C. S. Lewis

by Roger Lancelyn Green

  Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself (cf. the quotation opposite the title page of Dymer)* I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose ‘what it meant’.

  ‘Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the other are men’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’. Therefore it is true, not in the sense of being a ‘description’ of God (that no finite mind would take in) but in the sense of being the way in which God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The ‘doctrines’ we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection.38

  * * *

  * Thomas Dewar Weldon (1896–1958) was educated at Tonbridge School. He went straight from there into the war, serving in France with the Royal Field Artillery, 1915–18, for which he won the Military Cross. He came up to Magdalen College on a demy in 1919. He took a First in Literae Humaniores in 1921 and was a lecturer at Magdalen College, 1922–3, and Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Magdalen, 1923–58. During the Second World War he served with the Air Ministry, 1940–2. Weldon published three books: Introduction to Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1945), States and Morals: A Study in Political Conflict (1946) and The Vocabulary of Politics (1953).

  * The Hávamál, no. 138: ‘Nine nights I hung upon the Tree, wounded with the spear as an offering to Odin, myself sacrificed to myself.’ The Hávamál, which means ‘Sayings of the High One’ (i.e. Odin, chief of the Norse gods), is a ninth-century poem in Old Norse.

  NOTES

  1 SBJ, ch. 14, p. 170.

  2 Ibid., pp. 170–1.

  3 Ibid., p. 174.

  4 AMR, p. 379.

  5 The Abolition of Man: or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (1943), ch. 2, p. 30.

  6 FL, letter of 7 June 1930, p. 903.

  7 SBJ, ch. 14, p. 177.

  8 Luke 14:23 (Vulgate): ‘Et ait dominus servo: Exi in vias, et sepes: et compelle intrare, ut impleatur domus mea.’ ‘And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.’

  9 SBJ, ch. 14, p. 178.

  10 FL, p. 827.

  11 Ibid., letter of 12 October 1916, p. 231.

  12 Ibid., p. 862.

  13 Ibid., letter to Arthur Greeves of 3 April 1930, p. 889.

  14 Ibid., pp. 858–9.

  15 Geoffrey Chaucer, Troilus and Criseyde, V, 1837. FL, pp. 872–3.

  16 FL, p. 878.

  17 Ibid., p. 882.

  18 Ibid., p. 887.

  19 Ibid., p. 902.

  20 Ibid., p. 911.

  21 Ibid., p. 914.

  22 Ibid., p. 906.

  23 Ibid., p. 916.

  24 Ibid., pp. 925–7.

  25 Ibid., p. 909.

  26 Ibid., p. 932.

  27 The poem, entitled ‘Caught’, is found in Collected Poems, pp. 129–30.

  28 There are copies in the Bodleian Library and the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College.

  29 FL, p. 948.

  30 BF, pp. 79–80.

  31 FL, pp. 950–1.

  32 Ibid., p. 899.

  33 The Incarnation of the Word of God: Being the Treatise of St Athanasius ‘De Incarnatione Verbi Dei’, trans. A Religious of CSMV S.Th. [Sister Penelope], introduction by C.S. Lewis (1944), p. 10. Lewis’s Introduction is reprinted as ‘On the Reading of Old Books’ in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (1970) and First and Second Things, ed. Walter Hooper (1985).

  34 FL, p. 968.

  35 BF, p.88.

  36 SBJ, ch. 15, pp. 184–5.

  37 FL, p. 974.

  38 Ibid., pp. 976–7.

  5

  CHRISTIAN SCHOLAR AND ALLEGORIST

  At the dissolution of the family home in Belfast an enormous mass of diaries, letters and other papers relating to the Lewis and Hamilton families came to light. Albert Lewis rarely threw anything away and, though the papers were not arranged into any semblance of order, Warnie saw in them the kernel of a family history; shortly after his temporary retirement from the Army in December 1930, he set about arranging and editing them. He spent, all told, several years typing the 3,563 pages that make up the eleven volumes of ‘Lewis Papers’, covering the period 1850–1930.

  By the middle of September 1931, Warnie had got as far with the family memoirs as 1915. Lewis then asked Arthur Greeves if he might borrow the letters he had written to him, promising that his brother should not see those that dealt with ‘It’ – the name he and Arthur gave to Joy as well as the name they used for sex.

  While vetting the 160 letters he had written to Arthur Greeves for inclusion in the family papers, Lewis came, as it were, face to face with his past. He was surprised to discover what a large percentage of the letters were about the pleasure ‘Joy’ had given him and – now that he was a Christian – with what assiduity he had followed the wrong track in discovering its source. The benefits he gained from this review of his life were summarized in a letter to Arthur on 1 October 1931.

  To me, as I re-read them, the most striking thing is their egotism: sometimes in the form of priggery, intellectual and even social: often in the form of downright affectation (I seem to be posturing and showing off in every letter) … How ironical that the very things which I was proud of in my letters then should make the reading of them a humiliation to me now! Don’t suppose from this that I have not enjoyed the other aspects of them – the glorious memories they call up. I think I have got over wishing for the past back again. I look at it this way. The delights of those days were given to lure us into the world of the Spirit, as sexual rapture is there to lead to offspring and family life. They were nuptial ardours. To ask that they should return, or should remain, is like wishing to prolong the honeymoon at an age when a man should rather be interested in the careers of his growing sons. They have done their work, those days and led on to better things.1

  One thing which puzzled Arthur about Jack’s conversion was that the spontaneous appeal of the Christian story continued to be so much less to him than that of paganism. He asked if this might be due, in the main, to Jack’s upbringing in Protestant Ulster and man’s basic imperfection. Lewis agreed that these might have something to do with it, but felt that the chief cause lay elsewhere, possibly in the fact that paganism had furnished him with the initial ‘sweetness’ which he had needed to start him on the spiritual life.

  Though his Grandfather Hamilton had been an evangelical churchman who never tired of deprecating the Catholic Church from his pulpit, Lewis does not appear to have shared these sentiments except during his two years at Wynyard School when he affected disgust at the High Church practices of St John’s Church in Watford. Indeed, from the time of his conversion to the end of his life, Lewis achieved the rare and seldom-attempted feat of avoiding any show of partisanship. At the same time, however, he distrusted the various manifestations of liberalism (or ‘Christianity-and-water’ as he came to call it) and any attempt to forge an intellectual or political party out of Christianity.

  Later, when his theological works began to appear, many of
his critics confused his strong emphasis on ‘salvationism’ with modern Puritanism. But Lewis had long been aware of the negative and joyless elements in Puritanism – had indeed seen how they affected Arthur Greeves. The Greeves family had traditionally been Quakers. However, when Arthur was about twelve his father, Joseph, became a member of the Plymouth Brethren and had the entire family baptized in the bathtub. Joseph’s face, said Lewis, ‘was timid, prim, sour, at once oppressed and oppressive. He was a harsh husband and a despotic father … My own father described his funeral as “the most cheerful funeral he ever attended”.’2 Now, writing to Arthur on 6 December 1931, Lewis explained why he distrusted the Ulster brand of Christianity:

  I feel that I can say with absolute certainty that if you ever feel that the whole spirit and system in which you were brought up was, after all, right and good, then you may be quite sure that that feeling is a mistake … My reasons for this are 1. That the system denied pleasures to others as well as to the votaries themselves: whatever the merits of self-denial, this is unpardonable interference. 2. It inconsistently kept some worldly pleasures, and always selected the worst ones – gluttony, avarice, etc. 3. It was ignorant. It could give no ‘reason for the faith that was in it’.3 Your relations have been found very ill grounded in the Bible itself and as ignorant as savages of the historical and theological reading needed to make the Bible more than a superstition. 4. ‘By their fruits ye shall know them.’4 Have they the marks of peace, love, wisdom and humility on their faces or in their conversation? Really, you need not bother about that kind of Puritanism. It is simply the form which the memory of Christianity takes just before it finally dies away altogether in a commercial community: just as extreme emotional ritualism is the form it takes on just before it dies in a fashionable community.5

  Shortly after their memorable visit to Whipsnade in September 1931, Warnie re-enlisted for a tour of duty in China so that he could retire earlier than originally planned. Jack felt very acutely the loss of his company, not only at The Kilns, but in Magdalen as well. Since Warnie’s temporary retirement in December 1930, Jack had shared his college rooms with his brother and whenever he was not engaged in tutorials or other work they were usually to be found together and enjoying the same circle of friends.

  Though Lewis spent all his weekends and vacations at The Kilns, he stayed most nights in Magdalen during term. This meant that he and Mrs Moore saw each other less frequently than in the old days. Besides this, his literary and theological interests took him more and more into the company of friends such as Tolkien, Barfield, Coghill and Dyson whom it was more convenient to meet in college. As the old tradition of having friends home for tea began to disappear, Mrs Moore – now in her fifty-eighth year – saw little, if anything, of those friends Lewis had made since they moved to The Kilns. Fortunately for her, Mrs Moore had much else to occupy her. Besides eight acres of land – even if only a small part of it was ever under cultivation – she had to superintend the cooking and the running of a ten-room house, although she had a succession of maids to help her.

  The move to The Kilns had not long been completed before a gardener and general factotum was found to care for the vegetable garden, the greenhouse and the several acres of apple orchard that lay in front of the house. This was Fred Paxford,* who was the same age as Lewis and who lived in a small wooden bungalow on the other side of the old brick-kilns. Paxford, who was born in the nearby village of Fifield, was a countryman of immense integrity and surely one of the most unorthodox gardeners in the world. He was a great favourite with Mrs Moore and, unless she made him do otherwise, slept till mid-morning and went to bed long after the rest of the household was asleep.

  Though an optimist at heart, Paxford was given to gloomy prognostications and hymn-singing which, quite unbeknown to him, was sometimes so loud that it could be heard by those who lived near The Kilns. Once when Mrs Moore was confined to bed for some weeks, she called Paxford to her bedside and taught him the rudiments of cooking. Thereafter, he was able to prepare a very tolerable meal though, as Walter Hooper observed when he lived there, the dinners cooked by Paxford were often served up to the accompaniment of ‘Abide with Me’, uttered with so much feeling that every dish on the table rattled.

  This unusual gardener was also entrusted with the daily shopping. Though generous to a fault with his own money, he was intent on cutting The Kilns’ household expenses to a minimum by a most uncomfortable economy. He absolutely refused to buy tea or sugar till he had searched the larder and was convinced that the last spoonful had been used. Perhaps the most distinctive of Paxford’s attributes was his ability to ‘hold things together with a nail and a piece of string’. Once when a pane of glass in Warnie’s study was broken, he replaced it with one he could find no other use for: it was opaque and remained there as an eyesore for the rest of their lives. Though Paxford was almost fanatically attached to Mrs Moore, his second loyalty was to Lewis – or ‘Mr Jack’ as he called him – whom he served as a devoted friend and servant till the latter’s death.

  The greenhouse was Paxford’s private domain and few people, excepting Mrs Moore, were allowed inside. There he raised some beautiful fruits and vegetables, few of which reached the table as they were allowed to reach such perfection that most eventually rotted where they grew. One day when Hooper was staying in The Kilns Lewis took him to see the greenhouse. Through the door they could see a tomato vine, at the top of which was one large red tomato. Lewis loved tomatoes, and he tried to open the door. Paxford kept it locked. While they were gazing at the tomato it fell to the ground and burst. The next moment Paxford appeared. He had seen the whole thing. ‘Well, Mr Jack,’ he said. ‘I reckon it was a good thing I locked that door. You see, Mr Jack, you might have gone in and got that tomato when it was green. That green tomato would have made you very ill, Sir, very ill indeed. So I reckon you’ve been very lucky, Sir, I really do.’ Lewis told Hooper that Paxford, a lovable pessimist, was his model for Puddleglum the Marshwiggle who appears in The Silver Chair.

