The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings

by Philip Zaleski

  “I think a great deal of nonsense”: Ibid., 487.

  “How can I ask thee … eternal will”: Green and Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography, 217.

  “if its got to be”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 258.

  “ghostly feeling”: Ibid., 274.

  “safely dead”: Ibid., 278.

  “for me, personally”: Ibid., 274.

  “What is the use”: C. S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time,” in C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, ed. Walter Hooper, rev. and exp. ed. (New York: Collier Books / Macmillan, 1980), 20.

  “If we had”: Ibid., 32.

  “one night in nine”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 3, 153.

  “I can never forget”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 368.

  morbidly self-concerned: See his letter to Sister Penelope of October 24, 1940, in ibid., 450–52.

  “told too many … much too close”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 481–82.

  “bits … more lovely”: Ibid., 1057.

  “Do I become”: Ibid., 261.

  “the avoidance of”: Ibid., 479.

  “it has grown”: Ibid., 495.

  “merely indulging … Well—we have come”: Ibid., 452–53.

  “things are so bad”: Ibid., 586.

  “time and again … prayers that the prejudices”: Guy Brinkworth, S.J., “C. S. Lewis,” letter to The Tablet (December 7, 1963): 1317.

  “intended to be … When Catholicism goes bad”: Lewis, Allegory of Love, 322–23.

  a formula: See letter to Sister Penelope, October 24, 1940, in Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 449.

  “the vast mass … as much a provincial”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 646–47.

  “the difficulty”: David Wesley Soper, Exploring the Christian World Mind (New York: Philosophical Library, 1963; London: Vision Press, 1964), 69.

  “There is no mystery”: Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), viii.

  imaginatively Catholic: Allegory is similar to Catholic sacramentalism, Lewis notes, in that “it consists in giving an imagined body to the immaterial.” Thus, in The Faerie Queene, the exiled Una (personifying the true church) is dressed like a nun, the House of Holinesse resembles a convent, and Penaunce wields a whip—all in the service of allegory; but Lewis makes a point of saying that Spenser was no unconscious Catholic. Lewis, Allegory of Love, 321–23.

  “only a bungler”: Lewis, Allegory of Love, 323.

  “Jack, most of your friends seem to be Catholic”: Sayer, Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis, 421. For two staunchly Catholic perspectives on Lewis’s attitude toward Roman Catholicism, see Christopher Derrick, C. S. Lewis and the Church of Rome: A Study in Proto-Ecumenism (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981), and Joseph Pearce, C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003). For a more broad-based view of Lewis’s ecclesial thinking, see the essays in C. S. Lewis and the Church: Essays in Honour of Walter Hooper, ed. Judith Wolfe and Brendan N. Wolfe (London: T & T Clark, 2012).

  13. MERE CHRISTIANS

  the “Christian Challenge” series: Williams published The Forgiveness of Sins (also dedicated to the Inklings) in the same series in 1942. Charles Williams, The Forgiveness of Sins, Christian Challenge Series (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1942).

  “If you are writing”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 302.

  “Not many years ago … The creatures cause pain”: C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 1–3.

  “nonsense remains nonsense”: Ibid., 18.

  “whether we like it or not”: Ibid., 46–47.

  “gives the only opportunity”: Ibid., 93.

  “cannot cease”: Ibid., 107.

  “is the thing I was made for”: Ibid., 151.

  “standing above the sensations”: Ibid., 136.

  “how confessedly speculative”: “The Pains of Animals: A Problem in Theology,” Lewis, “The Reply,” God in the Dock, 170.

  “is so shocking”: Lewis, Problem of Pain, 13.

  “Mr. Lewis’s … style”: Charles Williams, review of The Problem of Pain, Theology 42 (January 1941): 62–63.

  “the sort of people”: Lewis, preface, Essays Presented to Charles Williams, xiii.

