As the two men walked from the station to the Kirkpatrick home, which was called “Gastons,” Jack tried to make small talk, commenting on how different the countryside was than he had expected. It was then that Jack learned how exacting Old Knock was. Instead of responding to Jack’s small talk, Old Knock began in his Ulster brogue challenging the premises of what Jack had just said, noting how illogical and pointless his comments were. Jack knew right then that he was going to have to think a little harder before talking to the professor.
Over tea at Gastons, Old Knock outlined his study regimen for Jack. “On Monday we will begin by reading Homer in Greek.”
Jack gulped. He did not know Greek, so how was he supposed to read a book in a language he did not know? His objection did not seem to faze Old Knock, and on Monday morning the professor walked into the small upstairs study that was Jack’s classroom. He opened a copy of the Iliad to Book I and read the first two pages aloud in Greek. Jack could not understand a word of it. Old Knock then translated the first hundred lines of the book into English and handed the page, along with a Greek lexicon, over to Jack. He told Jack to study what he had done and begin trying his hand at translating some more lines himself.
Jack did what he was told, studying Homer’s Greek text, Old Knock’s translation, and the lexicon. Slowly over the next several weeks, he began to grasp the basics of Greek. Before Jack was aware of it, he was not just translating the words into English in his head but was thinking and understanding in Greek as he read.
Albert Lewis had been concerned that Jack would find living with Professor and Mrs. Kirkpatrick lonely and boring, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Jack loved being the only boy in the house, and he and the professor soon worked out a routine that was agreeable to both of them.
Every morning at eight o’clock, the smell of sizzling bacon and tomatoes filled the house, and Jack enjoyed a hearty breakfast, complete with Irish soda bread. It reminded him of home and put him in a good mood for the rest of the day. Then it was upstairs to study and translate from nine till eleven, when Mrs. Kirkpatrick brought Jack a cup of tea. Jack then continued his schoolwork until lunchtime. After lunch he took a long walk through the countryside and settled back down to work again at about five o’clock in the afternoon. At seven o’clock he shared the evening meal with his hosts and then read happily until bedtime.
One thing Jack did not have to do for the first time in his life was attend church on Sundays. Professor Kirkpatrick was a self-avowed atheist who continually challenged Jack to prove the little he still believed about God. This was an exacting task, and Jack soon gave up trying, admitting to himself and Old Knock that he had doubts about Christianity in particular and religious faith in general. This led to many long conversations about why the professor believed that the Bible was not true and that God did not exist.
Jack had been at Great Bookham only about a month when he received a letter from Warren telling him that he had been commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Royal ASC (Army Service Corps), charged with transporting goods and supplies to the soldiers fighting on the frontlines of the war in Europe.
Jack guessed that it would be a matter of only a few weeks before his brother would be on his way to France. He was right. In November Albert sent word that Jack was to come back to Belfast to say goodbye to Warren. It was a short and awkward visit. Every time Jack went home, he could think of less to say to his father than the visit before, and Warren was now strangely grown up, dressed in his tailored serge uniform with shiny brass buttons.
On his return to Great Bookham, Jack felt more isolated than ever, and he threw himself into study. He soaked up information like a sponge, continuing on in his Greek studies and adding Latin, French, and Italian to the mix. He also discovered new authors and new books. His new favorite book was George MacDonald’s Phantastes. This book revolved around a dream in which a hero named Anodos wakes up in a strange world. A stranger, who later turns out to be his dead grandmother, guides him through a hole in a writing desk to the land of the fairies. Everything about the book intrigued Jack; the book built on so many of the stories he had heard since he was a young child. Jack also realized that he loved the sound of the English language, and he set his sights on becoming a poet.
Under Professor Kirkpatrick’s tutelage Jack found that any vestige of his Christian faith was completely eroded. Sometimes Jack put his thoughts on paper in letters to his new friend Arthur Greeves. In one letter he wrote that he thought Christianity was built on myths and that Jesus had been seen as a god only after he died. He also admitted that he was quite relieved to live without believing in a “bogey who is going to torture me forever” if he failed to do everything that the Bible mandated. Any God that would do that, he argued, was “a spirit more cruel and barbarous than any man.” Jack wanted to make it absolutely clear to Arthur that he had outgrown the Christian religion.
Two years rolled by, and in November 1916, Jack celebrated his eighteenth birthday. By now he had turned into a solid, stocky young man whose high-school education was almost behind him and who now had to make a choice about his future. Jack knew that if he went home to Ireland he could avoid the war, since the British government did not conscript on Irish soil. But if he stayed in England and applied to study at Oxford, as he desired to do, he would eventually be called up to serve in the army and sent to fight in the deadly trenches of France. Jack wrestled with his conscience over what to do and eventually made his peace, applying to Oxford and waiting for the call to arms.
