The Inklings

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The Inklings Page 36

by Humphrey Carpenter


  page 43

  ‘lies and therefore …’, ‘Mythopoeia’ (see above). These words of Lewis’s are quoted by Tolkien in one of the MSS of the poem, and he also refers to them in EPCW, p. 71. ‘a rush of wind …’, CSL to Greeves, 22 September 1931. Paragraph beginning ‘You look at trees, he said …’: an exact paraphrase of ‘Mythopoeia’ (see above), ‘myth-woven …’, ‘Mythopoeia’ (see above).

  page 44

  ‘we continued on Christianity’, CSL to Greeves, 22 September 1931. ‘nearly certain …’, CSL to Greeves, 18 October 1931. ‘how the life …’. ibid, ‘right in the centre …’, ibid.

  page 45

  ‘Dyson and I …’, CSL to Greeves, 22 September 1931. ‘I have just passed on …’, CSL to Greeves, 10 October 1931.

  page 46

  ‘perhaps I had said too much’ and ‘Perhaps I was not …’, CSL to Greeves, 18 October 1931. ‘There must perhaps …’, CSL to Sheldon Vanauken, 17 April 1951. ‘How could I …’, CSL to the same, 22 April 1953. ‘Even assuming …’, ‘Myth Became Fact’, MS of article by Lewis (Bodleian Library). Printed in World Dominion xx, September/October 1944, pp. 267–70; reprinted in Undeceptions (known in America as God in the Dock).

  page 47

  ‘the spontaneous appeal …’, CSL to Greeves, 8 November 1931. ‘now, as never before …’, Selected Literary Essays, p. 147. ‘It’s such fun …’, CSL to Ruth Pitter, 29 September 1945.

  page 48

  ‘He was indeed …’, MS note by Tolkien (Estate of J. R. R. Tolkien).

  page 49

  ‘My ethics …’ and ‘learn from your …’, The Pilgrim’s Regress, pp. 97, 102. ‘What I am attacking …’, Green & Hooper, p. 130. ‘poacher turned gamekeeper’, The Pilgrim’s Regress, p. 108. ‘Though Mr Lewis’s …’, Times Literary Supplement, 6 July 1933, p. 456.

  page 50

  ‘It was not …’, UM. ‘My father …’, SBJ chapter 1. ‘We were obliged …’, LP iii, p. 536.

  page 51

  ‘I wouldn’t for the world …’, The Pilgrim’s Regress, pp. 118–9. ‘bog-trotters’: ‘By my father and his friends the Roman Catholic Nationalist was dismissed as a poor ignorant bogtrotter who was too stupid and priest-ridden to understand the blessings of English rule.’ WHL biography of CSL, fol. 28. WHL often uses the term ‘bog-rat’ in his diary. ‘We were coming down the steps …’, UM.

  page 52

  ‘besides giving …’, Diary of J. R. R. Tolkien, 1 October 1933. ‘On Saturday last …’, WHL diary, 13 May 1931. ‘a conviction …’, ibid.

  page 53

  ‘I am delighted …’, WHL diary, 19 January 1932. ‘What a mercy …’, CSL to Greeves, 25 March 1933. ‘We discussed how useful …’, WHL diary, 3 January 1935.

  page 54

  ‘in came J’s friend …’, WHL diary, 18 February 1933. ‘At about half past …’, ibid, 17 November 1933. ‘This is one …’, Letters, p. 145.

  page 55

  ‘a vast medieval erection’, recalled by Derek Brewer, ‘must have nothing …’, CSL to WHL, 25 December 1931. ‘my party and I …’, ibid., 24 October 1931. ‘Two at the table …’, MS. (Estate of J. R. R. Tolkien). ‘In fact during …’, ibid. ‘Confound Tolkien! …’, WHL diary, 4 December 1933.

  page 56

  ‘where we had fried …’ and ‘and finished …’, ibid., 26 March 1934. ‘Dyson and Tolkien …’, ibid., 26 July 1933.

  page 57

  ‘a real discovery …’, ibid., 30 November 1933. ‘Since term …’, CSL to Greeves, 4 February 1933. ‘Whether it is …’, ibid,

  page 58

  ‘His one fault …’, WHL diary, 19 August 1947. ‘We were talking …’, Rehabilitations, p. 122. ‘The occasion …’, quoted in Lewis’s Selected Literary Essays, p. 18n.

  page 59

  ‘is really about …’, The Personal Heresy, p. 2. ‘A poet does …’, ibid., p. 26.

  page 60

  ‘To know how bad …’, Rehabilitations, p. 20. ‘Man, please thy Maker …’, quoted in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford History of English Literature), p. 97. ‘Looking back …’, introduction to Light on C. S. Lewis (ed. Jocelyn Gibb), p. ix. ‘deliberately ceased …’, ibid., p. xxvi. ‘with a certain underlying …’, ibid., p. x.

