Hugo Dyson at The Eagle and Child
C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien are remembered as writers of fantasy, but both men made their living teaching English at Oxford University. They met for the first time at a faculty meeting on the 11th of May, 1926. Lewis’s first impression of Tolkien wasn’t exactly favorable. In his diary, he describes Tolkien as “a smooth, pale, fluent little chap.” Then he adds, “No harm in him: only needs a smack or so.”
It got worse. As Lewis and Tolkien got to know each other, it became clear that they had a number of serious disagreements. They had different interests and personalities. They came from different religious traditions. And they had different academic specialties. Lewis was an expert in literature and philosophy; Tolkien was a philologist, an expert in languages. He loved Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon. Lewis said that meeting Tolkien triggered two of his childhood prejudices. He explains, “At my first coming into the world I had been (implicitly) warned never to trust a [Catholic], and at my first coming into the English Faculty (explicitly) never to trust a philologist. Tolkien was both.”
Within months of Lewis and Tolkien’s first meeting, the faculty at Oxford became entrenched in a bitter argument about which courses should be required for students studying in the English School. Lewis and Tolkien found themselves on opposite sides of the debate. Tolkien believed the English curriculum should be based on close study of ancient and medieval texts and their languages. He thought that if students were given a solid foundation, they could read the full range of modern texts on their own. Lewis also loved ancient literature, but he believed students would benefit more from a broad survey of both ancient and modern texts.
Tolkien was prepared to fight energetically for his curriculum. His approach was strategic: he decided the best way to win support for his point of view would be to foster a love for mythology and ancient languages among his colleagues. So he founded a club he called the Kolbítar (literally “the Coalbiters”), adopting an Old Norse word for “old cronies who sit round the fire so close that they look as if they were biting the coals.” They met each week to read Icelandic poems and stories. They translated them bit by bit, as much as each person could manage in turn.
Lewis was immediately drawn in. For him, the chance to join the circle was the fulfillment of his love for Norse mythology and his interest in Odin, Freya, and Loki. He was only nine years old when he first discovered these stories and was “uplifted into huge regions of northern sky” that he “desired with almost sickening intensity.” At twenty-eight, he was still unabashed in his enthusiasm for these ancient texts: “It is an exciting experience, when I remember my first passion for things Norse under the initiation of Longfellow. … It seemed impossible then that I shd. ever come to read these things in the original.”
The Kolbítar met regularly, working their way through ancient sagas and thrilling over both the literature and the language. Despite their initial suspicion and professional conflicts, Lewis and Tolkien discovered they had significant common ground. They gravitated towards each other because they shared an interest in what they called “northernness,” the vast skies, icy landscapes, and heroic tempers of the ancient Vikings. As they talked together, Lewis was slowly won over to Tolkien’s view of the English curriculum. And as they worked side by side, they forged a solid friendship. E. L. Edmonds, a student at Oxford, remembers, “It was very obvious that [Lewis and Tolkien] were great friends—indeed, they were like two young bear cubs sometimes, just happily quipping with one another.”
This change from suspicion to friendship happened as they worked side by side, pursuing a mutual interest. Another change occurred in December of 1929, when Tolkien decided to show Lewis the draft of a poem he had been working on.
The Lay of Leithian describes a mortal man named Beren who falls in love with a beautiful elf named Lúthien Tinúviel. The poem recounts one of the most personal and significant stories in all of his created mythology. Lewis took it home and read it eagerly. The next day, he responded with a brief note, filled with praise: “I can quite honestly say that it is ages since I have had an evening of such delight: and the personal interest of reading a friend’s work had very little to do with it. I should have enjoyed it just as well as if I’d picked it up in a bookshop, by an unknown author.”
As he read the long narrative poem, Lewis was struck by two qualities in particular. He admired the realism of Tolkien’s sub-created world, the depth and detail of Middle-earth. He also praised the mythical value of the story, the way the events were good in themselves and yet also suggested deeper layers of meaning to the reader.
But Lewis ends his letter on an ominous note, promising, “Detailed criticisms (including grumbles at individual lines) will follow.” A second letter, full of “criticisms” and “grumbles,” arrived some weeks later. Lewis questioned large, conceptual matters. He quibbled about small word choices. He requested specific revisions. He even rewrote entire sections of the poem himself.
