Who knew C. S. Lewis

inkspot said:
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?
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The Great Knock was the model for Digory as you say he used logic to look at life and did belive in Aslan that's why he got there in the end (last battle). Puddleglum was based on his gardener as he always had a glum out look to life. Benisse is right his brother was an alcoholic and Lewis had to carry him home many a time, Lewis also liked a drink but smoked like a train he must have smoked 100 a day. :)
 
Benisse also told me Warnie and Jack were pigs when it came to housekeeping, didn't use ash trays and ground the ashes from their ciggies into the carpet! What is up with that Clive?!
 
It's so hard to believe that 50 years have passed since C.S. Lewis' death. It's also hard to believe that I will be 50 this January.
 
inkspot said:
Benisse also told me Warnie and Jack were pigs when it came to housekeeping, didn't use ash trays and ground the ashes from their ciggies into the carpet! What is up with that Clive?!
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That's true Lewis did not use an ash tray, the carpet was his ash tary as he was a bat all his life.
 
Does anyone know much about Austin Farrer and C. S. Lewis? He did the eulogy at the funeral. Though it is not clear, it seems only about a dozen people showed up at Lewis' funeral.
 
TimmyofOz said:
Does anyone know much about Austin Farrer and C. S. Lewis? He did the eulogy at the funeral. Though it is not clear, it seems only about a dozen people showed up at Lewis' funeral.
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Sorry I don't know much about Austin Farrer and I did not know that only a dozen people were at his funeral, with all the people he knew you would think more would have turned up, maybe it was just a select few who knew him well that turned up.
 
Well, that and his death was barely even news in England .Keep in mind, he died the same day that JFK was assassinated which was huge world shaking news. Douglas Gresham recounted that day in an interview recently how the JFL assassination had been what everyone was talking about at school.

Based on what I read elsewhere, that was the way Lewis wanted it. A small funeral, no huge matter.
 
Has anyone read The A-Z of C S Lewis: A Complete Guide to His Life, Thoughts and Writings by Colin Duriez. I hear it is a good book on everything Lewis.
 
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Seeing all the talk about Tony Nixon being cast, maybe we can talk about who James Welch is and was he and C. S. Lewis well acquainted.
 
I am talking about the English Reformation on the Catholic thread and some might wonder why. And one reason is because we might want to understand why Lewis joined the Anglican Church rather than the Catholics Church, when you consider that the major forces that lead to him becoming a Christians were Catholic. To understand this you might want to know more about his Anglican background before his coming to Christ. To do this we need to know more about Jack's parents, Albert James Lewis and Florence Augusta Lewis (Hamilton). I know one thing and that Florence Augusta Lewis (Hamilton) father (Rev. Thomas Robert Hamilton) was an Anglican priest.
 
Another person we should look at as far as people who knew Lewis was his gardener, Fred Paxford. First I hope that the writers that are make the screen play for the new CON move will look at Fred Paxford to get an understanding of Puddleglum. Second, I didn't know that Fred did all the driving for Lewis because Lewis couldn't drive. This is funny because in the movie Shadowlands Lewis is seen driving.
 
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Well I guess no one want to answer why C. S. Lewis became an Anglican rather than a Catholic. The answer is because he already was an Anglican. He was baptized in the state church and in The United Kingdom at that time if you had been baptized you were Anglican. He just wasn't active in the Church of England. When he became a Christian he became a better Anglican just like he became a better person all way around. I really think C. S. Lewis never gave much thought about choosing a denomination or church hunting like we do in America. He was a Christian who lived out his life where he lived his life seven days a week as a Christian. You wouldn't have him answer if he was a Christian like so many people do, "Yes, I am a Anglican and I go to Holy Trinity Church on Sunday". His Christianity just wasn't identified by his denomination. He went to the community Anglican church, because that was the place an English citizen went to church.
 
British biographer Joseph Pearce wrote an excellent book on Lewis called C.S. Lewis and the Catholic Church. He points out that, given Lewis' own theology and predilections, it was kind of a surprise that he didn't. His close friend Tolkien was a devout Catholic, he was on good terms with many Catholics, including exchanging a series of very insightful letters with Fr. Don Giovanni Calabria. You're right that because Lewis was English, the Anglican church was a natural fit for him, but he was very "high church" Anglican, almost Anglo-Catholic. He even went to Confession. Pearce's conclusion was that Lewis was never quite able to escape his Ulster upbringing and make the shift to Catholicism. Besides, by the time of his later life, he was so widely known as the champion of "Mere Christianity" that he might have thought it polarizing for him to make such a change. It would have been far moreso in England than here.
 
One could say that the reason Lewis was High Church is because he happen to go to a parish church that was more High Church at that time than if he had lived in another parish. Like I said I feel Lewis would have just gone to the most local parish and not likely to church hunt. In fact he mocked church hunting in The Screwtape Letters. It is hard to see a overt Anglican Catholic leaning in his writings except for maybe The Great Divorce. Just because he prayed for the died may mean he happen to go to High Church parish. There was one person the Lewis looked very fondly toward, George MacDonald, who was not Catholic, but a Congregationalists. I am just saying it is hard to clearly say that Lewis was an Anglican Catholic though he had that reputation.
 
One must remember that Pearce is a Catholic and he based his book on interviews with Walter Hooper who is a Catholic convert. So they my have read there own bias into Lewis. I think you are right, PotW, the Anglican church of the 1940s was a perfect match for Lewis. It would be hard to say what denomination he would have belonged to today. We all want to project our own feeling into Lewis.
 
One might also say that you are resisting such an interpretation due to your bias against Catholicism. I wouldn't say that, but one might.
 
I think G.K. Chesterton's observation is true:

"It is impossible, I hope, for any Catholic to write any book on any subject . . . without showing that he is a Catholic."
(Prefatory Note to The Everlasting Man, 1925 -- one of the books which most influenced Lewis).

I just feel if Lewis was leaning toward the Catholic faith he probably would have shown it. I will probably add more to this soon.
 
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