Lewis and Tolkien: Scholars and Friends

if you're at a conference like this you need to visit the Wayde Center at Wheaton College it's an amazing experience to walk into lovely buildings and to see there the world's largest collection of materials on G K Chesterton George MacDonald Dorothy Sayers JRR tolkien Charles Williams did I say CS Lewis and well they're eight authors that are collected they're seven excuse me seven authors that are and Owen Barfield thank you Chris and over this wonderful collection presides dr. Christopher Mitchell this gentle man and historian by trade is also a man of great hospitality please visit the Wade collection and please welcome dr. Christopher Mitchell well good morning and thank you for coming and I say that on behalf of all of us I want to get right into this the subject right now is tokine and lewis scholars and friends george sear in his biography Jack describes his first meeting with Lewis he went in to meet Lewis before the term started in order to get a jump on the reading that Louis would have him do and he accidentally bumped into junior are talking on the way in tokine was actually coming up to see if he could set up a meeting with Lewis to go over some things that he was writing and as a as George Sayer left or tokine left he says as I walked away from the building this is George Sayer from new buildings I found the man that Lewis had called haulers sitting on one of the stone steps in front of the arcade how did you get on he asked I think rather well said Sayer I think he will be a most interesting tutor to have interesting yes he's certainly that you will never get to the bottom of him and that was talking on Louis and that was about 1934 and there the relationship had developed this as far as we know is the first encounter of Lewis and Tolkien and this was Lewis's first impression of poking a diary entry May 11th 1926 into Merton for English tea at 4:00 tokine managed to get the discussion round to the proposed english prelim i had to talk with him after I had a talk with him afterwards he is a smooth pale fluent little chap thinks the language is the real thing in the school thinks all literature is written for the amusement of men between 30 and 40 no harm in him only needs a smack or so his pet abomination is the idea of liberal studies technical hobbies are more in his line but we have here are two very complex and gifted men a very different makeups temperaments as you'll see and what I'd like to do is I want to spend the first little part giving you a flavor for their relationship and how it developed and then a brief look at their public personas and I'm going to do more of tokine's public persona this afternoon and then look at the so called cooling-off of their relationship and and I want to look at four things in relationship to that and then bring this to conclusion now in the beginning it's Luis that says more about the relationship than Tolkien and these come out of his letters especially letters to Arthur Greaves and this first meeting that I'd mentioned was May 11th 1926 well just about a month and a half later he writes to his boyhood friend Arthur Greaves in Ireland this is June 26 1927 he says I am realizing a number of very old dreams and and if you're not aware his relationship with Arthur Greaves revolved around their mutual love of reading and of myth and he was Louis's closest and most intimate friend in terms of reading and he says I'm realizing Lewis says a number of very old dreams in the way of books above all learning old Icelandic we have a little Icelandic club in Oxford called the Kohl bitter or cold beater which means literally cold biters ice is an Icelandic word for old cronies who sit around the fire so close that they look as if they were biting the coals you will be able to imagine what a delight this is to me and how even in turning over the pages of my Icelandic dictionary the mere name of God or giant catching my I will sometimes throw me back 15 years into a wild dream of northern skies and Volker II music and and this 15 years ago was is these this recovery of memory is something that he'd shared with Arthur Greaves only they are now even more beautiful seen through a haze of memory you know that awfully poignant effect there is about the impression recovered from one's past now this afternoon I'm gonna talk about that notion of recovery from tokine because it was very very important to Tolkien's understanding of literature and particularly particularly myth but you see Lewis now beginning to to enter into an experience at Oxford with this Icelandic club that he had as a younger boy and the person the driving force behind this Club was of course j.r.r tolkien Lewis again later that year towards the end December 3rd I have too many irons in the fire the Icelandic society and this and that one week I was up until 2:30 on Monday morning talking to the anglo-saxon professor Tolkien who came back with me to college from a society and sat dis coercing of the gods and Giants and Asgard for three hours and then departing in the wind and rain who could turn him out for the fire was bright and the talk was good now it was in this same period of time that Lewis converted to theism this was December 3rd 1929 and Lewis had made his move to a belief in a personal God not to Christianity as yet and then just about six months later writing to Greaves by the way one of the results of mine having left my keys at home he just come back Lewis did from holiday in Ireland and left his his keys to his rooms back there at home is that I can't let myself into college and therefore always have to be back by midnight twelve which didn't matter on Monday but it did matter at the Icelandic society when I had to leave token Bryson Dawkins just as we were getting comfortable bricen you know tokine is the man I spoke up when we were last together the author of the balloon la voluminous unpublished metrical romances and of the maps companions to them showing