Tolkien was as cheered by this careful critique as he had been by the lavish praise. More than anything else, it meant he had found someone who understood his work and was enthusiastic enough about it to give it a close, attentive reading. Although Tolkien did not agree with all of Lewis’s comments, he did revise the poem extensively, responding to most of Lewis’s suggestions in one way or another. Chapter 5 describes some of these important changes. In sharing this poem, Tolkien had taken a substantial risk, and Lewis had offered a generous, detailed response.
Lewis took the next step and shared some poems of his own. At this point in his life, Lewis saw himself primarily as a poet, and he fully expected that his most significant achievement would be to make his mark as a great poet. Owen Barfield, a friend from their undergraduate days, declared, “At that time, if you thought of Lewis, you automatically thought of poetry.”
Tolkien commented extensively on Lewis’s poems, offering both praise and criticism. It wasn’t long before it became a regular custom for Tolkien and Lewis to meet together in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College on Monday mornings to read and critique one another’s work. Lewis declared that this regular meeting time was “one of the pleasantest spots in the week.”
True Myth
Lewis’s interaction with Tolkien affected more than just his writing; it led to a transformation of his faith. Lewis had accepted Christianity as a child, but later abandoned God entirely. In 1916, he explained his position to his friend Arthur Greeves:
You ask me my religious views: you know, I think, that I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name are merely man’s own invention—Christ as much as Loki. Primitive man found himself surrounded by all sorts of terrible things he didn’t understand—thunder, pestilence, snakes etc: what more natural than to suppose that these were animated by evil spirits trying to torture him. These he kept off by cringing to them, singing songs and making sacrifices etc. Gradually from being mere nature-spirits these supposed being[s] were elevated into more elaborate ideas, such as the old gods: and when man became more refined he pretended that these spirits were good as well as powerful.
Thus religion, that is to say mythology grew up.
As a teenager, Lewis dismissed all religions with this neat and tidy explanation: primitive man simply invented religion in a misguided attempt to make sense of the dangers he saw in the natural world.
But as the years went by, Lewis found it increasingly difficult to remain an atheist, in part because he kept meeting intelligent, articulate men who turned out to be Christians. Lewis became friends with Nevill Coghill, “one of the best known and best loved men in Oxford.” Coghill was a man of warmth, chivalry, honor, and “gentilesse.” Lewis notes, “One could imagine him fighting a duel.” They first met as students in a literature class. Despite a promising beginning, Lewis was dismayed when he discovered that even though Coghill was “clearly the most intelligent and best-informed man in that class,” he was a Christian and “a thoroughgoing supernaturalist.”
Shortly after, two of Lewis’s most important college friends—Cecil Harwood and Owen Barfield—rejected atheism and became followers of Anthroposophy, believers in an objective, accessible spiritual world. This seriously upset Lewis, who writes,
I was hideously shocked. Everything that I had laboured so hard to expel from my own life seemed to have flared up and met me in my best friends. Not only my best friends but those whom I would have thought safest; the one so immovable, the other brought up in a free-thinking family and so immune from all “superstition” that he had hardly heard of Christianity itself until he went to school.
Though he was distressed by the religious conversions of his friends, it upset Lewis even more to find that many of the authors he loved best were also devout men of faith. He was unsettled when he realized that knowing God was absolutely central to the thought of George Mac-Donald, G. K. Chesterton, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Spenser, John Milton, William Langland, John Donne, and Thomas Browne. He says the most alarming influence of all came from George Herbert. Even Plato, Aeschylus, and Virgil challenged him with their easy acceptance of the idea of a supernatural reality. The assault, it seemed, was relentless. Tongue in cheek, he writes, “Really, a young Atheist cannot guard his faith too carefully. Dangers lie in wait for him on every side.”
The “dangers” became increasingly insistent. In a letter to Barfield, Lewis expressed the gnawing sense that something was closing in on him. “Terrible things are happening to me,” he writes, and he expresses concern that God seemed to be “taking the offensive.” He continues, miserably, “You’d better come on Monday at the latest or I may have entered a monastery.”
