The Making of C. S. Lewis (1918–1945) E-Book

Harry Lee Poe

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Serie: Lewis Trilogy
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Experience C. S. Lewis's Captivating Transformation from Atheist to Christian At the end of World War I, young C. S. Lewis was a devout atheist about to begin his studies at Oxford. In the three decades that followed, he would establish himself as one of the most influential writers and scholars of modern times, undergoing a radical conversion to Christianity that would transform his life and his work. Scholar Harry Lee Poe unfolds these watershed years in Lewis's life, offering readers a unique perspective on his conversion, his friendships with well-known Christians such as J. R. R. Tolkien and Dorothy L. Sayers, and his development from an opponent of Christianity to one of its most ardent defenders.

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“Detailed and fluent, this second volume of Poe’s trilogy is a triple helix of biography, literary criticism, and spiritual portraiture that will reward any reader, from the generally curious to the experienced Lewis scholar. Poe’s narrative vision of Lewis’s conversion and apologetic commitment, his arguments along the way, and the nuances of his spiritual insights are, respectively, engaging, challenging, and fascinating. Highly recommended.”

James Como, author, C. S. Lewis: A Very Short Introduction

“There are few more-erudite scholars of Lewis alive today than Harry Lee Poe. This being so, this long-expected second volume of Poe’s three-part intellectual life of Lewis is most welcome. Taking Lewis’s intellectual journey from his atheist youth to his work as a middle-aged Christian apologist, Poe serves as the perfect guide to his subject’s emergence as one of the most powerful voices in the English-speaking world.”

Joseph Pearce, author, Further Up & Further In: Understanding Narnia

“The Making of C. S. Lewis, a work of careful and detailed scholarship, is distinguished by the close attention Harry Lee Poe pays to Lewis’s reading and, most importantly, to his poetry and his early literary scholarship. Poe’s assessment of the importance of The Allegory of Love—not simply as a work of scholarship but as the test bed for Lewis’s emerging theology of the imagination—is most impressive. Poe delineates the important links between Lewis the literary critic and Lewis the Christian thinker. New Lewis readers and seasoned Lewis scholars have much to gain from this thought-provoking book.”

Malcolm Guite, Life Fellow, Girton College, Cambridge; author, Mariner: A Voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge and After Prayer

“With the increasing popularity of C. S. Lewis, the time has come for a more complete biography. This second volume of Harry Lee Poe’s three-volume biography covers all the major events and many previously ignored minor events so that we learn far more about Lewis’s generosity, friendships, writings, life of service, and uproarious sense of humor. Poe pieces together the influence of all the major people in Lewis’s life, as well as Leo Baker, Janie Moore, A. C. Harwood, Owen Barfield, and numerous others. Anyone who wants to graduate to the full picture of the life of Lewis needs to read this book.”

Joel D. Heck, Professor of Theology, Concordia University, Texas; author, From Atheism to Christianity: The Story of C. S. Lewis

“Harry Lee Poe has produced an in-depth sequel to his earlier book Becoming C. S. Lewis. This second volume offers detailed information about Lewis’s early adulthood and examines all the people, ideas, and experiences that influenced his pilgrimage from sharp-tongued atheist to golden-tongued apologist for Christian faith.”

David C. Downing, Codirector, Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton, Illinois

“While not all pictures are worth a thousand words, The Making of C. S. Lewis paints an image that is clearly worth every bit of its 120,000 words. Taking the reader from just before Lewis’s first published book and stopping five years prior to his Narnia debut, Poe masterfully unfolds details that even those familiar with Lewis might not know. This is especially true with the relatively recent discovery of The Norse Spirit in English Literature. Anyone wanting to understand why Lewis is so widely respected needs to read this book.”

William O’Flaherty, author, The Misquotable C. S. Lewis; Host, All About Jack podcast

“Hal Poe’s The Making of C. S. Lewis is the much anticipated second installment of Poe’s comprehensive biography of the foremost Christian apologist of the twentieth century. Much as he did in Becoming C. S. Lewis, Poe draws on multiple primary and secondary sources in order to offer an articulate and informed reading of Lewis’s life from 1918 to 1945. Of particular significance is Poe’s exploration of how Lewis’s conversion impacted his writings after 1933 through World War II.”

Don King, author, C. S. Lewis, Poet; Plain to the Inward Eye; and The Collected Poems of C. S. Lewis

“Harry Lee Poe has a remarkable ability to highlight and explore central moments of Lewis’s life in a highly readable way. Not only does his narrative retain an absorbing continuity of unfolding events, but he also shows the significance of the role that Lewis’s friends and family members, including his adoptive mother, played in shaping the journey of his life. J. R. R. Tolkien once remarked to an Oxford student that they would never get to the bottom of their tutor C. S. Lewis, but The Making of C. S. Lewis succeeds in doing so. It is refreshingly accessible as well as deeply knowledgeable, covering all aspects of the complex Lewis, whose learning, storytelling for adults and children, wisdom, and humor are known throughout the world.”

Colin Duriez, author, C. S. Lewis: A Biography of Friendship and Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship

The Making of C. S. Lewis

Also by Harry Lee Poe

Becoming C. S. Lewis: A Biography of Young Jack Lewis (1898–1918)

The Making of C. S. Lewis

From Atheist to Apologist (1918–1945)

Harry Lee Poe

The Making of C. S. Lewis: From Atheist to Apologist (1918–1945)

Copyright © 2021 by Harry Lee Poe

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Extracts from the following reprinted by permission: The Abolition of Man © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1943, 1946, 1978. The Allegory of Love © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1936. All My Road Before Me © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1991. Beyond Personality © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1947. Broadcast Talks © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1942. The Collected Letters of CS Lewis, vol. 1 © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 2000. The Collected Letters of CS Lewis, vol. 2 © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 2004. The Collected Letters of CS Lewis, vol. 3 © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 2007. Dymer © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1926. The Great Divorce, © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1946. Memoirs of the Lewis Family 1850–1930 © copyright Estate of Albert Lewis. Mere Christianity © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1942, 1943, 1944, 1952. Miracles © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1947, 1960. Norse Spirit in English Literature © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd. Of This and Other Worlds © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1982. An Open Letter to Dr Tillyard © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd. Out of the Silent Planet © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1938. Perelandra © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1944. The Pilgrim’s Regress © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1933. The Problem of Pain © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1940. The Screwtape Letters © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1942. Surprised by Joy © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1955. That Hideous Strength © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1945. The Weight of Glory © copyright CS Lewis Pte Ltd 1949.

