The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings

by Philip Zaleski

  The anomaly among these contributors is, of course, Sayers, author of the acclaimed Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novels and two influential books of Christian apologetics, The Mind of the Maker (1941) and Creed or Chaos? (1947). She is the only non-Inkling on the title page. What is she doing there? As we know, she was excluded in principle from membership in the group by virtue of her sex. Did Lewis, by this singular honor, intend to confer on her the title of honorary Inkling? Was she, as many critics claim, almost an Inkling or “not quite an Inkling”? We can dismiss as meaningless the claim that if she had been a man she would have been an Inkling, for if she had been a man she would not have been Dorothy L. Sayers. Equally unhelpful is the speculation of one Sayers biographer that if her candidacy had been seriously proposed, some Inklings “might have been disturbed by the inclusion … of Dorothy’s transsexual mind and not-very-stimulating body.”

  Sexual politics aside, however, Sayers had much in common with Lewis and Tolkien’s circle, including a love of orthodox Christianity, traditional verse, popular fiction, and debate. In The Mind of the Maker (1941), she presents a theory of artistic creation as an image of the Trinity that closely parallels Tolkien’s idea of subcreation. Tolkien, it is true, came to detest her aristocratic sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, telling Christopher that “I conceived a loathing for him (and his creatrix) not surpassed by any other character in literature known to me…,” but his objections, likely based upon Wimsey’s dandyism and Sayers’s affinity for strong female characters, seem not to have transferred wholesale to other Inklings. Lewis, for example, praised her Jesus play, The Man Born to Be King, a wartime BBC radio drama, which he reread “every Holy Week since it first appeared and never re-read … without being deeply moved.” She, in turn, admired his writing and was, Lewis said, “the first person of importance who ever wrote me a fan letter.”

  Sayers’s most significant association among the Inklings, however, was with Charles Williams. Their friendship was long and deep, and it was chiefly for this reason that Lewis included her in the memorial volume (that she, like Eliot, would attract a flock of readers was a welcome bonus). In 1933, Williams had written to the publisher Victor Gollancz an exuberant letter upon reading an advance copy of Sayers’s The Nine Tailors, declaring, “Your Dorothy Sayers…! Present her some time with my profoundest compliments. It’s a marvellous book; it is high imagination … the ending is unsurpassable.” This glowing tribute was relayed to the author, who wrote Gollancz that “I only hope he isn’t pulling my leg—it sounds too good to be true!” He wasn’t, it wasn’t. The two writers met, hit it off, and continued to dine together periodically for several years.

  In 1937, Williams wrote the play Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury for the annual Canterbury Festival and proposed Sayers as the festival’s next playwright. Sayers accepted the invitation and wrote The Zeal of Thy House for the 1938 season; her play, about William of Sens, the architect who rebuilt the Canterbury Cathedral choir after a devastating fire in 1174, received good notices and gave her prominence as a Christian artist as well as a creator of elegant mysteries. A few years later (as we saw in chapter 12), Williams unwittingly did Sayers a yet more profound favor by sparking her passion for Dante. Her contribution to Essays Presented to Charles Williams is to a great extent a summary of the many enthusiastic letters that she sent Williams during the early days of her Dante mania. Most notable and Inklings-like is her vigorous defense of story: Dante “was simply the most incomparable story-teller who ever set pen to paper”; the Commedia is, first and foremost, “a story of adventure,” and it is this that allows it to be also “a satire, a love-romance, a spiritual autobiography”; Dante succeeds because “nobody had taught him the strange theory of the early twentieth-century novelists, that one is a better story-teller for having no story to tell”; the Commedia possesses “that quality without which a tale may indeed take captive the imagination but can never root itself in the affections—the power to create a whole universe of breathing characters.” Lewis or Tolkien might have written these lines, which could serve as an aesthetic manifesto for the Space Trilogy and The Lord of the Rings, although the two Inklings might have adopted a more studied, less breathless tone (Lewis told Barfield that he found Sayers’s essay “perhaps a trifle vulgar in places”).