  “Finest Hour” speech:

  … the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

  Winston Churchill speech before the House of Commons, June 18, 1940, in Randolph S. Churchill and Martin Gilbert, Winston S. Churchill, vol. 6: Finest Hour, 1939–1941 (London: Heinemann, 1983), 571.

  “Well: we are on the very brink”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 423.

  frayed nerves: In a letter to Warnie, Lewis assessed the damage: “Dyson is in very poor form these days. On the whole I should say that Fox and he are the two among my acquaintance who are bearing up least well. Dyson I should have expected it of, for he’s obviously all on wires at any time, but I’m surprised at Fox. The truth is he was too tranquil before, with a tranquillity born of inexperience…” Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 425.

  “I don’t know”: Ibid. Among Hitler’s concluding remarks in this very long speech are the following:

  Mr. Churchill should … place trust in me when as a prophet I now proclaim:

  A great world empire will be destroyed. A world empire which I never had the ambition to destroy or as much as harm. Alas, I am fully aware that the continuation of this war will end only in the complete shattering of one of the two warring parties. Mr. Churchill may believe this to be Germany. I know it to be England.

  In this hour I feel compelled, standing before my conscience, to direct yet another appeal to reason in England. I believe I can do this as I am not asking for something as the vanquished, but rather, as the victor. I am speaking in the name of reason. I see no compelling reason which could force the continuation of this war.

  Max Domarus, Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, 1932–1945: The Chronicle of a Dictatorship, vol. 3: The Years 1939 to 1940 (Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1997), 2062.

  “useful and entertaining … It wd. be called”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 426.

  “though it was easy”: C. S. Lewis, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,” The Screwtape Letters: With Screwtape Proposes a Toast (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 183.

  “men are not angered”: Lewis, Screwtape Letters, 111.

  “once you have made”: Ibid., 34.

  “should become a classic … time alone can show”: Quoted in Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide, 275–76.

  “It’s like the end”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 485.

  “had had an extraordinary effect” … “promising to soar”: Charles Gilmore, “To the RAF,” in Como, C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table, 186–87.

  “complete failure”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 485. A reference to the biblical story of Balaam and the ass, Numbers 22:28.

  “a sterling and direct purpose”: Gilmore, “To the RAF,” 188.

  “I had never realized … the chance in many places”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 504.

  “as a reparation”: Tolkien, unpublished letter in the possession of Christopher Tolkien, quoted in A. N. Wilson, C. S. Lewis, 179.


  “feeling for words … Jack had done his job”: Gilmore, “To the RAF,” 186–89.

  “a fairly intelligent audience”: Quoted in Justin Phillips, C. S. Lewis in a Time of War: The World War II Broadcasts That Riveted a Nation and Became the Classic Mere Christianity (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002), 80.

  “most apologetic begins”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 470.

  “Every one has heard … is appealing to”: Lewis, Broadcast Talks (London: Geoffrey Bles, Centenary Press, 1942), 9.

  “Well, those are the two points”: Ibid., 13.

  “There’s been a great deal … You may even have thought”: Ibid., 27–29.

  “Supposing you hear a cry”: Ibid., 19.

  “Suddenly everyone just froze … there was the barman”: Phillips, C. S. Lewis in a Time of War, 119.

  “One gets funny letters”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 504.

  “after you have realized”: Lewis, Broadcast Talks, 32.

  “enemy-occupied territory … the story of how”: Ibid., 46.

  “the dark curse of Hitler”: Winston Churchill, July 14, 1940, BBC broadcast, in Winston Churchill, Into Battle: Speeches by the Right Hon. Winston S. Churchill (London: Cassell, 1941), 251. The complete sentence runs “This is a War of the Unknown Warriors; but let all strive without failing in faith or in duty, and the dark curse of Hitler will be lifted from our age.”

  “what new urgency?”: C. S. Lewis, “Evil and God,” The Spectator CLXVI (February 7, 1941): 141. Reprinted in C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1970), 22.

  “fighting religion”: Lewis, Broadcast Talks, 39.

  “good dreams … the most shocking thing”: Ibid., 49–50.