  page 61

  ‘common things …’, The Personal Heresy, p. 96. ‘the life of the …’, ibid., p. 106. ‘What meditation …’, ibid., p. 107. ‘It left me …’, Light on C. S. Lewis, p. xi. ‘From about 1935 …’, ibid., p. xiv.

  page 62

  ‘a half-hearted materialist …’, The Personal Heresy, p. 28. ‘If the world is …’, ibid., p. 30. ‘a disquieting contrast …’, Rehabilitations, p. 185. ‘What are the key-words …’, ibid., p. 186. ‘Applying this principle …’, ibid., p. 192.

  page 63

  ‘Man, Sub-creator …’, EPCW, pp. 71–2. ‘Man without art …’, ‘The Emergence of Shakespeare’s Tragedies’, Proceedings of the British Academy xxxvi (1950), p. 72. ‘our mortality catches …’, Poetic Diction, p. 181.

  page 64

  ‘sufficient measure …’, Education and the University, Chatto & Windus (1943), p. 18. ‘tradition of educated infidelity’ and ‘one phase …’, Christian Reflections, p. 19. ‘like trying to lift …’ and ‘Unless we return …’, ibid., p. 81. ‘Since the real wholeness …’, CSL to George Every, 4 February 1941. ‘Leavis demands …’, Of Other Worlds, p. 96.

  page 65

  ‘How I hate …’, G. A. L. Burgeon (pseud. Owen Barfield), This Ever Diverse Pair, Gollancz (1950), p. 19. ‘All who love …’, The Times, 8 October 1937. ‘No common recipe …’; Times Literary Supplement, 2 October 1937. ‘Mr Lewis and my …’, JRRT to Allen & Unwin, 18 February 1938. ‘Lewis said to me …’, JRRT to Charlotte & Denis Plimmer, February 1967.

  page 66

  ‘first suggested to me …’, CSL to W. Kinter, 29 September 1951. ‘I read the story …’, JRRT to Stanley Unwin, 4 March 1938. ‘heard it pass …’, ibid., 18 February 1938.

  page 67

  ‘You may not have noticed …’, ibid., 4 June 1938. ‘On Thursday …’, Letters, p. 170. ‘was then transferred …’, JRRT to William Luther White, 11 September 1967; printed in White’s Image of Man in C. S. Lewis. ‘It was a pleasantly …’, ibid.

  page 68

  ‘Yet our spirits …’ and subsequent quotations from R. E. Havard are taken from his unpublished memoir of Lewis (Wade Collection).

  page 69

  ‘regards this as sealing …’, Letters, p. 168. ‘along with these …’, ibid.

  page 73

  ‘The telephone …’, War in Heaven, chapter 1.

  page 74

  The description of Williams at Amen House is largely based on ‘Charles Williams as I knew him’ by Ralph Binfield, Charles Williams Society newsletter, 2 (Summer 1976), p. 9.

  page 77

  ‘had too many brains for him’, Hadfield, p. 21.

  page 78

  ‘rather like an ancient …’, ibid., p. 36.

  page 79

  ‘O rooms …’, Poems of Conformity, p. 21. ‘For the first five minutes …’, Image of the City (ed. Anne Ridler), p. xvii. ‘a face which …’, Divorce, p. 61. ‘So lovely …’, Image of the City, p. xvii. ‘whether love were not …’, Shadows of Ecstasy, chapter 13. ‘put off love for love’s sake’, The Silver Stair, p. 63.

  page 80

  ‘the steep whence I see God’, ibid., p. 44. ‘But this is true’, quoted by Dorothy L. Sayers, The Poetry of Search and the Poetry of Statement, Gollancz (1963), p. 73. ‘At bottom …’, Hadfield, p. 181.

  page 81

  ‘bridged the gap …’, quoted on cover of John Symonds, The Great Beast, Mayflower Books (1972), p. 142. ‘a dull and inaccurate …’, Aleister Crowley, Moonchild, Sphere Books (1972), p. 142. ‘My soul is wandering …’, Symonds, op. cit., p. 35. Williams’s recollections of the Golden Dawn as told to Anne Ridler are in Image of the City, p. xxiv.

  page 82

  ‘It
is not in competition …’, A. E. Waite, The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, William Rider (1924), pp. 627–8. ‘It is a House …’, ibid.

  page 83

  ‘No one can possibly …’, War in Heaven, chapter 9. ‘Our Father …’, Windows of Night, pp. 114–16.

  page 84

  ‘My mind possessed …’, ibid., p. 56. ‘To keep the Mass …’, Divorce, p. 69.

  page 85

  ‘dispersed in ancient pain …’, Hadfield, p. 61. ‘firmer under-stone’, Divorce, p. 24.

