C.S. Lewis: My Life's Journey

good evening my brother warned he said there were a lot of you but i didn't expect quite this many well you're welcome to our house i hope you're not too squashed in i trust you've been enjoying oxford it's a wonderful city i don't get in as much as i would like because these pins aren't quite what they used to be but uh when i do i very much enjoyed by the way if you have a chance to walk through headington our little village i think you'll enjoy it it's uh like both villages it has its charms so you're all writers are you and scholars oh dear mom feels a little unnerved it's almost like being a lion in a den of daniels and you're all from america i must say without my american readers my success as an author would be somewhat diminished what do they say a prophet is not without honor saving his own country i think that applies to authors as well especially in this city now oh i tell you what it reminds me of a little little ditty i once read i hope i can remember it we lewis's burn out quickly i'm afraid um he goes something like this an author from merrow was a very odd fellow he only could write in a tub with waterproof ink and steaming hot drink he would write till he needed some grub when he bathed in red wine he wrote words of rhyme and sent them to ladies of fame but these ladies of note forgot what he wrote and couldn't remember his name when he bathed in hot tea he wrote mystery and sent them to new scotland yard but these words of intrigue were hard to believe and they sued him for dubious yarns when he bathed in carl's milk his words were like silk and he sent them to men of the cloth but these gossamer notes were fed to the goats and they all developed a cough when he bathed in neat gin he wrote with a grin and sent them to jesters and clowns but these valuable puns were easy to shun for not one could vanquish a frown when he bathed in peace soup his words were astute and he sent them to those of sharp wit but these words for the wise were quickly despised being seen as the work of a twit one day his tubby started to blub for all of his writings were spurned his friends even said your writings we dread it would be best if they all should be burned so this author in vain then boarded a plane and flew to a land far away but in this new land his writing seemed grand three cheers for the us of a you won't mind if i use this chair do you it's a little farther back i'm going to bring it up wall is always moving the chairs you know that's better because i want to be able to see you my health is not what it was but i do feel a little invigorated today so i'm very glad of your company little while ago i had a heart attack and i was very convinced at the time that i was about to enter in as they say but as you can see my entrance was postponed i can't help feeling that it was rather a pity i did survive i mean having gliding so painlessly up to the gate to have it shut in one's face seems a little hard especially knowing that someday the whole process must be gone through again and perhaps a little less pleasantly though they call stephen the first martyr i sometimes think that lazarus had the raw a deal now you won't mind if i indulge in a cup of tea will you i find that tea keeps me going i feel a little bad because i had hoped warning would be here to make you a cup of tea before we got started unfortunately he had to pop out quite suddenly i say suddenly his departure seemed to coincide with the arrival of your bus but hopefully if he gets back we'll rustle you up a cup of tea and uh we'll send you on your way rejoicing wouldn't we your americans drink iced tea don't you how strange still i suppose that dates back to your first big tea party you dumped it in cold water then and you've been doing it ever since by the way professor tolkien tells me that he very much enjoyed his luncheon with you said it was one of the highlights of his calendar year well done the professor is not an easy man to impress i should know don't get me wrong we have been friends for many many years now if indeed he and i along with a few other writers used to meet quite regularly men splendid among men as charles used to say we called our little band the inklings and our chief occupation was to read to one another manuscripts that were works in progress if i'm not mistaken tolerance that's what the professor is called in the inner sanctum tollers read the whole of the lord of the rings to us long before it was ever published what a book and it's mounting levels of grandeur and terror i judged it almost unequal in the whole range of narrative art a man's fertility of imagination never ceases to amaze me i i remember one day i was working on a manuscript that i was particularly keen to read to tallest i was feeling unusually positive about it i think that should have been the first warning sign after i'd read the first few chapters there was a stony silence and tollers were sat there rubbing his chin jack you said i just like it intensely it really won't do you know why don't you put your efforts into something more worthwhile professor is not a man to mince words well after such stinging censure i showed the project to get on to something more worthwhile sometimes later i was going through some old papers you're all writers aren't you do you tend to find that you accumulate papers i do and then the pile builds up to the point where i can't find anything i really want to find well i've managed to solve this problem you see we never have enough paper to light our fires within the winter so every now and then i go through this pop pile and pull out obsolete papers and i pull out half-finished manuscripts that i'm not going to complete or tolerance doesn't want me to complete and then i throw them in the fire paper basket indeed when i have a book published i usually do exactly the same with the original manuscript charles rather scarelessly says that i should save these manuscripts for posterity to which i reply that posterity has been blamed for far too many things already anyway in this particular clear-out session i came across the manuscript that tolus had so roundly condemned and i was just about to throw it away and i thought well i'll give it a read i can't do any harm do you know i was enthralled even though i'd written it myself so i thought i'm good to finish it even though i will probably incur the wrath of my illustrious colleague and that's exactly what i did i sent it to my publisher and he was so enthusiastic he rushed it to the presses and i'm very glad to say that thirteen years later the lion the witch and the wardrobe is still in print now it is my usual custom when i have a book published to send a first edition copy to tollers but i decided not to do it this time i didn't want him to think that i was making a point so you won't find it on his bookshelves i don't think nor for that matter will you find it on the bookshelves of many of my illustrious oxford colleagues i think they regard my children's books as a betrayal of my position as an oxford don i'm quite sure they regard my christian books as a betrayal of my position as an oxford intellectual not that i consider myself an intellectual my wife was a little more blunt jack she once said the way you and your oxford cronies sometimes pontificate anyone would think that if you were all drowned at sea the world would grind to a halt personally my sympathies would be with the fish i think when i accepted a professorship at cambridge there was a quiet jubilation amongst many of oxford's elite they thought i would be packing my bags and leaving town but as i could easily communicate commute to cambridge i had absolutely no intention of leaving the city i had lived in or or near for the last 30 years so we didn't move and here we are still at the kilns