My schedule through the end of November is insane, so I’ll be sneaking little snatches of my Lewis studies here and there until the blessed month of December when there will be a dramatic increase in sweetness, light, and chocolate (not to mention my waistline) and a corresponding decrease in my workload. I’m planning on spending this break doing as little as possible for my current place of employment and devoting as much time to rest and distraction as I can as a matter of preserving my sanity. Thankfully, I consider studying C. S. Lewis an eminently worthwhile distraction.
Tonight as I was reading a bit of Surprised by Joy (66), I was struck by a comment Jack makes in an almost off-hand manner. He is discussing the chronological divisions into which he can describe his time at Cherbourg, and of the departure of his beloved matron, Miss G. E. Cowie. He notes that her influence “had been the occasion of much good to me as well as of evil.” Specifically, he states that,
…she had done something to defeat that antisentimental inhibition which my early experience had bred in me.”
This brought to mind something that had been hovering in the back of my thought since I started the project with Jack’s first few letters: The serious, almost cold (at times) formality with which Lewis wrote at the time (see 1-16 of the collected letters, volume 1). Much of what he has to say is purely informative–a simple statement of plain fact–and there are points in some letters where I felt that the writing itself was a formality. Points of creative, personal light peek through, but, over all, Jack’s “antisentimental inhibitions” are plainly displayed in the letters. At first I mistook it for an attempt to simply sound “grown up,” an air many children attempt to adopt. On further reflection, though that may well still play a role, over all one gets the sense that Jack is presenting a formalized mask through certain letters, hiding his true emotions and thoughts.
This might be especially obvious in his letters home from Wynyard: He didn’t let his father see the turmoil, pain, and real thoughts behind the veil of a “stiff upper lip.” I actually already hinted at this in my discussion of the Wynyard letters.
Of course, as time went along, I know that Lewis refined this into an art with his father, keeping Albert in the dark about many things in his life. It will be interesting to compare and contrast this with his letters to Arthur Greeves as time passes.
Mere Lewis 