C.S. Lewis’s Oxford: The place the Lion and the Witch Met the Hobbit

When Clive Staples Lewis arrived in Oxford in 1916, he was enchanted by the town’s Gothic stone buildings and spires reaching skyward. “The place has surpassed my wildest goals: I by no means noticed something so stunning, particularly on frosty moonlit nights,” he wrote in a letter to his father.

Lewis, an 18-year-old Irishman who glided by Jack, was visiting Oxford College to take the doorway examination. The town that made a fascinating first impression maintained its impact on him for a lifetime. Oxford was the backdrop to his pupil days, and to his profession as an educational and because the writer often known as C.S. Lewis, and it’s the place he discovered Christian religion, friendships and home happiness. It’s also the place he, together with J.R.R. Tolkien — the long run writer of “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” — and others based the Inklings, a literary group, 90 or so years in the past, and the place early notions of Narnia and Center-earth would floor.

Lewis is probably most well-known at this time for the “Chronicles of Narnia” sequence — although he discovered success in his satire, like “The Screwtape Letters,” and non secular defenses, like “Mere Christianity.” Because the sixtieth anniversary of his loss of life nears, it felt well timed to retrace Lewis’s steps across the metropolis that so significantly affected his life and works. On a fall afternoon, I met Rob Walters, an writer and a information with Official Oxford Strolling Excursions, on the central Radcliffe Sq., which is surrounded by majestic school buildings. Locals and vacationers, talking myriad languages, walked and biked alongside the cobbles.

“I prefer it when folks ask about Lewis,” mentioned a buoyant Mr. Walters, who conducts a mixed Tolkien and Lewis tour. “He has followers for a lot of completely different causes, some due to his Christian works, others for his fantasy,” he continued. “I found him by means of science fiction.”

I grew to become a Lewis fan conventionally, by means of the “Chronicles of Narnia” sequence, which my grandmother gave me once I was a toddler. The seven youngsters’s books a few legendary world, printed between 1950 and 1956, catapulted Lewis to fame. They’ve offered over 100 million copies and been translated into 47 languages. I devoured the primary three over one summer season and was captivated by Lewis’s world, the place youngsters have been highly effective, the place animals talked and the place — a novel thought for a younger Australian — it was perpetually snowy.

Mr. Walters and I stood within the slender St. Mary’s Passage, between College Church of St. Mary the Virgin and Brasenose Faculty. Earlier than us: an ornate wood door bearing a putting resemblance to a wardrobe — the portal by means of which the 4 Pevensie youngsters achieve entry to Narnia in “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the primary guide within the sequence. Within the heart was a carving that might be a lion’s face, whereas above have been two golden fauns (half-man, half-goat creatures). A tall lamppost stood close by. The setting recalled the guide’s scene wherein a younger Lucy lands in Narnia and meets the faun, Mr. Tumnus, beneath lamppost mild. All that was lacking was a coating of snow.

Is that this the place Lewis discovered inspiration for Narnia? “Nobody is aware of for positive, however the timeline is smart,” Mr. Walters mentioned. Within the early Nineteen Forties, Lewis was a lay theologian, and he sometimes gave sermons in St. Mary’s, just some ft away. “Maybe he left one night by means of the aspect door and walked straight out onto this,” Mr. Walters mentioned, gesturing to what’s develop into often known as the Narnia Door.

Skirting a vacationer with a digital camera poised on the door, we took a left onto Excessive Road, a thoroughfare brimming with outlets and eateries. Lewis studied literature and the classics right here again in 1917 at College Faculty, one of many college’s oldest, based in 1249.

At present in Oxford, arguably the world’s best-known college city, a Fifteenth-century constructing can home a grab-and-go meals chain, Anglo-Saxon ruins are inside miles of a shimmering Zaha Hadid constructing, and medieval stone grotesques watch from their perches as folks of various nationalities rush about beneath.

When Lewis arrived, there would have been fewer ladies — they weren’t allowed to hunt levels right here till 1920 — and fewer college students usually. “Most have been both lifeless or at struggle,” Mr. Walters mentioned. In 1917, there have been solely 12 males enrolled at College Faculty — Lewis included.

