Chris, yes, there were several reasons for the “breaking of the fellowship,” so to speak, and the marriage was among them. It was hard for me to understand that–frankly, anybody who didn’t bat an eye at Lewis’s living with that Moore woman for most of his life shouldn’t have presumed to judge his marriage.

2) I got to the Eagle & Child 60 years too late. All I got to overhear was some Brits who hadn’t the foggiest clue about the strategic implications of the Global War on Terror who’d recently been to the States complaining about what simpletons we Americans were.

3) On a more serious note, I’d heard that Lewis’ marriage to Joy Gresham also put a strain on the Tolkien-Lewis relationship.

4) You could look at the endings of both to gain more insight. “Well, I’m back,” back to my everyday relatively enjoyable, peaceable life, the glory days are over forever; cast against “Further up and further in!” coaxed on by an old friend from a previous life, practically begging the cast to go forth and find new adventures.

I think you’re on to something, Anwyn! Great stuff, as usual!

I think both authors were deeply affected by their time in Europe during World War I, and in my opinion that’s mostly the reason for the difference between their outlook. They were there at slightly different times, although they were stationed in the same area.

If I’m reading my dates right, Tolkein was present for the First Battle of the Somme, and Lewis was not. Tolkein was also sent home on extended medical leave following his time there, whereas Lewis was reassigned to duty in England; as a matter of fact, Tolkein never fully recovered from his injuries and, if I remember correctly, the gas attacks during that battle.

Tolkein also often wrote of his principal characters in a healing or tending role – witness the multitude of examples from Elrond to Aragorn – and his most tragic character of all the writing I’ve read began his descent by slaying his own caretaker (Turin Turambar, slaying Beleg Cuthalion). The focus is always around wounds that do not wholly heal, that injure the spirit as much as the body, and that is probably the most telling of all. What else might one expect of a soldier that survived the single bloodiest day in the history of the British Army?

Lewis, by way of contrast, experienced trench warfare, but he was there for at most six months. I don’t think he was ever involved in major combat action, and I think that that fact is the reason that his fiction, at least, often centers around the hope that all things will be better in the end, and that people leave the world a better place than they found it.

Lewis’ major fantasy work, after all, ends with the ending of his created world of Narnia and the Pevensie children ending up with Aslan in his equivalent of Heaven. Tolkein’s fantasy work is a long story of decline into the age of machines, and is much more dark, in my opinion.

Neat post!

There is another book I’ve read that focuses more closely on the two of them, but I only read it once and would have to go through it again to remember much about it specifically. It is Tolkien and C.S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship by Colin Duriez.