Essentially the story involved Shasta, a northern boy found in an abandoned boat by a poor fisherman named Arsheesh and forced to be the fisherman’s slave. When Shasta learns that Arsheesh is trying to sell him to a man named Anradin, he decides to escape. Bree, Anradin’s horse, who happens to be a talking horse from Narnia who was caught and pressed into Anradin’s service, aids Shasta in escaping. The two make their escape, and on the way north they join up with Aravis Tarkheena and her talking horse. Aravis is a determined young woman from Calormen who is fleeing from an arranged marriage to a sixty-year-old man.
In late fall 1950, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was finally published. It received mixed reviews from the critics, and at first sales were slow. But as more and more children read the book and told their friends about it, sales began to grow, much to Jack’s delight, since he had written the story for children, after all. Each December for the next six years, a new book in the series of stories about Narnia was published. Although Jack didn’t know it at the time, none of these books would ever go out of print.
While New Year 1951 should have been a happy time for Jack, with the recent publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and four more books in the series completed, it turned out to be one of the most wrenching times in his life. By the end of the first week of January, Mrs. Moore lay seriously ill in her bed at Restholme with the flu. A week later, on January 12, with Jack at her side, she died. Jack thought he was prepared for the swirl of emotions her death would bring, but he had not realized that her death would also make his own mother’s death forty-three years before seem so fresh to him all over again.
Janie Moore was buried in the churchyard at Headington Quarry on a particularly cold Monday afternoon. Warren, who had caught the same strain of flu as Mrs. Moore had died of, was not able to attend, though he did write in his diary about her passing.
And so ends the mysterious self imposed slavery in which J[ack] has lived for at least thirty years…. It is quite idle, but none the less fascinating to muse on what his life might have been if he had never had the crushing misfortune to meet her: when one thinks of what he has accomplished even under that immense handicap…. I don’t think I ever saw J work more than half an hour without the cry of “Baw-boys”! [her pet name for Jack]—“COMING Dear”!, down would go the pen, and he would be away perhaps five minutes, perhaps half an hour: possibly to do nothing more important than stand by the kitchen range as scullery maid. Then another spell of work, then the same thing all over again: and these were the conditions under which Screwtape, and indeed all his books were produced. What I think limited J more even than this, was the impossibility of knowing to within an hour and a half, when any meal would be on the table; for his presence was always required in the kitchen throughout the preparation. I wonder how much of his time she did waste?
Obviously this was not the whole picture, and because Jack kept his private life completely to himself—even guarding against his brother’s knowing what went on between him and Mrs. Moore—no one will ever know exactly what attracted Jack to her and what kept him so loyal to her till the end.
One of Warren’s assumptions, though, is quite wrong. Somehow Jack’s creative abilities thrived around Mrs. Moore. In fact, Jack was able to write twenty-five books while living at The Kilns with her. And Jack also had many fond memories of her, particularly in the early days. It was Janie Moore, and not his father, who had visited him before he went off to World War I. She was the one who wrote to him every day, encouraging him and giving him hope that he would survive. And when he returned to England a wounded soldier, she stayed beside him for five months, helping him to heal.
But now it was time for Jack to go on alone. He was a fifty-two-year-old, single, plump, red-faced man, who concluded that the useful part of his life was probably behind him. But despite this piece of gloomy self-assessment, more did lie ahead for Jack. For one thing he had two more of his Narnia stories to write, and just three weeks after Mrs. Moore’s death, he had another possibility to explore—the Chair of Poetry at Oxford.
Jack decided to enter the election for the Chair, and he had only one rival in the contest—Cecil Day Lewis. Surprisingly, not only did the two men share the same last name, but also they had a lot of other things in common. Like Jack, Cecil was born in Ireland, at Ballintubber in Queen’s County, where his father was a Protestant clergyman. Following the death of Cecil’s mother when he was a boy, Cecil’s father, with the help of an aunt, brought Cecil up in London. Cecil Day Lewis had graduated from Wadham College, Oxford, in 1927, and in Oxford he was part of the circle that gathered around poet W. H. Auden and helped him edit Oxford Poetry 1927. His own first collection of poems, Beechen Virgil, had been published in 1925.
The race to become the new Chair of Poetry at Oxford was spirited and well fought, but Cecil eventually won the contest by a vote of 194 to 173. However, no one could be sure how accurate this count was, since the two men were listed on the voting slip as Lewis C. D. and Lewis C. S., and many of the voters may well have confused the two men.
Jack bore the defeat with dignity. Compared to being free from the daily drudgery of living at The Kilns with Mrs. Moore, it seemed a small thing. In fact, Jack worried about how happy he was and put his thoughts down in a letter to Sister Penelope:
I specially need your prayers because I am (like the pilgrim in Bunyan) traveling across “a plain called Ease.” Everything without, and many things within, are marvelously well at present.
