C. S. Lewis – A Life

by Alister McGrath

  By the spring of 1913, Lewis had decided where he wished to go after Cherbourg. In a letter to his father of June 1913, he declares his time at Cherbourg—though initially something of a “leap in the dark”—to have been a “success.”57 He liked Great Malvern as a town, and would like to proceed to “the Coll.”—in other words, to Malvern College, where he could join his older brother, Warnie. In late May, Warnie announced that he wanted to pursue a military career, and would spend the autumn of 1913 at Malvern College, preparing for the entrance examination at the Royal Military College at Sandhurst.

  However, things did not work out quite as expected. In June, Lewis won a scholarship to Malvern College beginning in September, despite being ill and having to take the examination in Cherbourg’s sickroom. But Warnie would no longer be there. He had been asked to leave by the headmaster after being caught smoking on school premises. (Both Lewis brothers had developed their lifelong habit of smoking by this stage.) Albert Lewis now had to work out how to prepare Warnie for the Sandhurst entrance examinations without any assistance from the masters of Malvern College. He found an answer—a brilliant answer, that would have significant and positive implications for his younger son a year later.

  Albert Lewis had been a pupil at Lurgan College in Ireland’s County Armagh from 1877–1879, and had developed a great respect for his former headmaster, William Thompson Kirkpatrick (1848–1921).58 Kirkpatrick had arrived at Lurgan College in 1876, at which time it had only sixteen pupils. A decade later, it was regarded as one of the premier schools in Ireland. Kirkpatrick retired in 1899, and moved with his wife to Sharston House in Northenden, Cheshire, to be near their son, George, who was then working for Browett, Lindley & Co., Engine Makers of Patricroft, Manchester. However, it seems that Kirkpatrick’s wife had little enthusiasm for the industrialised Northwest of England, and the couple soon moved to Great Bookham in the “Stockbroker Belt” of the southern county of Surrey, where Kirkpatrick set himself up as a private tutor.

  Albert Lewis acted as Kirkpatrick’s solicitor, and the two had occasion to correspond over what should be done with parents who refused to pay their sons’ school fees. Albert Lewis had asked Kirkpatrick’s advice on educational matters in the past, and he now asked for something more specific and personal: would Kirkpatrick prepare Warnie for the entrance examination to Sandhurst? The deal was done, and Warnie began his studies at Great Bookham on 10 September 1913. Eight days later, his younger brother started at Malvern College—the “Wyvern” of Surprised by Joy—without his older brother as his mentor and friend. Lewis was on his own.

  Malvern College: 1913–1914

  Lewis presents Malvern College as a disaster. Surprised by Joy devotes three of its fifteen chapters to railing against his experiences at “the Coll,” faulting it at point after point. Yet this accumulation of Lewis’s vivid and harsh memories curiously fails to advance his narrative of the pursuit of Joy. Why spend so much time recounting such painful and subjective memories, which others who knew the college at that time (including Warnie) criticised as distorted and unrepresentative? Perhaps Lewis saw the writing of these sections of Surprised by Joy as a cathartic exercise, allowing him to purge his painful memories by writing about them at greater length than required. Yet even a sympathetic reader of this work cannot fail to see that the pace of the book slackens in the three chapters devoted to Malvern, where the narrative detail obscures the plotline.59

  2.1 William Thompson Kirkpatrick (1848–1921), at his home in Great Bookham in 1920, photographed by Warren Lewis during his visit when on leave from the British army. This is the only known photograph of Kirkpatrick.

  Lewis declares that he became a victim of the “fagging” system, by which younger pupils were expected to act as errand boys for the older pupils (the “Bloods”). The more a boy was disliked by his peers and elders, the more he would be picked on and exploited in this way. This was customary in English public schools of this age. What most boys accepted as part of a traditional initiation rite into adulthood was seen by Lewis as a form of forced labour. Lewis suggested that the forms of service that younger boys were expected to provide to their seniors were rumoured (but never proved) to include sexual favours—something which Lewis found horrifying.

