THE COLLECTED LETTERS OF C. S. Lewis ———Volume III——— Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950-1963 EDITED BY WALTER HOOPER

CONTENTS

Preface

Abbreviations

Letters:

Chapter 1 - 1950

Chapter 2 - 1951

Chapter 3 - 1952

Chapter 4 - 1953

Chapter 5 - 1954

Chapter 6 - 1955

Chapter 7 - 1956

Chapter 8 - 1957

Chapter 9 - 1958

Chapter 10 - 1959

Chapter 11 - 1960

Chapter 12 - 1961

Chapter 13 - 1962

Chapter 14 - 1963

Supplementary Letters

‘Great War’ Letters

Biographical Appendix

Index

About the Author

Books By C. S. Lewis

Copyright

About the Publisher

PREFACE

This is the third and final volume of the Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis. In the same way that the third novel of Lewis’s interplanetary trilogy, That Hideous Strength, grew to be twice the length of the first story, Out of the Silent Planet, so it is with Volume III of his correspondence, which is almost twice as long as Volume I. It would, I admit, have been neater to have had three equally sized books, but this is the way things have turned out, and I hope readers will welcome the many extra letters in this bulky concluding collection.

When it was agreed years ago between the publishers and the Lewis Estate that there would be only three volumes of letters, it was left unsaid how long a volume might be. I was halfway through editing Volume I when someone at HarperCollins suggested that the Collected Letters might consist of three paperback volumes of 325 pages each. This was not acceptable to the Estate because it would mean publishing only about a third of the letters known to exist, and leaving the others to an uncertain future. Lewis was one of the last great letter-writers and we felt it would be a pity not to publish all his letters. And so I persevered with Volume I, hoping that a book comprising about a third of the letters would be accepted by HarperCollins.

However, when the time came to send the publishers the typescript of the first volume, a different person at HarperCollins was in charge. This was lames Catford, of whom I’d heard many good things. I nevertheless feared he would turn the book down if it were very long, and I cut out a few letters. As I explained in the Preface to Volume I, ‘To prevent the book from being too long it was necessary to leave out a few letters, but the volume contains about 95 per cent of the letters from that period.’ I explained that some of the letters I omitted were ‘weekly “regulation” letters from lack to his father from his various schools’, while others were letters to Lewis’s great friends Owen Barfield and Cecil Harwood, in which he ‘was primarily arguing philosophical points or criticizing his correspondents’ poetry’.¹

On 19 April 1999, a few days after sending the typescript of Volume I to HarperCollins, I went up to London to meet James Catford, who would be guiding it through the press. I expected him to complain of it being too long, and I could not have been more surprised when he said: ‘Congratulations! We’re into Big Books!’

James gave the Collected Letters exactly the lift it needed, and although he left soon afterwards to become chief executive of the Bible Society, those who followed him at HarperCollins have supported the project with equal enthusiasm. More than that, they have shared my keenness to include in the Collected Letters all the letters that have come to light. Volume I, Family Letters, covered the period from Lewis’s first letters in 1905 up to his conversion in September 1931. Volume II, Books, Broadcasts and War, covered the period from October 1931 up to 1949 when Lewis wrote The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and was finding his way into Narnia, and I tried to include all the letters that fitted into that second period.

By the time I reached Volume III, with its triple theme, Narnia, Cambridge, Joy, covering 1950 up to Lewis’s death in 1963, David Brawn, the projects director at HarperCollins, and Chris Smith, commissioning editor, were as enthusiastic about the project as I. They liked my idea of including in Volume III a Supplement of those letters which were deliberately omitted from or, for various reasons, failed to get into Volumes I and II. Apart from the early letters to his father and those to Barfield and Harwood, for reasons of space I had also omitted Lewis’s letters to various periodicals, such as the Times Literary Supplement and the Church Times; these letters too are now included in the Supplement.

Besides the Supplement, there are the ‘Great War’ Letters dating from 1927-8. They are the only part of Lewis’s dispute with Owen Barfield about myth, imagination and anthroposophy conducted by letter. Long before the ‘Great War’ began in 1923, Lewis dismissed Christianity as a ‘myth’. Then, in February 1923, while preparing for his examinations in Greats, he witnessed a man he liked go mad.² This was Mrs Moore’s brother, Dr John Askins, who Lewis explained ‘had flirted with Theosophy, Yoga, Spiritualism, Psychoanalysis, what not?’³ In the little house Lewis shared with Mrs Moore he helped to hold Dr Askins down ‘while he kicked and wallowed on the floor, screaming out that devils were tearing him and that he was that moment falling down into Hell’.⁴Largely as a result of this Lewis assumed what he called his intellectual ‘New Look’. ‘There were to be,’ he insisted,

no flirtations with any idea of the supernatural, no romantic delusions. In a word, like the heroine of Northanger Abbey, I formed the resolution ‘of always judging and acting in future with the greatest good sense? And good sense meant, for me at that moment, a retreat, almost a panic-stricken flight, from all that sort of romanticism which had hitherto been the chief concern of my life.⁶

Lewis had just arrived at this ‘New Look’, with its rejection of anything supernatural, when Owen Barfield and Cecil Harwood became followers of Rudolf Steiner and the theosophical beliefs expressed in anthroposophy. ‘I was hideously shocked,’ said Lewis:

Everything that I had laboured so hard to expel from my own life seemed to have flared up and met me in my best friends. Not only my best friends, but those whom I would have thought safest…As I came to learn…what Steiner thought, my horror turned into disgust and resentment. For here, apparently, were all the abominations; none more abominable than those which had once attracted me. Here were gods, spirits, after-life and pre-existence, initiates, occult knowledge, meditation…There was no danger of my being taken in. But then, the loneliness, the sense of being deserted.⁷

The ‘Great War’ was to last until 1931, when Lewis converted to Christianity.

In a word, HarperCollins and I were determined that the three volumes would contain not a ‘selection’ of Lewis’s letters but all. The reader can see from the frequency of the abbreviations ‘BOD’ and ‘W’ that most of the letters are from the two major collections in the Bodleian Library and the Wade Center. But for the purpose of this volume, the net was thrown very wide, and this volume contains the letters I have found in all the Lewis collections I know about. When I began work on Volume III, I guessed that, with the addition of the Supplement, it would be only a few hundred pages longer than the other two. However, as word spread that this would be the final volume, I received numerous Lewis letters preserved in private collections. And so the book grew to be the size it is.

Despite our efforts to include in these volumes all of Lewis’s letters, there are a few that either I forgot about or which turned up too late to be fitted in. No doubt others will come to light. We should not be discouraged. This happens with the letters of nearly all eminent people. I doubt we can say we have all the letters written by anyone. Letters from Dr Samuel Johnson have shown up hundreds of years after his letters were first published, and despite the efforts of the many editors of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s Letters and Diaries, over a period of fifty years, letters from Newman still show up from time to time. While I have no doubt that most of Lewis’s letters are contained in these volumes, I expect the occasional letter will be popping up for the next 100 years. If this happens, perhaps HarperCollins will publish an additional volume of letters.

The theme of this volume is Narnia, Cambridge and Joy, but up to the end of 1949, there was almost nothing to suggest that the last thirteen years of Lewis’s life would involve any of those things, that it would be the fullest of all, and that the period would yield so many letters. In short, there was no reason for Lewis to imagine a revolution taking place in his life. He was very tired from years of looking after his aged companion, Mrs Moore, and he would have been glad of an occasional day of freedom. Thus, when Don Giovanni Calabria wrote from Verona at the beginning of 1949, urging him to write more, Lewis replied on 14 January:

I would not wish to deceive you with vain hope. I am now in my fiftieth year. I feel my zeal for writing, and whatever talent I originally possessed, to be decreasing; nor (I believe) do I please my readers as I used to…My aged mother, worn out by long infirmity, is my daily care…Perhaps it will be the most wholesome thing for my soul that I lose both fame and skill lest I were to fall into that evil disease, vainglory⁸

The clearest evidence that his ‘zeal for writing’ was decreasing was that he had written no stories since the last Ransom novel in 1945. For Lewis story-writing was never a matter of effort, but depended entirely, as he said, on ‘seeing pictures in my head’.⁹ But there were no ‘pictures’. And in any event, Lewis was poised, after years of preparation, to begin writing English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1954), the volume of the Oxford History of English Literature which he once complained ‘lies like a nightmare on my chest’.¹⁰ The burden of that ‘nightmare’ would have been eased had he received more help from his brother, Warnie. The brothers were the greatest friends, but Warnie would periodically disappear to Ireland on drinking binges, often absenting himself at the times when Jack needed most help with Mrs Moore.

As I mentioned in the Preface to Volume II, it was shortly after Lewis thought his talents to be ‘decreasing’ that he began dreaming of lions.¹¹ ‘At first,’ he said about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, ‘I had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Asian came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams of lions about that time…Once He was there He pulled the whole story together, and soon He pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him.’¹²

The extraordinary burst of inspiration that led to the writing of the Narnian stories was beyond anything he had experienced since his interplanetary stories. How did it happen? As he explained,

In the Author’s mind there bubbles up every now and then the material for a story. For me it invariably begins with mental pictures. This ferment leads to nothing unless it is accompanied with the longing for a Form: verse or prose, short story, novel, play or what not. When these two things click you have the Author’s impulse complete. It is now a thing inside him pawing to get out. He longs to see this bubbling stuff pouring into that Form as the housewife longs to see the new jam pouring into the clean jam jar. This nags him all day long and gets in the way of his work and his sleep and his meals. It’s like being in love.¹³

The first two chapters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were probably composed soon after he wrote to Don Giovanni on 14 January 1949, and they were ready for Roger Lancelyn Green to read when he visited Lewis in March. This first ‘Chronicle of Narnia’ was completed by the end of May, and in June Lewis made a start on what became The Magician’s Nephew. He dropped this story when he ran into some difficulties with it, and in September 1949 he wrote Prince Caspian. In August 1949 Lewis signed a contract with publisher Geoffrey Bles for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and by Christmas Pauline Baynes had illustrated it.

Volume III opens in January 1950, when Lewis was writing a third story, The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’. This was followed by The Horse and His Boy, which he was in the middle of when he found it impossible any longer to look after Mrs Moore. On 29 April 1950 she was moved to Restholme, a nursing home at 230 Woodstock Road. There Lewis visited her every day.¹⁴ ‘The old lady’s retirement to a Nursing Home,’ he wrote to Dr Warfield Firor on 6 December 1950, ‘has made me a good deal freer in a small way. I can plan my days and count on some domestic leisure as I have not been able to do these last fifteen years.’¹⁵

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, always the most popular of the stories, was published on 16 October 1950. The Magician’s Nephew was not completed until the spring of 1954, but all the other five were finished by March 1953. This meant that, with the exception of The Magician’s Nephew, Lewis wrote six Narnian stories in about four years. It was his publisher, Geoffrey Bles, who decided they should appear one per year.

The Narnian stories were favourably reviewed from the start, but it took several years before they captured the imagination of children. What became in the end a flood of letters from children was only a trickle when Lewis said in a letter to Dr Firor of 20 December 1951: ‘I am going to be (if I live long enough) one of those men who was a famous writer in his forties and dies unknown.’¹⁶ A few years later he was inundated with letters from children, and he enjoyed these more than any others he received. This volume contains all those previously published in Letters to Children (1985) as well as others, and they provide one of our most important sources of information about Narnia. Even today, Lewis continues to receive letters of gratitude from children, and I imagine he would be amused that I have answered more letters from children after his death than he did before it.¹⁷ Before the creation of Narnia The Screwtape Letters was his most popular book, but today Lewis is, of course, best known and best loved as the author of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Magdalen College gave Lewis a year off, from Michaelmas Term 1951 to Michaelmas Term 1952, to complete English Literature in the Sixteenth Century. Despite the fact that Asian was still ‘pulling in’ the remaining Narnian stories, Lewis managed to complete the book by May 1952. He celebrated by motoring around his native Ulster with Arthur Greeves. Those who have read both the Narnian stories and English Literature in the Sixteenth Century will probably agree that the two tasks were highly complementary. Lewis’s pupil, John Wain, spoke for many when he said in his review of the Oxford History: ‘Most dons have moved a long way from any recognition that literature is something that people read for fun. Mr Lewis, now as always, writes as if inviting us to a feast.’¹⁸

Turning to the second theme of these letters–Cambridge–many readers wonder why Oxford did not honour Lewis with a professorship. There is nothing to suggest that Lewis was hurt, much less angry, about this, but his friends were hurt for him. J. R. R. Tolkien felt that he and Lewis would be ideally suited for the two Chairs at Merton College, the Chair of English and the Chair of English Literature. But while Tolkien was elected Merton Professor of English in 1945, the Chair of English Literature, when it became vacant in 1947, went instead to Lewis’s former tutor, R P. Wilson. Lewis was passed over again in 1948 when the Goldsmith’s Professorship of English at New College went to Lord David Cecil, who often said, ‘This chair should have gone to Lewis.’ While Lewis’s reputation as a literary scholar will probably always be overshadowed by Narnia and his apologetics, he was the author of a number of works of literary criticism that have taken their place with the classics, notably The Allegory of Love (1936) and A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942).

Why was it that Lewis had to leave Oxford and go to Cambridge in order to find a professorial position? It is possible that Dame Helen Gardner supplied the answer in the obituary of Lewis she wrote for the British Academy. She suggested that a suspicion had arisen that he was ‘so committed to what he himself called “hot-gospelling”‘¹⁹ that he would not have time for the demands of a Chair. ‘In addition,’ she said, ‘a good many people thought that shoemakers should stick to their lasts and disliked the thought of a professor of English Literature winning fame as an amateur theologian.’²⁰

I met Professor Tolkien in 1964, having not long come from the United States. When he saw how perplexed I was by Oxford’s attitude to Lewis he explained it to me:

In Oxford you are forgiven for writing only two kinds of hooks. You may write hooks on your own subject whatever that is, literature or science, or history. And you may write detective stories because all dons at some time get the flu, and they have to have something to read in bed. But what you are not forgiven is writing popular works, such as Jack did on theology, and especially if they win international success as his did.²¹

One of the most pleasant parts of the ‘revolution’ that occurred in the last thirteen years of Lewis’s life was the offer of the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, created with him in mind. We are fortunate in having not only Lewis’s side of the correspondence about the Chair, but that of the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, Sir Henry Willink, who offered him the position. That correspondence, which begins on page 470, is as full of unexpected twists as an Agatha Christie novel, and I will say no more than that I hope the reader enjoys it.

Finally, what began as the quietest part of the ‘revolution’ in the end transformed Lewis’s entire life—Joy. Readers will not find in the many letters about Joy Davidman and her marriage to Lewis anything resembling the ‘love at first sight’ affair which some imagine befell these two people. Bearing in mind how it all turned out, readers will probably be as amused as I am about how Lewis viewed Joy’s stay at The Kilns during Christmas 1952. Writing to Laurence Harwood on 19 December 1952 he said: ‘I am completely “circumvented” by a guest, asked for one week but staying for three, who talks from morning till night.’²² The bitter-sweet story that followed that Christmas visit is treated so fully and touchingly in these letters there is no reason for me to say any more.

One of the first things I noticed when I moved into Lewis’s house in the summer of 1963 was the immensely heavy burden of ‘loathsome letter-writing’²³ he shouldered almost every morning. After breakfast we spent about two hours replying to every letter he received. He had rheumatism in his right hand, and it had become painful to write very much. At that time he was receiving as many as three letters a week from Mrs Mary Willis Shelburne. She was the anonymous recipient of the Letters to an American Lady, edited by Clyde S. Kilby and published in 1967. Dr Kilby was not allowed to reveal the lady’s identity, and the ‘American Lady’ also insisted that all references to her daughter, Lorraine, and son-in-law, Don Nostadt, be omitted. The letters to Mrs Shelburne are published here for the first time in their entirety.

By the time I moved into The Kilns Mrs Shelburne was writing more letters than Lewis could possibly answer, and Lewis decided to end it. He had me take out my notebook and write down the names of the two people I would be totally responsible for—Mary Willis Shelburne and Margaret Radcliffe, a one-legged nurse who was always threatening to move into The Kilns and ‘Iook after him’. Lewis felt he had written enough to them, that he had said all there was to say, and he chose to reserve a little time for the things he wanted to write.

Lewis missed Warnie, and he said in the letter to Mrs Shelburne of 10 June 1963: ‘My brother is away in Ireland…This throws a lot of extra work on me, besides condemning me to—what I hate—solitude.’²⁴ I soon realised he did not always like to be alone, and as long as I was busy with my own work he asked me to remain in the room while he wrote. If he had a decent chair, a bottle of ink and an endless supply of nibs for his pen, Lewis might have been in a private world. The exception was the period between after-lunch coffee and about three o’clock. I suspected he had a sleep when I left him alone in the common room after lunch; one day, as I was leaving, I said, ‘lack, do you ever take a nap?’ ‘Oh, no!’ he said. ‘But, mind you, sometimes a nap takes me!’

I once asked how he managed to write with such ease, and I think his answer tells us more about his writing than anything he said. He told me that the thing he most loved about writing was that it did two things at once. This he illustrated by saying: ‘I don’t know what I mean till I see what I’ve said.’ In other words, writing and thinking were a single process.

Lewis retired from Cambridge in the summer of 1963, and besides helping with letters, he had plans about how I would help with the books he planned to write. I never wanted anything more. What would Lewis have written had he lived longer? But that is enough speculation: Asian has made it clear that he will ‘tell no one any story but his own’.²⁵ On the other hand, I expect the great Lion is responsible for the comfort I get from knowing that the many hours Lewis spent ‘coaxing a rheumatic wrist to drive this pen across paper’²⁶ were not wasted. We have three large volumes of his letters.

In the period covered by Volume I Lewis was writing primarily to family members and close friends, in that covered by Volume II to a greatly enlarged circle of correspondents. The letters in Volume III were written to an even larger circle of people. As in Volume II, I have included substantial biographies of close friends, such as Nan Dunbar, Peter Bide and Katharine Farrer, and shorter biographies of associates and other people whose details were too substantial to be included merely as footnotes. It was fairly easy to gather facts when I was writing about people like Nan Dunbar and others whom I knew. Sometimes I was fortunate enough to track down those to whom Lewis wrote a single letter, such as Father George Restropo SJ (p. 1387). In some instances the recipient of a letter tracked me down. Unfortunately, many letters in this volume were bought by libraries from dealers who could supply no information about the recipients. Despite my efforts, many of these correspondents remain unidentified beyond their names.

Readers should note that the abbreviation ‘TS’ means the letter was typed by Lewis’s brother Warnie; ‘PC’ means it was written on a postcard. As Lewis grew older, and had more letters to answer, he often restricted his replies to postcards. Readers will also notice the abbreviation ‘p.p.’–per procurationem–meaning ‘through another’. If Lewis was not present when Warnie had typed a letter for him Warnie would sometimes sign his brother’s name, and I have indicated this by ‘p.p.’ Although most of the typed letters were composed by Lewis himself, I suspect that Warnie had a hand in the writing of a few of those marked ‘p.p.’

The eight years I have spent editing the letters would not have been as fruitful nor as pleasant were it not for the help of many others. My debts are numerous, and nothing I can say can adequately reflect my gratitude.

I begin by thanking the Classical scholar, Dr A. T. Reyes, who is responsible for most of the Latin and Greek references in the three volumes of letters. I would be embarrassed if readers knew the extent of that obligation. Others to whom my debts are very great are Dr Francis Warner, Dr Barbara Everett, Professor Emrys Iones, Dr lames Como, Dr John Walsh, Dr Tobias Reinhardt and Tyler Fisher. I could not have persevered without their encouragement. If I could say how much I owe Dr Michael Ward, Richard leffrey, Andrew Cuneo, Madame Eliane Tixier, Dr René Tixier, Raphaela Schmid, Patrick Nold and William Griffin, readers might wonder what part, if any, I had in editing these letters. I can never be grateful enough to Dr loel Heck, who spent an entire term in Oxford with his wife Cheryl typing many of the letters in this volume. My grateful thanks to Lewis’s pupils, Professor Derek Brewer and Professor Alastair Fowler, who gave me much help. I owe many good words to Dr Robin Darwall-Smith, Archivist of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Dr Ronald Hyam, Archivist of Magdalene College, Cambridge, who provided me with letters from their college libraries.

I could not have done without the vital help given me by various people at the Wade Center, notably Dr Christopher Mitchell, Marjorie Lamp Mead, Heidi Truty and Laura Schmidt. I gladly acknowledge a huge debt to Judy Winfree, who provided me with nearly everything I know about the history of Mary Willis Shelburne. I owe special thanks to Dr C. M. Bajetta, who translated some of the letters to members of the Poor Servants of Divine Providence in Verona, and who wrote the biography of Fr Luigi Pedrollo. Others who gave important help include Father Jerome Bertram Cong Orat, Father David Meconi SJ, Penelope Avery, Anthony Hardie, Ronald Bresland, John Coppack, Ron Humphrey, Martin Hesketh, Helena Scott, Mark Bide, Penelope Starr, Dr Alston McCaslin V, Dr Silas McCaslin, Philip G. Ryken, K. Scott Oliphint, Dabney Hart, Richard Furze, Nancy Macky, Keith Call, Isaac Gerwitz, Christian Rendel, Robert Trexler, Anthony Bott, Richard Haney, Don W King and George Musacchio.

There would not be many letters to include in this volume were it not for the Bodleian Library, and I am greatly indebted to Dr Judith Priestman and Colin Harris, who helped me use the resources of that wonderful institution. I thank David Brawn and Chris Smith of HarperCollins for their encouragement and for their immense labour in seeing this book through the press. Finally, while the faults of the book are entirely my own, I would have been afraid to embark on it at all without the help of my copy-editor, Steve Gove.

Walter Hooper

13 September 2006

Oxford

1 CL I, p. viii.

2 Lewis wrote of this in detail in AMR, pp. 201-8.

3 SB], ch. 13, p. 157.

4 ibid.

6 SB], ch. 13, p. 156.

7 ibid., p. 160.

8 CLII, pp. 905-6.

9 Of This and Other Worlds, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Fount, 1984; HarperCollins, 2000), ‘It All Began with a Picture…’, p. 64.

10 CL II, p. 221, letter of 25 January 1938.

11 ibid., p. xi.

12 Of This and Other Worlds, p. 64.

13 ibid., ‘Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said’, pp. 57-8.

14 Mrs Moore died at Restholme on 12 December 1951.

15 See p. 66.

16 See p. 150.

17 Many of these letters are preserved in the Bodleian Library (MS. Eng. c. 5369).

18 The Spectator, 193 (1 October 1954), p. 405.

19 Helen Gardner, ‘Clive Staples Lewis 1898-1963’, Proceedings of the British Academy, LI (1965), p. 425.

20 ibid.

21 Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography (London: Bles, 1974; rev. edn, HarperCollins, 2002), ch. 12, p. 340.

22 See p. 268.

23 See p. 1464.

24 See p. 1429.

25 The Horse and His Boy (1954), ch. 11.

26 See p. 834.

ABBREVIATIONS

AMR = All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis 1922-27, edited by Walter Hooper (1991)

BBC = Written Archive Centre, British Broadcasting Corporation

BERG = Berg Collection, New York Public Library

BF = Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis, edited by Clyde S. Kilby and Marjorie Lamp Mead (1982)

BOD = Bodleian Library, Oxford University

CAM = Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

CG = Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide (1996)

CL I = C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters, Vol. I: Family Letters 1905-1931, edited by Walter Hooper (2000)

CL II = C. S. Lewis, Collected Letters, Vol. II: Books, Broadcasts and War 1931-1949, edited by Walter Hooper (2004)

CP = C. S. Lewis, Collected Poems, edited by Walter Hooper (1994)

EC = C. S. Lewis, Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, edited by Lesley Walmsley (2000)

HAR = Harvard University Library

L = Letters of C. S. Lewis, edited with a Memoir by W H. Lewis (1966); revised and enlarged edition edited by Walter Hooper (1988)

Lambeth Palace = Lambeth Palace Library, Lambeth Palace, London

LP = unpublished ‘Lewis Papers’ or ‘Memoirs of the Lewis Family: 1850-1930’, 11 vols.

M = Magdalen College, Oxford

MC = Magdalene College, Cambridge

OUP = Oxford University Press, Oxford Oxford DNB = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 60 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). There is also an online edition of this work

P = Private collection

PC = postcard

p.p. = per pro (through another). In this volume the abbreviation indicates letters signed by Warnie Lewis on behalf of his brother

Poems = C. S. Lewis, Poems, edited by Walter Hooper (London: Bles, 1964). All the poems in this volume are included in Collected Poems (CP)

PRIN = Princeton University Library, Princeton, New lersey

SBJ = C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (1955)

SLE = C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, edited by Walter Hooper (1969)

T = Taylor University, Upland, Indiana

TEX = University of Texas at Austin

TS = typescript

UCL = University College London

UNC = Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

V = Congregation of the Poor Servants of Divine Providence, Verona, Italy

W = Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois

WHL = W. H. Lewis’s unpublished biography of his brother, ‘C. S. Lewis: 1898-1963’. The greater part of the narrative was brought together as a ‘Memoir’ and it was published with most of the letters as Letters to C. S. Lewis, edited with a Memoir by W. H. Lewis (1966). There are two typescripts of ‘C. S. Lewis: 1898-1963’, one in the Bodleian Library and one in the Wade Center

1950

During the spring of 1949 Lewis began dreaming of lions and by May 1949 he had written the first of the Chronicles of Narnia–The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This was hardly finished when he had the idea for the next story, Prince Caspian–or ‘A Horn in Narnia’ as it was first called. By the time this volume of letters opens Lewis was at work on yet another Narnian story, The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’, the manuscript of which would be ready for Roger Lancelyn Green¹ to read when he visited Lewis at the end of February 1950.²

TO JONATHAN FRANCIS ‘FRANK’ GOODRIDGE (P): ³

Magdalen College

Oxford

[1 January 1950]

There have been very few pupils in my 26 years’ experience as a tutor for whom I can speak so confidently as I can for Mr. Frank Goodrich.⁴ As a scholar he has quality which his actual degree did not at all represent. The year in which he sat for his Final was one of strange surprises for many tutors about many pupils: but apart from that, his failure to do himself justice can be explained by two factors.

(1.) He is really too conscientious a student, too determined to get to the bottom of every question, to make an ideal examinee: good at probing and not at all good at advertising: incapable of ‘bluff’.

(2.) He gave rather more time than he could afford to his duties as secretary of a philosophical club.⁵ I saw a good deal of him in that capacity and it was his Minutes which first convinced me that he had attributes quite out of the ordinary. He could condense, and slightly popularise, the arguments of speakers (often very erudite) with less loss than any man I have ever known.

This satisfies me that he will be a good teacher: he might very well turn out to be one of the great teachers. His personal character won my respect from the beginning and this respect steadily increased during the time he was with me. He is one of the most disinterested—I think I could say one of the most selfless—men I have ever met: and, in spite of his good humour and patience, which are unfailing, I should not like to be the boy who tried to ‘rag’ him. If I had a son of my own there is no one to whom I would entrust him so gladly as to Mr. Goodrich.

C. S. Lewis

Fellow & Tutor of Magdalen

TO GEORGE ROSTREVOR HAMILTON (BOD): ⁶

Magdalen College

Oxford

Jan 3./50

Dear Hamilton

O nodes cenaeque deum!,⁷ it was a glorious evening, and the underworld of that Hotel can claim as well as Pluto sunt altera nobis sideral.⁸ And now, to sweeten memory, firstly I find that Virgil does use planta⁹ and Owen¹⁰ accordingly owes me 2/6, and secondly the Masque.

They really were asses not to play it, for it is a lovely thing in a genre now infinitely difficult. For we have mostly lost the power (taken for granted by our ancestors) of fitting works of art into ceremonial occasions. In this you have succeeded and what I admire more than any particular moments, tho’ I admire many of those too, is the combination throughout of what is extremely local and English and fresh with what is classical or timeless. One loses a lot (as one should) by not seeing it actually performed, for then it would be a real ,¹¹ a death & resurrection rite with a most powerful effect. It is full of niceties: the three feminine endings that give the droning effect after ‘What does he say?’ on p. 5.–the ‘small change’ in your paraphrase of Aeschylus—the rhyme scheme on p. 7–the use of the ‘Voices’. But I think you were wrong to use lines (tho’ good) from Masefield¹² where you might have made as good of your own.

I’m not liking the new year much so far, but wish you very well in it. With many thanks.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (W):¹³ TS

REF.50/23.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

7th January 1950.

Dear Professor Starr,

We both thank you for your kind card, and wish you every happiness in 1950.

On Tuesday morning we hope to drink your health at the ‘Bird and Baby’: pity you can’t be there to join us!¹⁴

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis¹⁵

TO SARAH NEYIAN (T): ¹⁶

Magdalen College,

Oxford

9/1/50

My dear Sarah

Yes, I did indeed get the mats and was only waiting to be sure of the right address before acknowledging them. They were so like lino-cuts that if I weren’t such an unhandy and messy person I wd. have been tempted to ink them and try making a few prints. Thanks very much indeed.

I’m glad you like the Ballet lessons. I’m just back from a week end at Malvern and found an awful pile of letters awaiting me—so I am scribbling in haste. But I must tell you what I saw in a field—one young pig cross the field with a great big bundle of hay in its mouth and deliberately lay it down at the feet of an old pig. I could hardly believe my eyes. I’m sorry to say the old pig didn’t take the slightest notice. Perhaps it couldn’t believe its eyes either. Love to yourself and all,

Your affectionate

Godfather

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD): ¹⁷

Magdalen

9/1/50

Dear Miss Bodle,

Yes. Charles Williams often used the words ‘holy luck’.¹⁸ Compare Spenser ‘It chanced, Almighty God that chance did guide’.¹⁹ Bless you.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD): ²⁰

Magdalen College

Oxford

12/1/50

Dear Sister Penelope

The name of the graduate looks like KNIONAN, but this can hardly be right! It is embarrassing that as my own hand gets worse I also get worse at reading everyone else’s.

I am very sorry you have had no luck yet with the M.G.²¹ But many a book that afterwards succeeded has been rejected by several publishers.

I read Butterfield and gave it exactly the same mark as you; and am glad of your support, for most even of my Christian friends think it bad.²² All good wishes for St Bernard.²³

My book with Professor Tolkien—any book in collaboration with that great but dilatory and unmethodical man—is dated, I fear, to appear on the Greek Kalends!²⁴

I don’t quite know about those American veterans. Nearly all the books we shd. want to send are published in U.S.A. and there is a bad book famine in England.

Term begins on Sat. and there is a cruel mail today, so I am suffering incessant temptation to uncharitable thoughts at present: one of those black moods in which nearly all one’s friends seem to be selfish or even false. And how terrible that there shd. be even a kind of pleasure in thinking evil. A ‘mixed pleasure’ as Plato wd. say, like scratching?

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

Britain had been so weakened by the effects of the Second World War (1939-1945) that, despite American assistance, rationing was still in effect when Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952. Clothes rationing ended in 1949, but food continued to be rationed until 1954. For this reason many of Lewis’s friends in the United States, such as Edward A. Allen, were still sending him food parcels.

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W):²⁵ TS

REF.50/19.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

24th January 1950.

My dear Mr. Allen,

This is something like a New Year’s greeting! And I am most grateful to you for it. I had to look closely at the label to make sure that the gift was from you, for we are so bemused at the moment with high pressure election literature that I thought it might be from our own Mr. Strachey.²⁶ I don’t know whether it has appeared in your Press, but he has opened the government campaign here by saying how grateful he is to the public for their thanks for the ‘best Christmas in living memory’. The odd thing is that I can’t find anyone who told him that this was how we felt about the extra ounce of bacon or whatever it was that he gave us!

I hope your mother keeps well, and you also. Thanks to the photos you sent me. I picture you both always on a sea beach. But presumably you are now travelling on snow shoes.

With all best wishes and thanks

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W):²⁷ TS

RER50/81.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

30th January 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

I was very sorry to hear about the miserable fiasco of your New York holiday. ‘Flu itself I don’t mind so much, especially in its later stages when the temperature has gone down, but the getting back to normality afterwards is beastly. I hope that by this time you are over the ‘wet rag’ stage, and feeling yourself once more.

Need I say how much we look forward to the parcel which you so kindly promise? It sounds most exciting, and will be very welcome: because, whether it blows fair and warm politically or not, it is anything but fair and warm in the literal sense. I suspect that in California you are exempt from such a day as we are having here—frost, followed by rain, followed by frost—every side walk converted by delighted small boys into an improvised skating rink—splendid opportunities of giving the passers by a good laugh every time you venture out!

With all best wishes for your health, and many thanks,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD T. DELL (P):²⁸ TS

REF.50/79

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

30th January 1950.

Dear Mr. Dell,

I think we mean very nearly the same.²⁹ Evil is certainly not a ‘Thing’. But many states of affairs, or relations between things, are regrettable, ought not to have occurred, and ought to be removed. And ‘Evil’ is an elliptical symbol for this fact.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO SISTER MARYROSE (L): ³⁰

[January 1950]

I am sorry if I misunderstood your letter: and I think that you misunderstood mine. What I meant was that if I replied to your original question (why I am not a member of the Roman Church) I shd. have to write a v. long letter. It would of course be answerable: and your answer would be answerable by me…and so on. The resulting correspondence would certainly not, of course, be in excess of the importance of the subject: but haven’t you and I both probably more pressing duties? For a real correspondence on such a subject wd. be nearly a wholetime job. I thought we cd. both discuss the matter more usefully with people nearer at hand. Even the two letters which we have exchanged have already revealed the pitfalls of argument by letter. With all good wishes.

TO NICOLAS ZERNOV(BOD): ³¹

[Magdalen College]

3/2/50

Dear Zernov

Your news is a great shock to me. I will write to Spalding.³² It was a great pleasure to meet your wife the other night and altogether a splendid evening, as yours always are. Cd. you come & dine with me on Thurs. March 9? Do.

Yours

C.S.L.

TO MRS FRANK L. JONES (W):³³ TS

REE 50/18.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

7th February 1950.

My dear Mrs. Jones,

Many thanks for your long and interesting letter of the 24th of January. (‘And’ says my secretary-brother, ‘don’t forget to give her my grateful thanks for being one of the few people who quotes the number on your letter when she writes’).

Your husband may well be proud of his school chapel, a beautiful building, which–to pay a typically English compliment—would rank high amongst school chapels over here!

No indeed, there is no question of my not wanting you to send anything, though there are times when I am more than a little ashamed at the amount you do send. And I note with great pleasure what you say about the tea: also about specially marked parcels.

I stand appalled at the list of your activities. I thought myself a busy man, but…

Now for an attempt at answering some of your questions:–

(1) Why was Christ always talking over people’s heads?

Since all we know of his teachings is derived from the disciples and St. Paul, we are not in a position to say that they did finally misunderstand Him. With what other account of His teaching can we check theirs? That He was often temporarily over their heads, I agree. That is the way to get a class on, as every teacher knows.

(2) About God being Truth and Justice, and nevertheless creating this world.

I’m afraid I can’t add to what I said about this in the Problem of Pain.³⁴

(3) Why did God make most people stupid?

Have you any evidence that He did? Some people are stupid through their own choice–laziness, and even fear of the truth—so have made themselves stupid. Others, through bad education etc., which is the fault of other humans, not of God.

(4) Neurotic.

My dictionary defines neurotic as one ‘having disordered nerves’. This would often mean in effect that the patient, with little or no moral guilt, does as the result of his disease the same things which would imply great guilt if a person in health did them—e.g. acts of cowardice, ill temper etc. (We all make the distinction in ordinary life when we excuse someone for being peevish because he is very tired, and therefore temporarily in bad nervous health). But no doubt f[r]iends and even doctors often flatter healthy but wicked people by attributing to neurosis what is really just wickedness. There is a great temptation to excuse oneself on the same grounds!

(5) What is a soul?

I am. (This is the only possible answer: or expanded, ‘A soul is that which can say I am’).

With best wishes.

Yours sincerely.

C. S. Lewis

TO MR LAKE (T):

Magdalen College

Oxford

8/2/50

Dear Mr Lake

I think the process is: Planets are gods in ancient poetry—and Intelligences in Aristotle—angels are ‘gods’ in O.T.³⁵ and Milton–Cambridge Platonists (and Florentine Platonists) identify both Platonic daemons & ancient gods with Christian angels—why not accept the identification?³⁶–and incidentally try to rescue the Angels from the feminine & sentimental associations that have grown round them. See the learned note from the (non existent) Natvilcius in Cap I of Perelandra.³⁷

Yrs. sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO DAPHNE HARWOOD (BOD): ³⁸

Magdalen College

Oxford

20/2/50

Dear Daphne

You must have been bad if you thought last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday—or else you hold some Columban and pre-Augustinian view on the date of Easter. (Your Gudeman³⁹ will at a moment’s notice point out to you the passages in Bede which clear the whole thing up.)⁴⁰ I hope you’re well now? Bronchitis is nasty enough.

Fry is shattering. I’ve seen none and only read The Lady’s not for Burning.⁴¹ The funny parts were funny enough to make me laugh; as for the poetry–the wealth of real genius in the imagery is beyond hope. Almost too much, and sometimes rather splashed about than used. But, by gum, it’s a good fault and one we’d almost despaired of ever seeing again. Can it be—dare we hope—that the ghastly mumbling and whining period in which you and I have lived nearly all our lives, is really coming to an end? Shall we see gold and scarlet and flutes and trumpets come back?

John is doing more this term.⁴² How is Sylvia?⁴³ Give my love to Lawrence and all, including dear Woff.⁴⁴ And take care of yourself: let the young people work!

Yours sincerely

Jack L.

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD): ⁴⁵

Magdalen College

Oxford

21/2/50

Dear Green

Cd. you dine with me (7 p.m. smoking room) on Wed March 8th? I have several books to return and the typed MS of the Horn story⁴⁶ & MS of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

Ever since June 1947 when Warnie, suffering from acute alcoholic poisoning, was hospitalized in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, County Louth (see CL II, p. 787), his binges had become more frequent. When the brothers were younger Warnie was gregarious and Jack something of a recluse. As time went on Jack’s fame as a Christian apologist drove him to mingle with all kinds of people; Warnie, on the other hand, withdrew more and more into the company of books and a few friends. Alcohol gave him back, temporarily, the old gregariousness that was draining away. He was a binge-drinker, and if Jack could get him into either the Acland Nursing Home, Banbury Road, or Restholme, a private nursing home at 230 Woodstock Road run by Dorothy Watson, the bout was fairly short-lived. If, however, he slipped past his brother and reached Ireland, he usually ended up in the hospital at Drogheda, and he might be away for as long as six months. Despite Warnie’s efforts to overcome the problem, Jack was not successful in persuading him to join Alcoholics Anonymous. As time went on Warnie’s binges were of longer duration, and Jack was left to cope as best he could.

TO JILL FLEWETT (T): ⁴⁷

Magdalen College

Oxford

29/2/50

My dear June

W. is in a nursing home⁴⁸ at present—nothing serious, indeed he ought to be out now only the nurses have made such a domestic pet of him he can’t tear himself away—so I’ve been pretty busy letter writing. So sorry about yr. mother: please give her my duty.

Minto has at last allowed Bruce⁴⁹ to be euthanised. Don’t mention it if writing to her. She seems to miss him surprisingly little so there’s no good stirring the matter up. This has made an enormous difference to our lives–we feel like a balloon that has dropped half its ballast—the music room is clean! R.I.P. We’d both like to see you again. All the best.

Yours (in haste)

Jack

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT?⁵⁰

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sir,—

It cannot often happen that a scholar, writing to expose the corruption of a text, should himself at that very moment suffer inadvertently a corruption of the same sort; but it really looks as if something like this had happened to Professor Dover Wilson in his edition of Two Gentlemen (Cambridge, 1921).⁵¹ Here on page 103 (note on V iv 89-90) he rightly points out that which out of my neglect was never done⁵² is a ‘line of verse’, and adds: ‘The adapter is caught—in the act.’⁵³

But surely, on this principle, the evidence for an adapter in Professor Wilson’s own Notes is even stronger? Without turning a page we find:—

(1) On page 102.—‘Not free from “cuts”, is in the simple end-stopped verse which we associate with the youthful Shakespeare.’

(2) ibid.–‘This section is in quite another style.’

(3) ibid.–‘Strong medial pauses and—strange combinations!’ (The exclamation so obviously added for the metre, makes this example especially flagrant.)

(4) ibid.–‘In one of which we find a fossil line.’

(5) ibid.–‘Silence of Silvia, while events so vital’

(6) ibid.–‘Is virtually his own composition.’

(7) ibid.–‘The entry of the Duke and Thurio.’

(8) ibid.–‘May have been taken from a later portion.’

(9) ibid.–‘It may have been located in Verona.’ ‘We cannot tell. One of the minor problems.’

(10) ibid.–Page 103. ‘Clearly corrupt. Daniel proposed “discandied.”‘

(11) ibid.–‘The repetition in 1. 59.’

(12) ibid.–‘Through careless copying of the adapter.’

(13) ibid.–‘To mend the metre of these lines. The sense needs mending also.’ ‘73. short line.’ (Note here the omission of the article before short, clearly for the metre.)

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

RER50/81.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

9th March 1950.

My dear Miss Mathews,

You will no doubt be wondering—not angrily I’m sure, but sympathetically—why your two excellent parcels have gone unacknowledged.

The fact is that my secretary-brother chose the most inconvenient time of the term to retire to his bed and has only just ‘come to the surface’ again. While he was away I found my self very rushed, and my correspondence suffered accordingly.

I have so often tried to tell you how grateful I am for all your kindness that I find myself reduced to a simple ‘thank you’: but if the words are stale, the sentiment which prompts them is as fresh as ever.

Here we are enjoying the dubious delights of early English spring, and I often wonder what visiting Americans make of it: for they are already arriving in surprisingly large numbers considering the time of year. I can only suppose that they all come from Northern Alaska, and find our climate a nice change! If you have any friends who think of coming over, tell them that the English summer generally falls in the third week in June.

With many thanks and all my best wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WARHELD M. FIROR(BOD): ⁵⁴

Magdalen etc.

12/3/50

Dear Firor–

Well, term is over. And the election is over too, but you don’t want to hear about that:⁵⁵ except (which is the really remarkable thing) that despite the heavy poll I never knew an election pass with less apparent excitement. Perhaps this is because it was felt to be so important: it is not in the front line that War forms the incessant subject of conversation!

As for term, the last bit of it has been heavy for me with Scholarship Examinations. One answer is so puzzling that I wd. like to hand it on. Commenting on Hamlet’s words

Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unus’d,⁵⁶

one boy explained the first line as meaning ‘He who made the creation of man seem important by talking about it.’ Since this youth, needless to say, has no chance of a scholarship and therefore will not be summoned for an interview, we shall all go to our graves without knowing what he meant. What, do you think, is the Theology implied? My own vein of Irreverence (still, I fear, inexhausted) cannot help building up a picture: the Almighty feeling (and is one surprised?–) that Homo Sapiens could hardly be reckoned among His chefs d’oeuvre,⁵⁷ and wondering if a publicity campaign could mend matters.

Not, of course, that all the young men we have to examine are like this. At the other end of the scale comes the candidate for a mathematical Fellowship who said–and was understood by the other mathematician who was examining him, but by no one else in the room—‘I assume that All Stars are Trivially Embedded.’ Can you do that one? (Stars does not mean the things in the night sky, I’m told: nor even, which wd. make sense of another sort, film-stars).

But there is something about this endless examining, quite apart from the labour, which bothers me. It sets me wondering about the whole system under which you, as well as we, now live. Behind all these closely written sheets which I have to read every year, even behind the worst of them, lie hours of hard, long work. Even the bad candidates are doing their best and have been trained up to this ever since they went to school. And naturally enough: for in the Democracies now, as formerly in China under the mandarin system, success in competitive examinations is the only moyen de parvenir,⁵⁸ the road from elementary school to the better schools, and thence to college, and thence to the professions. (You still have a flourishing alternative route to desirable jobs through business which is largely disappearing with us: but it is at least equally competitive).

This of course is what Democratic education means—give them all an equal start and let the winners show their form. Hence Equality of Opportunity in practice means ruthless Competition during those very years which, I can’t help feeling, nature meant to be free and frolicsome. Can it be good, from the age of 10 to the age of 23, to be always preparing for an exam, and always knowing that your whole worldly future depends on it: and not only knowing it, but perpetually reminded of it by your parents and masters? Is this the way to breed a nation of people in psychological, moral, and spiritual health? (N.B. Boys are now taught to regard Ambition as a virtue. I think we shall find that up to the XVIIIth Century, and back into Pagan times, all moralists regarded it as a vice and dealt with it accordingly).

The old Inegalitarian societies had at least this in their favour, that at least some of their members (the eldest sons of gentlemen living on inherited land, and the agricultural labourers with no chance to rise and therefore no thought of rising) were often really outside the competitive struggle. I have an uneasy feeling that much of the manliness and toughness of the community depended on them. I’m not idealising such societies. The gentry were often bad, the peasantry often (perhaps nearly always) ill treated. I mean only that we haven’t solved the problem. Or, generalising this, I find the social problem insoluble. It is ‘How to extend to all the good life which unequal societies have (sometimes) produced for the few.’

For the good life as (I suppose) you and I conceive it—independence, calling one’s house one’s castle, saying ‘Mind your own business’ to impertinent people, resisting bribes and threats as a matter of course, culture, honour, courtesy, un-assertiveness, the ease and elbow-room of the mind—all this is no natural endowment of the animal Man, but the fine flower of a privileged class. And because it is so fine a flower it breeds, within the privileged class itself, a desire to equalise, a guilty conscience about their privileges. (At least I don’t think the revolt from below has often succeeded, or even got going, without this help from above).

But then, the moment you try to spread this good life you find yourself removing the very conditions of it both from the few and from the many, in other words for all. (The simplest case of all is when you say ‘Here is a beautiful solitude—let us bring charabanc-loads of the poor townsmen to enjoy it’: i.e. let it cease to be a beautiful solitude). The many, merely by being the many, annihilate the goals as soon as they reach them: as in this case of education that I started with.

Don’t imagine that I am constructing a concealed argument in favour of a return to the old order. I know that is not the solution. But what is? Or are we assuming that there must be a solution? Perhaps in a fallen world the social problem can in fact never be solved and we must take more seriously—what all Christians admit in theory–that our home is elsewhere.

Writing to you, as I do, quite irregularly and dealing with whatever happens to be uppermost in my mind at the moment, I feel I am in great danger of repeating myself. Does the same thing always ‘happen to be uppermost’? In other words, have I written this identical letter before? I hope not.

Crocus, primrose, daffodil have all appeared now: almond blossom and catkins too: but no leaves on trees yet. And there’s a Firor Ham in the refrigerator—I’ve never spelled that word before and have my doubts. God bless you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

4/4/50

My dear Roger

Thanks v. much for the blurb:⁵⁹ I shall send it to Bles⁶⁰ today. It seems excellent to me, but like you I don’t really understand Blurbology.

The man running this series of Lives is Milton Waldman c/o Collins.⁶¹ I will write to him about you at once.

I look forward v. much to Castle in L.

I may (i.e. will if I can) look for you at the K.A.⁶² tomorrow (Wed) about 11.30.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER(W): ⁶³

Magdalen College,

Oxford

6/4/50

My dear George

What ho? Any time between now and April 21st cd. you come up for two (= 2 = II = B) nights? I’ll stand myself two nights in College if you can and we can make of it two evenings and one day’s walking. Week-days of course. Do. Love to Moira.

Yours

Jack L.

TO EDWARD T. DELL (P):

Magdalen College

Oxford

6/4/50

Dear Mr. Dell

I had not thought of it before but it might be, as you say, that the decay of serious male friendship has results unfavourable to male religion.⁶⁴ One can’t be sure, though, because, if more women than men respond to religion, after all more women than men seem to respond to everything. Aren’t they much more easily stirred up than we in all directions? Isn’t it always easier to get female members for anything you are getting up?

I don’t know enough about the Ecumenical Movement to give an opinion.

Yes.⁶⁵ If (as I hope) the new earth contains beasts they will not be a mere continuation of (the present) biological life but a resurrection, a participation (to their appropriate degree) in Zoe.⁶⁶ See my remarks on this in Problem of Pain.⁶⁷ Nature will rise again now fully digested & assimilated by Spirit.

Bother!–I’ve no copy of the trans, of Athanasius at present. The theory you suggest seems to me sensible but I can’t say without the text (or perhaps with it) whether St. A. actually held it.⁶⁸

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS FRANK L. JONES (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

6/4/50

Dear Mrs. Jones

No, I don’t agree that loyalty to an institution is simply loyalty to the personnel and their policy. If I join a ship because I like the captain I am not justified in deserting the moment he dies, nor because I dislike his successor. There might come a point (e.g. if the new captain were using the ship for piracy) at which it wd. be my right, and my duty, to leave: not because I simply disliked him and his polity, but because the particular duty (keep your contracts) wd. now conflict with, and yield to, the higher and more universal duty (Don’t be a pirate).

I don’t see how there could be institutions at all if loyalty was abrogated the moment you didn’t like the personnel. Of course in the case of temporary and voluntary institutions (say, this College) there is no very acute problem. One is entitled to resign, and resignation of course ends all the duties (and all the privileges) I had as a fellow of it.

It is much more difficult with an institution like a nation. I am sure you don’t in fact regard all your duties to the U.S.A. as null and void the moment a party or a President you don’t like is in power. At what point the policy of one’s own country becomes so manifestly wicked that all one’s duties to it cease, I don’t know. But surely mere disapproval is not enough? One must be able to say, ‘What the State now demands of me is contrary to my plain moral duty.’

Do you know I doubt if your dog has the consciousness of ‘I’ (by that of course I meant, not saying the words—otherwise some parrots wd. have souls!). Even young children don’t seem to have it, and speak of themselves as he. Not that they haven’t souls, but their souls are not fully on the spot yet. Your dog may have a rudimentary soul for all I know—I said what I could about this in the chap, on Animal Pain in the Problem of Pain. And if you call learning by experience ‘reasoning’ then he does reason. But I doubt if he is aware of himself as something distinct from all other things. My dog if shut in a room and calling for his walk never dreams of barking to tell me where he is: which looks v. much as if all his tail wagging etc, however much it may be a language to me, is not language to him and he has no idea of using it as a sign. It is spontaneous, unreflective expression of emotion. His bark tells me he is excited, but he doesn’t bark in order to tell me: just as my sneeze may tell you I have a cold, but I didn’t sneeze in order to tell you.

Thanks, and thanks, and thanks again. I don’t think we have ever spoiled anything thru’ not opening a parcel promptly! With our good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS OSB (W): ⁶⁹

Easter Eve [9 April] 1950

My dear Dom Bede

Thank you v. much for yr. kind letter and for sending me yr. article.⁷⁰ Isn’t Havard a beautiful creature?⁷¹ anima candida.⁷²

I was much interested in the article with a great deal of which I agree. The bit I’m least happy about is ‘we are all alike saved by Christ whether His grace comes to us by way of the Natural Law etc’.⁷³ All saved by Christ or not at all, I agree. But I wonder ought you to make clearer what you mean by His Grace coming ‘by the way of the Natural Law’–or any other Law.

We are absolutely at one about the universality of the Nat. Law, and its objectivity, and its Divine origin.⁷⁴ But can one just leave out the whole endless Pauline reiteration of the doctrine that Law, as such, cannot be kept and serves in fact to make sin exceedingly sinful?⁷⁵

I’m not here labouring a point which I think we have retained and you have lost, because I don’t think we (in the C. of E., whatever may be true of some Lutherans) have really retained it.⁷⁶ Nor do I in the least want to see it again swollen and inflamed (as it was by the original Protestants) into a hypertrophy wh. destroys all the other truths of Christianity. But it must be got in. I never meet anyone, of whatever communion or school, who shows that Pauline sense of liberation from the Law: but I have an idea, from things you once said, that you have some qualifications for helping us all on this point. Perhaps it is not the main need at the moment—I don’t know.

As I may have said before, I don’t know much about the Existentialists.⁷⁷ I have read Sartre’s L’Existentialisme est un Humanisme:⁷⁸ that seemed, if pressed, to be the Berkleyan metaphysic⁷⁹ in the mind of an atheist with a bad liver!⁸⁰ I’ve both heard of and met Marcel.⁸¹ To see him is to love him: but it appeared to me that his thesis⁸² if taken seriously, shd. reduce him and us to perfect silence—as the philosophy of Heraclitus did his disciples. The same holds of Buber. What they mean by calling Aquinas and Augustine Existentialists I can’t understand: nor do I much like such labels. I’m sorry about my handwriting wh. seems to have completely collapsed in the last few years. God bless you, my old friend. Pray for me,

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

11/4/50

Dear Miss Bodle

God bless you and send you many happy Easters. As for my part in it, remember that anybody (or any thing) may be used by the Holy Spirit as a conductor. I say this not so much from modesty as to guard against any danger of your feeling, when the shine goes out of my books (as it will) that the real thing is in any way involved. It mustn’t fade when I do.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

12/4/50

Dear Miss Bodle

I will indeed pray for you.⁸³ So often after a period of exaltation and comfort (such as, I think, you were having at Easter) round the very next corner something horrid lies in wait for us, either in ourselves or outside. I suppose the preceding comfort was sent, partly, to prepare us for the other: like (to use a crude simile) the rum-issue before the battle. Courage!

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO WARHELD M. FIROR(BOD):

Magdalen etc

14/4/50

My dear Firor

What a vision!⁸⁴ Not that my attempts to ride and fish wd. give pleasure to anyone except the spectators (I don’t know, though. Perhaps the horse and the fish wd. find them mildly amusing) but I’d love walking in the sort of places where better men do ride and fish.

But it’s all visionary. I’ve told you what chains bind me to England.⁸⁵ If I can succeed in getting just over a fortnight away this summer (as I was prevented from doing last year)⁸⁶ I shall have realised more freedom than I have had since 1929. But I do get a real and strange pleasure out of the invitation. You are a fairy-tale character: your bounty (as Cleopatra says) is an autumn that grows the more by reaping.⁸⁷ (Autumn here, rather oddly, means harvest not the fall of the leaf). And I can’t understand why I should be selected for it all. However, this verges on a subject you have forbidden me.

Romanes has hitherto been to me more the name of a lecture than a man, by which I see I have done him a grave injustice.⁸⁸ (Odd that things left as the memorial of a man often in fact obliterate him like this). Have I confessed to you that an inability to read biography is one of my defects? Except Boswell, of course.

I’ve a pile of letters this afternoon, and this is just a note of thanks and regrets. We’re all well, and frequently asking when that next visit of yours is to be looked for.

All blessings.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY MARGARET MCCASLIN (W):⁸⁹ TS

REF.50/188.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20th April 1950.

Dear Mrs. McCaslin,

Many thanks for your most kind and encouraging letter of the 17th. It gives me great pleasure to know that my books have been of some service to you.

With all best wishes for the success of your work,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

22nd April 1950.

My dear Miss Mathews,

Your delightful parcel and the English spring arrived together this morning to supply badly needed cheer on the first day of Term: always a somewhat gloomy moment. From what I know of my native climate, the contents of the parcel will last longer than the fine weather.

Our latest food news is that fish has been ‘decontrolled’ as official English has it: which means that one’s fishmonger can select what he wants instead of having to take what our rulers think is good for his customers. The immediate result was a huge increase in the price of the better kinds of fish, but things have since settled down, and now the prices are in many cases below pre-war.

With many thanks for the huge parcel and all best wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

29/4/50

Dear Roger–

I like it very much indeed: less haunting than the Wood that Time Forgot⁹⁰ but richer. There are about four alterations I will try to persuade you to make, three of them quite easy.

Can you come & dine Thurs. May 11th to talk of that & other things?

Yours

Jack Lewis

Lewis’s friend, Mrs Janie King Moore–‘Minto’–was now 78. She had been bed-ridden for several years, and it had become impossible for Lewis to look after her. On 29 April 1950 she was moved to Restholme, the Oxford nursing home run by Dorothy Watson. Warnie wrote about Mrs Moore’s first day there, ‘The first news from Restholme is…[Minto’s] “very strong language”: and M wants to know how soon she will be able to escape from this hell on earth in which she is imprisoned. On the whole the outlook is as black as it well can be.’ ⁹¹

But there Mrs Moore was to remain for the rest of her life, visited almost every day by Lewis.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD): ⁹²

Magdalen College

Oxford

2/5/50

My dear Arthur

Once again the axe has fallen. Minto was removed to a Nursing Home last Saturday and her Doctor thinks this arrangement will probably have to be permanent. In one way it will be an enormous liberation for me.

The other side of the picture is the crushing expense—ten guineas a week wh. is well over £500 a year. (What on earth I shall do if poor Minto is still alive nine years hence when I have to retire, I can’t imagine.) The order of the day thus becomes for me stringent economy and such things as a holiday in Ireland are fantastically out of the question. So cancel all. I hardly know how I feel—relief, pity, hope, terror, & bewilderment have me in a whirl. I have the jitters! God bless you. Pray for me.

Yours

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

[Magdalen College]

May 6/50

My dear Arthur

Thanks for your wise and kind letter. Of course you’re perfectly right and I do try to ‘consider the lilies of the field’.⁹³ Nor do I doubt (with my reason: my nerves do not always obey it!) that all is sent in love and will be for all our goods if we have grace to use it aright. And thanks too for your immensely generous offer. I can’t accept it. She is miserable enough without being deprived of my daily visits. When you and I are meant to meet we shall.

God bless you.

Yours

Jack

TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD): ⁹⁴

[The Kins]

22/5/50

My dear Cecil

I had taken it for granted that you wd. hardly be able to come with Owen: and also that you wd. come if, after all, it shd. be possible. In utrumque paratus.⁹⁵

It is the apparent strength of my craft and the apparent lightness of yours that make me so vividly aware of the stout captain in the one⁹⁶ and the mere Bellman (see Hunting of Snark) in the other.⁹⁷ One of the bye-products of your news⁹⁸ was to fill me with shame at the rattled condition in which I then was about troubles quite nugatory compared with yours.

My hand (such as it is and for so far as it can be) is always in yours and Daphne’s. It is terrible to think (and yet how did we ever forget it) that unless in rare cases of simultaneous accident, every marriage ends in something like this.

God bless you all.

Yours

Jack

TO HAROLD GILES DIXEY (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

23/5/50

Dear Mr. Dixey

Thanks for the trouble you took to tell me you liked the Alcaics.⁹⁹ In a like case I am afraid I shd. have said: ‘I’ll write to that fellow’ and wouldn’t have done it!

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis (= N.W.)

Sheppard’s pictures of paperchases etc. were not at all like my memories of joy in youth!¹⁰⁰

TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

June 5/50

My dear Cecil

You know about that Trust of mine wh. Owen calls the Agapargyro-meter?¹⁰¹ If not, v. [ide] the Ramsden chapter in This Ever Diverse Pair.¹⁰² You must be incurring a good many unusual expenses at present: and there may be other—alleviations—wh. you wd. like to incur for Daphne. Will you please write to Owen (he signs the cheques, not I) for any sums you want? The fund is in a most flourishing condition and there is no reason to stint yourself. You understand that nothing you draw impoverishes me, for all the money in that fund is already given away from me, tho’ the question ‘To whom?’ is answered at my direction from time to time.

We have so ruined the language that it wd. mean nothing if I said it ‘would be a pleasure’. But reverse the positions and yr. imagination will show you how very truly you wd. say, in my place, ‘it wd. be a relief. God bless you both: you are not often out of my mind.

Yours

Jack

TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

9/6/50

My dear Cecil

Good. Dip and spare not.¹⁰³ I can indeed imagine the heart-rending pathos of this increasing hope: and have often wondered whether our preference (in art) for the tragic over the pathetic is not partly due to cowardice—that the pathetic is unbearable. Still, one’s past agonies of pity and tenderness don’t fester and corrode in memory as their opposites would.

Still love to both: I wish it were of better quality—I am a hard, cold, black man inside and in my life have not wept enough.

Yours

Jack

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF.50/19.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

10th June 1950.

My dear Mr. Allen,

The precious parcel which your mother mentioned in her last letter has come in safely, and has turned us into capitalists of the richest type. I don’t suppose there is another home in Oxford which contains this fabulous quantity of sugar. Why there should be a shortage of sugar in England is to me a complete mystery: we grow it within the Empire, and at the moment are actually refusing sugar from the West Indies (or so at least the papers say). But who can understand the methods of a government?

I don’t remember ever noticing before, the words Brightwood Sta. on your mailing stamp, and have been idly wondering what they mean. With us Sta. is the usual abbreviation for Railway Station, and I thought it might stand for that: but my travelled brother assures me that Depot is the American for railway station.

Your blue suit, looking uncommonly smart, is sauntering round Oxford on the person of the aforesaid brother, and meets with much admiration in its walks. It also visited Ireland last year, where it tramped several scores of miles and very nearly went bathing one rough day: so you may also consider yourself as having had a good look round these islands by proxy.

We are just emerging from a heat wave, and very unpleasant it was: sent us by you I think, and the first American gift for which I have not been grateful. I am not and never will be a hot weather man—having been reared in the north of Ireland, by the sea, where fifty degrees is a cold day, and seventy a very hot one. Part of the trouble is that we have no apparatus over here for dealing with hot weather—fans, plentiful ice etc. Lecturing and tutoring with the thermometer high in the eighties is ‘not my cup of tea’.

With all best wishes to you both for a happy summer,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO STELLA ALDWINCKLE (W): ¹⁰⁴

Magdalen College

Oxford

12/6/50

Dear Miss Aldwinckle

If I had carte blanche I should put up the following programme for next term¹⁰⁵–

1. The Concept of Mind by Ryle¹⁰⁶ or a disciple: answered by H. H. Price.¹⁰⁷

2. The Concept of Man by a Sartrian:¹⁰⁸ answered by Sheed¹⁰⁹ or Christopher Dawson.¹¹⁰

3. The Mystical Approach by someone of the Heard¹¹¹ or Huxley type:¹¹² ans. by Fr. Gleason?¹¹³

4. Why I believe in God by Miss Anscombe (is that how you spell it?):¹¹⁴ ans. by?

5. Pagan Christs by an Anthropologist: ans. by C. Hardie.¹¹⁵

6. The Historical value of the N.T.¹¹⁶ by Dr. Farrer:¹¹⁷ ans. by?

7. Faith & Experience by Mr. Mitchell:¹¹⁸ ans. by?

8. Religious Language by Prof. Ayer:¹¹⁹ ans. by Owen Barfield.

I shd. press hard for No. 4. The lady is quite right to refute what she thinks bad theistic arguments, but does this not almost oblige her as a Christian to find good ones in their place: having obliterated me as an Apologist ought she not to succeed me?¹²⁰

I am v. sorry I can’t attend the meeting. The point I shd. make if I were there is that we must not be pre-occupied with novelty. Each generation of undergraduates needs to hear a fair number of the arguments we’ve had already.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

P.S. Does Dorothy Emmet ever read papers? ¹²¹

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

12th June 1950.

My dear Miss Mathews,

Parcels from Beverly Hills seem to arrive with the same regularity as the demands of the Income Tax Commissioner, but differ considerably from them in the reception with which they meet. Here is yet another admirable assortment, posted on the 10th. of May, which I found waiting for me this morning, in excellent condition. I have so often had the pleasant task of thanking you for your kindness that I am ‘gravelled for matter’ in which to express my gratitude for its continuance. Many thanks.

We are just emerging from a heat wave, always a very trying thing in this island, where we never make any preparations for hot weather, and never learn from past experience; when the thermometer gets above 85, this is one of the most uncomfortable countries in the world. No doubt a Californian will smile at the idea of calling this hot weather, but with us, such temperatures are ‘news’ in the front page sense of the word. This is when one appreciates living on a river; I was bathing yesterday afternoon and the water was at seventy. But how greatly I would prefer the sea!

With many thanks and all best wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO JILL FLEWETT (T): TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

15th June 1950

My dear June,

We both enjoyed your visit immensely, and such was its tonic effect on Warnie that he was able to leave Restholme the following day: with however many regrets that he had not been discharged twenty four hours earlier.

Lucky you, in spite of the railway journey which must have been an unpleasant ordeal; but, as you say, you have your reward, and I envy you, though it is not a southern sea for which I pine. I want to see and hear Ulster waves breaking on an Ulster beach. I, alas, can’t get away, but Warnie has managed to squeeze out ten days in August at Vera’s bungalow in Co. Louth, by the sea: an ideal place for an economical holiday. For, as he points out, the nearest pub. is three miles away, and there is no form of transport other than his own feet!

We can’t imagine you getting engaged to anyone who is not very nice indeed, and look forward eagerly to meeting Clay;¹²² the only catch about the whole thing is I suppose the ‘somewhere to live’? It will have to be in or near London I take it. We wish you good hunting.

We hope you are having a really good holiday, and that you come back to fresh triumphs and increased happiness.

yours ever,

Jack

I love my diptych more every day.¹²³ It is in my bedroom, facing me as I wake. Funny they shd. make St. John Baptist grown up when Our Lord is a baby, when they were really almost the same age. But oh the blue & the gold!

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/6/50

My dear Arthur

Warnie is now quite restored again. My daily visits to Minto are v. grievous to me, but I don’t think things are too bad for her. On her (medically) ‘best’ days she grouches a good deal and talks about going home, but more often she is childish and incoherent. I don’t think she is any more discontented than she was at home. Remember that if you can get over to England the Kilns is now a house less horrible to stay in than I know it was before and except for an hour in the afternoon when I go to the Nursing Home we cd. have all our time to ourselves. I’d love to have you of course.

I’m fine, as I now get much more exercise. I have spent a good deal of this last fortnight in the river. I’m glad you still see dear old Lee. Remember me to him. Did I tell you that a children’s story by me is coming out this year?

We have (thank goodness) no dog now, so there’d be no objection to your bringing Peter¹²⁴ if you come. Do consider it. God bless you.

Yours

Jack

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):¹²⁵ TS

REF.50/243

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

16th June 1950.

Dear Mrs. Jessup,

Thank you very much for your most moving and interesting letter. Don’t attribute too much to me: any one may be privileged to be of use in this way at any time.

With all good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W): TS

REF.50/250.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

19th June 1950.

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen,

I rarely get such a happy letter as yours of June 10th, and the photos help us to share the joy. God bless you all.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER(W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

21/6/50

My dear George

I shall be completely alone at the Kilns (but for an ancilla)¹²⁶ from Aug 11 to Aug 19th and am like to fall into a whoreson melancholy. Can you come and spend all or any of this time with me?

We shall have our days to ourselves except for my calling at the Nursing Home each afternoon: and we can cut that one or two days for all day walks. We cd. read the whole Aeneid¹²⁷ together. Do if you can. Love to Moira.

Yours

Jack

When Roger Lancelyn Green met Lewis and the other Inklings in the ‘Bird and Baby’ pub for drinks on 22 June, he found proofs of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe being passed around and discussed.¹²⁸

TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS OSB (W): TS

REF.50/258.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

24th June 1950.

My dear Dom Bede,

Hurrah!¹²⁹ Come and lunch here on Monday, July 3rd, and let’s talk at length afterwards.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

The Korean War began on 25 June 1950 when the army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) opened fire on that of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) south of the 38th Parallel, the line serving as the border between the two countries. This act of aggression was caused by North Korea’s concern for security. The Chinese leader, Mao Zedong, was afraid that if he did not take the initiative US forces would put pressure on China along the Yalu River, causing China’s north-eastern defence force to be pinned down. At the same time Southern Manchuria’s power supply (generated from hydroelectric plants in North Korea) would he controlled by hostile forces. This same day–25 June—the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution calling for the immediate cessation of hostilities and the withdrawal of North Korean forces to north of the 38th Parallel. On 26 June the city of Uijongbu fell to North Korean forces, and the South Korean government left Seoul for Taejon.

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29th June 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

Many thanks for your note of the 24th., and the cheering news which it contains; it is kind of you to send parcels, and a refinement of kindness to keep an eye on our erratic supply markets. We look forward eagerly to the meat, but that is not to say that we shan’t welcome the fruit: for fresh fruit is an absurd price this year.

For once, the all absorbing topic of food has been swept into the background by the dreadful news from the Far East. The only gleam of satisfaction is that all of us feel that your prompt action may still save us from a third war; it has at least saved us from a second Munich, and there are hints in our papers today that Russia will very likely back down—but start probing for a ‘soft spot’ elsewhere: Burma, Cochin-China, or even Europe. One can but pray.

The first two syllables of Taliessin¹³⁰ are pronounced like the Tally in Tally-Ho: and the last two rhyme with guessin or blessin. Broceliande is four syllables with the main accent on the third—Bross-elly-and.

My children’s story will be out this Christmas.

With best thanks and all good wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF.50/19.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

1st July 1950.

My dear Mr. Allen,

Many thanks for your amusing letter of the 19th:–

And for the parcel. Westfield seems to specialize in the export of dress suits, and good quality articles too. My brother asks me to say that yours has been much admired, after he had had it altered to conform to English custom by having the turned up cuffs removed. Will you be good enough to thank Mr. Percival for his kindness?

No cocoa thanks; it is about the only thing we have been able to get in any amount we needed, ever since the beginning of the war. Why this should be so, with tea so short, has always been a great mystery to us, for we raise both these commodities within our own ring fence so to speak.

Pilgrim’s Regress and Silent Planet cost 8/6 over here, which, on the devalued £, should make them very cheap books in America.

Glad to hear you defeated Wormwood about even so trivial a matter as buying a car.

You must all be even more worried than we are by the news from the Far East—which does not bear thinking about. My brother—always an optimist—guesses that the Korean war is a large scale diversion to draw all available American and British forces to that theatre as a preliminary for a southward drive through Persia to the Middle East oilfields in 1951: which in its turn is a preliminary to a Russian ‘liberation’ of Western Europe in 1952.

But to return to Tea. We are actually in the proud position at the moment of having enough to see us through for I reckon the next three months: a position we have never been in before. But when our stock is exhausted, I shall most unblushingly remind you of your kind offer.

With all best wishes to your Mother and yourself,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER(W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

10/7/50

My dear George

Warnie is back in the Nursing Home again, alas. I’ve ventured to open yr. letter: he cd. read it but wd. forget it, and he certainly won’t be fit to go to you on Fri. I’ll get him to write to you when he’s cured.

A thousand thanks to you & Moira for yr. perpetual kindnesss. Ora pro nobis.¹³¹

Yours

Jack

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF.50/19.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

21st July 1950.

My dear Mr. Allen,

Attaboy! (Though I believe that expression is now completely old fashioned, or ‘classical’ American). Twenty one pounds four ounces of solid satisfaction, posted by you on the 19th of June, arrived here in the usual perfect condition this morning. How do you do it? I don’t refer so much to your kindness, remarkable though that is, as to the skill and labour which you put into the actual packing. Most of us I fear in your position would have been the seed on stony ground¹³²–would have packed enthusiastically for three months or so, and then said ‘Oh bother it’ or some less parliamentary expression! Whereas you keep on keeping on.

Does your government give you any information about the world situation? Ours steadily refuses to part with any, and consequently we live in a world of rumours and astonishing stories from the man who has a friend in the Navy or the Foreign Office or what have you. All that has become obvious is that your country is committed to what may be called a major-minor war, and you have our heartiest sympathy; what we are to do to help is not at the moment very obvious. If we move troops or ships from Singapore or Hong Kong, China would no doubt be ordered to stage a large scale attack on our depleted garrisons. I see the latest Russian move is to lay claim to Alaska, but I can hardly believe this is a serious threat: designed don’t you think to panic the American staff into refusing to reinforce the Far East? But what a state the world has got into! One can but hope and pray.

With best thanks and all good wishes to yourself and your mother,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

21st July 1950.

My dear Miss Mathews,

Once more I have the pleasant job of thanking you for your kindness; your welcome gift, posted on the 20th. of last month, arrived here in good order this morning—and will perform its accustomed, or rather I should say the accustomed function of spreading satisfaction throughout the household. Such satisfaction looks like being about the only material one to which we have to look forward.

I see in one of the papers this morning that our government’s reaction to the Korean tragedy is to look forward to ‘an early return to a full austerity’. They may not be able to find money, or troops, or ships, but trust them not to neglect that side of the international effort!

Seriously though, we all sympathize with you in the position into which you have been forced; it’s all very well to call it a UNO war, but so far as I can gather, it is a USA war. Have you noticed the French contribution? One gunboat!

With all best wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WARHELD M. FIROR(BOD):

Magdalen

26th July 1950

My dear Firor

Well, the sky darkens again. We feel rather ashamed here that you should this time be in it before us; and still more ashamed by anticipation of what our government may do and not do. You will perhaps have read already in the papers that their only move so far has been a lot of gas about ‘civil defence’ (all v. well as far as it goes, but they ought to be arming) and a resolution to seize this golden opportunity of stealing a few more of our liberties from us. Try not to judge us by our rulers. There is another side to the picture.

The other day I was listening to some working men talking in a pub. They were all of such ages as to have seen two wars and fought in one. One would have expected (and indeed excused) the attitude ‘Oh, not a third time! Three times in my life is too much.’ But there was not a trace of it. Merely a unanimous, and quite unemotional, view that ‘I’ reckon these—Russians are going the same—way as ‘Itler did’ and ‘We don’t want no bloody Appeasement this time’ and ‘The sooner they’re taught a lesson the better.’ Of course it is partly ignorance: they don’t know anything about the resources of the Russians. But then it was equally ignorance last time; they had no conception of Germany’s strength. But anyway, they’re obviously perfectly game.

Do you think ‘wishful thinking’ is as dangerous as people make out now-a-days? All our people (I don’t know about yours?) got through the miseries of the last war by a series of wishful delusions. They always thought it was going to be over next month or next spring or next year. Did this do harm? I am inclined to think it helped them to get through bit by bit what they couldn’t have faced at all if they had formed any true estimate of its extent. And I think I remember something like that as a boy—successfully completing a walk far too long for one and feeling ‘If I’d known it was that length I could never have done it at all.’ I suspect that modern psychology—at least, modern semi-popular psychology—plays about with the reserves of the soul very dangerously.

I am spending most of my time at present ploughing through back numbers of learned periodicals less in the hope of fresh knowledge than in the fear I’ve missed something.¹³³ In your subject, which is experimental, I suppose one doesn’t have to poke back so far, because everything before a certain date wd. be definitely superseded. With us literary blokes of course this absolutely decisive ‘supersession’ occurs only very rarely—say, as the result of a windfall like the discovery of a new MS., and views often disappear not because someone has proved them false but merely because they have gone out of fashion. In any forgotten article the really illuminating thing might lie hid: tho’ about 90 to 10 against. So that I mainly pass the hours reading rubbish. The worst rubbish being the pseudo-scientific—the attempt to apply, or the pretence of applying, the methods of your disciplines to ours.

The old lady whom I call my mother is now permanently in a Nursing Home, and I visit her daily. It is my first experience of this stage of paralysis; and, do you know, I am rather cheered by it. It does look so like childhood, only working backwards: the mind gradually withdrawing from the body in the last years as it was gradually settling in during the first. She was for many years of a worrying and, to speak frankly, a jealous, exacting, and angry disposition. She now gets gentler—I dare to hope not only through weakness. Certainly, I think she is a little happier, or a little less unhappy, than she usually was in health. You’d know more about all this than I do. My brother also has been ill (his old trouble) but is now better.

Is there any chance of your visiting England this year? If you want to meet plenty of fellow countrymen Oxford is the place! Indeed, not only Americans at present, but all nations—Medes (or at any rate Swedes) Parthians and Elamites.¹³⁴ Also, torrential rain.

God bless you My dear friend. Have us all in your prayers.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

And thanks (which you forbid) for the hams (which I mustn’t mention). No two are quite alike and each has its individual beauties.

TO RALPH E. HONE (W):¹³⁵ TS

REF.50/287.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29th July 1950.

Dear Mr. Hone,

I am sorry, but it so happens that you could hardly have struck a worse time. I am working at high pressure, and in the intervals have a Conference to attend, an invalid to look after, and several visitors. I’m afraid in the circumstances a meeting is hardly possible.

With thanks, good wishes, and regrets,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO CHAD WALSH (W): ¹³⁶

Magdalen College

Oxford

5/8/50

My dear Walsh

Thank you for your letter of July 20th. I’m glad to hear about the ‘revolution’ in poetry, but I moderate my hopes. I think what really separates me from all the modern poets I try to read is not the technique, with all its difficulties, but the fact that their experience is so very unlike my own. They seem to be so constantly writing about the same sort of things that articles are written about: e.g. ‘the present world situation’. That means, for me, that they can only write for the top level of the mind, the level on which generalities operate. But even this may be a mistake. At any rate I am sure I never have the sort of experiences they express: and I feel them most alien where I come nearest to understanding them.

I am just back from attending a Russian Orthodox Eucharist. The congregation walk about a lot!

My brother joins me in all best wishes to you and yours.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD): ¹³⁷

Magdalen College

Oxford

8/8/50

My dear Cecil

Thank you for your letter which is one of the most useful I have ever received. It brings home to me that aspect of Death which is now most neglected—Death as a Rite or Initiation Ceremony. And certainly something does come through into this world, among the survivors, at the time and for a little while after.

I am sorry about John’s Class¹³⁸–and also that I feel I failed him badly at our last meeting. I had been wondering for about 24 hours whether the lightness of head and extreme lassitude that I was feeling were the beginning of an illness. After a day in which I had had no leisure at all and which had ended with a visit to the Nursing Home I had got back to College feeling ‘all in’. At that moment came his knock. It was the moment of all others (midway between his mother’s funeral and his own viva) at which a chap might expect some moral support from an older man even if that older man were not his tutor and a family friend. But I could make no response at all. I’m sorry.

A week end here, after your travels, can be arranged almost whenever you like. Of course you will be thrice welcome.

Yours ever

Jack

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V): ¹³⁹

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

xxv. Aug. 1950

Dilectissime Pater,

venerunt mihi nuper in manus exemplaria quaedam libri mei De Aenigmate Doloris francogallice versi. Illam linguam, puto, bene intellegis. Quocirca, si tibi placuerit, mittam ad te exemplaria tria, primum tibi, alterum Dom. Lodettio, tertium Dom. Arnaboldio. Fac me certiorem si hoc tibi cordi fuerit. Isagogem satis doctam et elegantem addidit quidam Mauritius Nédoncelle.

Omnia omina nunc infausta; placeat Deo haec in melius verti, spectanti haud nostra sed Christi merita. Vale, mi Pater, et semper habe in orationibus tuis

C. S. Lewis

*

Magdalen College,

Oxford

25th August 1950

Dearest Father,

Some copies of my book The Problem of Pain translated into French have lately reached me.¹⁴⁰ I think you know that language well. Therefore, if you so wish, I will send you three copies, one for you, another for Mr. Lodetti, and the third for Mr. Arnaboldi.¹⁴¹ Just let me know if it is of interest to you. A rather learned and elegant introduction has been added to it by one Maurice Nédoncelle.¹⁴²

All the omens are, at present, unfavourable;¹⁴³ may it please God to change these for the better, looking not at our, but at Christ’s merits. Farewell, my father, and keep me always in your prayers.