the mountains of dread north grande and the city the city of the orcs in fact he is in one part of him what we were in terms of their relationship so you begin to see Lewis who said all he needs is a little smack he'll be all right drawing closer to Tolkien because of what they shared and then in September 22nd 1931 writing to grieves he says I couldn't write to you last Sunday because I had a weekend guest a man called Dyson who teaches English at Reading University I met him I suppose about four or five times a year and I'm beginning to regard him as one of my friends of the second class that is not in the same rank as yourself or Barfield but on the level with Tolkien and MacFarlane and so you know Lewis is now can I mean token is considered a friend but as friend of the second class and really pokey never really goes beyond that in terms of Luke is really a Lois's conception of things there is a period of time from a mile 1927 to 1940 as you'll see that Tolkien considers Lewis his best friend and will allude to this a little bit later here as to why I think tokine never made it into the first class as it were but still there was a deep love and affection and loyalty to one another now it was also around this time that Lewis makes it all the way to his conversion to Christianity and he makes a statement and surprised by joy when I began teaching for the English faculty I made two other friends both Christians these queer people seemed hot now to pop up on every side who were later to give me much help in getting over the last style that is into the faith they were Dyson then at Reading and jr. our Tolkien friend was shipped with the latter that is talking mark the break of too old prejudices at my first coming into the world I had been implicitly warned never to trust a papist and at my first coming into the English faculty explicitly never to trust a philologist tokine was both and as you know and here I will just summarize that what talking along with the help of Dyson was enabled enabled Louis to do was to open himself up to the myth of the Gospels like he did the other myths because tokens view of the Gospels of of Christianity is that is the myth that has become fact in fact Lewis builds on that and writes on that subject but Lewis said he said I was willing to open myself up and feel the power of the myth in everything but the Gospels he had a prejudice against them in what toking enabled Louis to understand is that that Christianity is just the same sort of thing but it's not something that happened in pre pre historical past it's something that actually happened in time in history it was a concrete fact it was all of these myths that participated in one way or another found their meaning in their fulfillment in the myth which is the myth the Christ myth and Lewis used to think of myths as lies lies breathed through silver but lies and he came to realize know that all myths participate in the truth at one level or another they all mere or shadow the true myth which is the Christ myth and so what happened is as Lewis began to open himself up to such things as sacrifice and propitiation and the dying God and doing so in Christianity and let me make just one observation in terms of surprised by joy in Lewis's journey to this faith because I think it is important and it says something about what Tolkien and Dyson were able to accomplish with Lewis if you are familiar with the book basically the entire book takes you up to the point where Lewis hops on the sidecar of war news motorcycle and takes off for the whipsnade zoo and up to that point even to his conversion to theism a belief in God lewis was able to unpack it very carefully and probably in more detail than some of you would really like but he was able to chart it right up to that point but when he comes to taking that final step to faith that Jesus Christ is the son of God Ian packs it in a small little paragraph he says I took off for this zoo I did not believe Jesus Christ was the son of God when I arrived I did and that was it and there's something authentic about that and the reason he couldn't unpack it is because now he was dealing with this incredible person called Jesus Christ and you just do not unpack him like a bunch of theological and philosophical systems that he finally bumped up against something that he couldn't just intellectually dissect it was a step of faith and how he got from one side to the other he couldn't explain but he could explain everything up to that point and in terms of one's entrance into the kingdom that's how it happens you just don't unpack Jesus not in that way and so he finds himself on the inside and that adds a new dimension to their relationship in November nineteen twenty second nineteen thirty one just after this Lewis is writing to Warren E it soon became his regular custom he was telling 1.e4 talking to drop in on Mondays mornings and have a drink a glass and Lewis tiles Warnie that this was the most one of the most pleasant times is in in his entire week so you see from 1926 to 31 nothing really harmful about the guy just needs a little slap a little smack now he becomes one of the most important things in his week then to Greaves 1933 another step since term began I've had a delightful time reading a chill and story which Tolkien is just written and this is the Hobbit I've told of him before the one man absolutely fitted if fate had allowed to be a third in our friendship in the old days for he grew up on William Morris and George MacDonald reading his fairy tale has been uncanny it is so exactly like what we would have both have long to write back in 1916 so that one feels he is not making it up but merely describing the same world into which all three of us have the entry whether it is really good I think it is until the end is of course another question still more whether it will succeed with martyr and children and of course we know it did and further along that same year I was talking about this - talking who you know grew up on Morris and MacDonald and shares my taste in literature to a fault we remarked how odd it was that the word romance should be used to cover things so different as Morris on the one hand and Dumas or Raphael Sabatini on the other we agreed that for what we meant by romance there must be at least the hint of another world one must hear the horns of Elfland my point here is just the growing relationship and just to sort of cap it off here note dis a diary entry by Warren E December 4th 1933 and what you have to realize is that Warren E is very much a part of the first class of friendship it was Warren Eon Barfield and Arthur Greaves but Warren II says Jack turned up about half past 10 and we came out to lunch together when we were about to start out I found that he was engaged to go for a walk with token this afternoon confound token I've seemed to see less and less of Jack every day so there's a sense of a bit of jealousy here on Warren YZ part in terms of this encounter now I'm going to for time sake one thing just a prime for something else that'll come up towards the end is that out of the silent planet Tolkien enjoyed very much out of the sign of the plan and peril andr he did not appreciate as much that hideous strength and and most of Lewis's work I mean there isn't a whole lot that poking actually said he liked but out of the silent planet is one of the luis had some difficulty getting it published and tokine was one of the ones that helped with this you can see in September I mean in February 18th 1938 he writes to Stanley Unwin encouraging him to write a to publish this book he does it again on the falling month in March talking about the book and again giving it high praise now back in by 41 CS Lewis's writing to Dom beat Griffith which was a student of his pupil and then became a friend and he's saying Williams Dyson of reading and my brother Anglicans and Tolkien and my doctor have heard your church brought RCR the Inklings to whom my problem of pain was dedicated we meet on Friday evenings in my rooms theoretically to talk about literature but in fact nearly always to talk about something better what I owe to them Lewis says all is incalculable Dyson and token were the immediate causes of my own conversion is any pleasure note this on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire now this is 41 and I want to contrast this with a letter for from Virginia Woolf just to put this in context a different context to her sister after a meeting with TS Eliot finding out that he'd become a Christian I've had a most shameful and distressing interview with poor dear Tom Eliot who may be called dead to us all from this day forward he has become an Anglo Catholic believes in God and immortality and goes to church I'm really shocked a corpse would seem to me more credible than he is I mean note this there was just something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God what would she have thought of a bunch of several men sitting by a fire believing in God Lewis and tokine lived in a very different world than the Bloomsbury group many others now CS Lewis to a fellow named Charles Brady he says toking is the most important and he's talking to him about things to read The Hobbit is merely the adaptation to children of a part of a huge private mythology of a most serious kind the whole cosmic struggle as he sees it but mediated through an imaginary world and we'll talk about this this afternoon because talking and at little different level is doing the same thing as Lewis that is past watchful dragons but what Tolkien called it is putting it in unfamiliar embodiments he says The Hobbit successor which will soon be finished will reveal this more clearly private worlds have hitherto been mainly the work of decadence or at least nearest eats this is the private world of a Christian he is a very great man now there are also differences in temperament we've come to a point where you see this relationship is developed in Louis in 1950s writing the sister Penelope my book with professor Tolkien any book and collaboration with that great but dilatory and unmet achill man is dated I fear to appear in the Greek killings and so which never comes about I mean Lewis was able to pump things out toking it was like pulling teeth to get him to publish anything Lewis - Charles Morman and here I'm trying to do is is just unpack a little bit of the flavor of their relationship this isn't by 1959 and note this this man Mormon now is writing a book on Charles Williams Lewis and TS Eliot so by fifty nine people are now giving attention to this and Lewis is writing back and he says I don't think your project is at all presumptuous but I do think you may be chasing after a fox that isn't there Charles Williams certainly influenced me and I perhaps influenced him but after that I think you would draw a blank no one influenced Tolkien you might as well try to influence a Bandersnatch we listen to his work but could affect it only by encouragement he has only two reactions to criticism either he begins the whole work over again from the beginning or else he takes no notice at all now there is an occasion where talking admits that he listened to Lewis so there are always exceptions to these things and tokine is responding to a summary statement of an interview with tokine concerning Lewis's influence and then he qualifies that this is what the plumbers Charlotte had Denise Plummer noted they say when he would say this is Lewis now to tokine you can do better than that better talking please I would try I would sit down and write the section not over and over that happened with the scene I think is best in the book the confrontation between Gandalf and his rival Wizard Saruman in the ravaged City of Isengard now tokine writes back and qualifies this and this is what he says I do not think the sour man passage the best in the book it is much better than the first draft that is all I mentioned the passage