Eventually, the old belief system that Lewis had constructed with such great care simply collapsed. In an often-quoted passage, he writes, “I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”
His conversion to Theism, to belief in God, took place in June 1930. More than a year later, Lewis became a Christian. There were many factors that contributed to his commitment to Christ, but the turning point came in September of 1931, following a long talk with two of his friends. One was J. R. R. Tolkien. The other was Hugo Dyson.
Dyson was a man of unusually bold and lively character. He has been described as “a man who gives the impression of being made of quick silver: he pours himself into a room on a cataract of words and gestures, and you are caught up in the stream—but after the first plunge, it is exhilarating.” Dyson’s strong personality could be quite destructive, as we will see in chapter 4. Still, Lewis admired Dyson for his fine mind, vibrant character, and merry laugh. Lewis’s descriptions generally emphasize his vivacity and quickness of speech. He also pays Dyson the high compliment of calling him “a man who really loves truth.”
On 19 September 1931, Dyson, Tolkien, and Lewis had dinner at Magdalen, then went out onto Addison’s Walk and talked late into the night. Lewis was confronted about his old anti-Christian biases and encouraged to consider Christianity as a true myth:
Now what Dyson and Tolkien showed me was this: that if I met the idea of sacrifice in a Pagan story I didn’t mind it at all: again, that if I met the idea of a god sacrificing himself to himself … I liked it very much and was mysteriously moved by it: again, that the idea of the dying and reviving god (Balder, Adonis, Bacchus) similarly moved me provided I met it anywhere except in the Gospels. The reason was that in Pagan stories I was prepared to feel the myth as profound and suggestive of meanings beyond my grasp even tho’ I could not say in cold prose “what it meant”.
Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened.
Lewis’s commitment to Christ became the central fact of his life. And the turning point was this specific conversation. Lewis writes, “Dyson and Tolkien were the immediate human causes of my own conversion.”
Warnie Comes Home
While C. S. Lewis was beginning his career as an academic at Oxford, his older brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis, was half a world away, serving as an officer at a Royal Army Service Corps depot in China. Warren Lewis decided on a military career when he was seventeen. He served for more than 20 years in supplies and transport. Historian Richard C. West explains that even though this assignment may seem rather tame, it was “dangerous enough work in wartime when being strafed by enemy planes, and always entailing responsibility for thousands of soldiers.” Major Lewis served in England, France, China, and West Africa.
The two brothers were uncommonly close all their lives. As children, they played together, wrote stories of imagined worlds together, and painted pictures and drew maps in creative interaction. Chapter 6 offers more details of this early collaboration.
When their mother died of cancer in 1908, they became even closer, like “two frightened urchins huddled for warmth in a bleak world.” Both boys attended Wynyard School and Malvern College. And both were tutored by William T. Kirkpatrick, who said of Warren Lewis, “He is one of the nicest, best tempered, personally amiable boys I have ever met. To live in the house with him is a pleasure, and no one could sit working along with him so long as I have done without developing an affection for him.”
Warren Lewis, also known as “Warnie,” was a warm and gentle man and a gifted writer. After he retired, he came to live in Oxford. He and his brother bought a house together, and Warnie was eager to find some new challenge. He decided to edit the Lewis family papers, a process we’ll consider in chapter 3. He loved the work, calling it “one of the most engrossing tasks I have ever undertaken.”
He spent most weekdays working on this project, researching and writing in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College. On Monday mornings, it was only natural for him to join his brother “Jack” and friend Tolkien for conversation and critique. Then the three of them would head over to the Eastgate Hotel for lunch and a pint of beer.
The Inklings
It was a small beginning—no big plans, no particular agenda. Just a few writers gathering each week for encouragement and conversation. To the extent that there is one critical moment of origin of the group, it would be the 6th of December, 1929, the day Tolkien made the courageous decision to share his created mythology with Lewis. From there, a more regular pattern developed as Tolkien and Lewis began scheduling time specifically to read and critique each other’s work. Their meetings received a boost in 1931, when Lewis renewed his Christian faith, and another when Warren Lewis retired in 1932, moved to Oxford, and joined them.