  As Mrs Moore was very kind to animals, The Kilns became a fashionable retreat for stray dogs and cats. Chief among her pets was the dog Mr Papworth, who was somewhat mixed in breed, but predominantly a terrier. Though he never made an elaborate fuss over them, Lewis liked dogs too and Mr Papworth accompanied the family on all their holidays. Mr Papworth, who died in 1937, became a bit curious in his old age – his chief oddity being that he would not eat if he were watched. Eventually it was discovered that the only way to get food inside him was by what might be called the Orpheus – Eurydice method. This required Lewis to walk down the village street with a bowl of food, followed by Mr Papworth who would eat whatever Lewis threw over his shoulder. What made this method ‘Orphean’ was that, should Lewis look round to see what was happening, Mr Papworth would give him a fierce look and ignore the food. Owen Barfield once followed behind the dog and watched, as did many amused villagers, Lewis feed Mr Papworth his peripatetic dinner.

  During term, when Lewis spent the nights in college, he was called (with tea) at 7.15. After a bath and shave he usually had time for a few paces in Addison’s Walk before he went to Matins in Magdalen chapel at eight o’clock. From 8.15 to 8.25 he breakfasted in Common Room, after which he answered letters until his first pupil arrived at nine o’clock. His morning tutorials usually lasted from nine till one o’clock which, he complained, was too long a time for a man to ‘act the gramophone in’. At one o’clock Maureen collected him in the ‘family car’ and drove him home for lunch. The car had been acquired shortly after the move to The Kilns and, though it was usually driven by Maureen or Paxford, Lewis did at one time learn to manipulate the gears and get it moving. What stopped him was not a crash but, as he told Hooper, the universal agreement that he should not be allowed behind the wheel. Still, he did not mind this and was always delighted to be a passenger when someone else was driving.

  Lewis was one of those rare people who enjoy almost every kind of weather, which, as he
says in That Hideous Strength, is ‘a useful taste if one lives in England’.6 On most afternoons he took a long walk and, now that he lived at The Kilns, he could stretch his legs and potter about in his own wood. After tea he was driven back to college where he had pupils from 5 p.m. till 7 p.m. After dinner, which was at 7.15 p.m., he usually attended the undergraduate societies described in Chapter 3. Tuesday was an especially busy day as it included ‘Beer and Beowulf’ evenings, when those pupils reading Anglo-Saxon came to his rooms for instruction and beer.

  The only exceptions to this rigorous programme were Saturdays when he had no pupils after tea and Mondays when he had none at all. He nevertheless went into college on Mondays as it had become a regular custom for Tolkien to drop in about mid-morning. From Lewis’s rooms they usually went to the Eastgate Hotel (just across the High Street from Magdalen) or to a nearby pub for a pint of beer. Writing to his brother on 22 November 1931 about these sessions, Lewis said: ‘We talk English School politics: sometimes we criticise one another’s poems: other days we drift into theology or “the state of the nation”; rarely we fly no higher than bawdy and “puns”.’7

  By ‘bawdy’ Lewis did not mean what are commonly called ‘dirty stories’. He disliked stories containing smut or which bordered on the blasphemous, and when they were told in his presence he did not disguise his annoyance. By his own definition, bawdy ought to be outrageous and extravagant but it must not have anything cruel or pornographic about it. One example of Lewis’s taste in bawdy is a story he once told Kingsley Amis and Brian Aldiss about a Bishop of Exeter who was giving prizes at a girls’ school. ‘They did a performance’, said Lewis, ‘of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the poor man stood up afterwards and made a speech and said (piping voice): “I was very interested in your delightful performance, and among other things I was very interested in seeing for the first time in my life a female Bottom.”’8