C. S. Lewis: A Biography

(#ulink_9f3844f6-36c7-53c9-a0c1-e3a652fffdd7) he confided sadly to his diary of 17 October. In later life he was to achieve one of the finest and most lucid prose styles of any writer of his period.

The reading of medieval English literature caused Lewis to have a fresh look at and a deeper consideration of Christianity, and even the first reading of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde set him arguing on the subject with Jenkin. ‘We talked of Troilus,’ he wrote of a walk on 18 October, ‘and this led us to the question of Chivalry. I thought the mere ideal, however unrealized, had been a great advance. He thought the whole thing had been pretty worthless. The various points which I advanced as good results of the Knightly standard he attributed to Christianity. After this Christianity became the main subject.’

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There were many such rambles and talks with Jenkin at this time: on a beautiful November day, ‘above the forest ground called Thessaly’, he got ‘the real Joy’ again, between a discussion of The Wanderer and The Seafarer, and ‘Jenkin’s undisguised delight in the more elementary pleasure of a ramble’.

(#ulink_caadcf00-345b-5bcd-a6a1-ed8f72648cf4) On other such outings they were deciding that of Housman’s Last Poems ‘some are exquisite – some mere sentimental jingle’,

(#ulink_e4549330-52e1-58c4-acff-e3d8886a3e33) or that Saintsbury’s History of English Literature was ‘a very poor book: his articles on Chaucer and Keats seem designed to prevent anyone reading them’.

The difficulty of finding enough time for reading, with so much whittled away by the exactions of Mrs Moore, led Lewis to develop the habit of reading as he walked. ‘I find that one really sees more of the country with a book than without,’ he decided, ‘for you are always forced to look up every now and then and the scene into which you have blundered without knowing it comes upon you like something in a dream.’

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After Christmas 1922, passed with his father at Little Lea, Lewis was back in Oxford revelling in lectures by Strickland Gibson

(#ulink_57513cb4-d7d5-5d20-aa8b-d25978e947b3) on bibliography and C.T. Onions (soon to be a much revered friend at Magdalen)

(#ulink_4f47dffc-0ee3-5ebe-9fa9-9e51b5ce758d) on Middle English, and enjoying his Anglo-Saxon studies which he found were much more extensive than he had expected. He was also reading Donne for the first time and finding The Second Anniversary ‘“a new planet”: I never imagined or hoped for anything like it’, but The Soul’s Progress he dismissed as ‘mostly bosh and won’t scan’.

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Meanwhile he had begun to attend the English classes organized by George Gordon, who had just become Merton Professor of English Literature in succession to Walter A. Raleigh,

(#ulink_bfac410f-137d-5248-8941-86181916d679) a post which he held until 1928 when he became President of Magdalen and was succeeded by David Nichol Smith.

(#ulink_3a5c1ac3-ffb7-5506-83a6-bdeb5647f65d) The first meeting, on 26 January, did not impress him very much – ‘Gordon was sensible rather than brilliant’

(#ulink_80ddc5b3-f4c2-5459-8925-135e840cee5c) – but the next, held on 2 February, brought Lewis a new friend: ‘We were a much smaller gathering. This afternoon a good-looking fellow called Coghill from Exeter read a very good paper on “realism” – as defined in his own special sense – “from Gorboduc to Lear”. He seems an enthusiastic sensible man, without nonsense, and a gentleman, much more attractive than the majority. The discussion afterwards was better than last week’s.’

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The friendship with Coghill ripened fast, and they were soon going for long walks together, eagerly discussing both literature and life. On the first walk, by the Hinkseys and Thessaly, on 11 February, Lewis ‘found to my relief that he still has an open mind on ultimate questions: he spoke contemptuously of the cheap happiness obtainable by people who shut themselves up in a system of belief’

(#ulink_d76f6fae-5ce3-5761-a68a-3a3f7b01b1c7) – but, as he recorded in Surprised by Joy, ‘I soon had the shock of discovering that he – clearly the most intelligent and best-informed man in that class – was a Christian and a thoroughgoing supernaturalist.’

