C.S. Lewis, who wrote of epic struggles between good and evil in the imaginary land of Narnia, once was thrust into the real-life role of hero protecting damsel in distress.
Or so he thought.
As stepson Douglas Gresham tells it, Lewis was strolling around his English country homestead with his wife, the American writer Joy Davidman Gresham, when an apparent Robin Hood imitator sprang from the bushes brandishing a bow and arrow.
The chivalrous Lewis stepped between the intruder and his wife, who was carrying a shotgun because of a long-running problem with vandals. But Joy Gresham snapped an expletive at her would-be defender, adding: “Get out of my line of fire!”
“I have to tell you that (Lewis) stepped sideways again, much more quickly than he had the first time,” Douglas Gresham says, eyes twinkling as his audience roars with laughter. The trespasser, he adds, beat a hasty retreat.
He relates the anecdote during the third annual C.S. Lewis Festival in this northern Michigan town, where schools, churches and community groups pay tribute to the beloved British author, scholar of medieval literature and Christian apologist.
Gresham, 60, is co-producer of the film adaptation of “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” scheduled for U.S. release Dec. 9. His biography of Lewis, “Jack’s Life,” was published last month. (Friends knew Clive Staples Lewis by his nickname, Jack.)
He also helps oversee the Lewis estate and is unofficial guardian of his legacy, believing the man and his works are often misunderstood.
Lewis has an image as a dour, cloistered Oxford don with little knowledge of ordinary people’s struggles, Gresham says. The confrontation with the modern-day Robin Hood illustrates an overlooked side of the Lewis story: humor.
“He was a very funny man, very joyous,” says Gresham, who spent “the most formative decade of my life” – ages 8 to 18 – in Lewis’ company.
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