Cover design: Jordan Singer

Cover image: Photo of C. S. Lewis used by permission of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL / William Morris Textile design, Bridgeman Images

First printing 2021

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4335-6783-4 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-6786-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-6784-1 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-6785-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Poe, Harry Lee, 1950– author.

Title: The making of C.S. Lewis : from atheist to apologist (1918–1945) / Harry Lee Poe.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020041654 (print) | LCCN 2020041655 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433567834 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781433567841 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433567858 (mobi) | ISBN 9781433567865 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898–1963—Religion. | Authors, English—20th century—Biography.

Classification: LCC PR6023.E926 Z8394 2021 (print) | LCC PR6023.E926 (ebook) | DDC 823/.912—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041654

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041655

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2022-03-17 08:51:38 AM

To

Mary Brandon Poe Hays

Contents

Acknowledgments

 1  Return to Oxford: 1918–1922

 2  From Philosophy to Literature: 1922–1925

 3  From Undergraduate to Fellow: 1925–1927

 4  From Idealist to Christian: 1927–1931

 5  From Poet to Scholar: 1931–1939

 6  From Scholar to Novelist: 1930–1939

 7  From Peace to War: 1939–1941

 8  From Academic Work to War Work: 1941

 9  From Personal Testimony to Philosophy of Science: 1942–1944

10  From War to Peace: 1944–1945

Epilogue

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

This is the fourth book about C. S. Lewis I had not planned to write. When I completed Becoming C. S. Lewis, I felt there was much more to say. The book ended with the end of World War I. Lewis had become a man, but he had not yet become a Christian. Becoming C. S. Lewis focused on how his teenage years prepared the way for the conversion of Lewis and for the academic and popular writing he would do the rest of his life. It seemed a shame not to continue the story. When I proposed a volume to tell of how Lewis went from being an atheist at the end of World War I to being the most prominent Christian apologist in the world at the end of World War II, Crossway agreed to this second volume if I would also write a third that would take Lewis to the end of his life.

I am grateful to my acquisitions editor at Crossway, Samuel James, for his interest in this project and the support that he and his colleagues have offered. Thom Notaro has given careful editorial attention to making this a better book. Jill Carter has handled an array of administrative tasks throughout the publishing process with efficiency and good cheer. Claire Cook has been an invaluable contact in Crossway’s design department, which has beautifully packaged the book. Darcy Ryan and the marketing team have been so creative and shown such initiative in making people aware of the book. I am so grateful for these and all the other people at Crossway who did so much to make this book possible.

Several excellent biographies of Lewis have been written. A biographer must make choices about what material to include and what to lay aside. To that extent, a biography is not simply a chronicle of what someone has done but a story of the significant moments in that person’s life. To tell this story, a biographer must choose the most significant episodes in a life. In sifting all the days of the life of C. S. Lewis, I have had the benefit of several important primary sources that have been published, in addition to the unpublished holdings at the Marion E. Wade Center of Wheaton College and the Bodleian Library of Oxford University. The primary sources are The Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, edited by Walter Hooper in three volumes, and All My Road before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis, 1922–1927, also edited by Hooper. It would have taken years to write this volume had Hooper not done the tedious and meticulous work of editing the letters and diary of C. S. Lewis. Scholars and lovers of Lewis can now examine those letters at their leisure in their own studies without facing the enormous expense of traveling to the research libraries and special collections that hold those letters. Walter Hooper has done an enormous service to generations that will come after him.

Other helpful primary sources are The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, edited by Humphrey Carpenter, and To Michal from Serge: Letters from Charles Williams to His Wife, Florence, 1939–1945, edited by Roma A. King Jr. In addition to Surprised by Joy, Lewis’s own memoir of his conversion, the most important secondary sources are the collections of memoirs written by those who knew Lewis:

Como, James T., ed. Remembering C. S. Lewis: Recollection of Those Who Knew Him. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2005; originally published as C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table.

Gibb, Jocelyn, ed. Light on C. S. Lewis. London: Bles, 1965.

Graham, David. We Remember C. S. Lewis: Essays and Memoirs. Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001.

Keefe, Carolyn. C. S. Lewis: Speaker and Teacher. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1971.

Poe, Harry Lee, and Rebecca Whitten Poe, eds. C. S. Lewis Remembered: Collected Reflections of Students, Friends and Colleagues. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006.

In addition to presenting papers at conferences and writing articles for magazines and journals, I have had a number of invitations over the years to speak and write about Lewis. These lectures have all informed this biography and helped to shape my thinking about Lewis. David Dockery and Greg Thornbury invited me to contribute a chapter titled “The Influence of C. S. Lewis” for an edited volume, Shaping a Christian Worldview (2002), in which I first explored the relationships between A Preface to Paradise Lost, The Screwtape Letters, Perelandra, and The Great Divorce. In 2006, I gave the keynote address for the Christianity in the Academy Conference, in Memphis, on C. S. Lewis’s understanding of a classical education. I was invited to contribute an article “C. S. Lewis and the Ladies” in a special 2007 issue of Christian Scholars Review, which explored Lewis and gender. I am grateful to W. E. “Nick” Knickerbocker and his wife, Sandra H. Knickerbocker, who established the C. S. Lewis and His Friends lectureship, and to the Memphis Theological Seminary, which invited me to give the inaugural lectures in 2008. These lectures allowed me to explore the way Lewis used various literary forms in different apologetic ways. I took advantage of another invitation to give a lecture at Williams College in 2009 on Lewis’s understanding of imagination, which I further developed for the Inklings Week in Oxford in 2013 and published in the Sewanee Theological Review. Dick Staub invited me to present “The Inklings and Friendship” for the Kindlings Fest on Orcas Island in 2010. In 2015, I gave two lectures for the Humanitas Forum that explored Lewis’s conversion, titled “From Ardent Atheist to Mere Christian,” and his treatment of hardship in “Pain, Evil, and Suffering.” For the Inklings Week in Oxford in 2019, I delivered a lecture titled “‘Friendship Must Be about Something’: The Case of C. S. Lewis.” One way or another, all of these invitations have found their way into this biography.

