1. In this chapter we hear a little bit about Mr. and Mrs. Pevensie as well as an update about Peter and Susan. What are your thoughts about them? Can we learn anything about them in these short descriptions?
Makes me wonder what Peter was going in for? Entrance exam for Oxford? If he was surrounded by a family of academicians, it wouldn't be unreasonable to suppose so. Probably not Cambridge.

As for Susan, it was not uncommon for girls with no particular bent for education to drop out of school at about age 16. Following matriculation, (if they even went in for that) only those with yearnings for higher education (or wealthy parents) would stay on and enter the Sixth Form.

For the younger two, it would not have been considered unusual for them to have been parked somewhere for the holidays. Children were often sent home from India and spent all their holidays at school or with relatives, if there were any. So they might have been considered lucky by some, though under the circumstances....

2. What theory do you have as to how someone painted a Narnian Ship?
Definitely agree with wagga on this one, although the idea of Polly painting it suits the tidy, writing side of my mind. But did they have ships yet when she was there? My supposition was always that it was a painting of an English ship, rather than a Narnian ship. Wouldn't the ships of Narnia be modelled after the ones in our world? After all, there was the influence of King Frank, the Pevensies, and finally, the Telmarines.

If you skip ahead to Chapter II, take note where Lewis describes the size of the Dawn Treader, comparing it to the ships from the days of the Golden Age--cogs, dromonds, carracks and galleons. A quick search shows that these ships were all pre- to post-mediaeval ships, starting with cogs in Alexandria, and on to galleons in the 18th century.

3. Why do you think it was Caspian who dived into the water and not a sailor?
A good king is the first to lead into battle, or the first to dive overboard? He also seems somewhat impulsive--maybe he didn't want Drinian to tell him not to jump in.

4. Why was Eustace the last one of the children to be brought on board?
Premonitions among the crew?

5. Lewis doesn't say whether Eustace can swim or not. Based on this chapter, do you think he can swim or not?
He takes the typical action of a non-swimmer, or at least a very poor one:

"[he] clutched at her in a panic and down they both went...[Edmund] had caught the arms of the howling Eustace."

presumably to keep him from going under again, or else to keep him from drowning all of them. Swimming doesn't seem to be the sort of healthy activity that would feature in the Experiment House prospectus.

6. What, if anything, do you make of Lewis' descriptions of the Scrubbs and their differences from the Pevensies? Is this caricature or an unfair portrayal of a certain type of person, or is it merely poking fun?
He wasn't necessarily saying that any or all of those characteristics were bad or odd. Actually, he didn't even say outright that the combination was bad, although it is certainly implied. He was not a vegetarian, teetotaler or non-smoker himself--we aren't told if he wore special underwear, are we? (something to do with health benefits, I believe Twigs)--but it is more the aggregate of special qualities that raised the Scrubbs to a level superior to all their less enlightened acquaintances. That is what he is making fun of here, I think. Haven't you ever met people like that? Nowadays it is the "Organic, eco-friendly, fair trade, vegan, sustainable harvesting" crowd: whatever the fashionable buzz word happens to be. If the book had been written a decade or two later, they most likely would have been hippies.

7. Is Aunt Alberta's having a painting of a Narnian ship a coincidence or something more?
That would be Aslan's doing, I should think; the very fact that it was given by someone whom she daren't offend, thus saving the picture from premature disposal. For this reason, I wouldn't tend to think it was from the Pevensies, simply because the Scrubbs didn't seem too impressed with them. I wonder on which side the relationship lay? Her sister, his sister, her brother?

8. How does the opening line "There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it" set the tone for the rest of the chapter?
You almost feel sorry for him--almost. Not that an awful name/combination of names makes it excusable to act like a beast. By no means. Perhaps the most telling line is "I can't tell you how his friends spoke to him, for he had none." Poor Eustace--he wouldn't have even recognized that this was a problem.

9. Lewis provides several descriptions of the sorts of things Eustace likes and dislikes. Why do you think he does this? Do you have some of the same likes and dislikes as Eustace?
Perhaps, King_Erlian, it was more the punyness of his soul than his actual physical stature? (Imagine, though, a hulking Eustace--he would have proved an uncomfortable adversary.) Lewis seems to be making fun of himself here--wasn't he a fairly short man?(EDIT to ADD: Not sure where I got that; according to his own words he was tall)--and of course, he didn't like his own name. Again, I don't think that Lewis was saying that there was anything wrong with the individual items. (Except perhaps the bug-sticking--British authors of the time seemed to have a decided aversion to hobbies that involved destruction of nature, e.g. Arthur Ransome's take on bird-nesting.) He didn't admire the stodginess of Eustace or his lack of imagination, which was brought out in more detail throughout the book. And anyone who had the poor taste to dislike the Pevensies? That says it all.

10. If this was your first time in Narnia, would you react the way Eustace does?
Not being a very adventurous person, I suspect that I wouldn't be too thrilled, especially if I had the feeling that I had been tricked into it somehow. Okay, hopefully not that badly, but I really do prefer to read about excitements, rather than have them happen in person.

11. Eustace is described as a 'record stinker' which might be misunderstood these days! What must it have been like having him stay 'last year'?
Enough to make them dread their stay this year. There's little doubt that he would have taken full advantage of "visitor's privilege" to get what he wanted--first and best of everything. Edmund and Lucy didn't seem to hope that he had improved since the previous year--and a vain hope it would have been!

12. Which part of the description of the ship/painting appeals to you most?
Different things stand out each time I read it; this time it was all the vivid colour of the ship and her surroundings, a sharp contrast to how the summer was shaping up for the younger Pevensies.

Oddly enough, the painting of the Dawn Treader has never appealed to me. If I had gotten it for a wedding gift, I probably would have re-gifted it.

What theory do you have as to how someone painted a Narnian Ship?

It's quite a conundrum... perhaps the strangest thing is that it shows The Dawn Treader in a particular moment in time. Whoever painted it seemed to have glimpsed it personally, and recently. (At least as far as Narnian time goes.)

This is my theory, or "headcanon" at least... I sincerely doubt that Lewis had it in mind, but I rather like to think of it as being the case. I'll put it in spoiler tags because it references something mentioned in the next chapter: