BY G. CONNOR SALTER

Dr. Don W. King (PhD, University of North Carolina at Greensboro) teaches British literature at Montreat College. He is a well-known scholar on the Inklings, particularly known for work on underdiscussed areas of Inklings scholarship, such as C.S. Lewis’ poetry.

In this third and final part of our interview, King discusses two women who played key roles in Lewis’ life: Ruth Pitter and Joy Davidman. Both shared Lewis’ passion for poetry and became dear friends with him. Ultimately, Lewis married Davidman, though various friends reportedly felt Pitter was better suited to him. The story of Davidman’s double marriage to Lewis (first a civil union, later an Anglican ceremony) and how their romance developed as Davidman struggled with cancer was adapted into the play and multiple movies Shadowlands.

While many know the broad strokes of the Davidman-Lewis romance from Shadowlands, very little information was available on Davidman or Pitter. King made major steps to filling that information gap with his books Hunting the Unicorn: A Critical Biography of Ruth Pitter, The Letters of Ruth Pitter: Silent Music, Sudden Heaven: The Collected Poems of Ruth Pitter, Out of My Bone: The Letters of Joy Davidman, and Yet One More Spring: A Critical Study of the Works of Joy Davidman.

King was kind enough to give some thoughts from his research on these women.

Interview Questions

How did you become interested in Ruth Pitter?

I had not heard of Pitter until the mid-1990s when I was researching and writing C. S. Lewis, Poet: The Legacy of His Poetic Impulse. I came across correspondence between Pitter and Lewis. Pitter asked Lewis if he would mind if she took the end of Perelandra—Chapter 17—and turn it into Spenserian stanzas. She said she wanted to do that because by turning those passages into poetry, she would be better able to remember the remarkable ideas about the Great Dance found in those passages. Lewis replied and said something like, “Well it’s fine with me if you want to do that, but I don’t know why you would want to waste your poetry on my prose.” When I read that exchange, I saw immediately that it supported my contention that at least some of Lewis’s best poetry is in his prose. That set me off on a search to try to find the transcriptions that Peter did to chapter 17 of Perelandra.

I contacted the Lewis estate, but they knew nothing about such transcriptions. I contacted Pitter’s estate, which was really just a lawyer, and he knew nothing about it, so at the end of my visit to the Bodleian library—I think this probably would’ve been about 1997— I decided I would check to see if the Bodleian had Ruth Pitter’s papers. I went up to the person I was working with and I said, “Do you have Ruth Pitter‘s papers?” and he said, “Well, of course we have Ruth Pitter‘s papers.” Of course, I got very excited, and I said, “Well, can I see them?” and he said, “No, you may not.”

When I asked why, he said, “Because her papers haven’t been properly cataloged yet.” They would’ve had her papers for about seven years at that time, but I think that just shows how understaffed the Bodleian was at least at that time.

What they did have was a single sheet of paper on which, for each of the 36 boxes of Pitter’s papers they had, there was a one sentence description of what was in the box. Eventually, this person permitted me to look over that listing, and I identified four boxes that I thought if Pitter’s transcriptions were going be anywhere, they would probably be in one of these boxes. As I was going through the four boxes— I think it was on the next the last day before I was going to be leaving to come back to the states—I opened the last box. It held Pitter’s manuscript notebooks. Sure enough, I opened one of the notebooks and there were her transcriptions of the seventeenth chapter of Perelandra. You can imagine that was pretty exciting stuff—it was the equivalent of a miner hitting a gold vein. The kind of thing only researchers can get excited about.

During my next visit to the Bodleian and discussions with Judith Priestman, I learned that a biography of Pitter was long overdue. Judith urged me to begin researching Pitter’s life and work, and to my delight, I found much to admire and appreciate.

What followed was Hunting the Unicorn: A Critical Biography of Ruth Pitter (2008). While not hagiography, Hunting the Unicorn was a genuine labor of love. Six years later, I followed with The Letters of Ruth Pitter: Silent Music (2014). These two books set the stage for Sudden Heaven: The Collected Poems of Ruth Pitter (2018),the final book in what had become an unplanned trilogy.

There had been a little more written about Joy Davidman (Lyle Dorsett’s book, various books related to Shadowlands), but not much deep research when you released Out Of My Bone in 2009. What led you to decide to write book-length projects on Joy Davidman?

After writing the biography of Ruth Pitter, I decided that I was also interested in the other important woman and Lewis’s life, Joy Davidman. This would’ve been in 2006 or so. The only substantial piece of research on Joy at the time was Lyle Dorsett’s biography of her, And God Came In, that had appeared in the early 1980s. So, I thought, “I’ll write a biography of Davidman,” but as I was working on that project I came across the fact that another scholar, Abby Santamaria, was already at work on a biography of Davidman.[1]

However, I’d already spent a lot of time gathering material for the biography, especially Davidman’s letters. I decided that publishing a collection of her letters was a worthy scholarly project. Accordingly, in 2009 I published Out of My Bone, containing all of the letters that were public at that time. Since that time several dozen other of her letters have been made public. I’ve already published six or seven of those letters, and over the next year or so, I’ll be publishing another 24 of those letters. Eventually, I’ll probably try to do a revised edition of Out of My Bone.

As I was working on the letters, I decided I wanted to publish an edition of Davidman’s poems as well as a book on her as a writer. This led to A Naked Tree: Joy Davidman’s Love Sonnets to C. S. Lewis and Yet One More Spring: A Critical Study of Joy Davidman, both published in 2015. So, as with Pitter, I ended up writing an unintended trilogy on Davidman.

Not many people talk about the fact that Davidman provided feedback on works by her first husband, William Lindsay Gresham. What do we know about their collaborations?

Davidman thought one of her literary gifts was as a collaborator. She often encouraged Bill to let her work with him on writing ideas. For instance, once Bill moved to Florida and started working for the magazine All Florida,[2]Joy often sent him ideas for stories, features, and photographs; at one point she suggested he run a contest for writers as a way to drum up contributors for the magazine.

Later, she lamented: “I imagine that some of the trouble you’re having in writing is the same as mine; the difficulty of breaking up a team. We were a good team; we each had what the other lacked, and I hated to dissolve it. A pity that your ego made you resent the collaboration so much” (June 26, 1954; Bone xxiv). Still later, she softened a bit and wrote: “If you ever feel it would be any help, don’t hesitate to consult me on any plot you’re having trouble with, and we can maul it over all night by air-mail! I don’t kid myself in these matters — whatever my talents as an independent writer, my real gift is as a sort of editor-collaborator like Max Perkins, and I’m happiest when I’m doing something like that” (April 29, 1955; Bone, xxiv).

This is a side note, but I’m curious. It’s been suggested that Davidman’s style is evident in some poems that appear in Gresham’s second novel, Limbo Tower. What’s your take on that?

I’ve not seen any of those poems among Joy’s papers, so I’m confident they are not by her. In addition, stylistically they aren’t her “voice.” They read more like something Bill would write.

We also know that Davidman is a key influence on Lewis’ last novel, Till We Have Faces. Can you tell us anything about how she influenced the book?

Wow, to answer this question completely I’d have to write an essay!

Davidman’s collaborative role in Till We Have Faces is multi-layered. First, she helped jar Lewis out of a writer’s block. On March 23, 1955, she writes to Bill: “One night [Lewis] was lamenting that he couldn’t get a good idea for a book. We kicked a few ideas around till one came to life. Then we had another whiskey each and bounced it back and forth between us. The next day, without further planning, he wrote the first chapter! I read it and made some criticisms (feels quite like old times); he did it over and went on with the next” (Bone, 242). It is reasonable to assume that Davidman offered similar criticism and suggestions for the remaining chapters of Till We Have Faces.

Second, she helped Lewis work through many of the ideas he wantedto include in the book, exercising what Davidman believed was her most valuable attribute as a collaborator, and recalling incidences in the past when she had similarly assisted Bill in his writing.[3] She wrote to Bill: “Though I can’t write one-tenth as well as Jack, I can tell him how to write more like himself! He is now about three-quarters of the way through [Till We Have Faces] (what I’d give for that energy!) and says he finds my advice indispensable.” (April 29, 1955; Bone, 246). Diana Pavlac Glyer believes that Davidman “was involved in each step of [Lewis’s] writing process. They would brainstorm ideas together before the text was written. She would carefully read and critique each chapter, making specific suggestions for needed changes. She would problem solve when the writing bogged down. And she would encourage, asking how the project was coming along, expressing ongoing interest in the work and in the writer.”[4]

Third, Davidman’s female perspective (Till We Have Faces was Lewis’s only book written from the viewpoint of a woman) served Lewis well as he tested her reaction to his presentation of Orual, the main character. Driven by jealousy, Orual tries to keep her younger sister, Psyche, to herself. In several letters Lewis writes about this, telling Jocelyn Gibb on February 16, 1956, that “every woman reader so far has” understood this jealousy. He confides to another correspondent on March 4, 1956: “I believe I’ve done what no mere male author has done before, talked thro’ the mouth of, & lived in the mind of, an ugly woman for a whole book. All female readers so far have approved the feminine psychology of it: i.e. no masculine note intrudes.”

Furthermore, Glyer argues there is something “of Joy Davidman’s character in Orual, in her wise decisions as queen, in her efforts to work things out logically, in her boldness to write out her complaint and face down the gods.” Although Glyer does not believe Davidman actually composed portions of Till We Have Faces, “the fact that she and Lewis thoroughly discussed the chapters before they were written convinces me that she is in part responsible for their creation.”

A final point worth noting is that Lewis dedicated Till We Have Faces to Davidman, suggesting in part his indebtedness to her.

We probably can’t answer this question definitively, but I’m curious for your perspective: we know that Lewis was close to Pitter and Davidman, and some friends felt Pitter was better suited to him. Any thoughts on why Lewis married Davidman instead?

Yes, I’ve written about this in several places, particularly in “Fire and Ice: C. S. Lewis and the Love Poetry of Ruth Pitter and Joy Davidman.”[5] In brief, if Pitter was both personally and culturally prone to holding back with regard to matters of romantic love—waiting, indeed, to be pursued—Joy Davidman was both personally and culturally prone to reaching out with regard to matters of romantic love. Even before her marriage to Bill, Joy had been sexually active, and no doubt, she had been pursued herself on many occasions. However, she was also very used to being the pursuer; after her marriage fell apart and once she fell in love with Lewis, she pursued him with single-minded devotion.

In saying this I am in no way criticizing Davidman. As Chaucer says, “Love is a mighty Lord,” and a strong-willed person such as Davidman would have been even more given than other women to win the love of the man she most admired. Accordingly, after her rejection of Communism and after her conversion to Christianity, in which the writings of Lewis played no small part, she decided to seek out a relationship with him.

In the end, only Lewis knows what drew him to Davidman rather than Pitter. He certainly was not naïve. If Joy “swept him off his feet,” he was a willing participant. While he may have enjoyed Ruth’s company, poetry, and cooking (she was by all accounts a marvelous cook), her own reticence to push herself forward mitigated against Lewis being the pursuer. Nothing in C.S. Lewis’s life before Joy Davidman demonstrates that he was capable of pursuing a woman; it would have to come from the other side. He had to be made to fall in love; otherwise, he would have remained a bachelor. Of the two women, only Davidman knew how to do this as her love poetry so convincingly illustrates. Pitter, on the other hand, wanted to be pursued. Fire and ice, Joy Davidman and Ruth Pitter. Lewis chose heat and light.

New work by King on Davidman will appear in VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center 40 (2024) and Sehnsucht: The C.S. Lewis Journal 19 (2025). Many of King’s essays on Lewis, Davidman, and Pitter have been collected in Plain to the Inward Eye: Selected Essays on C.S. Lewis. More information about his work and courses can be found at Montreat College’s website.

(Article first published on August 14, 2024).

Footnotes

[1] Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis by Abigail Santamaria was published in 2015.

[2] For more details on this period, see the F&F interview with Gresham’s stepdaughter, Rosemary Simmons.

[3] For more on how Davidman’s editing informed Gresham’s novels Nightmare Alley and Limbo Tower, see the F&F interview with Clark Sheldon.

[4] See Diana Pavlac Glyer, “Joy Davidman Lewis: Author, Editor, and Collaborator,” Mythlore, vol. 2 no. 22, pp. 10-46.

[5] See Plain to the Inward Eye: Selected Essays on C.S. Lewis, pp. 207-232.