  As it happens, a donnish or professorial tone emerges in Essays on the very heels of Sayers’s contribution, for it is followed by Tolkien’s “On Fairy-Stories” and Lewis’s “On Stories.” Together, the contributions of Sayers, Tolkien, and Lewis constitute a closely reasoned, richly illustrated defense of fantasy, Faërie, children’s literature, and the mythopoeic imagination: that is to say, the literature of the Inklings and their colleagues. Tolkien’s essay, contending that Faërie offers “Fantasy, Recovery, Escape, Consolation,” and “Enchantment,” and that fantasy allows the artist to “assist in the effoliation and multiple enrichment of creation,” is an expanded version of his 1939 Andrew Lang Lecture. Lewis approaches the same theme from a different angle than does Tolkien or Sayers, examining neither a particular story nor a single genre but rather “Story itself” (the capital letter is Lewis’s) and those literary forms in which “everything else”—characters, social analyses, propaganda—“is there for the sake of the story.” He rejects the popular notion that story exists to create excitement; if this were so, then The Three Musketeers, which is nothing but a torrent of thrills, would be the greatest of all stories. Lewis never states exactly what Dumas lacks that a good story possesses; instead, he contrasts such tales with those that join excitement to that special frisson—“sense of wonder” may be the best term for it—induced by a giant, a pirate, or an otherworldly landscape. These marvels stimulate the “deeper imagination”; they offer “something other than a process and much more like a state or quality.” H. Rider Haggard, David Lindsay, Walter de la Mare, and J.R.R. Tolkien are modern writers who have achieved this elemental quality; Charles Williams is not, for his stories remain, “despite their free use of the supernatural, much closer to the novel; a believed religion, detailed character drawing, and even social satire all come in.” Children’s literature, on the other hand, is specifically dedicated to evoking the sense of wonder, and Lewis’s argument is also a defense of this maligned genre (and thus of Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Barfield’s The Silver Trumpet). “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty—except, of course, books of information … A mature palate will probably not much care for crême de menthe: but it ought still to enjoy bread and butter and honey.”

  The final essays in the book go in other directions. Barfield’s “Poetic Diction and Legal Fiction” (see chapter 12) links the author’s twin vocations of literature and law. Gervase Mathew contributes an essay on marriage and courtly love in fourteenth-century England, while Warnie closes the volume with an account of the horrors of French galley life during the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King being a subject that vastly interested Williams as well (“these two, and Mr. H.V.D. Dyson of Merton, could often be heard in a corner talking about Versailles, intendants, and the maison du roy,” remembers Lewis in his preface).

  Signs of Decline

  Essays Presented to Charles Williams was the Inklings’ collaborative high-water mark; the tide soon began to ebb. In 1946, Merton College commenced a search for a new professor of English literature. Tolkien, one of the electors, favored Lewis or possibly Lord David Cecil for the post, but after fierce opposition from the English faculty, the position went to Lewis’s old tutor F. P. Wilson. Everyone knew the reason: the faculty feared that Lewis would turn the professorship into a bully pulpit for Christian evangelization. A month or so earlier, he had received an honorary doctor of divinity degree from the University of St. Andrews; during the ceremony, the presiding dean had said that “with his pen and with his voice on the radio Mr. Lewis has succeeded in capturing the attention of many who will not readily listen to professional theologian
s, and has taught them many lessons concerning the deep things of God.” At St. Andrews this passed muster, but at Oxford some academics doubted whether Lewis, now an international celebrity, would pay sufficient attention to the many vexing details that accompanied a professorship, while others fretted over how it would look to grant the author of The Screwtape Letters, an embarrassingly popular novel, such a prestigious chair. Tolkien’s lobbying failed to overcome these obstacles, and Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond speculate that his failure may have “slightly sour[ed] relations between” him and Lewis “for a while.” If so, it foreshadowed greater rifts to come.

