by Reep » September 19th, 2006, 12:48 am
Four years before Lucy Barfield died, on January 11, 1999, The Times (UK) published a brief but a very beautiful article The Lion, the Witch and the real Lucy by Nicholas Roe, Professor of English at St Andrews University in Scotland. It not only very well describes the importance of her grandfather's dedication of The Lion to her in her life but also includes three of her photographs taken when she was about five, ten and fifteen years old.
After an introduction to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as "one of the most famous childrens stories ever told", Nicholas Roe writes: "In a west London hospital, unable to move, speak or feed herself, and able to communicate only by blinking her eyes, lies Lucy Barfield, the heroine of... so far untold story. Lucy was the girl for whom Lewis wrote his celebrated novel, the first of the brilliantly succesful Narnia series, and who lent her name to the book's central character... Whether the fictional character was based entirely on the real Lucy is still a matter for debate but what is beyond doubt is that Lewis had the wellbeing of his goddaughter in mind when he wrote the dedication which appears at the front of the novel... in 1950 when Lucy was 15-years-old...
"The brutal truth is that Lucy Barfield developed multiple sclerosis just 15 years after the book was launched, an illness that seems even more poignant when you learn of her background. Lucy was adopted. Owen Barfield, who died in 1997 aged 99, and his wife Maud, who died in 1980, had no children of their own so they adopted three: Lucy and two boys, Alexander and Jeffrey... None of this made a difference to Lewis, who became a devoted godfather and family friend, sending the children money and paying school fees. Lucy grew into a friendly and energetic girl. In her father's words she was 'a very lively and happy child apt, for instance, to be seen turning somersault-wheels in the garden immediately after a meal'. She wanted to be a ballet dancer and trained hard to achieve that ambition.
"That made her illness all the more cruel when it began to affect her in the mid-1960s. What followed was a slow, remorseless decline towards helplesness, broken by heart-breaking periods of remission. Bravely Lucy fought her disease, studying ballet, teaching it briefly and then pursuing a career as a music teacher. But as the years unwound she found she needed help, and although in the late 1970s she found happiness by marrying one of her carers, he died of a heart attack 12 years later. Lucy became bed-bound and moved into hospital. By the early 1990s she could barely speak and was unable to feed herself.
"So where is the mitigating grace in this story? And how did Lewis's gesture become such an important factor in Lucy's difficult life? The answer is simple. By dedicating his book to her, Lewis made Lucy, now 63, known to children worldwide. And for years, as her illness has progressed, they have been writing to her.
"According to the author Walter Hooper, Lewis's secretary until his death and now adviser to the Lewis literary estate, the comfort Lucy has gained from the steady flow of readers' letters, usually reaching her via the publishers, has been something she herself acknowledged when able to speak. Hooper says: 'She has told me: What a wonderful oasis of pleasure I have in this pretty terrible world, being recognised as Lucy. I have often thought how fortuitous it was that it turned out this way.'
"Some young readers think Lucy is actually the character in the book and write to ask her about her adventures. Older readers have heard she is ill and simply write to wish her well. It has been an enormous benefit, says Hooper, especially as the book's fame has matched the onset of the disease: 'She has gained enormous comfort and interest from people she had never heard of,' he says. 'I remember sending her huge containers of these things only three or four years ago. I think there were people all her life who wanted to be in touch with her. She always said she was so pleased when someone wrote, and that she could have had a much more lonely life without that dedication.'
'It is like having something in the bank that your godfather has put aside to help you in lean times. It was just a compliment made by her father's friend but it turned out to have greater significance than anyone could have guessed, including Lewis himself.'
"Lucy's brother, Jeffrey, understands this better than most because he, too, had a C.S. Lewis book dedicated to him, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. 'I have had great pleasure out of it,' he says, 'but my sister would feel it even more because she is the Lucy in the story. I'm sure it has encouraged her.' Hooper adds: 'The dedication would have meant a lot to her whether she had become ill or not. But given her circumstances it looms much larger than for someone who has everything.'
"Before he died, Owen Barfield paid tribute to his daughter, admitting privately to friends that he 'wanted to get down on his knees' to Lucy for the way that she had handled her misfortune. The fact is, Lewis's central character had become a heroine in ways that the author could not have imagined on his death in 1963.
Professor Nicholas Roe closes his story: "Lucy may not have been able to read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to her own children, as Lewis had hoped, but the way her life turned out, the literary gesture itself was enough."
Born in Carlisle, near Scotland, on November 2, 1935, Lucy Barfield died in London, at the Royal Hospital for Neurodisability, on May 3, 2003. Whenever I read about her dramatic 38-year-long struggle and her ultimate inner final victory over paralysis I am also reminded of the Blessed Lucy of Narnia who lived 500 years ago. And of her own spiritual triumph over the cruel and unjust condemnation to 39 years of solitary confinement.
Further up and further in! -- The Last Battle