Aslan Knows Best

Dan DeWitt on the Chronicles of Cancer in the
Life of C. S. Lewis

Well, at any rate, we now have less chance of dying of cancer," quipped C. S. Lewis in response to learning of Hitler's invasion of Poland, knowing that his own country was on the brink of joining the war. As a World War I veteran, he knew the ugliness of combat. And for a man seldom without a pipe or cigarette, he also understood the risks of cancer. His droll response to the Nazi campaign illustrates that his life was indelibly marked by both war and cancer. And it's difficult to tell which had the greater impact.

In battle during the First World War, Lewis was hit by shrapnel, the injury from which would trouble him the rest of his life. But the wounds inflicted by the dark disease of cancer would prove even more painful and devastating. In one letter Lewis summarized this sad reality: "The disease is of course cancer: by which I lost my mother, my father, and my favorite aunt." He would later add his wife to this list of causalities. Lewis had to grow up, seemingly overnight, at the age of nine, when his mother died. His father, struggling to cope with the loss, disconnected from his sons. Lewis and his older brother Warren were thus fated to spend many of the subsequent years in boarding schools. It seemed that cancer had taken from them both mother and father. And in time, it actually would.

Conversion & Cancer: The Vanaukens

Cancer chased Lewis through the years. The merciless malady left its mark on many with whom Lewis maintained contact, from distant fans to close friends and family members. Like a kudzu vine, it seemed to overtake the landscape of his life. On one occasion, a medical exam even suggested that Lewis might have cancer himself, though that proved to be a false alarm. But like his war wound from shrapnel, he would suffer indirect hits from cancer that threatened to cripple him throughout the rest of his life.

Though cancer never laid its cruel hands directly on the beloved creator of Narnia, many of his friends and family took the full impact of the disease's fury. One American couple crossed paths with Lewis while studying at Oxford, and, like many others who met the personable scholar, their lives would never be the same. The wife's conversion to Christianity was followed by resistance and even resentment from her husband. But the couple had struck up a correspondence with Lewis, whose pen helped bridge the growing divide between them, and eventually the husband also embraced the gospel.

This couple was Sheldon and Jean Vanauken, and their moving story is recorded in the best-selling book A Severe Mercy. Shortly after Sheldon's conversion, his wife Davy was diagnosed with a rare disease that attacked her liver. The two were a joyfully eclectic couple who had once taken a vow they called the "Shining Barrier," a commitment to share everything in life with each other without exception. But sickness laid down a burden that—though lightened by their love—could ultimately be carried only by one.

On a winter day in 1955, Jean entered eternity, leaving Sheldon, at 41 years of age, to carry on alone. The next day Sheldon spread her ashes amidst falling snow in the churchyard of St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Forest, Virginia. Over four decades later Sheldon's ashes were scattered in this same churchyard after he passed away from lung cancer. He never remarried.

Friendship with Joy

Lewis was destined to walk a similar path. He somewhat naively began a relationship that would change the rest of his life when he agreed to meet Joy Davidman for dinner during her visit to Britain in 1952. Joy was an American author in the middle of marital problems spiraling toward divorce. She moved to London with her two sons not long after their first encounter, and a friendship quickly developed. Lewis helped her make ends meet by providing financial assistance for her rent and her sons' school fees.

Dan DeWitt is the dean of Boyce College, the undergraduate school of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he also teaches courses on worldview, philosophy, and apologetics. He is the author of Jesus or Nothing (Crossway, 2014) and posts regularly on his blog Theolatte.com. Dan and his wife April have four children and reside in Louisville, Kentucky.

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more on C. S. Lewis from the online archives

19.6—July/August 2006

Our Faith Observed

The Three-Fold Cord of Imagination, Reason & Will in C. S. Lewis by Michael Ward

18.3—April 2005

Lions of Succession

on Being a Free Narnian & the Joy of Subordination by Donald T. Williams

33.6—Nov/Dec 2020

Till We Have Faces Covered

on Masking the Human Countenance by Devin O'Donnell