Jack found the criticism from his old friend hard to take, partly because he had some doubts of his own about the story and partly because all along he had been encouraging Tollers to complete the book he had been writing now for several years. Tolkien called the book The Lord of the Rings, and Jack was sure that if Tolkien ever succeeded in finishing it, the book would be a masterpiece.
Following Tolkien’s negative response, Jack was tempted to put the manuscript for his story back on the shelf and forget about it. And he may well have, except that he gave a copy to Dr. Havard, who let his daughter Mary Clare read it. Mary Clare loved the story, causing Jack to realize that he had written the story for children after all, and not for intellectual adults like Tolkien.
This positive feedback emboldened Jack to ask Roger Green to read his manuscript and see whether he thought it had any merit. Roger very much liked what he read, though he had to agree with Tolkien that Father Christmas seemed very out of place in the story.
Jack thought about Roger’s remarks, but in the end he insisted on leaving Father Christmas where he was in the story. However, Jack did take Roger’s other piece of advice. He sent the manuscript for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe off to his publisher, Geoffrey Bles, and waited nervously to see whether he concurred with Tolkien that the story was nothing but an embarrassment, or whether he liked it and would consider publishing it.
Before he received a reply from his publisher, however, the stress of his writing and teaching schedule and the burden of caring for Janie Moore caught up with fifty-year-old Jack. In June 1949 Jack collapsed and had to be rushed to the hospital by ambulance. He had a high fever, and his glands were swollen. Dr. Havard administered penicillin shots to Jack every three hours. Jack spent more than a week in the hospital recuperating.
When Dr. Havard explained to Jack that his condition was a result of his becoming run-down by the stress of all his responsibilities at home and at the university, Warren became incensed. Although he could not do much about Jack’s responsibilities at Magdalen College, he stormed home to The Kilns to do something about the stressful situation there. He explained the reason for Jack’s collapse to Mrs. Moore and demanded that she leave his brother in peace for a month so that he could make a full recovery. Shocked by Warren’s fury at her, Janie Moore reluctantly agreed and, for a while, stopped making incessant demands of Jack when he returned home from the hospital.
Chapter 13
Chronicling Narnia
As Jack recuperated at The Kilns, he waited anxiously to hear from his publisher regarding The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Finally a letter from Geoffrey Bles arrived. In the letter Geoffrey confided to Jack that he was less than excited about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. He doubted that such a book would sell. Like Tolkien, he thought that its publication might even hurt Jack’s literary reputation and the sales of his other books. But Geoffrey did not dismiss the story outright as had Tolkien. Instead, he suggested that if Jack wanted to have it published, it should be the first in a series of children’s books.
Although these comments from his publisher were less than the ringing endorsement he had hoped for, nonetheless Jack was encouraged by them. Geoffrey would publish The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe if it were part of a series of books. That in turn sent Jack back to Narnia, the imaginary world that was now alive in his imagination as Boxen and Animal-Land had been when he was a child. Jack began thinking about other stories that could occur in Narnia. Eventually he settled on writing the story of the beginnings of Narnia and the first humans to visit the place. He hoped in the process to explain where the lamppost in Narnia and the wardrobe in Professor Kirke’s attic came from.
Jack called the new story he embarked upon Polly and Digory, after its two main characters, Polly Plummer and Digory Kirke. All went well with the story until Jack introduced the character of Mrs. Lefay, Digory’s godmother and a woman skilled in the ways of magic. Something about this character didn’t feel right to Jack, and his writing began to bog down. When he read to Roger Green what he had written so far, Roger confirmed Jack’s feelings about the character.
Unsure how to correct the wrong turn the story had taken, Jack decided to abandon Polly and Digory and instead start in on a new story. This story he called Drawn into Narnia, and Jack busily set to writing it. The opening line read, “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy, and it has been told in another book called The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe how they had a remarkable adventure.”
At the start of the story, the Pevensie children are waiting for the train that will take them back to boarding school, when they are suddenly and surprisingly pulled back into Narnia. In Narnian time a thousand years has passed since they ruled over the land from the capital Cair Paravel. The children had ruled during a Golden Age, but now Narnia is a very different place, where a state of civil war exists. The animals, trees, and dwarfs of old Narnia have been banished by the Telmarines, people from our world who found their way into Narnia and have taken it over. Prince Caspian, the rightful heir to the throne of Narnia, wants to assume the throne that is his and return Narnia to the “old” ways, but he is thwarted by his uncle Miraz, a despot who calls himself the Lord Protector and who is actively hunting down his nephew in order to kill him. But when Prince Caspian blows the horn given to Susan Pevensie in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children are magically called back to Narnia to aid the prince in his struggle. Along with Prince Caspian, Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy unite all those true to the old ways of Narnia in an epic battle as they confront Miraz.
Jack finished the book by Christmas 1949, and he quickly sent it off to his publisher. While Jack started on another story, Geoffrey wrote back and suggested that the book be published under the title Prince Caspian rather than the original Drawn into Narnia. Jack agreed to the change, with the proviso that it also have the subtitle The Return to Narnia.
