A Walk around C. S. Lewis's Oxford

Hello, my name is Simon Horrigan, and I'm a tutor in English at Maudlin College in Oxford, and I'm going to take you on a tour of C.S. Lewis Oxford. We're going to start our tour on the high street at the entrance to maudlin college, although this isn't where C.S. Lewis, his Oxford career began. It's the place that he's most clearly linked with. The Shadowlands film that tells the story of his marriage to the writer.

Joy Davidson is set in Maudlin. Even though by then, Lewis had actually moved to Cambridge. It's that maudlin that he got his first job as a tutorial fellow in English and where he spent nearly 30 years. Entering the college through the gate beside the Great Tower, we find ourselves in St. John's quite. Opposite is the president's lodgings. Which is where Louis was admitted to the Fellowship of Modelling in 1925. In a ceremony that remains unchanged today.

Having sworn to uphold the statutes of the college, Lewis shook hands with all of the assembled fellows who wished him joy. The choice of words seems significant, given Lewis's later use of it in his autobiography titled Surprised by Joy, where it refers to a specific kind of longing that left him unsatisfied and which ultimately led to his conversion to Christianity. But also, given his later relationship with Joy Davidson.

Turning into the cloisters, we passed the college chapel on my right, where Louis attended daily services following his conversion. There's a plaque identifying his usual seat. Coming out of the cloisters, we're confronted by the magnificent neo Georgian stone building that overlooks the deer park, known as the new building, in which Lewis had a set of rooms on the second floor of Staircase three.

The middle of the building, as you face it. It was in those rooms that the inklings met on a Thursday night. Reading extracts from their works in progress. During those meetings, Lewis read aloud from his first work of Christian apologetics. The problem of pain. And the first of his science fiction trilogy Out of the Silent Planet. It was also here that Louis converted to Judaism as memorably described in surprise by joy, where he writes.

You must picture me alone in that room in maudlin night after night feeling. Whenever my mind lifted, even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. His later conversion from Thayer's into Christianity was encouraged by a conversation with two of his friends

and fellow inklings J.R.R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson during and after dinner stroll around Addison's walk. One of Lewis's favourite books that takes a circular route around the college's water meadow. If we follow that path now along the river, it brings us to Holywell Ford. Where there's a plaque with a poem by Lewis called What the Bird said early in the year, which is set on Addison's walk.

Tracing all steps back to the Porter's lodge, we emerge on the high street again, heading west towards the city centre. On our left, we pass the East Gate Hotel. It was in the bar of this hotel, but Lewis and Tolkien would meet for a drink on Monday mornings, reading poetry to each other, swapping gossip or just indulging in bawdy puns. It was also here that Louis first met Joey Davidson.

Joey had begun writing to Lois after reading his apologetic books and then came to England in the hope of meeting him in person. Continuing down the high street brings us past the examination schools. Well, Louis lectured to large audiences of eager undergraduates. His hugely popular introductory lectures on mediaeval and Renaissance literature can be read in the posthumously published book The Discarded Image.

Further along, we come to University College, affectionately known as UNIV, which is where Lewis spent his undergraduate years. Lewis came up to UNIV and Trinity to the summit of 1916, an unusual time to begin. Since this is traditionally the end of the academic year. But of course, this was not a normal time to start a university career. There were very few students in residence, as most were in action in France.

Indeed, Lewis was quickly transferred to Keeble College. Which had been requisitioned by the army. Where he began military training prior to being sent to the Western Front. When he was not busy training, Lewis studied for the university's entrance exams, known as response tions in Latin, Greek and maths. While his Latin and Greek were up to scratch, the West struggled in maths and so received instruction from a tutor at Hertford College. But this didn't stop him failing the exam miserably.

It was fortunate for Lewis that the university introduced an exemption for soldiers returning from action. Well, he may never have become a student at Oxford. Lewis was sent to the Western Front in 1917, where he fought in the Somerset Light Infantry. He was wounded in April 1918 and sent back to England to convalesce. He was finally discharged from hospital and demobilised from the army in December of 1918. Returning home to Ireland for Christmas and then back to Oxford in January of 1919.

To recommence his studies. Most of Lewis's fellow students were not so lucky. Those who had survived the war, many of them found themselves psychologically unable to return to Oxford.

Lewis dealt with the trauma by immersing himself in his studies. His degree was in literary human race, which literally means more humane letters. Essentially, it's the study of the languages, literature, history and philosophy of the classical world. At the end of his first year, Lewis sat the exams known as moderation, and he was awarded a first. At the end of the third year, he sat exams for the final on his school, receiving another first.

This achievement is all the more remarkable, given that his lifestyle was not that of a typical undergraduate student. During this time, Lewis was looking after the mother of his army friend Paddy Moore, who had been killed in action, and her daughter Maureen, leading a peripatetic life moving between various unsuitable residences in Haddington, a village on the outskirts of the city.

Armed with his double first, Louis looked around for academic employment, applying for teaching positions in philosophy, but without any success. His tutor suggested he would improve his chances if he spent a further year studying for another degree. This time in the English language and literature. In the 1920s, the Oxford English course was heavily focussed on the language and literature of the Middle Ages. One of Lewis's great passions.

Although he was rather snippy about the people who studied English compared to those who read classics, Lewis took up this suggestion. And in 1923, he graduated with yet another first. After another round of failed job applications, Lewis was offered a temporary teaching position at Univ. Filling in for his philosophy tutor who was spending the year teaching in the states. In nineteen twenty five, they successfully applied for the post of tutor in English at Maudlin.

