Who knew C. S. Lewis

TimmyofOz said:
I would like to see the actual quote, but it seem to me like Churchill is talking about tear gas which here in America the government uses against its own people all the time. It seems from Wikipedia that Churchill didn't want to cause genocide, but to break up concentrations of forces. Let's remember this was England's Iraq war and it seems like the English had as much sucess there as the Americans did 80 years later. It looks like to me from my research it was a threat in hope that it would be taken more serious that it actually was meant to be. The kind of threat that got Saddam in trouble with America in 2003.
Click to expand...
I agree, if he is talking about tear gas, it makes sense. And doesn't seem so Heinous. Here is what I read:

Winston S. Churchill: departmental minute (Churchill papers: 16/16) 12 May 1919 War Office

I do not understand this squeamishness about the use of gas. We have definitely adopted the position at the Peace Conference of arguing in favour of the retention of gas as a permanent method of warfare. It is sheer affectation to lacerate a man with the poisonous fragment of a bursting shell and to boggle at making his eyes water by means of lachrymatory gas.

I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes. The moral effect should be so good that the loss of life should be reduced to a minimum. It is not necessary to use only the most deadly gasses: gasses can be used which cause great inconvenience and would spread a lively terror and yet would leave no serious permanent effects on most of those affected.

from Companion Volume 4, Part 1 of the official biography, WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, by Martin Gilbert (London: Heinemann, 1976)
Click to expand...

Although he says "poison" at one point, it does sound like tear gas. Good call, Timmy.
 
I had hoped someone would have had something to say about Hogo Dyson by now. I haven't found much about him, except that he was did much to leading Lewis to proclaim himself a Christian, after he became a thiest. In Surprised by Joy Lewis stops his testimony after he becomes a thiest. So from there we have to look toward biographies.
 
I do know that the main subject that Hugo Dyson and J. R. R. Tolkien used to move CS Lewis to his conversion to Christianity was "The dying god myth". Where the Incarnation was the pivotal point at which myth became history.
 
ok, I guess no one wants to talk about Hugo Dyson. I will just wrap it up with what little I do know about him. Prof. Dyson taught English and was an expert on Shakespere. A member of the Inklings, he lived near JRR Tolkien, but didn't like Tolkien's Middle-earth books. Which isn't a surprise because it seems to be a trait of the British to be very critical of the works of your friends.
 
I think Dyson was the one who ultimately insisted on veto power over Tolkien's reading of Lord of the Rings at Inklings meetings, something that eventually alienated Tolkien and caused him to reduce and eventually suspend his participation.

On a tangential note, did you know that Lewis nominated Lord of the Rings for a Nobel Prize in Literature? It was in 1961. He was passed over for "poor prose" in favor of that towering and influential Yugoslav poet, Ivo Andrić.

So now you know.
 
I never even heard of Hugo Dyson, and now I think he was a putz for not liking LOTR, and especially for hurting JRRT's feelings by now allowing him to read from LOTR at the Inklings meetings. How are you going to hurt your friend like that?
 
Let's not forget Tolkien, for example, didn’t like The Screwtape Letters. He was embarrassed that the book was dedicated to him. He also didn’t like The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, the early draft chapters of which Lewis read to him. He thought the book was “about as bad as can be”. Lewis felt stung by this unexpected negative reaction from his friend. That Inkling meeting wasn't there to get positive vives I guess. And we already talked about how Lewis complained about his illustrator.
 
Yeah, it's hard to get a read on the personality dynamics, because all we have is biographer's accounts and anecdotes. I've always gotten the impression that, though friends, they were nonetheless brusque old men who didn't see why they should be pleasant just to be pleasant. (Evelyn Waugh gives the same impression in interviews.) They didn't spare any critique of the work that was presented to them - Lewis was equally severe with Tolkien's drafts of Rings, at times chiding him for not accepting legitimate critiques.

It's certainly true that Lewis' debating behaviour bordered on what we would probably consider abusive - he'd badger and bully someone who hadn't thought their position through. That probably explains a bit of why he was so stunned when G.E.M. Anscombe took him to the intellectual cleaners over some passages in Miracles - he got a taste of his own medicine.
 
Yah, I have to keep in mind they were a bunch of brusque old men -- and in Lewis' case, a bachelor most of his life, so he didn't have a feminine counterpart to sort of help him learn to be gentle. I still take umbrage with Dyson not even allowing Tolkien to read. If you want to critique harshly someone's work, you have to let them read it to you. Surely JRRT was prepared for harsh criticism -- but to be censored from reading altogether? That's just hateful. And when you look at LOTR, it's a masterpiece, really, so Dyson's objections, whatever they were, were personal to him. He shouldn't have inflicted them on the whole group.
 
Anyone want to talk about Malcolm Muggeridge. He wasn't on our original list. He was a communist who I guess Lewis lead to Christianity, thou he didn't totally convert till after Lewis' death. There isn't much on his conversion on wikipedia, so feel free to tell about his conversion and his relation to Lewis. There is a collection of their letters in print.
 
Last edited:
Actually Lewis' Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer probably had nothing to do with Malcolm Muggeridge. No one wanted to catch me on that. Well does anyone know if Lewis and Malcolm Muggeridge were friends?:p
 
I don't think so - I think they met casually in a couple of contexts, but I'm not sure if they were truly friends. Friendly, probably, but not friends, I don't think.
 
Getting back to Pauline Barnes, Lewis wrote a very nice letter to his publishers about Miss Barnes' work on HHB. He said he was very happy about it. It is always good to not listen to gossip, especially about oneself. There were things Lewis liked about Pauline Barnes' work and things he didn't. It is just sad that Miss Barnes was hurt by things she heard latter.
 
We can also talk about people that Lewis dedicated books to. There was Mary Clare Havard, Lucy and Geoffrey Barfield, Nicholas Hardie, the Kilmer family, David and Douglas Gresham, J. McNeill, and some ladies at Wantage.
 
It is said that Lewis' tutor William T. Kirkpatrick is the bases of the Professor in the Narnia books. But from what I know he was not a believer in any way of Christianity. Can someone correct me or fill me in?
 
I thought the Great Knock was the model for McPhee in That Hideous Strength who is not a believer but a skeptic. Maybe the Professor/Diggory was also based on him in his demanding logic from the kids and stuff like that, but clearly Diggory was a believer in Aslan.

Benisse tells me Lewis' brother Warnie was an alcoholic. What do we know about that?
 
inkspot said:
Benisse tells me Lewis' brother Warnie was an alcoholic. What do we know about that?
Click to expand...

That's what C S Lewis said about his brother, but he also became a Christian the same time as C S Lewis and he long out lived his younger brother also. Warnie may have taken a lot better care of himself that his younger brother.
 
Back
Top