Interesting News: Regarding Wardrobes

Here's a bit of fun, lightheard, non-political, interesting news:

Dueling claims to inspiration for Narnia story
www.boston.com

Two small Christian colleges both lay claim to owning a big, portable closet that may have inspired Lewis when he penned ''The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe," the first tale written in his ''Chronicles of Narnia" series for children.

Which campus deserves bragging rights?

Nobody knows. But with a $150 million hit movie drawing holiday crowds, some 95 million ''Narnia" books in circulation since 1950, and a current ''Christianity Today" cover story likening Clive Staples Lewis of Oxford to Elvis Aron Presley of Memphis, there has been plenty of interest.

Further fueling the curiosity, the Disney film has riled critics who say it serves an evangelical agenda. Lewis, one of the 20th century's most noted theologians, built his children's stories around themes of sin and redemption, with Aslan, Narnia's lion, standing in for Jesus.

Besieged with media inquiries, each school tells reporters much the same thing: Their wardrobes were certainly owned by the prolific don, who died Nov. 22, 1963; however, it is unclear whether Lewis had either one in mind when the four children in his story poked into an armoire and somehow wound up cavorting with the chatty animals inhabiting Narnia.

At Westmont's campus outside Santa Barbara, Paul Delaney, a professor, recently showed visitors the piece of furniture at issue in the lobby outside faculty offices.

''We can't say for sure that it's the wardrobe," he said, ''but it definitely came from his house and closely matches the description in the book."

Westmont's website is less reserved, saying the Lewis wardrobe in Reynolds Hall ''served as a model for the magical one he described in his famous children's book."

At Wheaton, officials downplay the possibility that their Marion E. Wade Center library holds the portal to Narnia. Even so, they've posted a sign near their wardrobe that leaves little doubt as to their true position: ''We do not take responsibility for people disappearing."

Built to resemble an English cottage, the center also has Lewis's writing desk and more than 2,000 of his letters, as well as a mountain of documents chronicling the careers of Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and five other British writers.

''For casual visitors, the wardrobe is the biggest draw," said archivist Heidi Truty. ''When families -- even students -- come through the door, the question we hear most often is: 'Where's the wardrobe?' "

Snagged at a 1973 auction in England by a Wheaton economics professor, the school's ornate double-door black oak wardrobe was handcrafted by Lewis's grandfather, a shipbuilder in Belfast. Although it barely resembles the modest piece described in ''Narnia," it still may have triggered the imagination of Lewis, known by friends as ''Jack."

''A cousin of Lewis's visited and mentioned that, as children, they used to climb into this wardrobe and Jack would tell adventure stories to his playmates," Truty said.

The year after Wheaton's find, Westmont students doing a semester in England learned that the owners of the author's old house had found a wardrobe that was to be turned into scrap because it could not be carted out whole through a remodeled, narrower doorway. The students took it off their hands for about $50, had it dismantled, and shipped it to campus.

Unlike Wheaton's version, this wardrobe is as ''perfectly ordinary" as the Narnia entryway into a world of fantasy, Delaney of Westmont said. Like the one in the book, it has a single door with a mirror and a threshold low enough for a small child to step into -- as opposed to the 3-foot-high jump required to access the Wheaton wardrobe.

''Read the book," Delaney said.