The Inklings

by Humphrey Carpenter

  page 224

  ‘a trifle vulgar …’, CSL to Barfield, 16 December 1947. ‘among the two or three …’, EPCW, p. vii. ‘word music equalled …’, chapter 6 of ‘Williams and the Arthuriad’ in Arthurian Torso.

  page 225

  ‘Mr Lewis has …’, The Penguin Book of Contemporary Verse, ed. Kenneth Allott, Penguin Books (1950), p. 85. ‘hadn’t begun …’, Leavis, op. cit., p. 252. ‘Somehow, somewhere …’, The Tablet, cxcii, no. 5666, 25 December 1948, p. 421. ‘they attracted only …’, V. H. H. Green, op. cit., p. 359. ‘I can see it now …’, Sprightly Running, p. 184.

  page 226

  ‘A very pleasant meeting …’, WHL diary, 27 November 1947. ‘A very poor Inklings …’, ibid., 4 March 1948. ‘No one turned up …’, ibid., 27 October 1949. ‘The best of them …’, Sprightly Running, p. 184. ‘almost unequalled’ and ‘There are many passages …’, CSL to Tolkien, 21 October 1949 (Estate of J. R. R. Tolkien). Quoted at greater length in the present writer’s J. R. R. Tolkien: a biography, p. 204.

  page 227

  ‘Golly, what a book! …’, WHL diary, 12 November 1949. ‘It is sad that …’, JRRT to Fr. David Kolb, S.J., 11 November 1964.

  page 228

  ‘Five years ago …’, JRRT to CRT, 30 January 1945. ‘We are about …’, JRRT to Stanley Unwin, 21 July 1945. ‘may well have cost …’, The Cambridge Quarterly, i, no. 3, Summer 1966, p. 271.

  page 229

  ‘Present, Hugo Dyson …’, WHL diary, 30 January 1951. ‘While we were waiting … ibid., 8 February 1951.

  page 230

  ‘He at least …’, Green & Hooper, p. 280. ‘is continuously enjoyable …’, New Statesman, 30 October 1954. ‘far and away …’, Essays in Criticism, April 1955. ‘magnificent’ and ‘such intellectual vitality …’, Sunday Times, 16 January 1955. ‘now as always …’, Spectator, 2 October 1954. ‘Can Oxford …’, Birmingham Post, 5 October 1954.

  page 231

  ‘Come over …’, Basil Willey to Walter Hooper, 20 September 1970 (Bodleian). ‘Many of my colleagues …’, CSL to Mrs E. O. Allen, 17 January 1955. ‘My new College …’, CSL to E. A. Allen, 5 December 1955.

  page 232

  ‘We saw less …’, JRRT to Christopher Bretherton, 16 July 1964. ‘Everyman’s Theologian’, UM.

  page 233

  ‘going mad through trying …’, WHL diary, 14 October 1946. ‘She is in …’, CSL to Sister Penelope, CSMV, 30 December 1950. ‘So ends …’, WHL diary, 17 January 1951. ‘I specially need …’, Letters, p. 232. ‘what has been …’, CSL to Greeves, 11 October 1952. ‘Just another American fan …’, WHL diary, 5 November 1956.

  page 234

  ‘In a few years …’, Joy Davidman, ‘The Longest Way Round’, These Found the Way, ed. David Wesley Soper, Philadelphia, Westminster Press (1951), p. 15. ‘Men, I said …’, ibid., p. 16. ‘Come now all Americans …’, Letter to a Comrade, Yale University Press (1938), pp. 25–8. ‘It interested me …’, These Found the Way, p. 17. ‘All I knew …’, ibid., p. 19.

  page 235

  ‘Now with me …’, Letter to a Comrade, p. 47. ‘These books stirred …’, These Found the Way, p. 22.

  page 236

  ‘I put the babies …’, ibid., p. 23. ‘And my prayer …’, ibid., p. 80. ‘I was some little time …’, WHL diary, 5 November 1956.

  page 237

  ‘Her mind was lithe …’, A Grief Observed, p. 8. ‘Last week we entertained …’, CSL to Mrs Vera Gebbert, 23 December 1953.

  page 238

  ‘Poor lamb …’, Joy Davidman to ‘Bod and Jackie’, 19 January 1954. ‘That really is the greatest change …’, Selected Literary Essays, p. 11. ‘I read as a native …’, ibid., p. 13. ‘Where I fail …’, ibid., p. 14. ‘It was obvious …’, WHL diary, 5 November 1956. ‘were obvious from the outset’, ibid. ‘What is offered …’, The Four Loves, chapter 4.

  page 239

  ‘a pure matter …’, Green & Hooper, p. 268. ‘J. assured me …’, WHL diary, 5 November 1956. ‘There ought to be two …’, ‘Christian Marriage’, Mere Christianity. ‘No one can mark …’, Letters to an American Lady, p. 65. ‘Don’t put your goods …’, The Four Loves, chapter 6.

  page 240

  ‘Never have I loved …’, WHL diary, 5 November 1956. ‘There are marriages …’, Smoke on the Mountain, p. 83. ‘One of the most painful …’, WHL diary, 21 March 1957.

  page 241

  ‘My case is definitely …’, Green & Hooper, p. 269. ‘Do you know …’, unpublished memoir of Lewis by Peter Bayley.

  page 242

  ‘usual neat sardonic touch’, CW to AR, 21 September 1943. ‘very strange’, JRRT to Christopher Bretherton, 16 July 1964. ‘For almost twenty years …’, WHL biography of CSL, fol. 440.

  page 243

  ‘J. spent the evening …’, WHL diary, 16 March 1960.

  page 244

  ‘When we meet …’, ‘Christian Marriage’, Mere Christianity. ‘Because of endless pride …’, Poems, p. 89. ‘He seemed very different …’, unpublished memoir of Lewis by Peter Bayley.

  page 245

  ‘Lightly men talk …’, Till We Have Faces, p. 305. ‘We Lewises …’, Basil Willey to Walter Hooper, 20 September 1970 (Bodleian).

  page 246

  ‘Can it be …’, CSL to Kathleen Raine, 5 December 1958. ‘Some of the younger men …’, CSL to Basil Willey, 22 October 1963. ‘quiet, charming and kindly’, Green & Hooper, p. 289. ‘I wear a surgical belt …’, CSL to Sheldon Vanauken, 27 November 1957. ‘the doctors …’, ibid., 26 April 1958. ‘Of course the sword …’. ibid., 27 November 1957.

  page 247

  ‘You might call it …’, Green & Hooper, p. 269. ‘We found it …’, ibid. ‘Dear Mary …’, Letters to an American Lady, p. 76. ‘This last check …’, Green & Hooper, p. 270. ‘Meanwhile you have …’, Letters to Malcolm, p. 44. ‘Can one ask …’, CSL to Fr. Peter Milward, 25 December 1959. ‘her courage …’, WHL diary, 21 June 1960.

  page 248

  ‘She came back …’, Green & Hooper, p. 276. ‘It is incredible …’, A Grief Observed, p. 14. ‘Before I dropped off …’, WHL diary, 13 July 1960. ‘How long …’, A Grief Observed, p. 14. ‘but even now …’, WHL diary, 13 July 1960. ‘All this is flashy …’, Poems, p. 109.

  page 249

  ‘When I was …WHL diary, 13 July 1960. ‘No one ever told me …’, A Grief Observed, p. 7. ‘I had for some time … ibid., p. 11. ‘The conclusion …’, ibid., p. 10. ‘Sooner or later … ibid., p. 26. ‘I have gradually … ibid., p. 38. ‘Easier said … ibid., p. 57. ‘Didn’t people dispute …’, ibid., p. 59. ‘I am at peace …’, ibid., p. 60. ‘What a nice letter …’, CSL to Tolkien, 20 November 1962 (Estate of J. R. R. Tolkien).

  page 251

  ‘I can’t help …’, CSL to Greeves, 11 September 1963. ‘quite comfortable …’, ibid. ‘The wheel had come …’, Letters, p. 24. ‘It was very cold …’, unpublished memoir of Lewis by Peter Bayley.

  page 252

  ‘he was the link …’, unpublished memoir of Lewis by R. E. Havard. ‘I am sorry …’, draft of letter by JRRT to? (Estate of J. R. R. Tolkien).

  APPENDIX D

  Acknowledgements

  This book was undertaken at the suggestion of Rayner Unwin of George Allen & Unwin Ltd, and I am grateful to him for his help and advice throughout the project. I could not have written it had not those people who have charge of the unpublished material relating to its subjects allowed me to consult it and to quote freely from it. C. S. Lewis’s literary executor the Rev. Walter Hooper has, with his fellow Trustee, Owen Barfield, generously permitted me to make use of the full resources of Lewis’s literary estate and to print many quotations whose copyright is in their keeping. Further material relating to Lewis and to Charles Williams has been collected by Dr Clyde S. Kilby, the founder of the Marion E. Wade Collection at Wheaton College, Illinois; and he has generously allowed me access to everything in his charge, as well as permitting me to study
and quote from the diaries of W. H. Lewis, whose copyright he controls. Charles Williams’s son, Michael Williams, has with similar generosity allowed me to quote from his father’s unpublished letters. Finally in this group I must thank Christopher Tolkien, who as his father’s literary executor has kindly allowed me to quote from unpublished writings by J. R. R. Tolkien.

  Permission to quote from published material has been given by the following. For the works of C. S. Lewis: Collins (Publishers), the Delegates of the Oxford University Press, the Syndics of the Cambridge University Press, and Faber & Faber. For the works of Charles Williams: David Higham Associates and the Oxford University Press. For Summoned by Bells and Continual Dew by John Betjeman: John Murray. For Sprightly Running by John Wain: Macmillan & Co. and Curtis Brown Ltd.

  All surviving Inklings have responded with great kindness to my request for information, and I owe a considerable debt of thanks to the following: Owen Barfield, Professor J. A. W. Bennett, Lord David Cecil, Professor Nevill Coghill, Commander Jim Dundas-Grant, Colin Hardie, Dr R. E. Havard, Christopher Tolkien, and John Wain. Several of them have also read the book in manuscript, and it has benefited greatly from their comments; though it should not be assumed that everything in it necessarily represents their own views.

  Many other people who were associated with the persons and events described in the book have responded generously with information, the loan of letters and photographs, and personal memoirs. Here too, several of them have read the book in manuscript and have given me much valuable advice. In this category I owe many thanks to Peter Bayley, Dr Derek Brewer, Margaret Dyson, Dame Helen Gardner, Roger Lancelyn Green, Alice Mary Hadfield, the Rev. Walter Hooper, Phyllis McDougall, Stephen Medcalf, Anne Ridler, Anne Spalding, Priscilla Tolkien, and Michael Williams.

  My thanks also go to others who have helped me in various ways: Sir John Betjeman, the Rev. Frederick Black, Ann Bonsor, Keith Brace, the Rev. Peter Cornwell, Anthony Curtis, C. Talbot d’Alessandro, Wayne De Young, Roger Green, Christian Hardie, the Rev. Dr Brian Horne, Richard Jeffery, Charles Noad, Ruth Pitter, Billett Potter, the President of Magdalen College, Oxford, Stephen Schofield, and T. A. Shippey. My wife Mari Prichard has given her usual valuable help and advice.

  I have of course depended for much of my information on the published biographical studies of Lewis and Williams, especially C. S. Lewis, a biography by Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, An Introduction to Charles Williams by A. M. Hadfield, and Anne Ridler’s critical introduction to The Image of the City and other essays by Charles Williams.

  I owe a particular debt of thanks to the Phoenix Trust for a generous grant which made it possible for me to visit the Wade Collection at Wheaton College, Illinois, a journey without which the book could not have been written. My work at Wheaton was made much easier by the transcriptions from Warnie Lewis’s diaries and Charles Williams’s letters which had been typed by Linda La Breche and Barbara McClatchey. Nor can I close without mentioning with much affection the staff and students of Wheaton College, and in particular Barbara Griffin, Charlyn Johnson, Marjorie Mead, and Douglas Woods. Making such friends as these has been one of the many delights of writing the book.

  NOTES

  Chapter 1

  1 Warnie Lewis was never able to explain the relationship. On 23 November 1948 he wrote in his diary, of a conversation with one of the maids at the Kilns: ‘I cut the thing short, for I saw I was going to be asked the question I am so tired of, and to which I shall never find the answer, viz. how anyone so nice as J. ever came to make himself the slave of such a woman? It’s a very odd thing how impossible it is to be believed when you are telling the truth. I have been asked the question by all the Inklings, by Parkin [a friend from army days], by many of our “lady helps” and servants: and when I reply, perfectly truthfully, that I don’t know, and that J. and I never discuss this side of his life, I always see that I am suspected of an honourable reticence.’

  1 The brother of Colin Hardie. In earlier accounts of Lewis’s life the two have been confused. After one year at Magdalen, Frank Hardie moved to Corpus Christi College, of which he eventually became President. Colin Hardie arrived at Magdalen in 1936.

  Chapter 2

  1 Tolkien was an orphan. His father had died when he was four and his mother when he was twelve. For a brief summary of his early life see Appendix A. A full account is given in the present writer’s J. R. R. Tolkien: a biography (1977).