Even with the enormous amount of material that Hooper has edited, much remains unpublished at the Wade Center of Wheaton College and in the Bodleian Library. I am indebted to the center and its staff for their great kindness, generosity of spirit, encouragement, and helpfulness during several trips for extended periods of research into the primary documents related to Lewis during his middle years. Marjorie Lamp Mead has always been gracious to me and all those who come to use the resources of the Wade. Laura Schmidt and Elaine Hooker went out of their way to find things I did not know existed. David and Crystal Downing arrived at the Wade Center as the new codirectors while I was finishing my research on the first volume of this biography. Since then they have extended to me the warmest of possible welcomes, including the opportunity to talk with them on a podcast about this research. I am delighted that they will be leading this important research library into the future. Finally, I am grateful for the Clyde S. Kilby Research Grant for 2020 from the Wade Center, which has aided me in writing this book.

I also appreciate the help and courtesy given me by Rachel Churchill of the C. S. Lewis Company in securing permission to quote Lewis. The C. S. Lewis Company has safeguarded the work of Lewis, preserving his legacy for future generations, for which many are grateful.

I have had the pleasure of dialogue with many colleagues over the years with whom I have shared an interest in Lewis. Insights often come in undocumented conversations long forgotten. I am particularly indebted to Don King, Colin Duriez, Rebecca Hays, Walter Hooper, Paul Fiddes, William O’Flaherty, Dennis Beets, Barry Anderson, Malissa and Russ Kilpatrick, Stan Shelley, Nigel Goodwin, Joseph Pearce, Jerry Root, Holly Ordway, and James Como. Gregory Poore, my former student research assistant, brought a number of memoirs to my attention when I edited C. S. Lewis Remembered, which have contributed significantly to this volume.

For a number of years, I have taught a course on C. S. Lewis at Union University. My students have sparked my imagination with their questions, and I have found that new insights often come in the process of answering questions on my feet before the students. Connections are made that would otherwise have gone unnoticed. I have long believed that some of the best scholarship emerges from the classroom experience. I am grateful to those students over the years who have been my dialogue partners: Kelly Barron, Chelsea Blakley, Sarah Bradley, Valerie Burnett, Laura Bush, William Cherry, David Clark, Adam Craig, Ian Crawford, Ben Dockery, Jon Dockery, Jessica Farneth, Alyce George, Luke Hall, Meah Hearington, Graham Hillard, Jennifer Johnson, Jonathan Wade Jones, Stephanie King, Kelly Krebs, Jin Langford, Adam Lickey, Seth Massa, Kevin Minister, Brian Mooney, Katie Murphy, Eric Murrell, Chelsea Mytyk, David Patterson, Gregory Picard, Jennifer Powers, Kyle Riddle, Katie Sorrell, Greg Talley, Kerstin Ure, Travis Wales, Josh Wamble, and Brian Wells.

Also Naomi Addison, Benjamin Bailey, Erin Brassert, Robert Brown, Abigail Carpenter, Tiffany Collins, Katherine Conkling, Beth Cossiboom, Dustin Curtis, April Daigle, Jesse Daigle, Ashley Donahue, Amber Garrett, Matthew Gentry, Bevin Gracy, Jacob Hall, Lindsey Hall, Andrew Helms, Ryan Hill, David Kartzinel, Cody King, Daniel Lindley, Brett Logan, Devin Maddox, Christina Manchester, Danielle Montgomery, Lori Morris, Amanda Norris, Brent Parrish, Zachery Pendergrass, Amanda Pennington, Bess Perrier, Christopher Peterson, Austin Ward, and William Williams.

Also Joshua Abbotoy, Jordan Baker, Brad Boswell, Michael Brown, Patrick Brown, Amanda Bush, Joshua Cantrell, Bradley Carter, Kyle Clark, Elizabeth Davis, Sallie Duell, Caleb Dunlap, Megan Evans, Tiffany Fredericks, Dena Fritts, Jeffrey Harper, Mary Holliday, Chad Keathley, Christopher Lee, Christopher Malloy, Jewell Marshall, Renae Matz, Patricia McGarrah, Timothy O’Day, Mary Olson, Matthew Pinckard, Raina Schults, Shane Shaddix, William Sipes, Lauren Smothers, Chase Steinmann, Rachel Ware, Ben Watson, Brittany White, Cameron White, Matthew White, David Wickiser, Leah Wilkerson, and Jessica Yates.

Also Virginia Allen, Emily Anderson, Elizabeth Blevins, Hannah Brantley, Stephen Capps, Amanda Chambers, David Conway, Katherine Crutcher, Taylor Dartt, Dwight Davis, Erika Dean, Abigail Ebensberger, Rebecca Edgren, Daniel Garrett, Christopher Gibbons, Laura Grossberndt, Abigail Harris, Grant Kelley, Rebeckah King, Lauren Lester, Karl Magnuson, Ryan Mantooth, Kayla McCanless, Kelsey Meadows, Mary Beth Moore, Jesse Myers, Stephanie Netland, Abigail Nolen, Amanda Parrish, Cameron Puckett, Katherine Pullen, Liana Saffel, William Seaton, Spencer Smith, Victoria Stargel, Anika Strand, Beth Watson, Tucker Watson, Elissa Weber, and Whitney Williams.

Also Amanda Bennett, Amiee Brassert, Chelsea Coudriet, Scott Cravey, Caleb Creel, Nick Dean, Kyle Dwyer, Melissa Fields, Tracy Frisbee, Justin Goodson, Stacey Hanburry, Rachel Harkins, Micah Hayes, Autumn Hitt, Blake Hooten, John Keller, Molly King, Phillip Kurtzwell, Danny Linton, Haaken Magnuson, Thani Magnuson, Betsy Marsch, Renee Marshall, Kylie McDonald, Joseph McFatridge, Kiley Morin, Janie Owen, Lucas Peiser, Dylan Pelley, Peter Riggs, Grant Riley, Katie Ritchie, Wil Sloan, Tyler Stephens, Andrew Stricklin, Rusty Tuders, Caleb Valentine, Olivia Wallace, Abby Winters, Gracie Wise, Lydia Wright, and Stephen Wunrow.

Also Stephen Ballard, Virginia Bantz, Joshua Burton, Miracle Burton, Drake Denning, Ashley Ellis, Evan Estes, Lizi Frasier, Asa Gee, Jared Harrison, Hunter Hawes, Jacob Hayes, Lisa Herod, Brady Heyen, Joshua Johnston, Adam Lang, Kelsie Leaf, Cherish Lo, Eric Massey, Laura McCuin, Chris Mimms, John Monroe, Evan Nichols, Andrew Parks, Sarah Paschall, Grace Pepper, Robbie Pierson, Laura Reiswig, Amanda Rohde, Jordan Sellers, Rachel Sette, Trevor Sewell, Caleb Shaw, Bailey Shearon, Logan Smith, Jalen Sowell, Elizabeth Tomyn, Rian Trotter, Jessica Vinyard, Will Walker, William Watson, Laina Willoughby, Abigail Wills, Christian Winter, and Rachel Wukasch.

