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An Evening with the Inklings - Meet the Inklings Experts · Mythmakers

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  Hello and welcome to Midmakers. Midmakers is the podcast for fantasy fans and fantasy
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  creators brought to you by the Oxford Centre for Fantasy. My name is Julia Golding.
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  Now today I want to share with you a very special evening we ran last year to recreate
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  an Inklings event. We did this in the beautiful surroundings of Merton College, Oxford,
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  where Tolkien was a professor at the end of his life. Of course the Inklings actually
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  more normally met at Mordling College which is just over the road from Merton and it is
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  there that we start this presentation because the person who holds the seat that Louis
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  held in his day, Professor Simon Horobin, spoke to us in his room which is a few doors down
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  from where CS Lewis used to host the Inklings. I'm Simon Horobin and I'm a fellow and tutor
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  in English here at Mordling College. And I believe you hold a particularly significant
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  office. That's right I'm lucky enough to have the job that CS Lewis himself had when he was
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  here and not quite in the same rooms as him but in the same building.
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  So you've been working on a book about CS Lewis so can you tell us how did Tolkien and
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  CS Lewis first meet? So they first met in 1926 at a meeting of the English
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  faculty and they both actually recently joined the English faculty. Lewis had been in Oxford
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  before but he just got his job here at Mordling and Tolkien had just arrived as the new
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  Rawlinson and Bosworth professor of Anglo-Saxon from Leeds University and they met there at
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  that meeting where they were discussing syllabus reform of rather dry topic but actually
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  it was quite heated because there was a lot of antagonism between the English literature
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  side of the course and the English language people and Tolkien and Lewis found themselves
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  on opposite sides of that debate but despite that they got to know each other, got on very
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  well because they both shared this love of the mythologies of the Anglo-Saxons and Norse mythology
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  and so they quickly came to become close friends even though they were on opposite sides of
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  that debate. And they went on to have regular meetings in a reading group,
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  didn't they? Can you tell us something about the coal-biteers? So one of the things that Tolkien
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  set up shortly after he came to Oxford was this all-westlandic reading group which was called
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  the coal-biteers. It was sort of modeled on a Viking club that he'd set up at Leeds and what he was
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  trying to do is to promote the understanding of an ability to read Icelandic literature in the
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  original Old Norse and he invited Lewis to join that group and Lewis had already fallen in love with
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  all the Icelandic literature even as a child a 13-year-old he'd discovered the poetry of the Vikings
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  essentially and but he couldn't read it in the original so this was a great opportunity for him
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  and Tolkien invited a number of distinguished philologists from around the university
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  so the professor of Celtic was a member of it the professor of Byzantine Greek the professor
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  of comparative philology so it was a pretty high brow get together and they essentially were set
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  chunks of sagas or poems to translate in advance and then they turn up at the meeting
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  and Tolkien would kind of help them through essentially and how did that coal-biteer group become
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  the Inklings? Well it didn't directly in the sense that Lewis was going to a lots of
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  sort of reading groups discussion groups pretty much every night he went to something so he set up
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  the Mikkelmas club here in Mordlin which was a kind of philosophical debating society he was
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  going to the Socratic Club a kind of religious debating group and he had beer and bare wolf with
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  his undergraduate students and the Inklings itself started off as a group at university college
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  which is where Lewis had been an undergrad and he and Tolkien were invited along as senior members
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  but it was essentially an undergraduates reading group where they read their own compositions
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  to each other and commented on it and it kind of fizzled out because it was being led by undergraduates
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  who left the university and then the Inklings itself started borrowed the name from that group
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  and it was really centered around Lewis himself and Tolkien who was a particularly close friend
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  by that point and and their other friends and associates not necessarily all members of the
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  university but connected with it and many with the same kinds of interests and it became a
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  kind of group for sharing work and progress and commenting on it. So what do you think a meeting
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  of the Inklings would have been like because we are actually sitting here in the new building where
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  they met in very much a room very similar to where they met every week. That's right yeah so they
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  would have turned up I think about nine o'clock and it began with Lewis essentially saying who's got
