Читать книгу C. S. Lewis and the Craft of Communication - Steven Beebe - Страница 29

C. S. Lewis’s education could be described as having a disastrous beginning with a glorious conclusion, punctuated by unevenness in educational quality. His education had really begun at home. He refers frequently in his autobiography to “Little Lea,” (formally known as Leeborough) the grand Belfast home into which the family had moved from Dundela Village in 1905, with its cozy little “end room” where he and Warnie would read, dream, and play. Little Lea was almost like another character in his life. Biographer A. N. Wilson notes that “In memory, [Jack and Warnie] returned to it again and again …”³⁹ With books stuffed in shelves and stacked throughout, the home had space to let imagination soar.

Lewis’s parents, Albert and Flora, had also contributed to their young son’s education. Although Lewis had a sometimes challenging relationship with his father, he also picked up on his father’s rhetorical skills, as well as his impressive memory.⁴⁰ Lewis himself had a photographic (eidetic) memory that was to be a significant intellectual asset as both student and scholar. If not his math skills, his powers of logic had been passed on from his mother Flora, who had also started Lewis in Latin and French. Learning and mastering languages was a talent that further contributed to his academic and communication talents.

Before he could get to his ultimate educational experience at Oxford, however, he would attend four boarding schools, some better than others, before benefitting from the life-shaping instruction of William T. Kirkpatrick, tutor to both his father and Warnie.