Did Tolkien come around in the end?

[PrinceOfTheWest]

Indeed, that what I have always gathered. Tolkien did not think the bond of friendship was strengthened by the introduction of a third person with the same interests, as Lewis did. Tolkien did not like allegory (even in the sense that Lewis implemented it in CoN) and hated the amalgamation of mythologies present in CoN. Tolkien thought Lewis was sacrificing too much in his marriage to Joy. Since the initial marriage was civil only, he thought it silly to marry a woman for charitable reasons. I often wonder what Tolkien thought when Jack and Joy had another religious ceremony where Peter Bide joined them in the eyes of God.

All true, but there was a little more even than that. Charles Williams was a very magnetic and charismatic personality, and more people than Tolkien seemed to think he cast something of a "spell" over Lewis (speaking metaphorically, of course). Lewis was certainly obsessed with Williams from the time he came to Oxford to the time he died in 1945. It not only disrupted Lewis & Tolkien's older friendship, as you point out, but Williams' theology was somewhat sketchy. In his earlier years he'd dabbled in the occult and psuedo-gnostic branches of Christianity, and still carried an air of the esoteric about him - something we old-line Catholics are somewhat suspicious of. Also, if Lewis was too blunt and unsubtle in his writing, Williams was the opposite - obscure to the point that it baffled even T.S. Eliot. Tolkien couldn't make heads or tails of it and, in the manner of the Inklings, said so.

The question of marriage, as you point out, was probably the real "tipper". Tolkien and Lewis had already disagreed sharply about a prospect that Lewis raised in passing in Mere Christianity - that for marriage, perhaps there needed to be two standards and two ceremonies: a civil, which was only understood at the level of human law, and a Christian, which would reflect the high ideals for marriage described by Christ. Tolkien, being trained in Natural Law, said not so: if God said marriage should be a certain way, then all human law should reflect it, whether applied to Christians or unbelievers. Not only did Lewis actually go through with his idea in marrying Joy Davidman in a civil ceremony, but it was to a divorceé - who Tolkien considered still married to her prior husband. This pretty well sealed it between them, and when Lewis got the job at Cambridge, the didn't see much of each other after that.

 

[littlemanpoet]

All too true. Yet he could write to his daughter Priscilla, four days after Lewis's death:

So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age - like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots. Very sad that we should have been so separated in the last years; but our time of close communion endured in memory for both of us. I had a mass said this morning, and was there, and served ... Douglas Gresham was the only 'family' mourner.

And a little later in another letter, this time a draft to Michael Tolkien:

Jack Lewis's death on the 22nd has preoccupied me. It is also involving me in some correspondence, as many people still regad me as one of his intimates. Alas! that ceased to be so some ten years ago. We were separated first by the sudden apparition of Charles Williams, and then by his marriage. Of which he never even told me; I learned of it long after the event. But we owed such a great debt to the other, and that tie with the deep affection that it begot, remains.

In the same letter:

Lewis only met Williams in 1939, and W. died early in 1945. The 'space-travel' trilogy ascribed to the influence of Williams was basically foreign to Williams' kind of imagination. It was planned years before, when we decided to divide: he was to do space-travel and I time-travel. My book was never finished, but some of it (the Numenorean-Atlantis theme) got into my trilogy eventually.

Publication dates are not a good guide. Perelandra is dated 1943, but does not belong to that period. Williams' influence actually only appeared with his death: That Hideous Strength, the end of the trilogy, which (good thoug it is in itself) I think spoiled it.

All this from Tolkien's Letters.

 

[Danny]

I think Tolkien's main dislike of Lewis's work was not so much that it was Christian, but that it was blatantly Christian.
He disliked what he saw as the "narrowmindedness" of the text, and perhaps even its lack of depth in his own mind.

Tolkien is famous for his dislike of allegory, applying the term "applicability" to his own work whereby readers can take meaning from the text according to their personal life experiences. Allergory in comparisson is single-minded, intended to implant a specific view or meaning into the readers subconscious.
Also, Lewis wrote his "Narnia" series as an outlet for his theological observations, intending to make a point. Tolkien on the other hand had no intention of imposing inner meaning in his work, at least not consciously, stating that his stories simply "Grew in the telling".

Also, a lot of the critiscism I suppose was due to the success of "Lewis's whimsical tales" and the rate in which they were produced. We must remember that Tolkien's own vast and carefully constructed mythology had taken years to evolve, involving many plot changes and subtle tweakings to the narratives whereas Lewis churned out a Narnia book a year.

As for the eventual cooling of their friendship, I believe that was largely due to the controvesial marriage of Lewis to Joy Davidman, as Tolkien was a devout Catholic and was deeply against the idea of divorce and remarriage, having been brought up within strict religious doctrine from a young age.

 

[oxfordexile]

I'm responding here to comments close to twenty years old. But... I've read that Tolkien was very disappointed that Lewis became Anglican, upon his conversion, not Catholic. That is partly understandable, but the Catholic church was very reactionary and very stuck in the past, including its model as church (long befor Vatican II). Really a big ask for even a good friend. But being an English Catholic could no doubt feel lonely. But the other prescient point is that Ronald was a Catholic because his mum, a widow, had converted (in Ireland, too). Her family disowned her and a Catholic priest, her confessor, gave all the support he could to her and her two sons. Ronald was always a devout Catholic but there must have been an additional tie to it given his mother's enthusiasm but also, the consequences of her embrace of Catholicism. All of those factors would, I imagine, make one even more steadfast and loyal to your Faith.