With the second book in his series of stories about Narnia completed, Jack threw a luncheon for his friends where he read selections from the manuscript to them and introduced them to Pauline Baynes. Pauline was an artist whose illustrations in Tolkien’s book Farmer Giles of Ham had impressed Jack. Much to his delight, Jack’s publisher had agreed that Pauline could do the illustrations for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and he hoped, for the second book as well.
The third book in the series that Jack embarked upon was titled The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The story opens with Lucy and Edmund Pevensie standing with their obnoxious cousin, Eustace Clarence Scrubb, staring at a wall that held a picture of an ancient sailing ship. As they stare, the picture seems to come alive, and the three children are pulled into it. The children soon find themselves splashing about in the ocean and are rescued by the crew of the Dawn Treader, the ship in the picture. The ship is under the command of Lord Drinian, and aboard the vessel is Prince Caspian. The prince explains that he is on a quest to find seven of his father’s friends, Lord Revilian, Lord Bern, Lord Argoz, Lord Mavramorn, Lord Octesian, Lord Restimar, and Lord Rhoop, all of whom had been deposed by Miraz. The men had vanished in the Eastern Seas beyond the Lone Islands at the outer limits of Narnia. The only problem is, no one aboard the Dawn Treader has ever voyaged into these waters before, and they have no idea what might lie ahead. Along the way many adventures ensue, the circumstances of which slowly transform Eustace Scrubb physically and spiritually. Aslan also shows up in the story and reveals many truths about the eternal world he inhabits.
By March 1950, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader was complete. Jack now had three books in various stages of publication. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was in the process of being typeset and illustrated, Prince Caspian was being proofread, and Jack was reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader to Roger Green and listening carefully to his friend’s feedback.
Jack also started work on the fourth book in the series, The Wild Waste Lands, which eventually became The Silver Chair. This story involved the much-changed Eustace Clarence Scrubb and Jill Pole, who both attend a school called Experiment House, where bullies mercilessly pick on them. One day Eustace tells Jill about Narnia, and moments later they find themselves standing on a precipice there. Aslan has summoned them, and he admonishes the two children:
Far from here in the land of Narnia there lives an aged king. He has no heir because his only son was stolen from him many years ago and no one in Narnia knows where that prince went or whether he is alive. But he is. I lay on you this command, that you seek this lost prince until either you have found him and brought him to his father’s house, or else died in the attempt, or else gone back into your own world.
Jill and Eustace take up the challenge and head for the ruined city of the ancient giants. Along the way they link up with Puddleglum, a Marsh-wiggle from the Eastern Marshes of Narnia, and encounter the Green Witch before arriving at the House of Harfang, where one of the giants has a cookbook with a recipe that begins, “MAN. This elegant little biped has long been valued as a delicacy.”
On more than one occasion Jill and Eustace lose sight of their mission, but eventually they overcome the odds against them, find Prince Rilian, the son of Prince Caspian the Tenth, cut him free from the silver chair where he has been bound, and fight their way back to Narnia with him. And when Jill and Eustace finally make it back to their world, they find that the strength and confidence they have gained as a result of their mission allows them to beat back the bullies who tormented them in the past.
In April 1950, as Jack was working at writing The Silver Chair, Mrs. Moore fell out of bed and injured herself. After attending to Janie’s injury, Dr. Havard explained to Jack that she could no longer stay in the house at The Kilns. She needed around-the-clock supervision and would have to be admitted to a geriatric nursing home. Jack accepted the doctor’s diagnosis and chose nearby Restholme, in North Oxford, to which Mrs. Moore was transported. It was not cheap for Janie to stay there, costing over five hundred pounds per year. Jack worried about how he would pay for her care if she lived much more than another year or two. He put his thoughts about placing Mrs. Moore in a rest home on paper in a letter to Arthur Greeves, informing him that because of the added financial burden he could not afford to visit Ireland later that year. “I hardly know how to feel. Relief, pity, hope, terror, and bewilderment have me in a whirl. I have the jitters!”
Both Warren and Jack found it difficult to adjust to life at The Kilns without Janie Moore around. Janie had had a dominating influence on Jack’s life for over thirty years, and now she was neatly tucked in bed in a nursing home with other people to care for her. There was no more of her yelling down the stairs at The Kilns, no more ranting insults, no more irregular meals worked around her needs. All was calm and peaceful. And even though Jack visited Mrs. Moore every day without fail, he still had much more free time than he’d ever known as an adult.
Of course he put this spare time to good use finishing The Silver Chair and starting in on the next book, The Horse and His Boy, though Jack initially titled it Journey into Narnia. “This is the story,” Jack points out in the opening paragraph to the book, “of an adventure that happened in Narnia and Calormen and the lands between, in the Golden Age when Peter was High King in Narnia and his brother and his two sisters were King and Queens under him.”