(#ulink_048eddb9-150e-5c9c-9f43-37c013415318) Professor Coghill wrote in 1965:

We used to foregather in our rooms, or go off for country walks together in endless but excited talk about what we had been reading the week before – for Wilson [whom they both had as tutor] kept us pretty well in step with each other – and what we thought about it. So we would stride over Hinksey and Cumnor – we walked almost as fast as we talked – disputing and quoting, as we looked for the dark dingles and the tree-topped hills of Matthew Arnold. This kind of walk must be among the commonest, perhaps among the best, of undergraduate experience. Lewis, with the gusto of a Chesterton or a Belloc, would suddenly roar out a passage of poetry that he had newly discovered and memorized, particularly if it were in Old English, a language novel and enchanting to us both for its heroic attitudes and crashing rhythms … his big voice boomed it out with all the pleasure of tasting a noble wine … His tastes were essentially for what had magnitude and a suggestion of myth: the heroic and romantic never failed to excite his imagination, and although at that time he was something of a professed atheist, the mystically supernatural things in ancient epic and saga always attracted him … We had, of course, thunderous disagreements and agreements, and none more thunderous or agreeing than over Samson Agonistes, which neither of us had read before and which we reached, both together, in the same week; we found we had chosen the same passages as our favourites, and for the same reasons – the epic scale of their emotions and their over-mastering rhythmical patterns … Yetwhen I tried to share with him my discovery of Restoration comedy he would have none of it …

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The brief, concentrated English course drew to an end in June 1923. On 1 June Lewis attended Gordon’s last class held in Nevill Coghill’s rooms at Exeter, when they discussed tragedy: ‘There was some good discussion … Later we drifted to talking of Masefield and then to War reminiscences … Coghill then produced some port to celebrate our last meeting, and we drank Gordon’s health. I for one drank with great sincerity, for he is an honest, wise, kind man, more like a man and less like a don than any I have known. My opinion of him was rather low at first and has gone up steadily ever since.’

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The actual examination took place from 14 to 19 June. ‘The English School is come and gone,’ Lewis wrote to his father on 1 July, ‘though I still have my viva to face. I was of course rather hampered by the shortened time in which I took the School and it is in many ways so different from the other exams that I have done that I should be sorry to prophesy.’

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The viva took place on 10 July, the oral examiners being W.A. Craigie, the Icelandic scholar,

(#ulink_74935608-d64e-56ce-a15f-8e370589fc9e) and H.F.B. Brett-Smith, the editor of Peacock.

(#ulink_9426fc2c-9bcb-5395-8a3b-f47ce8a32359) ‘Most of the vivas were long and discouraging,’ wrote Lewis in his diary. ‘My own … lasted about two minutes … I came away much encouraged, and delighted to escape the language people.’

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The results appeared on 16 July, Nevill Coghill and C.S. Lewis being among the six to obtain ‘First Class Honours in the Honour School of English Language and Literature’.

Martin Ashworth Somerville became a member of King’s College, Cambridge in 1917. The others were Edward Francis Courtenay ‘Paddy’ Moore of Clifton College, Bristol, and Alexander Gordon Sutton of Repton School. After their training all three served in the Rifle Brigade.

(#ulink_de01a66a-3464-58fb-b047-b2d09e49c6e9) The authors are grateful to Dr Robert Clarke for his help with this medical record. He has provided the following commentary: ‘Lewis was probably struck from behind and received a penetrating injury to the left side of his chest, resulting in a fractured 4th rib (and coughing up blood), but escaped with no significant loss of lung function. While he had good air entry in his lung (which would have excluded a collapsed lung), there was dullness on percussion (which would reflect evidence of fluid accumulation around the foreign body [shell fragment] lodged in the upper lobe of his left lung). The injuries to left leg and left wrist were superficial involving soft tissue damage only.’

(#ulink_c403ed24-6bb4-5cd1-aa59-97c74c5b53ec) Second Lieutenant E.F.C. Moore is buried in the British Cemetery at Pargny. On 2 December 1918 he was awarded the Military Cross for ‘conspicuous gallantry and initiative’. A full account of the battle he took part in is found in William W. Seymour’s History of the Rifle Brigade in the War of 1914–1918, Vol. II (1936).

(#ulink_2c7b8e60-1aef-5780-bdc0-164bd12709f5) On 26 October 1918.

(#ulink_f1970a8c-bb11-5535-8cb0-21e552d8f67e) Arthur Blackbourne Poynton (1876–1944) was Lewis’s tutor in Greek. He distinguished himself as an undergraduate at Balliol College. In 1890 he was elected a Fellow of Hertford College, and in 1894 he became the Fellow and Praelector in Greek at University College. He was Master of University College 1935–7.

(#ulink_e1c67631-2f9a-5ea0-871e-e769cec4f787) Cyril Bailey (1871–1957) was Classical Tutor at Balliol College.

(#ulink_e1c67631-2f9a-5ea0-871e-e769cec4f787) George Gilbert Aimeé Murray (1866–1957) was known as ‘the most accomplished Greek scholar of the day’. He was from Sydney, Australia, and after being educated at St John’s College, Oxford, he was Professor of Greek at Glasgow University, 1889–99, and then Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, 1908–36.

(#ulink_85610253-8bd2-5b09-a609-32922e329e21) John Robert Edwards (1897–1992) grew up in Manchester. He graduated from University College in 1920, after which he held a number of appointments. He taught Classics at Chigwell School and Merchant Taylor’s School, Crosby, until 1931. He was afterwards headmaster of Grove Park Grammar School, Wrexham, until 1935, and headmaster of Liverpool Institute High School until his retirement in 1961.

(#ulink_82b581ef-92c4-5183-84dd-096d9021c98a) Cyril Hughes Hartmann (1896–1967) came up to University College in 1914. He read Modern History and after leaving Oxford became a successful writer. His books on literary and historical subjects include The Cavalier Spirit and its Influence on the Life and Work of Richard Lovelace (1618–1658) (1925).

(#ulink_82b581ef-92c4-5183-84dd-096d9021c98a) (Sir) Rodney Pasley (1899–1982) took his BA from University College in 1921, after which he taught in a number of schools. He was headmaster of Barnstaple Grammar School, 1936–43, and headmaster of Central Grammar School, Birmingham, 1943–59.

(#ulink_82b581ef-92c4-5183-84dd-096d9021c98a) Edward Fairchild Watling (1899–1990) matriculated in 1918 and took his degree in 1922. On leaving Oxford he went to King Edward VII School, Sheffield, where he taught classics for thirty-six years. He will be remembered for his idiomatic and highly readable translations of the classics.

(#ulink_172f3b6c-c883-5ab3-94bf-5de31c93dc51) Edgar Frederick Carritt (1876–1964) was Fellow of Philosophy at University College, 1898–1941. He was the first member of the faculty to lecture on aesthetics, and his books include Theory of Beauty (1914) and Philosophies of Beauty (1931). An argument he had with Lewis years later is mentioned in Lewis’s ‘Christianity and Culture’, found in Christian Reflections (1967).

(#ulink_172f3b6c-c883-5ab3-94bf-5de31c93dc51) Frank Percy Wilson (1889–1963), Lewis’s tutor in English, took a B.Litt. from Lincoln College, Oxford. After serving in the war, he returned to Oxford in 1920 as a university lecturer. He was Professor of English at the University of Leeds, 1929–36, and Merton Professor of English at Oxford, 1947–57.

(#ulink_172f3b6c-c883-5ab3-94bf-5de31c93dc51) George Stuart Gordon (1881–1942) was the first Fellow of English in Magdalen College. After serving as Professor of English in the University of Leeds, 1913–22, he returned to Oxford as Merton Professor of English, 1922–8. He was President of Magdalen College, 1928–42, and Professor of Poetry, 1933–8.

(#ulink_e6407749-f2ae-50ac-8148-d84b937cfec7) i.e. Spirits in Bondage.

(#ulink_a23dba87-1de7-59e3-bc3a-9c2cc58dcec9) ‘In those days,’ Lewis wrote in the preface to the 1950 edition of Dymer, ‘the new psychology was just beginning to make itself felt in the circles I most frequented at Oxford. This joined forces with the fact that we felt ourselves (as young men always do) to be escaping from the illusions of adolescence, and as a result we were much exercised about the problem of fantasy or wishful thinking. The “Christina Dream”, as we called it, after Christina Pontifex in Butler’s novel [The Way of All Flesh (1903)], was the hidden enemy whom we were all determined to unmask and defeat’ (p. xi).

(#ulink_a23dba87-1de7-59e3-bc3a-9c2cc58dcec9) Leo Kingsley Baker (1898–1986) was born in London. He served in the Royal Flying Corps during the First World War, after which he came up to Wadham College in 1919 and read Modern Languages. He and Lewis shared a love for poetry, and he introduced Lewis to Owen Barfield. After taking his BA in 1923, he became an actor with the Old Vic Company. In 1925 he married Eileen Brookes and they set up a handloom weaving business, Kingsley Weavers, in Chipping Campden. Baker had meanwhile become an Anthroposophist, and after their business was dissolved during the Second World War he taught in a Rudolf Steiner school. He was Drama Adviser for Gloucestershire, 1942–6, and National Drama Adviser for the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, 1946–63. See his biography in CG.

(#ulink_a23dba87-1de7-59e3-bc3a-9c2cc58dcec9) Acrasia is the witch-maiden in Edmund Spenser’s ‘Bower of Bliss’ in The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596).

Alfred Kenneth Hamilton Jenkin (1900–80) was born in Redruth, Cornwall. He matriculated at University College in 1919 and read English. He and Lewis met at that time and were members of the Martlets. After taking a BA in 1922, Jenkin wrote a B.Litt. thesis on Richard Carew. On leaving Oxford he returned to Cornwall where he became a very popular and highly respected author and broadcaster. His many books include The Cornish Miner (1927), Cornish Seafarers (1932) and The Story of Cornwall (1934). See his biography in CG.