C s lewis remembered, p.1
C. S. Lewis Remembered, page 1
C.S. LEWIS
REMEMBERED
Sketch of C. S. Lewis by Mary Shelley Neylan. See Chapter 14,
“A Goddaughter’s Memories,” by Sarah Tisdall.
Reprinted by permission of the Edwin W. Brown Collection
at Taylor University and Sarah Tisdall, daughter of the artist.
ZONDERVAN
C. S. Lewis Remembered
Copyright © 2006 by Harry Lee Poe
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Zondervan.
ePub Edition January 2009 ISBN: 978-0-310-55989-4
Requests for information should be addressed to:
Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
C. S. Lewis remembered : collected reflections of students, friends and
colleagues / Harry Lee Poe and Rebecca Whitten Poe, general editors.
p. cm.
ISBN-13: 978-0-310-26509-2
1. Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898 – 1963. 2. Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples),
1898 – 1963 — Friends and associates. 3. Oxford (England) — Intellectual
life — 20th century. 4. Teacher-student relationships — England — Oxford.
5. College teachers — England — Oxford — Biography. 6. Authors,
English — 20th century — Biography. 7. University of Oxford—
Faculty — Biography. I. Poe, Harry Lee, 1950 –. II. Poe, Rebecca Whitten.
PR6023.E926Z599 2006
823'.912 — dc22
2006003806
* * *
Extracts by C. S. Lewis copyright © C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Reprinted by permission. For permission to reprint “The Establishment Must Die and Rot . . . ,” we would like to acknowledge Curtis Brown on behalf of Brian Aldiss; copyright © Brian Aldiss 1964. George Watson’s article “The Art of Disagreement: C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963)” is reprinted by permission from the Hudson Review 48, no. 2 (Summer 1995). Copyright © 1995 George Watson.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
* * *
06 07 08 09 10 11 12 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To John Stanley Mattson,
whose vision and commitment
have led to the preservation of
The Kilns
and the establishment of
the C. S. Lewis Foundation
Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Preface
Foreword by Simon Barrington-Ward
Part One — The Man
1. C. S. Lewis as Christian and Scholar
Owen Barfield
2. What about Mrs. Boshell?
Walter Hooper
Part Two — The Teacher
3. C. S. Lewis: Sixty Years On
Derek Brewer
4. Good College Man
Peter C. Bayley
5. The Art of Disagreement: C. S. Lewis (1898 – 1963)
George Watson
6. C. S. Lewis: Personal Reflections
W. Brown Patterson
7. C. S. Lewis: Supervisor
Alastair Fowler
8. Encounters with Lewis: An Interim Report
Paul Piehler
9. Smartened Up by Lewis
Christopher Mead Armitage
Part Three — The Personal Influence
10. An Oxford Encounter with C. S. Lewis
David Bleakley
11. C. S. Lewis on The Abolition of Man
Basil Mitchell
12. What Lewis Has Meant for Me
Peter Milward
13. C. S. Lewis and Dorothy L. Sayers
Barbara Reynolds
14. A Goddaughter’s Memories
Sarah Tisdall
15. The Kilns Celebration and Dedication Service
Laurence Harwood, Walter Hooper, and Francis Warner
Appendix: The Establishment Must Die and Rot:
C. S. Lewis Discusses Science Fictionwith Kingsley Amis and Brian Aldiss
Contributors
Notes
About The Publisher
Share Your Thoughts
Preface
This is not a book of scholarship — though most of the contributors have had distinguished careers as scholars. Nor is it a collection of essays by “Lewis experts” — even though one of the contributors, Walter Hooper, has done more than anyone to make Lewis’s papers, articles, and letters available to the world. Rather, this is a book of personal memories and reflections by people who knew C. S. Lewis — mostly as a teacher.
I first thought a book of this sort should be written when I heard Francis Warner and Barbara Reynolds, at the C. S. Lewis Summer Institute in 1998, recounting their experiences with Lewis in Cambridge when they were young. Then in 2002, as I listened to Emrys Jones, who had held the prestigious Goldsmiths’ Professorship of English Literature at Oxford, evaluate Lewis as a teacher and scholar, I knew someone needed to collect reflections of Lewis as a teacher.
Most people know C. S. Lewis only through his writings, as well they should. His books have had an impact on the lives of millions. I know of many who owe their conversions to faith in Christ to Lewis’s writings. But Lewis was not a professional writer. He was a teacher. And as I listened to Jones, I wondered how much influence Lewis had really had in that capacity. What had happened to his students? Was he continuing to have an influence through those students? What sort of teachers did Lewis produce?
This book represents my efforts to find the answer to these questions. It is not an exhaustive answer, but it is a highly suggestive one.