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  something to read and then somebody would begin by just reading a section of something that they
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  had been working on if it was Tolkien it was likely the next installment of The Lord of the Rings
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  or the new Hobbit book as Lewis always referred to it. In Lewis's case he read them the problem of
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  pain and his science fiction works that are out of the silent planet in Perilandra the great divorce
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  and essentially they went around the room and read a bit and then made comments on each other's work
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  it would often lead into other kinds of discussion on sort of themes that had emerged even though
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  they were quite different many of the contributions so Warnie Lewis Lewis's brother was a member and
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  wrote 17th century French history. Lewis's family doctor Humphrey Havard was an inkling
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  and would give accounts of his latest mountaineering holiday and you wonder how they managed to find
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  common themes with this but that's seemingly what happened and this would go on quite often until
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  quite late in the night. So you hold Lewis's position now at the college as professor of English
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  language and literature what aspects of Lewis's interests in medieval literature and earlier
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  literature did he share with Tolkien in particular? Well both Lewis and Tolkien were interested in
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  medieval literature broadly conceived so Tolkien had the chair of Anglo-Saxon literature and
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  was particularly engaged with the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf so work that he was involved in
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  translating his translations and he recently been published he gave a very important
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  lecture about Beowulf which kind of stimulated lots of new work on as a poem and so that was a
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  work and that Lewis himself would have been teaching regularly had his beer and Beowulf sessions with
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  his undergraduate students and you can see that certainly influencing both of their fiction I mean
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  the most obvious I suppose in the Hobbit because it's a story of a dragon sitting on a treasure
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  hoard somebody steals a cup from the treasure he takes out his vengeance on the local town burning
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  it down and then Beowulf has to come and kill the dragon and it's clear echoes there of the
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  events at the end of the Hobbit and they both would have taught widely across the Middle Ages so
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  Sagawein and the Green Knight and Arthurian poem which Tolkien himself edited at the
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  edition that he edited is still one that we use today with students and there's a nice copy of
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  it that survives at the Lewis's own copy of Sagawein in the Green Knight in the Bodleian Library
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  heavily annotated and you can see his reactions to some of Tolkien's editorial decisions not
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  always favorable and so that again is a work that you can see cropping up in both of their
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  fictions particularly in the Narnian stories I suppose where Arthurian literature has an
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  important part to play and now over to Colin Duryes to tell us about his fascination with Tolkien
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  well it all started when I was in grandma's school we in one of the classes we were reading around
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  CS Lewis has booked me a Christianity I'd never heard of CS Lewis and I was gripped by his style
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  I wanted to read all his books and and it was through him that I came across the name Tolkien
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  and that interested me because I've got a French surname and I thought oh he's somebody with a
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  Germanic surname that's interesting and then of course the Hobbit appeared and I read that
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  and and then I went off to Istanbul for two years the University of Istanbul and it said that I
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  read the Lord of the Rings borrowed the books from the British Council Library and that's where it
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  all started and I started writing articles an article on Tolkien which I called Leonardo Tolkien
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  and Mr Baggins and I given it as a talk and I did this kind of an essay from as part of my
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  course at the university and then I it was sent I met a somebody who was from an American
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  university and he was just there for a year I had a transfer over the two and he sent it off
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  he said could I send off to Clyde Kilby in Wheaton College who had met Tolkien and spent
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  a summer with him actually to help him when he was working on his on his this the Silmarillion
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  and that and and Clyde Kilby asked if he could send it on to California because there was lots of
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  interest in Tolkien there you know it was kind of hippie era and it appeared in a a fanzine
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  basically about Tolkien which was a very interesting one and and that was my first big article on
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  on Tolkien and that's where it all started and and then since then I've written quite a few books
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  on Tolkien and his friends CS Lewis and and and I also veered towards Harry Potter and others but I
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  just like you know very much like fantasy writing and and that was something that drew me in and
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  and one of the earliest books I wrote was on the friendship between Tolkien and Lewis which
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  interests me greatly and Tolkien after the First World War he he came back to Oxford and he
