An Enduring Friendship and Sometimes Turbulent Creative Partnership - How CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien Inspire All Writers on the Creative Journey - by SC Skillman

 Recently I was led to look again at the supportive, mutually encouraging, sometimes turbulent literary friendship between CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. To read about this is fascinating, often amusing, and always instructive for us as writers – not only in showing us how to encourage each other (if we need that) but also it contains valuable insights into the writing process, which may help us if we are stuck or feeling dejected or unmotivated.

The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis - image of box set

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien - image of box set

Tolkien and Lewis first met among a gathering of academics in a room at Oxford University in 1926 and weren’t that impressed by each other (or so we might think from a reference in one of his Lewis’s diaries – or was it Tolkien’s? – to the other one being ‘smooth and pale’.)

Soon, however, they discover a mutual love of ancient Norse mythology and met up to share their joint enthusiasm.  Soon they became three – and four – and eventually transformed themselves into the now-legendary group, the Inklings, who met at the Lamb and Flag on a weekly basis.

Here are a few intriguing snippets, probably not even in a sensible order:

Lewis was entranced by Tolkien’s The Story of Beren and Luthien when Tolkien first read it to him. Lewis encouraged Tolkien to write more about the world of Middle-earth.

Lewis was an atheist when he first met Tolkien. Two years later Tolkien had convinced him of the truth of Christianity. But Lewis became an Anglican and that disappointed Tolkien as he was a dedicated Catholic and had hoped Lewis might join the same fold too.

Lewis wrote fast, Tolkien wrote slowly. Lewis was exasperated at Tolkien’s tendency to procrastinate and write slowly and painstakingly. The Hobbit first appeared in 1937 and later, urged by his publisher, Tolkien began thinking about writing The Lord of the Rings, but it wasn’t completed and published until 1954. Lewis’s first Narnia book had been out two years by then. Lewis then galloped his way through the rest of the Narnia stories at a rate of one a year, interspersing them with books of Christian apologetics (which Tolkien also didn’t like much, thinking them too simplistic). Tolkien decried his carelessness. Though some have hazarded a guess he was jealous of Lewis’s speed? (Any resonances for us there as writers!)

However, back to when the two of them were only just beginning to imagine their children’s fantasy classics.

CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien

Lewis encouraged Tolkien to carry on and write The Lord of the Rings (which he himself eventually loved). Lewis had begun writing the first Narnia novel, but then he found his story was floundering and he didn’t know what to do. That was until the idea of Aslan the lion came to him. One story says he saw a lion’s head door knocker on a door in Oxford.

Aslan the lion absolutely made the Narnia saga for Lewis. As for Tolkien, he decried Aslan. How could Lewis possible choose such an in-your-face- analogy for Jesus Christ? It was so obvious and crass! Tolkien would never do a thing like that. The Christian worldview was sown into his plot and themes and characters in a much more nuanced and subtle way, but not in such a blatant way as to have a central character representing Jesus and acting out the events of the crucifixion and resurrection.  (And a few severe commentators in more recent times have agreed with Tolkien in that regard – despite many millions loving Aslan, and large numbers of child readers having no idea at all of the Christian resonance in the stories).

Tolkien for his part had written his first chapter with Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday party and disappearance. Then he stopped. He didn’t know what to do next. Bilbo had disappeared and he didn’t know how or why or what happened next.

When it came to the ring Bilbo owned, Tolkien didn’t know what the ring was for or what it did. So he stopped, and waited, and prevaricated (and probably went back to adding more abstruse material to The Silmarillion). He felt stuck. That was until Lewis went to London to see Wagner’s four-part opera The Ring of the Nibelung. When he came back and enthused about it to his friend, Tolkien immediately knew what the ring was, and what power it contained, and what it meant to the future of Middle-earth.  He even had to go back and revise The Hobbit so as to give Bilbo’s discovery of the ring there much greater significance.

So much for the ring. Back to Lewis’s fantasy saga. Tolkien didn’t like his first reading of the opening chapter of Narnia.  And when he read more, he had further criticisms. How could Lewis include all those creatures and characters from different mythological traditions in time and space? Didn’t he realise a faun was a satyr (a class of being who in Greek mythology have the reputation of lustfulness)? How could he possibly dare to put Father Christmas in a book with witches, talking animals, centaurs and fauns?

Lewis went ahead. He had long held in his imagination the image of a faun with a scarf round his neck and an armful of parcels hurrying through a snowy wood.  He stuck with it. I think it’s true to say that although Tolkien, a purist, was probably right, in regard to the combination of creatures and beings in Narnia, Lewis ultimately got away with it, because his saga draws readers through, and entrances them. For me, the enduring image of Narnia is forever Mr Tumnus the Faun with his scarf and armful of parcels, peeping round the lamp post in the snowy wood during his first encounter with Lucy.

I even looked up the true character of a faun in Greek mythology and found several qualities but not lustfulness; it is indeed the satyr who represents wild sexual abandon and lust, he who could not be trusted in a glade of nymphs. The faun himself is OK. So in one sense there, Tolkien was being a bit pedantic – thus, Mr Tumnus is saved from any sleazy slurs on his character (apart from the sin of betraying the children’s presence in Narnia to the White Witch of course).

So, ultimately, the two great writers published their works, which have for generations been loved by millions. After Lewis’s death in 1963, Tolkien was devastated and later referred to their great friendship and their mutual support and encouragement and said that despite their literary differences their partnership of friendship, literary and intellectual symbiosis and cross-fertilisation of ideas (my words) would live on forever in the memory.

And so it has proved – living on not only in Tolkien’s memory during his lifetime, but in the minds of all of us ever since who love those two great writers. It remains a subject of intense interest and relevance today, especially to writers as they live out such precious partnerships in their own creative journeys.

Those who encourage us, read and comment on our work, remain loyal when our self-confidence falters, offer constructive criticism, do not allow rifts, disagreements or hurts at less positive opinions to last too long or hold us back, encourage us to continue, and (even unconsciously) sometimes provide the one unlikely and totally unexpected inspiration which might help us return to a flagging novel or a sliding vision… they are of immeasurable value in our lives.

SC Skillman Author

Sheila lives in Warwickshire, and writes mystery fiction and historical and paranormal non-fiction under the pen-name SC Skillman. She is a member of the Society of Authors and the Association of Christian Writers. Her non-fiction books on local history are published by Amberley and include Paranormal Warwickshire and Illustrated Tales of Warwickshire; her next book, A-Z of Warwick, will be released in November 2023 and she is currently working on a proposal for Paranormal Gloucestershire. Her new modern gothic novel is with publishers, and she is halfway through the sequel.

She was born and brought up in Orpington, Kent, and has loved writing most of her life. She studied English Literature at Lancaster University, and her first permanent job was as a production secretary with the BBC. Later she lived for nearly five years in Australia before returning to the UK. She has now settled in Warwick with her husband and son, and her daughter currently lives and works in Australia.