Читать книгу C. S. Lewis and the Craft of Communication - Steven Beebe - Страница 35

Lewis first mentions his friend “Paddy” Moore (Edward Francis Courtenay Moore, 1898–1918) when they were both training for military service. In a letter to Arthur Greeves Lewis describes Paddy as a “good fellow.”⁸² They undoubtedly became good friends because of their common Irish ancestry. Jack and Paddy made their pact that if either of them should be killed in the war, the survivor would care for the deceased’s parent. In Lewis’s case, his father Albert Lewis, and in Paddy’s case, mother Janie King Askins Moore.

Lewis saw Mrs. Moore frequently because she had come to Oxford to be near Paddy. She was estranged from her husband and although never divorced, remained separated from him for the rest of their lives. George Sayer, a former student who became a trusted Lewis friend, reached the conclusion that Lewis was “infatuated” with Mrs. Moore.⁸³ She was perhaps the nurturing mother that Lewis had lost when he was nine. Lewis had a month’s leave before being sent into active service. Rather than going home to visit his father, Lewis spent his time in Bristol with Paddy and Mrs. Moore. Missing letters (Sayer suggests they were destroyed) between Lewis and his close confidant and perhaps confessor, Greeves, may have shed light on the Moore-Lewis relationship. But Sayer concludes, “The letters that are left make it quite clear that he loved Mrs. Moore.”⁸⁴ Despite their 25-year age difference, there seemed to be a deep and enduring emotional bond between them.

Paddy was killed in battle in 1918. Lewis had been wounded by shrapnel in the Battle of Arras at Mount Bernenchon (which, in reality, is a flat plain rather than a mountain),⁸⁵ shrapnel that killed the Sergeant standing next to him. He was sent to a hospital and eventually returned to Oxford. He helped Mrs. Moore move from her home in Eastbourne to Bristol, and then later in the summer of 1919 to Headington, a village two miles to the northeast of Oxford City Center. By this time, Lewis and Mrs. Moore, along with her daughter Maureen, were inseparable. Lewis moved in with them, although he kept his living arrangements quiet. Lewis was expected to live in college, not out. The trio lived in several rental flats in Oxford before they bought The Kilns in 1930, a house about three miles from Oxford City Center. It was the house in which Lewis would write his best-known works and the house in which he would die. Lewis, Maureen and Mrs. ←49 | 50→Moore lived together until Maureen left to be married in 1940 and Mrs. Moore moved into a nursing home in 1950. Mrs. Moore died on January 12, 1951.

What was the true relationship between Mrs. Moore and C. S. Lewis? Most (but not all) Lewis biographers speculate that Lewis and Mrs. Moore had a brief, sexual relationship early in their association.⁸⁶ No one will know for certain.

Lewis biographer and personal friend, George Sayer, revised the third edition of his biography to add this conclusion:

I have had to alter my opinion of Lewis’s relationship with Mrs. Moore. In chapter eight of this book I wrote that I was uncertain about whether they were lovers. Now after conversations with Mrs. Moore’s daughter, and a consideration of the way in which their bedrooms were arranged at The Kilns, I am quite certain that they were. They did not share a room, but Lewis had a room which, until an outside staircase was built some years later, could be entered only by going through Mrs. Moore’s bedroom. Even close friends such as Owen Barfield did not know much of their relationship. Lewis had to be secretive because if the university authorities had found out about Mrs. Moore he would have been sent down and his academic career at Oxford would have been over.⁸⁷

Others strongly argue that theirs was strictly a mother/son relationship and that evidence of their platonic relationship may be found in Lewis’s letters.⁸⁸ What is clear is that Mrs. Moore was an important fixture in Lewis’s life until her death in 1951. It is a relationship shrouded in mystery that evokes varying opinions. Warnie writes that Jack never discussed the nature of their relationship with him. Jack’s close friend, Owen Barfield, describes Mrs. Moore as “a sort of baleful stepmother.”⁸⁹ Although Sayer revised his conclusion suggesting that there was a sexual relationship, he also writes, “Some of those who have written about C.S. Lewis regard his living with Mrs. Moore as odd, even sinister.”⁹⁰ Yet, as one of Lewis’s students at the time, Sayer adds, “This was not the view of those of us who visited his home in the thirties. Like his other pupils, I thought it completely normal that a woman, probably a widow, would make a home for a young bachelor. We had no difficulty accepting her, even when we came to realise that she was not his mother.”⁹¹ John Tolkien, one of J. R. R. Tolkien’s sons, said that Mrs. Moore was like a “Great Aunt” and that Edith Tolkien, John’s mother and J. R. R. Tolkien’s wife, had a very good friendship with her.⁹²

Janie Moore could be demanding, sometimes summoning Jack home to run errands. Nonetheless, he remained a faithful adopted son. When illness forced Mrs. Moore to move into a nursing home in 1950, Lewis would visit her daily, usually walking the two miles from Magdalen College to her nursing home on ←50 | 51→the Woodstock Road, and then back again. His relationship with her remained important throughout her life.

What does Lewis’s relationship with Mrs. Moore have to do with Lewis as communicator? As a highly educated Oxford scholar, and Oxford tutor and lecturer, Lewis lived in a world of rich intellectual privilege, with well-educated colleagues, and talented and motivated students striving for success. His close association with the Moores gave him a mooring (literally and figuratively) in communicating with the average, non-Oxford-educated person. Lewis was learning how to express ideas to those who would be his audience for his popular works—not the Oxford intelligentsia but the everyman and everywoman who would find his messages about Christianity useful. Lewis’s writing appeals not only to the well-educated and well read, but also to those without the benefits of an elite education. His war experiences, although not explicitly discussed in his work, coupled with his new and enduring relationships with Janie and Maureen Moore, played an important role in helping Lewis understand his audience—one of his hallmarks as a communicator.