  Perhaps more significantly, Lewis found himself excluded from the value system of Malvern College, which was heavily influenced by the then dominant educational philosophy of the English public school system—athleticism.60 By the end of the Edwardian era, the “games cult” had assumed an almost unassailable position as the centrepiece of an English public school education. Athleticism was an ideology with a darker side. Boys who were not good at games were ridiculed and bullied by their peers. Athleticism devalued intellectual and artistic achievement and turned many schools into little more than training camps for the glorification of physicality. Yet the cultivation of “manliness” was seen as integral to the development of “character”—an essential trait that dominated the educational theories of this period in British culture.61 In all these respects, Malvern was typical of the Edwardian age. It provided what it believed was needed, and what parents clearly wanted.

  But it was not what Lewis wanted. His “native clumsiness,” partly arising from having only one joint in his thumbs, made excelling in anything physical a total impossibility.62 Lewis seems to have made little attempt to fit into the school’s culture. His refusal to conform simply created the impression that Lewis was socially withdrawn and academically arrogant. As Lewis wryly remarked in a letter, Malvern helped him discover what he did not want to be: “If I had never seen the horrible spectacle which these coarse, brainless English schoolboys present, there might be a danger of my sometimes becoming like that myself.”63 To many, these remarks simply sound arrogant and condescending. Yet Lewis was clear that one of Malvern’s relatively few positive achievements was to help him realise that he was arrogant.64 It was an aspect of his character that he would have to deal with in the coming years.

  Lewis frequently sought refuge in the school library, finding solace in books. He also developed a friendship with the classics master, Harry Wakelyn Smith (“Smewgy”). Smith worked with Lewis on his Latin and helped him begin his serious study of Greek. Perhaps more important, he taught Lewis how to analyse poetry properly, allowing its aesthetic qualities to be appreciated. Furthermore, he helped Lewis realise that poetry was to be read in such a way that its rhythm and musical qualities could be appreciated. Lewis later expressed his gratitude in a poem explaining how Smith—an “old man with a honey-sweet and singing voice”—taught him to love the “Mediterranean metres” of classical poetry.65

  Important though such positive encounters may have been for Lewis’s later scholarly and critical development, at the time they were ultimately intellectual diversions, designed to take Lewis’s mind off what he regarded as an insufferable school culture. Warnie took the view that his brother was simply a “square peg in a round hole.” With the benefit of hindsight, he believed that Lewis ought not to have been sent to a public school at all. Lewis’s lack of athletic prowess and his strong intellectual leanings immediately identified him as a “misfit, a heretic, an object of suspicion within the collective-minded and standardizing Public School system.”66 But at the time, Warnie was clear that the fault, if fault there were, lay in Lewis himself, not in the school.

  It remains unclear why Lewis spends so much of Surprised by Joy dealing with his time at Malvern. It is true that he was invited to be a governor of the college in 1929, an invitation which caused him some amusement.67 Yet there is no doubt of Lewis’s despair at the time concerning his circumstances there, and his desperate attempts to persuade his father to move him to a more congenial place. “Please take me out of this as soon as possible,” he wrote imploringly to his father in March 1914, as he prepared to return to Belfast for the school holidays.68

  Albert Lewis finally realised things were not working out for his younger son. He consulted with Warnie, who was b
y then in his second month of training as a British army officer at Sandhurst. Warnie took the view that his younger brother had contributed significantly to his own deteriorating situation. He had hoped, he told his father, that Malvern would provide his brother with the same “happy years and memories and friendships that he would carry with him to the grave.” But it hadn’t worked out like that. Lewis had made Malvern “too hot to hold him.”69 A radical rethink was required. Since Warnie had benefitted from personal tuition from Kirkpatrick, Lewis should be offered the same. It is not difficult to discern Warnie’s irritation with his brother when he tells his father that “he could amuse himself by detonating his cheap little stock of intellectual fireworks under old K[irkpatrick]’s nose.”70

