A genius for friendship is a gift that great men frequently lack, but it was a talent that C.S. Lewis possessed to an extraordinary degree. A brilliant scholar, critic, novelist, essayist, writer of children's books, and Christian apologist, he was always on the lookout for like-minded men whose wit, erudition, and virtue could rival his own.
In this search he did not go unrewarded. At Oxford, Lewis discovered a large, if select, circle of men who shared his interests and talent, but who also recognized his brilliance and appreciated his gift for fostering lifelong friendship. For them "Jack" (as they called him) was simply the "unforgettable friend," a description that runs like a leitmotiv through reminiscences about Lewis by those who knew him well.
Indeed, it was his remarkable talent for friendship that enabled him to found the Inklings, a distinguished group of dons, writers, critics, theologians, and humanists who met weekly to read their unpublished work aloud to each other.
Beginning in about 1933, Lewis and several other Oxford scholars began meeting at the Eagle and Child pub (rechristened the Bird and the Baby by them) for Tuesday morning readings and critiques of each other's work. Later, from 1940 to 1949 or so, the Inklings often also met Thursday evenings after dinner in Lewis' rooms at Magdalen College. At such gatherings, J.R.R. Tolkien first read his epic fantasy, The Lord of the Rings; Lewis unveiled Perelandra, the second of his fascinating "space trilogy"; and Charles Williams treated fellow members to a recitation of his spiritual thriller, All Hallows' Eve.
Although Owen Barfield was a member of the Inklings, he lamented being "too seldom able to attend." When he did, however, they were assured of a memorable evening, for, as Tolkien observed, "Owen Barfield is the only man who can tackle C.S. Lewis [and make him] define everything." The result, according to Tolkien, "was a most amusing and highly contentious evening,” which an outsider would have thought "a meeting of fell enemies hurling deadly insults before drawing their guns."
Perhaps not accidentally, Tolkien's vivid depiction of an evening among the Inklings exactly matches Lewis' description of his favorite pastimes: "My happiest hours," he wrote to his publisher, "are spent with three or four old friends in old clothes tramping together and putting up at small pubs or else sitting up till the small hours in someone's college rooms, talking
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