The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings

by Philip Zaleski

  “avuncular informality”: Alastair Fowler, “C. S. Lewis: Supervisor,” The Yale Review 91, no. 4 (October 2003): 74.

  “I have been bothered”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 667. These were seven scholars from Lady Margaret Hall.

  “ladies of St. Hugh’s … man’s man”: Stephen Schofield, In Search of C. S. Lewis (South Plainfield, N.J.: Bridge, 1983), 62.

  John Betjeman, future poet laureate: A. N. Wilson, Betjeman: A Life (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), 55. See also Bevis Hillier, Young Betjeman (London: John Murray, 1988), for a detailed account of Lewis’s relations with Betjeman.

  parodies of T. S. Eliot poems: Lewis, All My Road Before Me, 410.

  “super-undergraduates … absolutely silent”: Ibid., 437.

  “luncheons, luncheons”: John Betjeman, Summoned by Bells (1960), in Collected Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), 461.

  “creditable”: Lewis, All My Road Before Me, 402.

  “he hasn’t been able to read”: Ibid., 433.

  “‘Objectively, our Common Room”: John Betjeman, “A Hike on the Downs,” in Continual Dew (1937), in Collected Poems (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), 30.

  “rude and incompetent”: Quoted in Jeremy Treglown, Romancing: The Life and Work of Henry Green (New York: Random House, 2000), 46.

  became for a while a close friend: For more on the Green-Coghill friendship, see Treglown’s superb biography of Green, Romancing, 50–80.

  “thought nothing of”: Maurice Bowra, Memories, 163, quoted in Treglown, Romancing, 46.

  “Lewis’s abrasiveness [and] Henry’s passivity”: Treglown, Romancing, 46. We are grateful to Treglown for pointing out the friction between Lewis’s and Green’s literary tastes.

  “He cut short my apologies”: John Lawlor, C. S. Lewis: Memories and Reflections (Dallas: Spence, 1998), 6.

  “He looked more like an angler”: Joan O’Hare, “Intellectual Development,” in We Remember C. S. Lewis: Essays and Memoirs, ed. David Graham (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman, 2001), 42.

  “implacable criticism”: Martin Lings, “A Debt Repaid,” in Graham, We Remember C. S. Lewis, 54.

  “happy but incompetent”: Alan Rook, “The Butcher,” in Schofield, In Search of C. S. Lewis, 11.

  “Lewis did not want to bully anyone”: W. W. Robson, “The Romanticism of C. S. Lewis,” The Cambridge Quarterly (1966), reprinted in Critical Essays (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), 73.

  “the best read man”: A. N. Wilson, C. S. Lewis, 161.

  “If only you could smoke”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 750.

  “wall of stillness … To sit opposite”: Helen Gardner, “Clive Staples Lewis,” Proceedings of the British Academy, 1966, 419.

  “Cum bove bos … Necnon ridicula”: J. D. Mabbott, Oxford Memories (Oxford: Thornton’s of Oxford, 1986), 77–78. As Laurence Harwood (son of Cecil Harwood and Lewis’s godson) points out, however, this verse appears to have been composed previously by Barfield and Lewis together. Laurence Harwood, C. S. Lewis, My Godfather (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: IVP Press, 2007), 53–54. The manuscript is included in the Owen Barfield Papers at the Bodleian Library (shelfmark: Dep. c. 1104, folio 3) under the title ‘Poema de XVI Animalibus arcem Noam intrantibus,’ with the legend “HAEC FECIT BARFIELD OVENS ET CLIVUS HAMILTON,” and initialed “CSL, AOB, Jan. 1929.”

  “smooth, pale fluent little chap”: Lewis, All My Road Before Me, 393.

  8. A MEETING OF MINDS

  “can’t read Spenser … no harm in him”: Lewis, All My Road Before Me, 393.

  “The school of English Lang. and Litt.”: Scarlett Baron, “A Short History of the English Faculty,” Christ Church, 2005, http://english.nsms.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/History%20of%20Eng%20Fac.pdf (accessed July 15, 2014).

  “the thousand years … a main source”: J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Oxford English School,” The Oxford Magazine 48, no. 21 (May 29, 1930): 778–82.

  “an intrinsic absurdity … the student who wants”: C. S. Lewis, “Our English Syllabus,” Rehabilitations and Other Essays, 91.

