And now Roger Lancelyn Green retells the story of that trip to Greece, from his diary kept at the time, and from his recollections of one of the most memorable experiences of his life.
Sunday 3 April 1960. June and I to London Air Port with ‘Wings’ Party (about 30 altogether) where we found Jack and Joy Lewis waiting for us, with Douglas to see us off, having driven there directly from Oxford. A very rough flight; our little Viking (Hunter Clan) had to make an extra landing at Naples, between those at Lyons and Brindisi. The four of us made merry on Chianti in large quantities while the ’plane was refuelling. We arrived very late at Athens, after midnight and unfortunately with a long walk from the ’plane to the Airport buildings, which was rather painful for Joy. We immediately learnt the Greek for a Wheel-chair – which we shall demand in future. We drove straight to the Hotel Cosmopolis, near Omonia Square.
Monday 4 April. A cloudy morning. Jack and Joy did not accompany the party to Marathon. But they joined us for lunch at the ‘Hellenikon’, and on the afternoon tour of Athens. Joy was able to get right up to the Acropolis, where she and Jack found a seat on the steps of the Propylaea and sat drinking in the beauty of the Parthenon and Erechtheum – columns of honey gold and old ivory against the perfect blue sky, with an occasional white cloud. We met again for dinner at the ‘Hellenikon’, Joy having gone back to the hotel to rest, while June and I explored the Agora and Plaka on foot.
Tuesday 5 April. All of us made an early start by coach. We went via Eleusis and Megara without stopping, to the Corinth Canal where we paused for twenty minutes for drinks. Then on into Argolis: poor weather and some rain. But when we got to Mycenae we had ideal weather: a great lowering dark cloud over the citadel, but blue sky beyond. Jack was immensely impressed by the entrance between the towering walls of Cyclopean masonry and through the Lion Gate: I shall never forget the way he paused suddenly and exclaimed: ‘My God! The Curse is still here,’ in a voice hushed between awe and amazement.
Jack and Joy did not get further than the Grave Circle. But they came to the Treasury of Atreus, the most impressive of all Mycenaean buildings, and we had a merry lunch at ‘La Belle Helene’, the old guest house which was still more or less as when Schliemann had stayed there, and were introduced to the genuine Wine of Nemea known as ‘Lion’s Blood’. The drive back to Athens took us by way of Old Corinth.
Wednesday 6 April. This was the most memorable day on the whole tour, and one which Jack said afterwards was among the supreme days of his life – the last of the great days of perfect happiness. The four of us set out on a private excursion in a car with a driver who had just a few words of English. We went via Daphni, where we paused to see the little Byzantine church and the ruins of the temple of Apollo. Then on the Thebes road as far as the pass over Mount Cithairon where we stopped at a taverna for ouzo. After June and I had climbed up to see the Classical ruins of Eleutherai Castle, we drove down to the head of the Gulf of Corinth, a superbly lovely drive down and down through vineyards, and richly scented pine woods with many of the trees tapped for resin, and through olive groves shining silver in the sunlight to the tiny village of Aegosthena, with the ruins of another Classical castle. After exploring the ruins we settled down at the one tiny taverna right on the shore, with Cithairon towering up on one side and the mountains behind Megara on the other, for a marvellous meal. To accompany our pre-luncheon ouzo we had pickled octopus, and the meal itself began with fried red mullets which our host brought to us still wet from the sea before cooking; and after these fried squid, the tenderest I have ever found in Greece, followed by ewe’s milk cheese and fresh oranges. And with this came measure after measure of retsina freshly drawn from the great cask in the half-cellar at the back of the taverna.
We sat there for several hours, the usual vivid conversation lapsing into contented silence broken only by the gentle lapping of the waves, the pervading hum of bees and the call of cicadas: the misty blue of the Gulf and the miraculously clear light of Greece working a charm of absolute contentment. It was with an effort that we tore ourselves away from Aegosthena and went back towards Athens and then up into the valleys and foothills of the Parnon range trying to reach the castle of Phyle. When the road gave out, June and I scrambled uphill and finally saw the castle far away on its hilltop. Then we rejoined the Lewises and drove back to Athens in the soft evening light just in time for dinner – ‘after a supreme day’.