With the election for the Chair of Poetry behind him, Jack turned his attention again to Narnia. This time he felt it was time to take up the story of Polly and Digory, which he had abandoned well over a year before. This time the story flowed for him; there was none of the bogging down because a character didn’t belong, which had plagued his first attempt at the story. Quickly the story of the first humans to visit Narnia came together. The first paragraph of the story read, “This is a story about something that happened long ago when your grandfather was a child. It is a very important story because it shows how all the comings and goings between our own world and the land of Narnia first began.”
The main human characters of the story are Polly Plummer, Digory Kirke, and Digory’s uncle Andrew Ketterly, an amateur magician. Polly and Digory are neighbors in a row house in London who find a tunnel in the attic that connects their two homes. In this tunnel they discover a room where Andrew carries out his secret magic experiments. Andrew has made two rings from dust contained in a box from Atlantis. The yellow ring will carry the wearer to what Digory’s uncle calls the “Other Place,” and the green ring will bring the wearer back to this world. Andrew tricks Polly into touching the yellow ring, and Polly is instantly transported to the Other Place. Digory’s uncle then tricks Digory into going after Polly. Adventures await Polly and Digory in this strange place, and the two meet a woman named Jadis, whom Digory thinks is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. Eventually Jadis follows the two children back to this world, where she wreaks havoc in London. In the process she pulls the crossbar from a lamppost and uses it to attack a policeman. Digory and Polly promptly transport Jadis and several other residents of London back to the Other Place, where they meet Aslan and watch as he sings a creation song that calls the land of Narnia into being.
Jack reveals to his readers that in Narnia, Jadis will become the White Witch of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and that the crossbar of the lamppost she brings back will grow to become the lamppost at the edge of Narnia that serves as a marker and guide for the Pevensie children to find the back of the wardrobe. He also reveals that Digory returns to our world carrying a magic apple, which he feeds to his dying mother, who is then miraculously healed. Digory then buries the apple core in the garden, and an apple tree grows. Years later when the tree is blown down, Digory uses its wood to build a wardrobe—a magical wardrobe that serves as a gateway to Narnia. Jack also informs his readers that Digory Kirke is indeed Professor Kirke, to whose house the Pevensie children are evacuated in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Satisfied with the story, Jack sent it off to his publisher. Geoffrey Bles wrote back suggesting that the name of the story be changed from Polly and Digory to The Magician’s Nephew. Jack agreed.
It was now time for Jack to turn his attention to the final book in the series. Jack titled the book Night Falls on Narnia and set to work. He carefully crafted a set of circumstances that would lead to a final climactic battle in Narnia. When he sees what he is up against, King Tirian of Narnia calls out, “Children! Children! Friends of Narnia! Quick. Come to me. Across the worlds I call you.” Jill Pole and Eustace Scrubb are transported to Narnia in response to the king’s cry for help, as are Peter, Edmund, and Lucy Pevensie. As the book draws to a close, Aslan in all his glory makes his final appearance. Also, Jack reveals to his readers what has happened to long-forgotten creatures they have met in the earlier books.
With the final book written, Jack breathed a sigh of relief and sent it on to his publisher, who, as he had with several of the other books, suggested that the title be changed. The new title of this book would be The Last Battle.
Finally, what Jack referred to as his Narnian Chronicles were complete. In a period of about two years Jack had written the seven books that made up the series, though not all of them had yet been published. As Jack flipped back through the copies of the manuscripts he had written, he was surprised at just how much Christian theology had found its way into the stories. He hadn’t set out to write a set of religious stories, but even he had to admit that the stories of Narnia seemed to give a better and clearer picture of his Christian beliefs than many of his theological books.
While Narnia would never completely leave Jack, it was time for him to move on to the next chapter in his life, though one more name change would occur before the books would become known as they are today. Although Jack had referred to the books as his Narnian Chronicles, Geoffrey Bles was not happy with this as a title for the series. It was then that Roger Green suggested switching the name around and calling the stories The Chronicles of Narnia. That name resonated with the publisher, and that is what the series of books was named.
Now it really was time for Jack to move on.
Chapter 14
New Opportunities
By September 1952, two of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, were published, and Jack was eagerly awaiting the publication of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in December. As a result of the publication of the Narnia stories, Jack began receiving more fan mail than ever. Together he and Warren tried to answer each letter, but it was a daunting task. Many of the letters contained deeply personal questions about faith, marriage, and struggles with bad habits like drinking too much. Jack and Warren did their best to answer each person’s questions as frankly and honestly as they could. From time to time, when Jack thought it would be helpful to a person, he would arrange to meet face to face with the person and attempt to resolve his or her problems.
One person he particularly enjoyed corresponding with was an American woman named Joy Gresham. Joy had first written to him in January 1950, telling him that she was a thirty-six-year-old mother from Westchester, New York, stuck in a very unhappy marriage. She had been born into a nonpracticing Jewish home and had become an atheist and then a communist. Then, as her marriage began to unravel, she had turned to Jesus Christ. At first her husband had been interested in Christianity too, and the pair had even written articles for Christian magazines. But Joy’s husband’s interest in religion died as Joy’s grew stronger. And it was about her faith that Joy was interested in corresponding with Jack.