  page 87

  ‘even the most precious The Masque of the Manuscript, p. 18. ‘He found the gold …’, The Bookseller, 24 May 1945.

  page 88

  ‘wilful, insolent’ and ‘part scornful …’, Poems of Conformity, p. 37.

  page 89

  ‘labour and purity and peace’, The Masque of Perusal, p. 21. ‘Nothing at all …’, Troilus and Cressida v, 2.

  page 90

  ‘undergoes an entire subversion …’, The English Poetic Mind, p. 58. ‘the passing of the poetic …’, ibid., p. 200. ‘When one reads …’, letter to the author, 5 March 1977.

  page 91

  ‘This she? …’Troilus and Cressida v, 2. ‘How dreadful …’, Hadfield, p. 110. ‘There can be few …’, CW to RH, 1 March 1940. ‘great period’, ibid.

  page 92

  ‘The Duchess, sir …’, ‘The Chaste Wanton’, Three Plays, p. 123. ‘I would be somebody …’, ibid., p. 124. ‘good works …’, ibid., p. 126. ‘The void! …’, ibid.

  page 93

  ‘all such a mad mixture …’, Shadows of Ecstasy, chapter 12. ‘You’ve nearly killed it …’, ibid,, chapter 7. ‘I have poured the strength …’, ibid., chapter 5. ‘If this pain …’, ibid., chapter 13.

  page 95

  ‘I saw Shakespeare …’, Windows of Night p. 91.

  page 97

  ‘painfully incredible’, quoted by Williams, CW to TS, undated (? 1932). ‘There are no novels …’, The Listener, xxxvi no. 936 (19 December 1945), pp. 894–5. ‘I remember a man …’, Introduction to All Hallows’ Eve, Pellegrini & Cudahy edition (New York, 1948), p. x. ‘I feel a real apology …’, Poetry at Present, p. 7. ‘If only we could neglect it …’, ibid., p. 163–73.

  page 98

  Eliot’s mention of his debt to The Greater Trumps: unpublished journal of Mary Trevelyan (in possession of the author).

  page 99

  ‘I have just read …’, CSL to Greeves, 26 February 1936. ‘noble fusion …’, The Allegory of Love, p. 21. ‘My dear Mr Lewis …’, Green & Hooper, p. 134.

  page 101

  ‘He is of humble origin …’, CSL to Greeves, 30 January 1944.

  page 102

  ‘his curious accent …’, Lois Lang-Sims, A Time to be Born, Andre Deutsch (1971), p. 196. ‘Love – obey …’, ibid., p. 197. ‘God bless you …’, memoir of Williams by Thelma Shuttleworth, Charles Williams Society newsletter, 6, p. 10. ‘And thus the Filial Godhead …’, Paradise Lost vi, 722. ‘Felt in the blood …’, ‘Tintern Abbey’, 28. ‘There has been a great deal …’, The English Poetic Mind, p. vii. ‘It isn’t what poetry …’, Shadows of Ecstasy, chapter 4. ‘submitted his obedience …’, ibid., chapter 13.

  page 103

  ‘Grounded in the Acts …’, ‘The Founding of the Company’, The Region of the Summer Stars. ‘Sin is the preference …’, He Came Down From Heaven, chapter 3. ‘an explanation of the whole …’, ibid., chapter 5.

  page 104

  ‘I have a point …’, Hadfield, pp. 139–40. ‘bear ye one another’s burdens’, Galations vi. 2.

  page 105

  ‘a tremendous flow of words’, Lang-Sims, op. cit., p. 201. ‘My dear Thelma …’, CW to TS, 18 March 1930.

  page 106

  ‘We were together …’, Charles Williams Society newsletter, 6, p. 8. ‘I was by this time …’, Lang-Sims, op. cit., p. 206. ‘to teach them …’, Letters, p. 208. ‘held me in a strange stillness …’, Lang-Sims; op. cit., p. 203. ‘seemed to control …’, Shadows of Ecstasy, chapter 5. ‘You’ll copy out …’, CW to TS, 28 June 1932.

  page 107

  ‘God forbid …’, ibid., 2 April 1940. ‘St Paul knew …’, ibid., 1 September 1930. ‘Whether his personal life …’, Descent into Hell, chapter 4. ‘We do not know …’, The Figure of Beatrice, chapter 1. ‘He seemed to me to approximate …’, The Listener, xxxvi no. 936 (19 December 1945), pp. 894–5. ‘What finally convinced me …’, Theology xxxviii, April 1939, p. 275.

  page 108

  ‘kidneys enclosed …’, EPCW, p. viii. ‘almost Platonic …’, ibid. ‘one of the most important …’, He Came Down From Heaven, chapter 5.