Thursday 7 April. Some of us went to the National Museum in the morning, and then after lunch we flew to the Island of Rhodes and settled in at the comfortable Hotel Thermai, where June and I enjoyed the ‘usual hilarious dinner with Jack and Joy, sampling several new Cretan wines’.
Friday 8 April. In the morning we went on an excursion round the Old City, while the Lewises did a little exploring on their own. In the afternoon we all went to Kamiros, an attractive site on a hillside looking towards Turkey, which combined Mycenaean, Classical, Hellenistic and Roman ruins.
Saturday 9 April. All day excursion to Lindos. Jack and Joy did not climb up to the Citadel, but had a pleasant time wandering round the little Greek village still mostly unspoilt by tourism. A very pleasant evening, the four of us drinking ouzo and having several stimulating arguments. Splendid verbal sparring between Jack and Joy, each enjoying it to the full: we could barely keep up with them.
Sunday 10 April. A quiet morning wandering by the harbour, and attending part of an Easter service in the Orthodox Cathedral. After lunch the whole party flew to Herakleon (late Candia) in Crete. A comfortable hotel, but no food supplied. We set out for dinner at the scheduled restaurant, only to find that it was being re-built and we had a mile walk to a terrible tourist resort called ‘The Glass House’ on the edge of the harbour. We were kept waiting hours for a very indifferent meal, and the band blared away deafeningly. Joy finally began flicking bread-pellets at the nearest musician, and the four of us whiled away the time by writing alternate lines of the following doggerel:
[Jack] A pub-crawl through the glittering isles of Greece,
[Joy] I wish it left my ears a moment’s peace!
[June] If once the crashing Cretans ceased to bore,
[Roger] The drums of England would resist no more.
[Jack] No more they can resist. For mine are broken!
[Roger] To this Curates’ shields were but a token,
[June] Our cries in silence still above the noise –
[Joy] He has been hit by a good shot of Joy’s!
[Jack] What aim! What strength! What purpose and what poise!
Monday 11 April. An excursion to Knossos all morning. Jack and Joy got only to the entrance to the Palace of Minos whence a good view of the whole could be obtained. In the afternoon they hired a car for the excursion to Mallia, as the step of the coach was so high that Joy had hurt herself getting up and down in the morning. Mallia being all on the level they were both able to enjoy it fully. In the evening we refused to go to ‘The Glass House’ and went off, the four of us, to the nearby ‘Irakleon Club’ – the only decent eating place – where we had dolmades, squid, globe artichokes and plenty of Minos wine: we had a very happy time.
Tuesday 12 April. All day excursion across the island to Gortyna, Phaistos and Agia Triada. The Lewises went by car with a French couple from the hotel who wanted to share one. At lunch on a balcony overlooking the Phaistos ruins we all sat at a big table: Minos wine ‘off the wood’ flowed in abundance, and Jack was the life and soul of the party, keeping ‘the table in a roar’. We stopped again at Gortyna on the way back, and I had the drinks waiting for Jack and Joy by the time the party had thought of ordering theirs. We’d realized for some time that Joy was often in pain, and alcohol was the best alleviation: so I had become adept at diving into the nearest taverna, ordering ‘tessera ouzo’, and having them ready at a convenient table by the time June had helped Jack and Joy out of coach or car and brought them in.
The orange harvest was in progress, and whenever the coach or car got held up th
e Cretans would come to welcome us and give us beautiful fresh oranges.
Wednesday 13 April. We had a splendidly smooth flight to Pisa, with views of Melos and much of the Peloponnese as we flew over it fairly low. Touched down at Brindisi, where the Chianti was far from good. In Pisa, June and I left the party and went off to stay with relations at Cesanello.
Thursday 14 April. We rejoined the Lewises for lunch at ‘Hotel Nettuno’, and flew back to London in the afternoon. They had a car waiting for them, and my last sight of Joy was of Jack wheeling her briskly in an invalid chair towards the waiting car.
There was no doubt of the success of the trip. ‘Greece was wonderful,’ wrote Lewis to Jock Gibb on 9 May 1960. ‘We badly need a word meaning “the-exact-opposite-of-a-disappointment”. Appointment won’t do!’63 Joy’s decline was slow and peaceful, and both she and Lewis carried on their lives as if her death were likely to be years rather than months away. Lewis was in excellent spirits at a gathering at the ‘Bird and Baby’ on 25 April, and was still writing ‘After Ten Years’ when Green stayed with him at Magdalene on 3 May.
