Giddy with awe
Humphrey Carpenter In Search of C. S. Lewis Edited by Stephen Schofield (Valley Books, Chepstow, Wales £3) C. S. Lewis was a very good man. A lot of very bad books have been written about him. Each of these statements con- tains a degree of exaggeration, but they are true in outline, and may serve as a useful guide for anyone coming fresh to the sub- ject.
In Search of C. S. Lewis exemplifies them both. Chiefly devoted to showing what a frightfully good fellow Lewis was, it has been put together with a fine degree of incompetence. I do not here refer to the editorial work of Mr Stephen Schofield, which has been done conscientiously enough, if according to somewhat unusual principles (Mr Schofield likes to tell us, for instance, that one of his contributors to the volume is 'an agreeable man'). I speak rather of Mr Schofield's publisher, or just possibly his printer.
Mr Schofield has kindly attached a typewritten note to my review copy — one of several such home-made erratum slips — pointing out that it was not he who supplied these gentlemen with the frontispiece to the book. This is a photograph bearing the cap- tion 'Magdalen Tower'. The tower depicted does faintly resemble that of Magdalen Col- lege, Oxford (of which C. S. Lewis was a member), at least in the lower parts of its anatomy. But on the top it spouts an ex- travagant spire. Mr Schofield has not been fooled. He knows it is not Magdalen, and he tells us so. Indeed he goes so far as to identify it as the Ottawa Peace Tower in Canada. Mr Schofield himself is a Cana- dian; his publisher and printer are not. The plot thickens.
Leaving this splendid frontispiece aside, and turning to the text of In Search of C. S. Lewis, one notes without surprise that several of Mr Schofield's contributors seem to be under the impression that Lewis was God. This notion has always been hovering on the edge of what are referred to in Wheaton, Illinois, and points west as 'CS. Lewis studies'. (Wheaton, Illinois, is where Lewis's letters and manuscripts have been lovingly collected; it is also the alma mater of Dr Billy Graham). But now it comes out into the open. Mrs Kathryn Lindskoog, a doyenne of 'Lewis criticism' and a con- tributor to Mr Schofield's volume, writes of Lewis: 'Being with him was a bit of heaven, and I hope that heaven will include a bit of being with him.' Not surprisingly, given this identification of Lewis with the Deity, Mrs Lindskoog was 'giddy with awe' when she actually sat on a sofa next to him. She also, for reasons that are not entirely clear,
believes that because her boyfriend bought her one of Lewis's books on the anniversary of Lewis's mother's death, she was thereby 'mentally "married" to Lewis that very day'. She does not record Mr Lindskoog's opinion of all this.
Mr Schofield is the editor of the Cana- dian C. S. Lewis Journal, published not, as you might expect, from Canada, but from Godalming. The Journal, as I recall, was largely concerned, in its early numbers, to attack certain other 'C. S. Lewis scholars , and I was rather sorry not to find any such amusing abuse in Mr Schofield's book. The reminiscences it contains are almost unvary- ingly soothing to those who worship Lewis, and why not, since they presumably will he the people who buy the book? But will there be typewritten notes apologising for the Ottawa Peace Tower in all copies, and tf. not, will a large number of transatlantic visitors to Oxford inquire of the President and Fellows of Magdalen when the spire fell off their tower?
It is rather a surprise to find A. P' Taylor, John Wain, and Malcolm Mug- geridge among Mr Schofield's contributors, but one should hasten to say that they all have reservations about Lewis's oin- nipotence. Mr Taylor remarks: Lewis never talked about religion in the College. We didn't want to hear it for one thing.' it is not entirely clear from this whether the Fellows of Magdalen didn't want to heal about religion, or didn't want to hear Lewis talking about it, or both. Mr Schofield promises that the book con- tains little-known facts' and 'is not all favourable', but the only original fact that could discover was that Lewis 'wore white cotton underwear', and the only un- favourable remark is made by the Poet Ruth Pitter, who hints that she did not like Lewis's wife; however, though she has writ; ten something about this, she has 'Put n away in a safe place, not to be opened for fifty years or more'. The only moment at, which the real problem of Lewis is tackleu comes when Professor E. L. Edmonds,.an, ex-pupil of Lewis's, remarks that LeWiS book A Grief Observed — a description of bereavement — gave him absolutely no helP when his own wife died. Professor Ed; monds does this in a moving little piece 01 verse:
But now, Sir I have to say Your words go like the wind.
There was no dignity Spiritual reconciliation But only agony Shared mutually Finally Humiliation Slow disintegration.
So grievously awry Your allegory.
Here is the starting-point for a book about the real Lewis and the presumptions upon which his seductive dogmatism was built. In the meantime, we have to make c.1° with stuff which tells us as much about WI as the Ottawa Tower does about Magdalen'
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