  “if any question of the value”: C. S. Lewis, “The Idea of an English School,” Rehabilitations and Other Essays, 64.

  “a sense of language”: Ibid., 72.

  “next year is the first exam … How long will it take us to become corrupt”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 9.

  the views of Tolkien and Lewis … prevailed: Tolkien would look back upon these contretemps in his “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford,” delivered at Merton College on the occasion of his retirement. J.R.R. Tolkien, “Valedictory Address to the University of Oxford, 5 June 1959,” in J.R.R. Tolkien, Scholar and Storyteller: Essays in Memoriam, ed. Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1979), 16–32. A slightly different version appears in J.R.R. Tolkien, The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays, ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1983); see discussion by Scull and Hammond, J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide, 1074–76.

  “a wild dream”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 701.

  “the gods & giants & Asgard”: Ibid., 838.

  “of the 2 class”: Ibid., 969.

  “sense of reality … I sat up late last night”: Quoted by Christopher Tolkien in an introduction to The Lay of Leithian, in J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lays of Beleriand (The History of Middle-earth, vol. 3), ed. Christopher Tolkien, 151.

  “For perfect construction”: J.R.R. Tolkien, “A Secret Vice,” The Monsters and the Critics, 210–11.

  “Roses all the way”: Albert’s diary, quoted in Lewis, All My Road Before Me, 425.

  “We will resolve them into their elements”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 866.

  “J and I went out … such stuff”: W. H. Lewis, Brothers and Friends, 58.

  C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love: A Study in Medieval Tradition (London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1936; reprinted with corrections, 1938). Lewis didn’t like the title: “I’ve also an old grudge against the Clarendon Press for making me call my first book The Allegory of Love when I wanted a sober academic title like The Allegorical Love Poem” (Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 3, 1115).

  “TO OWEN BARFIELD”: The capital letters are Lewis’s. In the original, Barfield’s name appears in larger type than the rest of the dedication.

  “… I saw him coming slowly towards me”: Coghill, “Approach to English,” 60–61. Or as Lewis would put it later, “our legend of the Renaissance is a Renaissance legend.” C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama: The Completion of the Clark Lectures (1944), in the Oxford History of English Literature, ed. F. P. Wilson and Bonamy Dobrée (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954), 56. In Surprised by Joy, Lewis says that the Renaissance is a construct, in which scholars project onto the fifteenth century a dim memory of their own reawakening after the “dark ages” or latency period of adolescence (71).

  The Romance of the Rose “and its school”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 754, note 18.

  “I have actually begun the first chapter”: Ibid., 766–67.

  “I … wrote nearly the whole”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 3, 1342.

  “that long-lost state of mind”: Lewis, Allegory of Love, 1.

  “the greatest among the founders”: Ibid., 360.

  “Humanity does not pass through phases”: Ibid., 1.

  “French poets”: Ibid., 4.

  “the very nature of thought … To ask how these married pairs”: Ibid., 44.

  “life’s golden tree”: Ibid., 316.

  “literary toy”: C. S. Lewis, “Edmund Spenser, 1552–99,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, collected by Walter Hooper (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 137.

  “There is nothing ‘mystical’”: Lewis, Allegory of Love, 48.

  “the allegorist leaves the given”: Ibid., 45.

  “affords excellent
reading … If his work lacks”: Howard Rollin Patch, Speculum 2, no. 2 (April 1937): 272–74.

  “undoubtedly one of the best books”: G. L. Brook, review of The Allegory of Love, Modern Language Review 32, no. 2 (April 1937): 287–88.

  “it is rarely that … Mr. Lewis is a critic alive”: Kathleen Tillotson, review of The Allegory of Love, The Review of English Studies 13, no. 52 (October 1937): 477–79.

  “for surely to be indulgent”: Lewis, Allegory of Love, 89–90.

  “something between the last of the medieval poets”: “On Reading ‘The Faerie Queene,’” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature, 48. Originally published as “Edmund Spenser,” in Fifteen Poets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941).

  believed in a personal God: Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 225.

  “I became aware”: Ibid., 224.

  “I was to be allowed to play at philosophy no longer”: Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 228–29.