Then the group began to grow. They called themselves the Inklings, and the name tells us something about the nature of the group. It was not a literary society, nor was it a forum for general discussion, although those kinds of groups are quite common in Oxford. It was more focused. This was a meeting of working writers. Members brought drafts they were working on. They read them aloud, received comments, and revised their work in response to what they heard.
As Tolkien points out, the name is “a pleasantly ingenious pun,” referring to those who “dabble in ink.” It also suggests people “with vague or half-formed intimations and ideas.” The manuscripts they brought to meetings were often rough drafts in their earliest stages. They came ready to make significant changes as they responded to criticism and feedback from the members. When Tolkien wrote a story about a fictional writing group much like the Inklings, he called it “The Notion Club,” reinforcing the view that they were working with “notions”: fleeting ideas, or tentative drafts in progress. There is evidence of extensive revision to these early drafts, as we will see in later chapters.
All in all, nineteen men are considered members of the Inklings. They are Owen Barfield, J. A. W. Bennett, David Cecil, Nevill Coghill, James Dundas-Grant, Hugo Dyson, Adam Fox, Colin Hardie, Robert E. “Humphrey” Havard, C. S. Lewis, Warren Lewis, Gervase Mathew, R. B. McCallum, C. E. Stevens, Christopher Tolkien, J. R. R. Tolkien, John Wain, Charles Williams, and C. L. Wrenn.
The group was large and loosely knit, but a typical Thursday night meeting was fairly small. On average, six or seven men would show up. Four of the Inklings—the two Lewis brothers, Tolkien, and Dr. Havard—attended the meetings most faithfully.
Dr. Robert E. Havard met Lewis when he was called to Lewis’s home, “the Kilns,” to treat him for an attack of the flu. According to Havard, “On my first visit we spent some five minutes discussing his influenza, which was very straightforward, and then half an hour or more in a discussion of ethics and philosophy.” This is not surprising: Havard was “well-read and keenly interested in the processes of literature and in theology.”
Havard reports that shortly after his first visit to the Kilns, Lewis invited him to come and join the Inklings, describing it as “a group of us who meet on Thursday evenings and read papers and discuss them.” As a physician, Havard might seem to be an unlikely participant in this group of Oxford literary men. But Havard was a skilled writer. He coauthored and published a number of medical research papers, along with several important memoirs. He had a talent for giving feedback: Havard made detailed comments on The Problem of Pain and offered significant encouragement as Lewis was writing The Chronicles of Narnia. The second book in that series, Prince Caspian, is dedicated to Havard’s daughter Mary Clare.
The Inklings met for about seventeen years. Attendance was by invitation only, and there was a fixed procedure for inviting and introducing new people. Warren Lewis writes, “Someone would suggest that Jones be asked to come in of a Thursday, and there could be either general agreement, or else a perceptible lack of enthusiasm and a dropping of the matter.”
Any violation of this rule resulted in open hostility. Those who came to meetings uninvited were called “gatecrashers,” those who brought unannounced visitors were severely criticized, and those who had the nerve to elect themselves members at their own initiative were considered completely out of line. On one occasion, Warren Lewis was outraged when Tolkien (called “Tollers”) brought an unwelcome guest, explaining that he and his brother were “much concerned this evening by the gate crashing of B; Tollers, the ass, brought him here last Thursday, and he has apparently now elected himself an Inkling. Not very clear what one can do about it.”
Tolkien violated protocol more than once. Warren Lewis reports, “Tollers, to everyone’s annoyance, brought a stranger with him, one [Gwyn] Jones, professor of English at Aberystwyth.” This time, though, the stranger “turned out to be capital value.” Warren records in his diary that “he read a Welsh tale of his own writing, a bawdy humorous thing told in a rich polished style which impressed me more than any new work I have come across for a long time.”
Another evening did not end as happily. Here’s the account: “Barfield made the mistake of presuming to bring a friend along unannounced— a serious faux pas that almost broke up the group when some members approved and others disapproved of the new candidate.” Ultimately, the man was never invited back.
