Sheldon Vanauken - Marriage and Religious Conversion

Marriage and Religious Conversion

Van met Jean "Davy" Palmer Davis during his junior year at Wabash. She was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, on July 24, 1914, the daughters of Reverend Staley Franklin Davis (1877–1926), a prominent Methodist minister, and his wife Helen Larter (Fredericks) Davis (1885–1950), a teacher. Staley Davis was a native of Pataskala, Ohio, and Helen Davis of Newark, NJ. Davy's sister Helen Marjorie (1908–1991) was six years older and her brother Donald three years younger.

When Davy was fourteen years old, two years after her father's death, she became pregnant by an unknown man. She gave the baby girl, whom she called Marion, up for adoption but never forgot her.

Davy had been educated in a Vermont boarding school, but had to withdraw due to lack of funds after her father's death. After finishing school, she worked in New York City for a time before moving to Indianapolis to enter Butler University. Shortly after beginning her studies there, she met Sheldon Vanauken at the Indianapolis department store where she worked hand-tinting photographs to earn her tuition.

Van and Davy soon fell deeply in love and made a vow they called the "Shining Barrier". In brief, they promised to share everything in life, including all their interests, friends, and work, in order to tie themselves so closely together that nothing could ever separate them. Their devotion to this idea was so complete that they decided never to have children, as they felt that motherhood would be an experience which could not be shared equally. Both were agnostics at this time.

They were married secretly (due, according to A Severe Mercy, to Van's father's objection to early marriages) on October 1, 1937, ten months after they met. They apparently kept their secret for some years, as they are both listed as "single" in the 1940 census, and are living apart -- Van with his parents in DeKalb County, and Davy in a boarding house in Indianapolis, where she is listed as working as a bank teller.

It is unclear when the couple were finally able to live openly as husband and wife, but it may have been when Van's father died suddenly during World War II. Vanauken inherited a substantial amount of money and used some of it to have a boat built which they named Grey Goose, for the bird which remains true to one mate throughout life. Following Van's studies in history at Yale, from which he received a Master's degree in 1948, and a stint in the Navy stationed in Hawaii, the young couple spent considerable time sailing Grey Goose around Chesapeake Bay, the Florida Keys, and the Caribbean.

In 1948, Vanauken took a teaching position at Lynchburg College. However, when postwar travel to Europe became possible again, he took a sabbatical and he and Davy moved to England so that he could study at Oxford University (where he was awarded a BLitt in 1957). While they were there, they became friends with a circle of young Christian students. Eventually, Davy "crossed the room" to became a devout Anglican Christian herself; she had reexamined her life and views on the nature of sin after a thwarted attempt by a stranger to assault her. Her conversion was also partly owing to the friendship and influence of C. S. Lewis, who was teaching at Oxford at the time. In the spirit of the "Shining Barrier", Van followed her, but with less conviction and even with some resentment.

Upon their return to Lynchburg, Van continued teaching history and literature at Lynchburg College. They joined a local congregation and explored their faith further. It was eventually to be tested severely. Davy contracted a virus which attacked her liver, possibly picked up during their years of travel. At the time of her diagnosis in the summer of 1954, Vanauken had just resigned to accept a job offer from his alma mater, Wabash College, but asked Lynchburg to rehire him in order to stay near Davy's doctors, which they did. Tragically, Davy died of her illness soon after, on January 28, 1955. She was 40 years old, and they had been married for over seventeen years.

A great part of A Severe Mercy concerns how Van came to grips with losing his beloved wife with the help of his increasing faith and his correspondence with Lewis, who soon was to face the loss of his own terminally ill wife. Vanauken later called the "Shining Barrier" he and Davy had created a "pagan love, invaded by Christ." He never remarried, and eventually converted to Roman Catholicism in 1981.

A Severe Mercy won a National Book Award in the one-year category Religion/Inspiration.