The Kilns household: Warnie, "Minto," and Maureen, the family Lewis chose

• Janie King Moore (1872–1951), mother of Paddy Moore, killed in 1918: Lewis had promised to look after her.
• Warren “Warnie” Lewis (1895–1973) moved into The Kilns in 1932.
• The Kilns, purchased in 1930 by Lewis, Warnie, and Mrs. Moore.
• Maureen Moore (1906–1997), music teacher, who later became Lady Dunbar of Hempriggs.

In brief

In 1917, while training as an officer in Oxford, Lewis shared a room with Edward “Paddy” Moore. He met Paddy’s mother, Janie, an Irishwoman separated from her husband, and her younger sister Maureen. The two young men are said to have promised that if one of them died, the other would care for the family of the deceased. Paddy was killed in 1918. Lewis kept his word.

Did you know

From 1919 onwards, Lewis, a penniless student, lived with Mrs. Moore and Maureen in rented rooms in Oxford, hiding the situation from his father, who was paying for his studies. The diary he kept from 1922 to 1927 shows a modest daily life: housework, errands, tutoring. He called her “Minto” and introduced her as his foster mother.

On screen

Meanwhile, Warren, the older brother, pursued his career. As children, Warnie and Jack were inseparable: the attic at Little Lea, rainy days, the notebooks of Boxen where Warnie invented an India of trains and steamboats. It was he who created, in a biscuit tin lid, the miniature moss garden that gave Jack his first experience of the “Joy”. After their mother’s death in 1908, they grew closer, facing a loving but clumsy father.

Warnie attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and became an officer in the Royal Army Service Corps. He served in France during World War I, then in Sierra Leone and China, in Shanghai.

The story

In 1930, Lewis, Warnie, and Mrs. Moore together purchased The Kilns, a house surrounded by woods and a pond in Headington Quarry, east of Oxford. Warnie retired in 1932 with the rank of major and moved in. The household was complete: the professor, the brother, Minto, Maureen, the dogs, and later, in 1939, schoolgirls evacuated from London.

Trivia

What was the nature of the relationship between Lewis and Mrs. Moore? Biographers are divided. Some, like A.N. Wilson, believe the young Lewis and this woman, twenty-six years his senior, were lovers in the early years. Others, like George Sayer or Walter Hooper, see it as a filial relationship, that of a motherless boy finding a home. Lewis remained silent: *Surprised by Joy* only makes a veiled allusion to it. There is no way to settle the matter, and it is wise to acknowledge that.

The Last Battle

As she aged, Mrs. Moore became domineering and ill. She made heavy demands on Lewis, who ran errands, walked the dogs, and was interrupted at all hours. Warnie could barely tolerate her presence, and their relationship was often strained. Friends were amazed by Jack’s patience.

Warnie himself had his own struggles: he fought alcoholism his whole life. His crises worried Lewis, who supported him with constant patience, never publicly judging him.

Going further

Warnie was also the practical pillar of the household. He typed much of his brother’s correspondence on a typewriter, using two fingers, writing thousands of letters. He participated in the Inklings, where he read his own works. A passionate student of 17th-century France, he published several history books starting in 1953, including *The Splendid Century* (1953), about society at the time of Louis XIV, praised for their liveliness.

The Kilns, 1930: a home for four

Mrs. Moore spent her final years in a retirement home in Oxford, where Lewis visited her daily, and died in January 1951, the year of *Prince Caspian*. Lewis would simply say it was the end of a long period of his life. Maureen, who became a music teacher, inherited in 1963, by a strange twist of fate, a Scottish baronetcy and became Lady Dunbar of Hempriggs. She would always show affection for Jack.

When Joy Davidman entered the household, Warnie got along very well with her and admired her wit. After Jack’s death in 1963, Warnie continued to live near The Kilns, edited in 1966 a first selection of his brother’s letters, and died on April 9, 1973. He is buried in the same grave as Jack, at Holy Trinity Church. His diary, published in 1982 as *Brothers and Friends*, is a valuable source on the daily lives of the two brothers and the Inklings.

What the household gave to the work

• Loyalty. Thirty years of faithfulness to a wartime promise illuminate the importance of keeping one’s word, a cardinal virtue in Narnia.
• Fraternal complicity. The rough and affectionate dialogues in Narnia, such as those between Peter and Edmund after their reconciliation, have often been compared to the relationship between the two brothers. Lewis never said so himself, but one can hear in them the two old bachelors teasing each other as they walked the hills.
• Demanding maternal figures, like the possessive mother in *The Great Divorce*, in whom some have seen Mrs. Moore. These are only hypotheses.
• A house: it was at The Kilns, amid this busy domestic life, that all seven of the Chronicles were written.

See also

• Journal 1922-1927 (title not translated)
• Boxen (title not translated)
• The Great Divorce
• Letters from Narnia: C.S. Lewis Writes to Children
• From the trenches of Artois to the evacuated children: how two wars opened the wardrobe
• Susan, Orual and Joy: reopening the "Lewis misogynist" file, with evidence
• Eight talks, eight books: the map of Lewis's works
• The Inklings, a literary club
• C.S. Lewis biography (1): from Belfast to Oxford, 1898–1931
• Joy Davidman and "Till We Have Faces"