i have to wonder what will happen to it when lawny and i are gone judging by the number of tourists in this town probably be bought some of them up by it will be bought by some americans i should think well it'll serve them right when they move the bookcases the walls will fall down by the way i say we didn't move and we lived here and of course referring to my brother and i my wife died three years ago it's funny really when we were very young warning and i used to spend a lot of time on our own now the twilight years have rolled in and we find ourselves on our own again and still i might say content with our own company i don't know whether i should let you into a little secret warning would be horrified but as he's gone awol he can hardly hardly argue the point can he i sometimes call him bpb he sometimes calls me spb spb stands for small piggy bottom so i think you can deduce what bpb stands for that's what our nurse lizzie endicott called us when we were young precisely what inspired her to so name as i'm sure i can leave to your own fertile imaginations suffice it to say the tradition remains till this day no not in public you understand would hardly add to our reputation as if when i was with the bank manager i asked him whether big piggy bottom needed to sign the documents as well i'm sure some people would say it's childish i think we see it as a celebration of a relationship no doubt the practice will continue till the day we die i've told warney that if he goes first i know what i'm going to inscribe on his gravestone here lies warnie brother dear who couldn't say no to a glass of beer here lies warn his soldier brave who beat his brother to this grave he lies warning he'll never be forgotten not with a name like big piggy bottom warning and i were allies from the start and when we moved to our new house our large house just outside of belfast we were in our element seem more like a city than a house if the story of clive staples-lewis is ever written and god forbid that posterity should once again be so lumbered i think this house would feature as a major character i'm a product of long corridors empty sunlit rooms indoor upstairs silences attics to be explored in solitude and endless books i always had as much certainty of finding a new book in our house as a man has of finding a flesh fresh blade of grass in a lush green meadow one day i was thumbing through a book of poetry by longfellow and i came across these words i heard a voice that cried boulder the beautiful is dead dead i had never even heard of boulder yet these words brought on an extraordinary mystical feeling a notion of great cold expanses of northern sky i couldn't say exactly what i felt only that it was a sense of exhilarating joy and the more i tried to recapture the initial sensation the more it slipped away i think as a child i was a very i was very precocious i once remember walking into my parents i think i was only four years old at the time and saying that i did not like clive much less did i like staples and that i would only answer to the name of jackson and from that time on i was known as jackson lewis which was later modified to jack when i was six years old mother took warning and i to france for a short holiday father didn't come father was a man married to daily routine so holidays were anathema to him anyway when we got back i happened to bump bump into father in the living room oh hello jack you said how do you like france i said well i i like it very much father though i find i have a prejudice against the french they're said why is that i said father if i knew that it wouldn't be a prejudice would it it's one of the first times i ever saw him speechless mother just burst into laughter she had a laugh that could inspire a thousand laughs otherwise our rock our fortress almost the sole architect of our humdrum happiness so when she died with cancer it was the end of my world the long corridors became long empty corridors the empty sunlit rooms became rooms blackened by the heavy drapes that were drawn across the windows the upstairs indoor silences gave way to the cheerless sounds of weeping and lifeless dialogue and the attics to be explored in solitude became attics to cry in solitude our rock had sunk into the sea like atlantis a fortress had crumbled the laughter had been silenced and i was 10 years old not long after mother died i was forced to leave my beloved house oh not because father was selling it but because i was being sent to boarding school in england can you imagine the desolation of a ten-year-old boy who has been stripped of much of what he holds dear and then finds himself traveling to a foreign and foreboding land fortunately was with me i remember that it was a very rough sea crossing warning was ceasing absurdly i rather envied this achievement and spent the rest of the journey trying to replicate it myself and when i did manage it it was a very poor affair apparently i'm a very good sailor our destination was a little town 20 miles north of london of which the principal establishment was winnard boarding school the school to which we were being sent now use your imaginations it is september 1908 and there is a young boy standing at the classroom door he is sweating and itching thanks to the thick dark woolly clothes he is wearing he has been throttled by a highly starched white collar his feet are already aching in unaccustomed boots and he is wearing knickerbockers buttoned up to the knee worst of all is a bowler hat apparently made of iron which grips his head that was me and i remember thinking then that if prison uniforms were anything like this then i would remain a model citizen for the rest of my life when i was a small school 20 or so borders thus the teaching staff consisted of the proprietor and the headmaster we called him oldie now quite how he came to be named one can only surmise the in-joke amongst the borders was that when he was being dressed for his christening his infant baptism someone forgot to put his nappy on i think you call it a diaper and then when he was being held over the front and felt water on his head it started the waterworks at the other end and the vicar said the first thing that came into his mind oldie lived in a solitude of power like the sea captains in the days of sale and he reveled in cruelty i have known oldie and many times come into a room stand there and his eyes would go to and fro ravenously looking for some poor soul to settle on and then when he found somebody we'd say oh there you are rez you hurried little boy if i don't feel too tired this afternoon i shall give you a good rubbing despite all this cruelty we did surprisingly little work i think there was only one good thing that befell me at wynard it was there that i first began to seriously read my bible and to pray intellectually however my time at oldis was almost entirely wasted had the school not closed down and had i remained there for another two years i think my fate as a scholar would have been sealed for good but it was closed down after an investigation following an incident when a boy was viciously beaten by oldie do you know not long after that aldi was certified insane well from the tyranny of winard i went for a short while to a preparative school and then off to malvern college in england another boring school where a different form of tyranny reigned prefects who lost no opportunity and bent in their spite against the new boys but despite all this it was at malvern that my education really began and it was also at malvern that i retreated from whatever belief i had in christianity and so little by little with fluctuations i cannot now trace i i became an atheist dropping my so-called faith with no real sense of loss and i might say a good deal of relief of course like so many atheists