Also J. P. Bardon, Chandler Bell, Holden Bennett, Emma Bilbrey, Jay Bishop, Deloma Bowling, Hannah Brandt, Andrew Campbell, Cayley Cantwell, Brittany Carroll, Jacob Carroll, Brady Cook, Jordan Daughrity, Joseph Delaney, Heather Dockery, Caleb Dunbar, Rebecca Duttweiler, Charlie Ellis, Mary Mattison Evans, Brandon Harper, Anna Harris, Joel Holland, Trenton Holloway, Ellen Howard, Hannah Johnson, Karis Lancaster, Jake Leach, Josh Leamon, James Martin, Shauna McCauley, Ben Melton, Yoo Jin Moon, Stephanie Olford, Avery Parks, Briley Ray, Blake Reeves, Russell Richardson, Samuel Riebel, Becca Robertson, Nicole Snover, David Taylor, Cooper Thompson, Adam Tomes, Anderson Underwood, Jessica Vaughn, and Anna White.

And finally, Alexander Bitterling, Riley Boggs, Lauren Butler, Nathan Chester, Jacob Collins, Jonathan Cooper, Madde Ely, Holly Gilbert, Jesse Greer, Nehemiah Guinn, Christopher Hearn, Rachel Hickle, Cameron Johnson, Ethan Judge, Rebekah Lisle, Robert Martin, Gabrielle Massman, Amelia Moore, Melanie Nassif, Ashley Rimmer, Kellen Robbins, Madison Rowland, Ashleigh Slusmeyer, Callie Teague, Chloe Thomas, Zach Tyler, Camille Wehrman, and Savannah Wright.

I could not undertake projects of this sort without the support of Union University: particularly our president, Samuel W. (“Dub”) Oliver; the provost, John Netland; and the dean of the school of theology and missions, Ray Van Neste. My wife, Mary Anne Poe, has long supported my interest in Lewis and has been a great encouragement in the writing of this book. Finally, to the many participants in the retreats sponsored by the Inklings Fellowship over the past twenty years, I am grateful for your support and interest in the life and work of C. S. Lewis.

1

Return to Oxford

1918–1922

C. S. Lewis spent the better part of 1918 convalescing from shrapnel wounds from which he would never fully recover. Two pieces of shrapnel remained in his chest.1 The pain in Jack’s shoulder would plague him for years after the war, as would the headaches and nightmares.2 His wound may have inspired the shoulder wound of Frodo Baggins when J. R. R. Tolkien wrote The Lord of the Rings. Of greater concern than his wounds in the months after his evacuation from France, however, was his desire to have Mrs. Janie Moore near him whenever the army moved him from one place to another.

A Concealed Relationship

Lewis had been wounded in battle near Riez du Vinage on April 15, 1918. The Liverpool Merchants Mobil Hospital at Étaples cared for him initially. Then he was transported back to England and the Endsleigh Palace Hospital, in London, from which he telegrammed his father, Albert Lewis, of his move on May 25. In anticipation of his move to London, Lewis wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves that he hoped Arthur could come see him at the London hospital because it would also give him a chance to meet Mrs. Moore.3 Regardless of where the army would move Jack in the ensuing months, Mrs. Moore found lodgings nearby. Greeves, to whom Lewis had confided his inmost thoughts and feelings since they became friends in 1914, enjoyed the confidence of Jack Lewis concerning his relationship with Mrs. Moore. He would help Jack conceal the nature of that relationship from his father for years.

To Albert, Jack wrote that Mrs. Moore had been in London to visit her sister and had called on him. He claimed that they had seen a good bit of each other because it seemed to offer her some comfort to visit an old friend of her son from Officer Training Corps days in Oxford.4 Her son, Edward (“Paddy”), had been reported missing and assumed dead on March 24, 1918.5 On June 24, the army transferred Jack from the hospital in London to a convalescing hospital in Bristol, where Mrs. Moore made her home with her daughter, Maureen. Jack wrote to his father that it was awful bad luck, because he had hoped to be sent to a hospital in Belfast, but at least he would have the consolation of the company of Mrs. Moore.6 As was often the case, Albert Lewis appears to have suggested that he could use one of his political contacts to get Jack transferred to Belfast. In reply to his father’s proposal, Jack wrote frantically that it was best for his situation to go unnoticed. Since his original plan for convalescence would be up on August 4, he would more likely be sent back to the front instead of being transferred to Belfast. If he were quiet, the army would not notice him. Nonetheless, he suggested that his father visit him in Bristol, where he could meet Mrs. Moore.7

The extent to which Albert avoided traveling, almost never going with Flora and the boys for their annual summer holiday by the sea, is illustrated by the description of his holiday in August 1918. He told Warnie (Jack’s brother, Warren) that he had spent it at home dividing his time between the little end room, Warnie’s room, and the garden. Albert reflected that the enormous worry involved in planning a trip would prevent him from ever taking one. He allowed that he might enjoy a trip, but the irksomeness of preparing for it was too much to manage.8 When Albert rationalized his failure to cross the Irish Sea and visit Jack in the hospital, he told Warnie it was because of the pressing demands of work and that he might lose his job if he took a holiday. Despite his rationalizations, Albert worried about what Jack would think of him for not visiting, which resulted in Albert’s bouts of depression and sleepless nights.9He also had a dread of German submarines plying the Irish Sea, which he had constantly impressed upon Jack when he was living with William T. Kirkpatrick. This fear was not without basis. People actually did lose their lives making the passage, as the passengers on the Lusitania had discovered.

On October 4, the army transferred Lewis to the Perham Downs Camp, at Ludgershall in Hampshire. Mrs. Moore rented a cottage near the camp, where she kept rabbits and pigs. Jack begged Arthur Greeves not to tell Albert of this move, lest his father attempt once again to have him transferred to Belfast.10 In the end, Jack could not hide, so he assured his father that the transfer to a command depot as a convalescing officer was a normal thing in the army, but that under no circumstance should Albert try to intervene. Jack explained that the easiest way to obtain a discharge would be from his present posting.