Charles Williams
One invited guest became a vital member of the group, though he arrived somewhat late on the scene. Charles Williams came to Oxford six years after meetings of the Inklings had begun. He was born and raised in London, and, in contrast to the other members, he strongly preferred life in the city. He worked as an editor at the London office of the Oxford University Press. Despite his demanding schedule as a senior editor, Williams was a prolific writer. He wrote seven books of poetry, four books of criticism, four of theology, seven biographies, seven novels, and dozens of plays, articles, and book reviews.
John Wain exclaims, “Williams! How many people have tried to describe this extraordinary man, and how his essence escapes them!” Wain is right: Williams is very difficult to describe. A short piece published in 1947 calls him a “poet, mystic, scholar and novelist,” and declares, “He was an astonishing and a very great figure to find in a world that for the most part lacked his double vision, and the seven novels are only a small part of what he left behind; writing of this kind will never be repeated, and the reading of his books is a disturbing experience which should not be missed.”
Descriptions of Williams as intense, honest, fierce, disturbing, astonishing, and prophetic are repeated in one form or another by everyone who knew him. His coworker at the Press, Gerard Hopkins, emphasized the strength of Williams as a transforming presence who was able to change the ordinary everyday workplace by the “sheer force of love and enthusiasm.” He had an unusual capacity for friendship; as Humphrey Carpenter explains, “At a first meeting he would talk as if he had known you for years, and as if it were the most natural thing in the world to discuss poetry or theology with you.”
Williams’s connection with the Inklings began with a serendipitous exchange of books. In 1935, Lewis completed The Allegory of Love, his first significant work of scholarship. He submitted the manuscript to Oxford University Press. Charles Williams read the proofs and was very impressed with it.
At the same time that Williams was preparing The Allegory of Love for publication, Lewis happened to be reading a copy of Williams’s novel The Place of the Lion. Lewis loved the book and wrote a fan letter to Williams on 11 March 1936 to tell him so. He begins his letter somewhat hesitantly, then breaks into unabashed enthusiasm: “A book sometimes crosses ones path which is so like the sound of ones native language in a strange country that it feels almost uncivil not to wave some kind of flag in answer. I have just read your Place of the Lion and it is to me one of the major literary events of my life.”
Lewis continues, listing four things about the book that he likes best: the pleasure of reading a good fantasy novel, the exploration of real philosophical and theological content, great characters, and “substantial edification.” Lewis was impressed not only with these features, but also the skillful way that all of them were handled. He tells Williams, “Honestly, I didn’t think there was anyone now alive in England who could do it.”
Lewis concludes his letter with an invitation, offering both a warm welcome and a very fine description of the Inklings: “We have a sort of informal club called the Inklings: the qualifications (as they have informally evolved) are a tendency to write, and Christianity. Can you come down some day next term (preferably not Sat. or Sunday), spend the night as my guest in College, eat with us at a chop house, and talk with us till the small hours. Meantime, a thousand thanks.”
Williams responded the next day, expressing his surprise: “If you had delayed writing another 24 hours our letters would have crossed. It has never before happened to me to be admiring an author of a book while he at the same time was admiring me.” Then he muses that, somehow, God must be at the bottom of it: “My admiration for the staff work of the Omnipotence rises every day.”
Lewis and Williams met about three months later, and they greatly enjoyed each other’s company. They made it a point to get together several times a year. Lewis writes that his friendship with Williams “rapidly grew inward to the bone,” and their friendship came to mean a great deal to both of them.
Lewis struggled to explain the effect that Williams had on others. He offered this description: “He is … of humble origin (there are still traces of cockney in his voice), ugly as a chimpanzee but so radiant (he emanates more love than any man I have ever known) that as soon as he begins talking … he is transfigured and looks like an angel.” Lewis used this image more than once, adding this clarification: “not a feminine angel in the debased tradition of some religious art, but a masculine angel, a spirit burning with intelligence and charity.”
In September of 1939, at the start of World War II, Oxford University Press moved its London offices to Oxford for safety. Williams moved with the Press, though his wife and son remained in London. As soon as he arrived, he became a regular, active member of the Inklings. Williams had a profound impact on the whole group, but he and Lewis enjoyed a particularly strong connection. Lewis describes him as “my great friend Charles Williams, my friend of friends, the comforter of all our little set, the most angelic.” In the following tribute, Lewis captures the versatility and vigor of an Inklings meeting and the important part Charles Williams played:
[Williams’s] face—angel’s or monkey’s—comes back to me most often seen through clouds of tobacco smoke and above a pint mug, distorted into helpless laughter at some innocently broad buffoonery or eagerly stretched forward in the cut and parry of prolonged, fierce, masculine argument and “the rigour of the game”.
