Yesterday we watched "Jack" Lewis begin life in a world perfect for his literary gifts and genius. However, his happy boyhood came to an early end, with the death of his mother to cancer in 1908.

Lewis described the effect of his mother's death in his spiritual autobiography, Surprised by Joy: "With my mother's death all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security. It was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis" (Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life [New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1955] 21).

In many ways, Lewis's father never recovered. He sent both boys to Wynyard School in Watford, Surrey, a boarding school in England. It was a disaster for Jack; he recounted it in Surprised by Joy in a chapter titled "Concentration Camp."

The schoolmaster was so abusive that he was later sued successfully by a student's family. The facilities lacked sanitation or hot meals. A few months before his death, Jack wrote that after half a century of effort, he had finally forgiven the man who so scarred his earlier childhood. Fortunately, the school closed, and he was sent home. He later described his faith during this period as one of legalism, filled with doubts as to whether his prayers were good enough for God.

His father returned him to England. This boarding school was a better experience academically, but not spiritually. From 1914 to 1917, Lewis was tutored by the atheist W. T. Kirkpatrick as a private boarder at his home in Great Bookham, Surrey. As a teenager, Jack mastered French, German, Italian, and Greek. He learned to love the Greek poetry of Virgil and Homer, and could read it easily in the original language. Kirkpatrick later called Lewis the most accomplished student he had ever tutored in his entire teaching career. He was perhaps the single most significant influence on Lewis's intellectual development. But his atheism would transform Lewis's soul forever.

In 1916, at the age of 18, Lewis was accepted to University College, Oxford. Oxford University is a configuration of relatively independent colleges; "Uni," as it is known, is the oldest and perhaps the most prestigious, founded in the year 1249. However, before he could begin his Oxford studies, Lewis volunteered for active duty in World War I. In significant ways, his life would never be the same, as we'll see tomorrow.

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