  “I’m trying here”: Ibid., 50–51.

  “Hebrew philosopher Yeshua”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 231.

  “as a literary historian”: Lewis, “What are we to make of Jesus Christ?” Reprinted from Asking Them Questions, 3rd series, ed. Ronald Selby Wright (Oxford University Press, 1950), 47–53, in Lewis, God in the Dock, 158.

  “Of course you can take the line”: Quoted by Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide, 308.

  “in Christ”: Lewis, Broadcast Talks, 57. Note that this “new man” is on an altogether different model from the Nietzschean or Theosophical “higher man.”

  “Give up yourself”: Lewis, Mere Christianity, 226–27.

  “take some … They obviously”: Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide, 310–13.

  “With the BBC … There will be”: P. W. [Philip Whitwell] Wilson, “Prophecy Via BBC,” The New York Times (July 22, 1945): 98.

  “the silly-clever … They are not really”: George Orwell, “As I Please,” Tribune (October 27, 1944), reprinted in George Orwell, The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell, Ian Angus, and George Orwell (Boston: David R. Godine, 2000), 264–65.

  “People whose lives”: Wain, Sprightly Running, 138.

  “there are no ordinary people”: C. S. Lewis, “The Weight of Glory,” Weight of Glory, 19.

  “this club”: Walter Hooper, “Oxford’s Bonny Fighter,” in Como, C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table, 138.

  “Those who founded it … We never claimed”: Lewis, preface to Socratic Digest 1, reprinted as “The Founding of the Oxford Socratic Club” in God in the Dock, 128.

  “Here a man”: Lewis, “The Founding of the Oxford Socratic Club,” God in the Dock, 127.

  “a kind of prize-ring … I can remember”: Wain, Sprightly Running, 140–41.

  “He was a bonny fighter”: Austin Farrer, “The Christian Apologist,” in Gibb, Light on C. S. Lewis, 25–26.

  “simple-minded undergraduates … in a straightforward, manly way”: Wain, Sprightly Running, 140.

  “Minto is laid up”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 549.

  “a little oasis … that horrid house”: W. H. Lewis, Brothers and Friends, 181.

  “I am inclined”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 771.

  “In the Tao”: C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 74–75.

  “I hear rumours”: Ibid., 79.

  “a real triumph”: Quoted in Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide, 341.

  “a doctrine never seems”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 730.

  “From all my lame”: Ibid., 527. The poem was later published as “The Apologist’s Evening Prayer” in C. S. Lewis, Poems, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1964), 129.

  “the chapter of Major Lewis’ projected book … not think so well”: Tolkien, Letters, 71.

  “I seemed to be standing in a busy queue … the Big Man”: Lewis, The Great Divorce (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1946; New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 1–3.

  “Tousle-Headed Poet”: Ibid., 4, 7–9.

  “the Intelligent Man”: Ibid., 9, 48–49.

  an Anglican bishop of progressive views: Ibid., 16, 34–44.

  “Well … this is hardly the sort of society I’m used to”: Ibid., 2.

  “blazing with golden light”: Ibid., 3.

  “I had the sense of being in a larger space”: Ibid., 20.

  “raindrops that would pierce him like bullets”: Ibid., x.

  identified the story: See Douglas A. Anderson, Tales Before Narnia: The Roots of Modern Fantasy and Science Fiction (New York: Del Rey, 2008), 283–84. The story is reprinted here, 284–300.

  “‘Golly!’ thought I”: Lewis, Great Divorce, 21.

  bright spirits: Brightest among the spirits is a Sarah Smith, who had lived an ordinary but unstintingly saintly life in Golders Green, a London neighborhood known for its Jewish population, suggesting that Lewis intends her to be Jewish.

  “Of course I should require some assurances”: Lewis, Great Divorce, 39.

  “I came here to get my rights”: Ibid., 31.

  “To any that leaves … will have been Hell”: Ibid., 68.

  ““at the end of all things … We were always in Hell”: Ibid., 69.

