The inn they stayed at that night at Aberystwyth had no hot water, and both men looked forward to the homeward journey and the comforts of home that awaited them at The Kilns. Warren concluded his account of the walking tour with the words, “At Leamington we changed and had a drink under difficulties, in a very crowded refreshment room, and ultimately got to Oxford just before eight…. In college we found a good fire burning and a noble supper awaiting us—cold duck and salad, a tart and cheese, and a bottle of Burgundy. This put the finishing touch on a holiday which, in spite of the Ponterwyd day, I look back on as one of the very best I have ever had.”
When Jack and Warren finally arrived back at The Kilns that night at around nine o’clock, they found that Janie was not well. She was now sixty-two years old and getting grumpier by the day. In fact, both Jack and Warren suspected that a lot of her “illnesses” were merely ploys to get their attention and to keep Jack, in particular, close to home to attend to her every need.
Jack, for his part, did all he could to help ease the burden of old age for Mrs. Moore—even though the more he did, the more she complained. Because trips away with Warren were about the only time Jack could justify leaving Mrs. Moore for any length of time, as soon as one tour was over he began to plan the next one. In July the two brothers took ten days off to visit family and friends in Belfast and in Glasgow, Scotland.
On Saturday, November 17, 1934, one of Jack’s former students came to have tea with Jack at The Kilns. The student, Pirie Gordon, had just returned from a visit to Germany and told Jack and Warren about what was going on there. He had met with the correspondent for the London Times in Germany and learned of sinister things that were happening though unnoticed by most. He told of people being tortured in a secret concentration camp near Munich. Following the visit Warren noted in his journal that Pirie Gordon “doubts if Hitler is fully aware of the cruelties which are being practiced in his name. A Herr Himmler is head of the Ogpu or whatever it is called, and is the most sinister figure in Germany. There appear to be rumours that Hitler is mentally deranged: it is common knowledge that Goering was in a private lunatic asylum at the time of the Nazi coup—his insanity being caused by excessive drug taking.” Neither Jack nor Warren fully knew what to make of Pirie’s observations, but the men would learn soon enough.
Life continued on at The Kilns for Jack, Warren, Janie, Maureen, and the assorted gardeners and household helpers. Warren probably found it the most difficult to live there. He resented the way Mrs. Moore treated Jack, especially since she would not allow him to work alone for more than half an hour at a time. Janie constantly interrupted Jack to fetch her a book, adjust the lamp she was reading by, or peel potatoes for dinner. Jack accepted these interruptions as part of his Christian duty, but Warren thought it was appalling that a man should be nagged that much, and he looked forward to trips away without Janie.
In January 1935 the Lewis brothers took their fourth annual walking tour, this time in the Chiltern Hills near Oxford. The weather was much kinder to them than it had been the previous year, and they both enjoyed themselves thoroughly.
When Jack returned home from the tour, he found a letter waiting for him. He slit the envelope open and read with interest that the editor of the Oxford History of English Literature series wanted him to write a volume on sixteenth-century English literature. Jack eagerly accepted the invitation.
Meanwhile, Warren was plotting a more permanent way to get some peace. In 1936 he had a twenty-foot-long motorboat built. He called it the Bosphorus, after a ship in his and Jack’s mythical land of Boxen. Because Janie became very unhappy if Jack was out of her sight for more than twelve hours at a time, Jack was unable to use the boat. Warren, however, spent many happy hours puttering around the rivers and canals of central England. He referred to this as ditch crawling. Warren liked nothing better than to find an isolated spot on a river or canal, tie up the Bosphorus, and go for a long walk.
In 1937 Jack and Tolkien had another one of their life-changing conversations—a conversation that yielded spectacular results for Jack. Both men lamented the fact that they did not like the type of popular fiction that was being published at the time, and Jack issued a challenge. “Tollers, there is too little of what we really like in stories. I am afraid we shall have to try to write some ourselves.”
The men agreed that Tolkien would write a book about time travel while Jack tackled one on space travel. Tolkien’s attempt, titled The Lost Road, was never finished, but Jack worked diligently on his book idea. Jack titled his book Out of the Silent Planet. The storyline involved a man named Ransom, a philologist like Tolkien, who on a walking tour comes upon a house where two scientists, Weston and Devine, are planning to visit outer space, specifically a planet called Malacandra, which turns out to be Mars. Everything is ready for the voyage, except Weston and Devine need a human being to accompany them. However, Weston and Devine do not reveal their sinister plan. They believe that the inhabitants of Malacandra are fierce individuals who eat men, hence the need for an extra human on the voyage whom they could use to placate the locals upon their arrival.
Each time he finished a chapter of the book, Jack would read it aloud to the Inklings and listen to their feedback. What he heard encouraged him to keep writing. The members of the Inklings loved his story and looked forward to each new chapter.