i was living in a world of contradictions i maintained that god did not exist but i was very angry with him for not existing i once remember another little dit is a bit silly but it does sum up my situation i hope i can remember it one day i'm going to get caught out some say there is a being divine or otherwise who made the sun the moon the earth and all the host of stars a being who made man and beast the greatest to the very least he spoke with might and there was light one word and there was mars some say that it's not so there is no architect the universe and all we see is all just there by chance that man and beast are all the same soulless creatures with different names there is no why we live and die life's just a fleeting dance i find i'm in a quandary the more i look the less i see i say oh well it's hard to tell thank god that i'm an atheist you'll get it well if melvin college saw my decline into youthful atheism my arrival at the great knox house heralded a season in which that atheism found a willing mentor the great knock was a tutor to whom my father sent me in great bookum in surrey which is in the south of england his full name was wt kirkpatrick i called him the great knock and he was an ulsterman with an intellect built on fierce logic the only illogical behavior i ever saw him indulge in was when on sundays he put on his best suit to dig the garden i shall never forget the first time i met him he had collected me from the railway station and we were traveling to his home in his car and he happened to i happen to say that i thought the scenery in surrey was much wilder than i'd expected said the great knock as the car screeched to a halt what do you mean by wildness and what grounds did you have for not expecting it well as answer upon answer was rejected it soon became apparent that i had no clear idea corresponding to the word wildness and insofar as i had any idea at all wildness was a singularly inept word do you not see then concluded the great knock that your remark was meaningless one was even afraid to say yes often wish i could have been a fly on the wall when he was talking to his wife oh hello dear you're home early i hadn't expected you so soon stop woman what do you mean by early and what grounds did you have for not expecting me so soon well i grew very fond of the great knock and i owe him a debt i could never repay you see my father had sent me to him to prepare me for the entrance examinations into oxford university and in that he was very successful thanks to his teaching skills i won a scholarship to university college oxford and i took up my studies there in 1916 of course i had to lay them down in 1917 when i was drafted in the uh into the army to play my part in the first world war but my army career wasn't very distinguished as soon as i arrived at the front lines in france i was hospitalized with trench fever thereafter i was only ever in serious danger twice once when an enemy shell exploded by one of our latrines unfortunately i was in residence at the time it's meant for a hasty evacuation well that's an unfortunate choice of words isn't it the other time the other time was when a shell burst behind our front lines it was an english shell what they call friendly fire well there's a contradiction in terms you're right bill no that blasted german shell just blew my leg off it wasn't a german shell bill it was an english one oh oh well that's all right then isn't it well it was a friendly show that english show for me anyway though i received superficial flesh wounds they were enough to have me sent back to england and by the time i had recovered the war was over but i still have a relic up here a little bit of shrapnel that's still there the doctors thought it was too close to the heart to mess around with and they said it wouldn't do any harm so if any of you've got any magnets don't get them out as you might find them rather drawn to you well i took up my studies again at university college and by that time of course i had a love of philosophy and english language and all my studies were weighted in that direction and i passed the various examinations with sufficient distinction to allow me to bide my time in oxford to await a hopefully a suitable appointment and in may may the 22nd i think it was 1925 i lapped out of bed and rushed to the front door to collect the times newspaper in which was published the announcement i had been waiting for for so long the president of fellows of modeling college oxford have enough have appointed to an official fellowship in the college as tutor of english language and literature mr clive staples lewis and that's where for the next 30 years i tutored my students since during that time i wrote most of my books now i can see what you're thinking oh here it comes a tedious bibliography well you'll be pleased to know that i am not going to indulge in that questionable practice of telling you what i wrote and why i wrote it i will say this though i will very glad that my general outlook on life changed before i wrote most of my books otherwise some of them i would have had to rewrite and others i would never have written at all you see by my early thirties i had not only abandoned my atheistic philosophy i had come to see it as an utterly vacuous doctrine mind you i wasn't yet ready to accept christianity much less the concept of a perfect being sacrificing himself for a mass of imperfect beings i had somewhat begrudgingly come to the conclusion that some sort of god was the least objectionable but i still viewed god as a rather crude nursery-like word and so i resorted to referring to fundamental truth as a spirit while at the same time maintaining there was absolutely no possibility of having a personal relationship with this spirit unfortunately this so-called spirit began to show an alarming tendency to do what i said it couldn't do become personal where still it seemed to be taking up the offensive i remember i was going up headington hill on a bus and i was aware of a sensation in which i was holding something at bay as i was shutting something out and i realized there was a choice to open the door or to shut it a little while later only moments later i realized i had made that choice i had opened the door and i finally admitted had admitted that god was god that night i knelt down and prayed for the first time in a long time probably the most reluctant and maybe even dejected supplicator in all of england but though i had admitted that god was god i hadn't yet admitted that christ was christ however i did say that the spirit was on the offensive one night i invited tollers and a man named hugo dyson to dine with me at boardlin dyson is a philosopher he's a devoutly religious man and he has a love of the truth he's also a man that gives you the impression of being made of quicksilver now i mean this in the positive sense he pours himself into a room in a cataract of words and gestures and you are caught up in the stream after the first plunge is exhilarating well after we had dined we took a walk through the modeling grounds and i happened to remark to tolers that i still viewed the story of christ as just another myth well that's it toler's off jack he said in a way i agree with you as you know i believe that all mythology contains some fragments of eternal truth but the story of christ is fundamentally different you see the poet who invented this myth was god himself and the whole myth is absolute truth and the myth actually happened at a precise point in human history well i said tolerance that's a little hard to accept jackie said you amaze me he said when you meet sacrifice in a pagan story you don't mind it at all in fact you rather like it you only dislike it when you meet it in the gospels he was right of course and i did love the story