by 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.
Further up and further in! -- The Last Battle