Such society, unless all its members happen to be of one trade, makes heavy demands on a man’s versatility. And we were by no means of one trade. The talk might turn in almost any direction, and certainly skipped “from grave to gay, from lively to severe”: but wherever it went, Williams was ready for it.
When the Inklings gathered, substantial intellect, enormous talent, and powerful personality met. And Williams was completely at home in the center of it all.
Ritual and Routine
As the group grew, the meeting time shifted from Monday mornings to Thursday evenings. But the defining activity remained the same. This was a group of working writers. They gathered in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College, a setting described as “rather bleak”:
The main sitting-room is large, and though certainly not dirty it is not particularly clean. … [Lewis] never bothers with ashtrays but flicks his cigarette ash … on to the carpet wherever he happens to be standing or sitting. He even absurdly maintains that ash is good for carpets. As for chairs—there are several shabbily comfortable armchairs and a big Chesterfield sofa in the middle of the room—their loose covers are never cleaned, nor has it ever occurred to Lewis that they ought to be. Consequently their present shade of grey may or may not bear some relation to their original colour.
Members would arrive sometime after dinner, usually around 9:00 p.m. According to Warren Lewis, “There was a tacit agreement that ten-thirty was as late as one could decently arrive.” Meetings of the Inklings followed a simple structure, and their opening ritual was always the same. When half a dozen members had arrived, Warren Lewis would produce a pot of very strong tea, the men would light their pipes, and C. S. Lewis would call out, “Well, has nobody got anything to read us?” Then “out would come a manuscript,” and they would “settle down to sit in judgement upon it.”
The range of texts read aloud at Inklings meetings was rich and remarkable. Tolkien read The Lord of the Rings. He also shared original poetry, a novel called The Notion Club Papers, and sections from The Hobbit. Williams read each chapter from The Noises That Weren’t There and All Hallows’ Eve, as well as his Arthurian poetry and an occasional play, including Seed of Adam and Terror of Light. Lewis read Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, The Problem of Pain, Miracles, and others, many of them chapter by chapter as they were written. He read many of his poems, and at one point, he shared a long section of his translation of Virgil’s Aeneid. He also read The Screwtape Letters to the group, and according to Havard, “They really set us going. We were more or less rolling off our chairs.”
Other members of the group attended less frequently and contributed less often. Nevill Coghill and Adam Fox read poetry, the former light lampoons and the latter more serious lyrics. David Cecil read Two Quiet Lives, a literary study of Dorothy Osborne and Thomas Gray. Colin Hardie read a paper on Virgil. Owen Barfield read fiction and a short play on Jason and Medea. John Wain read a number of his own poems and an essay on Arnold Bennett.
During the years the Inklings met, Warren Lewis began to write books about seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France, focusing on the reign of Louis XIV. His book The Splendid Century has become a standard text in its field. The Inklings observe that Warren Lewis often provided the best and most thought-provoking material read at Inklings meetings.
Listening to drafts and offering energetic feedback occupied the better part of every Inklings meeting. Warren Lewis makes it clear that the Inklings were unbiased in their judgments, observing, “We were no mutual admiration society.” Havard adds, “Criticism was frank but friendly. Coming from a highly literate audience, it was often profuse and detailed.”
There is nothing unusual about their procedure. Walter Hooper notes that this habit of reading papers aloud and submitting them for comment was typical of Oxford clubs. He writes, “The usual practice in most Oxford Societies—literary or otherwise—is for the speaker to read a paper. It is, I think I can safely say, as much the expected thing that a speaker will have a paper to read to his audience as that a student will have an essay in his hand when he goes to a tutorial.”
Extensive reading, careful listening, and thoughtful critique marked these weekly meetings. Tolkien expressed heartfelt appreciation for the liveliness and candor of the group, noting even though the discussion often became heated, he felt safe from “contention, ill will, detraction, or accusations without evidence.”