When Out of the Silent Planet was finally finished, Tolkien stepped in to help Jack find a publisher for it. He sent the manuscript along with a letter from him to Stanley Unwin, who had published Tolkien’s book The Hobbit. To Jack’s dismay, Unwin rejected the book for publication. However, he forwarded the manuscript on to another publishing company, The Bodley Head, and they accepted it. In late 1938 Out of the Silent Planet was published and went on sale. Much to Jack’s delight, it was well received by the book critics. Noted author Hugh Walpole wrote of the book, “Here is a very good book. It is of thrilling interest as a story, but it is more than that; it is a kind of poem, and it has the great virtue of improving as it goes on. It is a unique thing, full of stars, cold and heat, flowers of the planets and a sharp sardonic humour.”
Already Jack saw Out of the Silent Planet as the first of a trilogy, and he was looking forward to writing the next two books in the series. However, as the calendar rolled over into 1939, other matters of great importance interrupted Jack’s plans.
Chapter 10
War Again
For Jack 1939 started off as the seven previous years had, with a long walk through the countryside with Warren. This time the brothers chose to wander amid the Welsh marshes. Their trip also included a visit to Great Malvern, where they had both attended school. It was a poignant time for both Jack and Warren as they recalled times gone by. It was made even more poignant by the fact that Europe seemed once again poised on the brink of war—as it had been in 1914 during Jack’s last term at Great Malvern.
The walking trip through the Welsh marshes presented an interesting challenge for the Lewis brothers, since it snowed every day. But despite the discomfort the snow brought to their walk, Jack and Warren were entranced by the magical spell a blanket of snow cast over the landscape. The scene was one that Jack would later vividly recapture at the start of one of his books.
When Jack and Warren finally returned to The Kilns, they braced themselves for what lay ahead. If Germany, under Adolf Hitler’s leadership, did declare war, Warren was sure that he would be recalled to active service. He dreaded the thought, as he did not feel he had the psychological strength to return to the battlefield and watch his fellow soldiers being slaughtered.
Jack, on the other hand, was sure that he would not be called up. He still had pieces of shrapnel embedded in his chest from World War I that would make him unfit for active duty. But the idea of sitting around while England needed men to go and fight did not settle well with him. In the end, however, all he or anyone else in England could do was wait and watch as the storm clouds of war continued to gather over Europe.
While they waited, Jack embarked on writing a new book. The book was nonfiction, an exploration—or apology—for why God allows His children, whom He loves, to endure pain. The Problem of Pain was a short book, just forty thousand words, commissioned by a small London publishing house. Jack enjoyed the challenge of writing it, especially since he got to write in a different voice—not that of an Oxford don or a fiction writer but of a lawyer arguing a case. Before Jack was able to finish the book, however, war broke out.
On September 30, 1938, the governments of Britain and France had concluded a pact with Germany whereby the Nazis were allowed to keep Sudetenland, the narrow strip of land they had annexed from Czechoslovakia. In return, Germany promised that it would not invade any more territory in Europe. Upon returning to England after negotiating the pact, British prime minister Neville Chamberlain declared it to be “peace in our time.” But on March 15, 1939, the Nazis shattered that peace and the pact when they invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia.
Two months later, Adolf Hitler signed a pact with Italy agreeing that each country would support the other if war were to break out in Europe. And on August 23, 1939, the Nazis signed a ten-year nonaggression pact with Joseph Stalin, the Russian dictator. Germany then demanded the return of the city of Danzig (Gdansk) and the strip of land that linked East Prussia to Germany, territory the Germans had lost to Poland at the end of World War I.
In response to the Nazis’ threats and demands on Poland, Britain signed an agreement that it would come to Poland’s aid if the Germans attacked the country. And that is just what the Nazis did. On September 1, 1939, Germany annexed Danzig, and German troops poured across the border and invaded Poland, unleashing a blistering and devastating air attack against the country.
In the early morning hours of Sunday, September 3, the British prime minister issued an ultimatum to Germany: immediately cease the invasion of Poland or face all-out war with Great Britain. The Nazis ignored the ultimatum, and at 11:15 am Prime Minister Chamberlain interrupted regularly scheduled radio broadcasts to announce to the population that Great Britain was officially at war with Germany. Twelve minutes later the air-raid sirens in London began to wail. It was only a test, but it brought home to everyone the reality of the situation. Britain’s Commonwealth allies, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, also declared war on Germany.
With the country at war, the British government began mobilizing its troops to fight the Germans, and on September 4, 1939, Warren Lewis, now forty-five years old, was recalled to active service. He was sent to the army base at Catterick, Yorkshire, where he was given training in the latest innovations in war transportation and prepared himself to once again go and fight the Germans. Warren was also promoted to the rank of major and posted with the British Expeditionary Force to Le Havre, France.
The early stage of this mobilization was a time of great confusion in England. The government declared that it would take over Magdalen College. It took Jack two days to pack up all his books and lug them down to the basement. Then shortly afterward the government decided that Magdalen College would remain open, and Jack had to carry all of his books back upstairs to his office and rearrange them.
In London residents were required to carry gas masks with them at all times, and people busied themselves filling sandbags to barricade buildings in case the Germans began bombing the city from the air with the same ferocity as they were bombing Poland. Barrage balloons also floated above the city as a trap for enemy airplanes. In fact, the fear of impending air attacks by the Germans against London was so great that the government decided to evacuate the children from the city. All traffic into London was stopped, and all roads leading in and out of the city were made one-way roads out to aid in the evacuation of the city.