of boulder he said why can't you transfer your appreciation of that story to the story of christ the life and death of christ well by the time tolles just had finished it was three a.m in the morning so he left and then the second phase of the offensive kicked in hugo dyson who spent the next hour telling me how he'd become a christian and how important his relationship with jesus christ was tyler's left me at 4 am and my mind was in a whirl so many thoughts rushing through and then i realized it had come to a point where it was a matter of belief not logical proof i also realized that for far too long i'd let my rational side dominate my emotions not long after that i went from believing in god to definitely believing in christ i came to see that god became man for no other purpose than to secure man's salvation the centerpiece of christianity is a story of that one grand miracle that he who is beyond space and time who is uncreated eternal came into nature came into human nature descended into his own universe died and rose bringing up nature with him and now that i had come to this point i was determined to accept the traditional doctrines of christianity i did not want to argue about them i did not want to reinterpret them i simply wanted to defend them and that's why i wrote most of my books to the extent that some people have dubbed me rather dubiously i think as a christian apologist i must say the terms sits very uneasily are on my shoulders indeed there are many times when i feel very much unlike in a christian apologist not like a christian apologist at all probably more like an apology for a costume anyway i always find that apologetic work is somewhat dangerous to one's own faith sometimes a doctrine never seems dimmer to me than when i've just successfully defended it and that's when i repair to the apologist prayer from all my lame defeats and all much more from all the victories i seem to score from cleverness shot forth on thy behalf at which while angels weep the audience laugh from all my proofs of thy divinity thou who dost need no proof deliver me the one thing i was determined when i became a christian that unlike my childhood version this should be no wishy-washy affair it shouldn't be only on sundays putting on christ is not a special exercise that one does on a special day it is the whole of christianity christianity offers nothing else at all i am sometimes intrigued by people who want to use christianity as a convenience do you know that in world war ii the churches which had been previously half empty were so full on sundays that you could hardly get a seat people choosing to believe because it suits them charles used to say we've all been guilty of that jack dear charles when he descended on oxford it was with such commentary plays charles williams a man whose lectures were so celebrated that you could hardly get a sweep there as well lectures delivered without a single note perfectly coherent and delightfully peppered with quotations in his incantatory manner i shall never forget a lecture that he gave on chastity simply as criticism it was superb for here was a man who cared with every fiber of his being for that serious doctrine of virginity it was a beautiful sight to see a room full of young men and young women spellbound sitting in that absolute silence that cannot be faked i hadn't lasted only for once seen a university doing what it was intended to do and found it to do teaching wisdom speaking of world war ii and the increased interest in christianity even the bbc got in on the act they asked me if i would do a series of talks on the basics of christianity they even said they thought it might help boost morale well i agreed in the first series that i did i felt were a complete failure but i consoled myself with the fact that i wasn't the first ass that god had used and probably wouldn't be the last i did three series in all and no one certainly not i realized how popular they would become oh whether they boosted the british morale i cannot say i do know this that my publisher urged me to edit them into a book it's ironic really but for the second world war i doubt that mere christianity would have ever been published i know i can see what you're thinking you're thinking this author is not to be trusted he said he wasn't going to speak about his books or how he wrote them well now that i've transgressed i might as well do it again during world war ii we were constantly bombarded with german propaganda broadcasts that cut through our regular programming couldn't do anything about it and one day one of these propaganda broadcasts came through and it was hitler and i jumped up to turn it off obviously and as i got to the radio i i stopped i was stunned by the power of his artery it was compelling of course i did turn it off in the end the next sunday i was coming out of church and i was reflecting on this incident and the fact that we as christians face a very compelling enemy and then it struck me i came up with an idea to write a book that would look at the psychology of temptation only from the other point of view and that book was called the screw tape letters and it went on to be one of my most successful books ever do you know what it even landed me on the front cover of time magazine september 1947 did any of you see it no we haven't missed much charles by the way was asked to write a review on screwtape in one of the magazines i forget which one i won't tell you whether he wrote good or i love it i will tell you how he finished his review it went like this dear scorpio i hate this book this heavenly book it's heavily dangerous this giveaway of hell your friend snakesozzle p.s you will send someone to see after lewis some very clever fiends oh by the way when i read the first few chapters of screw tape to tollers he was very unenthusiastic he thought i was playing with fire but i was determined that he should read it all but how could this be achieved tyler's can be a very stubborn man if he wants to and then it struck me i know how i can get him to read it i'll dedicate the book to him well i want to go and see if i can find warning i want to make a cup of tea for you and i think he might be at richard so i'm going to go and give a quick call while i'm gone why don't you stretch your legs you'll find some conveniences around i i think you call them restrooms how odd i can't think of any room least likely to afford a good rest well if you give me a couple of minutes i'll be back in two shakes of a lamb's tail anybody seen warnie well i phoned richard and uh he's not there you know where he could have got to i know where he's gone to he's always doing this on me he stopped off at the pub for a pint of beer i have to watch him you know sometimes rather overdose it but i think he's a little better now that he's recognized that he's got a problem he has a self-deprecating error about it he's always trotting out this little poem quite humorous i always think and uh i don't know whether i can remember it and do my best how does it go now it was an evening in november as i very well remember i was walking down the street in drunken pride my knees were all a flutter so i lay down in the gutter and a pig came up and lay down by my side as i lay there in the gutter thinking thoughts i ought not utter a lady passing by was heard to say you can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses and the pig got up and slowly walked away don't tell warning i so told you will you it's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of an angry bpb well i've told you a little bit about my childhood told you a little bit about my education told you a little bit of how i became a christian now i'd like to tell you a little bit about my wife as i say she died three years ago but first we must go