The Life, Literature, and Legacy of C.S. Lewis ~ Week 1 Notes
THE LIFE, LITERATURE, AND LEGACY OF C.S. LEWIS
Part I
(Biography)
Belfast & Boxen (Week 1)
I. Introduction
We are embarking upon an abbreviated study upon the life, and works of C.S. Lewis. Jack, as he was called by his close friends, left us with worlds that are dear to our lives. His works concerning Christianity have help many in their process of growth and sanctification. He was a voice calling for the authority of scripture, like Dietrich Bonheoffer, in a time where liberal Christianity (if you can even call it Christianity) was taking hold. We will study his life in much the way one would study a character in Church history. I say "character," because Lewis saw created history as a story, and the atonement of Christ as the "great myth." The myth which all other myths point to; the true myth.
-How many of you have read anything by C.S. Lewis?
-What is your favorite Lewis work, and why?
II. Born on 29 November, 1898 in Belfast, Ireland.
A. Clive Staples Lewis
B. Son of Albert James and Florence Augusta Lewis.
C. He had one sibling, an older brother named Warren Hamilton Lewis.
1. C.S. Lewis would call him Warnie.
(We have encountered two nicknames already, and so I must tell that Lewis had an affinity for nicknames. When they were children Warnie called Lewis "Smallpiggiebotham" (SPB), and Lewis called Warnie "Archpiggiebotham" (APB). The nicknames grew from the affinity of their childhood nurse to threaten to spank their "piggiebottoms" if they did not properly behave.)
D. Lewis soon rejected the name Clive. He either did this in the summer holiday of 1903, or 1904, and declared to be called "Jacksie." Jacksie would become "Jacks," and Jacks would then become the nickname that he kept for the rest of his life; Jack.
III. A Home Packed with Books.
Lewis' father, Albert, loved reading, and so, he filled his home with books. In April, 1905, the Lewis family moved into a spacious home constructed just outside of Belfast; called the "Leeborough House." This vast house led the boys to create imaginary worlds, and Jack lived in an imaginary world of talking animals, while Warnie lived in "India." These worlds would soon be combined to create "Boxen."
In this house were shelves and stacks of books everywhere. Lewis would spend rainy days pouring over these works of myth, and romance. (Aside: in this seminar, when the word "Romance" is used, it does not refer to a passionate paperback love story with Fabio on the cover. It refers to tales about knights, courage, chivalry, and magical or mystical beings.)
Ireland, full of rainy days in a great house. Could the Professors home in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe be modeled after Lewis' childhood Leeborough home?
In 1905, Lewis was solitary and avidly reading. In May, 1905, Warnie was sent to Wynyard School in Watford, North London. Lewis lost his playmate, and while other boys were playing games, he began to construct worlds in his fertile imagination.
IV. Boxen.
Warnie and Jack spent much time indoors, and a way in which they passed the time was the creation of their world, "Boxen."
1. Lewis said, "We learnt to draw: my brother made his first attempts at writing; together we devised the imaginary country of "Boxen" which proliferated hugely and became our solace and joy for many years to come" (Sayer, 44).
2. Boxen was a world of talking animals, with characters such as Sir Peter Mouse, "knight" -in-waiting to King Bunny of Animal-land who reigned in the 14th century; Tom and Bob Mouse, sons of Ic-this-oress; and Sir Ben, the frog, who, in time, would become a great hero.
3. While Warnie was away at school, Lewis would write to him about the happenings in Boxen.
Jack wrote once that "Boxen was 'SLIGHTLY CONVULSED.' King Bunny was a prisoner. The colonists, who were the war party, were in such a bad way that they hardly dared to 'leave their houses because of the mobs.' The Prussians and the Boxonians were 'at fearful odds against each other.' However General Quicksteppe was 'making plans for the rescue of King Bunny'" (Sayer, 50). Lewis was about eight years old when he wrote this letter.
4. During the Easter holiday of 1912, at age thirteen, Lewis "wrote a complete novel in two volumes—... Entitled 'Boxen, or Scenes from Boxonian City Life,' it was generously illustrated with colored drawings, over which Jack took at least as much trouble as with the text" (Sayer, 69).
V. Glimpse of Joy.
Sometime in 1905, a great turn occurred in the imaginative effort of Lewis. He gives three experiences which gave birth to a major focus in his life.
1. The fragrance of a "flowering currant bush" in the garden of his home triggered a memory from "the old house." He said that he experienced a transitory, delectable sense of desire which overwhelmed him. The feeling soon passed, and then he felt a longing for that longing he had just experienced.
2. While reading Beatrix Potter's Squirrel Nutkin (1903), something sparked an intense longing; "the idea of Autumn." Once more he felt that intense desire.
3. While reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's translation of Swedish poem, by Esaias Tegner. The lines run,
I heard a voice that cried,
Balder the beautiful
Is dead, is dead—
Lewis said, "I knew nothing of Balder, but instantly I was uplifted into huge regions of northern sky, [and] I desired with almost sickening intensity something never to be described (except that it is cold, spacious, severe, pale, and remote)." Again, the experience almost immediately passed, and the longing to reenter it came fast.
B. These three experiences led Lewis to believe one thing; "an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy" (Lewis, Surprised by Joy).
VI. The Death of a Mother.
A. Early 1908, it became clear that Florence Lewis was severely ill. She had developed abdominal cancer, and required nurses at home.
B. Flora Lewis died in her bed at home on 23 August, 1908. In her bedroom was a calendar, and the quotation for that day came from Shakespeare's King Lear: "Men must endure their going hence." Warnie later discovered that the calendar remained open at that page.
C. It was apparent that during this loss, Albert was so grieved over the loss of his wife, that he forgot to pay attention to the grief of his sons over the loss of their mother.
D. Two weeks after his mother's death Lewis was sent to Wynyard with Warnie.
VII. Schooldays.
A. Lewis was at Wynyard School from 1908-1910.
1. Wynyard was a private boarding school established in 1881.
2. Lewis was shocked by the brutality of the schoolmaster, Robert Capron, and later dubbed the school "Belsen" after the infamous Nazi concentration camp. He called is education at Wynyard "a jungle of dates, battles, exports, imports and the like, forgotten as soon as learned and perfectly useless had they been remembered.”
3. Warnie left Wynyard in 1909 to head to Malvern, and Lewis was again left alone.
4. The school had no library, which was a blow to Lewis who had been learning to cope with life by swimming in books, and the school was closed in 1910, when Capron was finally certified as insane. Lewis was then sent to Campbell College.
B. Lewis was at Campbell from September to December of 1910.
1. Campbell was a boarding school in Belfast, Ireland; only a mile from his home.
2. Campbell was founded to allow, as Lewis stated, "Ulster boys all the advantages of a public-school education without the trouble of crossing the Irish Sea."
3. Lewis seemed to have enjoyed the arrangement, but his father had other designs. Jack was then sent to Cherbourg School, in Great Malvern, England.
C. Lewis was at Cherbourg from January of 1911, until June of 1913.
1. It was a small prep school with about twenty boys between the ages of eight and twelve. Cherbourg was located next to Malvern College, where Warnie was currently attending. The boys again could finally see each other.
2. There were a few important things that happened to Lewis while he was at Cherbourg.
- First, he won a scholarship to Malvern College.
- Second, was his discovery of "Northernness." This idea of Northernness would become an important aspect of the life, friendships, and creativity of Lewis, and would stem from his ideas about Joy. He described his discovery as comparable to a silent and barren Arctic landscape being turned into "a landscape of grass and primroses and orchards in bloom, deafened with bird songs and astir with running water."
The stimulus, this time, came from a "literary periodical" which was left in a schoolroom. It was the Christmas Edition of The Bookman, published December of 1911.
"This magazine included a coloured supplement including some reproducing some of Arthur Rackham's suite of thirty illustrations to an English translation by Margaret Armour of the libretto of Richard Wagner's operas Siegfried and The Twilight of the Gods" (McGrath, 28-29)
Rackham's illustrations was a stimulus that caused an intense desire in Lewis. "Northernness," "a vision of huge, clear spaces hanging above the Atlantic in the endless twilight of Northern summer."
