The older I grow, the more important coffee becomes. Spending the last past two weekends ensconced in the doctoral program of a Midwestern seminary near the polar vortex has merely reinforced that fact.

Coffee versus tea. It is the perennial international battle between caffeinated beverages. C.S. Lewis, famously, weighed in on the side of tea. (That’s no surprise, given the historic hold Camellia sinensis’ on British taste buds.)

One of Lewis’ most frequently quoted aphorisms is, after all: “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”

In Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature Lewis alludes to this cultural preference. In a passage discussing different ways of experiencing foreign customs, he describes the quintessential “bad tourist.”

One man carries his Englishry abroad with him and brings it home unchanged. Wherever he goes he consorts with the other English tourists. By a good hotel he means one that is like an English hotel. He complains of the bad tea where he might have had excellent coffee.

Despite their preference for tea, as the quotation above reveals that many Brits enjoy a good cup of coffee. Lewis himself loved a good cup at appropriate moments. In a 1939 letter to his brother Warnie, he mentions his need for a caffeine jolt prior to proctoring examinations.

My colleague Bone asked me to lunch with him at St John’s prior to an afternoon’s invigilation. I’ve known him quite good company: on this occasion, however, he spoke in almost a whisper and very seldom, and while other people were eating all round us (this was in John’s) nothing arrived for us till I was ‘nearly sick’ with hunger and embarrassment.

When at last we’d had some chicken another pause ensued, during which, almost in desperation for something to say, I asked him for the cheese, only to be told in sepulchral tones that there was a sweet coming. It came. Another pause.

Desperate for my coffee, I said presently that I supposed I’d better be getting along: my host, after pondering this for a minute or two, replied yes, he supposed I had. On our way out he stopped at the other end of the table and introduced me to a jolly old man as his father Sir Muirhead Bone. Now can it be that the mere paternal presence explains the whole business? One can imagine such things! Anyway I went off to my 3 hours’ invigilating without any coffee.

While we’re considering the role of coffee in the life of the Oxford don, I thought it might be an interesting exercise to search the Chronicles of Narnia to see if the drink is mentioned there. I uncovered several, the last of which is particularly delightful.

From The Horse and His Boy.

By the time Shasta had finished his porridge, the Dwarf’s two brothers (whose names were Rogin and Bricklethumb) were putting the dish of bacon and eggs and mushrooms, and the coffee pot and the hot milk, and the toast, on the table. It was all new and wonderful to Shasta for Calormene food is quite different. He didn’t even know what the slices of brown stuff were, for he had never seen toast before. He didn’t know what the yellow soft thing they smeared on the toast was, because in Calormen you nearly always get oil instead of butter.

And the house itself was quite different from the dark, frowsty, fish-smelling hut of Arsheesh and from the pillared and carpeted halls in the palaces of Tashbaan. The roof was very low, and everything was made of wood, and there was a cuckoo-clock and a red-and -white checked tablecloth and a bowl of wild flowers and little curtains on the thick-paned windows. It was also rather troublesome having to use dwarf cups and plates and knives and forks.

This meant that helpings were very small, but then there were a great many helpings, so that Shasta’s plate or cup was being filled every moment, and every moment the Dwarfs themselves were saying, “Butter please ,” or “Another cup of coffee ,” or “I’d like a few more mushrooms,” or “What about frying another egg or so?” And when at last they had all eaten as much as they possibly could the three Dwarfs drew lots for who would do the washing-up, and Rogin was the unlucky one.

From Prince Caspian.

They breakfasted at last in another of the dark cellars of Aslan’s How. It was not such a breakfast as they would have chosen, for Caspian and Cornelius were thinking of venison pasties, and Peter and Edmund of buttered eggs and hot coffee, but what everyone got was a little bit of cold bear-meat (out of the boys’ pockets), a lump of hard cheese, an onion, and a mug of water. But, from the way they fell to, anyone would have supposed it was delicious.

From The Silver Chair.

Breakfast was scrambled eggs and toast and Eustace tackled it just as if he had not had a very large supper in the middle of the night. “I say, Son of Adam,” said the Faun, looking with a certain awe at Eustace’s mouthfuls. “There’s no need to hurry quite so dreadfully as that. I don’t think the Centaurs have quite finished their breakfasts yet.”

“Then they must have got up very late,” said Eustace. “I bet it’s after ten o’clock.”

“Oh no,” said Orruns. “They got up before it was light.”

“Then they must have waited the dickens of a time for breakfast,” said Eustace.

“No, they didn’t,” said Orruns. “They began eating the minute they awoke.”

“Golly!” said Eustace. “Do they eat a very big breakfast?”

“Why, Son of Adam, don’t you understand? A Centaur has a man-stomach and a horse-stomach . And of course both want breakfast. So first of all he has porridge and pavenders and kidneys and bacon and omelette and cold ham and toast and marmalade and coffee and beer.

“And after that he attends to the horse part of himself by grazing for an hour or so and finishing up with a hot mash, some oats, and a bag of sugar. That’s why it’s such a serious thing to ask a Centaur to stay for the weekend. A very serious thing indeed.”

I occasionally wonder what it would have been like to have shared a pint with Lewis at the Eagle and Child. Magnificent, to be sure.

But perhaps better still would have been to share a conversation in his study or home over a simple cup of coffee (or tea). After all, just as a good meal establishes the mood for jovial discussion, so too can a soothing warm “brew” whet one’s desire to share an intimate conversation.