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  worked for a while on the the the big English dictionary I think it was called the English
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  I can't remember exact name that it had but he was given work on the W section of it and which
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  I think he enjoyed very much and was very much akin to his his knowledge of philology and and
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  the history of words it was very much his delight to do that and after that he he got a job as a
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  professor at Leeds University where he very much enjoyed teaching the students and and after a
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  while he then got a professorship in Anglo-Saxon here in Oxford to Pembroke College and it was a year
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  after that that he met CS Lewis who had not long after Tolkien it started as a a donate model in
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  college teaching in English and I also taught some philosophy and other subjects but English was his
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  was his his great love especially going back to medieval literature and he also was very knowledgeable
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  through his study on classics and he was very white white white white red and but they met at an
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  English tea as it was called here in Merton College to talk about the you know teaching English at
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  the university presumably and so that's where Lewis started chatting with with with Tolkien and
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  afterwards he he quite liked him and he thought he just he was okay but he needed to kind of a
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  slap or so and then he would be all right yeah had an interesting way of interacting with each other
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  that's right yeah so how did the inklings come about what was the origin of that group well
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  it grew over a period it eventually started off from from friends and knew each other some of them
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  were friends that Lewis had made as an undergraduate and they came a point when there was a group of
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  students that started a group called the inklings one of them was a brother of a famous filmmaker
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  um and but anyway they um and they were um and it was a very mixed group of people it wasn't they
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  weren't all just um oxardons or professors and so on they were a mix and and they weren't all
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  teaching the same subject they weren't all say teaching English literature but various subjects
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  and one for example one of the early members of the group was um CS Lewis's GP
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  to Dr Humphrey Havard well the Humphrey was um a nickname from one of the other inklings which
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  happened a lot they like to play around with words all the time that was part of it they loved
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  talking and the another idea behind it was um a lot of them were were writing starting to write
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  I mean I mean Arthur for example had written a number of things very important books and um
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  the uh also there was a lot of conversation about what people were writing they would give feedback
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  to it rather like a writers club either we have in this country and other places which are very
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  helpful I know when I when I was lived in Leicester I went to an excellent writers club and I learned
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  a lot from it because I was writing a variety of kind of books and um I would get feedback and I
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  can understand why the inklings was so attractive to to to young scholars or you know people that
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  were um entering into the academic world or into a teaching world or whatever and um would
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  would gain a lot from it so it wasn't till about 1933 that the inklings were given that name
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  well actually the name was never printed anywhere but that seems to be when the name started anyway
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  and um so it grew out of friendship and Lewis was very um and it was very much around
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  CS Lewis it is a rather amusing letter that um that Charles Williams during the war time when
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  he had to come to Oxford you know as an evacuee in a sense working for Oxford University Press
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  and he would write quite a lot of letters to Dorothy Alseas who was a friend of hers
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  and Lewis said that she knew knew nothing about the inklings but in one of the letters the
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  Williams talked about the the group being like a court a court of the king and the king of course
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  was CS Lewis and it was quite amusing to have the inklings described in that way and there's
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  lots of different ways that you can describe them but the fact is that they were real human beings
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  and they were interacting as friends and they um and there there was one or two bumps bumps in it
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  for example Hugo Dyson who was one of the important members of the group um he rather
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  disliked the Lord of the Rings and Tolkien was reading and reading many many chapters from the
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  Lord of the Rings was being written and Dyson didn't like it at all and he he had a veto
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  to stop people just talking about elves and fairies and things like that and um it was uh
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  it was quite funny well in one occasion Dyson was later arriving which was quite something
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  happened quite a lot and they'd got down to listening to Tolkien reading another chapter and
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  you know a very important section where you know everybody was following it and Dyson burst into
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  Lewis's rooms um and um immediately the veto came into well they stopped listening to Tolkien had
