‘Live in Hope and die in Caergwrle’ says the pun still current in these two North Wales villages between Hawarden and Wrexham in Flintshire. C.S. Lewis’s great-great-grandfather, Richard Lewis (c. 1775–1845), fulfilled at least the second part of this dictum, though he was probably also born in Caergwrle and was certainly a farmer there for most of his life. He had one daughter and six sons, the fourth of whom, Joseph (1803?–1890) – a farmer like his father – moved some miles north-east and settled at Saltney, then still a little village just south of Chester.
The family were members of the Church of England until Joseph, thinking he was not being given the prominence that was his due in the parish, seceded and became a Methodist minister. Farming must have been merely the necessary means of supplementing the scanty tribute of his congregation, for it is as a Methodist minister that he is remembered, and in this capacity he enjoyed a considerable local reputation. Though the handwriting and letters of Joseph Lewis are not those of an educated man, it is recorded that he was an impressive speaker of an emotional type.
Of Joseph’s eight children, it is his fourth son, Richard (1832–1908), who first emigrated to Ireland, where he found work in the Cork Steamship Company as a master boiler maker. Richard was one of the working-class intelligentsia in the fore of that artisan renaissance of which the chief symptoms in the 1860s were the birth of the Trades Union and Co-operative movements. In his concern for the elevation of the working classes, he set about improving his education, and writing essays for the edification of fellow members of the Workmen’s Reading Room in the Steamship Company. Most of his essays were theological and are remarkably eloquent for a man who had had so little education. Though he had returned to the Anglican Church, his essays were sufficiently evangelical to satisfy his Methodist father.
In 1853 Richard married Martha Gee (1831–1903) of Liverpool. Their six children, Martha (1854–1860), Sarah Jane (1856?–1901), Joseph (1856–1908), William (1859–1946), Richard (b. 1861), and Albert James, were all born in Cork. Albert (1863–1929), the father of C.S. Lewis, was born on 23 August 1863, and in 1864 his father proceeded to Dublin to take up a better job. His new position was something like an ‘outside manager’ in the shipbuilding firm of Messrs Walpole, Webb and Bewly.
In 1868 Richard moved with his family to Belfast where he and John H. MacIlwaine entered into partnership, trading under the name of MacIlwaine and Lewis: Boiler Makers, Engineers, and Iron Ship Builders. The business was a success, for a time anyway, and in 1870 the Lewises moved from the area of Mount Pottinger to the more fashionable one of Lower Sydenham.
Whether it was because of his early precocity or because of the rising fortunes of the family, his father was induced to give Albert a more elaborate education than had been bestowed on his three brothers. After leaving the District Model National School he went in 1877, when he was fourteen, to Lurgan College in Co. Armagh. This was a fortunate choice and was to have far-reaching effects, for the headmaster of Lurgan College at this time was W.T. Kirkpatrick – the ‘Great Knock’ who was to play an important part in C.S. Lewis’s life, and of whom we shall hear more in the course of this narrative. Kirkpatrick was thirty-one at the time and a brilliant teacher. He seems to have taken Albert under his wing, and, once it was decided that the boy would pursue a legal career, he set about preparing him for it.
Albert left Lurgan College in 1879 and was articled the day after leaving school to the law firm of Maclean, Boyle and Maclean in Dublin. Kirkpatrick had inspired him to continue his general education, and most evenings were set aside for the study of literature, composition, logic and history. In 1881 he joined the Belmont Literary Society and was soon considered one of its best speakers. One member predicted that ‘Since Mr Lewis joined the Society his matrimonial prospects have gone up 20 per cent’,1 little knowing that they had been quite high since he first met Miss Edie Macown when he went off to Lurgan. Both, it seems, were more ‘in love with love’ than with one another, and by 1884 Edie had faded out of Albert’s life.
The following year Albert qualified as a solicitor and, after a brief partnership, started a practice of his own in Belfast which he conducted with uniform success for the rest of his life.
On returning to Belfast, Albert was united not only with his family but with their neighbours, the Hamiltons. When the Lewises moved to Lower Sydenham in 1870 they had become members of the parish of St Mark’s, Dundela. Four years later the church acquired a new rector, the Reverend Thomas Hamilton. Richard Lewis was always a stern critic of Thomas Hamilton’s sermons, but the young Lewises and the young Hamiltons became warm friends immediately. Whereas the Lewises sprang from Welsh farmers and were, despite their evangelical Christianity, materially minded, the Hamiltons were a family of reputable antiquity with a strong ecclesiastical tradition.
The Irish branch of the Hamilton family was descended from one Hugh Hamilton who settled at Lisbane, Co. Down, in the time of James I and was one of the Hamiltons of Evandale, of whom Sir James Hamilton of Finnart (d. 1540) was an ancestor. His great-great-grandson (Thomas’s grandfather) was Hugh Hamilton (1729–1805), successively a Fellow of Trinity College, Dublin, Dean of Armagh, Bishop of Clonfert, and, finally, Bishop of Ossory. In 1772 Hugh married Isabella, eldest daughter of Hans Widman Wood. Their fifth son, also named Hugh (1790–1865), was likewise educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was ordained in 1813, and was Rector of Inishmacsaint, Co. Fermanagh. He married Elizabeth, daughter of the Right Hon. John Staples, and their second son, Thomas, was the grandfather of C.S. Lewis.
Thomas Robert Hamilton, born on 28 June 1826, took a First in Theology at Trinity College, Dublin in 1848 and was made deacon the same year. He was much afflicted with his throat and in 1850 set out with his family on a grand tour of Europe. Two years later he took another trip for his health, this time to India. He was ordained a priest in 1853. The following year, Thomas was appointed chaplain in the Royal Navy and served with the Baltic squadron of the fleet throughout the Crimean War. In 1859 he married Mary Warren (1826–1916), the daughter of Sir John Borlase Warren (1800–1863), by whom he had four children: Lilian (1860–1934), Florence Augusta (1862–1908), Hugh (1864–1900) and Augustus (1866–1945). From 1870 until 1874 Thomas was chaplain of Holy Trinity Church, Rome, after which he returned to Ireland and took up the incumbency of St Mark’s, Dundela.
‘Through the Warrens the blood went back to a Norman knight whose bones lie at Battle Abbey,’ wrote Lewis in Surprised by Joy.2 This was the very ‘William of Warenne’ of Kipling’s poem ‘The Land’ – and it seems a pleasant coincidence that the author of Puck of Pook’s Hill owned and wrote his series of tales about the land which had once belonged to an ancestor of the author of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Hamilton was an impressive and eloquent preacher, and during many of his sermons was often seen to be shedding tears in the pulpit (‘one of his weepy ones today’, the Lewises would say).3 His religion was, unfortunately, marred by his intense bigotry towards Catholics, whom he considered the Devil’s own children.4 He was also especially sensitive to swearing and in his naval journals he often recorded how he took a sailor aside to whisper some admonition in his ear. Once when returning to his ship in the captain’s gig, in a dangerous sea, he heard the officer in charge rebuke one of the crew with an oath. Hamilton immediately admonished the officer publicly. Afterwards the captain remonstrated with his chaplain, taking the view that the seriousness of the emergency excused the officer’s slip. ‘Captain,’ replied Hamilton, ‘if you found yourself in the presence of the enemy, what would you do?’ ‘Well, I suppose my duty,’ said the captain. ‘And I, Captain, was in the presence of my enemy, and I did my duty,’ was Hamilton’s retort.5 On the positive side of the account can be added the fact that Thomas Hamilton volunteered unhesitatingly for duty in the Baltic cholera camp at a time when deaths from that disease were of daily occurrence in the fleet.
