The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (85 page)

“a self-caressing luxury”: Lewis,
Surprised by Joy
, 168.

“a particular hill walk”: Ibid., 166.

“to care for almost nothing but the gods and heroes”: Ibid., 174.

“the passion for the Occult”: Ibid., 60.

“a superabundance of mercy”: Ibid., 178. March 4, 1916, is the date indicated in Lewis’s letter of March 7, 1916, to Arthur (Lewis,
Collected Letters,
vol. 1, 169). But Lewis places this event in October in
Surprised by Joy
.

“bright shadow … Holiness”: Lewis,
Surprised by Joy
, 179.

“transforming all common things … baptized”: Ibid., 181.

“its thought is not daring”: T. S. Eliot on Arthur Clutton-Brock’s
The Ultimate Belief
, quoted in Donald J. Childs,
T. S. Eliot: Mystic, Son, and Lover
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 63.

“god-imposed … an object”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 1, 343.

“Most people in England”: Arthur Clutton-Brock,
The Ultimate Belief
(New York: E. P. Dutton, 1916), 20.

highbrows: For an apposite portrait of the sort of highbrow Lewis has in mind, see Ian Hay (pseudonym for John Hay Beith),
The Lighter Side of School Life
(Edinburgh: Ballantyne Press, 1914), 107–108:

Then comes the Super-Intellectual—the “Highbrow.” He is a fish out of the water with a vengeance, but he does exist at school—somehow. He congregates in places of refuge with others of the faith; and they discuss the English Review, and mysterious individuals who are only referred to by their initials—as G. B. S. and G. K. C. Sometimes he initiates these discussions because they really interest him, but more often, it is to be feared, because they make him feel superior and grown-up. Somewhere in the school grounds certain youthful schoolmates of his, inspired by precisely similar motives but with different methods of procedure, are sitting in the centre of a rhododendron bush smoking cigarettes. In each case the idea is the same—namely, a hankering after meats which are not for babes. But the smoker puts on no side about his achievements, whereas the “highbrow” does. He loathes the vulgar herd and holds it aloof. He does not inform the vulgar herd of this fact, but he confides it to the other highbrows, and they applaud his discrimination. Intellectual snobbery is a rare thing among boys, and therefore difficult to account for. Perhaps the pose is a form of reaction. It is comforting, for instance, after you have been compelled to dance the can-can in your pyjamas for the delectation of the Lower Dormitory, to foregather next morning with a few kindred spirits and discourse pityingly and scathingly upon the gross philistinism of the lower middle classes. No, the lot of the
æ
sthete at school is not altogether a happy one, but possibly his tribulations are not without a certain beneficent effect. When he goes up to Oxford or Cambridge he will speedily find that in the tolerant atmosphere of those intellectual centres the prig is not merely permitted to walk the earth but to flourish like the green bay-tree …

See also Lewis’s November 4, 1917, letter to Arthur (Lewis,
Collected Letters,
vol. 1, 342).

“immediate conquest … God is”: Lewis,
Surprised by Joy
, 190–91.

“to relish energy”: Ibid., 198.

“the Junior Common Room”: Lewis,
Collected Letters,
vol. 1, 428.

“household gods”: Ibid., 447.

“After breakfast I work”: Ibid., 425.

“most of them vile”: Lewis,
All My Road Before Me
, 252–53.

“She is old enough to be his mother … The daily letter business”: “Lewis Family Papers” VI: 129, quoted by Walter Hooper in Lewis
, Collected Letters,
vol. 1, 451–52.

“fast becoming unbearable”: Lewis
, Collected Letters,
vol. 1, 455.

“Haven’t heard from my esteemed parent”: Ibid., 454.

“On 6 August he deceived me”: “Lewis Family Papers” VI: 167, quoted in Lewis
, Collected Letters,
vol. 1, 462. There followed a series of letters in which Lewis attempted to justify himself and to make peace.

“the blackest chapter of my life”: Quoted in A. N. Wilson,
C. S. Lewis
, 68, from Bodleian Library Ms. Fas.d.264, f.140.

“a strange fellow … right up our tree”: Leo Baker, “Near the Beginning,” in Como,
C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table
, 3.

“where everyone … I like and admire him”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 1, 495.

“amateur disciple in mysticism … presently I could hardly see anything else”: Ibid., 472–73.

“in every way the best person”: Ibid., 488.

“counterblast”: Ibid., 492. The Vorticist movement takes its name from the short-lived journal
Blast: The Review of the Great English Vortex
(only two issues appeared, in 1914 and 1915), founded by Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound as a showcase and manifesto for modernist poetry and art.

“I was interested in contemporary events … You take too many things for granted”: Baker, “Near the Beginning,” 4.

“some sort of God”: Lewis
, Collected Letters,
vol. 1, 509.

“Were you much frightened in France?”: Baker, “Near the Beginning,” 6.

“with deep and uncontrollable hatred”: Ibid., 4.

“to try and pick up some of the old links”: Lewis,
Collected Letters,
vol. 2, 161.

“we are all young once”: Walter Hooper, preface to Lewis,
Spirits in Bondage
, xi.

“our b
____
y lyrical poet”: Lewis,
Collected Letters,
vol. 1, 400.

“I was at this time living”: Lewis,
Surprised by Joy
, 115.

“matter’s great enemy”: Lewis,
Collected Letters,
vol. 1, 374.

“driven and hurt beyond bearing … Country of Dreams!”: C. S. Lewis, “Death in Battle,”
Spirits in Bondage
, 74–75.

“considered opinion of his own youth”: Warnie quoted in Walter Hooper, preface to
Spirits in Bondage
, xxvii.

“Beyond the western ocean’s glow”: Lewis, “Ballade Mystique,”
Spirits in Bondage
, 54.

“I am the flower … I am the spider”: Lewis, “Satan Speaks,”
Spirits in Bondage
, 3.

“Come let us curse our Master”: Lewis, “De Profundis,”
Spirits in Bondage
, 20. Compare Housman: “We for a certainty are not the first / Have sat in taverns while the tempest hurled / Their hopeful plans to emptiness, and cursed / Whatever brute and blackguard made the world.” A. E. Housman, “The chestnut casts his flambeaux,” in
Last Poems
(1922).

“the curse against God”: G. K. Chesterton, “The Defendant,”
The Defendant
(New York: Dodd, Mead, 1902), 2.

“But lo!, I am grown wiser”: Lewis, “Ode for New Year’s Day,”
Spirits in Bondage
, 14.

“Thank God that there are solid folk”: Lewis, “In Praise of Solid People,”
Spirits in Bondage
, 42.

“Can it be true”: Lewis, “The Ass,”
Spirits in Bondage
, 51–52.

“emotional glooming … the thought, when closed with”: quoted in Hooper,
C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide
, 144.

“purely academic … he is young”: letters between Warnie and Albert in “Lewis Family Papers” VI: 98, quoted by Walter Hooper in Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 1, 443, note 44.

“I have been moved”: Lewis,
Collected Letters,
vol. 1, 569.

“I am glad to have met Mrs. M”: W. H. Lewis,
Brothers and Friends
, 10, 12–13.

“notably domineering”: Warren Lewis, “Memoir of C. S. Lewis,” 33.

“he is as good as an extra maid”: Ibid., 37.

“the Second Friend … has read all the right books”: Lewis,
Surprised by Joy
, 199–200.

5. “WORDS HAVE A SOUL”

“The good are befriended”: Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Compensation.”

“every word was once a poem”: Emerson, “The Poet.” Barfield’s library included several books annotated by him, including an edition of Emerson’s essays; for details, see the Marion E. Wade Center website:
www.wheaton.edu/~/media/Files/Centers-and-Institutes/Wade-Center/RR-Docs/Non-archive%20Listings/Barfield_Library.pdf
(accessed July 13, 2014).

“I remember that awfully well”: Simon Blaxland–de Lange
, Owen Barfield: Romanticism Come of Age, A Biography
(Forest Row, UK: Temple Lodge, 2006), 12.

“always surrounded with music”: Shirley Sugerman, “A Conversation with Owen Barfield,”
Evolution of Consciousness: Studies in Polarity
(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1976), 4.

“I chalked on the wall”: Blaxland–de Lange,
Owen Barfield
, 12.

“
Cato, octoginta annos natus
 … the actual moment”: Ibid., 28.

“a great shadow … couldn’t say anything”: Ibid., 13.

“Sleep has a brother”: Ibid., 13.

“I was rather well developed”: Ibid., 22.

“Poetry … had the power to change one’s consciousness”: Barfield, “Owen Barfield and the Origin of Language,”
Towards
1, no. 1 (June 1978): 3.
Towards
was founded by the Waldorf educator Clifford Monks in 1977 as “a magazine for all who are striving for clarity and direction in meeting today’s challenges. It exists to explore and make better known the work of Owen Barfield, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Wolfgang von Goethe, Rudolf Steiner, and related authors. Implicit and explicit in their work are achievements and goals which offer profound insight, guidance, and hope for all who are struggling with the essential challenges of modern life.”

“the sort of thing my mind was full of”: Blaxland–de Lange,
Owen Barfield
, 24.

“a vivid experience … It was very strong”: Ibid., 22.

“It was a kind of new world … delightful”: Ibid., 23.

“the idea of love … being caged in the materialism of the age”: Ibid., 20.

“I have been seeing practically no-one”: Ibid., 299.

“pondering the problem of existence … acute depression”: Ibid., 301.

“Sophia experience … suddenly one evening”: Ibid., 20.

“would be able to find all the beauty”: Ibid., 20.

“led into the whole shape and development”: Ibid., 21.

“Hey-diddle-diddle … the poet’s material”: Owen Barfield, “Form in Poetry,”
New Statesman
(August 7, 1920), 501–502.

“words have a soul … grows subtler and subtler”: Owen Barfield, “‘Ruin,’”
The London Mercury
7 (December 1922): 164–70.

“Steiner had obviously forgotten volumes more”: Owen Barfield, introduction to
Romanticism Comes of Age
(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1967), 13.

“stature … we observe, actually beginning to occur, the transition”: Owen Barfield, “Introducing Rudolf Steiner,”
Towards
2, no. 4 (Fall–Winter 1983): 42–44.

“The essence of Steiner’s teachings”: Astrid Diener,
The Role of Imagination in Culture and Society: Owen Barfield’s Early Work
, Appendix: “An Interview with Owen Barfield” (Glienicke, Berlin: Galda
+
Wilch Verlag,
Leipzig Explorations in Literature and Culture
6, 2002), 186–87.

“il maestro”
: Owen Barfield,
Romanticism Comes of Age
, 1st ed. (London: Anthroposophical Publishing, 1944), 11.

“We went at our talk like a dogfight”: Lewis diary entry January 26, 1923, in W. H. Lewis,
Letters of C. S. Lewis,
179.

“a reputation among my own friends of being argumentative … Most people—here, especially, Lewis was different—are apt to flinch at the verbal aggression”: Owen Barfield,
Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis
, ed. G. B. Tennyson (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 127.

“a summoned voice”: Cecil Harwood,
The Voice of Cecil Harwood: A Miscellany
, ed. Owen Barfield (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1979), 8.

“We got into conversation on fancy and imagination”: Lewis,
All My Road Before Me,
59–60. Lewis and Barfield called wish-fulfilling fantasies “Christina Dreams” after Christina Pontifex in Samuel Butler’s
The Way of All Flesh.

“felt change of consciousness”: Blaxland–de Lange,
Owen Barfield
, 260.

“in which with prodigality [Barfield] squirts out the most suggestive ideas”: Lewis,
All My Road Before Me
, 275.

“one of the best new fairy stories”: “Stories for Little Children,”
The Times Literary Supplement
1245 (November 26, 1925): 811.

“I lent the
Silver Trumpet
to Tolkien”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 198. See Blaxland–de Lange,
Owen Barfield
, 171–72.

“Steiner seems to be a sort of panpsychist”: Quoted by Walter Hooper in “The ‘Great War’ Letters,” appendix to C. S. Lewis,
The Collected Letters,
vol. 3:
Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy, 1950–1963
, ed. Walter Hooper (New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 1596.

“I was hideously shocked”: Lewis,
Surprised by Joy
, 206.

“an almost incessant disputation … the ‘Great War’”: Ibid., 207. For an in-depth study, see Lionel Adey,
C. S. Lewis’ ‘Great War’ with Owen Barfield
(Wigton, UK: Ink Books, 2002).

“we used to foregather”: Nevill Coghill, “The Approach to English,” in
Light on C. S. Lewis
, ed. Jocelyn Gibb (New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1965), 54–55.

Clivi Hamiltonis Summae Metaphysices … Commentarium in Tractatum De Toto et Parte
: From the unpublished “Great War” material in the manuscript collections of the Marion E. Wade Center. C. S. Lewis, MS
Clivi Hamiltonis Summae Metaphysices Contra Anthroposophos Libri II
[November 1928–1929], the Marion E. Wade Center CSL / MS-29 / X. C. S. Lewis, MS [“De Bono et Malo”] [1930], the Marion E. Wade Center CSL / MS-34 / X. C. S. Lewis, “Commentarium in Tractatum
De Toto et Parte
” [1931], the Marion E. Wade Center CSL / MS-30. Owen Barfield, MS “Replicit Anthroposophus Barfieldus” and “Autem” [1929], the Marion E. Wade Center, OB / MS-101 / X. Owen Barfield, MS
De Toto et Parte
(rough draft) [1930], the Marion E. Wade Center, OB / MS-7; MS
De Toto et Parte
[1930], the Marion E. Wade Center, OB / MS-8 / X.