because it is in fact one of the very few places where in the event I found Lewis's detailed criticisms useful and just my cutouts I cut out some of the passages of light-hearted Hobbit conversation which he found tiresome thinking that if he did most other readers if any would feel the same because Lewis was his greatest fan him and Stanley enamines young son at this point Reiner Unwin in fact Lewis writes to stand the Unwin right after this and says I have met long ago to have thanked Reiner that is his son for reading the text tentative chapters and for his excellent criticism it agrees strikingly with mr. Lewis's which is therefore confirmed I must plainly bow to my two chief and most well disposed critics the trouble is that the Hobbit talk amuses me privately more than adventures but I must curb this severely now what's interesting here is when you think of talking and the Lord of the Rings and the movies it's all the adventures that are there the things that toking loved the most are the things that you don't get as as much in the movies now in terms of their public persona all I want to do here because I'm going to talk more about Tolkien's this afternoon is first to just lay out in some of this you'll be aware of in terms of Louis and then talking's response to it as early as 1942 Lewis was a best-selling author and by 7 1947 he was heralded quote one of the most influential spokesmen for Christianity in the inkling english-speaking world and then this was in the Time magazine in which bore his picture on the cover it goes on to say with erudition good humor and skill Lewis is writing about a religion for a generation of religion hungry readers brought up on a diet of scientific jargon and Freudian cliches he is at one of a growing band of heretics among modern and intellectuals an intellectual who believes in God and not a mild and vague belief for he accepts all the articles of the Christian faith now this article attributed much of Lewis's remarkable its success to his talent for putting old-fashioned truths into a modern idiom and giving a strictly unorthodox presentation of strict orthodoxy three years earlier in The Times Literary Supplement they had already suggested something similar mr. Lewis has a quite unique power of making theology attractive exciting and what might almost say an uproarious li fascinating quest now I don't know another person writing theology who has ever ever been spoken of in those ways you know to make theology this warrior is a bra really fascinating quest I mean that's wonderful I mean I'm really historical theology that's my Aryan this is great stuff now Alvin Underhill remarked in 1941 after reading problem of pain and out of the silent planet it is this capacity for giving imaginative body to the fundamental doctrines of the in faith that seems to me one of the most remarkable things about your work so early on Lois has this profound public persona and and it got him into trouble he was hated at Oxford for it and talking responding to a to to Walter Hooper's question you know why is it the topia that Lois was so hated he writes back in toking says well you know you're forgiven for writing two kinds of work or you're allowed to write two kinds of work that is areas in your own field your own discipline and detective novels because all Don's get sick and have to you know read something while they recover but what you're not forgiven is for writing works of popular theology especially if they give you you know success and so there were jealousies at Oxford's now one of the things I want to note too is that Toki Toki was a different sort of fellow and you'll see towards the end of his life especially after Lewis died and people asked him questions about Louis it was clear that Lewis had no problem criticizing Louis and he felt he had a right he was a friend a good friend but he didn't like other people doing it or taking shots at him because they didn't know what they were talking about and tokine felt he did now there was a point in which the relationship begins to cool and there are four factors involved here there is Charles Williams there's the breaking up of the Inklings fellowship there's the entrance of joy and there is the difference in their faith Protestant versus Catholic this is a letter to a Christopher Brethren 10 and this is in 64 a year after Lewis died and he written told Keane and asked about Lewis he says yes Lewis was closest friend from about 1927 to 1940 and remained very dear to me his death was a grievous blow but in fact we saw less and less of one another after he came under the dominant influence of Charles Williams and still less after his strange marriage so what you see are these two things and again this is most of this is after Louis died and people kept writing talking and asking him about his friend Louis I knew Charles Williams only as a friend of CSL whom I met in the company when owing to the war he spent much of his time in Oxford we liked one another and enjoyed talking mostly in jest but we had nothing to say to one another at a deeper or higher levels I had read or heard or a good deal of his work but found it wholly alien and sometimes distasteful occasionally ridiculous this is perfectly true as a general statement but it is not intended as a criticism of Williams rather it is an exhibition of my own limits of sympathy and of course in so large a range of work I found lines passages scenes and thoughts that I found striking I remained entirely unmoved Louis was bowled over by Williams and so there is again sort of a jealousy that comes in even as Warnie experienced earlier on with tokine toki now is sort of feeling that in relationship to williams coming on board he's writing to his son Michael after right after the death of Louis he says I'm sorry that I have not answered your letter sooner but Jack kahlúa says death on the 22nd is preoccupied me it is also involving me in some correspondence as many people still regard me as one of