“A Rumour of Adventure” by Kees Paling

It’s May 1938. Four friends embark upon a spring walk, something various members of their group usually do. This time, since the tradition is England, they choose Somerset. This walk is different from its predecessors; the threat of Germany is hanging over Czechoslovakia, and at least two members of the group still have strong memories of the horrors of the Great War.  

The four are members of the Inklings, a group of Oxford dons and various friends who usually meet twice a week at The Eagle and Child pub in in one of the member’s rooms in Magdalen College. The four are C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams. A Rumour of Adventure by Kees Paling is the fictional account of such a walk, which never occurred in that year with those participants (Williams wouldn’t become associated with the Inklings until more than a year later). But this is fiction, a novella or short novel, in fact, so it’s okay to invent.

 

It's a charming and engaging story, true to the teachings, beliefs, and personalities of the four. Paling has done a considerable amount of reading and study to get this as right as he does. And that includes works they wrote and biographies and accounts about them.

 

Kees Paling

Of course, the four don’t just walk; they stop at pubs and drink a lot of beer (and hey drink a lot of beer, except for Williams, who drinks a lot of tea). And they talk. Oh, how they talk. 

Their conversations about literature, writing, the growing threat in Europe, imagination, the faerie folk, and more is the heart of the story, and this is what makes the account so true to the real people. And while Tolkien in particular likes his adventures in oral and written stories only, the four will experience an adventure or two along the way. While it’s tempting to compare, the adventures bear almost no similarity to that of the four hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. Note that I said “almost.”

 

Paling has published several books in Dutch on subject ranging from the fall of Prussia and culture on the eve of the new millennium to learning problems in children. He’s contributed to several books on communication and published a rather vast number of newspaper articles. He received a degree in sociology from Utrecht University, served as a lieutenant and counsellor at the Dutch Royal Military Academy, and worked at the Dutch Ministry of Culture and Netherlands Institute for Social Research. He serves as a communication consultant for the Dutch government.

 

A Rumour of Adventure is a delightful story of four men who were good friends and companions in writing (it was Lewis who so strongly encouraged Tolkien to writ The Hobbit and the work that Tolkien called “The New Hobbit”). As the story makes clear, they were also teachers, great conversationalists, and beer drinkers (lots of beer). 

 

Some Monday Readings

 

Does America Still Do Federalism? – Tony Woodlief at Law & Liberty.

 

Cui Bono? – Alan Jacob at The Homebound Symphony.

 

Notes on the Great Vibe Shift – Ian Leslie at The Ruffian.

 

Is Atlas Shrugged the New Vibe? – Henry Oliver at The Common Reader.

 

Shrouded Veterans: The Untold Struggles of an Iowa Colonel’s Widow – Frank Jastrzembski at Emerging Civil War.

"The Oxford Inklings" by Colin Duriez

Just when you think you’ve read just about everything possible on the Inklings, and surely no one can add any more to what we know about them, along comes a writer like Colin Duriez and a book like The Oxford Inklings: Lewis, Tolkien and Their Circle, just to prove you wrong.

What a treat this book is – comprehensive, succinct, engaging, and informative.

Over a period of more than two decades, a group of teachers, professors, and occasionally students and friends came together to discuss literature, read from their works in progress, drink beer, and offer constructive criticism and encouragement. The best known of the group were J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. Owen Barfield, Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams, and Warren Lewis were regular attenders. Christopher Tolkien would join the group after his service in World War II.

What their discussions led to was some of the best-known, best-loved, and most influential literature of the 20^th century – The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the Chronicles of Narnia and numerous other books by Lewis, and the strange, magical novels of Charles Williams, among others.

The Bodelian Library, Radcliffe Camera and St. Mary's Church 

Not all of the discussions happened at the weekly meetings in the back room (aka “The Rabbit Room”) of the Eagle and Child pub; in fact, the more serious and important discussions happened in Lewis’s room in Magdalen College. It was only literature that was discussed; Tolkien and Lewis between them successfully plotted to overthrow the “tyranny of modern literature” in the Oxford English curriculum.  The Inklings were well aware, for example, that the term “Renaissance” was invented in the 19^th century to describe the 14^th-16^th centuries, and it was not a concept that the people who lived through it considered.

