his cult. Thereafter, Lewis was free to outsoar the shadow of our night, and such questions as what was and was not the case ‘in real life’ became less important than what made the most imaginative impact. C. S. Lewis societies, C. S. Lewis journals, C. S. Lewis institutes proliferate on both sides of the Atlantic. His books continue to sell in ever-increasing quantities, with devoted readers all over the Christian world. If professional theologians and Christian liberals do not find Lewis to their taste, they are heavily outnumbered by those who find him in various ways helpful. Thus while Dr Robert Runcie, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is reported to have sai
d that he ‘couldn’t stand C. S. Lewis’, it is not surprising that Mere Christianity should have found an appreciative reader in the more conservative-minded Pope John Paul II. Lewis’s Ulster nurse, who told him to take his feet out of muddy puddles and not to get dirty with ‘wee popes’, might not have liked this development, and with the residual part of himself that reacted against Roman Catholicism, Lewis himself would have found it uncomfortable that he had been taken up by the Sovereign Pontiff in Rome.
A Polish lady informed Walter Hooper that ‘Uncle’ (as Polish students call the Pope) ‘was always talking about Lewis when he was Archbishop of Krakow’. When the chance of a papal audience came Hooper’s way, he was therefore delighted. It took place on 14 November 1984 in the Paul VI Hall in the Vatican: a public audience and not, as Hooper might have hoped, a private interview. When the Pope appeared the audience applauded ‘with such fervour that my hands were sore for the rest of the day’, Hooper wrote. As he studied the figure of John Paul II coming down among the crowds, Hooper was aware that there was something familiar about him, but he could not at first tell what it was. Then he knew.’ “This is Aslan,” I thought, “this really is Aslan.’”
Hooper informed the Pope, ‘Lewis was very much like you. I feel that I am talking with him now.’ He presented the Holy Father with various books, including Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters, illustrated by Papas. The Pope laughed at the illustrations, and Hooper asked him whether he read Lewis in Polish or in English, ‘but I don’t think he understood the question’. They spoke together for about ten minutes.
‘Do you miss your friend Lewis?’ the Pope asked.
Hooper replied, ‘Holy Father, I was sure nothing very special would ever happen to me after C. S. Lewis died. It did not seem right to feel sorry for myself because the best man I knew died a long time ago. Still my mind kept saying that was all. From now on, it’s just remembering. I know that you realize that you are the last person in the world I would flatter, and this I feel ought to be said. I did not see it until I met you but it is clear to me this moment that the special gift which I received from God in knowing Lewis continues to be given to me through the years. All my years of editing Lewis’s writings have been a pleasure which has blossomed fully in meeting you. It is now full grown. Meeting you is the culmination of one, single, happy reality.’
The Pope replied, ‘Our [sic – or did he really say, “Ah”?] Wal-ter Hoo-per – you are doing very good WORK!’ He then moved on to speak to a nun on Hooper’s left. Shortly after doing so, he reached out and touched Hooper, who sank to his knees and kissed the papal ring. It would appear that at this moment a Charles Williams-style miracle of substitution took place and that Hooper was given to suffer the Pope’s pain, both for the moment when he had been shot and, in more general terms, the pain he suffered in carrying ‘the care of all the churches’. Some years after this, Walter Hooper became a Roman Catholic.
Like the story of Narnia itself, the story of C. S. Lewis would appear to be one ‘which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before’. We do not approach him, as we would approach other writers, only through his books, but also through the intense experiences of his followers and devotees, who have found in his pages something much more potent than purely literary interest or delight. Those who knew Lewis in the days of his flesh might suppose that he would chiefly be remembered as a vigorously intelligent university teacher and critic who also wrote some children’s stories. For others, it might be of interest to trace the story of how the inconsolable child from the Little End Room became the life-companion of Mrs Moore, the husband of Joy Gresham and the creator of Narnia. But the pious atmosphere of Wheaton College, Illinois, or the mystic experience of Walter Hooper in the presence of Pope John Paul II, offers the biographer a very different approach:
You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.2
Select Bibliography
Unless otherwise stated, the place of publication is London.