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th August 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

Many thanks for your letter of the 16th. August, and for the parcel of 17th. July, which ‘dead heated’ as the racing people say: and both are very welcome. No indeed, I can’t think of any item which I would like altered; I was going to say that we don’t want fruit, having plenty, but of course our fruit season will soon be over, and there is the winter to consider.

Eggs are off the ration, but the egg situation leaves us unmoved, as we, thank goodness, have our own fowls. According to what I read in the papers, their being off the ration does’nt help things much; by the time the innumerable hordes of inspectors have weighed and graded and stamped and sorted and packed them, they seem to be always stale and often bad by the time they reach the consumer.

I am glad you like the memoir on Charles Williams.¹⁴⁴ Most certainly you shall have a signed copy of the book as soon as it appears.¹⁴⁵ Are there any other of my books you have’nt got, and would care to have? If so, I might be able to get them for you.

I have been away for a few days in the Welsh mountains, and my brother—lucky man–is just back from a fortnight in Ireland, or Eire as they prefer to be called. He tells me that over there they are still living in a fool’s paradise; whilst the English—and no doubt American–papers were full of anxious discussion of the Korean war, the leading Irish paper carried banner headlines, WHAT IS WRONG WITH IRISH LUMPING? (It was Horse Show week). What is wrong with Irish THINKING would be more to the point.

With all best wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

Jill Flewett and Clement Freud were married in St James Church, Spanish Place, on 4 September 1950. Jack was unable to attend the wedding, but Warnie was there. ¹⁴⁶

TO BELLE ALLEN (W): TS

REF.50/19.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

5th September 1950.

Dear Mrs. Allen,

How nice to hear from you again! No wonder you feel disinclined for letter writing, with so many more attractive occupations out of doors. Your river sounds delicious, and I would much like to see it. I wonder is your King bird what we call over here a Kingfisher? Ours is a smallish bird of a very beautiful vivid blue, which flies low over the water, and at a great speed. Our bitterns are I think extinct, but I have often read of the ‘booming’ of the bittern. Do yours boom, and what sort of noise is meant?

I envy you your visit to Madison beach. No, I did’nt get away to the sea this year, alas, but I did manage a few days down in the Welsh mountains, which are very lovely, and where I got some fine walking: came across an inn, miles from anywhere where the guests are fed in the kitchen, as was common practice a hundred and fifty years ago. This was not a show piece for tourists, but is still the way they live in the heart of Wales.

My brother, more lucky than I, took Edward’s suit for a treat to an Irish beach for a fortnight in August; when he came back he informed me that he had had thirteen wet days, ‘and on the fourteenth we had a shower’. He was astonished at the unreality of life in Ireland today. Current events are never referred to, and Ireland is quite happy about the future: she is to be neutral, and her defence is to be a first charge on American and English resources: and that’s that, and now lets talk about horses. (On one of the most critical days in the Korean fighting, the leading Irish newspaper carried banner headlines on the front page, WHAT IS WRONG WITH IRISH JUMPING?). They are certainly an odd people.

All that you have to say about those little churches is very interesting and charming, and I am amused at your both being the same colour as the negro congregation; it’s a great testimony to Madison Beach. Though it is possible, by devoting all your time to it, to do the same thing even in England. There has been a man at the Oxford bathing place this summer, who would have passed, if not for a negro, at least for a Malay: though how he acquired this tan in such a wet summer, I don’t know. They tell me you can now buy sunburn in a bottle, which is perhaps the answer. By the way, yes, the Thames is bathed in, and I use it regularly in good weather; but its not the same thing as the sea, though very pleasant.

Many thanks for all the too kind things you say about my books–and the hardship of authors.

My mother died in 1908, when I was nine and my brother thirteen; we have no sisters, and are a couple of confirmed old batchelors, sharing a rather nice house with an eight acre garden in the suburbs.

And now I really must stop, with all good wishes to you and Edward,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD): ¹⁴⁷

Magdalen College

Oxford

Sept 7th 50

Dear Miss Bodle

The question ‘Is it better to live in cramped quarters with sister and Aunt-step-mother and bad prospects or to be uprooted and begin a new life elsewhere?’ immediately provokes the other question ‘Better for whom?‘

In other words it all turns on the actual character of, and relations between, Gertrude and Franzel. One can imagine a sort of home life wh. was worth clinging to at all costs, or one wh. was worth escaping from at all costs: and (troublesomely) the chances are that this home-life is between the two extremes. Now you hardly know enough to decide, and of course I know nothing. Mustn’t Franzel and Gertrude make the decision? Especially Franzel.

My own immediate feeling is that the uprooting wd. on the whole be the best thing for now. After all, what with jobs and marriage and one thing and another, most boys get pretty well uprooted anyway. But I think you can only offer, pray, and wait for their decision. Of course I can’t ‘see F’s point of view’. Boys are no more like one another than anyone else! With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO DON LUIGI PEDROLLO (V): ¹⁴⁸

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept. 12, 1950

Reverende Pater

Contristatus sum audita dilecti D. J. Calabriae valetudine. Placeat Domino nostro diutius servare nobis ‘tam carum caput’. De nugis meis, mi crede, non scripsissem si putavissem virum aegritudine teneri: quo fit ut importunior esse viderer. Attamen quodcumque est libelli mitto. Saluta pro me D. J. Calabria: quem, cum tota domo vestra, benedicat benedictus Jesus Christus. Vale

C. S. Lewis

*

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept. 12, 1950

Reverend Father,

I am very sorry to hear of dear Fr. G. Calabria’s illness.¹⁴⁹ May it please our Lord to preserve ‘tam carum caput’¹⁵⁰ longer. Believe me, had I known he was unwell, I would not have written about my trifles, which may have seemed rather untimely. Anyway, I am sending the book, just in case. Give my regards to Fr. G. Calabria: may the blessed Christ bless him, and all of your house. Farewell

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20th September 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

To receive one of your kind gifts produces a perceptible lightening of the gloom which descends on an elderly tutor when he realizes that he is on the verge of beginning yet another term. Many thanks for your unwearying attentions. The parcel which has just arrived is that numbered 2999, posted at Beverly Hills on 14th. August.

This however is perhaps not the time to be gloomy, for if our domestic news has little in it to cheer us, at least the world situation is distinctly better. We are all following anxiously the despatches from Korea; they are not very informative, but it does seem as if the tide had really turned in your favour at last. (One should I suppose, to be pedantic, say in U.N.O.’s favour, but it seems rather absurd to call a ninety per cent American army the ‘UNO Army’). What surprises me most about the whole war is the extraordinary fighting qualities of the Koreans; I’d never heard of them as soldiers before the outbreak of this trouble, and my brother tells me that in his time in the East, they were regarded as primitive agricultural nonentitites. Even allowing for their immensely superior number, they appear to be putting up a remarkable show.

Of home politics the less said the better; you may have seen that we have chosen this period of rearmament of all possible periods to nationalize the steel industry–apparently against the wishes of the Steel masters, and of the Trades Union leaders concerned. But enough of this.

After one of the worst summers on record, we are entering upon what looks like a wet autumn, and one either carries a raincoat on hot, fine days, or goes out without it and gets soaked. Still, the country is looking lovely, and autumn is my favourite season. My brother and I took a day off last week, put sandwiches in our pockets, and tramped sixteen miles or more along the old Roman road–now a mere track–which runs from Dorchester Abbey to Oxford. Foreigners are apt to think of this island, I find, as just one huge factory site. But you would be surprised if you could see the unspoilt beauty and charm which can still be found, even in the purely industrial areas: and here, within a few miles of Morris Motors, there are plenty of villages off the main highways, where nothing seems to have happened for the last two hundred years or so.

I hope to send you the autographed children’s book by Christmas, but will probably know more about its progress this afternoon, as I am going out to lunch with my publisher¹⁵¹ in the Cotswold village of Burford, where he is on holiday.

With many thanks, and all good wishes to you and your father,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO ANNE RIDLER(BOD): ¹⁵²

Magdalen College

Oxford

25/9/50

Dear Miss Ridler–

5 minutes after yr. departure I was kicking myself to having let you go without getting either yr. real name or yr. address. Well, I now have at any rate the address. No, no, I never confused you with R.P.¹⁵³ And don’t you go looking down your nose at her poetry neither. The earlier vols (not the late, comic ones wh. are not to my taste) contain surely v. choice work. Do try them again in a favourable hour.

Thanks for the C.W.¹⁵⁴ sonnet which, I agree, is good & characteristic in thought. Not bad in expression either, except for thrall. (Tho’ whether, in the long run the banishment of Poetic Diction & Archaism, wh. reduces us from the freedom of Greek, Anglo-Saxon & Skaldic verse, to the straight-waistcoast of classical French, may not shend us all, I’m not sure.) My duty remembered.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JILL FREUD (T): TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29th September 1950.

Dearest June,

Hurrah! A book I’ve always wanted. I shall devour it. Thank Clay enormously.

(Here concludes the manuscript of C.S.L., and as he has left to week-end with Barfield at Abingdon, I can’t challenge his spelling of Clay—surely Clé: to whom all greetings. How delightful of you to send this excellent book; I remember from our lunch at the Royal Oxford that Clé is an expert in this sort of thing, and no gift could have pleased us better.

As for coming to see you, it is, in the jargon of the day, a priority programme: but I fear nothing can be done about it until this term is over; you remember what term is like for poor J.

I hope Mrs. Freud is very happy in her new life; I don’t send the same wishes to Cle, for if he is’nt happy, what would make him so?).

No news here. Minto continues much the same, some days recognizing us, some days not. It sounds horribly unChristian and callous, but I can’t help wishing she would die. Can you imagine anything more horrible than lingering on in this state? However, she seems fairly contented.

All love to you both.

Yours,

Warnie

P.S. Many thanks for the wedding cake. Pushkin is up to a bit of no good in the neighbour’s gardens, but will be made to sleep on his portion as soon as he comes back.

TO MARTYN SKINNER (BOD): ¹⁵⁵

Magdalen College

Oxford

11/10/50

Dear Skinner

Great Heavens, what must you think of me by now! I see it is almost exactly a year since you so kindly sent me a copy of Two Colloquies:¹⁵⁶ and all that time not even a word of acknowledgement. I reject a momentary temptation to tell you that the year has been spent in a continuous, intensive study of the text. The truth is, I didn’t want to write until I had given them a sympathetic reading and somehow I never was in the mood for them till tonight. (Reading collection papers,¹⁵⁷ like marking School Cert.,¹⁵⁸ I have always found a great whetter of appetite for poetry. Fact! I don’t know why). The right mood for a new poem doesn’t come so often now as it used to. There is so little leisure, and when one comes to that leisure untried—well, you know, Ink is a deadly drug. One wants to write. I cannot shake off the addiction.

They’re good. The puns may be a bit too frequent for my taste, but most of them excellent in quality. (I mean, I couldn’t make them myself!)–especially ‘Lies is for me a realistic word.’¹⁵⁹ And other Wit too, and wit that involves wisdom, like ‘Doesn’t a cap still fit turned inside out.’¹⁶⁰ ‘Shelley-shalley’¹⁶¹ is a verb in a thousand. But ‘me rather all that bowery etc,’¹⁶² I mean the bits (in the good, obvious, old fashioned sense of the word) more ‘poetical’. Everyone has had a try at dewy cobwebs: few better than yours on p. 7. And I liked ‘A branch’s beauty in a waggon’s curve’,¹⁶³ and all p. 14 about the honey coloured ham and the white mines of pork inside the crackling made my mouth water.¹⁶⁴ ‘Simple, sensuous, and passionate’¹⁶⁵ egad! So too the whole bit beginning ‘This scene describes the hermit.’¹⁶⁶ But what’s much the best of all, what gave me the authentic thrill (an ‘uncovenanted’ thrill for your metre and manner don’t, so to speak, contract to provide such, they are not on the menu) is the passage beginning at the bottom of p. 35 on the worlds in the skull. Which retrospectively enriches the close of the first ‘drink to the Utopia within’.¹⁶⁷ Congratulations.

I expect this comes like last night’s joint appearing at breakfast, for of course you’re now writing something else and don’t particularly want to learn about the Colloquies. Can you forgive me? I assure you there are days when I could say with honest King George ‘I hate Bainting and Boetry’,¹⁶⁸ and I wouldn’t like to have gulped you down in one of those. Last time you wrote to me didn’t you say you were contemplating a narrative poem? Has anything come of it?

I must go to bed. Once more thanks v. much for this very distinguished little book, and add to the kindness by forgetting my incivility.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

16th October 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

Your parcels arrive at such frequent intervals that I am quite perplexed how to acknowledge them! Here is yet another, full of good things, which has just reached me, and for which I can, as usual, do no more than offer a simple thank you: and you know it is no empty form of words.

The international sky seems a trifle better than when I wrote last, and you must all be very proud of McArthur and your army: for, though called a UNO army, I fear the rest of us played a very small part in the victory. Let us hope that the whole sad affair will cause Stalin to change his policy, even at the eleventh hour: tho’ the boiling up of the trouble in French Indo-China does not look as if he was very repentant.

I am beginning the second week of a new term, and the harness still galls a little: but ‘the old horse for the hard road’ as we say. I expect I shall soon be trotting contentedly enough.

With many thanks and good wishes to yourself and your father,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: A Story for Children was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 16 October 1950.

TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD):¹⁶⁹ TS

REF.50/362.

Magdalen College

Oxford.

18th October 1950.

Dear Blamires,

I wanted nothing altered except the things I noted: certainly I did not want what I should call a ‘re-writing’.¹⁷⁰ But that is such a vague word, and we can only guess what it covers in Bles’s mind. I should advise you (if you are going to pursue the Bles avenue instead of trying another publisher) to make exactly the corrections you think proper–no more and no less—and then re-submit it. He will probably (entr nous)¹⁷¹ not remember the original text well enough to know how drastic the changes are! I can’t advise about other publishers: you’d know better than I. I hope it will find a home: I thought it a useful book.

In haste, with all good wishes,

yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO CHAD WALSH (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

20/10/50

Dear Walsh

Of course they feel passion about politics but no passion enough for poetry: especially passions that have no commerce with the senses. Sexual passion, you see, has a concrete object before it, and is linked with fundamental impulses.

The real parallel to much modern political poetry is not religious poetry concerned with God or the Passion or Heaven but merely pious poetry concerned with (ugh!) ‘religion’. The religion of politics is a religion without sacraments: for the human sacrifices wh. it practices are mere murder, not even ritual murder. Wordsworth compensated for the (poetically) ghost-like nature of politics by using a strict form, the sonnet. But that matter, with vers libre as the form, is to me quite unpardonable: a noisy vacuity.

My brother is now quite well, thanks. I’ll note the B.P.J.¹⁷² If you get some verse from me you’ve brought it on yourself: wéan ahsode¹⁷³ All the best.

Yours¹⁷⁴

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W): ¹⁷⁵

Magdalen College

Oxford

26/10/50

Dear Mrs. Shelburne–

Thank you for your most kind and encouraging letter. I should need to be either of angelic humility or diabolical pride not to be pleased at all the things you say about my books. (I think, by the way, you have all the ones that wd. matter to you). May I assure you of my deep sympathy in all the very grievous troubles that you have had. May God continue to support you: that He has done so till now, is apparent from the fact that you are not warped or embittered. I will have you in my prayers. With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W): TS

REF.50/250.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

2nd November 1950.

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen,

Many thanks for the post card. What a perfectly lovely place, and how I envy you the enjoyment of it! You may be sure that when (and if) it is ever my good fortune to visit the United States, I shall include the Smoky Mountains in my itinerary: preferably at a time when you are in residence.

With all good wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO BELLE ALLEN (WHL):

Magdalen etc.

2nd November 1950.

Dear Mrs. Allen,

…I was deeply interested in your sketch of your life, which certainly did not begin easily. Ours was very different; for there was always plenty of money, on the modest scale of provincial comfort in those far-off days; but we really hadn’t anyone to raise us, and ran wild; like Topsy, we just growed¹⁷⁶…

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

8th November 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

I think ‘gracious’ is the word I want. There is a graciousness about your continued kindness which quite floors me: the immediate reference being to the excellent parcel posted on 16th. October, which has just arrived, and whose contents will be stored against the literal and metaphorical rainy day which is rapidly drawing nearer. Very many thanks.

We are all a good deal depressed—and doubtless you are much more so—over the very unpleasant news from Korea. It is horrible to think of the distress of wives and mothers who had thought the fighting over, only to discover that what is virtually a new war has to be faced. And how is it going to end? Of the ultimate end there can of course be no doubt, but I fear there is very little chance now of a decision being reached before the northern winter clamps down on the country. We can but hope and pray for some speedy success.

Here, we have just recovered from the periodical nuisance of a by-election for parliament: our sitting member having been elevated to the House of Lords, much to the poor man’s disgust, for he is a keen party politician. The Socialist vote is down by three thousand on a poll of some 69,000, and the Conservative was returned with a majority of nearly double that polled by his Conservative predecessor at the General Election. It does not do to take by-elections too seriously, but there is a certain significance about this one, since we are now largely an industrial constituency.

Winter is beginning with grey sky and north east winds, and I find myself envying you in comfortable California, where I suppose you are still in summer clothes? You should buy yourself an enormous fur coat, fill the pockets with brandy and aspirin, and come over here and see how the poor live, on the fringes of civilization!

Again many thanks,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

P. S. I enclose the fairy tale, and hope you will like it.

TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS OSB (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

13/11/50

My dear Dom Bede

Good. I think we are in entire agreement on this point. One cd. put it this way. The bad (natural) tree cannot produce good fruit. But oddly, it can produce fruits that by all external tests are indistinguishable from the good ones: the act done from one’s own separate and unredeemed, tho’ ‘moral’ will, looks exactly like the act done by Christ in us. And oddly enough it is the tree’s real duty to go on producing these imitation fruits till it recognises this futility and despairs and is made a new (spiritual) tree. The trouble in the XVIth century was that Luther—who intuited the truth—was fundamentally an uneducated man, a peasant type: and really let the whole question get immediately entangled with political and ecclesiological questions wh. were really quite irrelevant to it. But the whole question must now be raised again. What most people who talk about Reunion don’t realise is that continental Protestantism regards the C. of E. as still theologically ‘uniformed’ and the Lutheran-Anglican gap is really at present at least as wide as the Anglican-Roman. It is thus a three cornered affair.

How very much superior the Imitation¹⁷⁷ is to the Scale of Perfection¹⁷⁸–yet I’d have said just the opposite once.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20th November 1950.

My dear Miss Mathews,

The nine pounds fourteen ounces of comfort and cheer, whose arrival was heralded by your last letter, has this morning arrived in good condition, and will be very welcome for what the papers still describe rather pathetically as ‘the festive season’. Which, as I told you, threatens to be even leaner than usual this year; there are amongst other things, cheerful prognostications of turkey at 7/6 per pound. My board will not ‘groan under coarse plenty’ at any such price, especially as we shall be in a position to sacrifice a couple of chickens.

I never read the papers, and would not have known anything about it except for my brother, who kindly reads me out the more cheerful extracts at breakfast. However, I am grateful to him for one excerpt from yesterday’s paper—a delicious printer’s error in a description of a revivalist meeting in the Midlands:–‘At the conclusion of the exercises, a large CROW remained in the hall, singing Abide with Me’. With renewed thanks and all good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

25th November 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

Many thanks for your letter of the 20th, and especially for the quotation from R Giovanni;¹⁷⁹ it is good, is’nt it?

I don’t think I should like the climate of Beverly Hills for a permanency; do you never feel the need to get away up north for a holiday and see snow on the ground? My idle brother on the other hand, with nostalgic memories of long lazy days in the tropics—at the taxpayer’s expense—feels it would suit him down to the ground: and talks still at times, generally at dinner times, of a steak and mushrooms which he once ate in San Francisco.

I note, with the usual gratitude—and embarrassment—that the usual stream of gifts is making its way steadily along the pipeline which you have laid from Alpine Drive to Magdalen College. Many, many thanks. Will you despise my pedestrian taste if I say I prefer envelopes to butter Scotch? I fear there is a sort of echo of Goering’s ‘guns before butter’ about this,¹⁸⁰ but stationary is for some reason, absurdly hard to get over here, and very dear when got. Probably now that I come to think of it, because we have recently broken off our paper contract with Canada; not unnaturally to the great annoyance of the Canadians.

If a magic carpet could transport you to Oxford this morning, it would work a very rapid cure on your lethargy. The floods are out, and now it is freezing, with a heavy fog; I can’t see across the quadrangle.

With all best wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO BELLE ALLEN (WHL):

Magdalen etc.

25 November 1950.

Dear Mrs Allen,

I too am an admirer of Bernard Shaw’s work, and could love him for his attack on the vivisectionists. That in the preface to the Doctor’s Dilemma is just devastating.¹⁸¹ Many before and since have attacked them for their cruelty, but Shaw was, I think, the first man to attack them for their stupidity; which I’m sure gets them on the raw whilst an attack on their cruelty would most likely leave their withers unwrung. No one who has ever read Shaw is able afterwards to think of vivisectionists without remembering the imbecile who spent his time cutting the tails off generations of mice to see if presently one would be born without a tail…

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD): ¹⁸²

REF.50/4.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th November 1950.

Dear Miss Pitter,

What a delightful surprise! You cheer me up no end, and provide a makeweight to letters from a headmistress which tell me the book will cause confusion and terror, and that many people are much ‘distressed’ at my having written it. But I get nice letters from actual children and parents.* I noted, of course, the lion image in your previous letter and rejoiced darkly.

But next time you write, don’t write all about me: what are you doing, and how are you? Well, I hope. With very many thanks,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS HALMBACHER (L):

Magdalen College

Oxford

28 November 1950

I avoided the word ‘Grace’ because I thought it didn’t carry much clear meaning to the uninstructed readers I had in view. I think the thing is dealt with in a rough and ready way in Case for Christianity¹⁸³ and Beyond Personality.¹⁸⁴ Any advanced or technical theology of Grace was quite beyond my scope. Naturally that does not mean that I thought the subject unimportant.

The other question, about the limits of faith and superstition, is also important. But my own mind is v. far from clear on it. I think you must seek counsel (if it is a practical problem for you) from a real theologian, not from an amateur like me. I am sorry to disappoint you: but it is better to refuse than to mislead.

TO WARFIELD M. FIROR(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 6/50

My dear Firor

It is always a pleasure to hear from you: doubled in this case by finding that you owed (or think you owed) me a letter when I feared the shoe was on the other foot.

The old lady’s retirement to a Nursing Home has made me a good deal freer in a small way. I can plan my days and count on some domestic leisure as I have not been able to do these last fifteen years. But it has hardly made me free on such a large scale as you suppose. I visit her pretty nearly every day, and I shd. certainly like to be at hand when the end comes. Also, I naturally have to be a good deal more frugal than before, since the Nursing Home makes a pretty big hole in my income.

The patient is nearly always perfectly placid now and does not seem to suffer at all. Very interested, for the first time in her life, in food. These bedside experiences have much allayed my fear of paralysis. I had not realised that it could be such a quiet return to infancy, or even animality. I suppose one need not be surprised that the evening twilight sometimes is exactly like the morning twilight. But, I fear, no chance of your ranches yet. ‘Ever more thanks.’

I am sometimes much worried about the News, sometimes ashamed that I am not worried more. I suppose it comes from one’s total power-lessness. Our emotions all have a strongly practical side and don’t work much when it is obvious that one can’t do anything. Hence a small noise at night in one’s house, which one can stop, keeps one awake till one has got up and done so: the most notable exception (for me) is when one is being driven in a car by a driver one doesn’t trust along a dangerous road. I do find it v. hard to surrender myself to my fate then. I suppose because one can’t get rid of the idiotic illusion that one could do something.

My great hope is that whenever in the past people have feared a German outbreak, their fears have proved right: but when they have feared a Russian outbreak, they have often, perhaps usually, been pleasantly disappointed. The Russian is not, like the German, a congenital invader. But this is slender. The thought of such a war as that wd. be bad enough in itself: but the thought of entering it with such a government as England now has, is sheer nightmare. Have you any parallel to their imbecility? All rulers lie: but did you ever meet such bad liars?

While you have been reading Letters to Young Churches (a good book, I thought)¹⁸⁵1 have been regaling myself on Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.¹⁸⁶1 wonder why that man never wrote anything else on the same level? The scene in which Huck decides to be ‘good’ by betraying Jim, and then finds he can’t and concludes that he is a reprobate, is really unparalleled in humour, pathos, & tenderness. And it goes down to the very depth of all moral problems.

We still eat hams (or give ‘em to the hard up) with much joy and gratitude, and your name is ‘in our flowing cups freshly remembered’.¹⁸⁷ I thought you were running over to this side some time soon again? I wd. dearly like another pow-wow. With all thanks & blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

7/12/50

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen,

(1.) To the best of my knowledge the Episcopalian Church in America is exactly the same as the Anglican Church.

(2.) The only rite which we know to have been instituted by Our Lord Himself is the Holy Communion (‘Do this in remembrance of me’¹⁸⁸–‘If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you’¹⁸⁹). This is an order and must be obeyed. The other services¹⁹⁰ are, I take it, traditional and might lawfully be altered. But the New Testament does not envisage solitary religion: some kind of regular assembly for worship and instruction is everywhere taken for granted in the Epistles. So we must be regular practising members of the Church.

Of course we differ in temperament. Some (like you—and me) find it more natural to approach God in solitude: but we must go to church as well. Others find it easier to approach Him thro’ the services: but they must practice private prayer & reading as well. For the Church is not a human society of people united by their natural affinities but the Body of Christ in which all members however different (and He rejoices in their differences & by no means wishes to iron them out) must share the common life, complementing and helping and receiving one another precisely by their differences. (Re-read 1st Corinthians cap 12 and meditate on it. The word translated members wd perhaps be better translated organs).¹⁹¹

If people like you and me find much that we don’t naturally like in the public & corporate side of Christianity all the better for us: it will teach us humility and charity towards simple low-brow people who may be better Christians than ourselves. I naturally loathe nearly all hymns: the face, and life, of the charwoman in the next pew who revels in them, teach me that good taste in poetry or music are not necessary to salvation.

(3.) I am not clear what question you are asking me about spiritual healing. That this gift was promised to the Church is certain from Scripture.¹⁹² Whether any instance of it is a real instance, or chance, or even (as might happen in this wicked world) fraud, is a question only to be decided by the evidence in that particular case. And unless one is a doctor one is not likely to be able to judge the evidence. V. often, I expect, one is not called upon to do so. Anything like a sudden furore about it in one district, especially if accompanied by a publicity campaign on modern commercial lines, wd. be to me suspect: but even then I might be wrong. On the whole, my attitude wd. be that any claim may be true, and that it is not my duty to decide whether it is.

‘Regular but cool’ in Church attendance is no bad symptom. Obedience is the key to all doors: feelings come (or don’t come) and go as God pleases. We can’t produce them at will and mustn’t try.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

Sheldon Vanauken’s¹⁹³ autobiographical A Severe Mercy (1977) is the heartrending story of his marriage to Jean ‘Davy’ Davis. They first met at the outbreak of the Second World War when Vanauken was in his second year at Wabash College in Indiana. They fell in love and married a few months later. From the first they devised what they called ‘The Shining Barrier’ which was meant to act as a ‘defence against creeping separ-ateness’.¹⁹⁴ Vanauken joined the Navy in March 1941 and was sent as a US naval lieutenant commander to Pearl Harbor, where he was stationed when it was bombed by the Japanese on 7 December 1941.

On leaving the Navy in November 1945 he went to Yale University with Davy where he took an MA degree in History. In the Michaelmas Term 1949 they moved to Oxford where Vanauken began work on a B. Litt. degree at Jesus College. At this time Vanauken spelt his name ‘Van Auken. Neither was a believer, but it was not long before they began to see things differently. They read a number of Lewis’s books and in December 1950 Vanauken wrote to Lewis:

Having felt the aesthetic and historical appeal of Christianity, having begun to study it, I have come to awareness of the strength and ‘possibleness’ of the Christian answer. I should like to believe it. I want to know God…But I cannot pray with any conviction that Someone hears. I can’t believe.

Very simply, it seems to me that some intelligent power made this universe and that all men must know it, axiomatically, and must feel awe at the power’s infiniteness. It seems to me natural that men, knowing and feeling so, should attempt to elaborate on the simplicity—the prophets, the Prince Buddha, the Lord Jesus, Mohammed, the Brahmins—and so arose the world’s religions. But how can just one of them be singled out as true?¹⁹⁵

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

14/12/50

Dear Mr. Van Awten

My own position at the threshold of Xtianity was exactly the opposite of yours. You wish it were true: I strongly hoped it was not. At least, that was my conscious wish: you may suspect that I had unconscious wishes of quite a different sort and that it was these which finally shoved me in. True: but then I may equally suspect that under your conscious wish that it were true, there lurks a strong unconscious wish that it were not. What this works out to is that all that modern stuff about concealed wishes and wishful thinking, however useful it maybe for explaining the origin of an error which you already know to be an error, is perfectly useless in deciding which of two beliefs is the error and which is the truth. For (a.) One never knows all one’s wishes, and (b.) In very big questions, such as this, even one’s conscious wishes are nearly always engaged on both sides.

What I think you can say with certainty is this: the notion that everyone would like Xtianity to be true, and that therefore all atheists are brave men who have accepted the defeat of all their deepest desires, is simply impudent nonsense. Do you think people like Stalin, Hitler, Haldane, Stapledon (a corking good writer, by the way) wd. be pleased on waking up one morning to find that they were not their own masters, that they had a Master and a Judge, that there was nothing ever in the deepest recesses of their thoughts about which they cd. say to Him ‘Keep out. Private. This is my business’? Do you? Rats! Their first reaction wd. be (as mine was) rage and terror. And I v. much doubt whether even you wd. find it simply pleasant. Isn’t the truth this: that it wd. gratify some of our desires (ones we feel in fact pretty seldom) and outrage a great many others? So let’s wash out all the Wish business. It never helped anyone to solve any problem yet.

I don’t agree with your picture of the history of religion—Christ, Buddha, Mohammed and others elaborating an original simplicity. I believe Buddhism to be a simplification of Hinduism and Islam to be a simplification of Xtianity. Clear, lucid, transparent, simple religion (Tao plus a shadowy, ethical god in the background) is a late development, usually arising among highly educated people in great cities. What you really start with is ritual, myth, and mystery, the death & return of Balder or Osiris, the dances, the initiations, the sacrifices, the divine kings. Over against that are the Philosophers, Aristotle or Confucius, hardly religious at all.

The only two systems in which the mysteries and the philosophies come together are Hinduism & Xtianity: there you get both Metaphysics and Cult (continuous with the primeval cults). That is why my first step was to be sure that one or other of these had the answer. For the reality can’t be one that appeals either only to savages or only to high brows. Real things are like that (e.g. matter is the first most obvious thing you meet—milk, chocolates, apples, and also the object of quantum physics).

There is no question of just a crowd of disconnected religions. The choice is between (a.) The materialist world picture: wh. I can’t believe, (b.) The real archaic primitive religions: wh. are not moral enough (c.) The (claimed) fulfilment of these in Hinduism, (d.) The claimed fulfilment of these in Xtianity. But the weakness of Hinduism is that it doesn’t really join the two strands. Unredeemably savage religion goes on in the village: the Hermit philosophises in the forest: and neither really interferes with the other. It is only Xtianity wh. compels a high brow like me to partake in a ritual blood feast, and also compels a central African convert to attempt an enlightened universal code of ethics.

Have you tried Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man?¹⁹⁶ The best popular apologetic I know.

Meanwhile, the attempt to practice the Tao is certainly the right line.¹⁹⁷ Have you read the Analects of Confucius? He ends up by saying ‘This is the Tao. I do not know if any one has ever kept it.’ That’s significant: one can really go direct from there to the Epistle to the Romans.

I don’t know if any of this is the least use. Be sure to write again, or call, if you think I can be of any help.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO R B. GRIBBON (W):¹⁹⁸ TS

REF. 50/185.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

19th December 1950.

Dear Mr. Gribbon,

It is also a far cry from December in Oxford to mid-Iune in Oxford! Thanks for your kind greetings, and the same to you. I too hope that we may meet again, either here or, better still, in Co. Down.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

19th December 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

Many thanks for all the kind and encouraging things you say about the new book.¹⁹⁹ I’m glad you enjoyed it.

The cutting is a treasure; you had better invest in a stock of these collars quick. For I doubt if your President will consider their manufacture really essential to America’s geared up emergency programme!

My brother joins me in sending you all best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS FRANK L. JONES (W): TS

REF.50/18.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

21st December 1950

Dear Mrs. Jones,

What, again!! Really two large and handsome food parcels in the same month is spoiling us completely. Here is a beauty from CARE just come in, in nice time for Christmas, and we are all very grateful indeed to you for it. On your bounty we shall ride comfortably into the New Year. Let us hope that it will be a better one than 1950, though I’m afraid there is not a very bright prospect before any of us.

I must also thank you and Mr. Jones for the two beautiful engagement books; I have had a preliminary look through them, and though California must be a very attractive state, I confess I prefer New England. It is more my sort of country. My brother, who is really more concerned with my engagements than I am, asks me to send his thanks too.

The weather forecast promises us Christmas weather over the holiday, and it is a prospect which I regard with very mixed feelings; I’m getting too old for ice and snow, and now share the views of Kipling’s MacAndrew:—

Hail ice and snow which praise the Lord, I’ve met you at your work And wished that we’d another route Or you another Kirk.²⁰⁰

All blessings on you both.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

21st December 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

Hard on the heels of your last letter comes yet another of your excellent parcels. If you go on at this rate, the Customs people will begin to suspect that what you are really doing is to run a black market shop in Oxford, with me as your distributing agent! But seriously, you spoil us—and very many thanks for doing so.

You will understand if I cut you off with the shortest of notes: I am knee deep in the hideous task of dealing with my Christmas mail. All blessings.

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD): ²⁰¹

Magdalen College

Oxford

23 Dec. 1950

Dear Mr. Van Auken

The contradiction ‘We must have faith to believe and must believe to have faith’ belongs to the same class as those by which the Eliatic philosophers proved that all motion was impossible.²⁰² And there are many others. You can’t swim unless you can support yourself in water & you can’t support yourself in water unless you can swim. Or again, in any act of volition (e.g. getting up in the morning) is the very beginning of the act itself voluntary or involuntary? If voluntary then you must have willed it, you were willing already, it was not really the beginning. If involuntary, then the continuation of the act (being determined by the first moment) is involuntary too. But in spite of this we do swim, & we do get out of bed.

I do not think there is a demonstrative proof (like Euclid) of Christianity, nor of the existence of matter, nor of the good will & honesty of my best & oldest friends. I think all three are (except perhaps the second) far more probable than the alternatives. The case for Xtianity in general is well given by Chesterton: and I tried to do something in my Broadcast Talks.

As to why God doesn’t make it demonstratively clear: are we sure that He is even interested in the kind of Theism which wd. be a compelled logical assent to a conclusive argument? Are we interested in it in personal matters? I demand from my friend a trust in my good faith which is certain without demonstrative proof. It wouldn’t be confidence at all if he waited for rigorous proof. Hang it all, the very fairy-tales embody the truth. Othello believed in Desdemona’s innocence when it was proved: but that was too late.²⁰³ Lear believed in Cordelia’s love when it was proved: but that was too late.²⁰⁴ ‘His praise is lost who stays till all commend.’²⁰⁵ The magnanimity, the generosity wh. will trust on a reasonable probability, is required of us. But supposing one believed and was wrong after all? Why, then you wd. have paid the universe a compliment it doesn’t deserve. Your error wd. even so be more interesting & important than the reality. And yet how cd. that be? How cd. an idiotic universe have produced creatures whose mere dreams are so much stronger, better, subtler than itself?

Note that life after death, which still seems to you the essential thing, was itself a late revelation. God trained the Hebrews for centuries to believe in Him without promising them an after-life: and, blessings on Him, he trained me in the same way for about a year. It is like the disguised prince in a fairy tale who wins the heroine’s love before she knows he is anything more than a woodcutter. What wd. be a bribe if it came first had better come last.

It is quite clear from what you say that you have conscious wishes on both sides. And now, another point about wishes. A wish may lead to false beliefs, granted. But what does the existence of the wish suggest? At one time I was much impressed by Arnold’s line ‘Nor does the being hungry prove that we have bread.’ But, surely, tho’ it doesn’t prove that one particular man will get food, it does prove that there is such a thing as food? i.e. if we were a species that didn’t normally eat, wasn’t designed to eat, wd. one feel hungry?

You say the Materialist universe is ‘ugly’. I wonder how you discovered that? If you are really a product of a materialistic universe, how is it you don’t feel at home there? Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or wd. not always be, purely aquatic creatures? Notice how we are perpetually surprised at Time. (‘How time flies! Fancy John being grown-up & married? I can hardly believe it!’) In heaven’s name, why? Unless, indeed, there is something in us which is not temporal.

Total Humility is not in the Tao because the Tao (as such) says nothing about the object to which it wd. be the right response: just as there is no law about railways in the acts of Q. Elizabeth. But from the degree of respect wh. the Tao demands for ancestors, parents, elders, & teachers, it is quite clear what the Tao wd. prescribe towards an object such as God.

But I think you are already in the meshes of the net! The Holy Spirit is after you. I doubt if you’ll get away!

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO BELLE ALLEN (W): TS

REF.50/19.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th December 1950.

Dear Mrs. Allen,

Many thanks for your interesting letter of the 12th, which gave me much pleasure. Some words do tend to look queer when they are put on paper: but ‘offing’ is a perfectly good nautical word, dating from 1627, defined by the Oxford Dictionary as ‘the part of the visible sea distant from the shore or beyond the anchoring ground’.

But don’t talk to me of your snow, for we are all shivering here in the hardest winter we have had since 1946, and with a fuel crisis to add to our troubles. Much recrimination too as to who is responsible for the latter, and wide publicity is being given to a piece of ineptitude which is going on in Cardiff Docks; in one berth is a Norwegian ship discharging American coal for the British Railways—in the next one to it, a Spanish ship loading Welsh coal for the Argentine Railways! There certainly seems something very wrong there.

With us too, the steady rise in retail prices is a constant nightmare to all except the weekly wage earners, who can remedy their position by striking. Only yesterday a lady told me that now the material to make a pair of man’s socks costs ten shillings: and everything else is up in proportion. Except the basic items of the ration, and these of course are heavily subsidized, so in the long run we pay for them too, through the taxes. But we have a most excellent housekeeper, who is a marvel at ‘making do’, and there are five of us in the house.

The people who are really hard hit are the single ones, or the childless married couples: for naturally the more of you in the house, the easier it is to get enough meat for stews and suchlike. In term time I have my meals in College, including a free dinner, which has from time immemorial been part of the stipend of a tutor. My brother takes a snack in town in the middle of the day—usually something he has bought on the way in—and has the rest of his meals out at the house; he keeps a very sharp eye on my, or perhaps I should say your parcels, and abstracts anything likely to be useful for his lunches, justifying his peculations by quoting that ‘the labourer is worthy of his hire’.²⁰⁶

It is very odd about the envelopes; we certainly received them, and they were all used up in due course. Why one never went back to it’s home, neither of us can understand. Of course I write to twenty English folk for one American, and therefore the odds against your getting one back would be considerable. Our very small envelopes are due, I understand, to the fact that we are very seriously short of paper—having broken our contract with Canada, for some reason I have never followed. I don’t think there is any mail restriction.

The whole question of the atomic bomb is a very difficult one: the Sunday after the news of the dropping of the first one came through, our minister asked us all to join in prayer for forgiveness for the great crime of using it. But, if fwhat we have since heard is true, i.e. that the first item on the Japanese anti-invasion programme was the killing of every European in Japan, the answer did not, to me, seem so simple as all that.

