The Hospitality of Mrs. Beaver

Your neighbor has been arrested by the secret police. Before his arrest, he delivered a secret message to you, pleading with you to deliver it to someone who would soon arrive from a distant land. If you keep your promise and harbor the foreign stranger, you put your wife, your home, and your very life in peril…

This could easily be the start of a class spy novel, but readers of C.S. Lewis will recognize that it is the situation of Mr. Beaver, one of the key characters in the beloved The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Mr. Beaver is, as his name suggests, a beaver. When the four Pevensie children stumble into the magical land of Narnia, it is Mr. and Mrs. Beaver who shelter them from the White Witch, a tyrannical giantess who uses dark magic to sustain a decades-long winter never broken by the bright hope of Christmas.

This is not a world that encourages hospitality. The safest course in such a surveillance state would be to stick to one’s own family, focusing on basic subsistence (hard enough, one imagines, if you are a foraging creature and the world is covered in snow). But Mr. Beaver brings four strangers home—and not just any strangers, but the prophesied heirs to Narnia’s throne, whose coming heralds the end of the Witch’s power. For this reason, they are the most dangerous guests any Narnian could entertain.

My parents began reading the Narnia books to me when I was three or four, and I’ve gone through the series countless times. For most of those readings, the scandal of the Beavers’ hospitality was lost on me: in part because as a child I was blessedly unacquainted with danger, and in part because I know how the story ends (but more on that later).

As I reflect on the story this year, I don’t take an ounce of their welcome for granted. They bring the children to their table, but soon enough, the worst happens: they are betrayed, and realize that the witch’s wolves are on the way to their own house. The hosts become homeless as they are forced to abandon their golden home and guide the children through the unforgiving winter. Worst of all, the betrayal comes from one of their guests: Edmund Pevensie, whose jealousy and addiction provoke him to betray his siblings and hosts to the Witch.

This year, for the first time in my life, I know what that betrayal feels like. Like Mrs. Beaver, I’ve had someone at my table who betrayed hospitality in a profound way, and it has rocked my confidence that I have anything worth saying about welcoming strangers (which is why, dear readers, I’ve not been writing more). Part of me has longed to turn inward, barring the door for the good. The fact that I haven’t is due largely to discipleship I’ve found through a lifetime of true stories.

Mrs. Beaver, with all her bustle and fuss, is heroic in her resolution to care for her guests, even at great cost. A homemaker even in exile, she insists on bringing pots of jam on their journey, and her greatest grief is for her sewing machine:

"Well, I'm nearly ready now," answered Mrs. Beaver at last, allowing her husband to help her into her snow-boots. "I suppose the sewing machine's too heavy to bring?"
"Yes. It is," said Mr. Beaver. "A great deal too heavy. And you don't think you'll be able to use it while we're on the run, I suppose?"
"I can't abide the thought of that Witch fiddling with it," said Mrs. Beaver, "and breaking or stealing it, as likely as not."

-C.S. Lewis from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Illustration by Pauline Baynes

Not only to welcome vulnerable strangers, but to join them as they travel through a dark and pathless winter: you begin to see why Mrs. Beaver is one of my heroes. Her strength comes from her hope: patient confidence that “Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight, / At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more…”

In Narnia, one of the first signs that Aslan is “on the move,” coming to overturn the Witch’s tyranny, is the arrival of Christmas: Father Christmas himself overtakes the Beavers and children on the road, shocking them with provision for a feast and weapons for war.

The winter here is long, and the Witch still on her throne—for now. Our guests may betray us, and wolves may find our door. But like Mrs. Beaver, we must take heart and set the table: Christmas is coming, friends. Christmas is coming.