He experienced again something he believed to be forever lost. It was a vision of standing upon the threshold of another world, looking within.
Lewis then began to spend his pocket money on recordings of Wagner operas.
- Third, at Cherbourg, Lewis began his descent into apostasy.
What happened was the reading of classical literature. While reading Virgil, and others, he noted that their religious ideas were treated by scholars and teachers as "sheer illusion." If that was so, he deduced that the same must be true of the religious ideas then. Simply, modern illusions. He began to think, why should he think Christianity to be correct, and others wrong?
- Fourth, by spring of 1913, at Cherbourg, Lewis decided he next wanted to attend Malvern College, where his brother was attending.
So, he wrote a letter to Albert asking to be sent there.
Unfortunately, Warnie was asked to leave Malvern after he was caught smoking on the premises. (Both Jack and Warnie had developed the habit of smoking by this time.)
Warnie began to be privately tutored with William Thompson Kirkpatrick, "The Great Knock" (Whom we'll talk more about next week). Lewis went to Malvern College.
D. Lewis was at Malvern College from September of 1913, until June of 1914.
1. In Surprised by Joy, Lewis presents Malvern as a complete disaster. In the book Lewis systematically destroys the institution in three of its fifteen chapters. His three chapter release of anger does not even help to develop his journey of Joy in the book. Warnie even found his complaint of the college to be misrepresented. This was likely a therapeutic exercise.
2. At Malvern, Lewis was a victim of what was called the "fagging” system. In this system the younger boys were to act as servants to the older boys (or "bloods"). As in all orders like this, the more a younger boy was disliked, the more he was picked on, and exploited. This by most was seen as a type of initiation into adulthood, but Lewis saw it as a form of forced labor.
3. Lewis also found himself exiled from the value system of the college, which was athleticism. Athleticism was an ideology with a darker side. Boys who were not good at games were bullied. "Athleticism devalued intellectual and artistic achievement and turned many schools into little more than training camps for the glorification of physicality" (McGrath, 33). Lewis was not athletic and did not want to be; he would often find refuge in the school library.
4. Lewis also found friendship in his Classics Master, Harry Wakelyn Smith (or "Smewgy", as he called him). Smith aided Lewis in his Latin and helped begin his serious study of Greek. Most importantly, he taught Lewis how to analyze poetry.
5. Malvern was not working out for Lewis. He wrote to Albert in 1914, "Please take me out of this as soon as possible." Albert wrote to Kirkpatrick asking him to tutor his other son. Kirkpatrick would become his tutor September of 1914.
VIII. Enter Arthur Greeves, a lifelong friend.
A. Lewis returned home for summer holiday mid-April 1914. A boy named Arthur Greeves, who was the same age as Warnie, was sick in bed, and sent a message for Lewis to visit him. There appears to have been some type of childhood friendship before this point, yet, Lewis' time in school seemed to have caused it to wither. Lewis reluctantly agreed to visit him.
B. Upon entering Greeves' room he caught sight of a book beside Greeves. The book was Myths of the Norsemen by H.M.A. Guerber.
1. Lewis, who loved "Northernness," immediately and excitedly asked, "Do you like that?" He received an excited reply from Greeves. They would remain in touch for the rest of Lewis' life.
C. There is a famous quotation by Lewis, "Friendship is born at that moment when one man says to another: 'What! You too? I thought that I was the only one.'" It is from The Four Loves, and I think that Lewis had his meeting with Arthur Greeves in mind when he wrote that.
IX. Conclusion.
We have traveled through the life of C.S. Lewis from his birth, 29 November of 1898, until his meeting of Arthur Greeves in the Spring of 1914. We saw Lewis lose his mother, a thing which greatly affected the outcome of his life, and at the same time essentially lose his father who was stricken with grief. We leave Lewis wandering from the social Protestantism he grew up with, into apostasy, and we are beginning to see the cultivation of his genius creativity. So, what does this mean for us here today? Lewis has not yet in his life had any sort of spiritual journey, and yet something magnificent keeps breaking through; this other world desire that is found as soon as it is lost; something that all of beauty is speaking to; Joy. Any questions?