From Douglas Gresham (we call him Doug)

First, read:

http://jmm.org.au/articles/16854.htm

Some comments from Douglas Gresham (C S Lewis’ stepson):

Monday, February 20, 2006 8:18 PM

Dear Rowland,

An interesting lecture of misunderstanding. 🙂

Comments:-

Article:

Both had a second wife who played an important role in their lives, and both were laymen who acquired a reputation in England as conservative defenders of an orthodox religion.

Doug:

Jack only ever had one wife.

Article:

These facts may make us think that Lewis and Eliot must have been close friends. But their relationship was a highly uneasy one, as I wish to demonstrate in this lecture.

Doug:

Not true; they were friends later in their lives and they worked together in harmony on the revision of the Psalms. It was also Eliot who was responsible for “A Grief Observed” being published by Faber.

Article:

Please suffer a final introductory remark on my sources. Lewis and Eliot regularly referred to one another in their books and articles. These open sources show on what points they disagreed, but they do not provide an answer to the question how they really thought about each other.

Doug:

It must be remembered that the modern idea of disliking someone because they dislike your work or disagree with you is only a recent development among the greater minds. Back in the days of the Inklings, it was those who disagreed with one that one sought out for back then they realised that you cannot learn from anyone who agrees with you.

Article:

Lewis and Eliot therefore agreed on very little.

Doug:

And Tolkien and Jack agreed on almost nothing, Barfield and Jack agreed on almost nothing Dyson and Jack agreed on very little and Havard and Jack agreed on very little and yet all these men remained life-long friends.

Article:

I hope the fact that I find myself often contradicting you in print gives no offence; it is a kind of tribute to you-whenever I fall foul of some wide-spread contemporary view about literature I always seem to find that you have expressed it most clearly. One aims at the officers first in meeting an attack!

Doug:

And that has to be regarded as the words of a friend.

There is too much here for me to have time to comment on it all, but I happen to know that Jack and Eliot were friends. Jack told me so. In fact it was something of a surprise even to Jack himself. I think this is a case of teh writer being too far removed culturally from the society of which he writes to have very much understanding of it.

Blessings,

Doug.

In a further email:

That article is the result of someone who never actually knew either man, ex-contextualising material from a century of the mores of which he has little or know knowledge and also failing to adequately research his topic. Mind you it is fast becoming impossible to fully research such matters as there is no printed material that is not in the idiom of the time, and those who knew and used the idiom are fast dying off. Perhaps I am one of the last and youngest, and I am already sixty! This is how history becomes so vague in so many areas.

Reproduced with Douglas Gresham’s permission…