C.S. Lewis at Poets’ Corner

by Michael Ward

  The Poets’ Corner Memorial was a labour of love by Dr. Michael Ward, whose idea this was and who led the effort from the beginning, including being in charge of the fundraising: every penny of the £20,000 required for the Memorial and Service was raised through private donations—and every individual and institution who donated, no matter how big or small the amount, is listed in the records of the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society, archived in the Bodleian Library, so that future Inklings scholars will be able to see the global reach and depth of Lewis’s readership. Dr. Ward, my colleague in the Apologetics Department at Houston Baptist University, attended to every last detail to the final minute; he joined with many others in making 1. Dr. Holly Ordway is Professor of English and Director of the MA in Apologetics at Houston Baptist University, Texas. She is the author of Not God’s Type: An Atheist Academic Lays Down Her Arms (Ignatius Press, 2014) and of “Charles Williams, Descent into Hell” in C. S. Lewis’s List: The Ten Books that Influenced Him Most (Bloomsbury, 2015). She is the Charles Williams subject editor for The Journal of Inklings Studies and maintains a web presence at www.hollyordway.com, where the original version of this article first appeared.

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  these commemorations something that would truly honour this great man, C. S. Lewis, and extend his legacy.

  The Symposium

  Thursday 21st November was the occasion of a Symposium on Lewis’s

  works, focusing on his contribution to Christian Apologetics. Professor Alister McGrath and Dr. Malcolm Guite spoke, respectively, on his use of Reason and Imagination—an approach that felt particularly relevant for us at HBU, since our approach to apologetics deliberately integrates rational and imaginative approaches. Professor McGrath’s address was on “Telling the Truth through Rational Argument,” and Dr. Guite’s was on “Telling the Truth through Imaginative Fiction.”

  After the lectures and a service of Evensong at Westminster Abbey, we reconvened to hear a panel discussion on “What Can Twenty-First Century Apologetics Learn from C. S. Lewis?” chaired by Michael Ward. The panel included novelist Jeanette Sears, theologian Judith Wolfe, and apologists William Lane Craig, Peter S. Williams, and Michael Ramsden.

  The Service

  It was glorious and all-too-brief. There will never be another event like this one—at which were gathered many of those still living who knew C. S.

  Lewis personally. The British people welcomed Lewis as one of their own (at last!). Though Lewis is popular in America and indeed around the world, it was most fitting that this commemoration was conceived of and organized by British people, and held in Westminster Abbey, England’s coronation church, which has been at the heart of national life for the last thousand years. Almost every aspect of Lewis’s life and work was honoured in some way, through the choice of readings and indeed the choice of readers, the music, the hymns, and the quotations selected for the Order of Service and for the Memorial itself.

  The sermon was given by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, the

  Most Reverend Rowan Williams—a brilliant exposition of Lewis’s understanding of the significance of language, and the corruption of language.

  The Service was also the occasion of the world premiere of a new choral anthem, commissioned especially for this anniversary, by noted composer Paul Mealor, who composed the motet for the Royal Wedding. The text was taken from Lewis’s poem “Love’s As Warm As tears”—and it was stunning. If this first performance is any guide, it seems likely the piece will

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  become a permanent fixture of the English choral repertoire; it certainly deserves to be!

  Continuing Lewis’s legacy: the closing collection at the Service went to support a new scholarship in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge, where Lewis finished his professional career. It reminded me that Lewis’s beneficent influence extended to his interactions with his students and colleagues. Without Lewis’s unfailing encouragement, for instance, one of those colleagues, his fellow-medievalist friend Tolkien, would never have finished his masterwork, The Lord of the Rings.2

  But before the close of the Service came its climax when Dr. Ward unveiled the Memorial Stone itself. Alongside Lewis’s name and dates was the inscription: “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else. ” Walter Hooper, who has done more than anyone else over the past fifty years to preserve and tend Lewis’s literary legacy, then placed flowers at the head of the Stone. I later discovered the thinking behind the choice of flowers: sixty-four white roses (one for each year of Lewis’s life); seven sprigs of holly berries (one for each of the Narnia Chronicles); three sprigs of rosemary (one for each novel of the Ransom Trilogy); and a single red rose (for the Roman de la Rose, the great medieval poem, signifying his academic career as a literary critic and historian).

  When the ceremony was concluded, I went and stood by the Memorial

  and read its inscription, reflecting on all that Lewis had accomplished in his life and all that his work has meant to so many people. I thought in particular of his influence on Tolkien—who, in turn, has had such a transformative effect on my own life. The reference to the Sun, combined with the beautiful flowers, put me powerfully in mind of Frodo and Sam at the Cross-Roads: Suddenly, caught by the level beams, Frodo saw the old king’s

  head. . . . [A]bout the high stern forehead there was a coronal

  of silver and gold. A trailing plant with flowers like small white stars had bound itself across the brows as if in reverence for the fallen king, and in the crevices of his stony hair yellow stonecrop gleamed.