Having made his decision, Jack refused to spend another minute thinking about the war. He wrote, “I put the war on one side to a degree which some people will think shameful and some incredible. Others will call it a flight from reality. I maintain that it was rather a treaty with reality, a fixing of a frontier. I said to my country, in effect, ‘You shall have me on a certain date, not before. I will die in your wars if need be, but till then I shall live my own life.’”
As it turned out, getting accepted to University College in Oxford proved more difficult than Jack had expected. Jack excelled in English and languages, but he hated science and mathematics and had spent little time studying them. But to become a member of the university he had to pass an examination that included his two worst subjects.
Jack took one last semester at Great Bookham with Professor Kirkpatrick to brush up on science and mathematics, but his heart was not in it. Whenever he was left unsupervised, he turned to studying German and Italian. It was a weak effort, and it resulted in Jack’s failing the entrance exams for the college.
Fortunately for him, the master of University College took pity on Jack because his other grades were so high. He allowed Jack to begin studying at the college, with the promise that he would work hard and pass his failed entrance tests in science and mathematics before he graduated.
On April 28, 1917, C. S. Lewis began his studies at Oxford. But as he entered the hallowed gates of Oxford as a scholar, the threat of fighting in the war loomed over his head.
Chapter 5
Into the Trenches
As Jack strolled around University College, Oxford, on the first day of the term, he wondered whether he had entered a university or a hospital. Actually, it was a bit of both. Half of the college had been converted into wards to accommodate soldiers wounded while fighting in the trenches of France. The other half of the school still functioned as a college, but it had only twelve students in attendance, including Jack. The rest of the student body had gone off to fight in the war. Encountering bandaged, wheelchair-bound men in the Radcliffe Quadrangle was a solemn reminder to Jack that it was only a matter of weeks before he would be transitioning from student to soldier and that he might possibly return to Oxford wounded—or worse, as an invalid.
Jack’s professors refused to give him any assignments, since they knew he would not be there for long, so Jack found himself in the strange position of being at college with no work to do. He whiled away the hours reading in the college’s wood-paneled library and wandering the grounds of the university. The architecture, some of which dated back to the college’s founding in 1249, fascinated Jack, and he often sketched his impressions of what he saw.
The town of Oxford itself also delighted Jack. It was spring, and Jack reveled in the blossoms that festooned the trees and the colorful flowers bursting forth everywhere. He also liked how quiet the town was. There were few cars in the place. Horses and carriages were still the main form of transport, while students scurried about decked out in their academic robes. All in all, Jack thought it was the perfect environment for study.
As he studied, Jack knew that his easy life at college could not last, not with Europe embroiled in such a major war. And sure enough, in May he was called up to go and fight for Mother England. The transition was surprisingly easy for Jack to make, since he was assigned to the Cadet Battalion, which was housed at Keble College, Oxford, located a short distance from University College. Once at Keble, the young draftees were assigned to barracks by alphabetical order. Jack found himself bunking next to Edward Courtnay Francis Moore, who insisted on being called simply “Paddy.” Paddy and Jack hit it off from the beginning; both had roots in Ireland, and both could have avoided being drafted but chose to fight out of a sense of duty and honor.
Basic training itself was mild. Nothing, Jack joked, compared to the harsh realities of attending an English boarding school. The battalion marched around the countryside and often slept in the open air, an activity that Jack had always loved.
Paddy’s mother, Janie Moore, who had separated from her husband years before, came to stay in Oxford to be close to her only son. Paddy’s twelve-year-old sister Maureen came along as well. Jack was soon drawn into their congenial family atmosphere and before long found himself spending all his days off with the Moores.
When the four-week period of basic training was over, Jack was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry and was to report to a camp near Plymouth to take charge of a group of new trainees, while Paddy was to be sent straight to France. Each of them, however, was given a month’s leave before having to report to his new posting. For the first two weeks of his leave, Jack went to Bristol and stayed with Paddy’s family before returning to Belfast to visit his father.
Before Jack and Paddy parted, they made a solemn vow to each other. Jack promised that if Paddy were to be killed in the fighting, he would make sure that his mother and younger sister were looked after, and Paddy promised to be a “son” to Albert Lewis if Jack should be killed. The promises were a relief to both young men, although, of course, they hoped that neither of them would ever have to fulfill them.
When Jack finally arrived at his new posting in Plymouth, he learned that his new job was remarkably simple. All he had to do was march a group of new recruits in training out of their barracks in the morning and deliver them to their instructors and then march them back to barracks again at night. By then the men were so exhausted that they got up to little mischief.
After a month at Plymouth, Jack received orders to report to South Hampton for transport to France. It was now time for him to face the grim reality of life on the battlefield. Jack was granted forty-eight hours’ leave before he had to report to South Hampton for transport, so he headed straight for Bristol to stay with Janie and Maureen Moore. He also telegraphed his father, hoping that he would make a quick trip across the Irish Sea to say goodbye to his son.
