It is widely recognised that CS Lewis’s (SH.1913-14) time in Malvern, in particular the gas lamps (there were many throughout Malvern College) and landscape, helped inspire his creation The Chronicles of Narnia which started with the best-known book The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. To mark the 125th birthday of this much-loved author, there has never seemed a better time to delve into our Archives and tell you about the author’s connection to Malvern College.
Clive Staples Lewis was born on 29th November 1898 in Belfast. In 1909, his father, solicitor Alfred Lewis, made the decision to send his elder son Warren (‘Warnie’) to Malvern College. Warren's younger brother 'Jack' (CS Lewis) followed in 1913 (following preparatory school at Cherbourg House). Thus began the long and extraordinary connection between the Lewis family and the College.
CS Lewis spent a year at the College but suffered intense homesickness for his beloved Northern Ireland following his mother’s death. It was at Malvern he developed his love of the Classics and of English literature, thanks to his teacher Harry W Smith. Indeed, there is still an inscription by the fireplace in what is now the marketing and admissions department, in tribute to this teaching time in Smith’s study.
After his year at Malvern Lewis was privately tutored and later wounded fighting on the Western Front. He entered into a pact with his close friend Paddy Moore that if either of them were killed, the survivor would care for the deceased's surviving parent. Lewis fulfilled this pledge and entered into a deep friendship with Mrs Jane Moore that survived until the latter's death. Her daughter Maureen would later marry Leonard Blake, the Director of Music at Malvern from 1945 to 1968.
Lewis followed a brilliant academic career at Oxford, being elected in 1925 as a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Magdalen College, a post he held until 1954 when he accepted the new chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance literature at Cambridge. It was at Oxford that he met George Sayer, who would become a life-long friend and later become Head of English at Malvern College.
After adolescent atheism he became convinced by Christianity, partly influenced by his friendship with JRR Tolkien and reading GK Chesterton, and became its greatest modern literary advocate with popular books like The Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters.
Legend has it that Lewis and JRR Tolkien would frequently meet at the Unicorn Pub in Malvern. One snowy evening, as Lewis departed from the Unicorn, the vision of a Malvern gas lamp sparked his creative inspiration. This moment directly influenced his depiction of a Narnian wood early in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, featuring a solitary gas lamp post amidst the snow. It is said Lewis observed the lamp in the snowy landscape and mused about its potential as a captivating scene for a book.
In November 2013 CS Lewis was honoured, on the fiftieth anniversary of his death, with a memorial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. Representatives from Malvern College, including the Headmaster, attended this tribute to one of its most illustrious sons.
Credits:
Malvern College: 150th Anniversary Portrait by Roy Allen – available to purchase for £15 via the Malvernian Society Shop.
Photos:
School House photograph, summer 1914 (Lewis is middle row, centre)
CS Lewis at his desk in 1960
(Credit: Used by permission of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL)