The lecturer, a short, thickset man with a ruddy face and a big voice, was coming to the end of his talk. Gathering up his notes and books, he tucked his hornrimmed spectacles into the pocket of his tweed jacket and picked up his mortarboard. Still talking””to the accompaniment of occasional appreciative laughs and squeals from his audience””he leaned over to return the watch he had borrowed from a student in the front row. As he ended his final sentence, he stepped off the platform.
The maneuver gained him a head start on the rush of students down the center aisle. Once in the street, he strode rapidly ””his black gown billowing behind his grey flannel trousers””to the nearest pub for a pint of ale.
Clive Staples Lewis was engaged in his full-time and favorite job””the job of being an Oxford don in the Honour School of English Language & Literature, a Fellow and tutor of Magdalen College and the most popular lecturer in the University. To watch him downing his pint at the Eastgate (his favorite pub), or striding, pipe in mouth, across the deer park, a stranger would not be likely to guess that C. S. Lewis is also a best-selling author and one of the most influential spokesmen for Christianity in the English-speaking world.
[blockquote]”People have discovered by bitter experience that when man starts out on his own to build a society by his own power and knowledge, he succeeds in building something uncommonly like Hell; and they have seriously begun to ask why.”[/blockquote]
Would that more people today of all political or religious or non-religious stripe seriously begin to ask themselves the same question and find the Answer in God made man.
Thank you for putting this article online, Kendall. A most encouraging and interesting read!
Clifford Swartz
Somewhere my memory tells (I could be wrong however) that Lewis was never elevated to the position of “Oxford Don”, his highest title was Lecturer at Oxford. Shunned by Oxford He accepted the position of full professorship and thus became a Don at Cambridge in the 1950s. Lewis scholars out plase correct me if I am woring on this.
A “don” is anyone holding an academic position at Oxford (or Cambridge), even a “mere” college fellow without any university position. Lewis (Fellow of Magdalen College and University Lecturer) was this certainly a “don,” even though his only professorship was one he had in Cambridge (where he became also a Fellow of Magdalene College) beginning in 1954.
William Tighe
(Ph.D, Clare College, Cambridge, 1984)
Wikipedia has an entry for “University Don”:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_don
So it looks like Lewis was an Oxford Don, though as you say he did become a full professor at Cambridge later in his life. You don’t need to be a full professor to be a don.
Splendid shoes to fill and follow. After Jesus, Moses, Paul and my parents, I want to meet Professor Lewis in Heaven.
Wonderful to be able to read an article about Lewis written in 1947 — feels a bit like time travel. Thanks!
Will you be recording your class and make it available online? I have attended a Lewis reading group every week for the last 8 or so years. We gather and read a book aloud and comment whenever we feel the need.
Brad M
It is a wonderful encounter with Lewis as well as a wistful reminder of the caliber of writing once found in the pages of Time.