C.S. Lewis Readers' Encyclopedia

Robert Emlyn "Humphrey" Havard (1901-1985) an Inkling, served as an official witness to Lewis's civil marriage to Joy Gresham, Havard first met Jack while making a house call at the Kilns. In his essay, "Philia: Jack at Ease," he describes this visit and a typical Inklings' meeting, along with a boating holiday he took with Jack and Hugo Dyson. Although he thought of himself "as the only nonliterary and nonteaching member of the Inklings," Jack asked him to write an appendix to The Problem of Pain. ("Philia," 215-228) Havard was also the first speaker to the Oxford University Socratic Club ("Oxford's Bonny Fighter," 140-141, 145, 174) and played an important background role in the "Anscombe-Lewis" debate on the "self-refutation of naturalism."

Dr. Havard had several nicknames, "Humphrey" (a name used in error by Dyson, but then continued and also used by Lewis in referring to him in Perelandra, chap. 2), "the Red Admiral" (due to his reddish beard), and the "U.Q" ("Useless Quack", dubbed such by Warnie Lewis in a situation unrelated to medicine) ("Philia," 222 and Inklings, 130, 177) Havard's medical role did play an important part in his relationship to Lewis's household. Lewis refers to him as "my Doctor friend," (TST, 540), and in the biography Jack by George Sayer, we learn about Havard's medical advice to Jack concerning the consummation of his marriage (Jack, 414). However, after Joy's cancer was discovered, and later, after Jack's own medical problems began, some associates began to doubt Humphrey's diagnostic abilities (Griffin, 376, 379, Gresham, 134). 

Anonymous."Report of the 248th and 249th Meetings."CSL 21, No.10 (August 1990):5-7.

Anscombe, G.E.M. The Collected Philosophical Papers of G.E.M. Anscombe, Vol. II: Metaphysics and the Philosophy of the Mind. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1981.

Carpenter, Humphrey. The Inklings: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979.

Griffin, William. Clive Staples Lewis: A Dramatic Life. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986.

Havard, Robert E. "Observed Effects of Pain." Lewis, C.S. The Problem of Pain. New York: Macmillan, 1962.

_____________. "Philia: Jack at Ease." C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences. ed. James T. Como. New York: Harvest/HBJ Book, rev.1992.

_____________. "Professor J.R.R. Tolkien: A Personal Memoir." Mythlore 17, No. 2 (Winter 1990): 61.

Hooper, Walter. C.S. Lewis: A Companion & Guide. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1996.

____________. "Oxford's Bonny Fighter."C.S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences. ed. James T. Como. New York: Harvest/HBJ Book, rev.1992.

Lewis, C.S. Poems. ed. Walter Hooper. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1964

_______ . They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963). ed. Walter Hooper. New York: Macmillan, 1979.

Lewis, Warren Hamilton. Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis. ed. Clyde S. Kilby and Marjorie Lamp Mead. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1982.

Sayer, George. Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1988. rev.1994.

Last Updated: Sunday, September 02, 2001