Oxford Inscriptions: Joy Davidman
THE FORMER HOME
OF THE WRITER
JOY DAVIDMAN
WIFE OF C. S. LEWIS
This plaque is on the front of 10 Old High Street (opposite Headington car-park).
In 1952 C. S. Lewis met Mrs Joy Gresham (née Davidman), an American who had been deserted by her husband. Lewis helped her to arrange the rental of 10 Old High Street, Headington for herself and her two boys, and she moved in during August 1953. Joy’s son Douglas Gresham was about eight years old when he moved into Old High Street in 1953. He said of the house:
It was a nice place partly because of the visitors who came, many of Oxford’s literary luminaries. Lewis himself of course, his brother Warnie, and J.R.R. Tolkien.
Joy divorced her husband in August 1954 and married Lewis in Oxford Registry Office on 23 April 1956. This was a marriage of convenience so that she could acquire British citizenship, and she continued to live in Old High Street after the marriage. Later in 1956 she broke her leg, and when she was admitted to the Wingfield Morris Orthopaedic Hospital (now the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre), she was found to have cancer. On Christmas Eve 1956, the following notice appeared in The Times about the first (civil) wedding: “Professor C.S. Lewis, Cambridge, announces that he has married Mrs. Joy Gresham, now a patient at the Churchill Hospital, Oxford. Spouses ask not to send congratulatory letters.”
On 21 March 1957 the Revd Peter Bide married Lewis and Joy a second time in hospital (this time with a Christian ceremony). The next month Joy moved out of Old High Street and into “The Kilns” with Lewis, where she died on 13 July 1960.
Wikipedia: Joy Davidman