back to 1950 the year the line the which in the wardrobe was published i've always received a lot of correspondence from people who have read my books and i always make a point to answer every one of them warning helps me in this endeavor he can use a typewriter i can't even if i could i would stick to handwriting i think it's far more personal still i suppose typewriters are here to stay anyway one day we had a use unusually large post bag and partly because there were a lot of letters from america so i said well walter you take the english ones and i'll take the american ones the first letter i opened was from a mrs joy gresham and though she and i had never met and it was the first letter i'd had from her she wrote us if she knew me i mentioned this to warning he said well that's really powerful the course for americans jack i said what do you mean it's par for the course you just said well they give the impression that they know you they're far too friendly i said warning i think we english can do with a little bit of this american friendliness he said well you can have my portion jack well as i knew this conversation was clearly going nowhere i returned to my letter and i was very impressed with her perceptiveness and her wit so impressed that i wrote back immediately not long after that i got a letter back from her and once again i was in awe of her perception well to cut a long story short we began a regular correspondence and after two years i got a letter from her to say that she was coming to england she had been unwell and was looking for a period of convalescence and she had some friends in london she hadn't seen for a long time and so she thought she'd kill two birds with one stone actually three birds because she intimated that she would like to meet with me i mentioned this to warney and i said i think i'll invite her for lunch morning careful jackie says i don't know what you're worried about warning i said she won't bite well then i wouldn't order much lunch if she won't bite jack you said warnie can be very drawl at times anyway i did invite her for lunch and it she came up and we had lunch in my tutorial rooms at maudlin college have you invited a few of my colleagues along i was wondering how she would get on in this male bastion but she seemed very comfortable and acquitted herself well in conversation i wondered how she would get on being the only woman amongst a number of men but she seemed extraordinary uninhibited she turned to roger and said is there anywhere in this monastic establishment where a lady can relieve herself the person nearly laid an egg well after the lunch was over i thought i'd give her the tapani happy tour of the college and that's what i did and the tour went swimmingly well until we bumped into christopher christopher is a bit of a cynic and has a rather jaundiced view of women it was loses and he never loses an opportunity to get to dig in when he can mind you i thought he even he was sailing close to the wind when he intimated that when men got together their conversation tended to be driven by the intellect and when me when women got together their conversation tended to be driven by emotion i should never forget her reply professor humphrey she said i can't do the american accent so i won't insult you professor humphreys you said in order to make a valued judgment about feminine conversation you would have to experience it in an exclusive environment to do that you would need to change your gender that would require you to have an operation which i for one would oppose on the grounds that feminine nobility would be markedly diminished that sent him packing well i put her back on the train to london with quite a bit of regret and with the hope that we would one day meet again she went back to london then of course back to america but i didn't get the letter that i was expecting and i thought oh that's it now that she's met me the bubbler's burst warning was in agreement so i don't know why you're surprised jack once you have met the object of your esteem the fantasy element disappears evaporates and you are left with the reality in your case a rather plump middle-aged man thank you warnie i said well a few months later i did get a letter from her and it became apparent why she hadn't written she had gone back to america only to find that her husband had taken a mistress and that mistress was now installed in the home of course he was very magnanimous he said that joy could have the spare room if she wanted of course she was very distort she wrote to me asking me for any advice even though she assumed that from my writings i was against divorce well i wrote back to her and said that i urged her to consider divorce only as a last resort it wasn't so much that i was against divorces that i am for marriage however defective the institution might sometimes appear she also asked whether i thought that divorce was acceptable in the eyes of god again i wrote back to her and said that from my understanding of scripture divorce is acceptable in only one circumstance and that of adultery and that if her husband wouldn't give up this adulterous liaison then i did not think that our lord would view her seeking or getting a divorce as a sin though i did point out that some of his official representatives down here might take a rather less lenient view well she went silent on me again quite a long time this time and then the phone rang and it was joy and after we exchanged a few niceties she said you'll never guess jack i said guess what she said you'll never guess where i'm living i said don't tell me you've moved to narnia no jax he said try london i said london london england she said yes joe you don't object do you well i said no it's not a matter of objective but what about your husband my ex-husband she said it transpired that her husband would not give up this mistress and so she had little alternative but to file for divorce and after she'd done that she wanted to get her and her two boys as far away from that situation as possible i suppose 4 000 miles is a fairly safe distance well now that she was just sconced in a london apartment we struck up our correspondence again i never visited her visited her in london mainly for two reasons firstly i found the pace of life in our capital little city very disagreeable secondly warning made it very clear that he did not think it was a good idea for a middle-aged bachelor and an oxford don at that to be visiting a divorcee and an american one at that so we just continued with our correspondence well i did manage in the end to persuade warning that we should invite her and the two boys to stay with us in oxford can you imagine a couple of crusted old bachelors trying to keep up with two american boys whose energy seems inexhaustible during those few days i took joy on a walk through the village and as we were going up one street we happened to notice that there was a house up for rent the next door neighbor happened to be in her garden and so we asked her whether she knew what the rent was and she said well it's about 20 pounds a month well joy's mouth dropped open she said i'm that's half of what i'm paying in london so i'm not surprised joy london is very expensive in fact everything in london is expensive rents food the lot well she said perhaps i should move up here i said would you save a lot of bunny and she said oh yes and postage said i'm not with you joy she said well if i'm up here maybe we could visit instead of right and i'm sure the neighbors will have something to say about that well to cut a long story short she did come to headington moved into that house and i i must say that as a short walk would have me on her doorstep the weekly letters really became a weekly visit warney was unimpressed of course i was going out one day and