On Saturday afternoon, 14 May, Jack’s Russian friends, Professor and Mrs Nicholas Zernov, came to tea. Mrs Militza Zernov took some photographs of Joy – the last to be taken – and they show her in the common room of The Kilns looking remarkably well as she sits crocheting an afghan.64 When Mrs Zernov later showed the photographs to Walter Hooper, he asked how she could look so well. ‘It is no mystery to me,’ replied Mrs Zernov. ‘She was a very happy woman!’ And on 23 May Jack wrote to Chad Walsh:
It looked very doubtful if Joy and I would be able to do our trip to Greece, but we did. From one point of view it was madness, but neither of us regrets it. She performed prodigies of strength, limping to the top of the Acropolis and up through the Lion Gate of Mycenae and all about the medieval city of Rhodes (Rhodes is simply the Earthly Paradise). It was as if she were divinely supported. She came back in a nunc dimittis frame of mind, having realized, beyond hope, her greatest, lifelong, this-worldly desire. There was a heavy price to pay in increased lameness and leg-pains: not that her exertions had or could have any effect on the course of the cancer, but that the muscles etc., had been overtaxed. Since then there has been a recrudescence of the original growth in the right breast which started the whole trouble. It had to be removed last Friday – or, as she characteristically put it, she was ‘made an Amazon’. This operation went through, thank God, with greater ease than we had dared to hope …
I had some ado to prevent Joy (and myself) from relapsing into Paganism in Attica! At Daphni it was hard not to pray to Apollo the Healer. But somehow one didn’t feel it would have been very wrong – would have only been addressing Christ sub specie Apollinis. We witnessed a beautiful Christian village ceremony in Rhodes and hardly felt a discrepancy. Greek priests impress one very favourably at sight – much more so than most Protestant or R.C. clergy. And the peasants all refuse tips.65
For some time now Lewis had been taking Joy to the Acland Nursing Home for treatment, and it was during this period that Joy ran into Tolkien’s wife, Edith. Mrs Tolkien was a patient there at the same time as Joy, and one day the nurses rolled their beds outside so they could enjoy the sun. They began talking, and soon discovered each other’s identity. Shortly afterwards Tolkien and Lewis bumped into one another at the Acland, and Tolkien was introduced to Joy.
The next few weeks were to test Joy’s mettle to the limit: and not only hers, but that of her sons. Both the boys left Dane Court in 1957, David Gresham to become a day-boy at Magdalen College School in Oxford, and Douglas to become a pupil at Lapley Grange School at Machynlleth in Wales. They had been through a great deal, and they knew their mother was very ill again.
In his diary of 21 June, Warnie recorded that Joy’s last outing had been on 14 June when he pushed her in a wheelchair up to the pond, with stops to inspect her favourite flower bed. He continued:
The last time I spoke to Joy (or I suppose ever will), was at about 10.15 on Sunday night, the 19th, when she seemed much better and said she would shout for me if she needed help during the night. When I got downstairs on Monday morning J told me that he had been up with her all night, and, poor thing, she had been vomiting, or at least trying to vomit all the time. About 10 a.m. she said to Hibbie, ‘Nurse, this is the end, I know I’m dying. Telegraph for Doug.’ But even then the old courage was still there; almost the last thing she said before falling into a drug induced coma was, ‘I’ve got enough cancers now to form a Trades Union of the darned things.’ And to the doctor she said, ‘Finish me off quick, I won’t have another operation’ …
There is nothing now left to pray for but that she may die without recovering consciousness. Jack of course went in with the ambulance at 4 p.m., and to me fell the task of breaking the news to the boys. I met David at the bottom of the drive and broke the position to him as gently as I could … Poor Doug arrived in tears, having heard the news from his Headmaster who, with really wonderful kindness, had motored him down all the way from central Wales.66
‘The first thing she said’, wrote Douglas, ‘was, “Doug, congratulations on passing your Common Entrance examinations.” I held her in my arms and merely wept. I was now taller than she would have been had she been able to stand, but as usual it was she who comforted me.’67
‘Once again’, wrote Warnie on 8 July, ‘Joy has made fools of the doctors and nurses.’68 Joy returned from the Radcliffe Infirmary on 27 June feeling quite well. By Sunday, 3 July, she was able to go to Studley Priory for dinner, and the next day she went for a drive in the Cotswolds. This reprieve was, however, to be very brief. When Warnie went to bed on 12 July he left Jack and Joy downstairs playing Scrabble. At 6 a.m. the next day the household was wakened by her screams, and Jack rang the doctor. The ambulance arrived soon afterwards and, once again, Joy was rushed to the Radcliffe Infirmary.
