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Lucy Barfield: The Real Lucy of Narnia

Please don't close the door behind you.

Lucy, Jill and Maureen

Postby Reep » April 14th, 2007, 12:25 am

Last edited by Reep on August 3rd, 2007, 12:46 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby carol » April 14th, 2007, 5:44 am

Marureen was not a sister. She was a lot younger than Jack, and by the time he took on her family's care, he had been through the ageing process that was called the Great War. I don't honestly think she had anything to do with Lucy the character. Lewis may have treated her like a kid sister, since she was his deceased friend's kid sister. She has the distinction of being one of the few females he knew well.

I shudder to think of cantakerous, middle-aged Mrs Moore "adopting" two grown men who were taking care of her. One does not adopt university lecturers who are supporting you financially.
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Mrs Janie Moore

Postby Reep » August 3rd, 2007, 1:04 am

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Lucy Barfield in America

Postby Reep » December 1st, 2007, 12:54 am

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In the fall of 1965 Lucy Barfield accompanied her father on his second stay in America. It was probably the happiest year of their lives. Owen Barfield truly enjoyed teaching at Brandeis University; Lucy had twelve piano students at a music school in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When the school year was over they were joined by her mother Maud, and all three spent the three days of 14-16 June 1966 in Vancouver visiting father's friend professor Craig Miller at the University of British Columbia. Then they returned to England; to their home in Westfield near Dartford, Kent.

And then? I searched for Lucy very carefully in the latest 350-page-biography of Owen Barfield by Simon Blaxland-de Lange and this was almost all I could find. True, on the same page (309) he also mentions: "Her [Lucy's] debilitating illness of multiple sclerosis (she was hospitalized in 1968) was clearly a source of much sorrow to Barfield". But when discussing many details of Barfield's deeply intimate twenty-three-year-long orrespondence with Professor Thomas Kranidas of the State University of New York, all Blaxland says is only that "there are a number of references to his adopted daughter Lucy, beginning with her [second?] move to hospital in 1977 and her wedding in June 1978". Without giving even one single word anywhere of what Owen Barfield ever actually said about his daughter to Kranidas (142).

Only, almost by oversight, he quotes Owen from a letter of 19 April 1974 to Cecil Harwood: "Lucy much the same, mentally as conscious as ever, or more so, but it is terrible to see her unable, even with a stick, to walk more than a step or two without someone to support her. We are exploring the possibility of a small car or powered vehicle of some sort to enable her to get about a bit" (309). And in the 25 February 1981 letter to Josephine Spence Owen Barfield says: "I have had a great deal of happiness, especially in America. Lucy's disaster has been the one big sobering cloud" (296).

This is ALL Simon Blaxland-de Lange wants to tell us about the almost forty years of Lucy's life (1966-2003). One truly wishes to know more. And myself - especially "about her wedding in June 1978". Who was, what kind of a person was Bevan Rake whom she married? Who was not only able to take Lucy out of the hospital but also to care for her until 1990, when he died.

When Joy and Jack Lewis in 1957 celebrated their wedding at the hospital, Joy was 42 and Jack 58 years old. Lucy was also 42 years old in June of 1978. And Bevan was 57!

"Shadowlands: Part Two"?


P.S. When Bevan Rake died Lucy had to return to the hospital. Never to leave it again until she died on 3 May 2003.
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Only Five Years

Postby Reep » April 27th, 2008, 12:12 am

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Will many think of Lucy on 3rd May 2008? The day she died five years ago? Most certainly her brothers, Alexander and, especially, Jeffrey who kept reading to her "The Chronicles of Narnia" during her last seven years in the hospital. Walter Hooper who wrote so beautifully about her in her obituary. A Catholic priest who said he will be offering his mass for her that day.

Her Godfather remembered her in his last will on 2 November 1961. He certainly did not know then what would happen to him in two years and to Lucy another three years later. That he would die in 1963 and that Lucy, after spending a year as a piano teacher in Cambridge, Massachussetts, in 1966 would be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

But he believed that: "We shall live forever. There will come a time when every culture, every institution, every nation, the human race, all biological life is extinct and every one of us still alive... We shall live to remember the galaxies as an old tale."

C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, p.172
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Re: Lucy Barfield: The Real Lucy of Narnia

Postby BarfieldLiteraryEstate » September 17th, 2009, 4:51 pm

Dear Reep,
I happened upon your topic purely by chance. Reading through the posts has been a strange and intriguing experience. I know my aunt Lucy would have been extremely touched and honoured by your interest in her.