his intimates alas that sees to be so some 10 years ago we were separated first by the sudden apparition of Charles Williams and then by his marriage of which he never even told me I learned a bit long after the event he also just about a year after the death to Anne and Barrett I am a man of limited sympathies but well aware of it and Charles Williams lies almost completely outside them and this is not in terms of the man but have his work I came into fairly close contact with him from the end of 1939 to his death and that was 1945 I was in fact a sort of assistant midwife note this at the birth of All Hallows Eve one of told Charles Williams novels he read it aloud to us as it was composed but the very great change is made in it were I think mainly due to CS Lewis I much enjoyed his company but our minds remain poles apart I actively disliked his our theory and Byzantine mythology and still think that it spoiled the trilogy Lewis's trilogy the last part which was that hideous strength now what's interesting though in all of this and again it's a more complicated picture because there are indications especially in war knees diary that Tolkien and Williams gone on really quite well and there were often entries in war knees diary where it was just war knee Williams and Tolkien that went out for a pint and and Lewis was nowhere to be found and had a great time together toki writes to his son christopher in 44 Charles Williams who is reading it all says the great thing and note this this is he's saying reading and all reading all of the Lord of the Rings as it's coming out Williams is and he's writing to his son Christopher and he's saying Charles Williams who is reading it all says the great thing that is that it's Center is not in strife and war and heroism though they understood they are understood and depicted but in freedom peace ordinary life and good liking yet he agrees that these very things require the existence of a great world outside the Shire unless they should grow stale by custom and in turn into humdrum now token confesses earlier as you know that he loved hobbit talk and all the quiet ordinary things and Williams affirmed that and encouraged him in fact in this sense they were both on the same page and so again you know it's just not one thing they were gifted complicated individuals and there were levels that they shared the don't necessarily come out and sometimes just responses in letters Louis to Greaves 1944 in spite of his angelic quality speaking of Williams he is also quite an earthy person and when Warren E token he and I meet for our pint in a pub in Broad Street the fun is often so fast and furious that the company probably thinks we're talking body when in fact we're likely talking theology so what you see is William certainly comes in and and kind of drives a wedge between them and in many ways part of it is Williams sympathies literary sympathies were much broader than tokens tokens were quite narrow and even though Lewis said that he looked like a monkey had an angelic quality that his Williams that that's that that put a wedge between tokine and louis and it was more on token side than Louis's side and then also by 1949 the Inklings group the ready regular meetings dissolved it stopped the Lewis and Tolkien continued to meet but it was less frequent Lewis is heavy tutorial poking was a professor Lewis was not all the time he was at Oxford and the cares of the ageing mrs. Moore this is 49 and mrs. Moore dies in 51 along with the increased demands of Tolkien's growing family had four children made it increasingly difficult for them to maintain the earlier into intimacy so you have Charles Williams which kind of put an edge you have the breaking up of the fellowship and just demands that the University and domestic life that just did not allow the same sort of relationship there was also the matter of joy and here I'm not going to go into a lot of detail because I think probably many of you know about it but tokine did not like joy George Sayer and his wife Moira did not like joy Austen ek fair did get on and either also roger lancelyn green and his wife but most people did not accept joy and clearly there are statements in terms of talking on behalf that this was extremely problematic and as our Bharti read the idea that Lewis never told him about this marriage really bothered him but at the same token Louis knew pokies views of marriage and divorce and remarriage and he knew that you know it would not be a good encounter to talk to him about it and so I think Louis just left it alone but that was another one that came in but there were also faith issues and here I'll just give a little bit of background if you don't know about tokine when he was three the family moved from where the mother his mother and his little brother who's just born hillary backed up to the midlands because of health reasons tokine's health reasons and while they're there his father dies in south africa and so they're left in the midlands and she soon his mother soon converts to Catholicism which creates an enormous problem on both sides of the family there was just one tokine uncle that actually helped them at all they were basically ostracized from that point on and part of it is because to become a Roman Catholic at that time at the turn of the century to many was almost viewed as a as a an act of treason because of the long time relationship between England and France in the Roman Catholic Church but as Tolkien himself says that her conversion was a declaration that her Christianity and her citizenship were not to be confused that her faith took precedent over all things even her family and her country and her desire to see that her boys were nurtured in the Catholic faith led her to work extremely hard at great personal cost in opposition from the family long hours of work undermined her health and she died of diabetes in 1904 when Tolkien was twelve so by 12 he's bereft of both father and mother now she had made arrangements for him to to be taken care of by a priest father Francis Morgan and who just did a yeoman's job as it were and caring for the boys took him on holidays and when he dies it was again a similar blow to the death of his mother his comment tokine's comment about her when he was 21 my own dear mother was a martyr indeed and it is not to everybody that God grants so easy away to his great gifts as he did to Hillary and myself giving us a mother who killed herself with labor and trouble to ensure us keeping the faith toking had just an incredible estimate of her mother and her faith and he did in fact keep that faith Ralph would who's down at Baylor did an interview with Priscilla Tolkien who's the youngest of the toking children and this is how she described her father in her father's Catholic faith he was a very spiky sort of Catholic and what she meant by that is very finely defined and a bit defensive he was pre Vatican - believer who scorned the vernacular liturgy longing still for the Latin Mass and who had no desire for ecumenical unity like Chesterton tokine regarded the protestant reformation as a terrible mistake and he looked upon the great anglican cathedrals as stolen catholic property in uncharacteristically harsh language he called Anglicanism that is the Church of England a pathetic and shadowy medley of half-remembered traditions and mutilated beliefs and Tolkien could be bit sharp at points not always he would do ride his friend Lewis for being an unrepentant Ulster Protestant note this what Priscilla said was that when he tho explored his imaginative world this short-fused defensiveness about his faith fell away and he was free to plumb the inexhaustible deaths of what Lewis called mere christianity now at the same token let me just want a little letter from Lewis to give you in terms of his view and relationship to Catholicism he's writing he says the questions from me naturally in writing about the Roman Catholic Church is not why should I not be a Roman Catholic but why should I this is 1951 but I don't like discussing such matters because its emphasis it emphasizes differences and in dangers charity by the time I had really explained my objection to certain doctrines which differentiate you from us and also in my opinion from the Apostolic and even the medieval church you would like me less and so what you see is Lewis's desired not to enter into that kind of conflict especially with his friends and the same was with own Barfield who was an anthroposophy and Barfield continually wanted to engage Lewis and gay Lewis would not in a really troubled Barfield Barfield died in 1997 I actually met with Barfield on four different occasions and that was one of the things he told me but Lewis would just not go there he does with Don Giovanni Calabria in the Latin letters and that goes on for quite some time but in terms of those closest to him he shied away from those kinds of discussions now note this to that tokine's inability is it were inability to actually get into Louis's first level of friendship had nothing to do with his faith that isn't I don't believe the thing that kept that from happening because Barfield was a part of that first level and he wasn't even a Christian at least not until later in his life he was an anthropologist he did join the Church of England later in his life Louis writes him and welcomes him on board but I think the difference is that as to even as Tolkien himself says his literary sympathies were very narrow and Lewis's were large and as toking says he was generous almost to a fault and so in terms he could share with toking at these certain levels north missile mythology in that but but he couldn't go any further and for Louis to be on the first-class first level you know needed a broader spectrum of literary sympathies I believe and they were both big men and therefore neither one of them allowed the differences in faith to create any real major problems in their life but it was there and there were differences and it was more troubling for toking than it was for Louis I mean Tolkien really did want Louis to come all the way to the kafir' Catholic fold but it never happened now time is waning and there's one other thing that needs to be said here a qualification and that is by 19 in these 40s you see 49 50 the the relationship cooling but it only cools to a certain level and one of the things that alerts us to this is when Louis was offered the chair of Medieval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge Modelling College Cambridge when when the invitation first came he turned it down now one of the things often people don't realize is that the King mitii that was searching for the candidate and they really all wanted Lewis in the first place tokine was one of two external members on that board when Lewis turns it down he says it's because of domestic issues the idea that I can't move from Oxford that sort of thing the head of the committee writes back immediately the same day and says you know please reconsider he writes back the same day Lewis does and says no there's just no way now we're there were two things that caused Lewis to do this one was he really didn't feel that he could be responsible to his brother and certain domestic issues in Oxford and and responsibly take this position also when it was first advertised and it was advertised in the paper Lewis never even showed interest in it a colleague on campus on the University campus Lewis encouraged him to apply for the position and told this fellow that he wasn't and he just didn't feel like he could go back on that as well but right in the middle of this tokine visits Lewis poking gets wind that Lewis said no and what happens here is tokine basically causes him to reconsider and it's tokine's influence that gets gives him the ability to do this and here I want to read this one section now why can't I find this yeah this is talking to Bennet he's saying whatever may be strictly correct