A Well of Wonder. Clyde S. Kilby
A WELL of
WONDER
ESSAYS ON C. S. LEWIS,
J. R. R. TOLKIEN,
AND THE INKLINGS
Clyde S. Kilby
Edited by Loren Wilkinson and Keith Call
For Clyde S. Kilby, with gratitude
2016 First Printing
A Well of Wonder: Essays on C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and The Inklings
Copyright © 2016 by Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois
ISBN 978-1-61261-862-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
Names: Kilby, Clyde S., author. | Wilkinson, Loren, editor.
Title: A well of wonder : essays on C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings / Clyde S. Kilby ; edited by Loren Wilkinson and Keith Call.
Description: Brewster MA : Paraclete Press Inc., 2016.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016035753 | ISBN 9781612618623 (volume 1 : hard cover)
Subjects: LCSH: Christianity. | Theology. | Christian literature. | Christianity and literature. | Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963. | Tolkien, J. R. R. (John Ronald Reuel), 1892-1973. | Inklings (Group of writers)
Classification: LCC BR96 .K43 2016 | DDC 230.092/241—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035753
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Published by Paraclete Press
Brewster, Massachusetts, and Barga, Italy
Printed in the United States of America
A Tribute to Clyde S. Kilby
It is a time when apples ripen,
friendships thicken,
maples kindle a fall fire
west of Blanchard. Through the halls
scholars and students quicken
at a familiar voice,
and on the corner of Washington and Jefferson
squirrels and sparrows rejoice
because you’re home. Like a hobbit
come back to the Shire
you’re home again, our friend,
bringing Martha with you, and sunflower
seeds, a sackful of nuts, three score
years and ten worth of wisdom, under
your arm—letters and Lewis-lore—
your mind a well of wonder.
It was your mind, your inner eye, that
saw it long before it happened—
the hierarchy of shelves
dusted obliquely by the late sun
behind old glass in the narrow room once occupied
by a minority of one
and now inhabited by Inklings and Elves.
Like a gardener raking grass,
piling the bright and varied leaves,
from far you gathered treasure, sheaves
of manuscripts, papers ornamented
with the rich, crabbed, English script,
searched out the volumes
burnished and precious with
scholarship and age—
“fact shrunk to truth” speaking
from every page.
Then you swung open for us all
the wardrobe door,
pushed us farther up and farther in
(accompanied by some favorite talking beast)
to Middle-earth, Narnia, and the Utter East.
In there, for us to re-explore,
is perfect Perelandra.
Treebeard is growing up the cornered wall.
In the Deep Space behind the rows of books
eldila elude us; Curdie
encounters Mr. Bultitude the bear.
There in that room
we smell the past, untainted by decay or death
but fragrant, for in there
the mallorns bloom
and all the blessed air
is warm with Aslan’s breath.
—Luci Shaw
Introduction
CLYDE S. KILBY: THE MAN WHO REOPENED THE DOORS TO WONDER
LOREN WILKINSON
In the poem to Clyde Kilby that stands as an epigraph to this collection of his writings, Luci Shaw—one of many writers and scholars who received early encouragement from Dr. Kilby—uses two metaphors to describe the kind of experience this remarkable scholar and teacher provided for many of his students. The first is of a doorkeeper, an allusion to the imaginative entrance to the world C. S. Lewis created in The Chronicles of Narnia.
Then you swung open for us all
the wardrobe door,
pushed us farther up and farther in.
The second picture is of the man as a deep well, returning with his wife, Martha, after a summer in England, bringing
three score
years and ten worth of wisdom, under
your arm—letters and Lewis-lore—
your mind a well of wonder.
As we prepared this book and its companion volume, The Arts and the Christian Imagination: Essays on Art, Literature, and Aesthetics, which includes Kilby’s writings on these topics, we invited many of his former students to write of his influence on them. Many of them responded with similar language. Mark Noll also sees Kilby as a doorkeeper. For a whole generation of American evangelicals, says Noll, “Kilby opened a wardrobe onto a land of wonder where the Lion stalked.” Tom Howard continues the metaphor in describing the effect of taking Kilby’s class