A Shiver of Wonder

by Derick Bingham

  It is worth pausing for a moment in this biography of C. S. Lewis, to reflect that one of the most famous incidents in the life of University College occurred in 1811, when it expelled Percy Bysshe Shelley. Why was he expelled? For his part in the publishing of a pamphlet called “The Necessity of Atheism.” In it he writes passionately,

  The mind cannot believe the existence of a God. It is also evident that as belief is a passion of the mind, no degree of criminality can be attached to disbelief; they only are reprehensible who willingly neglect to remove the false medium through which the mind views the subject. It is also unnecessary to observe, that the general knowledge of deficiency of such proof cannot be prejudicial to society. Truth has always been found to promote the best interests of mankind—every reflecting mind must allow that there is no proof of the existence of a Deity.

  Shelley and his roommate, Thomas Jefferson Hogg, were both expelled from Oxford University, not so much for the content of the pamphlet as for their refusal to come clean about its production. Shelley’s subsequent writing, especially the notes of 1813 to his poem “Queen Mab”, extols the virtues of the abolition of marriage; its abolition would result in “choice and change,” and “exempt[ion] from restraint.” He said that prostitution was the legitimate offspring of marriage and its accompanying errors. He spoke of the despotism of marriage. Shelley contended “the vulgar, ever in extremes, became persuaded that the crucifixion of Jesus was a supernatural event.” He maintained “the blood shed by the votaries of the God of Mercy and Peace since the establishment of his religion would probably suffice to drown all other sectaries now on the habitable globe.” Shelley wrote about the vast distance of the stars from the earth. He explains that in one year light travels 5.422 billion miles, and he speaks of how many years would elapse before light from the nearest star would reach us. “It is impossible to believe,” he writes,

  that the Spirit that pervades this infinite machine begat a Son upon the body of a Jewish woman. . . . All that miserable tale of the Devil, and Eve, and an Intercessor, with the childish mummeries of the God of the Jews, is irreconcilable with the knowledge of the stars. The works of His fingers have borne witness against Him.

  Shelley was part of a long line of intellectuals, some of them mentioned before in this biography, who were influenced by David Hume and his arguments against the Christian gospel.

  The atheistic Ulsterman who enrolled in University College in April 1917 was no mean poet himself. Over the last year he had been writing a collection of short poems entitled Metrical Meditations, which was to grow to fifty-two pieces. The day would gloriously come when his pen would run counter to his own and Shelley’s atheism, and his robust talent would be given to the service of Jesus Christ. For now, though, the shadow of war fell darkly upon him.

  Chapter Nine

  IF THERE WERE NO GOD, THERE WOULD BE NO ATHIESTS

  THE MONTH OF MAY HAD come. In its past, England has been famous for May Day revels. The first of May became a very important annual landmark. With the long winter over, a maypole was raised on every village green and crowned with garlands. The May Queen was chosen, and games were arranged for the children. There was dancing on the green, and events were open to all. Even town squares and marketplaces had their maypoles.

  Children kept up the May festival, even when the maypole became history. They carried garlands of the flowers of May, flowers which they showed at every home, waking late sleepers with their cry:

  A bunch of May I have brought you,

  And at your door it stands.

  It is but a sprout, but it’s well put about

  By the Lord Almighty’s Hand.

  The rebirth of nature in May is full of perfumes: lilac in the garden, gorse on the hills, and hawthorn in the valleys and hedgerows. In the forest, bluebells and pines, moss, fern, and tree bark pour out a heady mixture of scent.

  It was a Sunday morning in Oxford, May 1917. The towers and ancient pinnacles were gleaming in the sun; daisies and buttercups carpeted the level fields surrounding the city; overhanging trees permitted shade. The flowering bulbs of the Water Walks of Magdalen College were in evidence. Winter aconites and snowdrops had been followed by, amongst others, daffodils, sqills, and bluebells. By Addison’s Walk—named after Joseph Addison, the English poet and statesman—the famous fritillaria meleagris, commonly known as snake’s head fritillary, was flowering.

  On this beautiful Sunday morning, some bicycles were abandoned by a swimming hole; animated voices could be heard across its surface. Jack and his friends were enjoying an early morning swim. It was a long way from the emerald Atlantic breakers of County Donegal where Jack had enjoyed swimming in the hot summer of 1916. “Parson’s Pleasure” may not have been the white strands of Donegal, but the young student enjoying its refreshing water was now admitting that he had never been so happy.

  For Jack these were idyllic days. With his literary temperament, he did not take long to discover the joys of the Oxford Union library, one of the largest lending libraries in the city, and of particular relevance to a student studying classics. The Oxford Union was founded as a debating society, and Jack joined it. Long a forum for high class debating, some of the world’s greatest speakers had debated there. The topics for debate ranged from heavyweight political and ethical arguments to more light-hearted options. The forms of debate at the Oxford Union are similar to those of the House of Commons. The debating chamber has no amplification since it was built specifically for debates.

  Jack was soon punting with his friends on the Cherwell River. Punting on Oxford’s rivers has long been a popular recreational activity. A punt, of course, is a flat-bottomed boat propelled by one person who stands at the rear and pushes the punt along using a pole.

  Jack’s meals, apart from the main meal of the day, were now served to him in his room at University College by scouts, who were staircase servants. He made friends and talked late into the night with them, more or less overhauling the universe. War’s shadow, though, darkened his idyll. In all, there were only 315 students at Oxford University at this time; and Jack was one of only 6 men at University College. Most of the college space was given over to serving as an army hospital.

  Jack’s stay at University College did not last long. Having now enlisted in the army, he was sent across the city to be billeted at Keeble College, in a carpetless little room with two beds, minus sheets and pillows. He knew he was experiencing only a shadow of the real Oxford. Even when billeted at Keeble, he visited his own college, wandering around it, enjoying its atmosphere, as it stood encased in windows darkened with ivy that had been left uncut since the war had emptied its rooms. Dustsheets covered some of the rooms; others lay undisturbed, as the owners had left them. Jack just loved the place.

  Jack’s roommate at Keeble was a young Irishman, Edward Francis Courtney Moore. Jack called him Paddy, and they eventually became good friends. In September 1917, on passing an exam, Jack was made Second Lieutenant and was gazetted into the Third Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry. He was given a month’s leave before being posted for active service. Jack decided to accept an invitation from his friend Paddy Moore to stay at his mother’s house in Bristol. Jack had gotten to know Paddy’s family, who had stayed in rooms close to Keeble to be near to Paddy. Paddy’s mother, Mrs. Janie King Moore, was born in Pomeroy in County Tyrone, the eldest child of the Reverend W. J. Askins. She was separated from her husband, Courtney Edward Moore, and had moved to Bristol with Paddy and her daughter Maureen, who was now twelve years old. Mrs. Moore’s brother, Robert, was a doctor in Bristol. Maureen later became Lady Dunbar of Hempriggs. Through her father’s side of the family, she was heir to the Baronetcy; and she was also heir to an estate in Caithness, Scotland.

  Homesick for Ireland, Jack had grown close to the family. It was while at Bristol that Maureen Moore heard a conversation between Jack and Paddy, in which they promised that, if one of them did not survive the war, the other one would look after Jack�
��s father and Paddy’s mother. It was a promise that Jack would keep.

  Jack spent only the last week of his leave with his father in Belfast. His father was hurt by his action; it led to a division between them, even an estrangement. How Albert Lewis felt is understandable. Jack had spent three weeks with the Moores and only one week with his father, and all in the light of the possibility of Jack’s death in battle. Mrs. Moore was to come between them.

  In October, Paddy, also a Second Lieutenant, was sent to France with the Rifle Brigade; Jack was sent to a camp near Plymouth. In November Jack sent his father a telegram to say that he had arrived on a forty-eight-hour leave and asked his father if he would come to Bristol where Jack was staying. He would meet his father, he said, at the station. Jack omitted to tell his father that, after his leave, he was to be shipped from Southampton to France. Albert was confused by Jack’s telegram. He cannot be blamed for that. He wired his son to tell him that he didn’t understand the telegram and asked him to write. As it turned out, the third Somerset Light Infantry was ordered to France after its forty-eight-hour leave. Albert and Jack did not have their meeting. Twelve days after his arrival in France, Jack arrived in the front-line trenches. It was his nineteenth birthday.

  In his autobiography Surprised by Joy C. S. Lewis does not write of the politics or morality of the First World War. Many questions have been raised about the war: was it avoidable? Was it an error? Did the culture of militarism prepare men so well for war that they yearned for it? Was it Britain’s “war of illusions”? Was it maximum slaughter at minimum expense? C. S. Lewis writes more about the people he encountered than about these questions. He writes of a young man in his battalion who influenced him. He was a scholar of Queen’s College, Oxford. A highly principled young man, Johnston was moving toward a belief in God. Jack held long arguments with him, about faith in God and a wide range of other topics. It is quite evident that the high moral standards of Johnston pricked Jack’s conscience. Johnston, who commanded a company, was killed.

  Jack writes with deep irony about his very first entry into a dugout to report to a captain. Blinking in the candlelight, he discovered himself face to face with one of his former schoolmasters. Jack immediately claimed acquaintance; in response all he got from the captain was an admission in a low and hurried voice that he had once been a schoolmaster. The acquaintance was never mentioned again. Not a kindly word, not an ounce of warmth came from that block of human ice—by such acts are men remembered.

  However, Jack notes the kindnesses shown to him by men of higher rank; he rates them much better than the Bloods of Malvern College. Here he mixed with men of all classes and found camaraderie in the midst of the odious and irrational life of the First World War’s trenches. He writes with affection regarding two Canadian Officers who, on his very first night in France, treated him like a long-lost friend. Then there was Wallie, the West Country farmer whom Jack reckoned to be the best man in the battalion, and who drew many a laugh for his passionate commitment to the Third Somerset Light Infantry. Any criticism of the Yeomanry brought Wallie’s passion to the boil, and he was the butt of many a “wind-up.”

  Jack highlighted water and weariness as his two chief enemies during that horrendous winter. He went asleep marching and woke up to find himself still marching. Barbed wire pierced his thigh gumboots, and the icy water that filled the trenches above the knee welled up inside his boots. He often came across corpses, and he found that in the midst of life he was in death. He even describes finding men like crushed beetles. Typically, though, not even the misery of the trenches stopped his ferocious reading. He was deep into George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss.

  In February 1918, Jack went down with what was known as trench fever. This disease is spread among human beings through contact with body lice. The crowded conditions in the trenches, and the circumstances that interfered with the regular washing of clothes, meant that the soldiers were predisposed to the disease. Its symptoms are sudden fever, loss of energy, dizziness, headache, and weight loss. Severe muscle and bone pain can occur; and pain is particularly severe in the shin—thus its nickname “shin-bone fever.” The fever can reach 105 degrees Fahrenheit (40.5 degrees Centigrade) and stays high for five to six days at a time. The temperature then drops, staying low for several days, usually recurring in 5-6 day cycles. Untreated, the patient can experience relapses as many as ten years after the first episode. The disease can even cause prolonged disability.

  Jack was hospitalised for three weeks at the French coastal resort and seaport of Le Freport, twenty-five kilometers northeast of Dieppe. During the First World War, the port contained three hospitals. One of them was a converted hotel, where the soldiers were placed two in a room. Life is seldom tidy, and Jack’s first roommate was a soldier who was having a furious affair with a night nurse. When he was moved after a week, his next roommate was a Yorkshire man who was a misogynist. He suggested to Jack that they should both make up their own beds, in order to keep the nurses out of their room for as long as possible. Ah, such is life!

  “Women,” said the gifted writer of the book A Handful of Nations, “are the only realists; their whole object in life is to put their realism against the extravagant, excessive, and occasionally drunken idealism of men.” He also wrote in his book What’s Wrong with the World, published in 1910, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.” In his book Where All Roads Lead, he wrote, “If there were no God there would be no atheists.” Who was this gifted writer? His name was Gilbert Keith Chesterton. Jack lifted a volume of his essays at Le Freport. He knew nothing of Chesterton, or of the fact that he was a prolific and gifted writer in virtually every area of literature. If in the works of George MacDonald he heard the voice of Holiness, lying on his hospital bed in Le Freport reading Chesterton he heard the voice of Goodness. In fact, he said he felt charmed by Goodness through Chesterton’s essays.