  “terrible things are happening”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 882–83. Walter Hooper makes the point that “Lewis appeared to be having the very experience he later described in Surprised by Joy XIV.”

  revised dating: Alister McGrath, C. S. Lewis—A Life: Eccentric Genius, Reluctant Prophet (Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House, 2013), 141–46.

  “Adversary”: Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 216.

  “a zoo of lusts”: Ibid., 226.

  “And so the great Angler”: Ibid., 211.

  “the tension of these final chapters”: The Times Literary Supplement (October 7, 1955). Quoted by David Jasper, “The Pilgrim’s Regress and Surprised by Joy,” in The Cambridge Companion to C. S. Lewis, ed. Robert MacSwain and Michael Ward (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 228–29.

  “To know God”: Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 231–32.

  “sense of honor … the fussy”: Ibid., 233–34.

  “Where has religion reached … Paganism had been only the childhood”: Ibid., 235.

  As a result: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 911–12.

  “I started to say my prayers again … the inherent improbability”: W. H. Lewis, Brothers and Friends, 80.

  “To one … ‘breathed through silver’”: J.R.R. Tolkien, “Mythopoeia,” Tree and Leaf (new ed.; London: HarperCollins, 2001), 83. Humphrey Carpenter’s reconstruction of the Addison’s Walk conversations is based on a series of letters Lewis wrote to Arthur Greeves, combined with some of the lines in Tolkien’s poem “Mythopoeia.”

  “Rum thing”: Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 223–34. Walter Hooper identifies Weldon as the atheist in question; see Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 763, note 44.

  “the ecstasy”: Ibid., 970.

  “When we set out I did not believe”: Lewis, Surprised by Joy, 237.

  Joy “lost nearly all interest”: Ibid., 238.

  “I have just passed”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 974.

  The Pilgrim’s Regress, written in a white heat: According to Hooper (C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide, 182), Lewis wrote the whole of The Pilgrim’s Regress in August 1932, while he was simultaneously working on The Allegory of Love. He published Regress in 1933.

  “a sweetness and a pang”: Lewis, Pilgrim’s Regress, 33.

  “needless obscurity”: Lewis, Pilgrim’s Regress, preface to 3rd ed., 9.

  “Oriental pessimism”: Lewis, Pilgrim’s Regress, 174.

  “Globol obol”: Ibid., 69.

  “the character of the planets”: C. S. Lewis, “The Alliterative Metre,” Lysistrata 2, (May 1935); reprinted in Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, 24.

  “the twilight of the gods”: Lewis, Allegory of Love, 52.

  planetary symbolism is the key: Michael Ward, Planet Narnia: The Seven Heavens in the Imagination of C. S. Lewis (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

  “an uninterrupted feast”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 856.

  “Barfield doesn’t really taste”: Ibid., 857.

  “had the feeling that something was broken … I don’t think I ever heard him speak”: Blaxland–de Lange, Owen Barfield, 175.

  “Lo, there was a certain philosopher”: Owen Barfield, “C.S.L.: Biographia Theologica.” Owen Barfield Manuscripts, Marion E. Wade Center, OB / MS-6. Translation by John Zaleski.

  “I don’t think I ever showed it”: Ibid., note on verso.

  9. INKLINGS ASSEMBLE

  “prove more lasting”: Tolkien, Letters, 387.

  “unpublished compositions … immediate criticism”: Ibid., 388.

  “undetermined and unelected”: Ibid., 388.

  “philosophical discussion”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 692.

  “one of the pleasantest spots … Sometimes we talk”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 16.

  “ridiculously combative”: Owen Barfield, foreword, VII [Seven]: An Anglo-American Literary Review 1 (March 1980): 9.

  “Had I known”: Warren Lewis, C. S. Lewis: A Biography, unpublished draft, Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, quoted in Colin Duriez, C. S. Lewis: A Biography of Friendship (Oxford: Lion Hudson, 2013), 134.

  “red-brick universities”: Warren Lewis, “Memoir of C. S. Lewis,” 34.

  “surprisingly successful”: Owen Barfield, “The Inklings Remembered,” The World & I 5, no. 4 (April 1990): 549.

  “quite unreal”: Lyle W. Dorsett, oral history interview with Dr. Robert E. Havard, July 26, 1984, in the Marion E. Wade Collection, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois (1986), 37.