Lewis volunteered for officer coaching inside months of arriving at Oxford (as an Irishman born in Belfast, he was not routinely enlisted within the British military) and was shipped to the trenches of France — till he was wounded by an exploding shell in 1918 and returned to his research.

Lewis’s postwar years led to main shifts in his worldview: When Lewis first arrived within the metropolis, he aspired to be a poet. He was additionally an atheist. He modified his thoughts on each accounts at Oxford.

An extended stroll and a late-night epiphany

Bidding Mr. Walters farewell, I strolled a couple of minutes down Excessive Road to Magdalen Faculty, simply noticed by its putting medieval bell tower. Right here, in 1925, Lewis landed a coveted function as fellow and tutor in literature, a place he held for 29 years. The small payment (8 kilos, or almost $10) for public entry to the grounds is price it. As I walked by means of the Nice Quad with its gargoyles and manicured garden, removed from the crowds, I questioned how typically Lewis handed by means of. His second-floor rooms within the New Constructing, the place he lodged, are marked by crimson geraniums rising from a window field.

It was at a 1926 English division college assembly that he met one other Oxford professor, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. The friendship propelled each towards realizing their literary worlds: Center-earth and Narnia.

First impressions weren’t scorching. “No hurt in him,” Lewis wrote of Tolkien after their first assembly. “Solely wants a smack or so.” The 2 quickly bonded over a love of storytelling, myths and language. By 1929, Tolkien was sharing unpublished manuscripts along with his new pal, and Lewis shared his poetry. “I used to be up until 2:30 on Monday,” Lewis wrote in a letter to a pal that December, recounting that he and Tolkien “sat discoursing of the gods and giants and Asgard for 3 hours,” referring to the Nordic mythological realm.

Tolkien, a Catholic, additionally nudged the atheist Lewis towards turning into a believer and a prolific defender of Christianity in his writing.

Lewis, raised Anglican, by his midteens “maintained that God didn’t exist,” in response to his 1955 semi-autobiographical work “Shocked by Pleasure.” His mom’s loss of life from most cancers when he was 9 was his first disillusionment. He wrote within the guide that “all settled happiness, and all that was tranquil and dependable, disappeared from my life.”

Influenced partly by his Oxford mates, Lewis step by step got here to consider in God by the top of the Twenties, however didn’t but think about himself Christian. The shift was catalyzed by a now-fabled after-dinner stroll on Sept. 19, 1931, with Tolkien and the English tutorial Hugo Dyson, the place discuss of poetry, fable and faith bled into the early hours. Lewis declared a change of coronary heart: “I’ve handed on from believing in God to undoubtedly believing in Christ,” he wrote in a letter on Oct. 1, “a protracted night time discuss with Dyson and Tolkien had quite a bit to do with it.”

Christian themes underpinned Lewis’s fiction that adopted. Aslan the Lion, a foremost character within the Narnia sequence, is broadly interpreted as a Jesus determine: He sacrifices himself and is ridiculed, however is later resurrected to avoid wasting the realm.

Lewis’s epiphany-inducing night time stroll was round Addison’s Stroll, a leafy mile-long observe inside Magdalen Faculty. I retraced their steps for 40 minutes, taking in peaceable scenes of the River Cherwell, of timber turning russet, of individuals boating on the water and of a herd of deer in a close-by area. If ever there was a setting for lofty conversations, I believed, Addison’s Stroll felt proper.

Two pubs the place two worlds took form

Late mornings on Tuesdays from 1933 (though some reviews say it may have been earlier) till 1949, Lewis might be discovered on the opposite aspect of Oxford, often on the Eagle and Youngster pub, holding court docket with the Inklings, the casual literary society, almost definitely over a pint or three. Lewis was a founding father of the small tribe, which included Tolkien and the writers Charles Williams and Owen Barfield.

Works in progress, together with drafts from “The Lord of the Rings” and the primary Narnia proofs, have been introduced right here.