The week of the Armistice in November, Jack’s entire unit was moved to Eastbourne, in Sussex.11 Mrs. Moore and Maureen followed him straight away, and Jack told Arthur that he spent most of his time with them.12 Jack advised his father that he had suggested that Mrs. Moore come to Eastbourne and rent rooms near his camp until he went on Christmas leave.13 This bit of information, however, was slipped into a long letter that focused attention on his publishing prospects and on the best way to get a discharge from the army, with the war over. The army settled the problem by discharging Jack from the hospital on Christmas Eve and demobilizing him. He arrived in Belfast on December 27, so one might assume that he spent Christmas with Janie and Maureen Moore before going home unannounced. Had he informed his father that his demobilization had come through on Christmas Eve, Albert would have expected him home immediately.14

On November 10, Jack had written his father to tell him that he had taken the flu vaccination and that Albert should be inoculated as well. It was a mild inoculation that Jack thought worthwhile if it could save a person’s life. The war ended the next day, but death was still in the air. That winter alone, twenty million people would die worldwide during the influenza pandemic.15Among its victims was Harry Wakelyn Smith, the teacher known as Smugy, who had been Jack’s one bright spot at Malvern.16

Not until September had Mrs. Moore received confirmation that her son, Paddy, had been killed in action the previous spring. Despite his reservations about Mrs. Moore, Albert wrote her a letter of condolence upon hearing the tragic news. Her letter of acknowledgment to Albert on October 1, 1918, was signed “Jennie K. Moore” rather than “Janie.” She remarked that of the circle of five friends of which Jack and Paddy were a part in Officer Training Corps, only Jack had survived the war. She also confided to Albert that Paddy had asked Jack to look after her if her son did not return from the war.17

On Jack’s birthday two weeks after the Armistice, Warnie wrote to his father admitting how he had worried about Jack during the war. He would wake up in the middle of the night wondering if Jack were still alive. For Warnie, Jack’s safety was always “the great thing.”18 He added the news that it just might be possible for him to arrange for leave to be home by Christmas, but that his father should not get his hopes too high.19 Warnie did manage leave for Christmas, so he was at home when a taxi pulled up to the front of Leeborough House just before lunch on December 27 and Jack emerged. The family was together again, and they celebrated with champagne at dinner that night, the first time Warnie had ever seen it in their house.20 Jack spent several weeks with his father before returning to Oxford in mid-January of 1919 to resume his studies.

Publishing a Book

When he first went to the hospital in London, Lewis decided it was time to try to publish his poetry. From his hospital bed he wrote to ask Arthur Greeves to send the notebook of poetry in his care.21 By the time Jack was transferred to Bristol, he had nearly completed revising his poetry, which he then had typed. By July, he informed Arthur that he would soon be ready to send his manuscript around to the publishers.22 By August 7, 1918, his book of poetry had been rejected by Macmillan, and he next sent it to Heinemann.23 On September 3, William Heinemann wrote to Jack to say that his firm would publish the book.24

Perhaps surprisingly, Jack first wrote to his father several days before sending Arthur the news that Heinemann had accepted his manuscript, originally titled “Spirits in Prison: a cycle of lyrical poems by Clive Staples.”25 Despite the personal difficulties that continued to grow between father and son, Jack wanted to make his father proud of him and to win his approval. From his father, young C. S. Lewis had learned the love of books, and now his own book was to be published. Albert wrote to Warnie with the news, having assumed that Jack would not. The proud father celebrated Jack’s achievement in glowing terms—to publish a first book, and not just a book, but a book of poetry!26

Though excited by the news of his son’s impending fame as a writer, Albert suggested that the title was wrong, since Robert Hitchens had written a novel by the same title.27 Jack also had to explain why he intended to publish under a pseudonym. He confessed that he did not want the other officers to know that he was a poet, lest they ridicule him.28 Despite his pride in Jack’s achievement, Albert expressed his concern confidentially to Warnie that it might be a mistake for Jack to publish his poetry before he was twenty years old.29

Waiting in a convalescent hospital with little to do, Jack grew impatient for word from his publisher about the status of his book and for the page proofs for him to correct. Between William Heinemann going on vacation and Jack moving to a new post, the normal long delay grew longer. By October, he had hit upon the final title for his book and the final pseudonym. It would be “Spirits in Bondage,” by Clive Hamilton, using his first name and his mother’s maiden name.30 In late October, Jack secured permission to go to London to visit his publisher, where he was given the hope that John Galsworthy would publish one or more of his poems in a new magazine, Reveille.31 The poem “Death in Battle” appeared in the February 1919 issue, the magazine’s third and last.32 Albert told Warnie that the poem was the best one in the issue, which included the poetry of Hilaire Belloc and Siegfried Sassoon.33

Upon reading Jack’s poetry in manuscript form, Albert Lewis appears to have thought that it might be taken as blasphemous. Jack assured his father that he was not being blasphemous against “the God you or I worship.”34 He was simply being “honest.” Honesty was an interesting virtue for him to raise at this point, because his letter was suggesting that he was a Christian when he was not and vehemently knew he was not. He compounded the deception by telling his father that he would be reading the lesson in chapel that week as well as saying grace before a meal in the college hall.35

By the end of March, the much-anticipated publication of Spirits in Bondage finally arrived. The Times Literary Supplement for March 27, 1919, published what Lewis considered a “very insolent” review, but he feared even more how his father would regard the review.36 On a happier note, The Bookman of June 1919 gave him a flattering review full of praise.37 Oxford had what Lewis called an “extreme literary set” at Balliol and Exeter who controlled the Oxford Poetry book issued each year, in which J. R. R. Tolkien had published “Goblin Feet,” and which Dorothy L. Sayers had coedited for several years. Word had gotten back to Lewis that he was being noticed. The pleasure of being noticed was tempered, however, by the pity that he had been noticed by people who wrote the new free verse.38

Albert told Warnie that though the reviews were not enthusiastic, they were “decent, sober praise, all things considered.” Nonetheless, he feared that Jack was disappointed in spite of his father’s efforts to help him feel satisfied.39 On the other hand, Jack told Warnie that he feared their father would be disappointed by the reviews.40To add insult to injury over the tepid reviews, the publisher mistakenly attributed Spirits in Bondage to George S. Lewis instead of Clive Hamilton in the catalog. So much for pseudonyms.41

Back in Oxford

By mid-January 1919, Lewis was back in Oxford at University College for the beginning of Hilary term. In Surprised by Joy, Lewis named the chapter that dealt with his postwar return to Oxford “The New Look.” Warnie and Albert had taken note of Jack’s new look at the time, but Warnie referred to it as the “New Thought.” He joked that Jack might not want to take part in paying for a memorial to Smugy at Malvern, not only because he hated Malvern but also because he might view memorials to the honored dead “as an exploded superstition ranking with witchcraft and the Divine right of Kings!”42

