The Notion Club, as depicted, was informal and vague in outline. A number of characters appear in the dialogues, some rarely or fitfully.
— The Notion Club Papers, in J.R.R. Tolkien. Sauron Defeated: The History of Middle Earth Volume IX. ed. Christopher Tolkien (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992), 158.
Around 1931, an Oxford student group, founded by future BBC radio broadcaster E. Tangye Lean, met to discuss each other’s ongoing literary efforts. They would read aloud what each had written, and then discuss it, hoping for it to be criticized so they could hone each other’s emerging literary skills. It is one of many such groups which have come and gone at universities throughout the world. It would have been as forgettable as the rest, save for two important facts. The first is that the group was sponsored by C.S. Lewis. Lewis and some of his fellow dons, like J.R.R. Tolkien, came to the meetings and shared their own writings to the group. The second is that the group was named The Inklings, a name which would live on long after the student group ended around 1933, when Lean graduated from Oxford.[1]
C.S. Lewis and his friends would eventually take the name of the Inklings as the official title for their own get-togethers. Unlike what had happened before, the new Inklings would, for the most part, not be made up of students. Instead, a large number of them would be prominent members of the Oxford community at large. They would meet several times a week to converse, debate, partake of a good meal or drink, and, like the original Inklings, read and discuss each other’s writings. C.S. Lewis was, to be sure, the center and star of it. But there were many other people who would join in and put their own mark upon the group.[2] It has often been assumed, save for the odd man out, the group was quite unified in its interests and in its general beliefs. John Wain, who viewed himself as an outsider looking in, has helped to propagate this view: “The group had a corporate mind, as all effective groups must; the death of Williams had sadly stunned and impoverished this mind, but it was still powerful and clearly defined. Politically conservative, not to say reactionary; in religion, Anglo- or Roman Catholic; in art, frankly hostile to any manifestation of the ‘modern’ spirit.“[3] To a point, there is truth in this; many in the group did share a dislike for the changes they saw happening in the world. Yet, if one went beyond the surface, and to the people involved, one can see how Wain failed to appreciate the differences in the group; he didn’t see the struggles and conflicts which happened around him.[4] There can be no better example of this than between the underlying disagreements, and sometimes hostility, that Tolkien felt from none other than C.S. Lewis.[5]
No one should deny that Lewis and Tolkien were close friends: they were. But like many friendships, there were many elements of friction, many elements of serious conflict, many areas of resentment which grew through the years. Their disagreements, their different outlooks on life, would wound their friendship. The pain of it would be felt more succinctly by Tolkien than by Lewis, though Lewis also suffered from it. Tolkien could be irritable and fight, even at Inkling meetings, requiring him to apologize later.[6]Not all of the damage would ever heal over; and later in life, in the unpublished essay, “The Ulsterior Motive,” Tolkien wrote not only about what had most annoyed and confused him most about Lewis, but also took the time to offer a lengthy criticism of some of his theological ideas. Tolkien did not really appreciate Lewis’s popular approach to theology.[7] Not only did Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” ignore much of what Tolkien found significant in Christianity, it also had, for Tolkien, dangerous implications. He believed that many of Lewis’ so-called common-sense ideas questioned the value and meaning of many of the Christian doctrines Lewis tried to defend. A way to see this is by examining their respective views on marriage.
Footnotes
[1]The group served as a way that Lewis and Tolkien’s friendship, which had begun under Tolkien’s Coalbiters, could grow and include other people in it.
[2]It’s difficult to get an official list of the Inklings, in part because there is a debate as to what level of association one needed to be ranked among its members. And some, like John Wain, who are often recognized as being a member, would question that status for themselves because of how different they felt they were with the rest of the group. Be it as it may, the group is far more extensive and diverse as people often assume. Certainly C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield are the four most important members of the Inklings. But there are many more who should be mentioned, including, but not limited to: Major Warren (Warnie) Lewis (C.S. Lewis’s brother); Christopher Tolkien (J.R.R. Tolkien’s son); Hugo Dyson (Lecturer in English at Oxford); Nevill Coghill (one of Richard Burton’s mentors); Adam Fox (poet and eventual Canon of Westminster Abbey); Gervase Matthew (Dominican Friar, Byzantine scholar); Charles Wrenn (Lecturer on Anglo-Saxon); Lord David Cecil; R.E. Havard (physician and convert to Catholicism); and John Wain (former student of C.S. Lewis turned author, Lecturer in English and, eventually, Professor of Poetry).
[3] John Wain. Sprightly Running (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1963), 180.
[4] J.R.R. Tolkien struggled with many members of the group. Hugo Dyson and Tolkien often irritated each other: Dyson didn’t want to hear Tolkien reading from The Lord of the Rings; in fact, he wasn’t too interested in any of the reading the group did, he was interested in the conversation and fellowship. See Humphrey Carpenter. The Inklings(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1979), 212. Tolkien’s relationship with Charles Williams was quite complex, and we probably will never get the full of it. His own description of his association with Williams could change, but probably was best stated when he wrote, “I knew Charles Williams only as a friend of C.S.L. who I met in his company when, owing to the War, he spent much of his time in Oxford. We liked one another and enjoyed talking (mostly in jest) but we had nothing to say to one another at deeper (or higher) levels,” J.R.R. Tolkien. Letters. Ed. Humphrey Carpenter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1981), 361-2 (Letter 276). From what Tolkien would say to others, one gets the sense that he, in part, resented Williams’ infiltration into the Inklings, that Tolkien felt Williams had gotten in the way of his own friendship with Lewis. Indeed, Tolkien could often be critical and insulting when talking about Williams as can be seen by his description of Williams as a ‘witch doctor.’ See Carpenter. The Inklings, 212. Yet, we see a different side of his views on the man when Williams died. Tolkien, writing to Williams’ widow, said that he had “grown to admire and love your husband deeply, and I am more grieved than I can express,” Tolkien. Letters, 115 (Letter 99). Obviously, he was not going to tell Michal Williams all his reservations about her deceased husband, but the sentiment expressed in his comments go beyond the level of mere acquaintance and show that there was, on some level, a true bond of friendship made between the two men.
[5] C.S. Lewis and his brother occasionally showed anti-Catholic sentiments, sometimes to a shocking degree, despite their otherwise ecumenical approach to life. Irish Catholics were spoken of with insults, while the plight of Spanish Catholics in Spain’s Civil War had little to no emotional impact on Jack. “C.S.L. of course had some oddities and could sometimes be irritating. He was after all and remained an Irishman of Ulster,,” Tolkien. Letters, 350 (Letter 261).
[6] “It was good of you to write in return. But you write largely on ‘offence’; though surely I amend ‘offended’ in my letter to ‘pained’? Pained we cannot help being by the painful. I know well enough that you wd. Not allow pain to grow into resentment, not even if (or still less because) that may be a tendency of your nature. Woe to him, though, by whom the temptations come. I regret causing pain, even if and in so far as I had the right; and I am very sorry still for having cause it quite excessively and unnecessarily,” Tolkien. Letters, 125 – 6 (Letter 113).
[7]Bradley J. Birzer. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003), 50.
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