  Chapter 3

  1 It is entirely unfair to Steiner and his followers to attempt to define Anthroposophy in one paragraph. Nevertheless here is a brief and highly simplified outline of its principal doctrines, (a) Human thought is part of a larger extrapersonal process. ‘The idea which Plato conceived and the like idea which I conceive are not two ideas. It is one and the same idea … In the higher sense Plato’s head and mine interpenetrate each other; all heads interpenetrate which grasp one and the same idea … and the heads all go to one and the same place in order to have this idea in them’ (Rudolf Steiner, Mystics of the Renaissance, New York, 1911, pp.). (Compare Charles Williams’s ‘Co-inherence’ which has certain similarities.) (b) The Darwinian view of physical evolution leading ultimately to human consciousness is wrong. Consciousness has evolved in quite a different way, through identifiable stages: (i) ‘Original participation’ in which there was an extrasensory link between man and the power that created him; (ii) the age of the ‘Intellectual soul’ (the Graeco-Roman period) in which conceptual thinking began and developed, leading to the stage where human thought was completely subjective; (iii) the age of the ‘Consciousness soul’, in which we still are at present; the human microcosm is now completely cut off from the macrocosm; this may lead to a too literal acceptance of the world as it appears to us, whereas what is needed is a movement towards (iv) ‘Final participation’ in which man regains his at-one-ment with the principle of creation, only now in full self-consciousness as a self-contained Ego. (c) This ‘final participation’ is to be achieved by man becoming more fully aware of the workings of the imagination – more specifically by turning his attention to direct inspiration and inner revelation or intuition, (d) Anthroposophy does not of itself demand any specific religious observances; Steiner interpreted Christianity in his own fashion, but did not in any way deny its fundamental truth, and many Anthroposophists are practising Christians of one denomination or another. For further discussions of Steiner’s teaching see, of course, the works of Owen Barfield, especially Romanticism Comes of Age and Saving the Appearances.

  1 ‘Sub-creator’ in that he is under God, the prime Creator. For Tolkien’s exposition of this term, and for a full account of his views about the truth of myth, see his essay ‘On Fairy-Stories’, which is printed in Essays Presented to Charles Williams (ed. C. S. Lewis) and in Tolkien’s own Tree and Leaf.

  Chapter 4

  1 For a full exposition of Lewis’s views on the Christian story as myth-that-is-true, see his article ‘Myth became Fact’, printed in the collection of his essays entitled Undeceptions, which is known in America as God in the Dock. Owen Barfield remarks, in a letter to the present writer: ‘The proposition, that in the Incarnation and Resurrection, “myth became fact”, is simply taken for granted by every Anthroposophist, and had been so for years before Lewis’s essay. It would be an accurate sub-title for Rudolf Steiner’s book Christianity as Mythical Fact, published in German in 1902.’

  G. K. Chesterton expounds the view that pagan mythologies express in crude form some fragment of divine truth in the fifth chapter of The Everlasting Man. Austin Farrer explores the notion of Christianity as a ‘true myth’ in his essay ‘Can Myth be Fact?’. printed in Interpretation and Belief (1976).

  1 Lewis’s own term (intended a little sarcastically) for his own grandfather, in Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, Chapter 2. It ought to be added that in the next chapter of that book Lewis says that he has no objection to devotions to saints, though he adds ‘I am not thinking of adopting the pract
ice myself.’

  2 But Lewis does quote from The Pearl at the head of Chapter 8 of Surprised by Joy.

  1 Priscilla Tolkien recalls that her father and Lewis also attended a performance of one of the Ring operas at Covent Garden, where they found themselves to be almost the only members of the audience in their part of the theatre not in evening dress.

  2 The Cave was named after the Cave of Adullam in which David organised the conspiracy against Saul (I Samuel xxii, 1–2), the implication being that Lewis’s junto was conspiring against what had been, at least until 1931, the reigning party in the English School, and in particular David Nichol Smith the Professor of English Literature. The Cave’s members included Lewis, Tolkien, Coghill, Dyson, Leonard Rice-Oxley, and H. F. B. Brett-Smith. It was still in existence during the nineteen-forties.

  1 This walk took place in April 1937, and was in the West Country, where the party walked in the Quantocks. The date is known from a postcard sent by Tolkien to his daughter Priscilla, who believes that her father also joined Lewis for another walking tour, to Lyme Regis.

  1 Barfield actually made this remark not apropos of The Personal Heresy but of a poem written by Lewis in the nineteen fifties. See Light on C. S. Lewis p., for the full context.

  Chapter 5

  1 A letter from Waite to Williams, dated 6 September 1917, discusses arrangements for ‘your Reception at the Autumnal Equinox’. (The letter is in the Wade Collection, Wheaton College, Illinois.)

  2 Waite’s own explanation of Rosicrucianism comes as near to lucidity as does any account of this opaque subject: ‘The Cross is the sign or symbol of Jesus Christ, of the Brotherhood in its inward dedication, of pure mystical wisdom. Its red colour represents the mystical and divine blood of Christ, which – according to the Apostle – cleanses from all sin … There is placed in its centre a Rose “of the colour of Blood” to indicate the work of Sacred and Divine Alchemy in the purification of that which is unclean.’ (A. E. Waite, The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross (William Rider, 1924), pp.)