Though Jack had been accepted into University College with a scholarship, he had not passed the Oxford entrance exam, known as Responsions, before the war. For all his brilliance in some areas, Lewis had little hope of passing Responsions because of the math section. He flunked it in 1917, but after the war, ex-servicemen were exempted from Responsions.43 Lewis could go to Oxford after all. He wrote to Arthur Greeves with news of his new academic life and gave an overview of his daily routine. His scout (a college servant) woke him at seven thirty each morning. He bathed, attended chapel, and then went to breakfast in the great hall. After breakfast, he attended lectures or worked on his weekly assignment from his tutors, either in the college library or in one of the lectures halls, both of which were heated. At one o’clock he rode his bicycle to Janie Moore’s rented house at 28 Warneford Road, where he had lunch. He spent the afternoon working on his tutorial paper until tea, then studied more until dinner. After dinner, he might resume study or have a relaxing evening talking with Mrs. Moore or playing bridge before riding his bicycle back to the college at eleven. Back in his room, he made a fire and did a bit more work before going to sleep at midnight.44 This kind of schedule with so much time each day spent with Mrs. Moore necessarily meant that Jack would not “see very many people.”45

At this point, Arthur Greeves was the only person in Jack’s world who knew that he and Janie Moore had an arrangement. As far as Albert Lewis was concerned, Mrs. Moore lived far away in Bristol and Jack was safely ensconced in Oxford. Jack made the point in a letter to Arthur that he must not let Albert know about his domestic situation with Mrs. Moore.46 At the end of Hilary term in 1919, Jack wrote to his father that he could not come home during the short Easter vacation because his tutor told him he needed to stay for another week, and then he had promised to go to Bristol to help Mrs. Moore with moving. He said that she could not find anywhere else to go in Bristol or London. The housing shortage after the war would have been a problem known to many. Jack told his father that he had even suggested that she try to find a place in Oxford.47 By this time, however, Janie had been living in Oxford for two months, and Jack would be staying with her over his vacation, far from his father’s prying eyes.

Jack continued his neglect of Warnie, who wrote to him regularly with no reply. In exasperation, Warnie complained to his father of Jack’s failure to inform his own brother that he would be home in Belfast in April 1919, when Warnie probably could have arranged for leave to be together again.48 Jack’s inconsiderate attitude toward his father and brother continued when he promised to send Albert a telegram indicating safe arrival back in Oxford after his April 1919 visit. Not only did he not send the promised telegram, but when Albert telegrammed to find out if Jack was all right, he failed to reply.49 When Jack did finally write to Warnie, he evaded any specific information on his plans to visit Little Lea, the alternate name for Leeborough House. Warnie feared that Jack spent all his time working and was neglecting any personal time for relaxation, though Warnie had never thought Jack was given to overwork any more than Warnie was.50

When he did write to his father, Jack discussed the strategy he would pursue to secure an Oxford fellowship once he completed his studies. His tutor, Arthur Poynton, had advised him to undergo Classical Honour Moderations, a public examination in Greek and Latin midway through the second year of study. It was not necessary to take Mods, as they were called, in order to become a philosopher, but it would establish his credentials in the academic world of Oxford tradition. Lewis explained to his father, “People might feel that they could never be quite sure of you unless they knew what you had done in Mods.”51 The pursuit of philosophy fell under the program of study at Oxford known as Literae Humaniores, which involved philosophy and ancient history.

Oxford, a formidable institution with, in many ways, its own culture, prides itself in the articulate command of the English language, so much so that it has its own accent and dialect. Many a young person goes up to Oxford with a provincial or urban accent, only to go down three years later with the refined and slightly snobbish Oxonian accent. In this odd world of meticulously spoken English that abhors the common slang of the broad culture, the Oxonians use their own slang and institutionalized corruption of English pronunciation for almost everything imaginable. Thus, one does not speak of Classical Honour Moderations but of Mods. One does not speak of Literae Humaniores but of Greats. It is the town where Mary Magdalen Church is pronounced as it would be anywhere else in the English-speaking world, but where Magdalen College a few blocks away is pronounced “Mawdlin.” Jack Lewis, with his prominent Irish brogue, was learning the dialect and the slang well.

The system of education employed by Oxford and Cambridge, known as Oxbridge, does not involve a series of courses on various subjects with major and minor areas, nor is there a core curriculum that everyone takes. Instead, a pupil meets with a faculty member, known as a tutor, once a week. The tutor “recommends” several books for the pupil to read in preparing an essay to be read at the ensuing tutorial. During that meeting, the pupil reads the essay, and the tutor interrupts to ask questions and offer a critique. Lectures do not play the primary role in the Oxbridge system that they play in the American system. Nonetheless, the fellows of Oxford offer lectures on subjects of interest, or not, within their respective schools. Lectures are optional, though a good tutor advises pupils on lectures they ought to attend. The whole system aims at preparing pupils for the single examination at the end of their three years that will determine their fate. In the case of Greats, however, Lewis could expect a fourth year. He complained to Greeves that he had to read all of Homer, Virgil, Demosthenes, Cicero, and also do logic.52 He did not mention that he had already read most of the texts with W. T. Kirkpatrick, so that much of his university work was review.

Jack informed his father that the lectures given by Gilbert Murray were the best he attended. Lewis already knew Murray by reputation before going up to Oxford. Jack had read Murray’s treatment of TheBacchae of Euripides when Jack was living with Kirkpatrick in Great Bookham. Jack had recommended Murray’s translations to Greeves, even while confessing that he had no fondness for Euripides himself.53 Murray held the Regius Chair of Greek at Oxford in the fading twilight of an age when some still recalled how the command of Greek was the apex of intellectual and academic achievement.54Jack Lewis, newly arrived at University College in 1917, had been impressed that his new friend Butler actually knew both Murray and W. B. Yeats!55

Arthur Poynton had been Lewis’s tutor when he first went up to Oxford in 1917. During the war, he also filled the post of bursar, the business manager of an Oxford college. He would go on to serve a brief term of two years as master of University College.56 Lewis thought that Poynton was “an exceptionally good tutor,” which was high praise indeed, since he had only W. T. Kirkpatrick with whom to compare him. In fact, Lewis thought that Poynton was the equal of Kirk.57 Lewis took tea with Poynton, his wife, and a small company of undergraduates soon after his arrival. In the social setting, the esteemed tutor turned out to be an amusing and skilled teller of tales.58