1 BOOKS BY C. S. LEWIS
Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics (under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton). 1919
Dymer (under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton). 1926
The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism. 1933
The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition. 1936
Out of the Silent Planet. 1938
Rehabilitations and Other Essays. 1939
The Personal Heresy: A Controversy (with E. M. W. Tillyard). 1939
The Problem of Pain. 1940
The Screwtape Letters. 1942
A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’. 1942
Broadcast Talks. 1942
Christian Behaviour: A Further Series of Broadcast Talks. 1943
Perelandra (reprinted as a Pan paperback in 1953 as The Voyage to Venus). 1943
The Abolition of Man: Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools. 1943
Beyond Personality: The Christian Idea of God. 1944
That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups. 1945
The Great Divorce: A Dream. 1945
Miracles: A Preliminary Study. 1947
Arthurian Torso: Containing the Posthumous Fragment of the Figure of Arthur by Charles Williams and A Commentary on the Arthurian Poems of Charles Williams by C. S. Lewis. 1948
Transposition and Other Addresses. 1949
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 1950
Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia. 1951
Mere Christianity. 1952
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. 1952
The Silver Chair. 1953
The Horse and His Boy. 1954
English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama. Oxford, 1954
The Magician’s Nephew. 1955
Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life. 1955
The Last Battle. 1956
Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold. 1956
Reflections on the Psalms. 1958
The Four Loves. 1960
Studies in Words. Cambridge, 1960
The World’s Last Night and Other Essays. New York, 1960
A Grief Observed (under the pseudonym N. W. Clark). 1961
An Experiment in Criticism. Cambridge, 1961
They Asked for a Paper: Papers and Addresses. 1962
Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. 1964
The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. 1964
Poems (ed. Walter Hooper). 1964
Screwtape Proposes a Toast and Other Pieces. 1965
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (ed. Walter Hooper). Cambridge, 1966
Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (ed. Walter Hooper). 1966
Christian Reflections (ed. Walter Hooper). 1967
A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis (ed. Clyde S. Kilby). 1968
Narrative Poems (ed. Walter Hooper). 1969
Selected Literary Essays (ed. Walter Hooper). Cambridge, 1969
God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (ed. Walter Hooper). 1970
Fern-Seed and Elephants and Other Essays on Christianity (ed. Walter Hooper). 1975
The Dark Tower and Other Stories (ed. Walter Hooper). 1975
The Joyful Christian: Readings from C. S. Lewis. New York, 1977
On Stories, and Other Essays in Literature (ed. Walter Hooper). 1982
First and Second Things (ed. Walter Hooper). 1984
The Business of Heaven (ed. Walter Hooper). 1985
Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C. S. Lewis (ed. Walter Hooper). 1985
Present Concerns (ed. Walter Hooper). 1986
2 LETTERS AND DIARIES
Letters of C. S. Lewis (edited and with a memoir by W. H. Lewis). 1966 (revised by Walter Hooper). 198
8
Letters to an American Lady (ed. Clyde S. Kilby). 1969
They Stand Together: The Letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves 1914-1963 (ed. Walter Hooper). 1979
Letters to Children (ed. Lyle W. Dorsett and Marjorie Lamp Mead). New York, 1985
Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis (ed. Clyde S. Kilby and Marjorie Lamp Mead). San Francisco, Calif., 1982
3 A SELECTION OF BOOKS RELATING TO C. S. LEWIS
Carpenter, Humphrey The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends. 1979
Christensen, Michael T. C. S. Lewis on Scripture: His Thoughts on the Nature of Biblical Inspiration, the Role of Revelation, and the Question of Inerrancy. Waco, Texas, 1979
Christopher, Joe R. C. S. Lewis. Boston, Mass., 1987
Como, James T. (ed.) C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences. New York, 1979
Cunningham, Richard B. C. 5. Lewis: Defender of the Faith. Philadelphia, Pa., 1967
Dorsett, Lyle W. And God Came In: The Extraordinary Story of Joy
Davidman, Her Life and Marriage to C. S. Lewis. New York, 1983