in a lecture it was clear to me poking says that without some such talk the offer to Lewis would be a mere gesture but in spite of the loss to Oxford I felt able to urge the case for Cambridge sincerely he's talking talking to Bennet since I do think that besides being the precise man for the job Lewis would probably be happy there and actually be reinvigorated by a change of air and again it's because in Oxford he was Haydn Oxford is not I think treated him very well and though he is in capable of a dungeon or of showing resentment he has been a little dispirited talking says about him after our talk he said he would accept it was as I thought the chief obstacle is domestic he has a house and some dependents including his brother he will not contemplate closing that establishment but if he could be assured that Cambridge would provide him with the equivalent more or less of his rooms in madlyn which he will lose in which to live during term and house a lot of his books then I think you can have him I suppose that depends on election to a fellowship since chairs are not automatically attached to a college as here but would be would would there be much difficulty in that case I must add that I should be relieved if this comes off the more I reflect the more certain I feel right in my my vote to have Louis come now the problem here was with this professorship he wouldn't necessarily be connected to a college which means he would have no access to rooms as he had in in Oxford which he would have to give up so what toking do is do it he's actually one he talked to us in that shows you the influence that he are still had in 1954 in the nature of their relationship so there's a cooling off but not to the degree that is often thought and the same time toking is now pushing the university at Cambridge to make an exception to not only have a professorship but who attached him to a college to providing him four rooms so that he might be able to make this change and indeed it all comes off now what's interesting is after the second denial they offered it to the second candidate it was a woman and so Bennett writes back to Lewis and says I'm sorry because what Louis did with his tail between his legs you just don't do this by the way folks you don't say no and especially twice and then come back and say well maybe you know maybe I could so it was an embarrassing letter which I won't read I have it here it's an embarrassing letter of lewis back to bennett and you can tell you can feel you know the tension within louis but he writes bank says we're just gonna have to wait now we really don't know why this other candidate did not accept the position but she doesn't and so louis then is able to make the move with tokens influence he was given rooms but the point all of this is the fact that token even though there's a cooling there is still a very very significant relationship that is continued that continued and was maintained and as i begin to wrap this up this is tokine november 26 1963 just after the funeral for louis and he's writing to his younger daughter Priscilla thank you so much for your letter so far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one this feels like an axe blow near the roots very said that we should have been so separated in the last year's but our time of close communion endured and memory for both of us I had a mass said this morning and there and was there and served and have heard and Dundas grant were present the funeral at Holy Trinity the headington Khoury Church which Jack attended was quiet and attended only by intimates and some maudlin people including the president Austin fair read the lesson the grave is under a large in the corner of the churchyard Douglas Gresham was the only family mourner warned II was not present alas I saw one Barfield George Sayer and Jon Lawler a good mark to him among others Chris came with us that was his son Christopher there will be an official service in maudlin on Saturday at 12:15 p.m. no in this is a wrap this up Lewis is writing to end Barrett Lewis of course had some oddities and could sometimes be irritating this is 64 he was after all and remained an Irishman of all but he did nothing for effect he was not a professional clown but a natural one when a clown at all he was generous minded on guard against all prejudices though a few were too deep-rooted in here he's talking about his Ulster background whether Tolkien was really right on that I'm I'm not sure - deep rooted in his native background to be observed by him that his literary opinions were ever dictated by envy as in the case of TS Eliot is a grotesque enemy after all it is possible to dislike Eliot without with some intensity even if one has no aspirations to poetic laurels himself well of course I could say more note this but I must draw the line still I wish it could be forbidden that after a great man is dead little men should scribble over him who have not and must know they have not sufficient knowledge of his life and character to give them any key to the truth Lewis was not cut to the quick by his defeat in the election to the professorship of poetry he's just giving one example of what they don't know he knew quite well the cause I remember that we had assembled soon after in our custom tavern and found Lewis sitting there looking and since he was no actor at all probably feeling as well much at ease fill up he said and stop looking so glum the only distressing thing about this affair is that my friends seem to be upset and he did not really accept the chair in Cambridge it was advertised and he did not apply Cambridge of course wanted him but it took a lot of diplomacy before they got him and you know who now yeah it was stood in the gap his friends thought it was Note this it would be good for him he was mortally tired after nearly 30 years of the Bailey's of this world and even of the dun tens and that is his students that he tutored you know for thirty years I mean you don't know