• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

CHRISTIAN HISTORY Issue 113 Seven literary sages Why we still need their wisdom today THE ORIGINAL LUCY? Left: Lewis dedicated The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe to Lucy Barfield; like Lucy Pevensie she had “fair hair and a lively personality.” PARTNERS IN POETRY Below: Chesterton’s wife, Frances, authored the Christmas carol “How Far Is It To Bethlehem?” MAGES I RIDGEMAN B ELSH / W EN K TION / C RIVATE COLLE P RY) / Lewis’s chauffer Clifford Morris told how Lewis lost U ENT Did you know? one hat on a picnic: “On the way to Cambridge, at the C beginning of the next term, we looked inside the field MacDonald’s players, Tolkien’s grave, gate where we had picnicked, and there was the hat, under the hedge, being used as a home for field mice. HOOL, (20TH Chesterton’s pajamas, and Lewis’s hat SC Jack retrieved it, of course, and later on continued to CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN wear it.” Warnie Lewis, his brother, also told a hat story: NGLISH E One of the ways the MacDonald family made enough “It is said that Jack once took a guest for an early morn- money to spend winters in Italy for George MacDon- ing walk on the Magdalen College grounds . after a ald’s ill health was to dramatize Pilgrim’s Progress and very wet night. Presently the guest brought his atten- other literary works in their home. Since George and his tion to a curious lump of cloth hanging on a bush. ‘That wife, Louisa, had 11 children (he jokingly referred to his looks like my hat,’ said Jack; then, joyfully, ‘It is my hat.’ BLISHED IN 1941 (LITHO), brood as “the wrong side of a dozen”), there was no need And, clapping the sodden mass on his head, he contin- U IL to go outside the family for actors. Louisa adapted and ued his walk.” produced the plays (an 1875 copy of Pilgrim’s Progress Lewis refused to spend extra money on clothes (or HEATON, containing their tour schedule resides at the Wade Cen- on anything else) and gave away his book royalties. In W IL CHESTERTON, P ter at Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, today), and fact, he was surprised to find that he had to pay taxes C their eldest daughter, Lilia, a talented actress, starred. on the royalties even after he had given them away; RS CE STATE M When the MacDonalds toured the United States in to avoid this, Owen Barfield, his lawyer as well as his E BY HEATON COLLEGE, 1872—George lectured on Robert Burns, Shakespeare, friend, set up a philanthropic trust fund. W ONS T ITERARY and Tennyson—Greville, their oldest son, accompa- L ER nied them. He often had to produce family pictures to GUESS WHO didn’t DO THE SHOPPING T ARFIELD convince unbelieving audiences that the petite Louisa As a journalist G. K. Chesterton wrote over 100 books ADE CENTER, B W THE CHES . really had given birth to so many children. and 4,000 newspaper articles, often dictating two E WEN articles at once to his secretary while waving a sword- O ARION TREASURE IN TWEEDS stick for dramatic effect. Yet his absent-mindedness is M LOGG, FROM HE B T C. S. Lewis’s personal appearance—an old tweed legendary. One day he misplaced his pajamas while AIT ES T C coat with baggy flannel pants and a floppy fish- traveling. When his exasperated wife, Frances, asked, FF U RAN erman’s hat—was at odds with fan impressions. “Why did you not buy a new pair?” he replied plain- F OODR ITH PERMISSION OF THE According to biographer A. N. Wilson, Lewis once tively, “Are pajamas things that one can buy?” He also W W agreed to meet with a priest to discuss the man’s supposedly telegraphed Frances from a lecture tour: ing— doubts about the Christian faith. Said Wilson, “The “Am in Market Harborough. Where ought I to be?” C priest, who had expected the author of The Problem of His letters to Frances are also legendary. One, about Pain to look pale and ethereal, was astonished by the her mother’s financial objections to their marriage, ARFIELD DAN red-faced pork butcher in shabby tweeds he actually contains this paragraph: “When we set up a house, dar- B . CHESTERTON WITH HIS WIFE Y K . olkien shrine—Jennifer lewis with hat—Used by permission of T encountered.” ling . I think you will have to do the shopping. There LUC G Christian History MAGES I RIDGEMAN B ELSH / W EN K TION / C was a great and glorious man who said, ‘Give us the lux- AN ENDURING FELLOWSHIP Above left: Tolkien’s uries of life and we will dispense with the necessities.’ grave has become a shrine for many admirers; people That I think would be a splendid motto to write . over even leave copies of his books atop the grave. RIVATE COLLE P the porch of our hypothetical home. There will be a sofa “THAT IS my hat!” Above right: Lewis wore one of his RY) / U for you, for example, but no chairs, for I prefer the floor. hats even after it had become a rain-sodden nest for ENT C There will be a select store of chocolate-creams . and field mice. the rest will be bread and water. We will each retain a suit of evening dress for great occasions, and at other HOOL, (20TH times clothe ourselves in the skins of wild beasts (how and women sitting in that absolute silence which can SC pretty you would look) which would fit your taste in NOT be faked, very puzzled, but spell-bound: perhaps NGLISH furs and be economical.” with something of the same feeling which a lecture on E unchastity might have evoked in their grandparents— NOT SO EASY TO MARRY OFF the forbidden subject broached at last. That beautiful Dorothy L. Sayers meant to end her successful series carved room [in Oxford] had probably not witnessed of Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries sooner than she actu- anything so important since some of the great medi- ally did. She wrote of introducing Peter’s love-interest, eval or Reformation lectures. I have at last, if only for BLISHED IN 1941 (LITHO), U Harriet Vane: “Let me confess that when I wrote Strong once, seen a university doing what it was founded to IL Poison, it was with the infanticidal intention of doing do: teaching Wisdom.” away with Peter; that is, of marrying him off and get- HEATON, W ting rid of him.” But: “I could find no form of words in LETTERS ON A GRAVE IL CHESTERTON, P C which [Harriet] could accept him without loss of self- J. R. R. Tolkien’s works have created a community among respect. She must come to him as a free agent, if she his admirers—a community still reflected at his gravesite. RS CE STATE M E came at all, and must realize that she was independent Joe Ricke, a professor at Taylor University, found the fol- BY HEATON COLLEGE, W of him before she could bring her dependence.” lowing collection: “dead roses and lots of dead flowers, a ONS T ITERARY L It took another three novels and five years of “story brilliant red rosary hanging from a rosemary bush, lav- ER T time”—Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, and Busman’s ender, letters (lots), books, coins (lots from everywhere), ARFIELD ADE CENTER, Honeymoon—before the two were successfully wed. thank you notes, bracelets, cigarettes, runes (really), hair- B W THE CHES . E bands, drawings, a wood carving with a dragon and WEN O PREACHING A SERMON TO STUDENTS runes, butterflies (artificial), sunglasses, rocks, buttons, ARION M Despite Charles Williams’s unassuming—even ugly— watercolors, pages from a book, prayer cards, poems, LOGG, FROM HE B T AIT personal appearance and lack of a university education, business cards, crosses, a medallion, ribbons, locks of ES T C FF he was a dynamic speaker. Lewis and Tolkien arranged hair, a framed tribute in Spanish titled ‘Viejo professor’ U RAN F for him to give over 40 public lectures in Oxford dur- [old professor], notes in perfect Elvish script, and now, a OODR ITH PERMISSION OF THE W ing the time he was living there. In a 1940 letter to his bracelet I got in Pamplona during the festival of San Fer- W brother Warnie, Lewis wrote: “On Monday [Charles min. And it’s now missing one rose bud. ing— C Williams] lectured nominally on [Milton’s] Comus but “This seems like a lot, and you’d think it would be really on Chastity.” Williams, unlike most modern crit- garish and trashy. Not at all; it seems very sweet and ics, really cared about virginity, delivering what Lewis just about right.” C H ARFIELD DAN B called a “sermon” on its importance: “It was a beautiful . CHESTERTON WITH HIS WIFE Y K . olkien shrine—Jennifer lewis with hat—Used by permission of T LUC G sight to see a whole room full of modern young men On our cover: books from all seven of this issue’s sages Issue 113 1 Editor’s note IN LATE 2013 I was walking through the streets of read and taken to heart both MacDonald and Chester- Oxford and London, seeking traces of seven sages amid ton—Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, Dorothy L. bustling modern shops, chattering businesspeople, and Sayers, and Charles Williams—took on a generation shuttered churches. of secularists and modernizers with their weapon of Why was I there? To see a stone memorializ- choice: the pen.

Load more

  56

Copy Link