I read with interest and indignation your story of the experiment on the monkeys; there seems no end to the folly and wickedness of this world. Dogs are jealous; perhaps the besetting sin they inherited at the Fall.*

I see that in rambling along I have nearly forgotten to thank you for the impending gifts. I hope, indeed if I may so put it, insist that you give up spoiling me in this way if prices rise still more against you.

With all good wishes from us both to you both for 1951,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

* On second thoughts, I don’t think it is a sin in them, tho’ it is in us.²⁰⁷

TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 30/50

Dear Sister Penelope

Yours was a cheering letter which warmed my heart (I wish it wd. have warmed my fingers too: as it is they will hardly form the letters!).

I can’t offer any comments on the re-planning of the novel, not now having all the problems clearly enough in my head. I feel like saying it wd. be a pity to lose Adam, but then one has really no business to compare a work with its own pre-history.

I’m delighted about the Biblical plays which I remember doing me a lot of good when I read them. They may be, in a way, your most important work.

Our state is thus: my ‘mother’ has had to retire permanently into a Nursing Home. She is in no pain but her mind has almost completely gone. What traces of it remain seem gentler and more placid than I have known it for years. Her appetite is, oddly, enormous. I visit her, normally, every day, and am divided between a (rational?) feeling that this process of gradual withdrawal is merciful and even beautiful, and a quite different feeling (it comes out in my dreams) of horror.

There is no denying—and I don’t know why I should deny to you—that our domestic life is both more physically comfortable and more psychologically harmonious for her absence. The expence is of course v. severe and I have worries about that. But it wd. be v. dangerous to have no worries—or rather no occasions of worry. I have been feeling that v. much lately: that cheerful insecurity is what Our Lord asks of us. Thus one comes, late & surprised, to the simplest & earliest Christian lessons!

Rê pseudo- or deutero Screwtapes. My own feeling is that a literary idea ought to belong to anyone who can use it and that literary property is a sort of Simony. But you might find my publisher taking a different view. I don’t know, though: perhaps not, if it was published with proper acknowledgements. Let me know if it reaches the stage of a practical decision. I am glad to hear your inner news. Mine, too, is I think (but who am I to judge?) fairly good. Oremus pro invicem,²⁰⁸

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 30/50

Dear Miss Pitter—

I don’t know if I can write, my fingers are so cold. (Almost the only pleasure of which age has yet deprived me—I mean the only good one—is the power of enjoying hard frost. Otherwise youth’s a stuff that’s over-rated).

What helps you in Theocritus hinders me, and in the Georgics too: i.e. when I’ve looked up the vegetables in the Lexicon, I don’t know the English any better than the Greek. The equation ‘γλώε,’²⁰⁹ the lesser mud-wort, fangoleum paludis’, is to me a = b where both are unknown. Not that I don’t enjoy the vegetables when I meet them in the cool, green flesh: but each individual is new to me each time. Heroic books–is this yours? And for a ‘work in progress’? It is obviously some poet’s prose, sweet on the tongue. I feel that about the poet being a Parthian too: but am not quite sure whether it doesn’t come from living in an un-poetical age when the poet is perilously near being ‘vestigial’. Did people feel that way about Virgil or Firdausi?²¹⁰ (Here have been interrupted for an hour by an elderly lady asking moral advice!).

I hope you had a nice time with the Duchess.²¹¹ Shd. I like her poetry? I don’t know it. My brother joins me in all good wishes and I must go to lunch. My humble duty, Ma’am

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 30. 50

My dear George

What dears you both are: but a ruddy fellowship exam will keep me immobilised right up till term. Thanks all the same. Can you come up for a night any time after our term begins (Jan 13)?

MS rec’d safely. Yes, la belle Baynes²¹² will do the lot: Magnae virtutes nee minora vítía.²¹³ Her Mouse is one of her best beasts, however.

No, I don’t wish a cheque! You have both been much in oratíoníbus nostris. Name your night & do come.

Jack

1 See Roger Lancelyn Green in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1039-43. Green was the primary reader and critic of Lewis’s Narnian stories.

2 For information about the writing of the Narnian stories see Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography (London: Bles, 1974; rev. edn HarperCollins, 2002), ch. 11.

3 This is a letter of reference for Lewis’s former pupil, lonathan Francis ‘Frank’ Goodridge, whose biography appears in CL II, p. 936n. Goodridge was applying for the position of Senior Lecturer in English at St Mary’s College, Strawberry Hill, Twickenham, London. He taught at St Mary’s College, 1950-65. See Goodridge’s comments on this testimonial in CSL: The Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society, Whole No. 75 (Ian. 1976), p. 13.

4 This is one of those occasions on which Lewis misspelled his pupil’s name.

5 This was the Oxford University Socratic Club, founded in 1941 by Stella Aldwinckle with Lewis as its first president. See Stella Aldwinckle in the Biographical Appendix. The club’s purpose was to discuss the pros and cons of Christianity, and it met weekly during term-time. Goodridge was secretary of the Socratic Club, 1947-8. For a history of the club see Walter Hooper, ‘Oxford’s Bonny Fighter’ in Remembering C. S. Lewis: Recollections of Those Who Knew Him, ed. James T. Como (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005). This book was previously published as C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table (1979; new edn, 1992).

6 See the biography of George Rostrevor Hamilton in CL II, p. 707n.

7 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), Satires, II, vi, 65: ‘O nights and suppers of gods!’ Horace (65-8 BC) was one of the greatest of the Roman poets.

8 Claudian, De Raptu Proserpinae, II, 282-3: ‘There are other stars for us.’ Pluto speaks the phrase, attempting to calm Persephone’s weeping, telling her that he is a person of importance and that there is an upside to being in the underworld.

9 The word planta– ‘a young tree’–appears in Virgil, Georgia, II, 23.

10 See Owen Barfield in the Biographical Appendix to CL I, pp. 979-82. Barfield was one of Lewis’s oldest friends and also his lawyer.

11 ‘ritual’.

12 John Masefield (1878-1967), Poet Laureate 1930-67.

13 See the biography of Nathan Comfort Starr, Professor of English at the University of Florida in Gainesville, in CL II, p. 809n. His essay on Lewis, ‘Good Cheer and Sustenance’, appears in Remembering C. S. Lewis.

14 Lewis’s group of friends, the Inklings, met regularly every Tuesday morning in the Eagle and Child (‘Bird and Baby’) pub in St Giles.

15 p.p. See Abbreviations.

16 Sarah Neylan (later Tisdall) was Lewis’s eleven-year-old goddaughter. See Mary Neylan in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1054-5.

17 Rhona Bodle, from New Zealand, arrived in England in 1947 to study the education of deaf children. That same year she began teaching at Oakdene School for girls in Burgess Hill, Sussex. In December 1947 she began reading Lewis’s Broadcast Talks (London: Bles, 1942) and this led her to write to him. She became a Christian in 1949. See her biography in CL II, p. 823n. Her notes to Lewis’s letters are in the Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 200/4.

18 See Charles Walter Stansby Williams (1886-1945) in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1081-6.

19 Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590, 1596), I, xi, 45, 6: ‘It chaunst (eternal God that chaunce did guide)’.

20 See Sister Penelope CSMV in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1055-9.

21 In 1948 Sister Penelope began asking Lewis’s advice about a story she was writing, to be called ‘The Morning Gift’. She was never able to find a publisher. It is first mentioned in Lewis’s letter to Sister Penelope of 8 April 1948 (CL II, p. 848).

22 This was probably a reference to Sir Herbert Butterfield’s Christianity and History (London: Bell, 1949).

23 Sister Penelope’s St Bernard on the Love of God, De Diligendo Deo, newly translated by A Religious of C.S.M.V. (London: Mowbray, 1950).

24 In a letter of 29 November 1944 to his son Christopher, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien said that he and Lewis ‘begin to consider writing a book in collaboration on “Language” (Nature, Origins, Functions)’ (The Letters of]. R. R. Tolkien, ed. Humphrey Carpenter (1981), p. 105). By 1948 it had got as far as being called Language and Human Nature in an announcement of forthcoming books from the Student Christian Movement, who expected it to be published in 1949. In the end, it was never written. Emperor Augustus used ‘on the Greek Kalends’ for ‘Never’.

25 Edward A. Allen and his mother, Mrs Belle Allen, lived at 173 Highland Avenue, Westfield, Massachusetts. They were very generous to the Lewis brothers, and sent them numerous parcels of food over the years. For the beginning of the correspondence see Lewis’s letter to Allen of 3 January 1948 (CL II, p. 827).

26 John Strachey (1901-63), a British Socialist writer and Labour politician, who served as Minister of Food, 1946-50.

27 Vera Mathews (later Gebbert) was living at this time at 510 North Alpine Drive, Beverly Hills, California. She supplied the Lewis brothers with vast quantities of food during the lean years following the war.

28 See Edward Thomas Dell, Jr in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, p. 1025. At this time Dell was a student at Eastern Nazarene College, Wollaston, Massachusetts.

29 In a letter of 12 December 1949 Dell had asked whether ‘evil is an illusion’. Lewis replied on 19 December 1949: ‘I don’t think the idea that evil is an illusion helps. Because surely it is a (real) evil that the illusion of evil shd. exist. When I am pursued in a nightmare by a crocodile the pursuit and the crocodile are illusions: but it is a real nightmare, and that seems a real evil’ (CL II, p. 1010). Continuing the discussion, Dell asked in a letter of 26 January 1950: ‘If the illusion of the crocodile is evil isn’t it so because of man’s sin rather than a basic relationship set up either by an evil or uncontrolled by a finite God?’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/4, fols. 89-90).

30 Nothing is known of this American nun who, it appears, wanted to know why Lewis was not a Roman Catholic.

31 See Nicolas Zernov, Spalding Lecturer in Eastern Orthodox Culture in the University of Oxford, in the Biographical Appendix.

32 Henry Norman Spalding (1877-1953), philanthropist. In his early life Spalding came across a book about the history of India which kindled in him an interest in the Far East. He settled in Oxford and devoted himself to the attempt to cultivate better relations between the West and the East by fostering scholarly approaches to the history, art, religion and philosophy of Oriental countries. He was so impressed by the work of Nicolas Zernov that in 1965 he founded the Spalding Lectureship in Eastern Orthodox Culture, with Zernov as its first holder.

33 Mrs Frank Iones, who was still sending food parcels to Lewis, wrote from 320 Brookside Road, Darien, Connecticut.

34 The Problem of Pain (London: Bles, 1940; HarperCollins, 2002).

35 The Old Testament.

36 Mr Lake had presumably asked Lewis about the association of planetary intelligences and eldila with angels in his interplanetary trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet (London: John Lane, 1938), Perelandra (London: John Lane, 1943) and That Hideous Strength (London: John Lane, 1945). Lewis was later to write about these angels or daemons in The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), ch. 3, pp. 40-2.

37 For years Lewis had been publishing some of his poems under the pseudonym Nat Whilk (or N.W.)–Anglo-Saxon for ‘I know not whom’. In Perelandra (1943; HarperCollins, 2000), ch. 1, p. 13, he quotes a note on the eldila or angels by one ‘Natvilcius’, which is Latin for ‘Nat Whilk’.

38 See Daphne Harwood in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1050-1. Mrs Harwood, the wife of Cecil Harwood, had not been well.

39 i.e., her husband.

40 Bede (c. 673-735) established the date of Easter in his De Temporum Ratione (written in 725).

41 Christopher Fry, The Lady’s Not For Burning (1949).

42 John, the Harwoods’ eldest son, was Lewis’s pupil at Magdalen College. See his biography in CL II, p. 300n.

43 Sylvia was one of the Harwoods’ daughters.

44 See the biography of Walter Ogilvie ‘Woff Field in CL II, p. 572n. Field, like Cecil Harwood, was a teacher at Michael Hall School, Kidbrooke Park, Forest Row, Sussex.

45 See Roger Lancelyn Green in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1039-43. At this time Green was living at 119 Woodstock Road, Oxford,

46 Lewis’s original title for what became Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia (1951) was ‘A Horn in Narnia’ (since it was Queen Susan’s magic horn which drew the children back to the rescue of Prince Caspian).

47 See Lady Freud in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1033-6. June Flewett (known familiarly as ‘Jill’) had been evacuated to Oxford at the beginning of the Second World War, and ended up living at The Kilns during 1943-5, helping Mrs Moore and the Lewis brothers. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London, in 1947, she became an actress, using the screen name Jill Raymond.

48 Warnie was in Restholme on this occasion.

49 Bruce was Mrs Moore’s elderly dog.

50 This letter was published in The Times Literary Supplement (3 March 1950), p. 137, under the title ‘Text Corruptions’.

51 William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, ed. John Dover Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921).

52 William Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594), V, iv, 90. References to Shakespeare in the present volume are to William Shakespeare, Complete Works, ed. W J. Craig, Oxford Standard Authors (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1905).

53 Shakespeare, Two Gentlemen of Verona, ed. Dover Wilson, p. 103.

54 See Dr Warfield M. Firor in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1031-2.

55 On 24 February 1950 the British Labour Party won the general election, with Clement Attlee (1883-1967) returning as Prime Minister.

56 William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1603), IV, iv, 36-9.

57 ‘masterpiece’.

58 ‘way to arrive’.

59 Green had written a blurb for the cover of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (London: Bles, 1950), but in the end it was not used.

60 See the biography of Geoffrey Bles in CL II, p. 554n. Bles, Lewis’s publisher, was the owner of Geoffrey Bles Ltd, London.

61 Milton Waldman (1895-1976) was born in the United States and educated at Yale University. After serving with the US Army, 1917-19, he moved to England where he spent his life in publishing. He was assistant editor of The London Mercury, 1924-7, before becoming a literary advisor to the publishers Longmans Green, 1929-34, and then William Collins, 1939-52. He was joint managing director of Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd, 1952-3, and literary advisor to Collins, 1955-69. During his years with Collins he edited the Golden Hind and Brief Lives series. Waldman was the author of Americana (1925), Elizabeth of England (1933), and The Lady Mary: A Biography of Queen Mary L (1972).

62 The King’s Arms public house on the corner of Holywell Street and Parks Road.

63 See George and Moira Sayer in the Biographical Appendix.

64 In a letter of 3 April 1950 Dell said: ‘I have been reading your Allegory of Love with great interest. It has occurred to me to wonder whether the present-day lack…of a depth of love between men so often seen in the middle ages could be part of the cause for the male lack of interest in God’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/4, fol. 91).

65 In the same letter Dell asked: ‘I am a bit confused on a point. You say in “Membership”…that “all biological life (will be)…extinct”…But nonetheless I remember that your view of immortality in Miracles includes animals…Now, will only part of Nature then be redeemed when we, please God, “ride those greater mounts…with the King” and what we know as Bios be gone and Zoe reign in the “more organic” Nature?’ (ibid., fols. 91-2).

66 ‘existence’.

67 The Problem of Pain, ch. 9, pp. 145-6: ‘Supposing, as I do, that the personality of the tame animals is largely the gift of man—that their mere sentience is reborn to soulhood in us as our mere soulhood is reborn to spirituality in Christ—I naturally suppose that very few animals indeed, in their wild state, attain to a “self “or ego. But if any do, and if it is agreeable to the goodness of God that they should live again, their immortality would also be related to man—not, this time, to individual masters, but to humanity.’

68 Dell asked: ‘In reading the new translation of St. Athanasius’ Incarnation of the Word of God by your friend at “Wantage” [Sister Penelope]…I have wondered about an intimation on p. 28…that Athanasius may have assumed that God superimposed the Word or His image on the animal form of man. Do you think St. Athanasius was merely using a convenient way of speaking to describe a difference between man and animals or that he saw man as a progressively developed animal that was finally “made in the image” of the Word?’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/4, fol. 92). Dell was referring to The Incarnation of the Word of God, Being the Treatise of St. Athanasius ‘De Incarnatione Verbi Dei’, trans. ‘A Religious of C.S.M.V.’ (London: Bles, 1944). In Against the Heathen, 33, St Athanasius distinguishes between humans, who have immortal souls, and animals, who do not: ‘These things simply prove that the rational soul presides over the body. For the body is not even constituted to drive itself, but it is driven by another’s will, just as a horse does not harness himself, but is driven by his master. Hence laws for human beings to practise what is good and to abstain from evil-doing, while for animals evil remains unthought of and undiscerned, because they lie outside rationality and the process of understanding. I think then that the existence of a rational soul in man is proved by what we have said…O God, You have given us an immortal soul which distinguishes us from irrational creatures. Help us all to safeguard it from evil influences and everything that tarnishes it and turns it away from You.’

69 See Dom Bede Griffiths OSB in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1043-9. Griffiths, Lewis’s former pupil, had been prior of the Benedictine abbey at Farnborough since 1947.

70 Dom Bede Griffiths, ‘Catholicism today’, Pax: The Quarterly Review of the Benedictines of Prinknash, XL, no. 254 (Spring 1950), pp. 11-16.

71 See the biography of Dr Robert Emlyn ‘Humphrey’ Havard in CL II, p. 182n. Havard was Lewis’s doctor and an Inkling. As an oblate of Ampleforth—a lay member of the Benedictine order—he probably met Griffiths while visiting Farnborough Abbey.

72 ‘[He is] pure spirit’.

73 Griffiths, ‘Catholicism today’, p. 13.

74 The classical definition of natural law is found in St Thomas Aquinas: ‘The natural law is nothing other than the light of understanding placed in us by God; through it we know what we must do and what we must avoid. God has given this light or law at the creation’ (Collationes in decent praeceptis, 1). The chief New Testament text on which natural law is based is Romans 2:14-15: ‘When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts’ (RSV). Lewis devoted the first book of Mere Christianity (London: Bles, 1952) to natural law, and in The Abolition of Man (London: Oxford University Press, 1943; Fount, 1999), ch. 1, pp. 11-12, he defines it as ‘the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is, and the kind of things we are’. See the section on natural law in CG, pp. 586-96.

75 Romans 7:12-13: ‘The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just and good. Was then that which is good made death unto me? God forbid. But sin, that it might appear sin, working death in me by that which is good; that sin by the commandment might become exceeding sinful’

76 Lewis was referring to the belief in ‘salvation by faith and faith alone’, as understood by the Protestant Reformers, and St Paul’s statement in Galatians 2:16: ‘Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.’

77 As president of the Oxford University Socratic Club, Lewis was present at its meeting on 10 November 1947 when Ronald Grimsley read a paper on ‘Existentialism’, later published in the Socratic Digest, no. 4 [1948], pp. 66-77.

78 Jean-Paul Sartre, L’Existentialisme est un Humanisme [Existentialism Is a Humanism] (1945).

79 On the philosophical theory of Bishop George Berkeley, see CL II, p. 703, n. 21.

80 On 3 November 1947 Lewis read a paper to the Socratic Club entitled ‘A First Glance at Sartre’. A brief summary of the paper, which was a critique of Sartre’s L’Existentialisme est un Humanisme, is found in Walter Hooper, ‘Oxford’s Bonny Fighter’, Remembering C. S. Lewis, pp. 160-1.

81 In his letter to Dom Bede Griffiths of 5 July 1949 (CL II, pp. 953-4), Lewis mentions hearing the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973) give a lecture to the Oxford University Socratic Club on 18 February 1948. ‘It is definitely not my philosophy,’ commented Lewis.

82 See Marcel’s ‘theism and personal relationships’ in Socratic Digest, No. 4, pp. 78-9.

83 In her note to this letter Bodle said: ‘I had received bad and completely unexpected news from home’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/4, fol. 247).

84 Dr Firor had invited Lewis to spend a holiday with him at his cabin in the Rocky Mountains.

85 i.e., his responsibility for taking care of Mrs Moore.

86 While Lewis was preparing to spend a fortnight in Ireland with Arthur Greeves during the summer of 1949, Warnie went on a binge and the holiday was cancelled. See the letter to Greeves of 2 July 1949 (CL II, pp. 952-3).

87 William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra (1623), V, ii, 87-8.

88 George John Romanes (1848-94) was born in Canada and moved with his family to London in 1850. After reading Medicine and Physiology at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, he decided to devote his life to scientific research. This led to a lifelong friendship with Charles Darwin. Romanes was, at the same time, a man of strong religious convictions. In 1891 he provided for the Romanes Lectureship, the oldest and most famous of Oxford’s lectures. It is delivered once a year on a subject relating to science, art or literature. See Ethel Romanes, The Life and Letters of George John Romanes (1896). Lewis was asked to deliver the Romanes Lecture at the end of his life.

89 Mrs Maude M. McCaslin, wife of Alston Jones McCaslin, was writing from Europa, Mississippi.

90 ‘The Wood that Time Forgot’ is a novel by Roger Lancelyn Green. Although it was written before The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe it remains unpublished because it would seem to owe too much to Lewis’s Lion.

91 BF, p. 233.

92 See Arthur Greeves in the Biographical Appendix to CL I, pp. 993-6.

93 Matthew 6:28-30; Luke 12:27-8: ‘Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothe the grass, which is to day in the field, and tomorrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith?’

94 See Cecil Harwood in the Biographical Appendix to CL I (pp. 998-1000).

Harwood, one of Lewis’s oldest friends, was an anthroposophist and a teacher at Michael Hall School, Kidbrooke, Forest Row, East Sussex.

95 Virgil, Aeneid, II, 61: ‘prepared for either thing’.

96 In SB], ch. 13, p. 155, Harwood is described as ‘a pillar of Michael Hall’.

97 The Bellman was the captain of the ship in Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark (1876). In Fit the Second, stanzas 5-8, the Bellman persuades his crew that a blank sheet of paper makes an ideal chart of the open sea. ‘This was charming, no doubt: but they shortly found out/That the Captain they trusted so well/Had only one notion for crossing the ocean,/And that was to tingle his bell./…And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,/Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,/That the ship would not travel due West!’

98 Harwood had written to tell Lewis that his wife, Daphne, was dying of cancer.

99 Lewis had published a poem, ‘As One Oldster to Another’ under the pseudonym ‘N.W.’ in Punch, CCXVLII (15 March 1950), p. 295. Mr Dixey wrote to compliment him on his use of Alcaics, a four-line stanza using a predominantly dactylic metre named after the Greek poet, Alcaeus. A slightly revised version of the poem appears in Poems (1974) and CP.

100 Ernest H. Shepard (1879-1976), a cartoonist for Punch, illustrated ‘As One Oldster to Another’ and other of Lewis’s poems. Shepard also illustrated all A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh books.

101 In 1942 Lewis had Owen Barfield set up a charitable trust into which Lewis directed all his royalties. It was named ‘Agapony’ ‘or ‘Agapargyry’ or ‘The Agapargyrometer’ = love + money. The money was available for whoever might be in need, with preference given to widows and orphans. For details see CL II, p. 483.

102 While protecting Lewis’s confidentiality, Barfield devoted a chapter to the Agapony in his book This Ever Diverse Pair (1950).

103 Harwood had written to say that he had received some money from the Agapony fund.

104 See Stella Aldwinckle, founder of the Socratic Club, in the Biographical Appendix.

105 As president of the Oxford University Socratic Club, Lewis was suggesting in his letter to Aldwinckle a list of people she might ask to speak at the club, along with possible topics.

106 Gilbert Ryle (1900-76), philosopher, was Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1945-68.

107 Henry Habberley Price (1899-1984), philosopher, was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, where he took a First in Classics in 1921. In 1924 he was elected a Fellow and lecturer in Philosophy at Trinity College, Oxford, where he remained until 1935. In that year he was elected Wykeham Professor of Logic and moved to New College where he remained until his retirement in 1959. He was a frequent speaker at the Socratic Club. See his biography in the Oxford DNB.

108 i.e., an admirer of Jean-Paul Sartre.

109 Francis Joseph ‘Frank’ Sheed (1897-1981), publisher and author, was born in Sydney, Australia, and read law at Sydney University, taking his BA in 1917. In 1920 he went to London where he came across the recently formed Catholic Evidence Guild, devoted to out-of-doors speaking to explain the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. He was bowled over by the excitement of the Guild’s task, and he joined. There he met Mary ‘Maisie’ Josephine Ward (1889-1975), and they were married in 1926. That same year Frank and Maisie founded a publishing firm, Sheed and Ward. In 1933 they opened an office in New York, through which Sheed and Ward became the most influential Catholic publisher in the English-speaking world. Maisie died on 28 January 1975 and Frank on 20 November 1981.

110 Christopher Dawson (1889-1970), cultural historian, was born at Hay, Brecknockshire, on 12 October 1889 and educated at Winchester College and Trinity College, Oxford, taking his degree in 1911. He had sufficient means to be able to follow his own highly original path of historical research and reflection. His first book, The Age of the Gods (1928), was the result of fourteeen years of research. His second, Progress and Religion (1929), articulated the major theme of his subsequent writings, that religion is the dynamic of all social culture. The Making of Europe (1932) discussed a specific case of this, showing that the ‘dark ages’ were in fact the most creative period in the culture of the Western world. Dawson developed the topic further in his Gifford Lectures for Edinburgh University, Religion and Culture (1948), about which Lewis wrote to him on 27 September 1948 (see Supplement). Dawson became a Roman Catholic shortly after going down from Oxford and was an influential member of the group of writers which formed around the Catholic publishing house of Sheed and Ward. Dawson’s achievements were mainly overlooked by the academic world. He was eventually offered a chair in the United States at Harvard where he was Professor of Roman Catholic Studies, 1958-62. He died on 25 May 1970.

111 Henry Fitzgerald Heard (1889-1971), science writer and philosopher, was educated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, after which he lectured for Oxford University’s extra-mural studies programme, 1926-9. He took a strong interest in developments in the sciences and his The Ascent of Humanity (1929) marked his first foray into public acclaim. He served as a science and current affairs commentator for the BBC, 1930-4. In 1937 he moved to the United States, accompanied by Aldous Huxley, to accept the chair of Historical Anthropology at Duke University. His most famous book, The Five Ages of Man, was published in 1963. He died on 14 August 1971.

112 Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963), English novelist, won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford where in 1916 he took a First in English. His first novel, Crome Yellow (1921), was followed by others satirizing contemporary society through characters who flout convention. While in Italy he wrote Brave New World (1932). His move to California in 1937 coincided with a move away from his ‘philosophy of meaninglessness’ to something more transcendental and mystical. The books that followed, such as Brave New World Revisited (1958), spelt out the temptations presented by life in the modern world with its materialist values and dangerous technological advances. Huxley died on the same day as John F. Kennedy and Lewis–22 November 1963.

113 This was probably Fr John Philip Gleeson, who took a B. Litt. from Campion Hall in 1951.

114 Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe (1919-2001), philosopher, was born on 18 March 1919 at Glanmire, North Strand, Limerick. Her conversion to Catholicism as a teenager led to a lifelong interest in philosophy. She was educated at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she took a First in Greats in 1941. The following year she moved to Cambridge where, as a research student, she became the pupil of Ludwig Wittgenstein. In 1936 she returned to Oxford as a Research Fellow at Somerville College. She was a Fellow of Somerville, 1964-70, and Professor of Philosophy, Cambridge University, 1970-86. She died on 5 January 2001. On her debate with Lewis about Miracles: A Preliminary Study (London: Bles, 1947) see her biography in CG.

115 Colin Hardie, one of the Inklings, was Classical Tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford. See Colin and Christian Hardie in the Biographical Appendix.

116 New Testament.

117 The Rev. Dr Austin Farrer was Chaplain and Tutor of Trinity College, Oxford. See Austin and Katherine Farrer in the Biographical Appendix.

118 Basil Mitchell (1917–), philosopher, was educated at the Queen’s College, Oxford, where he took a BA in 1939. He was Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Keble College, Oxford, 1947-67, and Nolloth Professor of Philosophy of the Christian Religion, Oxford University, 1968-84. An active member of the Socratic Club, he followed Lewis as its president in 1955.

119 Alfred Jules Ayer (1910-89), Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford, 1959-78, was a proponent of logical positivism, and the author of Language, Truth and Logic (1936).

120 On 2 February 1948 Elizabeth Anscombe gave a paper to the Socratic Club on Lewis’s Miracles entitled ‘A Reply to Mr C. S. Lewis’s Argument that “Naturalism” is Self-Refuting’. It was published in the Socratic Digest, no. 4 (1948) and is reprinted in her Collected Philosophical Papers, Vol. II, Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind (1981). Anscombe’s argument concerned the nature of causation, one of its crucial points being that Lewis should have distinguished in chapter 3 of Miracles between ‘irrational causes’ and ‘non-rational causes’. Lewis accepted that he might have made his argument clearer and this he attempted to do by revising chapter 3 for the Fontana paperback of Miracles. See the letters to Jocelyn Gibb of 11 July and 8 August 1959.

121 Professor Dorothy Emmet (1904-2000), philosopher, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Manchester, 1946-66.

122 lili had become engaged to the writer Clement Freud, and their engagement was announced in The Timer. ‘Clement Raphael third son of Ernst and Lucie Freud of St Johns Wood London to June Beatrice second daughter of H. W. Flewett M.A. and Mrs Flewett of Gipsy Lane London SW15.’

123 This note was added later in Lewis’s hand, lili sent him a copy of the Wilton Diptych, the full title of which is Richard II Presented to the Virgin and Child by his Patron Saint John the Baptist and Saints Edward and Edmund. The diptych was painted between 1395 and 1399, and is in the National Gallery, London. It is called the Wilton Diptych because it came from Wilton House in Wiltshire, the seat of the Earls of Pembroke. Lewis treasured this gift all his life, and had it with him in Magdalene College, Cambridge, during his years there.

124 Arthur’s cocker spaniel.

125 Mrs D. Jessup was writing from 66 Milton Road, Rye, New York.

126 A house-maid.

127 Virgil (70-19 BC), Aeneid. Lewis probably read the Aeneid more often than he did any other book.

128 Green and Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography, ch. 11, p. 310.

129 Griffiths was planning to visit Oxford.

130 Mathews wrote to Lewis on 24 June 1950: ‘I’m in the midst of ARTHURIAN TORSO at the moment, but am having trouble with the pronunciation. How does one pronounce TALIESSIN and BROCELIANDE? Did you ever complete the idea for a children’s story you wrote me about?’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Facs. c. 47, fol. 191), Lewis, presumably, meant the second, not third, syllable of Brocelliande.

While Lewis was referring to the imminent publication of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Mathews was probably remembering a comment in his letter of 17 September 1949: ‘A good idea for a (children’s) story…arrived this morning’ (CL II, p. 980), this being the second Narnian story, Prince Caspian.

131 ‘Pray for us’.

132 Mark 4:5-6: ‘There went out a sower to sow. And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the wayside, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth. But when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away’

133 When in 1935 Oxford University Press conceived the idea of the mammoth Oxford History of English Literature (OHEL), Lewis was asked to contribute a volume covering the sixteenth century. He had been working on what was to be English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (1954) since 1936 and he was spending every available minute in the Bodleian Library trying to complete it. He called it his ‘O Hell!’ volume.

134 Acts 2:1-9: ‘And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting…They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language…Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia.’

135 Ralph E. Hone was writing from 39 Leicester Square, London.

136 See Chad Walsh in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1078-81.

137 Daphne Harwood died on 14 July 1950.

138 Lewis was John Harwood’s tutor at Magdalen College, and John had just taken a fourth-class degree in Schools.

139 See St Giovanni Calabria in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1036-9. Don Giovanni Calabria was the founder of the Congregation of Poor Servants of Divine Providence in Verona. In 1947 he read The Screwtape Letters in Italian. Wishing to write to Lewis about his books and about Christian unity, but not understanding English, he began corresponding in Latin. Most of the correspondence between Lewis and Don Calabria was published as Letters: C. S. Lewis-Don Giovanni Calabria: A Study in Friendship, trans, and ed. Martin Moynihan (London: Collins, 1989). Unless otherwise stated, the letters were translated into English by Moynihan (see his biography in CL II, p. 615n). There is also an Italian edition of the correspondence, with some additional letters between Lewis, St Giovanni Calabria and Don Luigi Pedrollo, entitled Una Gioia Lnsolita: Lettere tra un prete cattolico e un laico anglicano, ed. Luciano Squizzato, trans. Patrizia Morelli (Milan: Jaca Book SpA, 1995). Those additional letters appear in the present volume.

140 Le Problème de la Souffrance, trans. Marguerite Faguer, with an introduction by Maurice Nédoncelle (Bruges: Desclées de Brouwer, 1950).

141 In Una Gioia Insolita Luciano Squizzato (p. 156, n. 92) notes that both Lodetti and Arnaboldi denied ever having received this volume, and that no copies can be found in St Giovanni Calabria’s private library. Calabria was at this time seriously ill; Fr Pedrollo, who answered this missive, was deeply concerned for his friend’s health, and may have simply been vague about the books; apparently, Lewis just sent one to him (see Lewis’s letter of 12 September 1950). For biographical information on Dr Romolo Lodetti see CLII, pp. 821-2. Fr Paolo Arnaboldi (1914-98) was the founder of FAC, a Catholic movement in part inspired by Calabria’s books Apostolica vivendi and Amare (see Squizzato, pp. 262-3); incidentally, these were the books Calabria sent to Lewis in the autumn of 1947 (see CL II, p. 807).

142 Maurice Nédoncelle (1905-1976), philosopher and lecturer in Theology at the Faculty of Theology in Strasburg.

143 Probably a reference to Mrs Moore’s continued decline.

144 He was referring to his Preface in Essays Presented to Charles Williams (1947).

145 i.e., of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

146 For an account of the wedding see Clement Freud, Freud Ego (2001), pp. 99-100.

147 In her note to this letter, written on 4 October 1972, Bodle explained that she was wondering whether to take a German boy, Franzel, to New Zealand. ‘He didn’t go,’ she said. ‘He now has a doctorate & is on the staff of a German university’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/4, fol, 247).

148 See Don Luigi Pedrollo in the Biographical Appendix. Fr Pedrollo, a member of the Congregation of Poor Servants of Divine Providence in Verona, was answering on behalf of Don Giovanni Calabria. This letter first appeared in Una Gtota Insolita and was translated by Dr C. M. Bajetta.

149 Towards the end of his life (after 1949) St Giovanni Calabria was affected by a mysterious illness, which underwent a particularly acute phase in 1950. After a period of relief, following the Pentecost of 1951, his infirmity worsened and he died in 1954.

150 Horace, Carmina, I, 24, 1-2: ‘Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus/tam cari capitis?’: ‘Why blush to let our tears unmeasured fall/For one so dear?’.

151 i.e., Geoffrey Bles.

152 See the biography of Anne Ridler, friend of Charles Williams, in CL II, p. 658n, and Anne Ridler’s Memoirs (2004).

153 Ruth Pitter.

154 Charles Williams. Ridler criticised Williams’s use of ‘shend’ in a Taliessin poem.

155 See Martyn Skinner in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1072-3.

156 Martyn Skinner, Two Colloquies (1949).

157 ‘Collections’ are examination papers set by college tutors for their pupils. They take place either at the end of term (in which case students are tested on their work during the term) or at the beginning of term (on work set for the preceding vacation). In Magdalen, in Lewis’s day, Collections usually took place in Hall.

158 School Certificate examinations; for a definition see CL I, p. 612.

159 Skinner, Two Colloquies, ‘The Lobster and the Thatch’, 49.

160 ibid., 332.

161 ibid., ‘The Recluse, Part I, 13.

162 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘Milton’, 9.

163 Skinner, Two Colloquies, ‘The Lobster and the Thatch’, 220.

164 ibid., 239-43: ‘The sudden clatter of cutlery and crockery/As sliding through the ham the knife’s thin edge/Turns half to rose its honey-coloured wedge;/Or where the bronze pork sizzles still with heat/Clicks through the crackling to white mines of meat.’

165 John Milton, Works, vol. IV (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), Of Education, p. 286.

166 Skinner, Two Colloquies, ‘The Recluse’, Part II, 28.

167 ibid., ‘The Lobster and the Thatch’, 433.

168 King George I’s comment, ‘I hate all Boets and Bainters’ is found in John Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices (1949), ‘Lord Mansfield’.

169 See Harry Blamires in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, p. 1024. Blamires had been head of the English Department at King Alfred’s College, Winchester, since 1948.

170 Blamires had asked Lewis, his old tutor, to read and criticize his book English in Education (London: Bles, 1951).

171 ‘between ourselves’.

172 ‘Best professional judgement’.

173 Beowulf, I, xviii, 1206: ‘He was asking for trouble’.

174 The letter was unsigned.

175 See Mary Willis Shelburne in the Biographical Appendix. She is the author of Broken Pattern: Poems (Richmond: Dietz Press, 1951).

176 Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851-2), ch. 21: ‘“Do you know who made you?” “Nobody, as I knows on,” said the child, with a short laugh. The idea appeared to amuse her considerably, for her eyes twinkled, and she added–“I ‘sped I growed. Don’t think nobody never made me.” ‘

177 The Imitation of Christ is a manual of spiritual devotion first circulated in 1418 and traditionally ascribed to Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471). Lewis nearly always read this work in Latin, and when quoting it in English, he used his own translation.

178 The edition of this work used by Lewis was The Scale of Perfection by Walter Hilton, Augustinian canon of Thurgarton Priory, Nottinghamshire, modernized from the first printed edition of Wynkyn de Worde, London, 1494, by an oblate of Solesmes; with an introduction from the French of Dom M. Noetinger (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne Ltd [1927]).

179 In her letter of 20 November 1950 Mathews wrote: ‘I came upon such a beautiful message today by Era Giovanni (an extract from a letter, Anno Domini 1513) that I simply must pass it on to you’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Facs. c. 47, fol. 199). She went on to quote from Era Giovanni Giocondo (c. 1435-1515), A Letter to the Most Illustrious the Contesstna Allagta Delà Aldobrandeschi, Written Christmas Eve Anno Domini 1513 (193?). In 1970 the British Museum stated that it was impossible to identify Era Giovanni. The letter was published, probably in the 1930s, ‘with Christmas greetings’ from Greville MacDonald, son of George MacDonald, and his wife Mary. It is reprinted in various dictionaries of quotations.

180 Hermann Wilhelm Goering (1893-1946), German Nazi military leader, creator of the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, directed the German wartime economy. In 1939 he was named Hitler’s successor, but he later lost favour and in 1943 he was stripped of his command. ‘Guns will make us powerful,’ Goering said in a radio broadcast in 1936, ‘butter will only make us fat.’

181 George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906).

182 See Ruth Pitter in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1060-4.

* But fan mail from children is delightful. They don’t gas. They want to know whether Asian repaired Tumnus’s furniture for him. They take no interest in oneself and all in the story. Lovely

183 The Case for Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1943) was the American edition of Broadcast Talks.

184 Beyond Personality (London: Bles, 1944; New York: Macmillan, 1945).

185 J. B. Phillips, Letters to Young Churches: A Translation of the New Testament Epistles (1947). See Lewis’s letter to Phillips of 3 August 1943 (CL II, pp. 585-6).

186 Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876); The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

187 William Shakespeare, King Henry V (1600), IV, iii, 55.

188 Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24.

189 John 6:53.

190 i.e., in the Book of Common Prayer.

191 1 Corinthians 12:12: ‘For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.’

192 Mark 16:17-18: ‘These signs shall follow them that believe; In my name…they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’

193 See Sheldon Vanauken in the Biographical Appendix. Vanauken’s ‘Notes on the Letters’ are in the Bodleian Library (MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/2, fols. 152b-c).

194 Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977), ch. 2, p. 38.

195 ibid., ch. 4, pp. 87-8.

196 G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (1925).

197 Lewis uses the Chinese word ‘Tao’ in The Abolition of Man to mean natural law or morality.

198 The Rev. R. B. Gribbon, a relative of Arthur Greeves, was writing from Ballinderry Road, Easton, Maryland, USA.

199 i.e., The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

200 Rudyard Kipling, The Seven Seas (1896), ‘McAndrew’s Hymn’, II, 17-18: ‘Hail, snow an’ ice that praise the Lord: I’ve met them at their work,/An’ wished we had anither route or they anither kirk.’