  To my sceptical reader, in the France of 1917 the juxtaposition of the horror of war and the charm of goodness may seem implausible. Yet, as Chesterton put it in 1907, in his Introduction to the Book of Job, “the riddles of God are more satisfying than the solutions of man.” Later, Jack commented that a young man who wants to remain a sound atheist can’t be too careful what he reads. There can be no doubt that, amidst man’s bloody and heartless inhumanity to man in the Europe of 1917, the Saviour of Souls was searching for C. S. Lewis.

  On 20 February 1918, Jack rejoined his battalion at a village called Fampoux, on the north bank of the Scrape, six kilometers east of Arras. The Battles of Arras in World War I, were five major engagements fought between the Allies and the Central Powers. Jack was in the final engagement, as the Allies faced the final German attack on the Western Front. All day the Germans shells poured into the British lines at the rate of three a minute. Jack even “took” sixty German prisoners, who came out of nowhere with their hands up. Would not shades of the Scottish poet Robert Burns have touched the Irish heart of Jack Lewis when he noted that in the holocaust he, a poor shuddering man, met a poor shuddering mouse, and the mouse made no attempt to get away? It was the poet in him that remembered such detail; and indeed, in the midst of it all, he did keep a notebook, and he did write poems.

  Jack was later to pay great tribute to a certain Sergeant Ayres, who aided him as a young officer throughout his wartime experiences. He spoke of how Sergeant Ayres was virtually a father to him. Jack surmised that the same shell that wounded him on Mount Bernenchon killed Ayers. Jack was wounded in his left hand, on his left leg just above the knee, and in his left side just under his armpit, close to his heart. He crawled back and was picked up by a stretcher-bearer.

  One sadly imagines one of those “what if” scenarios. What if the fatherly sergeant had lived to see the young Irish officer rise to become one of the best selling and most deeply loved Christian authors in history? What if he’d been able to visit that author at Magdalen College in Oxford? What
if he had been able to have afternoon tea amidst the dreaming spires and walk through the local water meadows with C. S. Lewis, in that earthly haven reminiscing about the holocaust they had survived? But it was not to be; the kindly sergeant never saw England again.

  The young Irish officer was hospitalised at Etapas. His brother, now Captain Warren Lewis, cycled the fifty long miles from Doullens to see him. Joyfully and thankfully, Warren found him sitting up in bed.

  Chapter Ten

  HEARTBREAK AT THE HEART OF THINGS

  THERE ARE SIX SPECIES OF deer that can be found wild in the British Isles, but roe deer are the only species that can be considered indigenous. Their summer coat is chestnut-red, although it can vary to a sandy yellow. They can be seen feeding at dawn and dusk. They just love to sunbathe and can be found in sunlit clearings.

  The second indigenous deer species in the British Isles is the red deer. The red deer is the largest mammal in Britain and can have a life span of over twenty years. Fights between stags are common and very often cause serious or fatal injury. During the summer, red deer are dark red or brown, with a lighter colour of cream on the underbelly, inner thighs, and rump. Without question, the red deer is Britain’s most spectacular mammal.

  Fallow deer have a fascinating history in Britain. Norman records mention them; because they were classified “beasts of the forest,” they belonged to the king. They can be found today in practically all areas of England and Wales. The summer coat of the common fallow is deep chestnut with white spots.

  Another species is the Japanese sika deer. The sika deer was first brought to Ireland about 1860 and put on the Powerscourt Estate near Enniskerry, County Wicklow. In that year Lord Powerscourt bought a stag and three hinds with him from Japan. The sika was then brought to England and exhibited in Regent Park. Due to escapees and deliberate releases, the animal has become widely distributed. The adult’s summer coat is bright chestnut and usually includes a row of white spots down either side of the dark dorsal stripe.