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  to stop and then they then they got on with so they were a very um I mean they were a very interesting
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  group of people and um they came a time when it they stopped reading and they continued
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  discussion groups in pubs so um it became more of a conversational group after that although
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  there was lots of conversation at the time when the reading was done by various people as well
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  in you know centered around what had been read and the conversational side of the group is just as
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  important as the reading in my in my view anyway um having um having researched as much as I could
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  um so what do you think the in things meant to Tolkien do you think he would have written his works
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  without it? I think they were very important to him I think to have a um a listenership to what
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  he was writing because he knew he was going into ground that was um I mean he he knew that in the
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  medieval period people would would have fantasy and uh and supernatural beings and so on but it was
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  a very different world that he was in and um and to have a group of people that listened to him and
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  responded to it and uh and at the time when his book came out to his friend um yes Lewis
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  wrote uh wrote some blurb about it and Tolkien actually was a bit worried in case um no I think
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  Lewis was a bit worried because he thought there maybe because some people who didn't like him it
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  might have a bad effect on the Tolkien book but um so um if there was one thing by Tolkien everyone
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  should read uh what do you think where would you start? What age are you referring to an adult
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  adults? I think they should start reading the Hobbit uh it's quite a good I say it was a bit
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  contentious is it do you start with Lord the Rings or the Hobbit because the Hobbit being a children's
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  book and for people of yeah that's it is uh that's the first book of Tolkien I read as soon as I
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  got hooked via Lewis um I I saw the Hobbit in the WH Smiths and bought it and I was when I was
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  traveling to um Istanbul's and I was reading it on the journey and I just fell in love with it and
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  then I found that the the Lord it led to the Lord of the Rings and then I also make steps so
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  in um in terms of starting it's a difficult question but the fact is that um the the films by
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  Pete Jackson have encouraged many people to to read I think the the sales of the Lord of the Rings
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  have gone up and uh quite a bit since those films came out I mean some people didn't like the films
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  you know I remember when I was walking through a street in Leicester I belonged to a small Tolkien
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  my name is Owen Barfield and I'm the grandson of the other Owen Barfield who some people know
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  as the first and last inkling so Owen Barfield was one of the four principal inklings
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  and um I'm the only grandchild and I was 28 years old when grandfather passed away so I knew him
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  well so tell us something a bit about your grandfather and his and next we have Owen Barfield
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  who shares the same name as his grandfather Owen Barfield who was the first of the inklings so he
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  was an undergraduate here um but he was an independent scholar I think would be the words
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  people use now so his life was very much led in three parts the first part is a poet author
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  the middle part is a lawyer family man and then as the final part is the professor but his
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  professorship also he was lined up to have a role in academia here at Oxford he was blackboard
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  and instead he was a visiting professor in America a series of American universities
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  and what was his academic interest well his scene was the evolution of consciousness so that
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  was the big theme and the way he particularly studied it is the history of language uh and the use
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  of language in fact his second published book was history in English words so how did your
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  grandfather get involved with the inklings well um he would say that they got involved with him
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  because he would consider himself the the first inkling if you like he was 15 years old at school
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  in high-gate school sat in a Latin class with his best friend Cecil Harwood and they were translating
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  a Latin verse and there was a word that literally meant death but Cecil translated it as walking
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  out of life and in that moment grandfather realized that by studying language you can see the
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  evidence for an evolution of consciousness and from there he built up his philosophy um Barfield
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  in philosophy so what kind of contribution did he make to the inklings what did he what did he
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  read to them well um he made all sorts of uh contributions but first of all uh his interest
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  was music and dance and people don't associate the inklings with music and dance but that's where
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  grandfather first got involved and so here we need to bring in more grandmother so she was
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  organising a dance tour of Cornwall fault dance tour of Cornwall and she asked ground she asked
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  for volunteers grandfather volunteered and that's how they met and if during two summers um they
