A Shiver of Wonder

by Derick Bingham

  So began one of the most intriguing and complex relationships of the twentieth-century literary world. Joy’s was no average mind, and as we have already discovered in this story, neither was Jack’s. The sparks of Jewish humour and abrasive New York manner soon lit up Joy’s gifted writing in Jack’s mind. Her marriage to Bill Gresham was falling apart. Both Joy and Bill were disillusioned by communism. Bill converted to Dianetics, a system developed by the founder of the Church of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, and then he got into Zen Buddhism and began to use tarot cards. His womanising continued, as did his irresponsibility with money.

  Joy decided that she wanted to visit Jack in Oxford to ask his advice on her marriage and to discuss a book she was writing entitled Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments. Did she, as we say in Ulster, “set her hat” for him? Such a question is perhaps too deep for any biographer to answer. She certainly looked up to him intellectually, and her admiration was no doubt mixed with a certain amount of awe. She certainly set great store by his point of view, and in her distress she knew he would give her honest counsel. He had, after all, been used by God to lead her to faith in Christ.

  Seeking a safe place from her own alcoholic husband, Joy’s cousin Renee Pierce and her two young children had come from Florida to live at the large Gresham home in Staatsburg, New York. The place must have been a veritable pressure cooker. At that time, Joy received an invitation to visit a pen pal called Phyllis Williams in London. Renee said she would look after Joy’s family while she was gone, so Joy decided to go to England. She crossed the Atlantic from New York, docked at Liverpool, and eventually arrived to stay with Phyllis in August 1952. From there she wrote to Jack, inviting him to lunch with her and with Phyllis on 24 September, at the East Gate Hotel, across the street from Magdalen College. Jack wrote back to invite them both to lunch at his Magdalen College rooms.

  Jack’s friend, George Sayer, has written about the meeting. Since Warren had withdrawn, George was invited to take his place. Joy was no shrinking violet, and she exploded into Jack’s life. George Sayer thought the meeting was a real success. Joy was physically attractive, sharp-featured, dark-haired, blunt, distinctly anti-urban, and clearly anti-American. This abrasive New Yorker with a passion for small-farm life was going to influence Jack Lewis far more deeply than he realised. When Jack led the party around his college, Joy, uninhibited by her surroundings, fired off impudent questions that brought howls of laughter in response.

  Further meetings with Joy followed; and on 6 December 1952, Jack invited her to stay at The Kilns for Christmas. While she was there, a letter arrived from her husband suggesting a divorce. He said that he and her cousin were in love; he now wanted to marry Renee. After a divorce, Joy would be free to marry someone else, and they could all live within calling distance of each other.

  Joy discussed the letter with Jack, and he advised her to divorce Bill. So Joy returned to the United States; but she returned to even worse horrors, because Bill was drinking again and was Renee’s sexual partner. Now very low in finances, Joy stayed on to pay off family debts. At the beginning of 1953, she was confirmed in the Episcopal Church in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. She then started saving to raise funds for a return to England.

  As for Jack, what one can only call “the fountain of life springing up within him” was as fresh as ever. The fifth story in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Horse and His Boy, was at the publishers by March 1953; and Jack was busy proof-reading English Language in the Sixteenth Century. He finished writing the last of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle.

  In November 1953, Joy Gresham returned to England with her two boys, and they stayed for four days in December with Jack and Warren at The Kilns. Joy settled her boys at Dane Court Preparatory School in Surrey. For the next eighteen months, things were fairly quiet between Jack and Joy; but they certainly were not quiet between Jack and academia. The talk of the Common Rooms was that Jack had accepted the offer of the newly appointed Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University. As with most things in Jack’s life, the path to this appointment had not been smooth. He’d been pleased, honoured, and overjoyed at the invitation; but he was concerned for the welfare of his gardener Paxford and his brother Warren, if Jack moved to Cambridge. He was reluctant to accept, until J. R. R. Tolkien, who thought Jack had not been treated well by Oxford, powerfully intervened. Tolkien was determined that Jack should have the Chair at Cambridge. Lewis had now been passed over for three Chairs at Oxford. Professor Helen Gardner, in her obituary of C. S. Lewis for the British Academy, makes no bones about the fact that what Jack himself called his “hot-gospeling” had encouraged these “pass-overs.”

  On 17 May, Tolkien, who was one of the electors for the Chair, had a long conversation with Jack and convinced him that he would not be letting Paxford and Warren down by going to Cambridge. He convinced Jack that he could keep his home in Oxford and still work at Cambridge. Jack’s friends at Cambridge suggested that he could reside at Cambridge from Monday to Friday, and spend the weekends, Monday mornings, and the whole of his holidays elsewhere. Further correspondence between Jack and Sir Henry Willink, the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, brought the whole matter to a satisfactory conclusion. On 4 June 1954, he wrote to Sir Henry expressing pleasure and gratitude in accepting the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English.

  The summer of 1954 saw Jack and Warren back in the South of Ireland on holiday; afterwards Jack went to spend time with his friend Arthur Greeves at Crawfordsburn. On 16 September, Lewis’s incisive work English Language in the sixteenth Century was published.

  On 29 November 1954—his fifty-sixth birthday—Jack gave his inaugural lecture De Description Temporum at Cambridge in the largest lecture hall in Mill Lane. When a party of his friends and former pupils arrived, they couldn’t find seats in the lecture hall and had to sit on the dais behind him. They were claiming kinship in the hour of power, so to speak! Gowned and capped university dons lined the front rows, and a new generation of undergraduates leaned forward to savour the mind of this Ulsterman, who was famous not only for his academic prowess but also concerning the name of the Lord.

  If any had thought they were going to hear a lecture being played to a gallery who wanted more in-depth-study of modern literature in universities, they would have been disappointed. Passionately, amusingly, brilliantly, Jack attacked the “new” myth that new is better. He made a defence for the study of Old Western Literature, and firmly identified himself as an Old Western Man. He even referred to himself as one of the few remaining dinosaurs—a useful specimen of an old order. He unashamedly spoke of post-Christian Europe. He caused quite an intellectual stir, and received thunderous applause. It must have been a great day for him, given his great disappointment that younger dons at Oxford were pushing for the study of more modern literature, to the reduction of the study of Old English. Now, he was the new Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge. The Old Western Man had a new castle in which he was the liege lord!

  Situated by the River Cam, Magdalene College was founded in 1428 as a Benedictine hostel before being re-founded in 1542 as the College of St. Mary Magdalene, a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The re-foundation of the college was largely the work of Sir Thomas Audley, the Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII. Sir Thomas gave Magdalene its motto: Garde ta Foy, meaning “Keep your Faith.” The Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University had been at the cutting edge of research in theology and religious studies for eight hundred years; but the new Professor of English, who took up residence at Magdalene College on 1 January 1955, was keeping his faith in a different arena.

  Through his writing, Jack’s voice was now being heard very clearly. On 19 September his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, was published. It was the story of his conversion. The Chronicles of Narnia, and the task of writing English Language in the Sixteenth Century, had interrupted its writing. Although
it is as intriguing for what it leaves out as for what it leaves in, there can be few autobiographies to equal it for candour. We can be certain that Jack had found his voice. How the book preaches! Preaches? Of course it preaches. On Saturday, 5 November 1955, Jack was invited along with other Senior Members of the University to meet Dr. Billy Graham, who was in Cambridge to lead a mission for the Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union. It was the same Dr. Graham who said, “You are not really preaching until they hear another voice.” Few people reading Surprised by Joy lay it down without hearing that other voice. So, by that standard, the book truly preaches.