  All the while, the Inklings continued to attract new members. In 1947, C. E. Stevens, historian, fellow of Magdalen, and a warm, rambunctious figure—a born Inkling, by all accounts—joined the group. Stevens had worked for British intelligence during the war and had conceived the brilliant notion of using the celebrated opening notes of Beethoven’s Fifth, da da da daa, which also happens to spell “V” (for Victory) in Morse code, as the BBC’s propaganda theme. He, Lewis, and Warnie had been friends for years, but he had never been invited to the Thursday night gatherings, perhaps because his war work often took him away from the university. Lewis finally proposed Stevens’s membership at a meeting on October 23, 1947, to general acclamation. It was “the smallest Inkling we have had for a long time,” Warnie noted significantly—only he, his brother, Tolkien, and Havard attended—and the beverage was green tea. Clearly, change was in the air. The following Thursday, the same core group showed up. Stevens finally appeared on November 27 and made a good impression; “A very pleasant meeting,” declared Warnie. Other small pleasures arrived as well. Dr. Warfield M. Firor, a renowned surgeon at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University and an admirer of Lewis’s writings, began to send him ham and other delicacies to alleviate the postwar food rationing. On March 11, 1948, these gifts resulted in a grand Inklings assembly, featuring not only Dr. Firor’s ham but fillet of sole, pâté, soup, and assorted wines. For Warnie, at least, the feast was a brilliant success, “which I enjoyed as much as anything of the sort I have ever attended … We sat down eight to dinner, all in the highest spirits … There was just the right amount of everything, including drink.” The somewhat inebriated celebrants sent a “Ham Testimonial” to the good doctor, inscribed by all—the core four plus Christopher Tolkien, Dyson, Cecil, and Hardie. Dinner completed, the party raffled off a tuxedo, a gift from yet another overseas fan. For one night, at least, it was just like old times.

  Beneath the bonhomie, however, tensions festered. Five or six weeks before the Ham Testimonial, Tolkien had sent to Lewis a long letter that amounted to an apologia—in the dual sense of apology and justification—for having disparaged an unspecified work by Lewis read aloud at an Inklings meeting. The attack had upset Lewis greatly, and the two had exchanged letters on the subject. Tolkien piles up the mea culpas: “I regret causing pain, even if and in so far as I had the right; and I am very sorry indeed still for having caused it quite excessively and unnecessarily … I have been possessed on occasions (few, happily) with a sort of furor scribendi, in which the pen finds the words rather than head or heart; and this was one of them.” This bald apology seems to discomfit him, however, for he adds notes of defense (he had not realized at the time that Lewis was offended), attack (Lewis reads too much and too analytically), and presumptuous advice (Lewis’s suffering “will do good rather than harm, but that is between you and God. It is one of the mysteries of pain that it is, for the sufferer, an opportunity for good, a path of ascent however hard”). He then backtracks, advancing into Williamsian territory by asking Lewis to “do me the great generosity of making me a present of the pains I have caused, so that I may share in the good you have put them to.” This is the sort of behest that one can only make of someone who shares one’s deepest beliefs, a friend to whom one can confess one’s sorrows, and this is just what he does, revealing that he is “suffering … from ‘suppressed composition’” and is in consequence a “savage creature, a soreheaded bear.” It is a tender moment; the comradeship he feels for Lewis is palpable. Yet he wraps up the letter on a note of aggressive jocularity that undercuts the closeness: “But I warn you, if you bore me, I shall take my revenge … I sometimes conceive and write other things than verses or romance! And I may come back at you.” The bright flash of exposed nerve is unmistakable.

  Dyson’s Roar

  The tensions between Inklings had many causes. One of them showed up at almost every meeting: the ever vexatious Hugo Dyson, who relished any opportunity to create a ruckus. Recently, Dyson had broadcast the rumor that Tolkien disliked Lewis’s boisterousness during meetings. “Nay!” Tolkien assured Lewis. “That is largely a self-defensive rumour put about by Hugo. If it has any basis (for him), it is but that noise begets noise.” Warnie noted Dyson’s loudness in his diary for March 4: “Hugo’s voice was booming through the fog in the Quad, inviting a party of undergraduates up to his rooms, he really can be very irritating at times.” Tolkien was right in his assessment, for Dyson was the clangorous provocateur at Inklings gatherings. He bristled at anything he disliked, most notably The Lord of the Rings; Christopher Tolkien has described him as “lying on the couch, and lolling and shouting and saying, ‘Oh God, no more Elves’”—a bowdlerization of the funnier, more devastating, and more Dysonesque actual jibe, usually given as “Oh God, not another fucking elf!” Eventually, Dyson bullied his way into the censor’s seat and managed to ban all readings of Lord while he was present. One should add, in his favor, that he was not the only Inkling who disapproved of Tolkien’s epic: Barfield put it aside unfinished, and John Wain poured on the scorn: “When Tolkien came through the door at a meeting of the Inklings with a bulging jacket pocket, I winced because I knew we were in for a slab of Gandalf and Bilbo Baggins and the rest of it. I wished him no harm, but would have preferred him to keep his daydreams within bounds and not inflict them on us.”