The picture that emerges from The Oxford Inklings, published in 2015, is a group that centered on Lewis; he was the guiding spirit. What also emerges is a strong sense of what was happening with Christianity at Oxford; the interplay of writing, lectures, and friendships; the disdain by many of Oxford’s dons (and occasionally Tolkien himself) toward Lewis as a popularizer of theology, despite his major research and literary contributions. And one also sees something of the tension between friends who shared the different faith traditions of Catholic and Anglican.

Colin Duriez

Duriez is a writer and lecturer who has written extensively about Tolkien, Lewis, and the Inklings. His works include The C.S. Lewis Handbook (1990), The C.S. Lewis Encyclopedia (2000), The Inklings Handbook (2001; co-authored), Tolkien and The Lord of the Rings: A Guide to Middle Earth (2001), The J.R.R. Tolkien Handbook (2002), A Field Guide to Narnia (2004), The C.S. Lewis Chronicles (2005), J.R.R. Tolkien: The Making of a Legend (2012), and The Oxford Inklings (2015). He is also the author of A.D. 33: The Year That Changed the World (2007), Field Guide to Harry Potter (2007), The Poetic Bible (2001), and Francis Schaeffer: An Authentic Life (2008).

The Oxford Inklings is a significant addition to our understanding of who the Inklings were, what they accomplished, and what their friendship meant.

Related:

Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship” by Colin Duriez.

Top photograph: From left, Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and J.R.R. Tolkien, all members of the Oxford Inklings.

“A Well of Wonder” – Essays by Clyde S. Kilby

Clyde Kilby (1902-1986) joined the faculty of Wheaton College in 1935. He eventually earned a PhD degree from New York University (academia was a bit different in those days). He became the chairman of Wheaton’s English Department in 1951, a post he held until he retired in 1986. A few months after he retired, he died in Mississippi.

Kilby may had far more to do with our understanding of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their circle called the Inklings that we realize. It was Kilby who found a way to meet Lewis in the 1950s and Tolkien slightly later. It was Kilby who helped Tolkien with The Silmarillion, and played a role in its publication after Tolkien’s death. It was Kilby who started what became the Marion Wade Center at Wheaton, which was only a few manuscripts at its inception but is now a major center of documents and research for seven British authors: Lewis, Tolkien, Dorothy Sayers, Owen Barfield, G.K. Chesterton, George Macdonald, and Charles Williams.

And now a considerable number of Kilby’s essays have been edited and collected by Loren Wilkinson and Keith Call and published under the title A Well of Wonder by Paraclete Press. An added bonus is an introductory poem by Luci Shaw, who was a student of Kilby’s at Wheation.

The essays are divided into three parts – those about Lewis, those about Tolkien, and those relating to the Inklings, especially Owen Barfield and Charles Williams, and one non-Inkling, Dorothy Sayers. The essays were published in a variety of different publications.

In 12 essays on the author of such varied works as The Screwtape Letters and The Chronicles of Narnia, Kilby describes his one and only visit with Lewis; his world of fantasy; Lewis’s theology (and his theological critics); the critical roles of imagination and joy; and other subjects related to the “witness of literature.” (The role of fiction and literature is a major theme in all of the essays here.)

The seven essays on Tolkien focus on story and myth. Kilby describes how he met Tolkien and how the two came to work together on The Silmarillion. The essays cover a number of literary subjects – the idea of “lost myth;” how The Lord of the Rings includes both mystic and Christian elements; and several others.

Clyde Kilby

The final section on Sayers and the Inklings provides a wonderful introduction to Charles Williams and his writings, especially his novels (some of the strangest written in fiction generally); understanding who the Inklings were and more importantly what they were not; and how the Marion Wade Collection came to be.

Kilby was the author of several works about Lewis and Tolkien, including The Christian World of C.S. Lewis (1964); Tolkien and the Silmarillion (1971); Images of Salvation in the Fiction of C.S. Lewis (1978); and Brothers & Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis (1983). He served as editor for C.S. Lewis: Letters to an American Lady (1967). And a companion volume to A Well of Wonder, The Arts and the Christian Imagination: Essays on Art, Literature, and Aesthetics, was also published in 2016. Kilby also published Minority of One: A Biography of Jonathan Blanchard (1982).

For even general readers of Lewis and Tolkien, A Well of Wonder is filled with insights from a scholar who knew and studied both men up close.

Top photograph: From left, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Owen Barfield, and Charles Williams.