Although Walsh assured Joy that Lewis always answered his correspondence, it took her two years to find the courage to write. When she did, in January , Lewis's brother noted in his journal that Jack had received a fascinating letter from a most interesting American woman, Mrs. For the next two and a half years Joy and C. Lewis carried on a rich correspondence that intellectually and spiritually encouraged each of them. Over that quarter decade Joy's health and family problems opened the way for the famous English author and his talented American pen friend to meet.
During the late s Joy's health deteriorated. She suffered from nervous exhaustion while trying to raise the boys and write enough to pay all the bills. To be sure, Bill Gresham sobered up for brief periods, and he was in and out of the house depending on his moods.
Joy finished several writing projects, including a novel, Weeping Bay , that came out with Macmillan in early She gave a lengthy interview to a reporter for the New York Post and he brought out a multi-part series of Joy's testimony dubbed "Girl Communist. Her doctor ordered rest - preferably away from the the pressures of her chaotic house and family. With no money and few alternatives, she threw herself on the Greshams for mercy.
With financial help from her parents, Joy sailed for England in August, She found a room in London, rested well, and put the finishing touches on Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments. While in London for four months the Lewis brothers invited Joy to Oxford. Indeed, there were several visits where Joy Gresham and Jack Lewis had opportunity to get better acquainted. Joy laid out her problems before Jack Lewis. He listened, grieved for her, and said a sad farewell when she returned to New York in January During the four months Joy resided in London, Bill wrote from time to time keeping her informed about the boys.
He wondered if Joy would consider living under the same roof despite the changed circumstances. Joy had no intention of doing that but she did return with some hope that the mess could be redeemed. Months of wrangling failed to bring reconciliation. Nine months later Bill sued Joy for a divorce on grounds of her desertion when she went to England. In the meantime C. Lewis and his brother, Warrren, both of whom had grown extremely fond of Joy - urged her to return to England and bring the boys.
She was back in England with David and Douglas before Christmas. Joy lived in London for nearly two years, trying to support herself by free-lance typing and writing in order to supplement Bill's erratic child-support checks. The boys were placed in private schools thanks to the generosity of C. For almost two years Joy and Jack visited one another regularly.
When Joy's financial situation worsened in August , Lewis secured a place for her in Oxford, not far from his own home. He paid the rent and he and Warren plied her with manuscripts to edit and type. By Christmas it was apparent to everyone who knew them that friendship had become love. Lewis visited Joy almost daily and she and the boys spent holidays, and special occasions with Warren and Jack at their home, The Kilns.
Because Joy was now a divorced woman, there was no impropriety - at least to their mind - for them to see one another on a regular basis. But Joy told her closest friends that although they frequently walked and held hands, marriage was out of the question. Because she was divorced even their friendship appeared scandalous to some people. In April the British Govern ment, perhaps because of Joy Davidman's previous Communist Party affiliation, refused to renew her visa.
Lewis was devastated. How could this woman be sent back to the United States where her boys would possibly be abused by their alcoholic father who had more than once done them physical harm? And how could he manage without Joy nearby? She, after all, was the first woman with whom he had been truly close. She was his equal if not superior in intellect and they were the epitome of two people who truly were like iron sharpening iron,. In fact, C. Lewis could not imagine living apart from Joy Davidman.
He threw caution and appearances to the wind. They quietly married in a civil ceremony on April 23, Now Joy could legally remain in England, with her boys, as long as she wished. Lewis inquired about a sacramental marriage in the Anglican Church because to his mind a civil marriage was a legal convenience but not a real marriage. Lewis sought the blessing of the church on the grounds that Joy had legal grounds to be divorced and remarried due to Bill's infidelity, and further because he had been married prior to marrying Joy, and also neither of them were Christians when they were joined in a civil service years before.
But the Bishop of Oxford refused. Joy was divorced. And God came in. Davidman made it clear that this moment, itself, was not a coming to Christ; it was merely an abandonment of atheism. Shortly thereafter, she began studying world religions and reading more and more of C.
Her journey to Christ was a gradual one. Her presupposition had been that all religions are essentially the same, but she said when she began studying them, she discovered how untrue that is. And the Redeemer who made himself known, whose personality I would have recognized among ten thousand—well, when I read the New Testament, I recognized him.
He was Jesus. Around the same time, , Bill also converted to Christianity, even becoming an elder in the Presbyterian Church, but unlike Joy, his conversion proved temporary. In the years that followed, her marriage to Bill deteriorated; he was habitually unfaithful to her, at times abusive, and by the early 50s, he wanted to divorce her so that he could marry his cousin, Renee. Coinciding with the dissolution of her marriage, Davidman relocated to England with her two sons where she soon became friends with C.
Lewis, the man whose writings had been so influential in her own journey to Christ. At this point, she identified herself, no longer as a Presbyterian, but as an Anglican. A few years later, for reasons that are still unclear, the British government decided not to renew her work visa, leaving her in a quandary about what to do.
And when we wish — and how agonizingly we do, o how perpetually! Davidman, as a young poet and fan living in New York state, began writing to Lewis in They married in When she died of bone cancer, Lewis wrote A Grief Observed , his classic work on mourning and how faith can survive it. The book helped inspire a TV movie and stage play , Shadowlands , and an Oscar-nominated film of the same name, starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger. My scouring of other archival repositories across the country unearthed many letters Joy wrote to friends and colleagues.
But I hoped to find more. I suspected she knew more than she let on, and I hoped someday to earn her trust.
When it became clear that she would never live alone again, he took on the task of cleaning out her house—which is what he was doing when he rang me that December morning. Hundreds of poems, dozens of short stories, her oath of allegiance to the queen. A letter. Douglas told me that he would carry the papers back to his home in Malta, where I could see them. Three weeks later I was on a plane.
I spent most of my four days in Malta hovering over a copy machine in the cramped stockroom of an office supply shop, delicately peeling rusted paper clips off crumbling sheets and photocopying over 1, precious pages. No treasure trove of letters to or from Lewis emerged, but other materials were invaluable.
The heat had stopped working, and I shivered under my blankets, tossing and turning for hours. Eventually I got up, padded barefoot across the cold tiled floor, selected a bulging beige file folder from the cardboard box, and brought it back to bed.
That file in particular had intrigued me; across its cover, in capital letters, Joy had written the word Courage. There was a reference to Oxford. Joy expressed heartbreak over rejection. And finally, the object of her desire became clear. A new batch of letters between Joy and Bill confirmed that although Bill was no innocent victim, history has indeed judged him too harshly. She left them to be found: she was giving me her blessing.
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