he said you know what people are saying don't you jack i said no warning i don't know what they're saying because they're not saying it to me that doesn't mean they're not saying it jack i said saying what warning he said i don't know they're not saying it to me either i said look warnie if they're not saying what they're saying to you and they're not saying what they're saying to me how do we know what they are saying he said that's not the point jack i said it's precisely the point anyway i don't see why a man can't have a lady friend oh he said lady friends are all right but you do realize that they have other functions don't you i said warning without those other functions we wouldn't be having this ridiculous conversation i said but now that you've mentioned it i'll investigate the possibilities and report back to you that soon shut him up well when i was with her the other function was never even an issue we were generally locked in debate she was as good a debater as any man friend i had ever had she put me in mind of a certain miss antscan but we won't go there joy had a mind that was lies and quick muscular as a leopard i soon learned not to talk rot to her well i suppose you could say that a certain platonic status quo had settled him and would have remained so but for an enormous brush stroke across fate's campus one night when i went to visit her and she opened the door i could see she'd been crying and um she was a very independent woman so that when she fell into my arms sobbing i realized something was seriously wrong and then i noticed she was clutching a letter it was from the british government and they had informed her that they would not renew her visa that she and the boys should make arrangements to leave the country and go back to america and if they didn't do that they would be deported she was distraught and she didn't want to uproot the boys and take them back to america and she was very worried about them coming under the influence of their father so i said look joey i'm sure we can fight this i'll talk to my solicitor i think you call them lawyers i'll talk to my solicitor i said and let's see if we can challenge it she said oh jack she said i can't afford legal fees i said don't worry i can cover that i said oh i can't take your money during i said i wish the tax man would take such a noble stance well we tried but we failed the british government wouldn't budge and i felt very sorry for her then one day i was one night i should say i was lying in bed and i had remembered that my solicitor had said that there was one circumstance that would ensure she could stay in the country so i had a little chat to myself that's very dangerous jack i said you're a middle-aged man with little prospect of marriage according to warner you're a plump middle-aged man with no prospect of marriage so it'd hardly be a sacrifice if you married her so that she could stay in the country well the next night i went around to see her and uh i was sitting a little nervously because i'd never done this sort of thing before in the end i just blurted it out i said marry me joy and you can stay in the country well there was an awkward silence and then she said i'm not that desperate jack that was a reaction to break the tension and we both laughed i said to of course it would be a marriage of convenience there'd be no question of the other stuff and she said it's called sex jack i said i know but i found it very hard to use that word in front of a woman she said oh well at least if i marry you i'll be safe well i said think about it but don't think too long the wheels of government grind slowly but they do grind a few days later she phoned me and she said i've been thinking about your offer jack it's very kind very gracious and i will accept the diet was cast my only problem was telling warning the day i did remains forever burnt in my memory we were sitting in the garden it was a sunny sunday afternoon and we were reading now warnie and i have known each other so long that we have managed to be able to get to the point where we can both be reading and still indulge in a shallow conversation and such was the case that afternoon all the while i was trying to figure out a way how i could raise the subject when lo and behold he raised it himself what's happened to the visa jack oh i said the british government said no he said i'm not surprised still all for the best wagging tongues and all that said warning we've been here before when's he off when she off jack i said she's not well not just yet anyway oh he said i'm not surprised the way the government works take a long time of no doubt that he went silent thought well now that he's raised it i better get it over with said look warning there's something i want to tell you jackie said if you're about to tell me you're going to waste more money trying to change the british government's mind i do not want to hear it i said no warning i've decided not to waste the money trying to make waste any more money trying to change the british government's mind very wise he said jack very wise said anyway it's far cheaper to marry her well this was a shallow conversation as i said and it was clear the penny had not dropped but drop it eventually did what are you serious jack you're going to marry her i said yes sworn it's the only way she can stay in the country and don't worry it's america convenience nothing's going to change nobody will know jackie said i can't believe it i said look warner you're a soldier look it as look at look at it as a tactical maneuver to outflank the british government jackie said as an ex-soldier what you call a tactical maneuver we used to call a suicide mission well it all went silent and i thought well at least it's over with but it wasn't suddenly he slammed his book shut and he said oh jack there's got to be another way surely there's another way so i said well i suppose you could marry her warnie i won't tell you what he said but i will tell you the titles on my own in the garden for the rest of the afternoon well now that that hurdle was over the next hurdle was the marriage ceremony itself that was in a marriage registry office in oxford in front of a very stern registrar now i don't know what the situation is here but if you marry in that type of place in england it normally means there is something lurking in your past which precludes you from being married in a church and this registry i had a very suspicious look it's amazing how you can feel guilty for something you haven't done well we muddle through and i thought we were home free when suddenly she said something that i think we all should have anticipated you may kiss the bride now mr lewis if you wish well joy was horrified well you'd be horrified if you had to kiss me wouldn't you well i'm referring to the ladies of course warnie was in a state of apoplexy so i said look would you mind if i do it later the registrar said mr lewis i don't care whether you wait till doomsday then she signed the certificate slapped it in my hand and marched out of the room oh i was glad to be out of that place i went back to modeling joy went home i think roger took warning off for a stiff drink well a sort of equilibrium had returned and i still visited joy only a little bit more regularly which of course irritated warning i was going out one day said check why you keep visiting this woman said well i am married to her warning so he said i thought you said it was a tactical marriage i said well these are only tactical visits well at least he stopped talking about the neighbors the joy made me laugh once i was sitting with her and she started laughing i said why are you laughing she said don't you get the joke i said what joke she said well here we are the neighbors thinking that we are unmarried and up to all sorts of