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Chapter 2

MY FIRST (AND ONLY) VISIT WITH MR. LEWIS

Kilby met C. S. Lewis only once, in the summer of 1953. Of the several accounts of that meeting, this one, published later that year in Kodon, the Wheaton College literary magazine, is the freshest.

At noon on July first, I went by appointment to the office of C. S. Lewis in Magdalen College, Oxford. Thinking that Mrs. Kilby would enjoy the visit with me, I had inquired earlier at the college gate whether there was anything to the report that Mr. Lewis disliked women and had been told that there was “some truth in it.” Consequently, she went shopping and I climbed the stairs to his office alone. When I knocked, he immediately answered and invited me in, coming around his desk to greet me warmly at the door.

He is about fifty-four years old and of average height. He has a pleasant, almost jolly face, full though not fat, with a double chin. He has a high forehead and thinning hair. Actually, he is a much better looking man than the published picture of him. He was dressed well, though in ordinary clothes. His office is large, with used but comfortable furniture.

He invited me to sit down on a sofa, and he remained in his working chair. He was busy on the bibliography of his history of sixteenth-century literature, one volume of the Oxford Dictionary of English Literature. He spoke of the making of a bibliography as just plain labor and laughed about the idea of the scholar’s life as a sedentary one, saying that the physical labor of pulling the big folios from the shelves of the Bodleian was all the exercise he needed. Later he told me that apart from the last twenty years of the sixteenth century, there was relatively little of value in the literature of that time. He said also that he felt the Renaissance was not nearly so much of a “rebirth” as some scholars declare it to be. (Since my visit Mr. Lewis has written me giving his exact definition: “an imaginary entity responsible for everything the modern reader likes in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.”) I told him I had the feeling that literary periods are doubtfully described by our neat classifications, and he agreed heartily.

We talked at some length about Palestine and my recent visit there. He was much interested and spoke of the pleasure it would give him to go to the Holy Land. He talked of a book on Sumerian archaeology in which an ancient expressed his surprise at the antiquities before his own day. Mr. Lewis said that he asked a Jew if it was the intention of the Israeli to set up the biblical temple and sacrifices. The Jew answered that he did not know and that he had no explanation as to why his nation had stopped the ancient sacrifices. I suggested that a Jew lecturing at Wheaton College had laid the blame on St. Paul. Mr. Lewis demonstrated his shrewdness by promptly pointing out the Jewish claim not to have followed Paul and therefore the Jews could not have been led astray by someone they refused to follow.

One of the main questions I wished to ask Mr. Lewis concerned the relation of Christianity and art. He said the same relation existed between Christianity and art as between Christianity and carpentry, and he suggested that he had discussed the problem to some extent in his essay called “Transposition.” I mentioned Jonathan Blanchard’s assertion that a novel is at best a “well-told lie.” As I expected, he disagreed completely with this claim, saying that one is far more likely to find the truth in a novel than in a newspaper. In fact, he said he had quit reading newspapers because they were so untruthful.

One of the men I had hoped to see in England was C. E. M. Joad, professor of philosophy at the University of London, but he had died while I was in Palestine. I asked Mr. Lewis his opinion of Joad, and he said that after he had sat up and talked with Joad most of the night on two occasions, he had changed his mind about him, having found him vain, but sincerely and consciously so, and not hiding his vanity under a mask as most of us do while practicing our own brand of self-righteousness. Mr. Lewis had not yet read Joad’s account of his turn from agnosticism to Christianity (The Recovery of Belief). He declared that Joad was definitely not a charlatan, as some people have described him. I asked Mr. Lewis if he knows the critic D. S. Savage. He said he had never heard of him and asked naively, “Should I know him?” I told him something of the Christian viewpoint of that writer.

I told Mr. Lewis that one of the questions frequently asked in America was when he intended to come over here and lecture. In fact, while I was in Palestine, I had received a letter from a man at the University of Redlands asking me in the name of several California institutions to urge Lewis to come and offering to pay him liberally. He said definitely that he had no intention of coming to America until he retired. When I suggested the possibility of his coming during the summer, he said he had to get some vacation then, and a trip to this country would be anything but a vacation. He expressed sincere gratitude for the invitations and in that connection pointed out that his books sell somewhat better over here than in England. On the day before my visit I had bought a copy of one of his books in order to have him autograph it. When I pulled the book out of my pocket, he readily agreed to my request but added that he “saw no sense in it.” Both from reading his books and talking with him, I get the impression that he is far more fearful than most of us of the subtle sin of pride and tries in every way to escape it: thus his reticence to give an autograph.

I asked him if I would have an opportunity while in Oxford of hearing him lecture, either in the university or on the outside. He said he had no lectures scheduled and bantered me as a college professor wanting to hear a lecture while on vacation. In fact, in all his talk there is an incipient good humor and genuineness that makes a conversation with him a real pleasure. (I noticed the same genuineness in Chad Walsh when he was at Wheaton.)

I mentioned his remark in one of his books that the study of the metaphor would be a lifetime affair. I added that as far as I could judge, the secret of literature is bound up in the metaphor. He repeated his idea concerning the significance of metaphor and urged me to undertake the study. When I told him I was too old for that, he laughed and asked if I thought he was any younger than myself.

He had shown no sign whatever of wishing to get back to his work, but I felt that I had no right to impose upon him and therefore excused myself. He followed me to the door and gave me a warm handshake and greeting as I left.