  In July 1955, Jack Lewis was elected as a member of the British Academy; and as the new term started at Cambridge he got his driver-friend, Clifford Morris, to take him there. Clifford relates that, on his way to Cambridge, Jack loved to be taken to see the herds of deer in Woburn Park, the Duke of Bedford’s great estate in Berkshire.2

  At the beginning of the new term in 1955 with Professor Lewis, let us pause and muse a little. In July 2002, I stood on a hill in Woburn Park above Woburn Abbey and mused a little myself. With two friends I had just been filming a video on the life of John Bunyan. The Tinker of Bedford and his amazing story of Christian’s pilgrimage in Pilgrim’s Progress had inspired my heart and soul. (Incidentally, on 11 September 1962, the BBC recorded Jack reading an essay on Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.) When I got home, the emotions of standing on that hill above Woburn Abbey were recollected in tranquillity. I share them with you:

  “Sunset At Woburn”

  I stood on a height at Woburn,

  Evening sunlight dipped as swallows arched home

  To the eaves of the ancient and distinguished Abbey,

  Where the flag of the Dukes of Bedford fluttered.

  Away across the long-shadowed forest glades,

  Stags called and hinds stirred,

  And baby deer darted as the sun set.

  And I thought of the Tinker of Bedford,

  That humble mender of pots and pans,

  And his visits to the house of John Gifford,

  And of how his soul panted for spiritual life,

  Like a hart after the water brook.

  And I marvelled at Gifford’s patience

  Over those many question-filled hours,

  As John Bunyan sought salvation in Christ

  And found it, so memorably.

  And I thought of his book The Pilgrims Progress,

  And the millions who have drunk

  At its deep spiritual waters.

  I mused on how a former Duke of Bedford

  Generously raised Bunyan’s statue in Bedford.

  Ah! Not many mighty, not many of noble birth

  Are called: but God has chosen the weak things,

  And the things which are despised of this world,

  To put to shame the things that are mighty,

  So that no one may boast before Him.

  Despite what I have just written, I feel it is so necessary to add one thing to my musings. The Bible text does say, “not many mighty are called”; how glad I am that it does not say “not any mighty.”

  One of the “mighty,” now beginning a new term of his great work at Cambridge University, had clearly been called. He had only seven years of his earthly pilgrimage left. Unbeknownst to him, before they were through he was to know great joy, and deep, indescribable sorrow.

  Chapter Seventeen

  THE BRIDEGROOM AND THE WIDOWER

  SPRING WAS SPREADING ACROSS ENGLAND with all of its enchanting loveliness. There was fresh colour everywhere. Winter’s bare outline had been softened to the green mist of breaking buds and billions of unfolding leaves; blue, green, and gold were fusing into a general brightness. In copse and lane, primroses were wafting their sweet, fresh, wholesome scent. Regal swans were returning to their favourite pools and rivers. Water rats could be heard plopping enthusiastically into the water, and screeching moorhens and ducks were busy among the reed-beds.

  In England, April is the month for much bird-nesting activity. House martins, wrens, willow-warblers, chaffinches, and yellow hammers were hard at work. Perhaps the making of the chaffinch’s nest is the most delicate operation of them all. The sturdy, cheerful little chaffinch gathers moss, down, wood, hair, and wool, and binds them all together with consummate skill.

  House martins were looking longingly for April rain, for they needed mud for the masonry of their nests. They didn’t want too much, though! Then they needed sun and wind to harden and set the mud. Swallows were equally busy, carrying thousands of mud pellets to make the mud-cup cradles so familiar beneath the eaves of English homes. On Monday 23 April 1956, the activities down at the little Register Office in St. Giles, Oxford could hardly have been called “nest-building”. What was going on?

  Back in August 1955, Joy Gresham and her boys had set up home on High Street in Headington, about a mile from The Kilns. Jack leased the house, and he also paid the rent. In September 1955, Jack was back in Ireland on holiday and raised the matter of his relationship with Joy with his friend Arthur Greeves. The Home Office had refused Joy permission to live and work in England, and Jack now proposed the idea of going through a civil marriage ceremony in order to give British nationality to Joy, David, and Douglas. Jack regarded it as a merely legal formality, and not as a marriage before God. He intended to tell as few people as possible. There is no record of what Arthur Greeves thought; but his Roman Catholic friend George Sayer raised serious objections. Jack maintained that he was not in love with Joy and did not see the arrangement as a real marriage. He viewed it as a way to help out a friend.

  Jack’s doctor, R. E. Harvard, and Austin Farrer, the philosopher, theologian, and Chaplain of Trinity College, were present at the ceremony as witnesses. The scene was famously portrayed in the film Shadowlands, with Jack going one way and Joy another as they came out of the Register Office into a rain-swept day in Oxford. The scene may not have been factually correct; but one feels it may have been accurate in its portrayal of Jack’s emotions.

  Jack now started to visit Joy every day, and Joy protested that the visits would cause a scandal. She put him under pressure to allow her and the boys to live at The Kilns. She was certainly in love with Jack; but he was not in love with her—yet. How would such a complex relationship ever resolve itself?

  There is an Irish saying, “It’s a long road that has no turning.” The turning on the road that Jack and Joy were travelling came unexpectedly, with a telephone call. For some time Joy had been complaining of pains in her chest, back, and left leg. On the evening of the eighteenth of October 1956, Kathleen Farrer, novelist and wife of the Chaplain of Trinity College, had a premonition. Feeling sure that something was wrong with Joy, she telephoned her. As it happened, just before the telephone rang out, Joy had tripped over the telephone wire and fallen to the floor, bringing the telephone down as she fell. The femur of her left leg had snapped in two. As the phone lay on the floor, Joy could hear Kathleen’s voice asking with concern if there was anything she could do. The next day, Joy was admitted to the Wingfield-Morris Orthopaedic Hospital. Examination and x-rays proved that Joy had cancer, and that it had eaten almost completely through her femur. This was not the only bad news. Examination also discovered that she had a malignant tumour in her left breast and secondary sites in her right leg and shoulder. Within the next month, Joy had three operations: the tumour was removed, the cancerous part of the femur was cut out and the bone repaired, and her ovaries were removed.

  Jack now had to face the fact that Joy was almost certainly dying; and he wanted to bring her home to The Kilns, where she could die as his wife. He set about seeking a Christian marriage ceremony and had great difficulty. The Bishop of Oxford, although sympathetic, refused to give permission for one of his clergymen to marry them. The rule in the Church of England was that it would not remarry divorced persons. Even Jack’s friends on the University faculty said no. Eventually, another Anglican clergyma
n, a former pupil of Jack’s, agreed to help them. Jack took the view that, since Bill Gresham had been divorced before he married Joy, and since his former wife was still alive, Bill’s marriage to Joy was not a Christian marriage.

  The Reverend Peter Bide from the diocese of Chesterfield performed the ceremony. The night before Peter laid his hands on Joy for her healing. He is on record as saying that for him, what clinched the argument as to whether he should conduct the wedding ceremony was considering what the Lord would have done in the situation.

  Alone in his room at The Kilns that night, what were Jack’s thoughts as he went to bed? In my opinion he must have felt very vulnerable because of his great compassion and considerable international fame. What he had just done was full of perplexing questions. Could he really have put his head on his pillow in a carefree manner? Some of the Greek tragedies that he knew so well were not all that far removed from his own situation. In the secret chamber of his heart, how did he feel?

  It does not seem to me that Jack was as yet in love with Joy. I am reminded of what my mother used to tell me: Pity is akin to love. The situation that developed between Jack and Joy proves her to be right, I think. If Jack’s relationship with Janie Moore began with eros and ended with agape, his relationship with Joy began with agape and certainly ended with eros. He actually told a friend that, though it began with agape, it proceeded to philia, then became pity, and then finally became eros.1

  As Death threatened to take his wife, Jack suddenly woke up to what he would lose. His rival, Death, awakened love in his heart.2 There is no question that now he began to fall deeply in love with Joy.