In addition to his academic pursuit, Jack Lewis began to show signs of his growing ability to enjoy contact with other people, an ability he lacked prior to his time with the officers and men in the trenches of France. Early in his first term, Jack was elected to the Martlets, one of innumerable clubs and societies of Oxford that come in and out of existence. According to legend, the Martlets were over three hundred years old. In fact, they dated to 1892.59 In Oxford, however, the pursuit of truth and knowledge is exceeded only by the perpetuation of legend and the propagation of gossip. Nonetheless, the minutes of the meetings of the Martlets are kept in the Bodleian Library, a point of pride for Lewis, who was elected the secretary and charged with keeping the minutes. The Martlets provided Lewis with a social outlet, but they also were a context to exercise his mind and develop powers of discussion and critique, for the Martlets were a literary society in which the members wrote and presented papers on a wide variety of subjects. The group was limited to only twelve undergraduate members, so it also provided an air of exclusivity for Lewis. For his first paper, Lewis chose to write on William Morris, whose writing he had devoured since Great Bookham days.60 In his early days back at Oxford, his fellow Martlets included John Robert Edwards, Rodney Marshall Pasley, Edward Fairchild Watling, Basil Platel Wyllie, Cyril Hughes Hartmann, Alfred Kenneth Hamilton Jenkin, and Donald Frederick Wilkinson.61

In addition to the twelve undergraduates, the Martlets also had members who were fellows. The Reverend Alexander Carlyle, chaplain of University College, was a political philosopher, church historian, and social reformer.62

Oxford Friendships

One of Jack’s first acquaintances in college was his fellow Martlet Rodney Pasley, who also wrote poetry. At first, Jack was suspicious of him because he thought that Pasley might be a modernist. Jack may also have been slightly jealous at the prospect that Pasley might publish a book of poetry. He informed Arthur Greeves that a man named Mais was reportedly helping Pasley publish his book of poems.63 As it turned out, Pasley was the old-fashioned type of poet that Jack favored, and they soon became friends. Jack not only approved of Pasley’s poetry but envied him for some of it.64

Once the weather turned warm in Oxford, Jack renewed one of the greatest pleasures of his life. He went swimming. As its ancient name suggests, the city of Oxford began at the ox ford on the river Thames many miles above London. To complicate matters as only Oxford can, as it flows past Oxford, the Thames becomes the Isis River, only to become the Thames again below Oxford. The small Cherwell River flows into the Isis in Oxford at Christ Church Meadow. This was the river on which Toad, Mole, Ratty, and Badger lived in Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Christ Church Meadow is where Alice followed a white rabbit down a hole into Wonderland. Up the Cherwell at the lower corner of University Parks, the river makes a large S bend, and here the men of Oxford went swimming in the nude. Known as Parson’s Pleasure, the favored swimming hole was visited by Lewis most mornings before breakfast.65

Sons and Fathers

Relations between Jack Lewis and his father had gone steadily downhill since Albert sent his son to Wynyard School in 1908. Jack had learned the art of deceiving his father in his mid-teens, but by 1919 he had ventured on an elaborate double life. In Surprised by Joy, Lewis publicly acknowledged that the art of concealment from his father had grown into a habit.66 He complained to his brother, Warnie, that their father had grown unbearable with his continual fussing, sulking, and demanding to know all about his son’s life.67 Albert Lewis had grown older, but whether he had actually become more unbearable in his manner is open to conjecture. At this point in his life, Jack had much more to conceal than cigarettes. Any question about almost anything of his life in Oxford would require another lie, and the effort to lie requires a great deal of emotional energy for most people. Any routine, normal, polite inquiries that a father who was paying the bills might make of a beloved son might feel like badgering and a vile intrusion on privacy to someone who had something enormous to hide.

One of the reasons that C. S. Lewis could speak so authoritatively and insightfully about the dynamics of temptation and personal sin in The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce is his own considerable experience with them. In 1955, when he looked back on this period and relations with his father between his school days and his father’s death in 1929, C. S. Lewis said that his behavior lay “heavy on [his] conscience.”68 One of the ironies of human nature is that when we sin against another person, we tend to blame the other person for our sin, thereby adding contempt and loathing for the other person to the injury we have already inflicted. So it was with Jack Lewis and his father. By concealing his secret life from Albert, Jack grew increasingly sensitive to any overtures by his father to share his life. The teenage boy’s irritation with parental supervision could not make the adjustment to the normal interest a parent would show in an older son’s life at the university.

By 1919, however, a new cause for contempt of Albert had arisen. Arthur reported to Jack the growing rumor that Mr. Lewis was drinking alone! Arthur had heard his parents speaking in hushed whispers about Jack’s father. Then, one day when he dropped by the Lewis home, Arthur found Albert alone in his study apparently drunk to the point that he could not speak. Jack could now take the moral high ground and look down on his father’s “solitary tippling” with disgust.69

While Jack was growing increasingly irritated by his father, both Albert and Warnie grew increasingly disturbed by Jack’s relationship with Mrs. Moore, based on what little they knew, which was not very much. Albert wrote to Warnie at his army posting that the Mrs. Moore business was a mystery to him. By now, the father knew that his son was providing Mrs. Moore with money, as evidenced by his canceled checks made over to her. On May 10, 1919, Warnie wrote to his father that he hoped the mystery was a product of their imaginations, though he thought it a freakish situation. On May 20, Albert wrote to Warnie that Mrs. Moore’s husband was reputed to be a scoundrel, and he might be the sort who would attempt to blackmail Jack. On the other hand, Albert acknowledged that all his concern might simply be the result of a mind made overly suspicious by years as a police court lawyer. On June 3, Warnie replied with expressed relief at the news that Mrs. Moore was still married, which meant that Jack could not be contemplating matrimony. Furthermore, Jack was too poor to be blackmailed successfully. What concerned them most, however, was the report that Jack wrote daily to Janie Moore whenever he was in Belfast, though both Albert and Warnie had seen a dramatic decline in letters from Jack to them.70 Jack and Janie exchanged letters through the help of Arthur Greeves, who served as their go-between. Though Jack thought he had cleverly deceived his father, Albert knew all about it.71 Jack had a new primary relationship, and it was not centered in Belfast.