At first I thought others should collect these essays. The beginnings of this collection came in 1988 when Stan Mattson invited Owen Barfield, George Sayer, and Walter Hooper to speak at the first C. S. Lewis Summer Institute sponsored by the C. S. Lewis Foundation. Conducted in residence at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, the first summer institute took as its theme “The Christian in the Contemporary University.” In founding the C. S. Lewis Foundation, Stan Mattson was concerned to encourage a renaissance of Christian scholarship and artistic expression throughout the mainstream of contemporary higher education. The foundation was not formed as a C. S. Lewis veneration society. Rather, it took its inspiration from the life and legacy of C. S. Lewis in the matter of how to live and work as a vital Christian in higher education. Lewis provides the model for Christians who want to make a significant contribution in the academy.
In that first C. S. Lewis Summer Institute, Kim Gilnett and Walter Hooper interviewed Owen Barfield, who had known Lewis from the time of Lewis’s return to Oxford after World War I. The transcript of that interview is the opening chapter of this book. Though Barfield had played an important role in Lewis’s shift from atheism to belief that God must exist, Barfield was not himself an orthodox Christian. As Lewis became a leading voice of the Christian faith in the English-speaking world, Barfield became a leading proponent of anthroposophy. When Lewis came to faith in Christ, he and Barfield remained close friends — despite the theological divide that separated them. After Lewis’s death Barfield served as the advisor to Lewis’s literary estate. In his conversation with Gilnett and Hooper, Barfield introduces the man who was his friend. Several fine biographies provide the accurate details of Lewis’s life, details that Barfield makes no pretense to recall with accuracy, but Barfield offers the impressions of a long friendship with Lewis.
Following Barfield, Walter Hooper presents a different perspective on Lewis. If Barfield was among Lewis’s first friends in Oxford, Hooper was certainly one of his last. Walter Hooper did not study with Lewis, and yet Lewis had a profound impact on the young graduate student from America. Lewis took the time to meet him and encourage him. In turn, Hooper took the time to help Lewis with the secretarial duties that Warren, Lewis’s brother, normally performed. In another of those bits of irony, Hooper has spent his life completing those secretarial duties as he deserves the credit for collecting the short essays and letters of Lewis to make them available in edited volumes. Barfield and Hooper provide the frame for the essays that follow.
A common refrain marks the response of those who agreed to contribute to this collection. They almost all used the same words when invited to participate: “Oh, but I was not a friend of Lewis. I only knew him as my tutor.” This book does not claim to be, nor intend to be, an intimate portrait of C. S. Lewis. Those who knew him best have written important essays and books about their relationships. Those who are not familiar with these should read those volumes:
Jocelyn Gibb’s edited collection, Light on C. S. Lewis
George Sayer’s biography, Jack: C. S. Lewis and His Times
James Como’s collection of essays by many of Lewis’s friends, C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table, reissu
John Lawlor’s C. S. Lewis: Memories and Reflections
Douglas Gresham, Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis (a fine volume by Lewis’s stepson)
This volume, rather, explores the lasting work of C. S. Lewis as a teacher and an influence on young people. (Of related interest is a recent book by Joel Heck entitled Irrigating Deserts: C. S. Lewis on Education.)
My cousin George Poe, who chaired the French Department at the University of the South for many years, quickened my interest in Lewis as a teacher when he sent me a brief article from Sewanee magazine in spring 1999, written by the retiring dean W. Brown Patterson. The article entitled “C. S. Lewis: Personal Reflections,” was an account of Patterson’s experience as a Rhodes Scholar studying with Lewis. In time I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Patterson, who agreed to expand his article for this volume.
The irony of this investigation into the influence of Lewis came home to me later when I received a note from my high school history teacher. Ken Childs taught high school for several years after college before going on to law school and a distinguished career as an attorney. He had a profound influence on a generation of high school students. He challenged us intellectually, devoted time as an advisor to our student political club, and helped us learn to think. Because he also challenged us to think about how our faith relates to the rest of our lives, he had more to do with my early intellectual development than any other person. In his note, he invited me to join him at Sewanee to hear a speech by Lady Soames, Churchill’s daughter, and to have lunch with his own college history teacher, W. Brown Patterson. How startling to realize that I stood in the tradition of the Lewis legacy! We never know what influence we may have on our students, but Lewis provides a model of teaching at its best.
Some of the contributors, like Patterson, chose to study with Lewis because of his Christianity, but not everyone in this collection shared Lewis’s faith. George Watson admired Lewis as a scholar but never shared Lewis’s interest in religion. Paul Piehler studied with Lewis in defiance of Lewis’s God — only to become a convert himself after leaving Oxford. Some shared Lewis’s “mere Christianity” but differed with him over his Protestantism, such as Peter Milward, who for many years has served as a Catholic missionary in Japan.
Not everyone who contributed to this volume actually studied with Lewis in a formal setting. Obviously, Barfield did not. The rest came in contact with Lewis when they were young adults or younger. Barbara Reynolds never studied with Lewis but attended his inaugural lecture at Cambridge on behalf of her mentor, Dorothy L. Sayers. Bishop Simon Barrington-Ward came to know Lewis when he was the young, new chaplain at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where Lewis faithfully attended college chapel. Philosopher Basil Mitchell knew Lewis as the president of the Socratic Club and succeeded to the office when Lewis moved to Cambridge. Laurence Harwood was a godson of Lewis. Throughout his life until Lewis’s death, Harwood received notes of encouragement from Lewis at critical points in his young life. Sarah Tisdall was a goddaughter of Lewis and also received his attention. These accounts remind us that the true teacher has an influence beyond the formalities of instruction.