201 In his second letter to Lewis, Vanauken said: ‘My fundamental dilemma is this: I can’t believe in Christ unless I have faith, but I can’t have faith unless I believe in Christ…Everyone seems to say: “You must have faith to believe.” Where do I get it? Or will you tell me something different? Is there a proof? Can Reason carry me over the gulf…without faith? Why does God expect so much of us?…If He made it clear that He is—as clear as a sunrise or a rock or a baby’s cry—wouldn’t we be right joyous to choose Him and His Law?’ (Vanauken, A Severe Mercy, ch. 4, pp. 90-1)

202 The Eleatic school of philosophers was founded by the Greek poet Xenophanes (born c. 570 BC), whose main teaching was that the universe is singular, eternal and unchanging. According to this view, as developed by later members of the Eleatic school, the appearances of multiplicity, change and motion are mere illusions.

203 William Shakespeare, Othello, The Moor of Venice (1622).

204 William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608).

205 Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711), II, 2.

206 Luke 10:7.

207 This note was added in Lewis’s hand.

208 ‘Let us pray for one another’.

209 ‘the beard of corn’.

210 Abul Kasim Mansur Firdausi (c. 950-1020), Persian poet, is the author of Shah-natneh. Considered the greatest national epic in world literature, the poem consists of 60,000 couplets. When the work was presented to the Sultan, he rewarded Firdausi with a pitiful amount of money. The disappointed Firdausi gave the money to a bath attendant and left for Afghanistan. Lewis regretted he could not read Persian, but in his poem ‘The Prodigality of Firdausi’, published in Punch, 215 (1 December 1948), p. 510, and reprinted in Poems and CP, he extols ‘Firdausi the strong Lion among poets’ and tells how handsomely he behaved at the hands of the Sultan.

211 Dorothy Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington (1889-1956), whose collected poems were published as Early Light (1955).

212 Sayer had asked if Pauline Baynes should illustrate all the Narnian stories. See Pauline Diana Baynes in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1018-22.

213 Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1643), II, x: ‘Great virtues and vices no less great’.

1951

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Jan 5/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Whether any individual Christian who attempts Faith Healing is prompted by genuine faith and charity or by spiritual pride is, I take it, a question we cannot decide. That is between God and him. Whether the cure occurs in any given case is clearly a question for the doctors. I am speaking now of healing by some act, such as anointing or laying on of hands. Praying for the sick—i.e. praying simply, without any overt act is unquestionably right and indeed we are commanded to pray for all men.¹ And of course your prayers can do real good.

Needless to say, they don’t do it either as a medicine does or as magic is supposed to do: i.e. automatically. Prayer is Request—like asking your employer for a holiday or asking a girl to marry one. God is free to grant the request or not: and if He does you cannot prove scientifically that the thing wd. not have happened anyway. Just as the boss might (for all you know) have given you a holiday even if you hadn’t asked. (Cynical people of my sex will tell one that if a girl has determined to marry you, married you wd. have been whether you asked her or not!). Thus one can’t establish the efficacy of prayer by statistics as you might establish the connection between pure milk and fewer cases of tuberculosis. It remains a matter of faith and of God’s personal action: it would become a matter of demonstration only if it were impersonal or mechanical.²

When I say ‘personal’ I do not mean private or individual. All our prayers are united with Christ’s perpetual prayer and are part of the Church’s prayer. (In praying for people one dislikes I find it v. helpful to remember that one is joining in His prayer for them.)

With all best wishes for the New Year.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD): ³

Magdalen College

Oxford

Jan 5/51

Dear Mr. Van Auken

We must ask three questions about the probable effect of changing your research subject to something more theological.

(1.) Wd. it be better for your immediate enjoyment? Answer, probably but not certainly, Yes.

(2.) Wd. it be better for your academic career? Answer, probably No. You wd. have to make up in haste a lot of knowledge which cd. not be v. easily digested in the time.

(3.) Wd. it be better for your soul? I don’t know. I think there is a great deal to be said for having one’s deepest spiritual interest distinct from one’s ordinary duty as a student or professional man.

St Paul’s job was tent-making. When the two coincide I shd. have thought there was a danger lest the natural interest in one’s job and the pleasures of gratified ambition might be mistaken for spiritual progress and spiritual consolation: and I think clergymen sometimes fall into this trap.

Contrariwise, there is the danger that what is boring or repellent in the job may alienate one from the spiritual life. And finally someone has said ‘None are so unholy as those whose hands are cauterised with holy things’:⁴ sacred things may become profane by becoming matters of the job. You now want truth for her own sake: how will it be when the same truth is also needed for an effective footnote in your thesis? In fact, the change might do good or harm. I’ve always been glad myself that Theology is not the thing I earn my living by. On the whole, I’d advise you to get on with your tent-making. The performance of a duty will probably teach you quite as much about God as academic Theology wd. do. Mind, I’m not certain: but that is the view I incline to.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD): TS

REF.23/51.

Magdalen College,

6th January 1951

Dear Miss Pitter,

No, don’t! I mean don’t waste a copy on me. Contemporary pictures be blowed! It sounds horrible: the Ugly Duchess with a vengeance.

Incidentally, what is the point of keeping in touch with the contemporary scene? Why should one read authors one does’nt like because they happen to be alive at the same time as oneself? One might as well read everyone who had the same job or the same coloured hair, or the same income, or the same chest measurements, as far as I can see. I whistle, and plunge into the tunnel of term.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO PAULINE BAYNES (BOD):⁵ TS

RER20/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

8th January 1951.

Dear Miss Baynes,

My idea was that the map should be more like a medieval map than an Ordnance Survey–mountains and castles drawn—perhaps winds blowing at the corners—and a few heraldic-looking ships, whales and dolphins in the sea.⁶ Asian gazing at the moon would make an excellent cover design (to be repeated somewhere in the book; but do as you please about that.)

My brother once more joins me in all good wishes.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

You didn’t keep me a bit too long and I shd. have been v. glad if you’d stayed longer. I was hurried (I hope, not rudely so) only because I didn’t want to be left with a long vacancy between your departure and the next train).

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

8/1/51

Dear Mr. Van Auken

Look: the question is not whether we should bring God into our work or not. We certainly should and must: as MacDonald says ‘All that is not God is death.’⁷ The question is whether we should simply (a.) Bring Him in in the dedication of our work to Him, in the integrity, diligence, & humility with which we do it or also (b.) Make His professed and explicit service our job. The A vocation rests on all men whether they know it or not: the B vocation only on those who are specially called to it. Each vocation has its peculiar dangers & peculiar rewards. Naturally, I can’t say which is yours.

When I spoke of danger to your academic career on a change of subject I was thinking chiefly of time. If you can get an extra year, it wd. be another matter. I was not at all meaning that ‘intellectual history’ involving Theology wd. in itself he academically a bad field of research.

I shall at any time be glad to see, or hear from you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TOP. H. NEWBY(BBC): ⁸

C4/HT/PHN

Magdalen College

Oxford

11/1/51

Dear Mr. Newby

I don’t think I’d care to do a Work in Progress on my OHEL volume.⁹ I am hoping to drop rather a bomb by that book and don’t want to give too many warnings. Thanks for asking me.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER (BOD): ¹⁰

Magdalen College

Oxford

14/1/51

Dear Mr. (or Professor?) Kinter

The title of my children’s book (by the way, it is a single story not a collection) is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and the American edition is by Macmillan N. Y The only printed verse of mine outside the Regress (and a very early volume wh. I don’t want remembered)¹¹ is a poem called Dymer, recently reprinted with a new preface by Dents.¹² It first appeared in 1926 (I think—I’m weak on dates): also in Punch, over the signature N.W. (= Nat. Whilk = O.E. nát hwylc) several short pieces wh. are chiefly experiments in internal rhyme and consonance—not to be read unless you have strong metrical interests.

An amusing question whether my trilogy¹³ is an epic! Clearly, in virtue of its fantastic elements, it cd. only be an epic of the Ariosto type.¹⁴ But I shd. call it a Romance myself: it lacks sufficient roots in legend and tradition to be what I’d call an epic. Isn’t it more the method of Apuleius, Lucian and Rabelais, but diverted from a comic to a serious purpose?

No, I certainly didn’t know about the dissertation on Bernardus. And I’ve lost my own copy of the text!¹⁵

With many thanks & good wishes. Be sure and look me up if you’re ever rash enough to visit this conquered island.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF.25/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

18th January 1951.

My dear Mr. Allen,

If when you first began to keep us afloat I had known that your kindness was going to continue over a number of years, I would have kept a record of your parcels; the number must now run into scores, and the weight into hundredweights! How do you do it? As I said once before, it is not so much your generosity as your hard work which impressed me; if the case was reversed, I hope I should try to behave to you and Mrs. Allen as you have done to me. But I should draw the line at coming home from my job and settling down to packing! (Anyway, I could’nt do it, being one of those whose fingers are all thumbs). Both the 11th and 12th December parcels have come in, and we are both very grateful for them.

They have I’m afraid been here a few days, but it is the beginning of the term, and my brother has only just got up after an attack of ‘flu, which has put us all behindhand. This is one of the worst influenza years we have had for a long time, and is in fact a battle on two fronts; one ‘wave’ of the disease coming over from Norway, and the other working north across France from the Mediterranean. Different types too, which is not making the doctor’s work any easier. In the north it is so bad that work at the port of Liverpool is held up, and they are burying people by night, as in the plague days. This does nothing to dissipate the gloom with which we, and no doubt you too, regard the prospects for 1951.

The brightest spot so far in the year has been the tonic of Eisenhower’s arrival:¹⁶ who is proving himself no mean diplomatist, and has won golden opinions wherever he has been. I see that even in Italy the hostile reception engineered for him by the Communists was a complete fiasco. He was made a freeman of the City of London at the end of the war, and there he made a big hit by talking of his ‘fellow Londoners’–and by recognizing and shaking hands with the chauffeur who had driven him during the war. Little things of course, but the little things count. I must say I don’t envy him his job though; not even Eisenhower can hold the Russians unless he is provided with an army, and the army still seems to be in the committee stage.

A small letter is a mighty poor return for two large parcels: but pupils are already knocking at the door, and I must get to work.

With many thanks and all the best wishes to you and your mother for 1951,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

Janie King Moore died at the Restholme Nursing Home, Oxford, on 12 January 1951. She was buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, in the same grave as her friend Alice Hamilton Moore. ¹⁷

TO SARAH NEYIAN (W): TS

RER60/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26th January 1951.

My dear Sarah

I am 100% with you about Rider Haggard. You know he wrote a sequel to She told by Holly, and called Ayesha; She and Alan, told by A. Quartermain: and Wisdom’s Daughter told by She herself.¹⁸ What comes out from reading all four is that She was (as Job assumed) a dreadful liar. A. Quartermain was the only man who wasn’t taken in by her. She is the best story of the four, though not the best written. A missionary told me that he had seen a little ruined Kxaal where the natives told him a white witch used to live who was called She-who-must-be-obeyed. Rider Haggard had no doubt heard this too, and that is the kernel of the story.

I also have just had ‘flu or I’d write more. Love to all.

Your affectionate Godfather,

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen etc

31/1/51

My dear Arthur

Minto died a fortnight ago. Please pray for her soul.

Wd. it suit you if I arrived at your local inn on Sat. March 31st and left on Mon. April 16th? Can you let me know by return? And also if the inn cd. have me?¹⁹ If they’re fed up with my choppings & changings you can truly tell them that my circumstances are wholly changed. God bless you.

Yours

Jack

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD): ²⁰

Magdalen College

Oxford

31/1/51

My dear Roger

What two nights can you come to me? I prefer not a week end if you can possibly manage it. I suggest Feb 28 & 29th. (Feb 13, 20 & March 2nd no good). I miss you v. much. Love & duty to all of you.

Yours

Jack

TO MRS HALMBACHER(WHL):

Magdalen College,

January 1951

Dear Mrs Halmbacher

How very kind of you. This is absolutely the present I wanted, for the nuisance and waste of time of finding that one has’nt got an envelope at a critical moment is serious…

We are all chuckling over a certain West of England resort which is I’m told circulating the American tourist agencies to this effect–‘When you come to England come straight to—. We guarantee that we are taking absolutely no part in the Festival of Britain.’²¹

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

7/2/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

First, I must apologise for not having acknowledged Woodbridge on Nature.²² It arrived safely: many thanks. I have not read it yet but it is on the waiting list. (You will understand that I am never in the position of looking for a book to read, but nearly always looking for time in which to read books!)

If ‘planning’ is taken in the literal sense of thinking before one acts and acting on what one has thought out to the best of one’s ability, then of course planning is simply the traditional virtue of Prudence and not only compatible with, but demanded by, Christian ethics. But if the word is used (as I think you use it) to mean some particular politico-social programme, such as that of the present British Govt, then one cd. only say after examining that programme in detail. I don’t think I have studied it enough to do that. As for the ‘planning’ involved in your social work I am of course even less qualified.

It is certainly not wrong to try to remove the natural consequences of sin provided the means by which you remove them are not in themselves another sin. (E.g. it is merciful and Christian to remove the natural consequences of fornication by giving the girl a bed in a maternity ward and providing for the child’s keep and education, but wrong to remove them by abortion or infanticide). Perhaps the enclosed article (I don’t want it back) will make the point clearer.

Where benevolent planning, armed with political or economic power, can become wicked is when it tramples on people’s rights for the sake of their good.

Your letter gave me great pleasure: you are apparently on the right road. With all blessings.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

On 8 February 1951 there was a vote for the Professor of Poetry by the MAs of Oxford University. C. S. Lewis was running against Cecil Day-Lewis.²³ Warnie Lewis wrote in his diary that evening: ‘While we were waiting to dine at the Royal Oxford…came the bad news that [Jack] had been defeated by C. Day Lewis for the Poetry Chair, by 194 votes to 173.J took it astonishingly well, much better than his backers.’²⁴

TO SEYMOUR SPENCER (P): ²⁵

Magdalen etc.

28/2/51

Dear Doctor Spencer

Thanks v. much for the bit from Fromm.²⁶

I enclose an offprint (I don’t want it back) from the Australian Twentieth Century wh. I hope makes my point clear.²⁷ Quote directly or indirectly from this at pleasure. I look forward to seeing yr. paper in the Month and wd. be happy to read the typescript if you think I can be of any help.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ‘MRS LOCKLEY (L): ²⁸

[Magdalen College]

5 March 1951

How right you are: the great thing is to stop thinking about happiness. Indeed the best thing about happiness itself is that it liberates you from thinking about happiness—as the greatest pleasure that money can give us is to make it unnecessary to think about money. And one sees why we have to be taught the ‘not thinking’ when we lack as well as when we have. And I’m sure that, as you say, you will ‘get through somehow in the end’.

Here is one of the fruits of unhappiness: that it forces us to think of life as something to go through. And out at the other end. If only we could steadfastly do that while we are happy, I suppose we shd. need no misfortunes. It is hard on God really. To how few of us He dare send happiness because He knows we will forget Him if He gave us any sort of nice things for the moment…

I do get that sudden feeling that the whole thing is hocus pocus and it now worries me hardly at all. Surely the mechanism is quite simple? Sceptical, incredulous, materialistic ruts have been deeply engraved in our thought, perhaps even in our physical brains by all our earlier lives. At the slightest jerk our thought will flow down those old ruts. And notice when the jerks come. Usually at the precise moment when we might receive Grace. And if you were a devil would you not give the jerk just at those moments? I think that all Christians have found that he is v. active near the altar or on the eve of conversion: worldly anxieties, physical discomforts, lascivious fancies, doubt, are often poured in at such junctures…But the Grace is not frustrated. One gets more by pressing steadily on through these interruptions than on occasions when all goes smoothly…

I am glad you all liked ‘The Lion’. A number of mothers, and still more, schoolmistresses, have decided that it is likely to frighten children, so it is not selling very well. But the real children like it, and I am astonished how some very young ones seem to understand it. I think it frightens some adults, but very few children…

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

6/3/51

My dear Roger

(Of course, yes: I thought I had asked you to do so). You are quite right about a wood fire.²⁹ Wood keeps on glowing red again in the places you have already extinguished—phoenix-like. Even the large webbed feet of a marsh-wiggle couldn’t do it. Yet it must be a flat hearth, I think. Does peat go out easily by treading? As an Irishman I ought to know, but don’t. I think it will have to [be] a coal fire on a flat hearth. After all, Underland might well use coal, whereas wood or charcoal wd. have to be imported.

I finished the Antigeos book.³⁰ There are two and only two, good ideas in it: the (supposed) ‘fog’ on the voyage and the great tidal waves on the Antigosian sea. All else is as dull as ditchwater: a flat, featureless, landscape and deadly municipal restaurants. The inhabitants are less interesting than any other-worlders I have yet met.

I enjoyed our biduum³¹ or pair-o’-days v. much. Love to both.

Yours

Jack

TO RUTH PITTER (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

17/3/51

Dear Miss Pitter

I hope you haven’t thought I was being such a brute beast as to obey your ‘Don’t write’. I was more innocently employed in having my third dose of influenza this year–or rather, now that I look at the date of your letter, it must have been my second and third, for the flash of daylight between the two tunnels was almost too short to notice.

The book is most beautiful,³² yet not with any fussy and intrusive beauty that reduces the poems to parts of a pattern. My old friends look better in their new site—for I’m no Manichean, and think the beautiful soul should have a beautiful body. But one reason why they look better is that they are better than I remembered. I find that my very favourite, The Sparrow’s Skull, had in memory preserved only its poignancy and lost a great deal of its delicacy and poetic breeding. More shame to me when it was on my shelves and memory—apparently a vulgarising memory—could have been corrected. I say, Sinking, which I hadn’t properly noticed before, is a corker. So indeed are dozens. It is a good time for re-reading: I have the precious vulnerability of the convalescent. Why do they call it ‘depression’? I like it.

The engraving is perfect except for (possibly) the Muses’ profile where I think the heavy, moustache-like shadow on the upper lip is a pity:³³ but probably not so in the original. Yes. I have good reason to remember your vine and ‘to consider it’ (as in this picture) ‘is to taste it spiritually’–so Traherne says in his Centuries of Meditations,³⁴ which I expect you know and am sure, if you know, you love.

When next term cd. you come down and lunch? There’s an extra reason: you have property to reclaim. Groping in the inn’ards of an old arm chair lately (a place which rivals the sea bed for lost treasure) I fished out a spectacle case which, being opened, revealed your golden name wrapped in your silver address. So come in May or June: preferably not a Tuesday. Let me know your ideas on this.

I’m off to Northern Ireland after Easter to try my native air—half frightened at the thought. Very many thanks for the book: it has given me great pleasure already.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

17/3/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

No. Unless it attracts you as an amusement I wouldn’t advise you to start attending ‘classes’. My idea is that unless one has to qualify oneself for a job (which you haven’t) the only sensible reason for studying anything is that one has a strong curiosity about it. And if one has, one can’t help studying it. I don’t see any point in attending lectures etc with some general notion of ‘self-improvement’–unless, as I say, one finds it fun.

I never see why we should do anything unless it is either a duty or a pleasure! Life’s short enough without filling up hours unnecessarily. And I think one usually learns more from a book than from a lecture.

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO CHRISTIAN HARDIE (P): ³⁵

Magdalen etc

22/3/51

Dear Christian

Your commands have been obeyed.³⁶ About half way through, not having yet met a single scene or character that thoroughly engaged my interest, I nearly gave up: but perseverance was rewarded, for the second half is better. One forgives Julia quite a lot for her outburst on p 255 about Charles’s ‘damned bounderish way’.

Waugh is a writer, certainly. Many descriptions, phrases, and long-tailed similes pleased me: but not the novel, as a novel. If one’s going to tell the story through one of the characters then, surely, either that character ought to be a fairly sane and straightforward one (as in Erewhon³⁷ or Rob Roy),³⁸ or else, if he’s a monstrosity, then the other characters ought to be normal (as in Hogg’s Justified Sinner³⁹ or McKenna’s Well Meaning Woman).⁴⁰

As Chesterton said, you can have a story about a knight among dragons, but not about a dragon among dragons.⁴¹ Or, to come nearer, I can manage humans seen in a distorting mirror or goblins seen in an ordinary mirror: but goblins in a distorting mirror is too much. In spite of clear distinctions, the narrator is so very much ‘the same kind of thing’ as Blanche & Sebastian and his own father & Ld. M, and all the others—the tiresome seen through the eyes of the tiresome. And Sebastian would be a terrible bore on any terms. The narrator’s spontaneous dislike [of] all nice people (e.g. old Lady M. or Ld. Brideshead) has, I suppose, a theological significance?

But apart from all this—what, please, ought I now to know about the ‘contemporary scene’ after reading it? His picture of undergraduate life is, I suspect, much more characteristic of 1912 than of 1923: but for obvious reasons cd. not be really characteristic of any period. Not even characteristic within the circles he describes: for though I didn’t know them, I do know that if I did they wouldn’t look at all like that to me–any more than the circles I do know consist solely of Hoopers.⁴² Julia’s excellent remark about Mottram on p. 277 (‘He was a tiny bit of one’) seems to me true of all the characters except Julia herself. There isn’t one that is round and live like Levin⁴³ or the Rostovs,⁴⁴ or Archdeacon Grantly,⁴⁵ or Ld. Monmouth in Coningsby.⁴⁶ They’re more like people out of an Oscar Wilde melodrama, only without the epigrams.

Am I missing the point? Haunted by that fear I asked a man so young that W is to him an old master what he had got out of the book. He said ‘Oh, snob-value: it delighted the housemaid in me’ (i.e. he got out of it the same sort of pleasure my generation got out of Benson—I mean the Dodo one).⁴⁷ But that can’t be why you admire it. Nor can you think that ‘the contemporary scene’ is just what W describes: because after all we have independent access (worse luck!) to that scene. I’m puzzled.

You shall prescribe me a book to read every Lent: a kind of literary hair shirt.

You gave me a charming interlude on Tuesday—a bit of ‘contemporary scene’ quite omitted by W.!

Yours

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

[The Kilns]

23/3/51

My dear Arthur

Naturally, without a Co. Down Ry.⁴⁸ time-table I can’t tell you what time I’d be at Helen’s Bay! But we shall find better uses for your petrol, and I’ll come by bus from Oxford St. I’m glad to know there’s a ‘regular’ service and am wondering whether it runs regularly every 5 minutes, every hour, once a week, or only a century.⁴⁹ No doubt I shall find out.

Looking forward!–yes, I can’t keep the feeling within bounds. I know now how a bottle of champagne feels while the wire is being taken off the cork.

Yours

Jack

Pop!!

TO DOUGLAS EDISON HARDING (P): ⁵⁰

Magdalen etc

Easter Day [25 March] 1951

Dear Mr. Harding

Hang it all, you’ve made me drunk, roaring drunk as I haven’t been on a book (I mean, a book of doctrine: imaginative works are another matter) since I first read Bergson during World War I.⁵¹ Who or what are you? How have you lived 40 years without my hearing of you before? Understand at once that my delight is not, alas!, so significant as it may seem, for I was never a scientist and have long ceased to be even the very minor philosopher I once was.

A great deal of your book is completely beyond me. My opinion is of no value. But my sensation is that you have written a work of the highest genius. It may not be—I mean, I can’t vouch that it is–philosophical genius. It may be only literary genius. The feeling I get is like a mix up of Pindar, Dante, & Patmore. (But can anything be so well written if it’s not good thought as well?). You follow the rocket course wh. you ascribe to Tellus.⁵² Paragraph after paragraph starts as if we were embarked for only the sort of Pantheistic uplift one gets in Emerson, but then swoops down and comes all clean & hard. But remember always, I don’t really understand: especially the crucial cap. 13 wh. is no easier than the Deduction of the Categories. (One difficulty is that my excitement makes me read it too quickly).

One criticism. Somebody is sure to answer the Missing Head gambit by saying that it wd. have no meaning for a blind man who knew the world and himself by palpation instead of vision.⁵³ My head is just as feelable (tho’ not as visible) as the rest of me. In other words, they’ll say, you have merely tripped over the fact that the eyes are in the Head. I’m sure this objection misses the real point: but had it not better be obviated, if only in a footnote?

England is disgraced if this book doesn’t get published: yet ordinary publishers will be so likely to send it to someone like Ryle to vet, and that will be fatal. Gollancz, Sheed, Faber, are possibles.

May I pass on my copy to Owen Barfield?–I must have someone to talk to about it.

When can we meet? Can you come over sometime next May or June and dine? (I can provide bed & breakfast)

I now feel that my illnesses etc are no excuse for my not having read it before. That this celestial bomb shd. have lain undetonated on my table all these months is a kind of allegory. Thanks to the Nth.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

P.S. On p. 97 (30b) Further, it was until recently often held…By whom? I thought the doctrine always was that of my eldila⁵⁴–‘He has no need at all for anything that is made⁵⁵…He has infinite use for all that is made.’

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD): TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26th March 1951.

Dear Miss Pitter,

May I book May 10th: 1.15? The ferly in the engraving is not at all like a concrete mixer.⁵⁶

I did’nt know arm chairs were ever cleaned: should they be?⁵⁷

Yours ignorantly,

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER(W): TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26th March 1951.

My dear George,

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things⁵⁸–but chiefly of when you next propose to take a bed in College. Any time you like after the 23rd of next month, Mondays excepted, and also excepting 8th and 15th May.

Pray, Sir, how does Moira do? And Cardinal Schwanda?⁵⁹ All well here except myself, who have a bad cold; but I’m off to Ireland I hope on Friday for a fortnight, which may shift it. (Warnie in his usual way of encouragement, reads me paragraphs from the paper at breakfast about liners wind bound in the Mersey and waves 61/2 feet high off the Irish coast.)

Yours

Jack

TO CHRISTIAN HARDIE (P):

[Magdalen]

27/3/51

Dear Christian

The difference isn’t exactly that I read a novel for the characters. It’s more that for me a novel, or any work of art, is primarily a Thing, an Object, enjoyed for its colour, proportions, atmosphere, its flavour—the Odyssey-ishness of the Odyssey⁶⁰ or the Learishness of K Lear: but never, never (here is the real difference) as a personal acquaintance with the author.

Of course it is not a question of where I like the characters in the sense of wishing to meet them in real life. In that sense I like Sebastian better than lulia (or dislike him less): but I ‘like’ lulia better as a character in the sense that I find her live & worth reading about, while I find him dull. What matters more than absolute liking or disliking is some degree of sympathy with the author’s revealed preferences. I didn’t think the mother & Brideshead ‘priggish & imperious’ & I didn’t think Ryder ‘a sane & ordinary chap!’ As to liking & disliking the ‘idea’ of twitch-on-the-thread, I’m not absolutely certain that I often have any experience I wd. call liking or disliking an idea.

My trouble is quite different: a twitch-on-the-thread conversion doesn’t seem to me to be capable of artistic presentation. When the old man crosses himself we are shown (and can only be shown) only the physical gesture. The difference between (a.) Grace (b.) Momentary sentiment (c.) Semi-conscious revival of a gesture learned in childhood, can’t appear. It can be in real life. But in art de non existentibus et non apparentibus eadem lex.⁶¹ In fact, we’re left to put in all the important part for ourselves. I know about the veil over Agamemnon’s face:⁶² but the success must have depended on the rest of the picture

As to whether ‘religious people should be good’ Nicholas⁶³ seemed to have sounder views than Waugh!

I await your next prescription with interest. We might even make it Advent instead of Lent!

I liked yr. friend extremely.

Yours

Jack

TO VERA MATHEWS (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

27/3/51

Dear Miss Mathews

I have just got your letter of the 22nd. containing the sad news of your father’s death. But, dear lady, I hope you and your mother are not really ‘trying to pretend it didn’t happen’. It does happen, happens to all of us, and I have no patience with the high minded people who make out that it ‘doesn’t matter’. It matters a great deal, and very solemnly. And for those who are left, the pain is not the whole thing. I feel v. strongly (and I am not alone in this) that some good comes from the dead to the living in the months or weeks after the death. I think I was much helped by my own father after his death: as if our Lord welcomed the newly dead with the gift of some power to bless those they have left behind; His birthday present. Certainly, they often seem just at that time, to be very near us. God bless you all and give you grace to receive all the good in this, as in every other event, is intended you.

My brother joins me in great thanks for all your kindnesses, and especially on behalf of dear little comical Victor Drewe—our barber, as you know.⁶⁴ When he cut my hair last week he spoke in the most charming way of his wife who has just been ill and (he said) ‘She looks so pretty, Sir, so pretty, but terribly frail.’ It made one want to laugh & cry at the same time—the lover’s speech, and the queer little pot-bellied, grey-headed, unfathomably respectable figure. You don’t misunderstand my wanting to laugh, do you? We shall, I hope, all enjoy one another’s funniness openly in a better world.

I have had flu’ three times but am better now and am going for a holiday on Friday. As to beef—it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good: I expect the bulls enjoy roaming the Argentine plains & really like that better than being eaten in England!

Yrs. Sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO WARHELD M. FIROR(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

27/3/51

My dear Firor

Your letter came to cheer a rather grim day. I have never known a spring like this: the sun has hardly appeared since last October and this morning a thin mixture of rain & snow is falling. My own household is lucky because we have a wood, and therefore wood (what a valuable idiom) for fires: there is hardly any coal in England. The worst of a wood fire—delightful to eye and nose—is that it demands continual attention. But this is a trifle: many people have to spend most of their leisure at the cinema because it is the only warm place. (I hardly ever go myself. Do you? It seems to me an astonishingly ugly art. I don’t mean ‘ugly’ in any high flying moral or spiritual sense, but just disagreeable to the eye–crowded, unrestful, inharmonious)

There has been a great change in my life owing to the death of the old lady I called my mother. She died without apparent pain after many months of semi conscious existence, and it wd. be hypocritical to pretend that it was a grief to us.

Of your three rules I heartily agree with the first and the third. The second (‘keep rested’) sounds at first as if our obedience to it must v. often depend on many factors outside our control. I can think of some in whose ears it would sound like a cruel mockery. But I suspect that you have a reply. Do you mean that there is a kind of rest which ‘no man taketh from us’⁶⁵ and which can be preserved even in the life of a soldier on active service or of a woman who works behind a counter all day and then goes home to work and mend and wash? And no doubt there is: but it doesn’t always include rest for the legs.

‘His plan for the day’–yes, that is all important. And I keep losing sight of it: in days of leisure and happiness perhaps even more than in what we call ‘bad’ days.

The whole difficulty with me is to keep control of the mind and I wish one’s earliest education had given one more training in that. There seems to be a disproportion between the vastness of the soul in one respect (i.e. as a mass of ideas and emotions) and its smallness in another (i.e. as central, controlling ego). The whole inner weather changes so completely in less than a minute. Do you read George Herbert—

If what soul doth feel sometimes My soul might always feel—⁶⁶

He’s a good poet and one who helped to bring me back to the Faith.

My brother and all other ham-eating beneficiaries (shd. I call us Hamsters?) join me in good wishes. All blessings.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS HALMBACHER(L):

[Magdalen College

March 1951]

The question for me (naturally) is not ‘Why should I not be a Roman Catholic?’ but ‘Why should I?’ But I don’t like discussing such matters, because it emphasises differences and endangers charity. By the time I had really explained my objection to certain doctrines which differentiate you from us (and also in my opinion from the Apostolic and even the Medieval Church), you would like me less.

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD):

17/4/51

Dear Van Auken

My prayers are answered. No: a glimpse is not a vision. But to a man on a mountain road by night, a glimpse of the next three feet of road may matter more than a vision of the horizon. And there must perhaps always be just enough lack of demonstrative certainty to make free choice possible: for what could we do but accept if the faith were like the multiplication table?

There will be a counter attack on you, you know, so don’t be too alarmed when it comes. The enemy will not see you vanish into God’s company without an effort to reclaim you. Be busy learning to pray and (if you have made up yr. mind on the denominational question) get confirmed.

Blessings on you and a hundred thousand welcomes. Make use of me in any way you please: and let us pray for each other always.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO R. W. CHAPMAN (BOD): ⁶⁷

Magdalen

17/4/51

Dear Chapman

Did I ever denigrate Horace? If so, I deserve to be struck blind like Stesichorus (was it?) for insulting Helen.⁶⁸ But I dare say I did: I wouldn’t now. The truth is I am just returning to him after a period of idolatrous admiration for him in boyhood and a long intervening alienation. The risus ab angulo stanza⁶⁹ alone is proof enough.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

18/4/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Thanks for your letter of the 7th. I have just returned from a holiday and the time since has been spent in writing about 40 letters with my own hand: so much for Ivory Towers.

I also find your question v. difficult in my own life. What is right we usually know, or it is our own fault if we don’t: but what is prudent or sensible we often do not. Is it part of the scheme that we shd. ordinarily be left to make the best we can of our own v. limited and merely probable reasonings? I don’t know. Or wd. guidance even on these points be more largely given if we had early enough acquired the regular habit of seeking it?

How terrible your anxiety about your daughter must have been. She shall have her place in my prayers, such as they are.

Walsh didn’t know much about my private life.⁷⁰ Strictly between ourselves, I have lived most of it (that is now over) in a house wh. was hardly ever at peace for 24 hours, amidst senseless wranglings, lyings, backbitings, follies, and scares. I never went home without a feeling of terror as to what appalling situation might have developed in my absence. Only now that it is over (tho’ a different trouble has taken its place)⁷¹ do I begin to realise quite how bad it was.

God bless you all.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO SISTER MADELEVA CSC (W): ⁷²

Magdalen College,

Oxford

18/4/51

Dear Sister Madeleva

I don’t know whether I shd. thank you or your publishers for so kindly sending me a copy of your wholly delightful Lost Language.⁷³ At any rate I have to thank you for writing it. There has been nothing v. like it before and it emphasises a side of Chaucer too often neglected. I am glad you say a word on behalf of ‘conventions’ on p. 17. I always tell my pupils that a ‘convention’ appears to be such only when it has ended.

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MISS BRECKENRIDGE (I):

Magdalen etc

19 April 1951

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.

Many religious people, I’m told, have physical symptoms like the ‘prickles’ in the shoulder. But the best mystics set no value on that sort of thing, and do not set much on visions either. What they seek and get is, I believe, a kind of direct experience of God, immediate as a taste or colour. There is no reasoning in it, but many would say that it is an experience of the intellect—the reason resting in its enjoyment of its object…

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

[The Kilns]

22/4/51

My dear Arthur

You were quite right to leave me when you did. A farewell meal is a doleful business: it was much better for me to get my luggage dumped and my berth found & for you to be back at home as soon as possible.

Thank Elizabeth for her letter.⁷⁴ She will understand, I am sure, why I don’t want to continue the discussion by post: my correspondence involves a great number of theological letters already which can’t be neglected because they are answers to people in great need of help & often in great misery.

I have hardly ever had so much happiness as during our late holiday. God bless you–and the Unbelievable.⁷⁵ Pas de jambon encore.⁷⁶

Yours

Jack

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

22/4/51

My dear Roger—

May 31st & June 1st will do me nicely. May I book you a room for those two nights?

I doubt if you’ll find me both in and without a pupil on April 26th except between lunch & tea, when I suppose June will be in the Sheldonian. Cd. you ring me up if convenient?

Love to all three.

Yours

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

[The Kins]

23/4/51

My dear Arthur

 (1.) A Ham has been posted to you today.

 (2.) My plans, if they fit with Yours, for the summer are as follows.

 (a.) Short visit to C’fordsburn with W. Aug. 10 (arrive llth)-Aug. 14

 (b.) Stay with W. in S’thern Ireland Aug. 14-28.

 (c.) Longer visit to C’fordsburn alone Aug. 28-Sept. 11th. Can you be in residence at Silver Hill Aug. 28th-Sept. 11th?

Blessings,

Jack

TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS OSB (W):

Magdalen etc.

23/4/51

Dear Dom Bede—

A succession of illnesses and a holiday in Ireland have so far kept me from tackling Lubac.⁷⁷ The Prelude⁷⁸ has accompanied me through all the stages of my pilgrimage: it and the Aeneid (which I never feel you value sufficiently) are the two long poems to wh. I most often return.

The tension you speak of (if it is a tension) between doing full & generous justice to the Natural while also paying unconditional & humble obedience to the Supernatural is to me an absolute key position. I have no use for mere either-or people (except, of course, in that last resort, when the choice, the plucking out the right eye, is upon us: as it is in some mode, every day.⁷⁹ But even then a man needn’t abuse & blackguard his right eye. It was a good creature: it is my fault, not its, that I have got myself into a state wh. necessitates jettisoning it).

The reason I doubt whether it is, in principle, even a tension is that, as it seems to me, the subordination of Nature is demanded if only in the interests of Nature herself. All the beauty of nature withers when we try to make it absolute. Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first & we lose both first and second things.⁸⁰ We never get, say, even the sensual pleasure of food at its best when we are being greedy.

As to Man being in ‘evolution’, I agree, tho’ I wd. rather say ‘in process of being created’.

I am no nearer to your Church than I was but don’t feel v. inclined to re-open a discussion. I think it only widens & sharpens differences. Also, I’ve had enough of it on the opposite flank lately, having fallen among—a new type to me—bigoted & proselytising Quakers! I really think that in our days it is the ‘undogmatic’ & ‘liberal’ people who call themselves Christians that are most arrogant & intolerant. I expect justice & even courtesy from many Atheists and, much more, from your people: from Modernists, I have come to take bitterness and rancour as a matter of course.

I might get down to see you some time this year. No chance of your visiting Oxford?

Yours always

C. S. Lewis

TO WARHELD M. FIROR(BOD):

Magdalen etc.

23/4/51

Dear Firor

I guessed what response my news would elicit from your friendly heart and awaited it with mixed pleasure and pain: pleasure because your amazing good will (I am still puzzled as to how I acquired it) is always as cheering as a bright fire on a winter day, pain because I cannot respond as you wd. wish. I have seized my new freedom to get that infernal book on the XVIth Century done, or as nearly done as I can. The College is giving me a year off to do it, but the work can be done only in England, and much less ambitious holidays than a jaunt to America will serve my turn.

I am not naturally mobile. But you are. Is there no chance of seeing you in England? (Not, of course, in connection with this idiotic ‘Festival’⁸¹ of which I and some others are heartily ashamed—such untimely nonsense!)

And now to business…I feel twice the man I have been for the last ten years. God bless you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO COLIN HARDIE (P): ⁸²

24/4/51

Dear Colin—

This is even more exciting than Oedipus.⁸³ The excessive length comes from the intrusion of matter relevant & interesting for the history of Greek religion but not, or not so much, for the Christian interpretation of reviving Gk. Myths. Unfortunately you are so concatenated & sagacious that v. few of the bits I want removed come away quite clean. Amputation, especially in another man’s work, is v. dangerous, so the following lists of delenda must be treated as tentative, and if you accept all or any of them you must then go carefully through what is left to remove ‘fossils’. They are

Dele⁸⁴ on p3 from It is the presupposition to Trojans raw from At this point (5a) to types of character (5e) from who formed a guild (9) to and unity (10) from Groups of three (11) to or under earth (12) from Professor Rose, thinking (12) to human history (15) from We have seen (16) to of sacrifice (17) from To the Aegean peoples to where they could (19) Then go to ‘The Greeks, unlike the Aegean peoples, allowed the idea’ etc. from The Greek idea (2) to always disbelieved (21) from In popular theology (24) to from matter (25)

Most, if not all, of these I shall be sorry to lose. But, as Ridley sagely remarks, the business of a cutter is to cut.⁸⁵ You cd. expect from me only one of three things: a refusal to cut, a recommendation to cut passages because they were bad, or a recommendation to cut passages although they were good. You’ve got the third wh. is presumably what you’d prefer.