  “but better known” … “a poet … intolerant”: J.R.R. Tolkien, The Notion Club Papers, in Sauron Defeated: The End of the Third Age (The History of The Lord of the Rings, Part Four); The Notion Club Papers; and The Drowning of Anadûnê (The History of Middle-earth, vol. 9), ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 1992), 159.

  He identified Ramer as “Self”: Christopher Tolkien’s commentary, Tolkien, Notion Club Papers, in Sauron Defeated, 150.

  “not to look for their own faces”: Tolkien, Notion Club Papers, in Sauron Defeated, 149.

  “read aloud … was highly approved”: Tolkien, Letters, 29.

  “a feeling for literature”: David Cecil, “Oxford’s Magic Circle,” Books and Bookmen 24, no. 4 (January 1979): 10, quoted by Scull and Hammond, J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide, 429.

  “There’s no sound I like better”: From a biographical sketch Lewis provided at the request of his American publisher, Macmillan; quoted and discussed by Alan Jacobs in the introduction to his Lewis biography: Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), xviii–xix.

  “In each of my friends”: C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960; reprint ed. (Orlando: Harcourt, 1991), 61–62.

  a mutual interest in Thomas Aquinas: On Havard’s first meeting with Lewis, see Lyle W. Dorsett, oral history interview with Dr. Robert E. Havard, 17.

  “Occasionally he would hold a note”: Jenifer Wayne, The Purple Dress: Growing Up in the Thirties (London: Gollancz, 1979), 65–66, quoted in Scull and Hammond, J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide, 1124.

  “elegant yet at the same time spontaneously gauche … David and Rachel”: Rachel Trickett, “Cecil, Lord (Edward Christian) David Gascoyne- (1902–1986),” rev. ed. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Oct. 2006 online ed., www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/39801 (accessed July 17, 2014).

  “the pleasure of poetry”: Adam Fox, Poetry for Pleasure: An Inaugural Lecture Delivered Before the University of Oxford, 2 November, 1938 (Oxford: Oxford University, 1938), 7, 13.

  “were always made by the way”: Oral history interview with R. E. Havard, conducted by Lyle W. Dorsett for the Marion E. Wade Center, July 26, 1984, quoted in Colin Duriez, Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship (Mahwah, N.J.: HiddenSpring, 2003), 83.

  “The ritual of an Inklings … no rules”: Warren Lewis, “Memoir of C. S. Lewis,” 34. It is not entirely clear whet
her this description covers also the earliest Inklings meetings.

  “the talk might turn … the cut and parry”: C. S. Lewis, preface, Essays Presented to Charles Williams (London, New York, Toronto: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1947), x–xi.

  “sold his birthright”: Barfield, “Inklings Remembered,” 549.

  “His whole manner”: Oral history interview with R. E. Havard, conducted by Lyle W. Dorsett for the Marion E. Wade Center, July 26, 1984, quoted in Duriez, Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, 83.

  “We smoked”: Lewis, preface, Essays Presented to Charles Williams, v.

  also read works in progress: Inklings scholar David Bratman has compiled an impressive list of “Published works known to have been read or heard by other Inklings prior to publication,” but it is not clear how many of these works were actually read aloud at Inklings meetings, www.dianaglyer.com/scholarship/the-company-they-keep/supporting-bibliographic-material/ (accessed July 25, 2014). This and other supporting bibliographies were compiled by Bratman in connection with Diana Pavlac Glyer, The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2007).

  “Since term began”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 96.

  “only slightly taller”: The Tolkien children loved hearing about Snergs, and Michael set about creating Snerg stories of his own. In a letter to Auden, Tolkien says that The Marvellous Land of Snergs was “probably an unconscious source-book! For the Hobbits, not of anything else” (Tolkien, Letters, 215 footnote).

  other creative and scholarly work: This would include translating Beowulf; preparing the 1936 Israel Gollancz lecture (“Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”); an alliterative verse retelling of the Norse lays of Sigurd the Völsung and the fall of the Niflungs (unfinished; but edited with extensive commentaries by Christopher Tolkien and published in 2009 as The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún [London: HarperCollins, 2009]); an (unfinished) Lay of Leithian telling the story of Beren and Lúthien; the 1930 Quenta Silmarillion; and First Annals.

  John and Michael remembered: Scull and Hammond, J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide: Reader’s Guide, 386.