Only Arthur continued to have Jack’s total confidence. He knew all about Mrs. Moore. He visited Jack in Oxford the last week of June 1919. By this time, Mrs. Moore had moved again into “Invermore,” which Jack described as a “jolly little house” without a bathroom.72 Arthur stayed at the Mitre Hotel on the High Street, which would become a favorite watering hole and dining spot for Lewis and his friends until World War II. Arthur would have met Mrs. Moore for the first time on this visit, though they had been in correspondence for some time.73 Arthur would assist Jack in his deception of Albert regarding his relationship with Mrs. Moore until Albert’s death. It was probably during this visit that Jack and Arthur began using “Minto” as an affectionate nickname for Janie.74 She also had a visit during this period from her brother Dr. Robert Askins. Rob Askins had what Jack called “a very bad state of nerves.”75 He arrived in Oxford in a suicidal state and kept Janie up all night talking. This episode was probably the first hint Jack had that the Askins family might have a tendency to mental distress.

C. S. Lewis had a lifelong habit of constructing nicknames. Some of these reflected his affection, others his contempt. He had numerous nicknames for his brother and father, which developed as life circumstances changed. His nicknames for them depended on his mood and the states of their relationships at the time. Now and then his letters addressed his brother as A.P.B., which stood for Archpiggiebotham, a reference to the way their nurse had threatened to spank their piggiebottoms when they were little. Jack was S.P.B., which stood for Smallpiggiebotham.76

When the long summer vacation of 1919 came, Albert Lewis expected his son to return home to Belfast as he had done since he first went away to Wynyard School, but Jack had other ideas. He told his father that the Trinity term did not actually end in late June as published but continued unofficially for two or three weeks into July. Furthermore, he claimed that Poynton had told him he should stay in Oxford after the term ended in order to do more work. Jack reasoned that life would be so pleasant at home in Little Lea that he could not possibly get any real work done with so many happy distractions. He told Warnie a slightly different story. He said that Oxford had four terms a year, which Warnie took to mean that they squeezed a short term “somewhere in the middle of the summer.”77 As an alternative, Jack proposed that Albert and Warnie venture to Oxford, where they could stay at the Mitre and go punting. The wily Jack would have known that Albert, who hated to travel on vacation, would never leave the comfort of Little Lea for the uncertainty of the food and beds at the Mitre.78

Warnie wanted to coordinate his leave during the summer of 1919 with the Oxford long vacation, but Jack would not tell him the dates, much to Warnie’s frustration.79 Albert advised Warnie not to hope for too much, because Jack had not been so scrupulous in his visits home since he first met Mrs. Moore.80 As they tried to make plans for a summer 1919 reunion, Albert complained to Warnie that with Jack, it was always Mrs. Moore first. When Jack had six weeks leave, he spent five with Janie Moore. Not even Arthur Greeves provided an attraction, whose company must “pall” in comparison with Janie’s.81

The trip to Belfast and home could not be avoided entirely, however, though Jack delayed it as long as possible. In the end, he conspired with Warnie to spend a few days together in Oxford and London before visiting Kirkpatrick in Great Bookham, and only then traveling on to Ireland. It can be assumed that Warnie, while in Oxford, did not cross paths with Mrs. Moore, who remained safely away in her lodgings during Jack’s pretense of receiving and entertaining Warnie at his rooms in University College. Warnie arrived on July 23, and on July 26 the brothers sailed for Ireland, where they remained with their father until August 22.82

This summer visit home to Little Lea would prove to have disastrous consequences for the relationship between Albert and Jack Lewis. Albert discovered that Jack had lied to him about the state of his finances. Jack was overdrawn by £12.9.6d at Cox and Company bank.83 Albert had found the letter from the bank lying on a table in the little end room where the boys played as children.84 When he confronted Jack with the evidence, a horrendous argument ensued in which Jack laid bare all of his father’s failings since Jack’s childhood. All of the resentment, bitterness, contempt, and disrespect that Jack had accumulated since his mother’s death came pouring out in a hot, insulting assault on his father. Albert wrote in his diary that the episode left him “miserable and heart sore.”85 That his son had no respect for him hurt, but the loss of his son’s love proved unbearable. Having been caught red-handed in a lie, Jack Lewis did the only thing any reasonable reprobate would do. He lashed out at the one who found him out. It was churlish behavior in a decorated war hero, but the memory of it would haunt him till his dying day and would provide him with keen insight into the human condition that would serve him well in later life. What upset Warnie most was that it made it impossible for him “to touch” his father for the money to spend a week at Malleranny!86

Jack and Albert Lewis in Little Lea garden, July 1919. Used by permission of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL.

After this disastrous confrontation at Little Lea in the summer of 1919, Warren and his father had little to say about Jack in their correspondence for several years. The vacation visits in summer and at Christmas continued as before, and when Warren was assigned to a post in Aldershot, he regularly made weekend visits to Oxford several hours away. Nonetheless, things had changed. Curiously enough, during the early 1920s, Albert and Warnie stopped referring to Jack as “It” and reverted in their letters to speaking of the youngest Lewis man as Jacks, the little boy of fond memory.

When Jack returned to Oxford at the end of August, he found that Janie Moore had moved from Warneford Road to 76 Windmill Road in Headington, where she took a flat in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Morris.87 In the small flat, Jack slept on the sofa.88 Instead of feeling remorse after his verbal attack on his father, Jack began referring to him contemptuously in letters to Arthur as “his Excellenz,” which not only suggested that Albert had an inflated view of his own importance but also mocked his Irish accent as a mark of ignorance.89 Only two letters survive from Jack to his father in the period between summer vacation and Christmas vacation in 1919. Perhaps he did not write more. The two are both short, and the second, written in October, expressed the view that he would blame himself more if he had not spoken so frankly to his father in August. He was not in an apologetic mood. He had written to Arthur to the effect that he would not apologize until his father apologized first.90 Mr. Lewis did not stand alone in experiencing his son’s neglect. Arthur received only two letters from Jack between September and the following February. Jack made his excuses, but he had other fish to fry and had begun to collect a new set of friends in Oxford.

A New Best Friend

During the fall of 1919, Rodney Pasley, of the Martlets, introduced Jack to Leo Baker, an undergraduate at Wadham College reading modern history. Pasley knew of Baker through a friend who had been hospitalized with Baker as they both nursed their war wounds. Baker won the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service in the Royal Air Force during the war, but suffered severe wounds in August 1918. Like Lewis, Baker had gone up to Oxford in 1917 and to war from there. Pasley told Baker about Lewis and their common interest in poetry, and introductions soon followed.91 Baker soon became Jack’s walking companion on his afternoon romps about Oxfordshire. The men were the same age, just twenty-one, shared a love of poetry, enjoyed long walks, suffered war injuries, and were “intellectuals.” Beyond those things in common, however, their interests diverged. Baker had an interest in contemporary events, politics, social causes, and marriage. Jack did not.92