I do long to see all this out in book form where you have elbow room, for I really think it is some of the most important work that is being done in our time. I think I told you before of the advice wh. old Macan⁸⁶ gave me long ago ‘Don’t put off writing until you know everything or you’ll be too old to write decently’

It must be fun being you.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

30/4/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen—

No, the ‘different trouble’ is not an illness, or not an illness of mine. I could hardly tell you of it without a breach of confidence.

My holiday was only in a hotel, but in my old country & near the house of an old friend.

My prayer for Genia (an interesting name, by the way) cd. not naturally take the form you suggest. A little too schematic for my habits: and, to tell you the truth, a little bit like giving God a lecture on Theology!

As to MacArthur, I don’t feel in a position to have clear opinions about anyone I know only from newspapers. You see, whenever they deal with anyone (or anything) I know myself, I find they’re always a mass of lies & misunderstandings: so I conclude they’re no better in the places where I don’t know.

Nations being ‘friends’ is only a metaphor: they’re not people, and their co-operation depends, alas, on professional politicians & journalists whom you & I can’t control.

In fact, as you see, I’m a terrible sceptic about all public affairs. I am inclined to think that your Mac A and our Montgomery are specimens of a new, dangerous, & useful type thrown up by the modern situation–but it’s only a guess.

In haste. God bless you all.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO THE EDITOR OF ESSAYS IN CRITICISM ⁸⁷

Magdalen College,

Oxford,

May 3rd, 1951.

Dear Sir,

I have read Mr. Watt’s essay on Robinson Crusoe⁸⁸ with great interest and almost complete agreement. But what does he mean when he says that the myths of Midas and the Rheingold are ‘inspired by the prospect of never having to work again’ (p. 104)? Surely the point of the first story is that Midas’s golden touch brought starvation: and the point of the second that the gold carried a curse. If the gold in either story has an economic signification at all (which might be questioned) the meaning must be less banal than Mr. Watt suggests.⁸⁹

Yours truly,

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER(W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

5/5/51

I had no notion of all this oriental background to you–barbaric pearl & gold.

Glad to hear the illness was not serious. Any chance of a night or week-end later? I needn’t say how welcome you’d be.

J.

Love to both from both.

TO AN ANONYMOUS GENTLEMAN (P): TS

REF.236/51

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

12th May 1951.

Dear Sir,

If I knew a little more about the subject I should have been very glad to introduce your edition of the Psalms. But whatever I tried to say, I should come up against my ignorance. The right person to do it would be Sister Penelope, C.S.M.V., St Mary’s Convent, Wantage, who understands both their religious use, and something of their history.

With all good wishes,

yours faithfully,

C. S. Lewis

TO VALERIE PITT (BOD): ⁹⁰

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/5/51

Dear Miss Pitt—

It seemed to me after I’d got to bed that in my anxiety to prod a silent meeting into some semblance of debate I may have given the impression that I overlooked what Farrer⁹¹ rightly called the richness of yr. paper. The parts of it we wd. really like to have discussed were those least suitable for the Socratic. I hope you will continue to pursue the subject. All good wishes

C.S.L.

TO MARY MARGARET MCCASLIN (W): TS

REF.238/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

15th May 1951.

Dear Mrs. McCaslin,

Thank you for your kind letter of the 11th.

A book of reference tells me that John Flavel came from Dartmouth and kept a private school.⁹² I have never heard of him before nor seen his books. But I have no difficulty in believing that he may be excellent. The past is full of good authors whom the general literary tradition has ignored and whom one only finds by chance. There is a great element of chance in fame. With all good wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE ROSTREVOR HAMILTON (BOD):

Magdalen

17/5/51

My dear Hamilton

Of course I’ll write an introduction to Ouroboros.⁹³ I’d deserve to be hanged if I wouldn’t. Mind you, one doesn’t always write best on what one most keenly and spontaneously enjoys. One writes best on the authors who are one’s acquired tastes (as happy love produces fewer great poems than mess and fuss like Donne’s or obsession like Catullus!) But I’ll do my damdest. When the matter is fixed (and I leave you to go on into that) can you come down for a night and talk it over? I shall want to pick your brains: especially for testimonies which I can quote from other admirers, yourself, and lames Stephens etc.⁹⁴ I remember the other Eddison v. well: give him my duty.⁹⁵

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD): TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

18th May 1951.

Dear Miss Pitter,

It is I who have to thank you for making my little party a success. You supplied the fire and air. I wrote down Young’s⁹⁶ address, and will write: many thanks. My own MS will go to you as soon as it is typed. Don’t let it be a bother: what I want is only a Yes or a No or Doubtful. It is very kind of you to undertake the job, for a job of course it is. Kindest regards to Miss O’Hara and yourself.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO ANDREW YOUNG (BOD):⁹⁷ TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

18th May 1951

Dear Canon Young,

May a stranger take the liberty of offering his thanks for your poems? You appear to me a modern Marvell and a modern marvel: there has been nothing so choice, so delicate, and so controlled in this century. Every weir I see in this town of rivers now ‘combs the river’s silver hair’.⁹⁸ Thank you very much indeed.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

25/5/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

About yr. idea that error in upbringing might be partly responsible for Genia’s trouble, does any trained psychologist agree with you? From what I hear such people say I shd. v. much doubt whether it cd. have had any ‘depth’ effect. Do not burden yourself with any unnecessary cares: I suspect you are not at all to blame. I pray for Genia every night.

About loving one’s country, you raise two different questions. About one, about there seeming to be (now) no reason for loving it, I’m not at all bothered. As Macdonald says ‘No one loves because he sees reason, but because he loves.’⁹⁹ Or say there are two kinds of love: we love wise & kind & beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid & disagreeable people because they need us. This second kind is the more divine, because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but because He delights to give.

But the other question (what one is loving in loving a country) I do find v. difficult. What I feel sure of is that the personifications used by journalists and politicians have v. little reality. A treaty between the Govts. of two countries is not at all like a friendship between two people: more like a transaction between two people’s lawyers.

I think love for one’s country means chiefly love for people who have a good deal in common with oneself (language, clothes, institutions) and is in that way like love of one’s family or school: or like love (in a strange place) for anyone who once lived in one’s home town. The familiar is in itself a ground for affection. And it is good: because any natural help towards our spiritual duty of loving is good and God seems to build our higher loves round our merely natural impulses—sex, maternity, kinship, old acquaintance, etc. And in a less degree there are similar grounds for loving other nations—historical links & debts for literature etc (hence we all reverence the ancient Greeks). But I wd. distinguish this from the talk in the papers. Mind you, I’m in considerable doubt about the whole thing. My mind tends to move in a world of individuals not of societies.

I’m afraid I have not read E. Gough’s book.¹⁰⁰ With all blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO SEYMOUR SPENCER (P):

Magdalen College.

29/5/51

Dear Dr. Spencer

Thank you v. much for letting me see the MS. of your article.¹⁰¹ My reading confirms the view I formed on hearing the earlier form of it read, that it is a most interesting and important piece of work.

On p. 3, para 4 the first sentence is a little obscure. It might mean that we shd. expect the admission of conscious mind to exclude freedom but it doesn’t inevitably do so. I take it that is not what you meant. Wd. it run better ‘the mere admission of a conscious mind leaves open the possibility of freedom’?

I still disagree with yr. view that bodily procreation is a consequence of the Fall, taking my stand, if you like, on Aquinas (Summa Theol. Pars Ia. Quaest xcviii):¹⁰² and I think it a grave, tho’ not a fatal objection to your view that the same command crescite et multiplicamini¹⁰³ is addressed to beasts (Gen. I.22)¹⁰⁴ and to Man (ibid 1.28). But I hope your view will be published, and discussed by better authors than me. I’m sorry that I have no record of the Number of the XXth Century in wh. my article appeared: and as you see, the silly asses don’t put it on the off-print.

With all good wishes and many thanks.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29th May 1951

Dear Starr

This is the sort of thing that makes my blood boil. The events at Rollins College¹⁰⁵ seem to me to concentrate into one filthy amalgam every tendency in the modern world which I most hate and despise. And, as you say, this kind of thing will put an end to American scholarship if it goes on. Why then did I not cable to an American paper as you suggested?

My dear fellow, consider. What could unsolicited advice from a foreigner do except to stiffen the Wagnerian party by enlisting on its side every anti-British and every anti-God element in the state? You are asking me to damage a good cause by what would, from an unauthorised outsider like me, be simply impertinence. In a cooler moment (I don’t expect you to be cool at present) you will be thankful I didn’t. God help us all. It is terrible to live in a post-civilised age.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

Dear Starr

If you think there is anything to be gained by publishing my letter, you are at liberty to do so. My brother thanks you for your remembrances, and sends his lively sympathy.

But not the condemnatory part without the parts saying it wd. be impertinent of me to address a public on the matter.

C.S.L.

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

RER25/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

4th June 1951.

My dear Mr. Allen,

That perfection of packing, parcel no. 184 has just arrived, and I have spent a pleasant ten minutes dismembering it. Normally we won’t open your parcels when we get them, but reserve them for that moment of domestic crisis which so constantly arrives–‘We shall have to open one of Edward Allen’s parcels’ we say. But I tackled this one at once on account of the clothes.

The suit is just the thing I want for the summer, if there should happen to be a summer, which at the moment looks unlikely. (My brother skilfully annexed the last one you sent, and is still wearing it: on the strength of which he has the impudence to recommend this one to me)! Very welcome too was the sugar, for we are reduced to saccharine at the moment. We of course have our sugar ration, but it is never sufficient, and has to be ‘nursed’. I’ve no doubt that during the course of the week I shall find a grateful recipient for the dress. In fact an excellent parcel all round, for which I thank you very much.

Term is nearing its end in a whirlwind of work, and I shall be very glad to see the last of it. I always am, but this time especially, because I hope to be able to fit two holidays into the vacation—a week by the sea in the extreme west, Cornwall, a county I don’t know at all well, but which is very lovely: and then three weeks in the north of Ireland, two of them also seaside. I don’t think I have had so much holiday since I was a young man. I suppose you and Mrs. Allen will be thinking of going back to that bathing beach of yours? I looked with much envy last year at the photos you sent of yourselves there. We have already had quite a considerable American invasion of Oxford, and I’m sorry that our visitors will take away such a dreadful impression of our weather–for it can be fine in England in the early summer though not often. Of course Americans in Oxford are no novelty, but what I notice this year is the absence of the obviously very wealthy ones—who are I suppose on the continent; we are getting the nice, homely, quiet not so rich type (between ourselves a much nicer type), attracted I suppose by the devaluation of the pound. (On second thought I believe I should’nt have used the word ‘homely’. Does’nt it mean ugly in American? We mean by homely, just ordinary folk of our own kind of income etc.).

War and inflation are still the background of all ordinary conversation over here, to which has just been added the railway jam; our new railway organization has succeeded, so far as I can understand, in blocking every goods depot in the country. The tradespeople are grumbling, and the effect is just becoming apparent to the consumer.

With many good thanks, and kind remembrances to your Mother,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

5/6/51

Dear Sister Penelope

My love for G. MacDonald has not extended to most of his poetry. I have naturally made several attempts to like it. Except for the Diary of An Old Soul¹⁰⁶ it won’t (so far as I’m concerned) do. I have looked under likely titles for the bit you quote but I have not found it. I will make further efforts and let you know if I succeed. I suspect the lines are not by him. Do you think they might be Christina Rosetti’s?

I’m very glad to hear the work is ‘roaring’ (a good translation, by the way, of fervet opus!)¹⁰⁷ and I much look forward to seeing the results. As for me I specially need your prayers because I am (like the pilgrim in Bunyan) travelling across ‘a plain called Ease’.¹⁰⁸ Everything without, and many things within, are marvellously well at present. Indeed (I do not know whether to be more ashamed or joyful at confessing this) I realise that until about a month ago I never really believed (tho’ I thought I did) in God’s forgiveness. What an ass I have been both for not knowing and for thinking I knew. I now feel that one must never say one believes or understands anything: any morning a doctrine I thought I already possessed may blossom into this new reality. Selah! But pray for me always, as I do for you. Will there be a chance of seeing you at Springfield St. Mary’s this summer?¹⁰⁹

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARTYN SKINNER (BOD):

As from Magdalen

June 11th 51

Dear Skinner—

I wouldn’t like you to think that Merlin¹¹⁰ has been out all these months without being both bought and read by me. What happened was that I did both shortly after its appearance and then lent it to a man who returned it only the other day. Since then I have re-read it. Any poem of yours is always a refreshment and I think this is better than any you’ve done yet. Of course part of my pleasure consists in agreement–idem sentire de república¹¹¹ (and about a good many other things too)–but I don’t think it can be discounted on that score. I am sure if I had found half so much wit and invention in any of the dreary modern-orthodox poems which from time to time I try dutifully to appreciate, I should be praising it volubly.

I think you waste a little time in Canto I (though symbol and plot as wholesale and retail is good) but I am thoroughly carried away by II. ‘Mute magnificent cascades of stair’¹¹² is heavenly—and the simile of that evening light in 6-8–and the entrance of Merlin.¹¹³ St.¹¹⁴ 55 is a good ‘un, too. Frivolous and imperceptive reference to a great modern critic in III 4 is soon swallowed up in the perfectly obvious (once it’s been done) yet stunningly effective rendering of lasciate etc. by no exit:¹¹⁵ wh. is grimmer than Dante’s own words. All the Tartarology—fiends being the perfect guinea pigs etc—good: and oh Bravíssímo at 40 (‘is still called “games’“).

But III 47 I don’t like. He couldn’t see the faces above him if he was in the front row of the dress circle, unless he turned round, could he? Well, a few at the sides. They wdn’t be the first thing. It just checked the formation of my mental picture for a second. In IV the inferred meeting is good: and ‘Macaulay’…of the wrong end (32) simply superb. St. 43 is real good thinking. You make a most dexterous use of the Miltonic background in V, especially of course at 14. I could have wished, not for less fun, but for more beauty about your angels. I thought we are starting it at 35 (splendid as far as it goes) but it died away too soon: and 37, like the fig-leaf in sculpture, rather emphasises than conceals the want. Or am I asking for impossibilities in such a poem. VI has a peculiar glory of its own: the relief and beauty of the transition from hell to earth in 45, 46.

I am longing to read the rest. I shd. think you are enjoying yourself. It is sickening to think how little chance of a fair hearing you have…and poor old Desmond Macarthy¹¹⁶ dying at the wrong moment! Fire-spitting Rowse may do more harm than good: indeed I myself can hardly feel the right side to be the right (and he only feels it to be the Right) when it is sponsored by him. But all good luck. Finish the poem whatever they don’t say. Will the tide ever turn?

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen etc

11/6/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Genia’s letter is not yet to hand. I wish it were on any other subject. My job has always been to defend ‘mere Christianity’ against atheism and Pantheism: I’m no real good on ‘inter-denominational’ questions.

Walsh’s ‘not wholesome’¹¹⁷ cd. certainly be a bit hard if one took the words in the popular literary sense—in which ‘unwholesome’ suggests a faint smell of drains! But in the proper sense it is, surely, quite obviously true. The mind, like the body, will not thrive on an unbalanced diet. But–granted health and an adequate income, appetite itself will lead every one to a reasonably varied diet, without working it all out in vitamins, proteins, calories and what-not. In the same way I think inclination will usually guide a reasonable adult to a decently mixed literary diet. I wouldn’t recommend a planned concentration on me or any other writer.

There are lots of good religious works both in prose & verse waiting to correct & supplement whatever is over—or under—explained in me: a Kempis, Bunyan, Chesterton, Alice Meynell, Otto, Wm. Law, Coventry Patmore, Dante—

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GENIA GOELZ (P/Z): ¹¹⁸

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

13/6/51

Dear Mrs. Goelz

(1)I think you are confusing the Immaculate Conception with the Virgin Birth. The former is a doctrine peculiar to the Roman Catholics and asserts that the mother of Jesus was born free of original sin. It does not concern us at all.

(2) The Virgin Birth is a doctrine plainly stated in the Apostles Creed that Jesus had no physical father, and was not conceived as a result of sexual intercourse. It is not a doctrine on which there is any dispute between Presbyterians as such and Episcopalians as such. A few individual Modernists in both these churches have abandoned it; but Presby-terianism or Episcopalianism in general, and in actual historical instances, through the centuries both affirm it. The exact details of such a miracle—an exact point at which a supernatural force enters this world (whether by the creation of a new spermatozoon, or the fertilisation of an ovum without a spermatozoon, or the development of a foetus without an ovum) are not part of the doctrine. These are matters in which no one is obliged and everyone is free, to speculate. Your starting point about this doctrine will not, I think, be to collect the opinions of individual clergymen, but to read Matthew Chap. I and Luke I and II.

(3) Similarly, your question about the resurrection is answered in Luke XXIV. This makes it clear beyond any doubt that what is claimed is physical resurrection. (All Jews except Sadducees already believed in spiritual revival—there would have been nothing novel or exciting in that.)

(4) Thus the questions that you raise are not questions at issue between real P. and real Ep. at all for both these claim to agree with Scripture. Neither church, by the way, seems to be very intelligently represented by the people you have gone to for advice, which is bad luck. I find it very hard to advise in your choice. At any rate the programme, until you can make up your mind, is to read your New Testament (preferably a modern translation) intelligently. Pray for guidance, obey your conscience, in small as well as great matters, as strictly as you can.

(5) Don’t bother much about your feelings. When they are humble, loving, brave, give thanks for them: when they are conceited, selfish, cowardly, ask to have them altered. In neither case are they you, but only a thing that happens to you. What matters is your intentions and your behaviour. (I hope all of this is not very dull and disappointing. Write freely again if I can be of any use to you.)

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

P.S. Of course God does not consider you hopeless. If He did He would not be moving you to seek Him (and He obviously is). What is going on in you at present is simply the beginning of the treatment. Continue seeking with cheerful seriousness. Unless He wanted you, you would not be wanting Him.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

[The Kilns]

16/6/51

My dear Arthur

You’re right. Not that I shall be tired of hotels, still less of you, by then, but that I shall be feeling like getting down to a little work. Also I think you wd. find it a waste both of Lily¹¹⁹ and of me to have us together.

Love to the Unbelievable and to yourself.

Yours

Jack

TO WARFIELD M. FIROR(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

22/6/51

Dear Firor

I sympathise with you about my handwriting. I used to have a v. good one but no efforts will now recover it. I say! nothing could be nicer than the Hams. If it is not troublesome I’d like you to cancel the new order about Beef & Eggs and revert to the Hams. (We keep poultry and are alright about Eggs).

I don’t know about Deadlines. I somehow can’t quite believe in myself going to Wyoming¹²⁰–perhaps this is a case for psychoanalysis. Your patient who actually wants his Red Lizard¹²¹ fattened up is of course a disgusting old brute but is he also mad? By what sort of transaction did he propose to transfer his soul? And what value did he suppose it wd. have?

My brother is away so I have all the mail to cope with by hand. Therefore in haste.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROBERT C. WALTON (BBC): ¹²²

04/SB/RCW

Magdalen College,

Oxford

10/7/51

Dear Mr. Walton

I am afraid I couldn’t. The route by which I actually became a Theist (viâ subjectivism and as an escape from Solipsism, almost in Berkeley’s manner) could not be used for such a dialogue as you have in view. And also, like the old fangless snake in The Jungle Book,¹²³ I’ve largely lost my dialectical power. I am really very sorry. It sounds an excellent series and I wd. like to have been in it if I could.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

14/7/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Yes: GEORGE HERBERT, Seventeenth Century religious poet: his book is called The Temple and is available in many modern reprints.

Yes: by Reason I meant ‘the faculty whereby we recognise or attain necessary truths’ or ‘the faculty of grasping self-evident truths or logically deducing those which are not self-evident’. I wd. not call the truths Reason any more than I wd. call colours Sight, or food Eating.

Yes: Christ is the eternal, unique 2nd Person of the Trinity: sharing His Sonship we can become sons of God in a real, but derived, manner.

I am v. sorry your husband is going through a bad time. You are all in my prayers. Thanks for the charming photos.

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

17/7/51

Dear Miss Pitter

Very many thanks for reading the MS. The idea that you should also thank [me] is to me fantastic: I was ‘making use of you’, you were a thermometer. The thermometer reading (print the good ones because they’re good and the bad ones because they’re bad) is intriguing: a line more easy to take about other people’s work than one’s own. One sees Huck’s point of view: the Widow, getting the house ready for a visitor would not have shared it.

I am lately back from Cornwall where I have been sailing for the first time. I think it is a way in which people who can’t dance can get some of what dancing was made to give. There’s nothing like water after all. Do you know David Lindsay’s lines explaining why there was no wine before the Flood—

The wattir was sae strung and fine Thei wald nat labour to mak wyne.¹²⁴

That is why they lived so long. Well, thank you. My duty to you both.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD):

REF.310/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

17th July 1951.

Dear Mr. Kinter,

The sardines, and the enormous tin of ham which you so very kindly sent me, have arrived in good condition, and I am most grateful to you for such a welcome gift; it could hardly have arrived more apropos, for I saw yesterday in the paper that our microscopic ration of bacon is shortly to be reduced by one ounce. Your ham will be of great service in tiding us over a lean period. It shall be consigned to the refrigerator until the time comes—though I was a little surprised to find the instruction that it needed refrigeration on the label; over here we never put canned goods into the frig., but just store them in the coolest part of a larder.

There is a larger number of American visitors in Oxford this year than usual, and I’m glad to say that they are having what—by our standards—is a very good summer. They are doing the Colleges very thoroughly, and putting us natives to shame daily by asking questions about them which we can’t answer. You never realize how little you know about your home town until you meet an intelligent visitor in it.

We are all very thankful—and you are no doubt more so—to see that at last there is some prospect of an end to this ghastly Korean war. Our only fear now is that it may be replaced by a Persian one; but it will be time enough to cross that river when we come to it.

With many thanks and all good wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W): TS

RER328/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

27th July 1951.

Dear Mrs. Jessup,

Thank you for your letter of the 21st. Someone (and someone I don’t even know) had been selected by Charles Williams as his biographer some time before his death, and is in possession of all the materials. So that is that! But don’t imagine you are losing anything. Biography is not in my line.

I agree most strongly with all you say about him, and wish someone really good could do him: but I would’nt, even if there were not another claimant in possession.

With all best wishes,

yours sincerely,

WH Lewis

Secretary.

(Dictated by Mr. Lewis)

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHURCH TIMES (EC): ¹²⁵

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sir,—

Having read Mr. Bradbury’s letter on the Holy Name,¹²⁶ I have a few comments to make. I do not think we are entitled to assume that all who use this Name without reverential prefixes are making a ‘careless’ use of it; otherwise, we should have to say that the evangelists were often careless. I do not think we are entitled to assume that the use of the word Blessed when we speak of the Virgin Mary is ‘necessary’; otherwise, we should have to condemn both the Nicene and the Apostles’ Creed for omitting it.

Should we not rather recognise that the presence or absence of such prefixes constitute a difference, not in faith or morals, but simply in style? I know that their absence is irritating to others. Is not each party innocent in its temperamental preference but grossly culpable if it allows anything so subjective, contingent, and (with a little effort) conquerable as a temperamental preference to become a cause of division among brethren? If we cannot lay down our tastes, along with other carnal baggage, at the church door, surely we should at least bring them in to be humbled and, if necessary, modified, not to be indulged?

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W): ¹²⁷

As from Magdalen College,

Oxford

4/8/51

Dear Evans

The Coming of a King¹²⁸ arrived most opportunely when I was in almost solitary confinement recovering from mumps, and I read it at two sittings. I think it not only the best but incomparably the best book you have done. The others interested me but this really set wires jangling. I congratulate you. And I think it is a great thing to put that idea of the Stone Age—which is at least as likely to be the true one—into boys’ heads instead of Well’s or Naomi Mitchison’s. It’s all good. The marriage customs are amusing, the Ogres exciting, and the Dark Faces with their quest just add the something more. I hope it will be a great success.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS C. VULLIAMY (W):¹²⁹ TS

RER347/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

10th August 1951.

Dear Mrs. Vulliamy,

Many thanks for your most kind and encouraging letter of the 4th. With all best wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER(W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/8/51

You are treasures. Yes, I’d love to. The 15th Sept. week end (i.e. arrive 14th) if I may. Lovely.

I’ve just been having Mumps. Humphrey¹³⁰ kept on quoting me bits out of The Problem of Pain, which I call a bit thick. Love and deep thanks to both.

J

TO GENIA GOELZ (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

September 12, 1951

Dear Mrs Goelz

There is no doubt that laymen, and women, can baptise. The validity would, I suppose, depend on whether you regard the church into which the child is baptised as a part of the true church. I am very impressed that an Episcopalian will not accept Presbyterian baptism (and at the rudeness of his method) but I dare say he knows the rule. I fear I don’t. If I were you I would ask another (quieter and more amiable) Episcopalian parson. Personal animosities or friendships ought to have nothing to do with the question. In great haste.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen etc

Sept 12/1951

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

It is v. remarkable (or wd. be if we did not know that God arranges things) that you shd. write about our vicarious sufferings when another correspondent has recently written on the same matter.

I have not a word to say against the doctrine that Our Lord suffers in all the sufferings of His people (see Acts IX.6)¹³¹ or that when we willingly accept what we suffer for others and offer it to God on their behalf, then it may be united with His sufferings and, in Him, may help to their redemption or even that of others whom we do not dream of. So that it is not in vain: tho’ of course we must not count on seeing it work out exactly as we, in our present ignorance, might think best. The key text for this view is Colossians I.24.¹³² Is it not, after all, one more application of the truth that we are all ‘members of one another’?¹³³ I wish I had known more when I wrote the Problem of Pain.

God bless you all. Be sure that Grace flows into you and out of you and through you in all sorts of ways, and no faithful submission to pain in yourself or in another will be wasted.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept 12/51

Dear Mrs. Jessup

Yes, I shd. jolly well think I have met that problem of the division between loving hearts when one comes to believe and have known something of it in my own life.¹³⁴ The poem on Galahad at Caerleon¹³⁵ touches it, doesn’t it? Our Lord foresaw it: see Luke XII 49-53.¹³⁶

I have not the ghost of anything that cd. be called a ‘solution’. Perhaps this pain cannot be avoided: is it not the tension between the Church and the World breaking out in each household. Sometimes the unconverted party, hitherto quite kind, becomes almost diabolical:* but the other often wins him (or her) over in the end. (I don’t think you are conceited at all!)

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

Magdalen College,

Oxford,

England

Sept. 13th 1951

Dilectissime Pater—

Insolito gaudio affectus sum tuâ espistolâ et eo magis quod audivi te aegritudine laborare; interdum timui ne forte mortem obisses. Minime tamen cessavi ab orationibus pro te: ñeque enim debet illud Flumen Mortis duke commercium caritatis et cogitationum abolere. Nunc gaudeo quia credo (quamquam taces de valetudine–noli contemnere corpus, Fratrem Asinum, ut dixit Sanctus Franciscus!) tibi iam bene aut saltern melius esse. Mitto ad te fabulam meam nuper Italice versam; in qua sane magis lusi quam laboravi. Fantasiae meae liberas remisi habenas haud tamen (spero) sine respectu ad aedificationem et meam et proximi. Nescio utrum hujusmodi nugis dilecteris; at si non tu, fortasse quidam juvenis aut puella ex bonis tuis líberís amabit. Equidem post longam successionem modicorum morborum (quorum nomina Itálica nescio) iam valeo. Quinquagesimum diem natalem sacerdotii tui gratu-lationibus, precibus, benedictionibus saluto. Vale. Oremus pro invicem semper in hoc mundo et in futuro.

C. S. Lewis

*

Magdalen College,

Oxford,

England

Sept 13th 1951

Dearest Father—

I was moved with unaccustomed joy by your letter and all the more because I had heard you were ill; sometimes I feared lest you had perhaps died.

But never in the least did I cease from my prayers for you; for not even the River of Death ought to abolish the sweet intercourse of love and meditations.

Now I rejoice because I believe (although you keep silent about your health—do not condemn the body: Brother Ass, as St Francis said!)¹³⁷I believe you are well or at least better.

I am sending you my tale recently translated into Italian in which, frankly, I have rather played than worked.¹³⁸I have given my imagination free rein yet not, I hope, without regard for edification—for building up both my neighbour and myself. I do not know whether you will like this kind of trifle. But if you do not, perhaps some boy or girl will like it from among your ‘good children’.

For myself, after a long succession of minor illnesses (I do not know their Italian names) I am now better.

I salute the fiftieth anniversary of your priesthood with congratulations, prayers and blessings. Farewell. May we always pray for one another both in this world and in the world to come.

C. S. Lewis

TO BERNARD ACWORTH (W): ¹³⁹

Magdalen College,

Oxford

13th Sept. 1951

Dear Acworth–

I have read nearly the whole of Evolution¹⁴⁰ and am glad you sent it. I must confess it has shaken me: not in my belief in evolution, which was of the vaguest and most intermittent kind, but in my belief that the question was wholly unimportant. I wish I was younger. What inclines me now to think that you may be right in regarding it as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives, is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders. The section on Anthropology was especially good.

I am just back from Ireland where I have had the great pleasure of meeting an old friend of yours—Conway Ross. He told me you were one of the only two men who ever ‘talked him down’ and he hoped I wd. be the third. This hope was disappointed: ‘faith he gave me little chance to fulfil it. But he’s a grand chap and a man of my totem.’

The point that the whole economy of nature demands simultaneity of at least a v. great many species is a v. strong one. Thanks: and blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept 15th. 1951

Dear Miss Mathews

I will convey your kind message to my brother. St. Ives (it was my friends’ choice, not mine) isn’t the tucked-away and time-forgotten nook you picture, but a good deal spoiled by holiday-makers.

Since then, I have been really in quiet and almost unearthly spots in my native Ireland. I stayed for a fortnight in a bungalow which none of the peasants will approach at night because the desolate coast on which it stands is haunted by ‘the Good People’. There is also a ghost but (and this is interesting) they don’t seem to mind him: the faerie are a more serious danger.

I am told that fewer Americans than usual visited England this year so the Festival, from that point of view, was a failure: it was, in any case, a silly business. With all sympathy, blessings, and, as always, thanks.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

24/9/51

Dear Mr Kinter

I have been in Ireland, revisiting the haunts and some of the friends of my boyhood, and that is why your letter of Aug 22nd. has been so long unanswered. A ham is not a ‘small thing’, but a glorious creature. If the shortages within our English ‘Tin Curtain’ did not affect others so much more grievously than me, I could almost give thanks for a state of affairs which restores to men in their fifties a healthy schoolboyish interest in eating. It gives us a chance (which I fear I often forget to take) of making grace before meals a reality.

I rather envy your visit to Boethius’ tomb:¹⁴¹ but perhaps his shade wd. be more pleased if I re-read the Consolatio.¹⁴²

My Numznor was a mispelling: it ought to be Numenor.¹⁴³ The private mythology to which it belongs grew out of the private language which Tolkien had invented: a real language with roots and sound-laws such as only a great philologist cd. invent. He says he found that it was impossible to invent a language without at the same time inventing a mythology: he adds that Muller was wrong in calling mythology a ‘disease of language’¹⁴⁴ and that it wd. be truer to say that language was a disease of mythology. I don’t quite understand that.

The private mythology ‘clicked’ with this world at the moment when the participle atlan (fallen or shattered) which had been produced by sound laws with no anticipation of what it wd. lead to, when applied to the vanished land of Numenor, turned out to be so obviously connected with our vanished land of Atlantis. A letter to him direct (J. R. R. Tolkien, Merton College, Oxford) wd., I am sure, give pleasure and elicit a full and most interesting reply.

I am so glad you liked the Lion: there will be another children’s story in November. With v. many thanks & good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

27/9/51

Excellent. Will Tu. Oct. 30th do? RSVP.

J.

TO BERNARD ACWORTH (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

4/10/51

Dear Acworth–

No, I’m afraid. I shd. lose much and you wd. gain almost nothing by my writing you a preface. No one who is in doubt about your views on Darwin wd. be impressed by testimony from me, who am known to be no scientist. Many who have been or are being moved towards Christianity by my books wd. be deterred by finding that I was connected with anti-Darwinism.

I hope (but who knows himself!) that I wd. not allow myself to be influenced by this consideration if it were only my personal success as an author that was endangered. But the cause I stand for wd. be endangered too. When a man has become a popular Apologist he must watch his step. Everyone is on the look out for things that might discredit him. Sorry.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

Lewis had been working on Volume III of the Oxford History of English Literature, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, since 1936. Beginning with the Michaelmas Term of 1951, Magdalen College gave him a year off to complete the hook. He did no teaching during that time.

Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 15 October.

TO MRS JESSUP(W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

15/10/51

Dear Mrs. Jessup–

I agree with everything you say (except that I shd. publish anything on the subject: a bachelor is not the man to do it—there is such an obvious answer to anything he says!).

Our regeneration is a slow process. As Charles Williams says there are three stages: (1.) The Old Self on the Old Way. (2.) The Old Self on the new Way. (3.) The New Self on the New Way.

After conversion the Old Self can of course be just as arrogant, importunate, and imperialistic about the Faith as it previously was about any other interest. I had almost said ‘Any other Fad’–for just as the loveliest complexion turns green in a green light, so the Faith itself may have at first all the characteristics of a Fad and we may be as ill to live with as if we had taken up Nudism or Psychoanalysis or Pure Wool Clothing. You and I, clearly, both know all about that: one makes blunders.

About obedience, the principle is clear. Obedience to man is limited by obedience to God and, when they really conflict, must go. But of course that gives one v. little guidance about particulars. The converted party must pray: I suppose it is not often necessary to pray in the presence of the other! Especially if the converted party is the woman, who usually has the house to herself all day. Of course there must be no concealment, in the sense that if the question comes up one must say frankly that one does pray. But there is a difference between not concealing and flaunting. For the rest (did I quote this before?) MacDonald says ‘the time for speaking seldom arrives, the time for being never departs.’¹⁴⁵ Let you and me pray for each other.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

RER64/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

18th October 1951.

Dear Miss Mathews,

Your nice parcel of the 6th September has just arrived, and has I see been opened by our Customs people—which rarely happens. What they saw suspicious about it I can’t imagine. I suppose what happens is that they open one parcel in every hundred or so as a routine check.

I feel sure that you won’t be offended if I tell you that I have—with great reluctance—sent your gift straight on to some one else, whose need is much greater than mine. It has gone to a particularly hard hit member of the most unfortunate class in this country: an elderly lady (65), who has always had a struggle to make ends meet, and who, owing to a failure of dividends, is now on the verge of actual want. No doubt you have seen in the papers that we are caught in what the economists call ‘an inflationary spiral’; so far this has not apparently touched the working classes, but amongst the elderly, living on dwindling investment income in a world of rising prices, there is already discomfort, hardship, and I fear in many cases, real suffering. And to the lady in question, your parcel will be a real Godsend.

Our elections take place this day week, and I shall not be sorry when they are over. Already everything possible seems to have been said by every possible candidate, and the reiteration becomes wearisome. There seem to be good prospects of putting Labour out, in spite of the fact that they are promising the earth, whereas Churchill, with his usual good sense, is promising nothing but hard times.

I hope you are keeping well; we both are. With many thanks (should I also say apologies?), and all good wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WENDELL W. WAITERS (P):¹⁴⁶ TS¹⁴⁷

REF.413/51

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

25th October 1951.

Dear Mr. Watters,

Yes. I am not surprised that a man who agreed with me in Screwtape (ethics served with an imaginative seasoning) might disagree with me when I wrote about religion. We can hardly discuss the whole matter by post, can we?

I’ll only make one shot. When people object, as you do, that if lesus was God as well as Man, then He had an unfair advantage which deprives Him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water shd refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying ‘Oh, but you have an unfair advantage’; it is because of that advantage that He can help.¹⁴⁸

But all good wishes: we must just differ: in charity I hope. You must not be angry with me for believing you know: I’m not angry with you!

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD): TS

RER401//51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29th October 1951.

Dear Blamires,

I hope my refusal will rank as a very ‘flat’ one.¹⁴⁹I am struggling with a preface for another book at the moment and wishing I’d never undertaken it!¹⁵⁰ I don’t believe I would really do you any good, for [I] think the Educational world is rather anti-me. I could write a paragraph– the sort of thing that comes out in the catalogue or on the dust jacket. I’m sorry. But I must get out of these ‘little jobs one after another’ that, in the aggregate, really cripple one.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD): PC

Magdalen College

Oxford

5/11/51

How is the Back? And if it is better, cd. you come and dine with me on Wed. next 7 (not dressed: call in my rooms at 7. sharp) or, if that is not convenient, cd. you lunch at 1 o’clock the same day? My duty to your wife

C. S. Lewis

TO HERBERT PALMER (TEX): ¹⁵¹

20/11/51

‘To which’ [i.e. to Rhetoric] ‘poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate’–Tractate on Education (Prose Wks, Bohn’s Edtn. Vol. Ill, p. 473.)¹⁵²

Bad luck on ‘impassioned’ wh. he certainly did NOT say, whatever E.S. may think. I imagine, tho’, that passionate and impassioned meant v. nearly the same.

I’m afraid I never see the Fortnightly, but will look out for yr. article if I do.¹⁵³ I am v. sorry you have been so ill and hope there is a better time coming. I’m alright. Blessings–

C.S.L.

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen etc.

27/11/51

Dear Evans

(I wish you wouldn’t doctor or mister me!) I was a pig not to send you a Caspian, but you know how, at the moment of making out one’s list one has first 3 names wh. some recent event makes obvious, and after those one can only think either of 100 people or no one. I now rectify the omission. I am delighted that it pleased you. I look forward v. much to the ‘booklets’. The conception sounds excellent and, I hope they will be a great success.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD): TS

REF.310/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

27th November 1951.

Dear Mr. Kinter,

Thank you for your kind letter of the 19th. What it is to have a real reader! No one else sees that the first book is Ransom’s enfances:¹⁵⁴if they notice a change at all, they complain that in the later ones he ‘loses the warm humanity of the first’ etc.

All the best.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MISS TUNNICLIFF (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Dec 1st 1951

Dear Miss Tunnicliff

(1.) Oddly enough I have more than once thought of writing on the Problem of Pleasure. As for the title and subject of my actual book¹⁵⁵ [they] were not of my own independent choice: I had been asked to deal with that subject for a series.¹⁵⁶

(2.) ‘Rough male taste’¹⁵⁷ is, of course, a metaphor. It still seems to me the right one—but of course all metaphors are touch-and-go and don’t appeal equally to all imaginations.

(3.) I did try so to write as to make people less angry. To say that they might be angry was part of the attempt.

(4.) You think I don’t go far enough about animals: others think I go too far. If I had gone as far as you wd. like I shd. have raised more incredulity. Yes—my treatment of freedom was crude & hasty.

(5.) No, I don’t think I can frame every sentence for reading aloud in mixed company. I think books on such subjects are best read in solitude.

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

In his unpublished biography of his brother, most of which became Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966), Warnie Lewis wrote: ‘On 3rd December 1951 Jack received a letter from the Prime Minister [Winston Churchill] offering to recommend him for a C.B.E. in the New Year Honour’s List. Here is his reply:’¹⁵⁸

TO THE PRIME MINISTER’S SECRETARY (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

[4 December] 1951

I feel greatly obliged to the Prime Minister, and so far as my personal feelings are concerned this honour would be highly agreeable. There are always however knaves who say, and fools who believe, that my religious writings are all covert anti-Leftist propaganda, and my appearance in the Honours List would of course strengthen their hands. It is therefore better that I should not appear there. I am sure the Prime Minister will understand my reason, and that my gratitude is and will be none the less cordial.

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF.25/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

6th December 1951.

My dear Mr. Allen,

As I entered my rooms this morning I was cheered by the sight of a parcel, so admirably packed, that I did’nt have to look at the label to see who was the kind friend who had sent it. How do you do it? I’ve been trying for years to learn how to make up a package, and still have’nt progressed sufficiently in the art to produce one that I would trust to cross the street. I need hardly say how grateful I am to you for it, coming as it does at a moment when the new government—very rightly by the way—has refused to woo the electors by playing Father Christmas with a food bonus.

It appears from information given in Parliament that Labour’s food gifts to the country in December were really only available by cutting the rations in other months, and this Churchill does’nt propose to do. But what a mess the world is in, is’nt it? In some respects you must feel it even worse than we do; you are of course better off materially, but we at least have’nt a full-scale war on our hands. And one to which I can’t see any end, for I take it that if peace is made in Korea—which does’nt look very likely—it will merely be the prelude to an attack on France in Indo-China or ourselves in Malaya. But we can’t do anything about it except pray, so there is no use in grumbling.

After the wettest November on record, with floods all down the Thames valley, we have settled down into a crisp December, and are enjoying it. There is of course the usual coal shortage, but that does’nt worry us much, for we have a good deal of timber about the place, and my brother and I do our own coal mining with axe and saw. So do the neighbours, drat ‘em, but its impossible to patrol the place day and night; but as King Louis XV used to say, ‘things as they are will last out my time’.

With all best wishes to you and your mother for a happy Christmas from both of us, and with very many thanks,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

RER64/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

12th December 1951.

Dear Miss Mathews,

Many thanks for your letter of the 8th:–

Texas certainly does’nt sound attractive, but you seem to have got some enjoyment out of it; my brother says he has an idea that this is the one which calls itself the Lone Star State, and that its inhabitants–like the Scots and the Jews—are always making up good stories against themselves, e.g. that when America entered the war, Texas wired the President ‘Texas joins with U.S.A. in fight for freedom’.

Yes, we have been exceedingly lucky (in more senses than one) over your parcels, and the customs took no notice of the things you mention; I think with all articles they take the view that as long as you are not making a business of it, a little of this that or the other thing may now be passed. But this is only a guess, I really don’t know.

Of course I’ll try my hand at commenting on a short story, but don’t attach much importance to what I say. I’ve never had any professional (i.e. academical) connection with modern literature, and the short story is a genre I’m particularly bad on. That is, I accept the job, not because I can do it, but because you have such high claim to anything we can even try to do.

With all best wishes from us both to you both for a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

P.S. My brother asks me to add that he too looks forward to seeing the story, and that unfortunately he does’nt know India at all; he was once under orders to go there for five years, but with his usual ingenuity, managed to persuade the War Office to send him to West Africa for twelve months instead.

TO WARHELD M. FIROR(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford Dec.

20th 1951

My dear Firor

How the years flick past at our time of life: don’t they: like telegraph posts seen from an express train: and how they crawled once, when the gulf between one Christmas and another was too wide almost for a child’s eye to see across. If ever I write a story about a long-liver, like Haggard’s She or the Wandering Jew¹⁵⁹ (and I might) I shall make that point. The first century of his life will, to the end, seem to him longer than all that have followed it: the Norman Conquest, the discovery of America and the French Revolution are all muddled up in his mind as recent events.

My year ‘off’ has been, as it was meant to be, so far a year of very hard work, but mostly congenial. The book really begins to look as if it might be finished in 1952 and I am, between ourselves, pleased with the manner of it—but afraid of hidden errors. In that way I rather envy you for being engaged in empirical inquiry where, I suppose, mistakes rise up in the laboratory and proclaim themselves. But a mistake in a history of literature walks in silence till the day it turns irrevocable in a printed book and the book goes for review to the only man in England who wd. have known it was a mistake. This, I suppose, is good for one’s soul: and the kind of good I must learn to digest. I am going to be (if I live long enough) one of those men who was a famous writer in his forties and dies unknown—like Christian going down into the green valley of humiliation.¹⁶⁰ Which is the most beautiful thing in Bunyan and can be the most beautiful thing in life if a man takes it quite rightly–a matter I think and pray about a good deal. One thing is certain: much better to begin (at least) learning humility on this side of the grave than to have it all as a fresh problem on the other. Anyway, the desire wh. has to be mortified is such a vulgar and silly one.

Most of us are v. much cheered by having got rid of the Labour government and at finding that we have done so without yet plunging into a period of strikes and sedition and ‘cold’ revolution, which we feared. There are some, not Labour, who feel quite differently. Have you ever heard of Captain Bernard Acworth R. N., a distinguished submarine commander in World War I and v. good Christian of the Evangelical type—but his head absolutely buzzing with Bees? He was with me the other day explaining that the whole American-English-UNO¹⁶¹ set up is absolutely fatal and part of a plot engineered (so far as I cd. make out) by the Kremlin, the Vatican, and Jews, the Freemasons and–subtlest foe of all—the Darwinians. So I suppose you must be in it too. But there was a core of rationality in it. He thinks our strategy ought to be purely naval, that we can ruin ourselves by trying to keep up an army in Europe and, even so, cannot succeed on those lines.

Have you given up visiting these parts? I (and others) have a very warm memory of your one descent upon Oxford and would greatly welcome another. You are a naturally mobile organism, you know, unlike me. Whether you come or not, all very best wishes and, as always, hearty thanks. I’m sorry for the handwriting: the harder I try, the worse it gets now-a-days.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

E Collegio S. Mariae Magdalenae

apud Oxonienses

Die S. Stephani MCMLI[26 December 1951]

Dilectissime Pater

Grato animo epistulam tuam hodie accepi et omnia bona spir-itualia et temporalia tibi in Domino invoco. Mihi in praeterito anno accidit magnum gaudium quod quamquam difficile est verbis exprimere conabor.

Mirum est quod interdum credimus nos credere quae re verâ ex corde non credimus. Diu credebam me credere in remissionem peccatorum. Ac subito (in die S. Marci) haec veritas in mente mea tam manifesto lumine apparuit ut perciperem me numquam antea (etiam post multas confessiones et absolutiones) toto corde hoc credidisse. Tantum distat inter intellectûs mera affirmatio et illa fides medullitus infixa et quasi palpabilis quam apostolus scripsit esse substantiam.

Fortasse haec liberatio concessa est tuis pro me intercessionibus! Confortat me ad dicendum tibi quod vix débet laicus ad sacerdotem, junior ad seniorem, dicere. (Attamen ex ore infantium: immo olim ad Balaam ex ore asini!). Hoc est: multum scribes de tuis peccatis. Cave (liceat mihi, dilectissime pater, dicere cave) ne humilitas in anxietatem aut tristitiam transeat. Mandatum est gaude et semper gaude. Jesus abolevit chirographiam quae contra nos erat. Sursum corda! Indulge mihi, precor, has balbutiones. Semper in meis orationibus et es et eris. Vale.

C. S. Lewis

*

from the College of St Mary Magdalen

Oxford

St Stephen’s Day [26 December] 1951

Dearest Father

Thank you for the letter which I have received from you today and I invoke upon you all spiritual and temporal blessings in the Lord.

As for myself, during the past year a great joy has befallen me. Difficult though it is, I shall try to explain this in words. It is astonishing that sometimes we believe that we believe what, really, in our heart, we do not believe.

For a long time I believed that I believed in the forgiveness of sins. But suddenly (on St Mark’s day)¹⁶² this truth appeared in my mind in so clear a light that I perceived that never before (and that after many confessions and absolutions) had I believed it with my whole heart.

So great is the difference between mere affirmation by the intellect and that faith, fixed in the very marrow and as it were palpable, which the Apostle wrote was substance.¹⁶³

Perhaps I was granted this deliverance in response to your intercessions on my behalf!

This emboldens me to say to you something that a layman ought scarcely to say to a priest nor a junior to a senior. (On the other hand, out of the mouths of babes:¹⁶⁴ indeed, as once to Balaam, out of the mouth of an ass!)¹⁶⁵ It is this: you write much about your own sins. Beware (permit me, my dearest Father, to say beware) lest humility should pass over into anxiety or sadness. It is bidden us to ‘rejoice and always rejoice’.¹⁶⁶ lesus has cancelled the handwriting which was against us.¹⁶⁷ Lift up our hearts!

Permit me, I pray you, these stammerings. You are ever in my prayers and ever will be.

Farewell.

C. S. Lewis

1 1 Timothy 2:1: ‘I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men.’

2 Many of these thoughts were later to go into Lewis’s essay, ‘The Efficacy of Prayer’, published in Fern-seed and Elephants and Other Essays on Christianity, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Collins, 1975; Fount, 1998).

3 Vanauken had asked Lewis his opinion as to whether he should continue with his postgraduate work in history or study theology.

4 Francis Bacon, Essays (1625), ‘Of Atheism’: ‘The great atheists, indeed are hypocrites; which are ever handling holy things, but without feeling; so as they must needs be cauterized in the end.’

5 Pauline Baynes was illustrating the Narnian books.

6 At a meeting with Geoffrey Bles in London on 1 January 1951 Lewis gave Pauline Baynes a map he had drawn of Narnia bordered on the north by the ‘Wild Lands of the North’ as well as his drawing of a Monopod. In this letter he refers to that map which is in the Bodleian Library. (MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/1, fol. 160), and is reproduced by the Bodleian as a postcard. Baynes used Lewis’s original map to draw (1) ‘A Map of Narnian and Adjoining Lands’ which appeared on the endpapers of Prince Caspian; (2) a map of the Bight of Calormen and the Lone Islands of the Great Eastern Ocean which appeared on the endpapers of The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’ (1952); (3) ‘A Map of the Wild Lands of the North’ which appeared on the endpapers of The Silver Chair (1953); and (4) a map on the endpapers of The Horse and His Boy (1954) showing the position of Tashbaan, the Desert and Archenland.

7 George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, 2nd series (1885), ‘The Fear of God’, p. 163.

8 See Percy Howard Newby, writer and broadcasting administrator, in the Biographical Appendix.

9 Newby, Organizer of Third Programme Talks for the BBC, had written to Lewis on 9 February 1951: ‘From time to time we broadcast in the Third Programme talks under the general title of “Work in Progress”, the general idea being that scholars and critics should discuss the nature and scope of a particular book they are engaged upon. We should be very happy if you would talk in this way about the volume you are preparing for the Oxford History of English Literature.’

10 William Lewis Kinter (1915–) was born in St Thomas, Pennsylvania, on 21 October 1915. He took a BA in English from Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania, in 1938, another BA from Yale University in 1940, and a PhD from Columbia University, New York, in 1958. He taught Latin and English at Westminster School, Hartford, Connecticut, 1944-6, was Assistant Professor of English at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania, 1946-62, and Associate Professor of English at Loyola College, Baltimore, Maryland, 1962-78. From there he became Chairman of the Department of Language and Literature at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He is the author, with loseph R. Keller, of The Sibyl: Prophetess of Antiquity and Medieval Fay (Philadelphia: Dorrance, 1967).

11 Spirits in Bondage: A Cycle of Lyrics (1919), Lewis’s first book, was published under the pseudonym ‘Clive Hamilton’. See CL I, p. 443n.

12 Dymer, with a preface by the author (London: Dent; New York: Macmillan, 1950).

13 i.e. Lewis’s interplanetary trilogy, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and That Hideous Strength.

14 Ludovico Ariosto (1474-1535) was the author of Orlando Furioso (1532). See The Allegory of Love, Ch 7, Sect. 1, pp. 312-13).

15 Bernardus Silvestris, De Mundi Universitate, ed. Carl Sigmund Barach and lohann Wrobel (Innsbruck: Verlag der Wagner’schen Universitats-Buchhandlung, 1876).

16 Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-69), American general and President of the United States, 1953-61, who launched the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944 and oversaw the final defeat of Germany. In 1950 President Truman asked Eisenhower to become supreme commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and in 1951 he flew to Paris to assume his new position. For the next fifteen months he devoted himself to the task of creating a united military organization in western Europe to be a defence against the possibility of Communist aggression.

17 On Mrs Alice Hamilton Moore (1853-1939), see CL II, p. 281n.

18 Rider Haggard, She (1887); Ayesha (1905); She and Allan (1921); Wisdom’s Daughter (1923).

19 After Greeves’s mother died in 1949 he moved from the family home, ‘Bernagh’ in Belfast, to a cottage at Silver Hill, Crawfordsburn, Co. Down, about twelve miles from Belfast. When he visited Arthur there, Lewis always stayed at the Old Inn, Crawfordsburn.

20 When Roger Lancelyn Green’s father died in 1947, Roger, his eldest son, became the 31st Lord of Poulton, and in August 1950 he moved with his wife and son from Oxford to the family home, Poulton Hall, Poulton-Lancelyn, Bebington, Wirral, Cheshire.

21 The Festival of Britain was opened by King George VI in London on 3 May 1951, six years after the end of the Second World War. It was designed to celebrate the best of British art, design and industry, and raise the nation’s spirits after the austerity of the war years. More than eight million people visited the exhibition over a period of five months.

22 Frederick lames Eugene Woodbridge, An Essay on Nature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940).

23 See Cecil Day-Lewis in the Biographical Appendix.

24 BF, p. 239.

25 See Dr Seymour Jamie Gerald Spencer in the Biographical Appendix.

26 Eric Fromm (1900-80), German-born American psychoanalyst who studied the role of social conditioning in human behaviour.

27 This was Lewis’s essay, ‘The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment’, in 20th Century: An Australian Quarterly Review, vol. Ill, no. 3 (1949), pp. 5-12 and subsequently in Res Judicatae, VI (June 1953), pp. 224-30, and The Churchman, LXXIII (April-June 1959), pp. 55-60. It was reprinted in First and Second Things, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Fount, 1985) and EC.

28 ‘Mrs Lockley’ is the pseudonym Warnie Lewis gave this correspondent in L and WHL. See CL II, p. 975n. The woman is yet to be identified.

29 Green had been reading the manuscript of what became The Silver Chair, and he had questioned whether the wood fire Puddleglum tramples on in Chapter 12 would go out. In the end, Lewis did not specify what kind of fire it was, and he simply let Puddleglum ‘stamp on the fire, grinding a large part of it into ashes on the flat hearth’.

30 Paul Capon, The Other Side of the Sun (1950).

31 Period of two days.

32 Ruth Pitter, Urania (1950). This volume of poems was a selection from Pitter’s A Trophy of Arms: Poems 1926-35 (1936), The Spirit Watches (1939) and The Bridge (1945).

33 Urania contains an engraving by Joan Hassall. At the feet of the Muse there is a vine branch based on those at Pitter’s farm in Essex.

34 Thomas Traherne (c. 1636-74), Centuries of Meditation (1908), First Century, 27.

35 See Colin and Christian Hardie in the Biographical Appendix. In ‘Three Letters from C. S. Lewis’, The Chesterton Review, XVII, nos. 3 and 4 (August/November 1991), p. 393, Christian Hardie commented: ‘The three letters…relate to the two novels which I lent to C. S. Lewis. He had revealed one day at lunch with us, that he had read no book by Evelyn Waugh or Graham Greene. I said that he should try to catch up with the contemporary scene, and that I would lend him some books which were currently read and admired. The first, in March 1951, was Brideshead Revisited. Treating this as a Lenten penance, a year later he asked for another and got The Power and the Glory. He could easily have returned the books with only a verbal message; characteristically, he took the trouble to write a letter.’

36 Lewis took Hardie’s advice and read Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945). The novel is told in the first person by Charles Ryder, a fellow-student at Oxford of Lord Sebastian Flyte, a member of an ancient Roman Catholic family. Sebastian takes Charles to the home of his family, Brideshead Castle, where he meets the rest of the Flyte family. Sebastian has an elder brother, Lord Brideshead, and two sisters, Julia and Cordelia. His mother, the devout Lady Marchmain, refuses to divorce Lord Marchmain, who is living in Venice with his mistress. Lady Marchmain attempts to enlist Charles’s help in preventing Sebastian’s drinking, but Sebastian escapes to North Africa where, after his mother’s death, he becomes a saintly down-and-out. Charles falls in love with Lady lulia, but in the end the power of the Church reclaims her and they part for ever.

37 Samuel Butler, Erewhon (1872).

38 Sir Walter Scott, Rob Roy (1817).

39 James Hogg, The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (1824).

40 Stephen McKenna, The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman (1922).

41 G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1909), ch. 2: ‘You can make a story out of a hero among dragons; but not out of a dragon among dragons.’

42 When Charles Ryder is stationed near Brideshead Castle near the end of the war, one of his platoon commanders is named Hooper. The man epitomizes everything Ryder—and Waugh—hate. ‘In the weeks that we were together,’ says Charles in the Prologue to Brideshead Revisited, ‘Hooper became a symbol to me of Young England, so that whenever I read some public utterance proclaiming what Youth demanded in the Future and what the world owed to Youth, I would test these general statements by substituting “Hooper” and seeing if they still seemed as plausible.’

43 Constantin Levin is a character in Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1873-82).

44 Characters in Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace (1863-9).

45 Archdeacon Grantly is a prominent character in the ‘Barsetshire’ novels of Anthony Trollope.

46 Benjamin Disraeli, Coningsby (1844).

47 Edward Frederic Benson (1871-1914), whose novels include Dodo (1893).

48 Railway.

49 Lewis was planning to travel the (roughly) twelve miles from Oxford Street, Belfast, to Helen’s Bay, near Crawfordsburn.

50 Douglas Edison Harding (1909–) was born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, on 12 February 1909 and educated at Lowestoft Grammar School and University College, London. In a letter to Walter Hooper of 11 August 2005, he said: ‘My parents were Exclusive Plymouth Brethren. I apostacised from them at the ripe age of 21. Though I earned my living as an architect, my real job and passion has been the Perennial Philosophy and research into my True Identity, plus sharing my discoveries with as many people as possible worldwide by means of workshops and books.’ Harding is the author of many books, including The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth: A New Diagram of Man in the Universe (1952), The Little Book of Life and Death (1988), Religions of the World (1966), The Trial of the Man Who Said He Was God (1992), and the best known of all his books, On Having No Head: A Contribution to Zen in the West (1961).

51 Lewis was reading the manuscript of what was published as D. E. Harding, The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth: A New Diagram of Man in the Universe, with a preface by C. S. Lewis (London: Faber, 1952). Lewis’s preface was reprinted as ‘The Empty Universe’ in Present Concerns, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Fount, 1986) and EC.

52 ibid., ch. 9, ix, pp. 95-6: ‘Only beings who consider the possibility of breaking laws can comply with them. Earth does both. To determine her orbit, the scientist supposes that, disobeying for a while the law of gravity and obeying the law of inertia, she flies off at a tangent; and that then, reversing her disobedience, she falls towards the sun; and he adds that these illegalities are in practice so brief that her ratchet-shaped path is smoothed out into the compromise of a curve, which respects both laws alike. Now I take this mathematics more seriously than the scientist himself; for (a) I link Earth, not merely with the original data and the final result of the calculation, but with the intermediate stages as well, and (b) I say that all three are her function.’

53 ibid., ch. 18, vii, p. 188.

54 In Lewis’s interplanetary trilogy, eldila (singular, eldil) are angels who inhabit ‘Deep Heaven’. Their bodies are as swift as light, and hence they are usually invisible to human beings. They are first mentioned in Out of the Silent Planet, ch. 13. See the letter to Mary Willis Shelburne of 4 March 1953.

55 Perelandra (London: Bodley Head, 1943; HarperCollins, 2000), ch. 17, p. 223.

56 ‘The “ferly” ‘, wrote Pitter, ‘is a sort of vision in the engraving by Joan Hassall…the figure of the Muse stands with flowers & vine-leaves in her arms, in the calm twilight landscape full of symbols: she points downward to a kind of visionary sphere containing images of violence: it is this that someone thought was like a concrete-mixer’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/3, fol. 100).

57 Pitter said of this: ‘I had expressed mild pain at the idea of the spectacle-case lurking so long undiscovered in the crease of the armchair. Never cleaned—didn’t know they had to be?!!!’ (MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/3, fol. 100).

58 Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1872), ch. 4, ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’: ‘“The time has come,” the Walrus said,/”To talk of many things:/Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax–/Of cabbages—and kings

59 Cardinal Schwanda was the Sayers’ cat.

60 Homer (fl. 8th century BC) is the author of the Greek epics, The Odyssey and The Iliad.

61 ‘The same rule applies to things that do not exist and to things that are not apparent.’ This is a standard legal maxim.

62 Anthony Trollope, Barchester Towers (1857), ch. 40: ‘The painter put a veil over Agamemnon’s face when called on to depict the father’s grief at the early doom of his devoted daughter.’

63 Nicholas Hardie (b. 12 November 1945), to whom The Silver Chair is dedicated, is the eldest son of Colin and Christian Hardie. Nicholas was educated at Magdalen College School and Balliol College, Oxford. After taking his BA in 1970, he took an MBA from Lancaster University.

64 Victor Drew ran the little barber’s shop now called High St Barbers at 38 High Street, Oxford.

65 John 16:22: ‘Ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.’

66 George Herbert, The Temple (1633), ‘The Tempter’, I, 3-4: ‘If what my soul doth feel sometimes,/My soul might ever feel!’

67 See the biography of Robert William Chapman in CL II, p. 203n.

68 Legend relates that Stesichorus (c. 640-c. 555 BC), a Greek lyrical poet, was struck blind for having censured Helen in one of his poems. His sight was restored after he had written his Palinodia or recantation, in which he claims that it was not Helen, but her phantom, that accompanied Paris to Troy. This version of events was adopted by Euripides who used it in his play, Helen. Lewis was later to use this theme in his unfinished ‘After Ten Years’, published in The Dark Tower and Other Stories, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Collins, 1977; Fount, 1983).

69 Horace, Odes, I, ix, 21-4: ‘nunc et latentis proditor intimo/gratus puellae risus ab angulo/pignusque dereptum lacertis/aut digito male pertinaci’: ‘Now too the lovely laugh betraying the girl hiding in the secret corner, and the token snatched from her arm or her scarcely resisting finger.’

70 Chad Walsh, C. S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics (1949).

71 i.e., Warnie’s drinking.

72 Sister Madeleva CSC was a teacher of English at St Mary’s College, Notre Dame, Indiana, who had attended some of Lewis’s lectures in 1934. See her biography in CL II, p. 140n.

73 Sister Madeleva, A Lost Language (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1951), p. 17: ‘This practice of prayer was something of a habit with Chaucer…It was, of course, one of the writer’s conventions of his day. Had it not been, there is a probability that he would have practiced it. But, as a convention, the devotional sincerity of his prayers is frequently questioned. Conventions are a badly libelled lot. One knows they are devices; one concludes that they are deceits with an immediacy to be recommended rather for speed than for logic. Particularly is this true of the conventional medieval writing. Without going into digression on this matter, it may be volunteered that the fourteenth century writer probably used the convention to say what he meant rather than to say the exact opposite of what he meant.’

74 Mrs Lisbeth Greeves (1897-1982), née Lizzie Snowden Demaine, was the wife of Arthur’s cousin, Lt.-Col. John Ronald Howard Greeves (1900-). She was a devout and enthusiastic member of the Bahai faith, and was keen to discuss it with Lewis through the post.

75 One of Greeves’s dogs.

76 ‘No ham yet.’ See the letter to Greeves of 23 April 1951.

77 Cardinal Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), French lesuit theologian, was a professor of theology at Lyon for many years. He was one of the thinkers who created the intellectual climate of the Second Vatican Council (1962-5), his major contribution being to open up the vast spiritual resources of the Catholic tradition. De Lubac was one of the founders of the collection ‘Sources Chrétiennes’, an important series of patristic and medieval texts. Griffiths probably sent Lewis a copy of de Lubac’s Catholicism: A Study of Dogma in Relation to the Corporate Destiny of Mankind (London: Burns & Oates, 1950).

78 William Wordsworth, The Prelude: or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind (1850).

79 Matthew 5:29: ‘If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell.’ See also Mark 9:47.

80 Lewis had already devoted an essay to this principle entitled ‘First and Second Things’, published in First and Second Things and EC.

81 The Festival of Britain.

82 See Colin and Christian Hardie in the Biographical Appendix.

83 Hardie had asked Lewis to read an essay he had written on ‘The Myth of Paris’. It has never been published.

84 ‘delete’.

85 Maurice Roy Ridley (1890-1969) was Tutor in English Literature at Balliol College, Oxford, 1920-45. See his biography in CL II, p. 306n.

86 Reginald Walter Macan (1848-1941) was Master of University College, Oxford, 1906-23. See his biography in CL I, p. 263n.

87 This letter was published in Essays in Criticism, I (July 1951), p. 313, under the title ‘Robinson Crusoe as a Myth’.

88 Ian Watt, ‘Robinson Crusoe as a Myth’, Essays in Criticism, I (April 1951), pp. 95-119.

89 Watt’s reply appears on the same page as Lewis’s letter.

90 See Valerie Pitt in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1059-60. Pitt, who was writing a B. Litt. thesis for St Hugh’s College, Oxford, was secretary of the Socratic Club.

91 Austin Farrer was a member of the Socratic Club. See Austin and Katharine Farrer in the Biographical Appendix.

92 John Flavell (baptized 1630, d. 1691), Presbyterian minister and religious writer, was educated at University College, Oxford. He was the minister at Dartmouth, Devon, 1656-62. Following Charles II’s declaration of indulgence in 1672, Flavell returned to Dartmouth, licensed as a Congregationalist minister. His works include A Token for Mourners (1674), The Seaman’s Companion (1676), Divine Conduct (1678), Sea Deliverances (c. 1679), The Touchstone of Sincerity (1679), The Method of Grace (1681), A Saint Indeed (1684) and Treatise on the Soul of Man (1685). See the article on Flavell in the Oxford DNB.

93 E. R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros (1922). See Eric R”ucker Eddison in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1025-8. Hamilton had been a close friend of Eddison, and he was trying to arrange for The Worm Ouroboros to be reprinted, with an introduction by Lewis. He was not successful.

94 James Stephens (1882-1950) wrote an introduction to Eddison’s A Fish Dinner in Memison (1941). See CL II, p. 558, n. 53.

95 ‘The other Eddison’ was Colin Eddison, brother of E. R. Eddison.

96 See the letter to Andrew Young of 18 May 1951.

97 See the Rev. Andrew John Young in the Biographical Appendix.

98 Andrew Young, Collected Poems (1936), ‘The Slow Race’, IV, 2.

99 George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, 1st series (1867), ‘Love thy Neighbour’, p. 202: ‘No one loves because he sees why, but because he loves.’

100 This was probably Edward John Gough, author of Simple Thoughts on the Holy Eucharist (1893).

101 An article entitled ‘The Id and the Fall’ which was not, finally, published in The Month.

102 St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Part I, Question 98: ‘In the state of innocence there would have been generation of offspring for the multiplication of the human race; otherwise man’s sin would have been very necessary, for such a great blessing to be its result.’

103 ‘increase and multiply’.

104 Genesis 1:21-2: ‘And God created great whales, and every living creature…And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth.’

105 Starr had been teaching at Rollins College Winter Park, Florida, since 1941. In March 1951, its 33-year-old president, Paul Wagner, announced that almost a third of its laculty members (one of whom was Starr) were to be dismissed for ‘financial reasons’. Members of the board suspected that the progressive educator had fired these members because they refused to conform to his campaign for visual education, as opposed to the old reading and lecture method: Wagner boasted that after a number of years people wouldn’t know how to read. The firing was reported in ‘Squeeze at Rollins’, Life, 30, no. 13 (26 March 1951), p. 115. After months of wrangling, the faculty members were reinstated and Wagner was removed from office. He was replaced by Hugh F. McKean (1908-95), a member of the art faculty. Professor Starr chose to resign at the end of the academic year 1951-2, and he spent the next academic year at Kansai University, Osaka, Japan as a Fulbright Scholar. See the letter to Starr of 3 February 1953.

106 George MacDonald, The Diary of an Old Soul (1885).

107 Virgil, Georgia, IV, 169; Aeneid, I, 436: ‘the work grows leverish’.

108 John Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress from this World to That which is to Come, ed. lames Blanton Wharey, 2nd edn rev. Roger Sharrock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), First Part, p. 106: ‘Then Christian and Hopeful outwent them again, and went till they came at a delicate Plain, called Ease, where they went with much content.’

109 Springfield St Mary’s was a youth hostel at 122 Banbury Road, Oxford, run by the Community of St Mary the Virgin.

110 Lewis was reading Skinner’s The Return of Arthur: Merlin (London: Frederick Muller, 1951), the first part of a four-part work. The second part was entitled The Return of Arthur: Parti (London: Chapman and Hall, 1955); the third was entitled The Return of Arthur: Part II (London: Chapman and Hall, 1959). The complete edition, containing the three earlier volumes as well as The Return of Arthur, Part III, was published under the title The Return of Arthur: A Poem of the Future (London: Chapman and Hall, 1966). Because of the rarity of the individual parts, all references are to the 1966 edition.

111 ‘to think alike about political affairs’. From Henry St John Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Dissertation Upon Parties, Letter 1.

112 Skinner, The Return of Arthur: Merlin, II, ii, 5.

113 ibid., xxxvii.

114 Stanza.

115 ibid., Ill, ix. ‘Lasciate etc’ refers to Dante, Inferno, III, 9.

116 Sir Desmond MacCarthy (1877-1952), literary journalist, was known for his theatre criticism and for his reviews and other writing in the Sunday Times.

117 In C. S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics, ch. 20, p. 161, Walsh stated: ‘I mention what Lewis has not done, not as a reproach to him, but to suggest to his overardent admirers that an exclusive diet of his works is not wholesome.’

118 Genia Goelz—Mrs E. L. Goelz—was the daughter of Mrs Mary Van Deusen. She is referred to as ‘Mrs Sonia Graham’ in L. She was writing from 2756 Reese Avenue, Evanston, Illinois. Although abbreviated copies of the letters to Mrs Goelz appeared in L, complete copies were made by Walter Hooper in 1965.

119 Mary Elizabeth ‘Lily Ewart was Greeves’s sister. See her biography in CL I, p. 98n.

120 Dr Firor had a ranch in Wyoming, and he was constantly urging Lewis to join him there.

121 In The Great Divorce: A Dream (London: Bles, 1945 [1946]; Fount, 1997), ch. 11, one of the Ghosts has on his shoulder a Red Lizard who represents Lust.

122 Robert C. Walton, head of the BBC’s School Broadcasting Department, wrote to Lewis on 9 July 1951 announcing plans for six half-hour programmes on ‘the nature of evidence’: ‘We shall begin by stating as clearly as possible the Christian belief that God is to be understood in personal terms, and then two speakers will discuss with the “interrogator” how they have come to accept the Christian conception of God’s nature. Our main purpose is not to argue whether or not the Christian belief is true, but to explain the nature of the evidence which leads Christians to this conclusion. We should be very glad if you would take part in this programme.’

123 The old white cobra in ‘The King’s Ankus’ in Kipling’s Second Jungle Book (1895).

124 Sir David Lyndsay, The Monarchie (Ane Dialog Betwix Experience and ane Courteour) (1554), 1293-4.

125 This letter was first published in the Church Times, CXXXIV (10 August 1951), p. 541, under the title ‘The Holy Name’.

126 Leslie E. T. Bradbury, ‘The Holy Name’, Church Times, CXXXIV (3 August 1951), p. 525.

127 See the biography of Idrisyn Oliver Evans in CL II, p. 584n.

128 I. O. Evans, The Coming of a King: A Story of the Stone Age (1950).

129 Mrs Vulliamy was writing from Park College, Parksville, Missouri.

130 Lewis’s doctor, Robert Emlyn ‘Humphrey Havard.

131 Acts 9:4-5: ‘And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who are thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutes’

132 Colossians 1:23-4: ‘I Paul…now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church.’

133 Romans 12:5: ‘So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.’

134 Lewis was referring to a problem that sometimes arises when, in a family of non-Christians, one of them becomes a Christian. It is one of the themes in Lewis’s novel, Till We Have Faces. See the letter to Clyde Kilby of 10 February 1957.

135 Lewis meant ‘The Coming of Galahad’ in Charles Williams’s Taliessin Through Logres (1938).

136 Luke 12:49-53: Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.’

* Yet oh! How I sympathise with him! God is such an Intruder! We must deal with them v. tenderly.

137 Francis of Assist: Early Documents, 3 vols., ed. Regis J. Armstrong OFM Cap., J. A. Wayne Hellmann OFM, Conv., William J. Short OFM (New York: New City Press, 2000), Vol. II: The Founder, ‘The Legends and Sermons about Saint Francis by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1255-1267)’, p. 564: ‘[Francis of Assisi] taught his brothers…that they should master their rebellious and lazy flesh by constant discipline and useful work. Therefore he used to call his body Brother Ass, for he felt it should be subjected to heavy labor, beaten frequently with whips, and fed with the poorest food.’

138 This was the Italian translation of Out of the Silent Planet, published as Lontano dal Pianeta Silenzioso, trans. Franca Degli Espinosa (Milan and Verona: Mandadori, 1951).

139 See the biography of Bernard Acworth in CL II, p. 632n. Acworth was founder and president emeritus of the Evolution Protest Movement.

140 Bernard Acworth, This Progress: The Tragedy of Evolution (London: Rich & Cowan, 1934).

141 The tomb of Boethius (AD 480-524) is in the Church of S. Pietro Ciel d’Oro at Pavia.

142 The edition Lewis used was The Consolation of Philosophy, with the English Translation of ‘I.T.’ (1609), rev. H. E Stewart (London: Heinemann, Loeb Classical Library, 1918).

143 Kinter had asked about a sentence in the preface of Lewis’s That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups (London: John Lane, 1945; HarperCollins, 2000), p. xii: ‘Those who would like to learn further about Numinor and the True West must (alas!) await the publication of much that still exists only in the MSS. of my friend, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.’

144 Max M”uller, The Science of Language, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, 1891), Vol. II, p. 454.

145 George MacDonald, Sir Gibbie (1879), ch. 47: ‘the time for speaking comes rarely, the time for being never departs.’

146 Wendell W. Watters, MD, a Canadian psychiatrist, was Professor of Psychiatry at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He was the author of Deadly Doctrine: Health, Illness, and Christian God-talk (1992).

147 This letter first appeared in L as ‘To A CRITICAL BUT CHARITABLE READER’, and was incorrectly dated 12 September 1951.

148 Dr Watters’s objection to Christ’s ‘unfair advantage’ was occasioned by Lewis’s Broadcast Talks, Bk. II, ch. 4. When revising the talks for Mere Christianity (London: Bles, 1952; HarperCollins, 2002), Lewis added two paragraphs to the end of Book II, Chapter 4, in which he used the example given here: ‘I have heard some people complain that if lesus was God as well as man, then His sufferings and death lose all value in their eyes, “because it must have been so easy for him”…If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back (between my gasps) “No, it’s not fair! You have an advantage! You’re keeping one foot on the bank”? That advantage—call it “unfair” if you like—is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?’ (pp. 58-9)

149 Geoffrey Bles was pressing Blamires to persuade Lewis to write a preface for Blamires’s English in Education (London: Bles, 1951).

150 i.e., the preface he was writing for D. E. Harding’s The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth.

151 See the biography of Herbert Palmer, poet and literary critic, in CL II, p. 678n.

152 John Milton, Prose Works, with preliminary remarks and notes by J. A. St John, 5 vols. (London: Bohn’s Standard Library, 1948-53).

153 Herbert Palmer, ‘English Poetry: 1938-1950–I’, The Fortnightly, CLXX (September 1951), pp. 624-8; ‘English Poetry: 1938-1950–II’, ibid. (October 1951), pp. 695-700; ‘English Poetry: 1938-1950–III’, ibid. (October 1951), pp. 768-74.

155 i.e., The Problem of Pain.

156 Ashley Sampson of Geoffrey Bles, The Centenary Press, had asked Lewis to contribute a book on pain to the Christian Challenge series. See CL II, p. 289n.

157 The Problem of Pain, ch. 1, p. 15: ‘The Christian faith…has the master touch–the rough, male taste of reality’

158 ‘C. S. Lewis: 1898-1963’, Bodleian Library, MS. Facs. d. 290.

159 Since the thirteenth century there have been many versions of the legend of the Wandering Jew. In essence the legend recounts how a Jew chided Christ as he bore the cross to Calvary and was thereafter condemned to wander about the world until Christ’s Second Coming.

160 Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Part I, pp. 55-6.

161 United Nations Organization.

162 25 April.

163 Hebrews 11:1: ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’

164 Psalm 8:2; Matthew 21:16.

165 Numbers 22:24-31.

166 Philippians 4:4.

167 Colossians 2:14-5.

1952

TO EDNA GREEN WATSON (BOD): TS

REF.52/9

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

2nd January 1952.

Dear Mrs. Watson,

Very many thanks for your kind present of the cake, which has just arrived in good condition; good external condition that is, for it will not be opened until I get it out to my house this evening, where it will be received with enthusiasm. I often hear laments about the difficulty of getting cake making materials, so you can imagine how much pleasure it will give.

It will also help to distract attention from all the news in the papers about the shortages which are expected in 1952: news which is not rendered any the more palatable by Churchill’s assurance that when he gets back from your country,¹ and meets Parliament, he will have several proposals to make which ‘will be very unpleasant for all of us.’ But we are in hopes that his treatment will differ from Atlee’s in being like the pain after you have had a tooth out–getting less every day—whereas under the late government we were shirking going to the dentist and the pain was getting worse every day.²

With many thanks, and all good wishes for the New Year,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen etc

Jan 8th. 1952

Dear Miss Pitter

May Maleldil send you a good year.³ Of course use those Spenserian stanzas as you wish.⁴ I think your idea of the sheepdog-trial for readers is excellent.

The poem of yours which I didn’t like was the one about the enamoured earwig and the lady:⁵ and it all comes of mere idiosyncrasies of mine, (a.) My imagination goes easily to humanised mammals but stops dead at humanised insects, (b.) I can’t bear the least suggestion (however sportive) of love affairs between different species or even between children. That is one of the many things which for me sinks Tom Sawyer so immeasurably below the divine Huckleberry. But as I can’t give any reason for the second—I think I could for the first–this doesn’t help you v. much. I suspect it originates with the mingled embarrassment and nausea evoked in oneself as a child by grown-up jokes of an arch character at childrens’ parties.

Isn’t Herbert–?⁶ well: one can only say well. I am glad you are swimming in poetry and cannot help hoping great things.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF. 52/28

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

8th January 1951 [1952].

My dear Mr. Allen,

A very happy new year to you both, and many thanks for your amusing letter of the 2nd. As you will observe, you were very nearly in time to call up on the old wave length, but not quite; my brother makes a clear sweep of all the old numbers every 31st December. I don’t know why, and I dare’nt ask him, in case he should insist on explaining it to me. He by the way asks to send greetings to both of you, and asks me to tell you that your thin blue summer suit is still going strong: and adds, that in view of the amount of summer we get in this country, he reckons on it figuring amongst the assets of his estate when the Landlord terminates his lease.

I doubt if there is a man in America besides yourself who would have seriously contemplated sending a private gift of coal to this country: I believe if I said ‘thanks very much, and while you are about it, make me a present of the ship that brings it’, you would do your best to comply! But I’m glad to be able to report that your prayers for mild weather have been answered; I got up this morning to find the thermometer standing at 52 in my unheated bedroom, in which the window had been wide open all night. Your weather is the sort I hate—or at least like least, for we should’nt hate even the weather. But I confess I don’t enjoy wet snow.