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  took Cornwall with his folk music and dance show but they also brought it to Oxford and so in that
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  year which they brought it to Oxford which I think is 1922 November um that's when I would say the
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  inkling impulse entered Oxford it started from there and more of course was a great fan what friend
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  of Sirs Lewis and a supporter of grandfather's work so as we have the grandson here can you tell
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  us any of your own memories of your granddad what was he like as a person well I like being with him
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  so um from about the age of 14 or so I prefer to go by myself to visit him than with my parents
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  you know you want to put some distance to your parents but they would go one weekend on a Sunday
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  and then I'd wait and I'd go the alternative month if you like so we saw a couple of months
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  I'd go visit usually on a Sunday um for to have lunch and then tea with him um would walk around
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  walking the countryside all around the garden of the residential home that he was living in later on
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  and conversations treating a tea drink in uh was always a part of the visit and um for me he was really
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  just grandfather I was never aware of him being an inkling or his inkling interest or his philosophy
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  so I think grandfather compartmentalized his life as many people do and I was in the family
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  compartment so um for example I was um his executor with my father but everything to do with his
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  literary estate he'd appointed four literary executors so we weren't to get involved with that
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  there's only much later when I felt the literary executors were not no longer doing anything that
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  I started to ask questions and take an interesting grandfather's work so for me grandfather was first and
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  foremost you know a man I like to be with thank you and last we have Alicia Smith to introduce
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  us to that strangest of the inklings Charles Williams and my interest in the inklings goes back to
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  well to childhood I read Lewis and Tolkien like many people um but I then when I was doing my English
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  degree um my first degree here I grabbed the opportunity to write an extended essay on the
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  inklings which was a lot of fun and that's where I accounted um not only more of Lewis and
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  Tolkien's work than I'd read as a child but also Charles Williams's work his novels primarily
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  in some of his poetry while I read it at that time um so that's my interest I worked particularly
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  on um their attitudes to academia and to work in community which was really interesting preparation
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  for doing graduate studies myself in the university so tell us about Charles Williams
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  who was he first and foremost where did he come from so um he had a bit of a different background
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  to uh some of the other inklings although they are a very varied group so that's maybe not much
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  to say um he was a publisher he worked for Oxford University Press um all his working life
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  he didn't have a university degree that made him quite different to the rest of them but he was a
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  very intelligent person um self-taught in large parts a very kind of literate um full of quotations
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  very like Lewis um and he alongside his publishing work um lectured and uh wrote various various
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  kinds of literature um and criticism he was often published um in as a review as a reviewer um and
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  a critic critic um Lewis and he sort of met because they wrote each other fan mail essentially um
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  their letters congratulating each other on recent novels kind of almost crossed in the post um and
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  then when uh the war broke out uh Williams moved up to Oxford with uh with OUP um became quite
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  quite a core part of the inklings at that time uh so met a lot of the rest of of that group
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  so what was his first entry to the inkings how was he connected primarily through uh Lewis
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  his friendship with Lewis um Lewis really liked him um possibly more than some of the other members
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  of the group um Williams tended to be quite a uh a divisive personality he was very vivid he
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  people often liked him at first you know first meeting um but he could be a challenging person
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  as well by all accounts um but he he was quite a vivid he was quite a central part of the
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  inklings for the years that he was in Oxford um until he suddenly died quite young um not long
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  after that he's been called the most extraordinary of the inklings um if there was one thing
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  by him that you would suggest people read what would you point them to
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  I think I'd recommend his novel uh Descent Into Hell um which is a very strange um
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  be prepared for a strange novel but it is it's an astonishing meditation on what creativity
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  and community uh meant to Williams and and could mean in a kind of theological way as well as being
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  a sort of thriller one of the characters is dead um throughout the whole novel um there are
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  sort of doppelgangers and ghosts and all kinds of things going on it's a really interesting kind of
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  one of his supernatural traumas is often called thank you for listening
• 28:46
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