If you are interested in the idea of Lucy as an inspirational figure, the Literary Estate is publishing a book by Owen Barfield called 'The Rose on the Ash-Heap' next month. It is a sort of fairy tale, and centres on a beautiful temple dancer called Lucy, the love for whom inspires a powerful young Sultan to abandon his throne and follow her across continents. Like many of Grandfather's stories, it's a grail quest - and about the redemptive powers of love and the imagination.

Please send me a private message with a postal address, and I would be delighted to send you a copy of this book. Otherwise, you could contact me through the Literary Estate website:
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Dancer called Lucy

Postby Reep » September 23rd, 2009, 10:35 pm

Last edited by Reep on March 10th, 2010, 8:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Lucy Barfield: The Real Lucy of Narnia

Postby stourhead » September 24th, 2009, 10:10 pm

I understood that Lucy Pevensie was created after Jill 'June' Flewett, later Lady Jill Freud, who was one of the evacuee children that stayed at the Kilns during World War II. In a 2005 interview in the Daily Telegraph, Lady Freud (who happens to be the wife of the late Clement Freud, grandson of Sigmund and brother to Lucien) said that Douglas Gresham had telephoned her and told her that she was Lucy. You can see the article by following this link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... -Lucy.html
Will the real Lucy please stand up.
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Re: The Real Lucy

Postby Reep » September 27th, 2009, 12:20 am

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The Real Lucy of the Dawn Treader

Postby Reep » October 21st, 2009, 12:12 am

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Seven Years

Postby Reep » April 29th, 2010, 4:12 pm

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The first and the last day of Lucy Barfield's life keeps returning again every year. Next Monday, 2010 May 3rd, it will be already seven years since she died. We are reminded again how little we know about her, keep wondering again who she really was. And what her Goodfather, Jack or C.S. Lewis, really knew and thought about her.

A question comes back again to my mind which I already tried to answer to myself many times. Would there be, would we still have The Chronicles of Narnia had there been no Lucy Barfield? Her Goodfather is saying to her: "I wrote this story for you". Could he also have written it for someone else? Could he have said this, may be in some other words, to anybody else?

Never was I able to come to a satisfactory and final conclusion. So this year I decided just simply to try to ask others. What do you think? And why?
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No Response

Postby Reep » September 14th, 2010, 1:55 pm

There was no response, no answer, not even a single word. Even though since April this question was viewed almost 1500 (1487) times. Why? Apparently - the answer was too simple and too self-evident. And no one wanted to waste the time.

The answer is clearly: NO! "Without Lucy Barfield there would had been no Chronicles of Narnia"! As there would had not been without C.S. Lewis himself. These two names will remain forever locked; and not just on the first page of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. But also locked in an eternal, never dying Love. I wrote this story for you. When I began it... you were only four... But I did not forget you. And I will never forget you untill I die!... A very humble, a little bashful declaration not of fictional but of real love. which deeply touched hundreds of the first young readers and gave this book its meaning: I am loved, too! Until The First Chronicle stopped being The First.

Not many know now anymore that the first entrance into Narnia was not meant to be from a dirty, dusty attick in a crowded suburb but from a huge beautiful mansion far in the country; surrounded by well-kept gardens, trees and fields. And also that before entering, at the Wardrobe door, they were all supposed to meet Lucy Barfield, already expecting and waiting for them to be their guide. Who had already entered it before them and had been already exploring this mysterious realm for sixteen months - having been the first to receive this book by the end of May 1949.

For us and all others the door solemnly and officially opened on Monday, 16 October 1950. A New World opened, a new country was born into the consciousness of our Old World. NARNIA! A word nobody had never known before - suddenly exploded in London on that day and began to spread. And still continues to spread now, precisely sixty years having passed - in over 200 million copies and 47 languages.

Let's celebrate! Yes, this our little thread or topic - Lucy Barfield: the Real Lucy of Narnia - which began to exist on 27 May 2006 and reached 13481 views - on the first day of October 2010 will be no more. Let us take a brief look at at Wikipedia which is really just a brief look back here. On 2 November 2010 she would had been Seventy Five. And let us all thank one another. Cheerfully, with bread and wine!

As a friend of Prince Caspian once said. "My Jesus is Jesus turning water into wine. This is what he wants us to be. THE NEW WINE!"
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Re: No Response

Postby john » September 14th, 2010, 2:45 pm

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Re: Lucy Barfield: The Real Lucy of Narnia

Postby carol » September 15th, 2010, 9:52 am

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Re: Lucy Barfield: The Real Lucy of Narnia

Postby paminala » September 15th, 2010, 4:39 pm

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
~ Galileo Galilei
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