It is often said that C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien turned up a party dressed as polar bears… the kicker being that it wasn’t even a costume party!
But is this claim true? My research is far from complete, but it seems that this story is based on a couple of other verified incidents…
Story #1: Tolkien’s polar bear outfit
J.R.R. Tolkien seems to have once attended a party dressed as a polar bear. His biographer, Humphrey Carpenter, says that it was at a “New Year’s party”:
At a New Year’s Eve party in the nineteen-thirties he would don an Icelandic sheepskin hearthrug and paint his face white to impersonate a polar bear, or he would dress up as an Anglo-Saxon warrior complete with axe and chase an astonished neighbour down the road.
J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography
…although other evidence seems to suggest that it might have been a children’s party, which would be quite possible, given that a polar bear was one of the characters in his Father Christmas Letters.
Story #2: Tolkien and friend mistaken for bears
On a completely separate occasion, J.R.R. Tolkien and a fellow Inkling, Nevill Coghill, were walking home in big winter coats and fur hats and were apparently “mistaken” for Russian bears.
Explanation and Conclusion
It’s important to note that Lewis is involved in neither anecdote. It seems to me quite likely that these two stories have been conflated. In the latter story, Tolkien’s friend is changed from Coghill to Lewis due to Jack’s better name-recognition.
So, in conclusion, I’m afraid to say that there’s no evidence that C.S. Lewis ever turned up at any party dressed as a polar bear!