The Bird and Baby
One way to get a clearer picture of the Inklings is to contrast these Thursday meetings at Magdalen College with other, less formal gatherings that took place throughout the week. The Thursday writers group might be described as their center of gravity. It established their identity, defined their membership, and gave them their name. In a sense, the focus of the Inklings was quite specific.
And yet, the ongoing activity of the Inklings was flexible and wide-ranging. They met in small clusters of two or three to exchange manuscripts, give advice, or collaborate on various projects. They saw one another in many different venues: for lunch, dinner, or beer, or walking tours through the English countryside. They enjoyed a number of special celebrations. During wartime shortages, Lewis received occasional care packages from his American fans, and he would gather his friends and share needed supplies. There were special occasions, including a weekend celebration to mark the end of the war. Their literary influence flourished in many settings throughout the years they met.
Of these casual meetings, the best known was the gathering for lunch on Tuesdays. They met at an Oxford pub called The Eagle and Child, long referred to as “The Bird and Baby” by those who frequent it. These meetings were more open and public. Warren Lewis makes it clear they were separate from the Thursday writers group. He adds, “Of course there was no reading on Tuesday.” Tolkien’s biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, agrees: “talking, rather than reading aloud, was the habit at these morning sessions in a pub.”
Nathan Starr attended one of the Tuesday meetings. Recalling it years later, he, too, emphasizes its informality: “The conversation at The Bird and Baby was rather casual and general; I do not recall any sustained serious discussion.” Unlike the Thursday meetings, this get-together at the pub can, indeed, be accurately described as just a gathering of friends, an assembly of those who had much in common and much to share.
In fact, Tuesday meetings at The Eagle and Child developed a reputation for being quite boisterous, partly as a result of Lewis’s exuberance, partly the equally dynamic presence of men like Hugo Dyson and Nevill Coghill. One of the lesser-known members of the Inklings, James Dundas-Grant, emphasizes the drama and energy: “We sat in a small back room with a fine coal fire in winter. Back and forth the conversation would flow. Latin tags flying around. Homer quoted in the original to make a point.” Even Professor Tolkien, often pictured as reserved and reflective, joined in the fray by “jumping up and down, declaiming in Anglo-Saxon.” Lewis wondered what other people made of it all, suggesting “the fun is often so fast and furious that the company probably thinks we’re talking bawdy when in fact we’re v. likely talking Theology.”
Famous and Heroic
Although there are plenty of controversies and disagreements about the Inklings, their energy, intellectual rigor, and creative intensity are never in doubt. And the Inklings are frank in expressing their appreciation for the group. Warren Lewis calls them “a famous and heroic gathering.” He describes the talk, particularly his brother’s, as “an outpouring of wit, nonsense, whimsy, dialectical swordplay, and pungent judgement such as I have rarely heard equalled.” Havard echoes this sentiment, observing, “The talk was good, witty, learned, highhearted, and very stimulating.” John Wain, generally quick to carp and criticize, says of the Thursday meetings, “The best of them were as good as anything I shall live to see.”
Lewis agreed. He asks, “Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?” He emphasizes not only the thrill of the group, but also their significance: “What I owe to them all is incalculable.”
Tolkien expressed his appreciation with characteristic artistry and enthusiasm, writing in imitation of his beloved Beowulf: “Hwæt! we Inclinga, on ærdagum searoþancolra snyttru gehierdon.” Carpenter provides this translation: “Lo! we have heard in old days of the wisdom of the cunning-minded Inklings.” The translation continues, “how those wise ones sat together in their deliberations, skillfully reciting learning and song-craft, earnestly meditating. That was true joy!”
DOING WHAT THEY DID: Great groups often grow from small beginnings. Lewis observes, “What we now call ‘the Romantic Movement’ once was Mr. Wordsworth and Mr. Coleridge talking incessantly (at least Mr. Coleridge was) about a secret vision of their own.” Members meet often, and typically their surroundings aren’t formal or fancy—the corner pub, a coffee shop, or a shabby sitting room will do. There are informal and spontaneous get-togethers as well as scheduled ones. And regularly scheduled meetings work best when there are predictable structures, almost as if the rhythm of routine creates a safe place to discuss daring possibilities.