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GREAT ESCAPES: Oxford, England
Golden Sessions
by Ruth A. Hill
If author, Christian apologist and Oxford University don C. S. “Jack” Lewis had lived to see his Narnia tales become not only cherished children’s literature, but also a blockbuster 21st-century film, he would have been astonished.
His was a simple life, as we learned during a walking tour of Lewis sites around Oxford. He didn’t drive a car; took in orphans, animals and houseguests; and gave away half of what he earned. His greatest entertainment was intellectual jousting, especially with friends such as J.R.R. Tolkien, of Lord of the Rings fame.
Around town, Lewis cut the profile of the quintessential professor in a rumpled tweed coat whose pockets had burn holes from his ever-present pipes. Though he had an unassuming demeanor and wasn’t much for small talk, he had many loyal friends.
The storyteller and intellect behind the myths, the magic and the expositions was also often called a “country man.” Yet when he died on November 22, 1963 (the same day John F. Kennedy was assassinated), he left the world a legacy of allegorical literature and apologetics that has only burgeoned in appeal in the years since.
My friend and traveling companion Diane and I are Lewis admirers, so we included a couple of Oxford nights and a walking tour of his home turf during our recent ramble through England’s Cotswolds. Walking in his steps, we gained a better understanding of the man whose words and teachings continue to magnetize fans of all ages.
Our lodgings at Macdonald Eastgate Townhouse Hotel put us inside the contemporary pulse of Oxford’s medieval town-and-gown ambience and next to Magdalen College, where Lewis was elected a Fellow in 1925. He taught medieval and renaissance literature there until 1954. |
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To begin our day tour, guide Terry Bremble recommended we take a taxi from Eastgate over to Headington Quarry, the suburban village neighborhood that was home base for Lewis and his older brother Warren, “Warnie,” from 1930 to 1963. Referred to by the neighbors as “The Professor” and “The Major” in recognition of their academic and military vocations, the brothers were lifelong best friends and seldom seen apart.
Inside the mid-19th-century Holy Trinity Church, the Lewises sat in the same pew for Sunday morning and Evensong worship year after year. Ronald Head, a former vicar of the church, said the brothers attended most church social events, but few in the immediate community were aware of Lewis’s fame. Inspiration for The Screwtape Letters, Head believed, came to Lewis while he was sitting in church during the World War II years. Opposite the Lewis pew are shimmering engraved glass Narnia windows, installed in 1991, and featuring the castle, the lion Aslan, a flying horse and other creatures from the stories.
The brothers’ final resting place is in the churchyard, amid tall pine trees and ivy-covered stone walls. The adjacent graves are identified by simple stone markers that project no fame or notoriety. Shepherding us through the church gate, Terry pointed to The Masons Arms public house across the street. Built in 1872, the watering hole was well-known to the Lewis brothers. Some speculated the two men often left church early in order to enjoy a pint or two on their way home.
The way to The Kilns, the former Lewis home, is a quiet residential street, lined with middle-class brick houses. Rescued from oblivion in the mid-1980s by the California-based C. S. Lewis Foundation, The Kilns serves as residence for visiting Lewis scholars and is open for tours by appointment. Teresa Kipp, the American housekeeper in residence, welcomed us and showed us around the modest rooms where Jack, his wife Joy, her two sons Douglas and David, Warnie, a housekeeper and a gardener/handyman lived with a ginger cat and shaggy poodle. Built in 1922, the house was jointly purchased in 1930 by the Lewis brothers. After Joy died in 1960, Jack lived on in the house until his death in 1963, as did Warnie, who outlived his younger brother by ten years. |
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While looking at the rooms, we spotted a wardrobe in the upstairs hallway, a typewriter that Warnie used to answer Jack’s correspondence and a few of Jack’s pipes on a sideboard. “When Lewis lived,” Kipp told us as we stood before the expansive window in the downstairs study, “the ceiling and walls in this room were coated with black residue from pipe smoke. Stacks of books and papers made it difficult to walk around. Blackout curtains from the war hung on the windows.” It was clearly a bachelor’s enclave, she said–until Joy came along and made it more livable. “Many who knew Lewis say his décor was his imagination,” said Kipp, “and there was probably nowhere on this property that his imagination took flight more than it did on the lake and woodlands to the rear of the house.” Indeed, many have speculated that the Narnia tales were born on those waters.
Dodging the ever-present cyclists in Oxford’s center city, we made our way into some of the university’s awe-inspiring architectural treasures. While the city has a contemporary beat, its façade is medieval and unique, and its ancient halls, walls, gardens and towers captivated us. Magdalen College’s pastoral, riverside setting outside the original city gates features the peaceful Addison’s Walk, which ends in front of a stone inscribed with a Lewis poem, “What the Bird Said Early in the Year.” The college’s great stone bell tower, built in the late 15th century, is one of Oxford’s most prominent skyline features at 144 feet high.
University College, founded in 1249, is Oxford’s oldest center of learning. Lewis left his native Belfast and entered it in 1917 on a scholarship. He listened to lectures in the college’s Divinity School, a stunning 15th-century medieval building whose ceiling consists of elaborate Gothic fan vaulting. Another Lewis haunt, the adjacent Bodleian Library, is one of the world’s greatest repositories of medieval literature, local history and early printing.
Making our way down bustling St. Giles Street, we encountered the Eagle and Child, the favored watering hole for The Inklings, Lewis’s famous group of literary friends. Lewis wrote of their “golden sessions” beside a blazing fire in the Rabbit Room. On a wall near the bar is a 1949 note to the landlord from the Inklings stating that they have drunk to his health.
The Tourist Information Centre, Oxford, arranges Lewis walking tours (www.visitoxford.org). Independent visits to The Kilns are by appointment on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Visit www.cslewis.org to make a reservation. |
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