  page 109

  ‘Taliessin through Logres contained …’, New Statesman, xviii no. 459 (9 December 1939), pp. 864–6. ‘He always boiled …’, Introduction to All Hallows’ Eve, Pellegrini & Cudahy edition (New York, 1948), p. xii. ‘The poor benefit …’ and ‘One would hardly think …’, The Spectator, clv, 13 September 1935, pp. 400–1.

  page 110

  ‘To think we said …’, Hadfield, p. 109.

  page 113

  ‘Outside Lewis …’, CW to MW, 4 October 1939. ‘I was just saying …’, ibid.

  page 114

  ‘Can you cook? …’ Recalled by Anne Spalding in conversation with the author, 7 March 1977. ‘I sympathise with her …’, CW to RH, 13 September 1939. ‘I am in …’, CW to MW, 21 June 1940. ‘if he had to choose …’, Shadows of Ecstasy, chapter 11. ‘I have fled …’, quoted by C. S. Kilby, Tolkien and the Silmarillion, Illinois, Harold Shaw (1976), p. 72.

  page 115

  ‘There is no-one here …’, CW to MW, 6 October 1939. ‘Things are not too bad …’, CW to RH, 17 October 1939. ‘unusually intelligible’, Letters, p. 170. ‘We had an unusually …’, CSL to WHL, 4 May 1940. ‘He is largely …’, Letters, p. 197.

  page 116

  ‘He has an undisciplined mind …’, CSL to Dom Bede Griffiths, 25 May 1942. ‘Don’t imagine …’, Letters, p. 212. ‘a cheering proof …’, EPCW, p. xi. ‘Before he came …’, ibid.

  page 117

  ‘Much was possible …’, The Place of the Lion, chapter 15. ‘one of the most …’ and ‘almost seriously …’, Letters, p. 169. ‘They are good for my mind’, CW to MW, 30 August 1940. ‘I brood on and off …’, CW to AR, 30 September 1942.

  page 118

  ‘or rather not “read” …’, CSL to WHL, 18 November 1939. ‘to smuggle him in …’, ibid., 28 January 1940. ‘The vulgarest …’, ibid. ‘We cannot make him real …’, T. S. Eliot, Selected Prose, Penguin Books (1953), p. 123. ‘To-morrow I go …’, CW to MW, 28 January 1940.

  page 119

  ‘On Monday …’, CSL to WHL, 11 February 1940. ‘Am I only …’, CW to MW, 5 March 1940.

  page 120

  ‘a very impressionable …’, JRRT to Anne Barrett, 7 August 1964. ‘had already become …’, EPCW, p. x. ‘If you were going up …’ and ‘To my eyes …’, unpublished memoir of Lewis by Peter Bayley.

  page 121

  ‘In every circle …’, EPCW, p. v. ‘No, I think not’, MS comment in Tolkien’s copy of EPCW (Estate of J. R. R. Tolkien). ‘I was and remain …’, JRRT to Dick Plotz, 12 September 1965. ‘a witch doctor’, recalled by Paul Drayton from a conversation with Tolkien in 1967 (personal communication to the author). ‘This morning I reached …’, JRRT to CRT, 29 November 1944.

  page 122

  ‘Had a glass …’, ibid., November 1943. ‘I did not start …’, ibid., 23 September 1944. ‘The only freedom …’, The Image of the City, p. 115. ‘In her heart …’, ‘The Departure of Dindrane’, The Region of the Summer Stars.

  page 123

  ‘C. Williams who is reading …’, JRRT to CRT, 13 December 1944. ‘Our dear Charles Williams …’, MS (Estate of J. R. R. Tolkien).

  page 127

  (and following pages) The imaginary conversation: as I have not transcribed verbatim from the sources, but have adapted them freely to
suit the context, I do not give detailed references. Among the sources used are CSL to Greeves, CSL to WHL, JRRT to CRT, WHL diary, early drafts of The Lord of the Rings, JRRT letter to Daphne Cloke (from which the Berúthiel story is taken), EPCW (‘On Fairy-Stories’), JRRT to W. H. Auden, Lewis’s Of Other Worlds, JRRT to Milton Waldman, Lewis’s Poems (pp. 55–6), his discussion of ‘progress’ in Fern-Seed and Elephants and Screwtape Proposes a Toast, his review of The Lord of the Rings in Time & Tide, and Charles Williams’s The Forgiveness of Sins.

  page 153

  ‘to suggest a shared outlook …’, Charles Moorman, The Precincts of Felicity, the Augustinian City of the Oxford Christians, University of Florida Press (1966), p. 15n.

  page 154

  ‘the common Inklings attitude’: J. S. Ryan, Tolkien: Cult or Culture? Australia, University of New England (1969), p. 54. ‘chasing after a fox …’, Letters, p. 287.

  page 155

  ‘He has read …’, SBJ chapter 13.

 

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