by David C. Downing
Back row: C. S. Lewis, Damaris Walsh, Eva Walsh. Madeline Walsh is mostly hidden behind Joy. Photo courtesy of Madeline Walsh Hamblin, August 1955, Wade Call Number: CSL / P-40
Last year the Wade Center was pleased to host Madeline Walsh Hamblin, who met C. S. Lewis when she was only 13 years old. Madeline is the daughter of Dr. Chad Walsh, the Beloit English professor who wrote the first book-length study of Lewis, titled C. S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics (1949). Professor Walsh visited Lewis several times during his trips to England in the 1940’s and 1950’s. In 1955, he took his wife, Eva, and two of his daughters, Damaris and Madeline, to meet Lewis in Oxford.
The Walsh family actually met the Gresham family—Bill, Joy, David, and Douglas—long before they were introduced to C. S. Lewis. Soon after the publication of Professor Walsh’s book C. S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics in 1949, Joy Davidman Gresham wrote to Chad Walsh directly, and the two became friends. Professor Walsh invited the Greshams, still married at that time, to visit the Walsh’s summer cottage in Vermont. Madeline remembers that it rained all day during their stay. The Walsh sisters played in the basement with the Gresham boys, listening to a conversation upstairs that seemed to get more animated as the adults got more “lubricated.”
Walsh encouraged Joy to write to C. S. Lewis directly, which she did, initiating a sequence of events that would eventually lead to their face-to-face friendship and subsequent marriage.
In 1955, Professor Walsh took his wife and two of his four daughters, Damaris and Madeline, to England, a trip that included a visit with C. S. Lewis at Oxford. Madeline recalls of her first meeting with Lewis that he was “a little bit dour-looking, not terribly familiar with children.” His rounded figure and well-worn clothing did not fit the image of the man she was expecting to meet, the eminent scholar and writer.
Lewis focused mainly on conversation with the adults, while the two girls listened quietly and read books. Madeline recalls especially the beautiful deer park just outside Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen, as well as a trip up the Magdalen bell tower. Lewis was quite proper during their visit up the tower, insisting that the ladies, in dresses, go last up the stairs and first down the stairs, in order to protect their modesty.
After their tour of Magdalen College, Lewis and the Walsh family traveled out to the Kilns, where Joy Davidman Gresham and her two sons were visiting at the time. Madeline recalls that Lewis immediately looked more relaxed in the presence of Joy. The two of them engaged in witty repartee almost the whole time the Walsh family were visiting, with lots of laughter amid the literary and theological topics. There was even a game of charades at one point. Lewis drew the word “bullfinch,” and Madeline laughs at the memory of “Jack” (as Lewis was known to his family and friends) snorting and pawing the ground, trying to illustrate the first syllable of the word.
The Walshes visited the Kilns again in June 1958, after Jack and Joy were married. Lewis was in Cambridge at the time, but Joy proved to be an excellent hostess and tour guide. At that point, Joy was walking with a cane after surgery for bone cancer, but she had lost none of her energy or high spirits. She cooked dinner for the Walsh family and showed them around the grounds of the Kilns. Madeline described her as “stomping around” when she walked, adding that she was “rather an intimidating, a little bit of a fierce personality.”
Madeline recalls the two Gresham brothers during that visit. The oldest, David, 14, was physically small, but “horribly and impressively grown up.” He used extraordinary words during conversation, and Madeline was shocked when he and her father began discussing elements of the Turkish language. Douglas, according to Madeline, was at age 12 almost as tall as his brother, with “huge blue eyes and a winsome face.” He entertained the Walsh sisters by shooting a gun and bringing out his horse, Cobbler. Madeline observed that Douglas “was not as brainy as Davy, but much more down to earth and plenty smart.”
During that summer visit in 1958, the Walsh family accompanied Joy to Stratford-upon-Avon, where they toured Anne Hathaway’s cottage and other local sites. That evening, the Walsh parents stayed at the Eastgate Hotel in Oxford, while their daughters spent the night at the Kilns. At the end of their visit, the Walshes gave Joy a green Wedgewood tray to express their appreciation, and she gave Damaris Walsh, who was going to be married later that summer, a 20-pound note.
Madeline Walsh Hamblin revisited these memories during an oral history interview at the Wade Center with Crystal Downing and Bob Goldsborough, a Chicago Tribune writer, in February 2022. This meeting came about because Madeline’s close friend, Almarie Wagner, Wheaton ’66, read Crystal’s book Subversive, and wanted to meet Crystal personally at the Wade Center. She asked to bring along her friend, Madeline Walsh Hamblin, and so the interview took place almost as a serendipity. Madeline also provided the Wade Center with a color picture of C. S. Lewis, along with Joy Davidman, the two Gresham brothers, and the members of the Walsh family who made the visit to Oxford. (See the photo above, published here for the first time.) C. S. Lewis passed into glory sixty years ago this month, November 22, 1963. It is a great privilege after all these years to meet someone who met Lewis in person, who witnessed him playing charades (!), and who provided a rich time of conversation and fellowship to members of the Wade staff.
The interview recording with Hamblin is available for listening on-site at the Wade Center (call number: OH / SR-92), along with many other interviews in the Wade’s Oral History Collection.
Off the Shelf 