  Albert Lewis then wrote to Kirkpatrick, asking him for his advice. Kirkpatrick initially suggested that Lewis should resume his studies at Campbell College. But as the two men wrestled with the problem, another solution began to emerge. Albert persuaded Kirkpatrick to become Lewis’s personal tutor effective September 1914. Kirkpatrick professed himself overwhelmed by this compliment: “To have been the teacher of the father and his two sons is surely a unique experience.” It was still risky. Warnie had loved Malvern, yet Lewis had detested it. What would Lewis make of Kirkpatrick, who had been so good for Warnie? Kirkpatrick’s efforts had led to Warnie’s being ranked twenty-second out of more than two hundred successful candidates in the highly competitive entrance examination. Warnie’s military record shows that he entered Sandhurst on 4 February 1914 as a “Gentleman Cadet,” being awarded a “Prize Cadetship with emoluments.” His military career was off to a flying start.

  Meanwhile, Lewis had returned home to Belfast for the vacation. In mid-April 1914, shortly before he was due to return for his final term at Malvern College, he received a message. Arthur Greeves (1895–1966) was in bed recovering from an illness and would welcome a visit. Greeves, who was the same age as Warnie, was the youngest son of Joseph Greeves, one of Belfast’s most wealthy flax-spinners. The family lived at “Bernagh,” a large house just over the road from Little Lea.

  2.2 A tennis party at Glenmachan House, the Ewart family home, close to Little Lea, in the summer of 1910. Arthur Greeves is on the far left in the back row, with C. S. Lewis to the far right. Lily Greeves, Arthur’s sister, is seated second from the right, in front of Lewis

  In Surprised by Joy, Lewis recalls that Greeves had been trying to initiate a friendship with him for some time, but that they had never met.71 Yet there is evidence that Lewis’s memory may not be entirely correct here. In one of his earliest surviving letters of May 1907, Lewis informed Warnie that a telephone had just been installed at Little Lea. He had used this new piece of technology to call Arthur Greeves, but had not been able to speak to him.72 This hints at a childhood acquaintance of some sort. If Lewis and Greeves had been friends around this time, it seems likely that Lewis’s enforced absence from Belfast at English schools had caused the existing relationship to wither.

  Lewis agreed to visit Greeves with some reluctance. He found him sitting up in bed, with a book beside him: H. M. A. Guerber’s Myths of the Norsemen (1908). Lewis, whose love of “Northernness” now knew few bounds, looked at the book in astonishment: “Do you like that?” he asked—only to receive the same excited reply from Greeves.73 Lewis had finally found a soul mate. They would remain in touch regularly until Lewis’s death, nearly fifty years later.

  As his final term at Malvern drew to an end, Lewis wrote his first letter to Greeves, planning a walk together. Though he was “cooped up” in the “hot, ugly country of England,” they could watch the sun rise over the Holywood Hills and see Belfast Lough and Cave Hill.74 Yet a month later, Lewis’s view of England had changed. “Smewgy” had invited him and another boy to drive into the country, leaving behind the “flat, plain, and ugly hills of Malvern.” In their place, Lewis discovered an “enchanted ground” of “rolling hills and valleys,” with “mysterious woods and cornfields.”75 Perhaps England was not so bad; maybe he might stay there after all.

  Bookham and the “Great Knock”: 1914–1917

  On 19 September 1914, Lewis arrived at Great Bookham to begin his studies with Kirkpatrick—the “Great Knock.” Yet the world around Lewis had changed irreversibly since he had left Malvern. On 28 June, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in Sarajevo, creating ripples of tension and instability which gradually escalated. Grand alliances were formed. If one great nation went to war, all would follow. A month later, on 28 July, Austria launched an attack against Serbia. Germany immediately launched an attack against France. It was inevitable that Britain would be drawn into the conflict. Britain eventually declared war against Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire on 4 August.

  It was Warnie who was affected most immediately by this development. His period of training was reduced from eighteen months to nine, to allow him to enter active military service as soon as possible. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal Army Service Corps on 29 September 1914, and was on active service in France with the British Expeditionary Force by 4 November. Meanwhile, Lord Kitchener (1850–1916), Secretary of State for War, set out to organise the recruitment of the largest volunteer army that the nation had ever seen. His famous recruiting poster declaring “Your country needs you!” became one of the most familiar images of the war. Lewis could hardly have failed to feel this pressure to enlist.