  “They cannot conquer for ever!” said Frodo. And then

  suddenly the brief glimpse was gone.3

  2. “The unpayable debt that I owe to [Lewis] was not ‘influence’ as it is ordinarily understood, but sheer encouragement. He was for long my only audience. Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff ’ could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought the L[ord] of the R[ings] to a conclusion,” The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Carpenter, 362.

  3. Tolkien, The Two Towers, Book IV, chapter 7, “Journey to the Cross-Roads.’ Dr.

  Ordway is currently working on a study of The Lord of the Rings, entitled Tolkien’s Modern Sources.

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  The Best Tale Lewis Ever Told

  Sarah Clarkson 1

  On the day of the C. S. Lewis Symposium at Westminster, we got to the doors of St. Margaret’s almost an hour before they opened. I tightened my scarf and watched the line grow; we queued in our hundreds in the chilly November air, present to honour an author whose words had helped form us, in mind and heart and soul.

  My attendance at these commemorative events came as somewhat of a

  pilgrimage, to give thanks for a man whose writings shaped my faith almost from its inception. He may have died long before I was born, but Lewis’s books reached me like letters from a kind, witty, and child-hearted godfa-ther. Narnia companioned my childhood. Talking stars and valiant mice and swaying dryads peopled my dreams. When my siblings and I rigged up the oak tree in our front yard and called it a ship, it was the Dawn Treader I was sailing. And it was Aslan’s country I desired to find.

  Ah, Aslan . . . Good, but never safe. “Not a tame lion.”

  As I grew up and began to wrestle with the reality of an untameable God, Lewis’s works came often to my aid. His written voice guided me through doubt, assuaged my frustration, and called me back from the brink of disbelief. His stories evoked the kind of beauty that gave me powerful reason to hope, cause to continue trusting the lion-like God I was learning to love. If Lewis had still been living, I would gladly have trekked half the 1. Sarah Clarkson is the author of four books, including Read for the H
eart (Apolo-gia Press, 2009), and is currently studying for a degree in Theology at the University of Oxford where she serves as President of the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society. She maintains a web presence at www.thoroughlyalive.com, which is where the original version of this article first appeared.

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  world round to see him, so England didn’t seem too far to celebrate his legacy. But I was amazed that day, as the crowd steadily swelled, to realize how many others felt the same.

  I clapped my hands against the cold and watched my breath etch the frosty air. As the line lengthened behind me, a question formed in my mind: Why, I wondered, is the draw of C. S. Lewis so strong? What power in his self or his works summoned us from around the globe, from all walks of life, to honour his legacy and study his thoughts? What was the particular quality that so influenced me as a young reader and Christian? His books are famous, yes, but so are countless others. Novelists we have aplenty. Apologists too. And though his status as an Oxford don intrigues us, it’s really not enough to kindle the kind of love that lasts for decades and links the hearts of countless different souls.

  I ruminated on this throughout the day. As I listened to the excellent Symposium talks, I glimpsed the fact that part of the allure was the extraordinary way in which Lewis reconciled reason and imagination, engaging both faculties in his readers. His sheer writing genius is also, of course, part of his power, in books that continue to captivate with their richly imagined truth, their clarity of argument, their vivid fictional atmospheres. But even after these obvious qualities, I felt there was another element still to identify.

  I mulled it as I walked home that night, discussed it over dinner with my family, and returned to it as I rode the Tube back downtown for the Memorial dedication next morning. Perhaps most of all, I wondered as I sat in my stall waiting for the service to begin; for the Abbey itself is the kind of place in which such a question may well be pondered.

  There are few places so shaped to shelter questions of legacy as the wide grey height of Westminster Abbey, with its spacious, motherly, encompassing embrace. A thousand years of prayer have risen amidst these pillars, this taut reach of stone; and a jeweled rain of light still falls from the high stained-glass. Myriads of busy people are always there in an eddy and flow, but the gentle talk and shuffle of steps is the run of a little river through a formidable old canyon. As I sat, I was deeply aware of a silence and shadow engraved by the passing of many centuries, hallowed by countless saints living and dead, a stillness that hovered above the sound of any modern voice.

  The Abbey is a house of faces. They meet you at every step, at every turn, for this great church is, in many ways, a hall of heroes, a carved memorial to the kings and heroes, warriors, artists, and statesmen who have crafted the story of England. I felt almost haunted that day. In each alcove, grave sculpted faces arrested my glance. Emperors glared a challenge down at me from their pedestals; martyrs wailed their faith with eloquent eyes.

  I dropped my gaze to the floor, and remembered that the words of poets

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  and novelists, priests and composers were cut in the very stones at my feet.

  I lifted my eyes and found the face of Christ, calm, fierce, lovely, reflected through figures glimmering and dancing in a hundred coloured windows.

  So great a cloud of witnesses . . . . The words from the Epistle to the Hebrews sang in my head.

  The first strains of music signaled the start of the service. I thought again of Lewis as I studied the wise, knowing eyes of those statues and imagined the strong acts of compassion, battle, or creation that stood as the story and cause behind each silent figure. Each face was set in that place because the living soul it represented had thought or felt or fought its way to some vital truth about the world, a truth that compelled them to craft a life and work that embodied the treasure they had found.