Warnie waited at home all day, 13 July, for news. Late that night Clifford Morris collected Jack from the Radcliffe and drove him home. At 11.40, said Warnie,
I heard J come into the house and went out to meet him. Self: ‘What news?’ J: ‘She died about twenty minutes ago.’ She was, he tells me, conscious up to the last, just before Till* called J out of the room to say she was dying rapidly. J went back and told Joy, who agreed with him that it was the best news they could now get. During the afternoon and evening she dozed from time to time, but was fully sensible whenever she was awake.
She asked during these final hours that she should be cremated, left her fur coat as a parting gift to K. Farrer, and was able to receive Absolution from Austin, whom she asked to read the funeral service over her at the crematorium. Once during the afternoon she said to J, ‘Don’t get me a posh coffin; posh coffins are all rot.’ God rest her soul.69
On Monday, 18 July, Jack, Warnie, David and Douglas went by taxi to the Oxford Crematorium. They were joined by others, including Jean Wakeman, and the service of the dead was read by Austin Farrer. ‘At the end,’ a grieving Warnie wrote that same day, ‘the coffin was withdrawn and curtains, pulled invisibly, hid it from us for ever.’70
On reading an ‘Epitaph’ Jack had written with no one in particular in mind, and which is found in his Collected Poems, Joy had asked if he would write a version of it for her. He did, and the poem is engraved on a marble plaque near the spot where her ashes were scattered at the crematorium:
Remember
Helen Joy
Davidman
D. July 1960
Loved wife of C.S. Lewis
Here the whole world (stars, water, air,
And field, and forest, as they were
Reflected in a single mind)
Like cast off clothes was left behind
In ashes yet with hope that she,
Re-born from holy poverty,
In lenten lands, hereafter may
Resume them on her Easter Day.71
* * *
* Richard William Ladborough (1908–72) was edu
cated at Malvern College and Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he read French and Latin for the Modern and Medieval Language Tripos. He took his BA in 1930 and his D.Phil. in 1935 with a thesis on Maucroix. He worked for two years in the British Museum on the Book Catalogue, after which he taught French at the then University College of Southampton. In 1954 he returned to Cambridge as University Lecturer in French, and he was elected Fellow and Director of Studies at his own college where he was also Pepys Librarian. See his biography in CG.
* Stanley Bennett (1889–1972) served in the First World War, during which he lost his right foot. He took his BA from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he read English. He was elected a Fellow of Emmanuel in 1933 and served for twenty-five years as College Librarian. He published many scholarly works, including English Books and Readers 1475–1557 (1952). His wife, Joan Bennett (1896–1986), was a Fellow of Girton College, Cambridge, and a lecturer in English at Cambridge University, 1936–64. Lewis dedicated Studies in Words to them.
* Emile Victor Rieu (1887–1972), well known for his translations of the Odyssey and the Iliad in Penguin Classics.
* The Rt Rev. Harry James Carpenter (1901–93) was educated at Queen’s College, Oxford. He was Tutor in Theology at Keble College, Oxford, 1927, Fellow of Keble College, 1930, and Warden of Keble College, 1939–55. He was Bishop of Oxford, 1955–70. In 1940 he married Urith Monica Trevelyan, and they had one child, Humphrey (b. 1946), who is the author of The Inklings (1978) and many other biographies.
* The Rev. Peter William Bide (1912– ) read English at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. After taking his BA in 1939 he served in the Royal Marines. In 1948 he went to Wells Theological College and, following his ordination, he served at St Helen’s, Hangleton, in Sussex. During a polio epidemic in the spring of 1954 he was chaplain at the local ‘fever hospital’ and one of the stricken children he prayed for recovered from polio. Lewis regarded this as a miracle. After a short time as vicar of Goring-by-Sea, Bide became the Anglican Assistant General Secretary to the British Council of Churches, responsible for local councils of churches throughout the British Isles, including Ulster and Eire. He was Chaplain of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and tutor in Theology, 1968–80, and Precentor of Oxford Cathedral, 1980–2.
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