Into the Wardrobe

Thanks, Alan. I read "Down and Out" a long time ago, and remember the scenes of his life as a plongeur in a Paris hotel. I'll have to look at the London part again.

I think it is obvious that there is more in this relationship than the simple promise to take care of Paddy Moore's mother if he died. We have the comment by Warnie sometime after Mrs Moore's death that he had never dared to ask Jack how she had such a hold on him. And we have Lewis' comments in Surprised by Joy (Chap 13) that "I must warn the reader that one huge and complex episode will be omitted. I have no choice about this reticence. All I can or need to say is that my earlier hostility to the emotions was very fully and variously avenged." And in a Feb 1918 letter to Arthur Greeves, he wishes for some of the long walks he had with Arthur, then says "Perhaps you don't believe that I want all that again, because other things more important have come in: but after all there is room for other things besides love in a man's life."

So it seems clear that at least for a while there was a romantic relationship between Lewis and Mrs Moore. Whether this also meant a sexual relationship, is not necessarily a given in Lewis' time like it would be in ours.

But my conclusion, this doesn't make any real difference to evaluating Lewis as a writer, or even as a person. An unfortunate event, a flaw in Lewis' character, yes, but who is without flaw?

To return for a bit to the subject of CSL's relationship with Janie Moore:
What surprises me is that everyone immediately thinks of a sexual relationship as the only possible emotional complication.
From my reading of practically everything that Lewis wrote, plus Sayer's biography, I think that Lewis had quite violent 'surrogate mother' feelings towards her. She was a woman with a soft spot for everything and everyone in need, from stray cats to poor acquaintances. She always called him and his brother 'the boys'. She filled the painful gap that Albert Lewis left, who did not visit Jack before he went to war in France, nor while he was in hospital after being wounded. Making all allowance for a man who would have had to cross the Irish Sea and who hated the disruption of his routine, this remains inadequate behaviour for a father.
For the rest of his life, also after he became a Christian, Jack called her his mother, not always explaining that she wasn't really. That is how he saw her, and when the violence of his first feelings had died down, that is [I think] what remained.