Once Upon a Wardrobe

During the holidays, Lewis invites Megs to his tutor rooms at Magdalen College. When she arrives, the author is writing to his American penfriend, Joy Davidman. Lewis also reveals he is working on an autobiography and a prequel to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, in which the name of the professor will be revealed as Digory Kirk. Lewis’s next story for George is about World War II and the friendships he made in the literary group the Inklings.

On the train home, Megs reads Spirits in Bondage, Lewis’s first poetry book. She also has a history book about Dunluce Castle, hoping George will find it a satisfactory substitute for visiting the castle. Megs is struck by the despairing tone of Lewis’s poems, which seems uncharacteristic of the author she knows.

During World War II, Warnie was again sent to fight. Meanwhile, Lewis was a tutor at Magdalen College, and Minto and Maureen were living with him. In 1939, Operation Pied Piper began as parents sent their children away from London to keep them safe from the bombings. Three girl evacuees arrived at the Kilns—Annamaria, Sheila, and Rose. Lewis realized that the girls missed their parents and told them his favorite stories. One day, Sheila asked if there was anything behind one of the wardrobes. Inspired, Lewis wrote the first few lines of a story about young evacuees staying with an old professor. The story began, “There were four children, Ann, Martin, Rose, and Peter” (196).

George points out that the characters’ names were wrong, as only Peter featured in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Megs explains that it was the author’s first attempt at the story, which he revisited in 1948. Megs warns George that there is only one story left. She encourages him to save it, but her brother is impatient.

The final story is about Lewis’s friendship with J. R. R. Tolkien, a professor of English at Merton College, Oxford. One day, Lewis talked about the importance of myth with Tolkien and his friend Hugo Dyson as they walked by the river. All three were members of the Inklings, a private literary club in which members shared readings of their work. While Lewis was an atheist, Tolkien and Dyson were devout Catholics. Lewis compared the story of Christ to other resurrection myths, such as that of Adonis and Bacchus. However, his friends argued that the story of Christ differed because it was true. The discussion continued into the early hours of the morning, finally convincing Lewis to convert to Christianity.

Megs breaks off her account, crying and saying that she does not want the story to end. However, George urges her to continue, reassuring her that “everything ends.”

Lewis began writing books defending and supporting God’s existence, such as The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, The Pilgrim’s Regress, and The Great Divorce. Meanwhile, after discussing the declining state of children’s literature, Lewis and Tolkien pledged to write books that they would have enjoyed as children. Tolkien had already published The Hobbit and began a story called The Lost Road. Meanwhile, Lewis returned to his unfinished story about the evacuees, renaming the characters Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy.

George compliments Megs on the way she told the final story, declaring that she is “a storyteller.”

Megs returns to the Kilns three days before Christmas. Feeling like she must offer George a concrete answer to his question, she asks Lewis if anything about Narnia is grounded in the real world. Lewis confirms that the character Lucy is named after Lucy Barfield, the goddaughter to whom he dedicated his book. The daughter of his fellow Inkling Owen Barfield was four when he started writing the first Narnia book and is now 14. Meanwhile, the image of a faun in a snowy wood carrying an umbrella came to him when he was 16. He also had recurring dreams about lions. Megs describes how George repeatedly draws pictures of Aslan and asks if Aslan is God. Lewis replies that Aslan is how God might appear in another world. He also suggests that the White Witch could be Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen or Circe from The Odyssey, as his characters are archetypes. Megs compares the White Witch to her brother’s illness and also war and cruelty. Lewis denies intentionally writing a Christian allegory, claiming that the spiritual element of the book emerged as he wrote. He urges Megs to visit anytime. However, he observes that her notebooks must be full and suggests that she should “live and tell [her] own stories” (217).