MEETING C. S. LEWIS

I was an English major at the University of Redlands in California when I first sampled a book by a man I had never heard of before, C. S. Lewis. I was entranced. A few weeks later, when I was invited to do an honors project in the field of English, I chose Lewis for my subject and plunged in. I began to read everything by and about him in the Los Angeles Public Library, to scour used book shops, and to order his new books from the department store in Redlands.

I was bewildered when The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe arrived and turned out to be a children's book. I walked all the way back to campus with it, collapsed on my bed to cool off, and entered Narnia for the first time. In a way, I never got out. In the following months I wrote a thesis showing that all of Lewis's major beliefs were present in his brand new series of Narnian fantasies for children.

I was working part-time in the cafeteria for seventy-five cents an hour and had no hopes of getting to England, but I read about a summer course at the University of London and applied for a scholarship. As soon as I got word that I had won, I wrote to C. S. Lewis for the first time--telling him that I had been studying his work for a year and a half and asking if I could hear him lecture or meet him. The letter reached him the morning after his secret registry-office marriage to Joy Gresham, and he replied immediately.

I graduated in June and took the train to Wheaton College in Illinois, where I had been invited to serve on a panel at the first Christianity and Literature conference. There I encountered Lewis's friend Chad Walsh, but it was Clyde and Martha Kilby who befriended me. Dr. Kilby was surprised that Lewis was willing to meet me, because he was said to be a woman hater. The previous year, Dr. Kilby had gone to meet Lewis and had left Martha out in the car for fear that her presence would offend the misogynistic Lewis.

I spent two weeks crossing the Atlantic on an ocean liner, economy class, feeling seasick all the way. As soon as I got to England I wrote to C. S. Lewis, and his answer came soon.

On July 20 I took the train to Oxford, left my little bag in a cheap hotel room, and set off for the Royal Oxford. As I approached, however, panic set in and my steps lagged. I had no idea how to meet a stranger in a lobby. I didn't even know what the man looked like!

Those who have seen the 1994 movie "Shadowlands" saw Debra Winger playing Joy Gresham in that very situation. The film portrayed Lewis as such a shy, socially inept man that Joy had to announce her presence to the hotel lobby at large in order to get his attention. That is the opposite of the real C. S. Lewis.

As soon as I stepped inside after pushing the heavy door open (heavy with my trepidation, no doubt), a bulky, ruddy, balding man sprang up from one of the sofas and greeted me from across the room: "Miss Stillwell?!" He gestured for me to come and sit beside him.

I was so thrilled to find myself sitting next to C. S. Lewis that I almost fainted and fell on the floor. That would have been a double catastrophe: he would have been disconcerted, and I would have lost my only chance to meet him. Fortunately, my head cleared just before I passed out.

The first thing Lewis did was to pull out a packet of cigarettes and offer me one. To my chagrin, the first words I ever said to Lewis had to be, "No thank you, I don't smoke." That is the first and only time I have regretted being a non-smoker. But to my immense relief, as Lewis lit up he said "Good! Never start, because once you start you can't quit. I wish I had never started."

I told him I was glad that he would see me, because he was said to be a woman-hater who avoided women altogether. At that he boomed with laughter. Didn't they know, he exclaimed, that he had always taught women as well as men? From there on the conversation was full of fun, but I had one more problem ahead.

The tea tray that Lewis ordered held a platter of breads and cookies, a big pot of tea, a pitcher of milk, and of course cups and saucers and spoons. I knew the British had a way of pouring tea and milk simultaneously, but I did not know how it was done. To my dismay, Lewis asked me to serve and went on talking. I lifted the tea and held it aloft for a very long time while we chatted. The pot got heavier and heavier, and I have no recollection of how I finally muddled through. But the next time I read Out of the Silent Planet the scene where the villain held a beverage aloft instead of pouring it leapt off page eleven at me: "Ransom, who was very thirsty indeed by now, observed that his host was one of those irritating people who forget to use their hands when they begin talking." At the time, Lewis did not show a flicker of irritation.

Lewis was extremely easy to talk with. We soon learned that we had something in common -- a love for the surf. When he told me how much he enjoyed the surf in Ireland, I knew he would love it in Southern California. But he said he had no desire ever to come to the United States.

I had a burning question for him. "How," I asked, "do you intend for readers to pronounce the name Aslan?" All he would say was that he did not care and that I should pronounce it however it sounded best to me. I hoped he would slip and say the word in passing, but he didn't.

I told him I had read Chad Walsh's book C.S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics and had encountered Walsh himself about four weeks earlier. He responded a bit disparagingly about the book and pointed out that Walsh had greatly exaggerated the size of the Kilns. (He must have liked Walsh, however, because four years later he dedicated The Four Loves to him.) When we were talking about his Ransom trilogy, I asked Lewis which science fiction he would recommend, and he said his favorite was Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.

When I told him that my single favorite book of his was The Great Divorce, his face beamed and he spoke of it fondly as his Cinderella. He said he couldn't understand why Screwtape Letters was the popular one when Divorce was a far better book.

Lewis's latest book when I met him was his favorite, Till We Have Faces, which was going to be published several weeks later. He told me he had called it Bareface, but his publisher refused to publish it under that title because it might be mistaken for a Western. The title Till We Have Faces was Lewis's second choice, and he was still irritated about his publisher vetoing Bareface. (At this time Lewis was hoping the book would have a good reception, but it was doomed to be a bigger disappointment than The Great Divorce in that regard.)

Lewis told me that Till We Have Faces would be his last book with that publisher. He said it would be a difficult break, but he was determined to make it because the man in charge had taken advantage of his good nature for years; he made the story of his victimization dramatic and funny. (A quick check of his bibliography shows that he didn't change publishers after all.)

The one piece of advice that Lewis gave me besides urging me not to smoke was to read for pleasure. (I have followed his advice on both counts.) It was probably when he waxed warm on pleasure reading that after a pithy statement or illustration of his I exclaimed that that was just what he had written in such and such a book.

He pretended to be crestfallen and exclaimed, "That's the trouble with writing a book. Once people have read it, your conversation is never new to them!"

By the time we got up and left the Royal Oxford, Lewis had spent an hour and a quarter with me; the peculiar part is that he seemed to enjoy every minute of it as much as I did. I had a Brownie camera with me and longed to take a snapshot as we said goodbye, but I decided not to end our meeting with a request he might dislike. He shook my hand warmly and headed for his bus. I walked down the street in the opposite direction, gazing at the hand he had just touched. I didn't wash it for two days.

That night I got back to my hotel room and wrote to a friend, "C. S. Lewis is the kindest man I have ever met -- and his eyes twinkle." How they twinkled!