the workload that that involved he proved a good it proved a good move and tell us to help began too soon soon to fail it gave him a great deal of happiness in a trouble this year troublesome year endless distractions much weariness ending with the blow of CS Lewis is death now note something here I want to end with two statements to show you even though joy was a division but their approaches to their wives were remarkably similar you may be familiar with this poem Joy's that sting odo not dies has done for I shall hate all women so how false the sentence rings women but in life made desolate it is the joys when shared that have the stings to take the old walks alone or not at all to order one pint where I had order to to think of and then not to make the small time-honored joke census us to all but you to laugh all want to laugh to talk upon themes that we talked upon when you were there to make some poor pretence of going on be kind to one's old friends and seem to care while know when Oh God through the years will say the simplest common word is just your way now he's writing now talking is about the death of his wife and he's writing to his son Michael but the feeling of insecurity is possibly and I hope due mainly to the maiming effects of the bereavement we have suffered him a wife and Michael his mother I do not feel quite real or whole and in a sense there was no one to talk to this is 72 since I came of age in our three years separation and here he's talking about three years of separation before he could meet and again and marry his wife Edith after that separation we had shared all joys and griefs and all opinions in agreement or otherwise so that I still often find myself thinking I must tell about this and then suddenly I feel like a castaway left on a barren island under a heedless sky after the loss of great great ship I remember trying to tell Margery inkle den tokine's first cousin this feeling and when I was not yet 13 after the death of my mother and vainly waving a hand of the sky saying it is so empty and cold and again I remember after death of father Francis my second father at the age of 77 and this was in 34 saying to Lewis I like a lost survivor into a new alien world after the real world has passed away and then he finishes I met the lúthien tuna ville the new and evil this is his wife his affection astern purr of my own personal romance with her long dark hair fair face and starry eyes and beautiful voice in 1934 she was still with me when Father Francis passed away and her beautiful children but now she has gone before baron that's his reference to himself leaving him indeed one-handed now I remember the first time I met Owen Barfield 1994 who was just two two and a half weeks older than Lewis and then one of the first things he told me was I've lived too long all my friends died over 20 years ago and what you see here with tokine is with the death of his wife 72 and he dies in 73 he was alone and part of that loneliness I believe was also Lewis and so I want to end with this statement from Lewis the four loves in terms of their relationship and try to picture yourself right now in a scene of heaven because that might be very true of what's going on at the moment those are the golden sessions when our slippers are on our feet spread out towards the blaze and our drinks at our elbows when the whole world and something beyond the world opens itself to our minds as we talk and no one has any claim on any or any responsibility for another but all are free men and equals as if we had met for the first time just an hour ago while at the same time an affection mellowed by the years that unfold us life natural life has no better gift to give who could have deserved it I can sort of picture them with their feet up against the fire even now this coursing in areas that they found that they love most thank you maybe a couple of minutes for questions you'll have a chance to get it at Chris again this afternoon but let's take a couple of minutes here and let me bring the Michael you could shout out maybe he referred to his wife as Luthien tinuviel and perhaps himself as Berrien yes and that that rang a chord in the Lord their rings the steward and the king when Aragorn is crowned the whole imagery there I mean he's called the Ancient of Days and and Faramir says behold the king and then he marries Arwen who seems to be like the Bride of Christ and there is a reference to them as lúthien and baron as though Aragorn was barren at one time and Arwen who becomes also takes a mortal life like lúthien did becomes his wife and I I just wondered now it you brought up a whole new way of looking at this relationship wonder how much Lewis influenced his thinking about those kinds of metaphors since there's this connection between seeing himself as Baron and his wife is lúthien and then seeing Aragorn he makes Aragorn also a baron and Arwen lúthien in the Lord of the Rings is there any connection there well there's the connection in terms of a playing out of the same story I mean Beren and lúthien that's the first age of middle-earth and what you have is a similar sort of love that unfolds with Aragorn and Arwen in terms of Louis's influence I really doubt it because the Baron lúthien tale was really at least begun to be laid out before there was any kind of relationship where that would be significant at all and again that was excuse me yeah Oh deal with us a little bit this afternoon one of the things - you know as I said that it was okay for tokine felt okay to criticize his his friend but he didn't want other people to criticize him in the same way he's willing to talk about Christian imagery in his work he just didn't like other people doing it he's often which is sort of interesting

Channel: University of California Television (UCTV)

Views: 42,115

Rating: 4.7741175 out of 5

Keywords: C.S., Lewis, Tolkien, literary, writer

Id: iNhCMReS_M4

Length: 59min 18sec (3558 seconds)

Published: Thu May 01 2008