  “nearly nothing”: Ibid., 139.

  “My Roman Catholic friends would be surprised … ‘They’re both right’”: Ibid., 71.

  “the sort of universe”: Lewis, “Learning in Wartime,” 32.

  “Don’t you like”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 1, 215.

  “I don’t think”: Ibid., 220.

  “I have finished”: Ibid., 290.

  the new generation: See J. Middleton Murry, “Milton or Shakespeare?” The Nation and the Athenaeum 28 (March 26, 1921): 916–17, and T. S. Eliot, “A Note on the Verse of John Milton,” Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association 21 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1936), 32–40.

  “Milton’s dislodgement”: F. R. Leavis, “In Defence of Milton,” Scrutiny (June 1938): 104–114; reprinted in F. R. Leavis, The Common Pursuit (London: Chatto & Windus, 1952), 33–43.

  “partly anticipated … that when the old poets”: C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (London: Oxford University Press, 1942), v.

  “that great miracle … the proper order”: Charles Williams, introduction, The English Poems of John Milton, from the edition of H. C. Beeching, The World’s Classics 182 (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), ix.

  “the recovery of … Apparently the door”: Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost, v–vi.

  “any of the normal … frenzy of special pleading”: W. W. Robson, “Mr. Empson on Paradise Lost,” The Oxford Review; reprinted in Robson, Critical Essays, 87.

  “It is not”: Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost, 134.

  “if only he”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 561–62.

  “Now that ‘Weston’ has shut”: Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet, 158.

  in Lewis’s rooms: Alastair Fowler, personal interview, October 13, 2006. For the Matthew testimony, see Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide, 215.

  “‘Of course … the sort of time-travelling’”: C. S. Le
wis, “The Dark Tower,” in C. S. Lewis, The Dark Tower and Other Stories, ed. Walter Hooper (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1977), 17.

  “in time to prevent their ‘falling’”: Lewis, Collected Letters, vol. 2, 503.

  “I’ve got Ransom to Venus … Have you room for an extra prayer?”: Ibid., 496.

  “Every night Venus”: Ibid., 397.

  “scattered through other worlds”: Lewis, Perelandra, 40.

  “in something … with principalities”: Ibid., 21.

  “four or five people”: Ibid., 25.

  “Humphrey”: It was Dyson who came up with “Humphrey” as a nickname when he couldn’t remember Havard’s first name. Lyle W. Dorsett, oral history interview with Dr. Robert E. Havard, 8.

  “celestial coffin”: Lewis, Perelandra, 29.

  “we had raids”: Ibid., 26.

  “a sceptical friend … engulfed”: Ibid., 29–30.

  “for one draught”: Ibid., 42.

  “itch to have things”: Ibid., 43.

  Life Force … “blind, inarticulate purposiveness”: Ibid., 78. As Lewis suggests in Studies in Words, the word “life” and all its compounds (life force, life-affirming) had in his day a mystical aura attached to it that made it off-limits to criticism. See “Life,” Studies in Words, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 304–305.

  “the most terrifying”: Charles Andrew Brady, “C. S. Lewis: II,” America 71 (June 10, 1944): 270.

  “far away on Earth”: Lewis, Perelandra, 121.

  “an inspired litany”: Victor Hamm, “Mr Lewis in Perelandra,” Thought 20 (June 1945): 271–90.

  “irregular Spenserian stanzas”: The Letters of Ruth Pitter: Silent Music, ed. Don W. King (Newark, Del.: University of Delaware Press, 2014), 158, note 73.

  “secret fear … It is at this point”: Alistair Cooke, “Mr. Anthony at Oxford,” The New Republic 110, no. 17 (April 24, 1944).

  “The schaddow of that hidduous strenth”: Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, 104.

  “somehow what he thought”: Owen Barfield, “The Five C. S. Lewises,” Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis, 22.

  “violation of frontier … invaded by”: C. S. Lewis, “The Novels of Charles Williams,” On Stories, 22.