Members didn’t shrink back from disagreement. Lewis struggled at instances with Tolkien’s books for all their “Hobbit discuss,” and Tolkien thought Narnia was a haphazard try at mythology, regretting that Narnia and Lewis’s work “ought to stay exterior the vary of my sympathy as a lot of my work was exterior his,” Tolkien wrote in a 1964 letter.

However with out Tolkien and the Inklings, there may by no means have been Lewis the fantasy novelist. Whereas lamenting the state of in style fiction sooner or later in 1936, Lewis mentioned to Tolkien, “Tollers, we want extra tales like your Hobbit — we’ll simply have to put in writing them ourselves,” in response to “The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien,” a set of his correspondence. Quickly after, Lewis — who had beforehand written poetry and Christian defenses — accomplished “Out of the Silent Planet,” the primary guide of what would develop into a well-liked science fiction trilogy.

Lewis wrote of the Inklings to a pal in 1941 that “what I owe all of them is incalculable.” Tolkien, too, was grateful for his or her conferences and Lewis’s friendship. Solely by Lewis’s “help and friendship did I ever battle to the top,” Tolkien wrote in a 1954 letter, shortly after “The Fellowship of the Ring” was printed.

The Eagle and Youngster, which has develop into a pilgrimage website for lovers of Narnia and Center-earth, was shuttered throughout the pandemic and is now for hire. After I visited in 2019, it was the quintessential Oxford pub — low-slung roof, dimly lit, ales as plentiful because the dialog and laughter.

The Lamb and Flag, a watering gap throughout the street that has operated since 1613, hosted the Inklings within the society’s twilight years. The pub additionally closed throughout the pandemic, however a group group — known as the Inklings — rescued it and reopened its doorways in October after a renovation, guaranteeing that Oxford guests can nonetheless clink pints and consider the Inklings’ legacy.

A refuge within the woods

The subsequent morning, beneath grey skies, I got down to the ultimate websites on my tour. A 15-minute taxi experience to the suburb of Risinghurst deposited me earlier than a rambling, two-story brick home often known as the Kilns. This was Lewis’s house from 1930 till his loss of life from kidney failure on Nov. 22, 1963, at 64.

At present, the Kilns is a examine heart operated by the C.S. Lewis Basis and affords excursions by appointment. “Annually we get a whole lot of individuals wanting to go to his house,” mentioned Tyson Rallens, the middle’s director, who met me on the entrance gate.

“Lewis discovered a whole lot of inspiration right here,” Mr. Rallens mentioned as we stood within the kitchen, a radiant Aga range heating the home as it might have performed throughout Lewis’s life. He confirmed me a black-and-white picture of Lewis’s gardener, Fred Paxford, the inspiration for Puddleglum, a loyal but pessimistic character within the Narnia sequence guide “The Silver Chair.”

In “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” the youngsters are despatched to the nation house of a professor to flee the bombing of London, and in actual life, Lewis opened the Kilns to a number of youngsters looking for refuge from the Blitz.

After the home tour, Mr. Rallens recommended I go to Lewis’s backyard, throughout the cul-de-sac from the primary home. At present, it’s the C.S. Lewis Nature Reserve, a sprawling wooded space with a big pond. I used to be amazed by how the reserve swallowed me up with its quiet; I’d have had no thought a freeway was shut.

A girl, bundled up and with a battered copy of “Shocked by Pleasure,” sat on a brick bench overlooking the pond — a seat as soon as a favourite of Lewis’s. When she was gone, I sat there and appeared on the woods and water. I believed, as soon as extra, that had there been snow, the scene earlier than me may simply be Narnia.

The ultimate cease was Lewis’s resting place within the graveyard of Holy Trinity Church, the place Lewis ceaselessly worshiped, close to the Kilns. The church honors him with a stained-glass window depicting Narnia. Guests are welcome inside and on the cemetery grounds. At Lewis’s headstone, amongst auburn leaves, I discovered dry flowers and some handwritten notes tucked beneath pebbles.

One learn, “Thanks for being my information throughout this unusual, wandering time.” I imagined it was from an admirer of Lewis’s Christian writings. In one other, which was extra weathered, I may simply make out the top: “And thanks for the tales.” It was precisely what I’d come to inform Lewis myself.

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