Hamilton’s wife, Mary Warren, was infinitely his superior in energy and intelligence. This clever and aristocratic woman was a typical daughter of a Southern Irish seigneur of the mid-nineteenth century, and the Rectory at Dundela reflected her tastes. The following account comes from her grandson, Warren Lewis:
The house was typical of the woman: infested with cats (which were however rigorously excluded from the study), their presence was immediately apparent to the nose of the visitor when the slatternly servant opened the front door. Supposing him to have been invited to dine, he would find himself in a dirty drawing room, adorned with rare specimens of glass, china and silver. The hand which his hostess extended to him would gleam with valuable rings, but would bear too evident traces of her enthusiasm as a poultry keeper. The announcement of dinner was the signal for a preconcerted rush on the part of the family, the object of which was to ensure the unfortunate guest the chair which had only three sound legs. The dinner, in spite of the orders of the head of the house, was apt to be thoroughly in keeping with the general style of the establishment, and the visitor, having partaken of a perfectly cooked salmon off a chipped kitchen dish, would probably be offered an execrably mangled chop, served in a collector’s piece of Sheffield plate.6
Despite this unusual home life, Hamilton tried to ensure that his children received a good education. He was particularly successful with his second daughter, Florence (or ‘Flora’). She was born in Queenstown, Co. Cork, on 18 May 1862, and was old enough to have benefited from the years the family spent in Rome. On their move to Belfast she attended ‘Ladies’ Classes’ at the Methodist College. At the same time she went to the Queen’s University (then the Royal University of Ireland) where she performed brilliantly. While Albert was preparing for the Bar, Flora was reading Mathematics. In 1880 the eighteen-year-old Flora took her first degree at Queen’s. In another examination the following year, she passed with First Class Honours in Geometry and Algebra. She remained at Queen’s University until she was twenty-three when, in 1885, she passed the second university examination and obtained First Class Honours in Logic and Second Class Honours in Mathematics.
Albert had long been a favourite of Thomas and Mary Hamilton – especially of the latter, who liked discussing politics with him. He, however, was far more interested in Flora than in her parents, and in 1886 he made his feelings known to her. Flora at once made it clear that she could never have anything ‘but friendship to give in exchange’7 and urged him to stop writing to her. Though they lived only a mile apart, the correspondence continued. In 1889 Flora began writing magazine articles and, because of his superior knowledge of English literature, she found in Albert an able and flattering critic. Hamilton, with considerable astuteness, realized that Albert’s attachment to his daughter could be made to serve his own purposes. He was a man much addicted to short jaunts or holidays and in the unfortunate Albert he found not only a courier but, on many occasions, a disbursing officer. ‘I’m a mere parcel,’8 he would say genially, leaving Albert to make all the arrangements. Never had a Jacob served more arduously for his Rachel than did Albert, and he was at last rewarded for his patience. In 1893 Flora agreed to marry him, and in her cool-headed and matter-of-fact way, she wrote: ‘I wonder do I love you? I am not quite sure. I know that at least I am very fond of you, and that I should never think of loving anyone else.’9
After a year’s engagement, during which many love letters were exchanged, Albert and Flora were married. The wedding was celebrated on 29 August 1894 at St Mark’s Church, Dundela. The reception was held immediately afterwards in the Royal Avenue Hotel, and Albert’s somewhat disappointed father-in-law was heard to say, ‘Now that he’s got what he wanted, there’ll be no more jaunts.’10
Albert and Flora went to North Wales for their honeymoon, after which they returned to Belfast and settled at Dundela Villas, one of a pair of semi-detached houses within a mile of Albert’s old home.* It was in this house that their first son, Warren Hamilton, was born on 16 June 1895, and their second son, Clive Staples, on 29 November 1898.
* The villas were demolished in 1952, their place now taken by Dundela Flats, 47 Dundela Avenue, Belfast.
1 Undated letter from Albert to Edie Macown, LP II, p. 9.
2 SBJ, ch. 1, p. 1.
3 LP I, p. 3.
4 Ibid., p. 2.
5 Ibid., p. 201.
6 Ibid., p. 3.
7 Ibid., II, p. 152.
8 Ibid., I, p. 5.
9 Ibid., II, p. 248.
10 Ibid., I, p. 5.