  Dyson, despite his knack for obnoxiousness, was generally liked for his conviviality and wit, and he and Tolkien had been allies, not least in the late-night discussion along Addison’s Walk that had led to Lewis’s conversion. His disapprobation stung Tolkien deeply. “I remember this very vividly, my father’s pain, his shyness, which couldn’t take Hugo’s extremely rumbustious approach,” recalled Christopher. Lewis intervened whenever possible to soften the blow, shouting, “Shut up, Hugo … Come on Tollers,” but it did little good. Dyson got his way. The source of his rudeness is not hard to discern: his mind outran his manners. To Warnie, who adored him for his humor (and because a day with Dyson meant a day with drink), he gave “the impression of being made of quick silver: he pours himself into a room on a cataract of words and gestures, and you are caught up in the stream.” Dyson would seize any opening for a quip; one evening he and Warnie downed some glasses of sherry at the Mitre Tap and then walked to the courtyard, where they saw a boy slip on the cobbles. “Don’t do that, my boy: it hurts you and distresses us,” Dyson shouted. His humor and impudence went hand in hand:

  Councillor Brewer arrived [at the King’s Arms Pub] and put his vast bulk in the chair facing Hugo across the table: it was plain that Hugo had never spoken to him before, but he leant forward and addressed him with an almost servile deference—“you will pardon the liberty, Sir; I trust you don’t think I presume: but I shall call you Fred. You look the sort of man who ought to be called Fred.” This the Councillor took well, and conversation became general: but a minute later, Hugo, gazing intently at his huge pale face, broke in again—“You’ll excuse me sir, but am I looking at your full face or your profile?”

  Dyson’s rudeness was a slow-acting poison. First it amused, then it exasperated, finally it destroyed. His aggressiveness intensified with the years; by 1949, Warnie noted in his diary that “at a ham supper in J’s rooms, H bellows uninterruptedly for about three minutes, and as he shows no signs of stopping, two guests at the bottom of the table begin a conversation: which being o
bserved by Hugo, he raises his hand and shouts reproachfully—‘Friends, friends, I feel it would be better if we kept the conversation general.’” One detects in this remark, as in Dyson’s overall antics, both insecurity and envy. His genius lay in idle repartee and back-slapping friendship rather than scholarly pursuits. He published but a handful of notable books: Pope: Poetry and Prose; Augustans and Romantics (coauthored with John Butts); and The Emergence of Shakespeare’s Tragedy. The introduction to his Pope anthology is telling; he singles out the poet’s “freshness and vigour of execution,” his “colour and movement,” and, in regard to his greatest work, The Rape of the Lock, its tone of “sophisticated malice-flecked delight,” all attributes of Dyson’s own persona. When Augustans and Romantics appeared, Lewis remarked, “It is, as one would expect, almost too bright, but some of the sparks are admirable”—a splendid summing up of Dyson’s gestalt. Others, too, admired Dyson’s writings, but he never attained the popular acclaim poured so lavishly upon other Inklings. In the mid-1960s, he appeared in the John Schlesinger film Darling as a celebrated author, a white-haired owlish man with clever, shifting eyes, tossing off bons mots of which the most memorable is “It’s true I have always preferred to be a mouse off by itself rather than a member of a group of literary lions.” The line carries a full measure of truth: Dyson, although a key member of the pride, often stood apart, too prickly and insecure (like all who demand their own way) to mesh perfectly with others. His contrariness exacted its price: when he vetoed The Lord of the Rings, it was no longer a case of Inklings against the world, but of Inkling against Inkling, another stage in the breaking of the circle.