The financial security this position gave him enabled Lois and Mrs. Moore to purchase a house in Haddington called the Kilns in 1930. And it was here that Lewis lived until his death in 1963. The House is open to visitors today and has been kept as it would have looked during Lewis's day. Although none of the furnishings or decoration are original, including the yellow nicotine stains on the ceiling.

If we continue further down the high street, we passed the University Church of St Mary, the Virgin. Well, Lewis gave his famous sermon, the weight of glory in 1941. Pausing at the side entrance to the church in St. Mary's passage, we can see the doorway that has given rise to many stories about the origins of Narnia.

Here we find two carved phones said to be the inspiration for Mr Thomas above a doorway with a carving of a face surrounded by foliage taken to be that of a lion with a shaggy mane. Beside the door, there is a Victorian lamp post. The story goes that one snowy night. Lewis came out of the church through this door and found himself confronted by a lamppost, a phone and the lion. Giving him all the ingredients of the first of The Narnia Chronicles, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

The problem with this attractive claim is that Louis himself offered an alternative one. According to Lewis, the story began with pictures that he had been seeing in his head since his teens. One of a thorn in a snowy wood carrying parcels, another of a witch on a sleigh. It was in his 40s that he decided it was finally time to see if he could write a story about them. And at the same time, he says he found himself dreaming about lions. And so, as he puts it, Aslan bounded in.

This reminds us that while Lewis was no doubt influenced by the Oxford in which he spent most of his adult life. His fictional writings are primarily works of imagination. But this hasn't stopped people trying to identify real life locations and influences. There are rival lampposts laying claim to be the model for the one that shines in London, based in Cambridge, London and Belfast. The wardrobe from the Lewis family home of Little Leigh in the Belfast suburbs built by Lewis, his grandfather.

Now resides in a museum. Wheaton College outside Chicago. But it's claimed to be the inspiration behind Lucy's portal into Narnia is somewhat debateable. This wardrobe doesn't have a looking glass built into the door, which is specifically mentioned in the story. Returning to the high street, we passed the motor in which is where Louis first met the poet T.S. Eliot. Who endeared himself to Louis by observing how much older he appeared in person.

Leading to a rather frosty tea party. Arriving at the end of the high street, we turn right into corn market and then keep going north up St. Giles, as far as the famous Eagle and child pub, were left. This pub, known to the inklings as the bird and baby was the location of that Tuesday lunchtime drinking sessions. The group was quite informal, there was no strict membership and no minutes or records were made of their discussions.

As well as Lewis and Tolkien, it included other members of the English faculty like Lord David Cecil, Friends and fellow writers like Owen Barfield and Charles Williams. Lewis's brother Warnie, who came to live with Lewis at the kilns after retiring from the army in 1932 and Lewis is Dr Robert Havard. Name inklings was borrowed from that of an undergraduate reading Rupert unit that Lewis had attended.

Tolkien described it as a pleasantly ingenious pun, suggesting people with vague or half formed intonations and ideas, plus those who dabble in ink. Tolkien's major contribution to the inklings was, of course, the vast project to write a sequel to The Hobbit. What became The Lord of the Rings finally published in three volumes between 1954 and 1955. Charles Williams, best known for his fantasy thrillers, read from his novel All Hallows Eve.

David Cecil offered updates from his biographical writings. While warning, Lewis read from his work on French history. This isn't the final stop on our journey. A few doors down, St Giles, we find number 42 now a dental practise, but in 1956, the registry office where Louis and Joy Davidson were married. This was a marriage of convenience intended to allow Joy to become a British citizen and remain in England with her two sons. And so avoid having to return to the states to an unhappy marriage.

But shortly after their wedding, Joy discovered that she had terminal cancer. This sudden diagnosis prompted Louis to recognise the depth of his feelings for her, leading him to propose a full Christian marriage. Which was held at her hospital bed in 1957. Thanks to the cancer going into remission for a time, the couple were able to enjoy several years of marriage visiting Ireland and Greece before she died in 1960.

Nurse's relationship with Julie Davidson was one reason for a cooling in his friendship with Tolkien. Another was Lewis's devotion to Charles Williams, who joined the inklings when staff of the Oxford University Press moved from London to Oxford during the war. Williams wrote to Lewis full of praise for his first scholarly work, The Allegory of Love. The Study of mediaeval allegorical poetry while Lewis was a great admirer of Williams's novel The Place of the Lion.

Tolkien rather resented the way that Lewis brought Williams along to their meetings at the East Gate and as a committed philologist, one who studies the history of languages, he didn't share their more literary interests. In 1945, Williams was rushed into hospital for an emergency operation. Lewis called into the Radcliffe Infirmary just a little further north Up St. Giles to visit him on his way to a meeting of the inklings of the eagle and child,

only to discover that Williams had died. Lewis was shattered by the loss, the inklings would never be the same again. Williams is buried in Oxford's Holywell cemetery next to St Christchurch, the end of Long Wall Street, along with another inkling Hugo Dyson. In 1954, the U.S. was invited to apply for a new chair of mediaeval and Renaissance literature at the University of Cambridge.

He initially dismissed the idea since he couldn't imagine uprooting his life and family at the kilns and moving to Cambridge. It was only when Tolkien intervened, pointing out that it would be possible to commute between the two cities that Lewis was willing to be considered. He was unanimously elected to a position that he held until his retirement, prompted by ill health in 1963.

When asked which Cambridge college he would like to be associated with, Lewis chose Maudlin since he didn't want to confuse the celestial civil service by switching his allegiance to a different saint. But despite spending those nine years at Cambridge, the continues to be associated with Oxford. Today. As witnessed by the huge numbers of tourists who flock to the city in search of Lewis and his legacy.