  Perhaps it was then, as I pictured Lewis in company with that multitude, that I first perceived his continuing power to draw and shape so many.

  After two hours of a marvelous service crammed with the truths that Lewis himself had found and striven to tell, all spoken into the air of that storied, sacred place, echoing down the decades to us, I began to understand.

  We came because Lewis lived a great story. The best tale that Jack Lewis ever told was the tale of his own life and that story lends a power to his words that time cannot dispel. In his essay “On Stories,”2 Lewis wrote of the

  “atmosphere” imbuing his favorite “romances.” Some tales were steeped in a certain air beyond the cycle of mere events, an air that struck the reader with a sense of otherness, a sense of something beyond a plotted sequence.

  Whether the long, awful dark of “Outer Space,” or the chill, pure sky of Northern myths, the greatest stories let us enter, for a moment, a “sheer state of being” that stirs our souls to life with hunger, awe, or wonder.

  Human lives have atmospheres as well. Some lives, like those tales Lewis loved, are marked by a vibrancy so potent that we taste the numinous in their presence or their telling. The life of C. S. Lewis is a romance in and of itself.

  His story bears the smell of pipe smoke, the taste of beer, the atmosphere of hearthsides and shabby college rooms in which fast friendships formed and strong opinions volleyed forth with brusque good humour into the small hours. In his tale, the fresh air of long walks and longer thoughts blows free. His elements are tea and common sense and high learning and the call of distant hills.

  But into this lively picture flows an even fresher wind from the vast beyond, the heady skies of imagination. Who would have thought that an Oxford don skilled in logic, the “best read man” of his generation, whose 2. Lewis, On Stories, and Other Essays on Literature, ed. Walter Hooper.

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  intellect cowed countless students (and peers), could countenance a fairy tale? The atmosphere of Lewis’s story grows rich and strange as we marvel that the mind at work in Miracles wove also the tale of a little girl named Lucy and the love she had for a lion. Walking trees and tea-drinking fauns peer round the corners of Lewis’s life. Dragons roar through his dreams and give his story an atmosphere in which any number of wonders might take place. We relish his life because it gives us hope that our own stories too could quicken with the wind of imagination—and with a spirit yet more glorious still.

  In his pithy Experiment in Criticism, Lewis identifies a number of key qualities belonging to the kind of story that he calls a “myth.” He describes myth as a story that is “a permanent object of contemplation—more like a thing than a narration—which works upon us by its peculiar flavour or quality.” Myth, he contends, is a story not dependent on literary finesse or narrative twists. A tale of absolutes, it deals with “impossibles and preternaturals.” “Myth,” says Lewis “may be sad or joyful but it is always grave.”

  Last, and most important of all, Lewis believed that in reading myth we encounter some facet of Reality itself. We come up against something, clothed in story, which “will move us as long as we live.”3 In tales of dying gods or kings returned or great sea-faring heroes, we apprehend some aspect of eternal Reality. Myth, at its best, gestures to Christ.

  The life of Lewis was the best kind of myth. Not because he was sinless or brilliant, not because he was a legend, but because he turned—or tried to turn—every facet of himself to the love of God; and that makes a person mythic in the end. Lewis did nothing by halves. From the point of his conversion onwards he followed every logical conclusion demanded by faith.

  He shirked nothing. His books are certainly marked by reason, by beauty, by vivid imagination. But they are also shaped by an eminently practical faith. With frank, good-humored obedience he worshipped and prayed, confessed his sins, and loved his neighbour by succouring the poor (giving aw
ay most of his royalties) and bearing with the difficult (especially the age-ing Mrs. Moore and those “lame ducks” who wrote to him, endlessly). And so, unwittingly, he made his life into “a permanent object of contemplation.”

  His was a heroic virtue, the “impossible or preternatural” virtue that comes through Christ, lived on the scale of the every day. The longer he lived, the more his own story was subsumed into the divine drama. His life took on the form he had described as a literary critic, that of an intentionally patterned objet d’art gesturing toward a fuller Reality.

  3. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism.

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  Anyone who spends many years loving God with heart, soul, mind,

  and strength will begin to grow mythic in the end. The lines become clearer the longer you follow the Master. Sin gets sloughed away. The soul grows crystalline with love, and the light of Christ shines through, “lovely to the Father in the features of men’s faces.”4 Lewis practised what he preached in his sermon “The Weight of Glory,” and “conducted all his dealings” in such a way that his life was the slow becoming of “everlasting splendor.”5

  The way was not without pain and doubt. His works detail the depths of inner dilemmas and temptations. He knew the struggle that comes with truly learning to love. And after death took his wife, Joy, the book that he wrote about his bereavement voiced the anguished abandonment all lovers know in loss. He understood from within the way that God Himself seems to change when suffering obscures one’s sight. But I remember how Bishop Simon Barrington-Ward described him in the months after Joy’s death: as if he had fought a battle that cost him everything. And yet, “there was almost a light upon his face.”6

  I don’t believe that the stories Lewis told or the truths he argued could wield such power today without the bedrock story of his faithful life. His writings were rooted in the primary story of his life. He chose God and lived for Him at every turn, and his life became a living story pointing toward that Love.