Lewis's pre-conversion relationship with Mrs. Moore was, in fact, most probably sexual, as his biographers now almost all agree. The charge is most certainly not simply a product of "suspicious minds" or people wishing to tear down Lewis. Lewis's friend George Sayer, in the 1997 edition of his biography of Lewis (Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis), wrote:
"I have had to alter my opinion of Lewis's relationship with Mrs. Moore. In chapter eight of this book I wrote [in the earlier edition] that I was uncertain about whether they were lovers. Now after conversations with Mrs. Moore's daughter, Maureen, and a consideration of the way in which their bedrooms were arranged at the Kilns, I am quite certain that they were."
Walter Hooper agrees: in the introduction to the Lewis journal volume All My Road Before Me, published 1989, he says "The notion of sexual intimacy between the two [Moore and Lewis] must be regarded as likely." In 1994, Humphrey Carpenter called A. N. Wilson's case that Mrs. Moore and Lewis slept together "convincing."
Our business? No more or less, I suppose, than any fact in anybody's life. If we are to mind our business completely, we must swear off reading biographies. But if we are to write or read them at all, best they be truthful ones. And best to air the truth ourselves, as Lewis lovers, than to leave it muck-racking Lewis-haters, who will certainly not be restrained by kindly propriety.
Sincerely,
Larry Gilman
