| Dear Mr. Lewis
The Narnia Author and His Young
Readers
The mental picture is irresistible, that of C.S. Lewis, the
redoubtable scholar, the Christian apologist, and one of the
world’s most widely read authors, settled before the
fire, chuckling over Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind
in the Willows. As an adult, Lewis still read children’s
books, and it wasn’t until he was into his 20s that
he first discovered the antics of Mr. Toad and friends.
No matter how erudite his writings for adults, the author
of The Chronicles of Narnia could pen one of the
most popular children’s literary series of all time
precisely because he refused to squelch the child inside.
Though he was a bachelor for much of his life and never fathered
children of his own, Lewis did not avoid encounters with other
people’s children. He took them into his confidence,
treated them as equals, and relished their insights. He refused
to call them “kids,” a term he considered condescending.
“Once in a hotel dining-room,” wrote Lewis, “I
said, rather too loudly, ‘I loathe prunes.’ ‘So
do I,’ came an unexpected six-year-old voice from another
table. Sympathy was instantaneous. Neither of us thought it
funny. We both knew that prunes are far too nasty to be funny.
That is the proper meeting between man and child as independent
personalities.”
His appreciation of children, Lewis once said, began when
“the war brought them to me.” The Reverend Tom
Honey, current vicar of the church Lewis attended in Headington
Quarry outside of Oxford, England, explains: “Lewis
and his household welcomed evacuee children to live at his
home, The Kilns, during the Second World War. The children
were often from poor families, whose homes were in danger
from bombs during the London Blitz. He indulged these children,
even when his adopted mother, Mrs. Moore, was less inclined
to generosity.”
Evacuee Patricia Heidelberger would look back on her years
at The Kilns as “two of the happiest of my school life.”
“My first impression of C.S. Lewis was that of a shabbily
clad, rather portly gentleman, whom I took to be the gardener
and told him so,” she later wrote in a letter to Clyde
Kilby, founder of the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College.
“He roared — boomed! — with laughter. …
Unlike most evacuees, we were comfortable, we were well fed
— I grew fat! — and we seemed to be loved. I enjoyed
the scholarly sessions in the den; I borrowed books; I learned
about Tolkien and the Inklings. I think [we] were extremely
fortunate, and more than a little spoiled.”
The author’s largesse extended to local children as
well. “He tried to teach a young man working as a houseboy
how to read,” says Honey. “Even though this attempt
eventually ended in failure, he spent many hours trying. And
he allowed the boys of the neighborhood to swim in the pond
on the house grounds.”
Lewis was in his late 50s when he married Joy Davidman Gresham
and became stepfather to two young boys, Douglas and David
Gresham. Douglas, the younger, retains a fond childhood memory
of Lewis asking him for a ride across the pond in the boy’s
pride and joy, a wooden kayak. Even though Lewis was not known
for his sense of balance, he nonetheless stepped aboard the
unstable little vessel. “Thanks, Doug,” he said,
safe on the other side. “I can see why you’re
so fond of her. She’s a wonderful craft.” Gresham
recounts the story in Lenten Lands, where he writes,
“Jack risked a ducking in a cold lake simply to please
a rather too cocksure boy because he knew that in so doing
he would make both me and Mother very happy.”
Lewis, who as a child renamed himself Jack, openly confided
in young readers who sent him letters by the thousands. He
wrote that he didn’t drive cars because “I’m
no good at any sort of machine.” And while he had mastered
a variety of literary styles, he confessed that he couldn’t
“write a play to save my life.”
Famously self-deprecating, Lewis wrote to a class of fifth
graders in Maryland that he was “tall, fat, rather bald,
red-faced, double-chinned, black-haired, have a deep voice,
and wear glasses for reading.” Nor did he flatter his
correspondents, but was hearty with commendation and gentle
with criticism. “The content of the poem is good,”
he wrote one budding bard, “but the verse ‘creaks’
a bit!"
So important to him were the letters he received that Lewis
would awaken before dawn to read them and compose replies
by noon. One American girl received 28 encouraging letters
from Lewis over nearly two decades. On the day he died, Lewis
spent part of the morning answering letters.
The results of his winning way with children span the generations.
The seven books of Narnia have sold more than 100
million copies in 30 languages, nearly 20 million in the last
10 years alone. The books have been adapted for stage, TV,
and now the movie screen. So compelling is the storyteller’s
empathy and ability to connect with his readers that adolescent
Narnia fans continue to write to Lewis 42 years after
his death. This past summer, a young reader from an elementary
school in Toronto, Canada, wrote a letter delivered to The
Kilns: “Dear C.S. Lewis … Do you know what interests
me of all your books? It is the mysteries. I really like The
Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. When you wrote ‘Aslan
is near’ in quotation marks … it makes me think
something good is going to happen.”
Lewis’ own keen mind took flight at an early age. Charmed
by the myths and ancient legends told to them by their nurse,
Jack and his brother, Warnie, used to pass many a sodden afternoon
in Belfast, Ireland, sitting inside their grandfather’s
old wardrobe. There in the dark among the coats, Jack spun
fantastic stories about “Animal Land,” a magical
realm filled with talking animals. The wardrobe itself later
became the magical point of literary entry into the land of
Narnia.
Jack was gifted with an imagination that endowed even a description
of his boyhood home with overtones of make-believe: “I
am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs
indoor silences, attics explored in solitude, distant noises
of gurgling cisterns and pipes, and the noise of wind under
the tiles.”
It was, as well, a house piled high with “endless books.”
As a child, he feasted on Treasure Island, Beatrix
Potter’s Squirrel Nutkin, and The Secret
Garden. As a teenager, he fell under the spell of Scottish
author George MacDonald, author of The Princess and the
Goblin and a number of adult fantasies. “In a very
real sense,” said Lewis, “people who have read
good literature have lived more than people who cannot or
will not read.” And books, especially fiction, helped
bridge times of sorrow and anxiety in the boy Jack’s
life. His mother, to whom he was very close, died when he
was 9, and his subsequent boarding school years were among
the most miserable of his life. Good stories helped cushion
the pain.
All of these life experiences not only shaped his character
but also cemented in Lewis the power of story to comfort and
inspire. When four youngsters came to live at The Kilns during
the WWII London bombings, Lewis was surprised at how few imaginative
stories they knew. He would eventually write such a tale himself:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, dedicated to
one of his godchildren, Lucy Barfield. It arguably became
the most popular children’s book of the 20th century.
One youthful recipient of a letter from The Lion, the
Witch and the Wardrobe’s author was Patricia Mackey.
In 1960, at age 13, she wrote Lewis with several questions
about the Narnia series. Her father, Aidan, of Bedford,
England, remembers it well: “Although at the height
of his fame, grossly overworked, and with the physical act
of writing becoming difficult, Lewis replied in detail, point
by point, with no trace of condescension. That, I believe,
tells us a great deal about that man’s character and
goodness.” Three years later, Patricia again wrote Lewis,
whose faithful response began, “Your letter was cheering
… ”
Kind to the end, Lewis paid children respect as he did adults
by challenging them to examine more closely their ideas and
beliefs. But perhaps he was never a more effective Christian
witness than when answering their questions and putting their
hearts at ease. Winner of the Carnegie Medal, England’s
highest honor for children’s literature, Lewis proved
it was possible to sell millions of books worldwide while
setting out simply to nurture the imaginations and souls of
his readers.
— BY clint kelly
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