Remembering Jill Freud
The purported inspiration behind the character of Lucy in the Chronicles of Narnia has died.
The character was named after Owen Barfield's daughter Lucy, but was said to be patterned after a teenager who stayed at the Kilns during WWII. Her name was Jill Flewett (she later married a Freud), although the Lewis brothers called her June. She impressed them both.
Warnie wrote in his diary:
"Our dear, delightful June Flewett leaves us tomorrow... She is not yet eighteen, but I have met no one of any age further advanced in the Christian way of life... She is one of those rare people to whom one can venture to apply the word 'saintly.'
C.S. Lewis wrote to Jill's mother:
When June goes the only bright spot in our prospect goes with her. But, putting ourselves out of it, I think she ought to go [to drama school]... in talking to June it is no use to appeal to selfish motives (she is, without exception, the most selfless person I have ever known) I told her she had a duty to you and her father in the matter...
Lewis paid for her schooling.
Jill later recounted:
Of course I fell madly in love with him. It was a tremendous crush. I was 16. And I would have lain down and he could have walked all over me for the next two years... I'm sure I made a complete idiot of myself. He was a very honourable man - he wouldn't have taken any sort of advantage of it.... Every smile, every kind word was like daylight, like the summer... Lewis was the first person who made me believe that I was an intelligent human being and the whole of the time I was there he built up my confidence in myself and in my ability to think and understand. He never put me down. He never made me feel foolish, no matter how small my contribution towards any conversation might be... He built up my self-esteem.
In an ironic twist of fate, she was scheduled to come visit Lewis for the first time in many years the very night he died.
Jack had not been well and the night President Kennedy was assassinated I rang the Kilns to say I was coming. I actually telephoned within half an hour of Jack's death.
Her daughter Emma produced a tribute which aired on BBC 4. Jill's coffin was decorated by her granddaughter Martha.