things and all the time we're married and up to nothing at all our friendship continued to grow she became as as good a friend as any man friend i had one night i praised her for her masculine virtues but she soon put a stop to that by asking how i'd like to be praised for my feminine ones and then there came another brushstroke i was conducting a tutorial one morning at maudlin and there was a knock on the door it was a porter they put a little note in my hand mrs gresham has been rusting to hospital and she's asking for you well as soon as i finish the tutorial i of course went straight down to the hospital when i got to the hospital the receptionist said the doctor wants to have a word with you before you go and see mrs question so it's all right such i sat down and waited for the doctor and he julie came with his clipboard sat down with me and there followed a conversation which could only have happened in a british hospital so you're the mr lewis she's been asking for are you i said yes i am well he said may i ask what relationship you are to mrs question i said well we're just good friends ah he said well then perhaps you'll help us out we have a few gaps in her admission form which we need to fill in so could you tell me who her next of kin is i said well um actually i am so i thought you said you were just good friends i said well we are but she's still my wife as well i said well that's a rare occurrence around here have a wife is a good friend well he said she gave her name as mrs gresham should we change it to lewis i said no um just think of it as her author's name i said well can i have your full name i said yes clive staples lewis clive staples lewis that's a coincidence he said i've just read a book by c.s lewis you read any of his books he said i said well an oxford oxford don's life is very busy he said well i shouldn't worry you haven't missed much and then he got to the point sorry to tell you mr lewis your wife is very ill she has bone cancer i said well what does that mean and he said well it's terminal we expect her to live weeks maybe a few months said have you told her he said no we thought we would leave that to the next of kin i said thank you well often reads about people being stunned when they get bad news and one idly speculates on the absurdity of the expression but there's truth in it i felt i had just slipped over and hit my head on the floor well i got to joy's room and when i went in i was appalled i had seen her a few days earlier and though she did look a little off color she still looked reasonably well now her face was drawn very pale and even though her eyes were closed they were sunken obviously she was drugged and she was drifting in and out of sleep so i sat there and then she woke up for a period of time and looked at me and she said how long have you been here jack that's it all 20 minutes or so i'm dying aren't i jack everybody is dying don't play with me jack yes you're dying how long she said well the doctor says it could be weeks perhaps months oh she said and just when i'm beginning to win all our debates she was a heroic woman and her main concern of course were for the two boys and once i had assured her on that point then the only other concern she had was preparing them for that fateful day but in all this she maintained her perspective and she maintained her sense of humor i remember once time one time i was with her and she said jack the funeral i've got some savings that can cover that oh i said just don't worry about that let the boys have the savings i can cover that oh i can't expect you to do that she said i said why not you are my wife oh she said that's a very good point oh well then you might as well go mad mind you and it was then that i realized i was hopelessly in love with her i went back that day and that night i just tossed and turned in bed i was 50 odd years old and i had never felt this way before the next morning i cancelled my tutorials i spruced myself up put my best suit up did my hair polish my shoes and found a tie that didn't have any stains on it and i went to see her when i walked into her room she looked at me and she said am i dead jack i said why would you ask a question like that joy she said well looking at the way you you're dressed it looks as though you're going to a funeral i said joy i think in the circumstances that's a very flippant comment anyway i said i've come to tell you i'm going to marry you she said too late jack i'm already married to some crazy englishman i said be serious joy i love you she said and i love you jack have done also have done so for some time well i said there it is then i'm going to marry you properly before god in the eyes of god oh well she said at least i'll be legitimate when i get up there and then she drifted off to sleep a few minutes later she woke up yeah she said do englishman propose i said what was in marriage she said yes as in marriage i said oh yes they do she said must have missed it i said you didn't miss it joya i just told you i'm going to marry you oh she said that's how you do it here she said in america when a man wants to marry a girl he asks her he doesn't tell her she said i know it's silly but the ladies love it i said all right then joy so i grabbed hold of her hand and she said oh no i want the works so what do you mean by the works she said one knee the lot said joy i can't get down on one knee here somebody might burst in she said well if they do count slowly to five say allowed loud amen and get up looking pious well i did get down on one knee i got it over with as quickly as i could because i was more concerned about the door opening and i was had one eye on the door and when i had finished my proposal i looked back and she'd gone back to sleep i said i can't believe it she wants me to propose and can't even stay awake for the end and then she opened one eye she said all right jack i will but we can't keep getting married so we were married at her hospital bedside a vicar friend of mine conducted the ceremony and i think that day i must have been the happiest and the proudest man in all of england of course i wanted to take mrs lewis back to the kilns back here so i asked the doctors whether she could come home and they said well mr lewis we really can't do anything for her here so yes she can come home it's as well for her to die under your roof and under this one so warnie and i made preparations to get her home cleaning up and it needed to clean up and the night before she was due to come warn he said to me um jack you said um i've made arrangements for an unobtrusive withdrawal i said unobtrusive withdrawal what do you mean he said diggs i'm going to get diggs you know two two's company three is a crowd said warning i think you've got your arithmetic wrong there are two boys remember that makes four oh yes he said oh well that's settled then i'll make it five well joy did come home and there was one more brushstroke remission and it allowed us to throw ourselves into our marriage with the passion if not the energy of a pair of teenagers in love in our own way we feasted on love every mode of it solomon and merry romantic and realistic sometimes as dramatic as a thunderstorm and sometimes as unemphatic and as comfortable as putting on your soft slippers years ago when i wrote about medieval love poetry i was blind enough to treat it as a purely literary phenomenon i know better now i never realized i would have in my sixties the happiness that had passed me by my twenties well as the end of the third year of remission came upon us joy went along for one of her usual checkups ironically was probably the only checkup that we ever approached without any dread her health seems so complete but all how cruel life can be the x-ray revealed that the cancer spots had returned to the