  2.3 “Your country needs you!” The front cover of the magazine London Opinion, published on 5 September 1914, shortly after Britain’s declaration of war. This image of Lord Kitchener, designed by the artist Alfred Leete (1882–1933), quickly achieved iconic significance, and featured prominently in British military recruitment campaigns from 1915 onwards.

  While England lurched into a state of war for which it was not properly prepared, Lewis was settling in at Kirkpatrick’s house, “Gastons,” in Great Bookham. His relationship with Kirkpatrick would be of central importance, especially since his relationships with both his brother and father were by now somewhat strained and distant. Lewis travelled by steamer from Belfast to Liverpool, then by train to London. There he picked up a train from Waterloo Station to Great Bookham, where Kirkpatrick awaited him. As they walked together from the station to Kirkpatrick’s house, Lewis remarked casually, as a way of breaking the conversational ice, that the scenery in Surrey was somewhat wilder than he had anticipated.

  2.4 Station Road, Great Bookham, in 1924. C. S. Lewis and Kirkpatrick would have walked along this road on their way from the railway station to Kirkpatrick’s home, Gastons.

  Lewis had intended merely to begin a conversation; Kirkpatrick seized the opportunity to begin an aggressive, interactive discussion demonstrating the virtues of the Socratic method. Kirkpatrick demanded that he stop immediately. What did Lewis mean by “wildness,” and what grounds had he for not expecting it? Had he studied some maps of the area? Had he read some books about it? Had he seen photographs of the landscape? Lewis conceded he had done none of these things. His views were not based on anything. Kirkpatrick duly informed him that he had no right to have any opinion on this matter.

  Some would have found this approach intimidating; others might think it to lack good manners or pastoral concern. Yet Lewis quickly realised that he was being forced to develop his critical thinking, based on evidence and reason rather than his personal intuitions. This approach was, he remarked, like “red beef and strong beer.”76 Lewis thrived on this diet of critical thinking.

  Kirkpatrick was a remarkable man, and must be given credit for much of Lewis’s intellectual development, particularly in fostering a highly critical approach to ideas and sources.77 Kirkpatrick had a distinguished academic career at Queen’s College, Belfast, from which he graduated in July 1868 with First Class Honours in English, History, and Metaphysics.78 In his final year at Queen’s College, he had won the English Prize Essay under the nom de plume Tamerlaine. He was also awarded a Double Gold Medal by the Royal Uni
versity of Ireland, the only student to gain this distinction that year. He applied unsuccessfully for the position of headmaster of Lurgan College when the college opened in 1873. There were twenty-two applications for the prestigious position. In the end, the school’s governors had to choose between Kirkpatrick and E. Vaughan Boulger of Dublin. They chose Boulger.

  Undeterred, Kirkpatrick looked elsewhere for employment. He was seriously considered for the Chair of English at University College, Cork. His opportunity came, however, late in 1875, when Boulger was appointed to the Chair of Greek at University College, Cork. Kirkpatrick applied again for headmaster of Lurgan College, and was appointed to the position effective 1 January 1876. His ability to encourage and inspire his students became the substance of legend. Albert Lewis may have made many mistakes in arranging for his younger son’s education in England. But his biggest decision—based on his own judgement, rather than the flawed professional advice of Gabbitas & Thring—turned out to be his best.

  Lewis’s highly condensed summary of his most significant tutors merits consideration: “Smewgy taught me Grammar and Rhetoric and Kirk taught me Dialectic.”79 For Lewis, he was gradually learning how to use words and develop arguments. Yet Kirkpatrick’s influence was not limited to Lewis’s dialectical skills. The old headmaster forced Lewis to learn languages, living and dead, by the simple expedient of making him use them. Two days after Lewis’s arrival, Kirkpatrick sat down with him and opened a copy of Homer’s Iliad in the original Greek. He read aloud the first twenty lines in a Belfast accent (which might have puzzled Homer), offered a translation, and invited Lewis to continue. Before long, Lewis was confident enough to read fluently in the original language. Kirkpatrick extended the approach, first to Latin, and then to living languages, including German and Italian.