Though most of the contributions were written for this collection, some were originally presented in plenary sessions of the C. S. Lewis Summer Institute, and some appeared in whole or in part in journals. The details may be found in each contribution’s opening footnote.
As an appendix, this volume contains a reprint of an article that appeared in the inaugural issue of SF Horizons in spring 1964. I am most grateful to Brian Aldiss for permission to reprint it. The article is unusual for several reasons. It appeared after Lewis died. SF Horizons is a nonreligious, nonscholarly magazine for science fiction enthusiasts. Most important for our purposes, the article is the transcript of a taped conversation on science fiction between C. S. Lewis, King-sley Amis, and the editor Brian Aldiss. While many descriptions of Lewis’s art of conversation within the Inklings and within a formal tutorial have been published, I believe that this article represents the only transcript we have of how Lewis actually engaged in serious and critical conversation.
The hardest part about editing this collection was bringing it to a close. Scores of others could be included in this collection. Christopher Armitage sent along a brief word when it was too late for a full essay, and we have included it to represent the many who are not included.
In the midst of this project, I invited a young colleague to join me. I had undertaken too many other projects of my own with deadlines looming and editors growing impatient when I suffered a back injury. My daughter Rebecca Poe came to the rescue. She stands at the beginning of a career in English literature, so it seemed appropriate that she should help edit this manuscript and learn from the masters who contributed to it. She has been a great help in some of the most laborious and painstaking aspects of locating and verifying quotations.
I also acknowledge my debt to those who helped in various ways to bring this collection to a successful completion. Marjorie Richard transcribed the tapes of oral addresses by Barbara Reynolds, Owen Barfield, Walter Hooper, Laurence Harwood, and Francis Warner. Paul Sorrell, of the Emma Waters Summar Library at Union University, obtained numerous volumes through interlibrary loan that allowed me to find the quotations that so many of the contributors included in their essays. Sharon Helton, the conference manager of the C. S. Lewis Summer Institute, struck up a conversation with a gentleman in the coffee shop across from St. John’s College, Cambridge. The gentleman turned out to be George Watson, who was most gracious to us during our visit with him. Jill Fort, Faculty Forum coordinator for the C. S. Lewis Foundation, assisted me in too many ways to remember. I am indebted to Stan Mattson, president of the C. S. Lewis Foundation, for granting permission to publish all of the addresses that came from the C. S. Lewis Summer Institutes. Bob Hudson, senior editor-at-large at Zondervan, believed in this project from the beginning and worked diligently to see that it came to pass. I am most grateful for his support.
I deeply appreciate the support of David S. Dockery, president of Union University, who has offered his encouragement and support for this and so many other projects.
I appreciate the understanding and the indulgence of my wife, Mary Anne, and my daughter Mary Ellen while Rebecca and I spent too much time away from them in the last month of the editing process.
Harry Lee Poe
Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture
Union University
June 2006
Working at The Kilns
The noise and fury of twenty hands
rebuilding the house around me
never intruded on my thoughts
as I set to do the work before me.
Ripping up the rotten floor
and cutting new parquet
to match the old in Joy’s room;
Cutting out the boards by hand
and nailing them together
--0to match the bookcase in the pictureof Mrs. Moore’s room;
Tearing brick and mortar apart
with a miniature jack hammer
to open up the fireplace
in Jack’s bedroom;
Scraping the ladder on the quarry tile floor
and drilling into the ceiling
to hang a towel rack above the Aga
in Mrs. Miller’s kitchen.
My pen moved steadily across the paper
while I sat at the dining room table
until I finished my chapter,
looked up, and thought,
“Jack wrote here.”
Harry Lee Poe
Foreword by Simon Barrington-Ward
Not long ago, on one of the first of those really warm mornings of spring, I was strolling back across the Fellows’ Garden of Magdalene, Cambridge, returning from early morning prayer in chapel. As I approached the “Monks’ Walk,” a path, which at that time had become a primrose path indeed, on a raised bank by the far wall of the garden, I suddenly had that sense of more than déjà vu, of almost a positive glimpse of a “sly shade” from the past. It was as if, at any moment, rounding the corner, I might encounter a well-loved presence, never far away from the college. And there came into my mind the words of “Jack” Lewis, the name by which C. S. Lewis told us to call him, in a last letter, written to the master of the college after his enforced retirement due to illness in 1963. The letter was written to acknowledge his having been made an honorary Fellow: “I am constantly with you in imagination. If, in some twilit hour, anyone sees a bald and bulky spectre in the Combination Room or the garden, don’t get Simon to exorcise it, for it is a harmless wraith and means nothing but good.”