bones it was like being recaptured by the giant after you seem to have got through every gate and are nearly out of sight of his castle well now came the waiting while we waited we had to go on living could one ask for a second miracle joy grew weaker but not so weak that she couldn't badger me to take her to greece and so i decided that as she had so long wanted to see the parthenon climb the steps of my ceiling that we should go and we went with two friends and she was very resilient while we were there i remember one night in the restaurant she was in a very impish mood there was a an awful greek band playing and so she was getting little pellets of bread rolling them in her finger and flicking them trying to hit one of the band members she was in good spirits when we got back she had realized one of her greatest life long this worldly ambitions the last time she was rushed into hospital it was in great pain but she never lost her perspective nor her humor don't get me posh coffins jack posh coffins are all rot i was with her when she died warning and i were plunged into despair of course warner had come to love her almost as much as as i had but of course in a different sort of way seeing her as a sister we never had he did as he had always done in a crisis he turned a drink i did as i had always done in a crisis i picked up my pen and wrote and the words were very angry to start off with i was so angry with god i don't think it was i was in any danger of ceasing to believe in him the real danger was coming to believe such dreadful things about him the conclusion i dreaded was not so there's no god but so this is what god's like i remember ranting one time to god you led us up the garden path didn't you time after time when you seemed most gracious you were really prepared preparing the next torture of course it was a yell little more than mere abuse telling god what i thought about him and of course as in all abusive language what i thought didn't really mean what i thought true only what i thought would offend him most and then gradually my grief subsided and i came to realize that i was looking at my situation from the wrong perspective it was all about before this it was all about what we hadn't had rather than what we had and i remembered that when we got married that second time when she came home we had expected to have maybe a few weeks no more than a few months and we had been given three years and i came to see that he was the giver and she was the gift and what a gift she was my mother and my daughter my pupil and my teacher my subject and my suffering and always holding all these things in solution my trusty comrade friend shipmate fellow soldier if we had never fallen in love we should nonetheless been always together and created a scandal i used to refer to her as a sword well that's true as far as it goes but utterly utterly inadequate by itself and misleading i ought to have balanced it i also said but also like a garden like a nest of gardens wall within wall hedge within hedge more secret more fertile more fragrant the further you entered and then of her and of every created thing i praise i should say in some way in its unique way like him who made it thus up from the garden to the gardener from the sword to the smith to the life-giving life and the beauty that makes beautiful do you know what i said to her near the very end if you can i said if it is allowed come to me when i too am on my deathbed aloud she said heaven would have a job to hold me and ask for hell i'd break it into bits now she knew she was speaking a kind of mythological language with even an element of comedy in it there was a twinkle as well as a tear in her eye but there was no myth no joke deeper than any feeling that flashed through her her last words to the chaplain were i am at peace with god her last words to me were you have made me very happy and then she smiled but she didn't smile at me and she didn't smile at the chaplain she had turned to the eternal fountain and at that very moment she had entered in and now her face shone with his reflected glory we are all to shine like the sun we are to be given the morning star in one way god has already given us the morning star you can get up on many a fine morning and see the gift if you get up early enough ah but you say what more do we want well we do want so much more we don't merely want to see beauty though god knows that that is bounty enough we want something that can hardly be put into words we want to pass into the beauty we see become united with the beauty receive it into ourselves that's why that's why the poets tell us such lovely falsehoods they speak as if the west wind could really sweep into the human soul but it can't yet if we are to take the imagery of scripture seriously if we believe that god will one day give us the morning star calls us to put on the splendor of the sun then we may surmise that the poets though very false as history are very near the truth as prophecy at the present we are on the outside of the world the wrong side of the door we discern the freshness and the purity of the morning but they do not make us fresh and pure we cannot mingle as we would like with the splendors that we see but all the leaves of the new testament are wrestling with the rumor that it shall not always be so one day god willing we shall enter in and in there in beyond nature we shall eat of the tree of life but the cross comes before the crown a cleft has opened in the pitiless walls of the world and we are invited to follow our captain inside i suppose it may be possible to think hereafter too much of our own glory but i do not think it is possible to think too much or too often of our neighbors glory it is a serious thing to remember that we live in a society of possible gods and goddesses there are no ordinary people you have never spoken to a mere mortal natures civilizations arts cultures these are mortal their life to ours as a life of a gnat but it is with immortals that we work joke snub marry exploit oh i do not mean to say that we are to be perpetually solemn we must play but our merriment must be of that kind and i think it is the best kind which exists between people who have from the outset taking one another seriously no presumption no flippancy no superiority and our love must be a real and costly love with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner not some indulgence or mere tolerance which parrot is love as flippancy parrot is merriment i ventured to suggest that your neighbor is one of the most precious objects presented to your senses and one of the most important and if he or she is your christian neighbor they are important in another way because in him and in her christ the glorifier glory himself is truly hidden and if we are not only writers and scholars but educators then i think we can legitimately say that our pupils are our neighbors i can't see anything in the nature of the younger generation which stops them from accepting christianity if somebody is prepared to tell them many are ready to listen and we face the challenge to be true to our christianity and our calling well i must stop i think it's probably accurate to say that warning is not going to be back in time for me to make you a cup of tea so i'm sorry about that but i really have enjoyed your company if you are ever in knoxville again and i'm still around you are welcome to a return visit until that time enjoy yourselves have a good journey back to america and thank you very much for coming to see us in our home foreign

Channel: University of California Television (UCTV)

Views: 413,453

Rating: 4.8253603 out of 5

Keywords: C.S., Lewis, life, David, Payne, play

Id: 96uT-BvRi-k

Length: 89min 40sec (5380 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 24 2008