Talking of ships, the epic of the ‘Flying Enterprise’ has played even the Truman-Winston conference off the front page of our diminished dailies: and rightly so.⁷ The American merchantile marine, and indeed the whole nation must be very proud of their Captain Carlsen. I wonder is a flair for journalism inborn in your people? You must have noticed how good are the reports from the commanders of the U.S.N. destroyers which have been standing by; no professional journalist could have done the thing better. A British naval officer in the same circumstances would be transmitting reports in what we call ‘Whitehall English’ which would make even the ‘Flying Enterprise’ story sound dull.

I like the name of your car; over here we are more aristocratic. My brother’s old Colonel has a car which has been raised to the Peerage under the title of Victor, Viscount Vauxhall, but he is called Vic for short; on the other hand he had an American friend in Shanghai whose car rejoiced in the name of ‘Puddlejumper’.

If you send a letter to Lieutenant-Colonel R. K. Wilson, Royal Artillery, c/o the War Office, Whitehall, London, S.W.I., it should reach him wherever he is, but of course if he is in Korea or some such place, it will take some time to reach him; it would be as well to endorse the envelope ‘Please Forward’ anyway. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but our army is very scattered these days; I saw in the Sunday paper that at any given moment, we have ninety thousand trained troops on board ship, going to or coming from somewhere. As you say, what a muddle. Is this ghastly Korean war never going to end: or are we to spend the rest of our lives running round the Iron Curtain stopping leaks in it?

Yours ever.

C. S. Lewis⁸

TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD):

Magdalen etc.

10/1/52

Dear Sister Penelope

It was, as always, a great pleasure to hear from you. Hearty good wishes and prayers for the new year.

I was very intrigued by the Snow Men last time the story came up (about 15 years ago, was it?) but had hardly noticed its re-occurrence: certainly I am not well enough equipped to write to the Times.⁹

I have, if not thought, yet imagined, a good deal about the other kinds of Men. My own idea was based on the old problem ‘Who was Cain’s wife?’ If we follow Scripture it wd. seem that she must have been no daughter of Adam’s. I pictured the True Men descending from Seth, then meeting Cain’s not perfectly human descendants (in Genesis vi. 1-4, where I agree with you), interbreeding and thus producing the wicked Antediluvians.¹⁰

Oddly enough I, like you, had pictured Adam as being, physically, the son of two anthropoids, on whom, after birth, God worked the miracle which made him Man: said, in fact, ‘Come out—and forget thine own people and thy father’s house’¹¹–the Call of Abraham wd. be a far smaller instance of the same sort of thing, and regeneration in each one of us wd. be an instance too, tho’ not a smaller one. That all seems to me to fit in both historically and spiritually.

I don’t quite feel we shd. gain anything by the doctrine that Adam was a hermaphrodite. As for the (rudimentary) presence in each sex of organs proper to the other, does that not occur in other mammals as well as in humans? Surely pseudo-organs of lactation are externally visible in the male dog? If so there wd. be no more ground for making men (I mean, humans) hermaphroditic than any other mammal. (By the way, what an inconvenience it is in English to have the same word for Homo and Vir).¹² No doubt these rudimentary organs have a spiritual significance: there ought spiritually to be a man in every woman and a woman in every man. And how horrid the ones who haven’t got it are: I can’t bear a ‘man’s man’ or a ‘woman’s woman’.

I haven’t read any of the books you mention except Farrer’s Glass of Vision (if that is the Bamptons)¹³ which I found v. good.¹⁴ Have you read Simone Weil’s Waiting on God?¹⁵ Erroneous in many ways, but I have rather fallen in love with it. The fragment at the end, about the sons of Noah, wd. interest you especially.

I will order They Shall be My People¹⁶ and look forward to it. Congratulations. For my own part, I have been given a year’s leave from all teaching duties to enable me to finish my book on XVIth century literature, so I am plugging away at that as hard as I can. My hope is to kill some popular mythology about that fabulous monster called ‘the Renaissance’. There are five fairy tales already written, of which the second has now appeared.

‘lane’ died almost a year ago, after a long but, thank God, painless illness. I beg you will often pray for her. She was an unbeliever and, in later years, very jealous, exacting, and irascible, but always tender to the poor and to animals.

Your hand is better than mine (to read, I mean—it may hurt more).

Yes, oremus, oremus.

Yours very sincerely.

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen etc

10/1/52

Dear Evans–

Thanks for the play,¹⁷ and for the other chap’s stories.¹⁸ I liked the play very much. You made the astrology of the Magi v. convincing and Simeon was quite a character. I hope the performance pleased you?

As for the stories—the author writes a great deal better than most of the ‘science fiction’ lot, and is pretty learned. But oh, if only he didn’t try to be comic! The Norse story¹⁹ was far the best, for in its atmosphere rough horse-play did no harm. But the attempts at humour in the other two ruined them for me. I can’t bear Britomart getting drunk and maudlin. In Ariosto’s world there is, of course, plenty of comedy: but not of the kind this author puts in! Perhaps I expected too much. With all good wishes for the new year.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO HARRY BIAMIRES (BOD):

Magdalen.

19/1/52

Dear Blamires (I wish you’d call me Lewis instead of Dr. Lewis)

I have read through the revised passages.²⁰ They all seem to me v. sound now. A few minor points remain: p. 1. animal kind. Just a slight danger of anbiguity between kind = sort (i.e. are animalic) and kind = species (animal-kind or mankind). P. 24. para 3 especially brutal. I’d prefer cruel. Brutal is unfortunate because the use of brutal to mean cruel is itself an instance of the same figure that leads to inhuman meaning cruel. P. 72 End of footnote. Wd. common dependence be better than communal. The latter might mean that we don’t have in common a personal dependence but only a corporate dependence. P. 73 para 2. I’m not quite happy about ‘authority of service’. P. 74. Isn’t the quotation ‘come full circle’ not gone. (I haven’t looked this up).

About your kind compliment to me in the Preface, I like it of course. The real question is whether it will do you good or harm. I am much hated as well as much loved and the connection with me will damn you with certain reviewers. I’d advise you to omit it, but you must do exactly as you please.

They were wrong in saying I was away that Friday and I’m sorry they did, because I had staying with me a man whom I wd. like you to have met. He has read your previous books & likes them, and has in common with you the qualities of being (a.) A Christian—R. C. (b.) A schoolmaster (c.) An old pupil of mine. Not that you are exactly a schoolmaster. His name is G. Sayer (The College, Malvern)

Of course you were right to send me the MS. All best wishes: you are doing a most valuable work.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO CAROL JENKINS (W): ²¹

REF.52/60

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

22nd January 1952.

Dear Miss Jenkins,

It is a pleasure to answer your question. I found the name²² in the notes to Lane’s Arabian Nights:²³ it is the Turkish for Lion. I pronounce it Ass-Ian myself. And of course I meant the Lion of ludah. I am so glad you liked the book.²⁴ I hope you will like the sequel (Prince Caspian) which came out in November.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD): TS

REF.52/64.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

22nd January 1952.

Dear Mr. Kinter,

By an odd coincidence your very handsome and acceptable gift arrived by the same post as the enclosed letter: which I send to you as a proof that I was not so rude as to ignore your very interesting and welcome letter of last year. Wise after the event, I now see that you were merely on a visit to New York, and had not changed your permanent address.

You cannot imagine what the arrival of a ham means to the average British household these days: it would be untrue to say that we are short of food, but our sufficiency is a very monotonous one, and such luxuries as you have sent me have a very cheering effect.

With very many thanks, and all best wishes for 1952,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (P): ²⁵

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Jan 31st 1952

Dear Mr. Hilton Young

Lanes²⁶ have sent me a copy of your paper on my novels, and suggested that we shd. meet. If you could run down and lunch with me in college on any day next month except the 7th and 12th (Sundays are bad, but possible) I’d be delighted to have a talk afterwards. But—would it be a risk? I have an idea that a critic and a book are company, but that the author is de trop.²⁷ Wd. my Milton book have been improved or ruined by a meeting with Milton? Because, you see, there is hardly any limit to our disagreements about my trilogy.

But ought you to take any notice of the fact? When I’ve said that there is no allegory in it, and that there’s nothing at all about the Second Coming in T.H.S.,²⁸ you may reply ‘Well, that is what the books mean to an intelligent reader and what does it matter what you meant them to mean?’–a point of view I wholly agree with. Still, I hope you’ll come: we shd. probably have several other authors to discuss.

You could hardly conceive how different my approach was from yours. The germ of Perelandra was simply the picture of the floating islands themselves, with no location, no story, and no [?]²⁹ The way you allegorise the 3 species on Mars is masterly: and those three, because—well, however one does invent things: presumably because I’m human and therefore can’t invent things except by splicing up human nature. Query—is it possible for any man to write a fantastic story which another man can’t read as an allegory? (The history of medieval criticism makes it clear that the answer is No).

Do come, and name your day: 1 o’ clock at the college lodge, and ask to be shown to the Smoking Room.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen

31/1/52

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

How singular! In the last year my life also became much ‘better’ and, just like you, I often feel a little frightened. We must both distinguish (a.) The bad Pagan feeling that the gods don’t like us to be happy and that it excites Nemesis: see Browning’s Caliban upon Setebos³⁰ (b.) The good Christian caution lest we become soft and self indulgent and cease to recognise one’s dependence on God.

That suffering is not always sent as a punishment is clearly established for believers by the book of Job and by John IX. 1-4. That it sometimes is, is suggested by parts of the Old Testament and Revelation. It wd. certainly be most dangerous to assume that any given pain was penal. I believe that all pain is contrary to God’s will, absolutely but not relatively. When I am taking a thorn out of my finger (or a child’s finger) the pain is ‘absolutely’ contrary to my will: i.e. if I could have chosen a situation without pain I would have done so. But I do will what caused pain, relatively to the given situation: i.e. granted the thorn I prefer the pain to leaving the thorn where it is. A mother smacking a child wd. be in the same position: she wd. rather cause it this pain than let it go on pulling the cat’s tail, but she wd. like it better if no situation which demands a smack had arisen.

On the heathen, see I Tim. IV. 10.³¹ Also in Matt. XXV. 31-46 the people don’t sound as if they were believers. Also the doctrine of Christ’s descending into Hell* and preaching to the dead: wd. that would be outside time, and include those who died long after Him as well as those who died before He was born as Man. I don’t think we know the details: we must just stick to the view that (a.) All justice & mercy will be done, (b) But that nevertheless it is our duty to do all we can to convert unbelievers. All blessings.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHURCH TIMES (EC)?³²

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sir,–

I welcome the letter from the Rural Dean of Gravesend,³³ though I am sorry that anyone should have regarded it necessary to describe the Bishop of Birmingham as an Evangelical. To a layman, it seems obvious that what unites the Evangelical and the Anglo-Catholic against the ‘Liberal’ or ‘Modernist’ is something very clear and momentous, namely, the fact that both are thoroughgoing supernaturalists, who believe in the Creation, the Fall, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Second Coming, and the Four Last Things. This unites them not only with one another, but with the Christian religion as understood ubique et ab omnibus.³⁴

The point of view from which this agreement seems less important than their divisions, or than the gulf which separates both from any non-miraculous version of Christianity, is to me unintelligible. Perhaps the trouble is that as supernaturalists, whether ‘Low’ or ‘High’ Church, thus taken together, they lack a name. May I suggest ‘Deep Church’; or, if that fails in humility, Baxter’s ‘mere Christians’?³⁵

C. S. Lewis

TO JILL FREUD (T):

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/2/52

It lies on my mind that I talked some nonsense about a ‘tread mill’ in my note yesterday. Pretty good rot for a man who is being given full pay for doing what most people do in their spare time. Wash it out. I only meant the engine is happily doing N revs, per second!

J

TO VERA MATHEWS (W):

Magdalen College,

Magdalen

17/2/52

Dear Miss Mathews

You will think I have taken a terribly long time over the Nabob,³⁶ but the only time I have for such things is the week ends and the last two have been fully occupied by going through proofs of a new translation (someone else’s) of the gospels.³⁷ And now, before I say anything, remember that—as I think I said, the short story is not my Form at all, so that my criticism will be amateurish.

I think the general narrative manner is good, and, with certain reservations, the character of the wife. I don’t find Cobham so good: but my reasons will best come out as we go along. These are my notes;

P. 2. Having worked…everything seemed. Am I pedantic to object to the syntax? If everything is the subject of the sentence then it ought to be everything, not Hermione, who had ‘once worked’ etc

P. 3. just that. I don’t understand what these words mean. But perhaps it’s an American idiom that I don’t know. If so, O.K.

righteously felt sincerely? genuinely? I don’t know what ‘righteously feeling’ wd. mean

P. 4. his bent was military etc. This is the first of many passages in wh. you refer to C. as a soldier. But wouldn’t the governor of a province in India be in the I.C.S. (Indian Civil Service) not in the Army?

enlisted. Do you mean went in as a private soldier? (wh. is what enlist means to us). If so this is infinitely improbable for a young man of C’s social position at that time. You mean, don’t you, that he ‘went into the army’ i.e. got a commission?

P 5. to never yield, ‘never to yield’?

P. 6. What are the drafts?.

P. 9. para 3. v. good P. 20. How those vicars. But they wouldn’t, you know. They might have v. likely 100 or so years earlier. In Cs time they’d all have been talking about a God of love. I don’t mean that our Englishman in India, bitten with Oriental wisdom, might not say what C. does, but then he wd. be a fool, which you don’t mean C. to be.

savant. Doesn’t this suggest something academic and even scientific? Perhaps ‘sage’ wd. do.

P. 24. What are physical virtues? It ought to mean good muscles, good digestion, sound teeth etc, but I don’t think that’s what you do mean.

P. 25. better stayed. No English speaker wd. omit the have.

P. 26. She might even laugh…wd. not have. Oh but surely—surely—a man so near renunciation and enlightenment as you mean C. to be wd. have got beyond the stage of minding whether people laughed at him or not ages ago. You might as well introduce a great pianist who has difficulty about five finger exercises!

visit the Tower. More what schoolboys, foreigners, or very country cousins wd. do—not an ‘Indian Civilian’ and his bride. They’re not like that.

P 28. Period is purely American. The English is ‘full stop’. But of course you may be entitled to translate, just as you’d make ancient Egyptians talk modern American if you were writing a story about them. Still, it raises awkward problems when the two languages are almost identical.

P 29. I’m kind. Wouldn’t anyone say ‘I am kind’?

P. 30. would they laugh…military man. See notes on pp. 26 and 4.

P. 36. I’m not quite clear what is meant by putting God ‘primarily’ above everything.

P. 34. beg apology. Surely one begs a pardon or makes an apology?

P. 36. soldier etc. see on pp. 4, and 30.

I’m like you…bloody Mary. This sounds to me like the language of an utterly commonplace old grumbler, not one far advanced in the mystic path.

I will pay you the compliment (for it is one: the naked truth is not for fools) of giving you a perfectly honest criticism. I don’t think the story, as it stands, will do. But its partial failure does not prove (this is what you most want to know) an absence of literary talent. That, I think, you probably have. What is wrong with this story is due to inexperience. You have set yourself two handicaps, either one of which wd. be enough to wreck most authors. (1.) You are writing about a society you don’t know. I don’t know much about Anglo-Indian life myself, but your picture somehow smells all wrong. (2.) You have tried to put across a marvel (the lévitation. Whether Swamiji wd. have let us call it a ‘miracle’ or not doesn’t concern us as literary critics).

Now there were only two ways to make us accept it. One was by making the whole story fantastic—like a fairy tale—from the word go. That, of course I see, wd. have been quite inconsistent with the mood you wanted to create. The other was so to build up the spirituality of Cobham or Swamiji or (better) both, that we could believe anything of them. And that’s where you come down. We see v. little of Swamiji and what we do see has no aura of grandeur or mystery, nothing numinous, about it. As for Cobham, he is incredible as a mystic. There’s no trace of serenity or love, and his numerous speeches to Hermione are in a vein both of censoriousness and of slangy bullying which is not only unlike a budding sage but quite untrue to the social group he wd. belong to. In other words the difficulties of the theme have, on this occasion, defeated you. I await with interest a story with a better chosen scene and subject. There is nothing amateurish about the actual writing and you have, I think, the gift for ordonnance.³⁸

Are we still friends? I hope so,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (P):

Magdalen

24/2/52

Dear Hilton-Young–

I think I muffled the point I was trying to make yesterday about the significance-unknown-to-the-artist in a work of art. I certainly didn’t intend to treat ‘Either Inspiration or the Unconscious’ as an exhaustive alternative for its source.

It’s more like this. Every fiction, realistic or fantastic, uses forms taken from the real world: a woman, a ship, a gun, a horse etc. Now the total significance of these in the real world (call it T) is known to nobody. And the fraction of it known to each is slightly (or, it may be) widely different. The fraction in the artist’s mind (both conscious and unconscious) is T/A: in the reader’s T/R. An extreme case of difference wd. be, say, if a child who didn’t yet know the facts of generation put a marriage into a story. His ignorance might make that bit of his story simply comic & absurd to the adult reader: but it might also make that bit to the adult reader far more significant than the child had ever intended it to be.

Now I hope no individual reader of my work is to me as adult to child. But the aggregate experiences of my readers, contributing to each from T/Rl + T/R2 etc, presumably are. At any rate a classic, wh. has been read by great minds for 1000 years, and discussed, will have all its forms interpreted by a composite mind, which ought to see in them more than the artist intended. This is not a complete substitution of a new work for his original one, for it is his particular grouping of forms which evoke the whole response. (As if successive generations learned better and better dances to one original tune: a certain formal element in it remaining constant but being more richly & subtly filled).

All this is only an elaboration of the old maxim that what you get out of work depends on what you bring to it. Humanity as a whole brings to the Aeneid more than Virgil could: therefore it must get more out. After all, you as an Atheist have to believe that in admiring natural beauty we are getting out of it what no-one put in: why shd. we not equally get out of verbal compositions what the composer didn’t put in?

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (P): PC

Magdalen College

Oxford

27/2/52

Yes. T/Rn is only an aggregate unless either (A.) [?]³⁹ are real, as Plato & Hegel, in a different way, thought or (B.) Each educated T/R is, through tradition & critical discussion modified by the other T/Rs. Now I think A is probably and B is certainly true. Thanks for kind offer of hospitality: I’ll try to make it one of these days.

C.S.L.

TO GENIA GOELZ (Z/P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29 Feb 1952

Dear Mrs. Goelz (or may I, being old, and bold, and avuncular, say dear Genia?

I learn from Mrs. Van Deusen that you are ‘taking the plunge’.⁴⁰ As you have been now for so long in my prayers, I hope it will not seem intrusive to send my congratulations. Or I might say condolences and congratulations. For whatever people who have never undergone an adult conversion may say, it is a process not without its distresses. Indeed, they are the very sign that it is a true initiation. Like learning to swim or to skate, or getting married, or taking up a profession. There are cold shudderings about all these processes. When one finds oneself learning to fly without trouble one soon discovers (usually. There are blessed exceptions where we are allowed to take a real step without that difficulty), by waking up, that it was only a dream.

All blessings and good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29/2/52

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

How odd and delightful that you should meet James! Give him my kind regards.

He has perhaps not given you quite the right idea about our ‘Long Vacation’.⁴¹ It is precisely that part of the year on which both dons and serious students rely for their real work: the term for lectures & discussion, the Vacations, and especially the ‘Long’ for steady reading. I think your universities suffer from not having it. Mine, this year, will be v. busy indeed, and no question of holidays to America.

But don’t think I am the less touched or grateful for your most kind offer of hospitality. I am speaking of the ‘Long’ as it has now come to be: of course originally this prolonged summer gap in all our English institutions–Parliament, Law courts, etc—dates, no doubt, from the days when we were an agricultural community and no one cd., at that time of the year, be spared from the land.

I have written to Genia. Your news is v. good. In a way it is [a] good sign, isn’t it?, that the Rector shd. not be a person she particularly likes. I will indeed continue my prayers for her. With love to all.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO HELEN D. CALKINS (W):⁴² TS

REE 52/123.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

1st March 1952.

Dear Mrs. Calkins,

I will read it with pleasure,⁴³ but I must’nt write a foreword. I have done far too many of them. It begins to make both the authors and me ridiculous, and also I run dry. I wish the book all success.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

7/3/52

Sir

I write in support of an application which, I understand, my very deeply respected friend Mr. J. A. Chapman⁴⁴ is making to your Committee. Mr. Chapman has in his old age a serious devotion both to his art and to humanity which we usually meet only in the young; if he has spent on the publication of his poem⁴⁵ a sum very serious to him, though not large, I trust, by the standards of the R.L.E, I am sure he has been moved to do so not by an author’s vanity but by a sense of his mission. A grant to him would be a proper recognition of a long and arduous life devoted to letters and learning in a spirit of self-dedication.

I am, Sir,

Yours faithfully

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR G REEVE S (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

8/3/52

My dear Arthur

I hope to arrive at Crawfordsburn with W.⁴⁶ on Aug. Wed. 20th. He will leave on Aug. Sat. 23rd. If agreeable I wd. like to stay on at the Hotel⁴⁷ for a fortnight of your society, i.e. sail again on Mon. Sept 8th. Will that suit you? I can’t manage the Easter as well.

In the Last Chronide⁴⁸ I think all the London parts (the ‘Bayswater Romance’) a bore and now always skip them. But I think the Crawley parts splendid.

I am wondering how your date with Tchainie went? Give her my love. Blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD): PC

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/3/52

Excellent. I’ll be (D.V.) in the Eastgate about 12 noon on Sat. March 22 d.

C.S.L.

TO GENIA GOELZ (L/P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

18 March 1952

Dear Genia

Don’t bother at all about that question of a person being ‘made a Christian’ by baptism. It is only the usual trouble about words being used in more than one sense. Thus we might say a man ‘became a soldier’ the moment that he joined the army. But his instructors might say six months later ‘I think we have made a soldier of him’. Both usages are quite definable, only one wants to know which is being used in a given sentence. The Bible itself gives us one short prayer which is suitable for all who are struggling with the beliefs and doctrines. It is: ‘Lord I believe, help Thou my unbelief.’⁴⁹ Would something of this sort be any good?: Almighty God, who art the father of lights and who hast promised by thy dear Son that all who do thy will shall know thy doctrine:⁵⁰ give me grace so to live that by daily obedience I daily increase in faith and in the understanding of thy Holy Word, through lesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W):

Magdalen etc.

22/3/52

Dear Miss Mathews

I was glad to get your letter. I seem to be as ignorant of America as you are of India. I had no idea your parsons preached Hell-fire: indeed I thought the ordinary presentation of Christianity with you was quite as milk-and-watery as with us, if not more so. We could do with a bit more Hell fire over here.

Clearly I misunderstood Cobham. I hadn’t thought of a wholly unregenerate man being levitated simply by someone else’s sanctity—tho’ of course we all hope this will happen to ourselves. Thanks for a picture of two charming creatures. I am glad to have one of them among my correspondents and wish Andy would write too: but I suppose that’s not much in his line. They sound as if they were animals with a sense of humour. Shall we see some more literary works by you? I hope you’ll go on. With very good wishes from us both.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

24/3/52

My dear Roger–

I have re-read The Luck⁵¹ and liked it very much. I felt, as I had felt at the first reading, that tho’ it could not have the quality you and I most prize in a story, yet it had a freshness, a real feel of wet wood & spring days wh. make it more than a mere treasure hunt. It is also extremely exciting. As luck wd. have it I met a lady who was looking for things to ‘read to the children’ & the Luck is now on her list. I think she’s a buyer too, not a library addict.

Now for Logistics. I see that the Beaumaris jaunt must be on my backward journey as, on the outward, it wd. be in the midst of the Aug. bank-holiday period.⁵²1 propose to sail from Belfast to L’pool⁵³ on the night of Sept. Mon. 8th. Can we meet, say at Woodside ferry landing stage on the morning of the 9th & lie that night at Beaumaris. I shall be alone and, if quite convenient wd. gladly accept a night’s lodging chez vous on Wed. 10th, setting out for Oxford the first convenient train on Thurs. 11th. But I trust you to tell me if this is in the least a nuisance, for I can be perfectly well housed in Woodside Hotel. My duty to June. Good hunting.

Yours

Jack

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN:⁵⁴ PC

Magdalen College

Oxford

24 March 1952

Porcus sum, I am a pig, porcissimus, the piggest of pigs. I looked at my diary at about 3 o’clock on Sat. afternoon and found to my horror that I had failed a tryst with you at 12. Please forgive a nit-wit. Will you prove your charity by meeting me at the Eastgate 12 o’clock next Saturday? Even I seldom make exactly the same howler twice! I really am very sorry: I had been much looking forward to it.

C.S.L.

TO MICHAEL IRWIN (P): ⁵⁵

Magdalen College,

Oxford

25th March 1952

Dear Michael

Thank you very much for your nice letter. I am very glad you liked the Narnian books. Yes–there is another one already written but you won’t be able to get it till next November: they are printing it at present, and printing takes a long time, especially for a book that has pictures in it.

Lucy and Edmund and Caspian and Reepicheep (but not Peter and Susan, who are now getting a bit too old) all come into the new one. They get into the Narnian world and all go to sea and have a long voyage: it is called The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

I wonder what other books you like. Do you like E. Nesbitt’s The Phoenix and the Carpet, and The Amulet,⁵⁶ and Tolkien’s The Hobbit,⁵⁷ and MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblins and Curdy and the Princess?.⁵⁸ I think all these are very good. Please thank your father for writing to me. Love to all.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

29/3/52

Hearken, Little Brother, to the wisdom of Baloo.⁵⁹ Neither you nor I will write to the Bulkeley Arms⁶⁰ for rooms for us both, for the modern hotel keeper wd. then be v. likely to put us both in one room without warning or remedy.

But you will write for your room & I will write (today) for mine. And then, by the permission of Allah, he will think he has to do with a Mr. Green of Bebington & a Mr. Lewis of Oxford who have no connection.

High Wind in Jamaica⁶¹ wh. I’ve just read is better than I expected. Tho’ none of them speak about the brother’s death we are told that the eldest girl ‘missed him badly’: her silence was not due to indifference but to a kind of taboo wh. I think quite possible. As to her evidence wh. hanged the pirates, I suppose some children, as some adults, wd. do that and others not. She was in a tight place: and as a certain type of woman wd. play her sex, a certain type of child wd. play its childishness. A grim book but good in its way.

Love to all.

J.

TO HELEN D. CALKINS (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

March 29th 1952

Dear Miss Calkins

I’ve read India Looks with as much interest as if it were an adventure story: especially the parts about ancient Indian history which were absolutely new. That’s one of the reasons why I won’t do a preface: I am not qualified to sponsor a book on this subject. For all I know it might be (tho’ I’m sure it is not) a mass of errors! The other is that you are kind to me and quote me, and after that a preface from me wd. make us both look silly—a mutual admiration society.

It’s v. well done. Here are a few notes wh. you may or may not find worth considering.

P. 3. para 4. Trojan heroes etc. Does it matter that of those you mention only Hector was on the Trojan side? Or that many people think the Trojans were not Aryans! Wd. Homeric for Trojan be safer?

P 4. Leaf’s poem, dazzle and the stress. Are you sure it isn’t dazzle and stress*.

P. 23 Quotation from me. I’m afraid people may think (despite the quotation marks) that the view expressed is mine! Could you without too much labour find another motto for this chapter?

‘I am the doubter and the doubt’–is it from Emerson or Henley?–might do by itself.⁶²

P. 36 Para 1. Its connotation…receptivity. This clause conveys no meaning whatever to my mind! This migh the because all the words had different shades of meaning in America. But a knot of abstract nouns, all rather hard to define, is usually a danger signal. (Beware of aspect, framework, connotation, and all their family!)

P 41. Quotation from Hooker. For intensive read intentive.

P 41. last line but one. of separated. Something must have dropped here.

P 42. Para 3. Surely the correct construction is ‘enamoured of ‘not ‘enamoured with’?

And above, Para 3, for Origin read Origen.

P. 45 First sentence. Again, conveys no clear meaning to me. Simplify! Simplify!

P 49 Footnote. You quote as if it was mine what I (as I told you) was quoting from Whitehead.⁶³ Return it to him. I haven’t got a copy to hand but it’ll do you no harm to read his Chapter II! (By the way in a serious book like yours all other books shd. be mentioned with place and date of the edition you are using. Otherwise it will look amateurish to publishers’ readers.

P. 51 Para 1. Christ-centric. Surely the usual word is Christocentric?. (I’m not quite clear at what date the processes described are meant to be happening.)

P 52. Para 1. The reason for his reluctance was because. You’re saying it twice over! Either The reason…was that or Dr. H. was reluctant because he (The second is better. Always prefer concrete to abstract nouns when you can get them: it avoids Gobbledegook.)

P 53. Was there really no effort to do all these works till modern times? Jesuits in Paraguay? Evangelicals attacking slavery?

P 59. Para 2. The assumption etc. Ambiguous. Does it mean ‘We can’t bear it when others assume that we are naif ‘or ‘when others assume that they are naif ‘?

P. 67. It is not…estimate of God. Good. Very good. That’s how to write.

Very good wishes; and thanks for an interesting bit of reading.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY NEYLAN (T):⁶⁴

Magdalen College

Oxford

1/4/52

Dear Mrs. Neylan–

Yes, I do miss him.⁶⁵ But what strikes me even more is the sense that he is already helping me more from where he is than he would do on earth. It was v. nice to meet you all and especially Sarah, now at last old enough to talk to! I liked her and cd. have done with less of Mingo! She wants fattening, though! Bless you all.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen etc

April 1st 1952

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

The advantage of a fixed form of service is that we know what is coming. Ex tempore public prayer has this difficulty: we don’t know whether we can mentally join in it until we’ve heard it—it might be phoney or heretical. We are therefore called upon to carry on a critical and a devotional activity at the same moment: two things hardly compatible. In a fixed form we ought to have ‘gone through the motions’ before in our private prayers: the rigid form really sets our devotions free.

I also find the more rigid it is, the easier it is to keep one’s thoughts from straying. Also it prevents any service getting too completely eaten up by whatever happens to be the pre-occupation of the moment (a war, an election, or what not). The permanent shape of Christianity shows through. I don’t see how the ex tempore method can help becoming provincial & I think it has a great tendency to direct attention to the minister rather than to God.

Quakers…well I’ve been unlucky in mine. The ones I know are atrocious bigots whose religion seems to consist almost entirely in attacking other people’s religions. But I’m sure there are good ones as well.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

April 3rd 1952

My dear Mr. Allen

Sugar and tea! Hurrah. They are just what we need most, tea being our most powerful addiction-drug, and we thank you v. heartily.

I’m not quite sure whether we are playing into Uncle loe’s⁶⁶ hand by messing about in Korea and elsewhere. If the enemy were the Germans I’d agree with you. He has always been a big fighter and it’s no good doing anything about him short of a full-dress war. The Russian, so far (whether Tsarist or pseudo-Communist makes no odds, I expect) has not been like that. He grabs things here and grabs things there when he finds them unguarded. I think there’s a real chance that by rearmament and resistance at minor points we just might prevent it coming to a real show-down. But heaven knows I am as ill qualified as anyone in the world to have an opinion. At any rate both your country and mine have twice in our lifetime tried the recipe of appeasing an aggressor and it didn’t work on either occasion: so that it seems sense to try the other way this time.

I’m all with you about Orion. It’s nice to live in the Northern Hemisphere because the winter stars are much better than the summer ones and of course one sees more of them when the nights are longest. The whole combination Sirius—Orion–Aldebaran—Pleiades is magnificent. I wonder what constellation our Sun forms part of as seen from the planets (if any) of Sirius?

Spring has been arrested here by a sudden cold snap, snow & frost and all the crocuses are in a bad way: but the birds, bless them, keep on talking as if it were real April weather. I suffer from your inability to remember what I have to buy. In my case it happens chiefly about razor-blades. One remembers it during the five minutes painful scrape each morning but never when one is among the shops. With many thanks & v. good wishes.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

For some time now a woman calling herself ‘Mrs C. S. Lewis’ had been living on her ‘husband’s’ credit at the Courtstairs Hotel, Thanet, Kent. The lady had a history of living cheaply by pretending to be married to some well-known person who would soon be joining her. In this instance she told the owners of Courtstairs Hotel, Alan and Nell Berners-Price, that Lewis would soon be arriving and would pay the bill. However, by April 1952 she had been living at Court Stairs for over a year, and Mrs Berners-Price went up to Oxford to confront Lewis with a mass of unpaid bills.

On being admitted to Lewis’s rooms in Magdalen College, Mrs Berners-Price said, ‘I’ve come to ask about your wife.’ ‘But I’m not married,’ replied Lewis. Mrs Berners-Price was as surprised by this as Lewis was on learning he had a ‘wife’. Following the advice of his solicitor, Owen Barfield, Lewis took out an injunction of jactitation of marriage against the woman.

The woman, Mrs Nella Victoria Hooker, had been in jail a number of times for similar offences. She was arrested in April and her trial set for 8 May in the court at Canterbury. While in jail she wrote letters to Lewis, as he mentions in the letter to Christian Hardie below.

TO CHRISTIAN HARDIE (P):

Palm Sunday [6 April] 1952

Dear Christian

I romped through The Power and the Glory.⁶⁷ Its theme makes it suitable enough as a preface to Holy Week but if you intended it as a penance you have bowled a wide. It is a most moving and (in its proper mode) enjoyable book.

As far as I am concerned there is no common measure between it and Waugh.⁶⁸ In Waugh’s book the supposedly good end of the old rake had simply to be taken on trust: but one lives through the whole experience of Greene’s hunted priest, filled from the first with interest, soon with compassion, and finally with love. Also Greene seems to know things. All that about the ‘pious woman’ in the cell (few laymen perhaps get letters from her so often as I) is excellent: also the bit about forgiveness of sins being easier to believe than forgiveness of the ‘habit of piety’. Greene loves and understands his most repulsive characters–the lieutenant and the half-caste—better than Waugh does his favourites.

I think he has a fault. The central tragic theme is not made more effective by filling up all the chinks with other, irrelevant, miseries, like those of the Fellows family. The great tragic artists didn’t do that. Macbeth⁶⁹ wd. not have been improved by making the drunken porter get cancer: nor the Iliad by making the domestic life of Hector and Andromache squalid and miserable. That is the modern nimiety. But it is a very good book all the same.

Thanks very much for the loan of it. (It wd. be unkind to discuss my views on tragedy with Colin just at present. He seems to be a little tired of that subject). A happy Easter to you both.

Yours

Jack

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

[Magdalen College,

Oxford.]

April 14th 1952

Pater dilectissime

Multum eras et es in orationibus meis et grato animo litteras tuas accepi. Et ora tu pro me, nunc praesertim, dum me admodum orphanum esse sentio quia grandaevus meus confessor et carissimus pater in Christo nuper mortem obiit. Dum ad altare celebraret, subito, post acerrimum sed (Deo gratias) brevissimum dolorem, expiravit, et novissima verba erant venio, Domine Jesu. Vir erat maturâ spirituali sapientiâ sed ingenuitate et innocentiâ fere puerili–buono fanciullo, ut ita dicam.

Potesne, mi pater, quaestionem resolvere? Quis sanctorum scriptorum scripsit ‘Amor est ignis jugiter ardens’? Credidi haec verba esse in libro De Imitatione Christi sed non possum ibi invenire.

‘Ut omnes unum sint’ est petitio numquam in meis precibus praetermissa. Dum optabilis unitas doctrinae et ordinis abest, eo acrius conemur caritatis unionem tenere: quod, eheu, et vestri in Hispania et nostri in Hibernia Septentrionali non faciunt. Vale, mi pater,

C. S. Lewis

*

[Magdalen College,

Oxford.]

April 14th 1952

Dearest Father,

You were and are much in my prayers and thank you for your letters. And do you pray for me, especially at present when I feel very much an orphan because my aged confessor and most loving father in Christ has just died. While he was celebrating at the altar, suddenly, after a most sharp but (thanks be to God) very brief attack of pain, he expired; and his last words were, ‘I come, Lord Jesus.’ He was a man of ripe spiritual wisdom—noble minded but of an almost childlike simplicity and innocence: ‘buono fandullo’ if I may put it so.⁷⁰

Can you, my Father, resolve a question? Which of the holy writers wrote ‘Amor est ignis jugiter ardens’? I thought these words were in The Imitation of Christ but I cannot find them there.⁷¹

‘That they all may be one’⁷² is a petition which in my prayers I never omit. While the wished-for unity of doctrine and order is missing, all the more eagerly let us try to keep the bond of charity: which, alas, your people in Spain and ours in Northern Ireland do not.

Farewell, my Father.

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

April 16th 1952

Dear Miss Pitter

It always seems a bit of cheek to send anyone (especially the likes of you) a ticket for one’s lecture, unless one could do it in the Chinese style ‘In the inconceivably unlikely event of honourable poetess wishing to attend this person’s illiterate and erroneous lecture…’⁷³ Oh dear, to think of that immemorial urbanity, that remote, fantastic world being in the hands of the Bolshevists!

Hero & Leander⁷⁴ has no Original in the strict sense. The Greek poem on the subject is late, rather charmingly precious, and was falsely attributed to the primeval and mythical Musaeus: the real author is unknown—some Alexandrian, I think. But neither the Marlovian nor the Chapmanic part is anything like a translation—not so close to pseudo-Musaeus as Tennyson is to Malory.

Have you read Andrew Young’s Into Hades,⁷⁵ and what do you think of it. I found the content absorbing and the images like all his, simply enchanting (There’s a bit about reflected water-drops from a raised oar rushing up to meet the real water drops—lovely!) but my ear was a bit unsatisfied. I believe ‘Blank Verse’, unrhymed five footers, is not a metre to be written loosely. I think the unrhymed Alexandrine, written without a break at the 6th syllable wd. be far better: e.g.

I know far less of spiders than that poetess Who (like the lady in Comus in the perilous wood) Can study nature’s infamies with secure heart…

The third line is here the best: one wants plenty of trisyllables to leap across the threatened medial pause. Try a few. Commending me to you in the lowliest wise that I can or may.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF.52/28.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

19th April 1952.

My dear Allen,

I got back today from a delightful three days break in the country, just a little dissatisfied to be at my desk again, and therefore just in the mood for the welcome fillip which your admirable parcel administered. You must by this time be as tired of hearing C.S.L. on the English food situation as I am tired of enduring it: so I will say no more than that all these good things will be a wonderful help at the house, and thank you once again for your kindness.

I have been stopping with an ex-pupil, now a master at my old school, Malvern:⁷⁶ a pleasant little town, about sixty miles from here, lying under the foot of a four miles range of hills, two thousand feet high, in the Severn valley. Of course this is nothing much in the way of height, but they rise so abruptly from the level that one gets the effect of miniature mountains; and there is splendid air and exercise to be had in tramping them. To add to the joy, our curious climate has suddenly decided to give us an advance instalment of summer—at least one hopes it is only an instalment and not the summer. It was 75 degrees yesterday, and as hot today; all the women in summer frocks and so forth. Malvern town is a perfect and melancholy example of the change which has come over this country since my schooldays; then, it was a town of large ugly, comfortable Victorian houses, designed to be run by four or five servants apiece. The same houses are still there, but at least seven out of every ten are now either schools, offices, or boarding houses.

I occasionally glance at the news of your Presidential elections with that respectful bewilderment with which one regards another nation’s domestic affairs. To us, the question naturally presents itself from the viewpoint of which candidate will be most sympathetic to our troubles. Most people here seem to hope for Eisenhower, and are most afraid of Taft: who, rightly or wrongly, seems to have the reputation of being the old style Isolationist.⁷⁷ It is being said that if he is returned, his foreign policy will be that America should be defended in America, and not in Europe. But I suspect that this must be a crude exaggeration.

I hope Mrs. Allen keeps well: please remember me very kindly to her. Do you both propose to go to the seaside this year? If all goes well, I shall be in Eire for a fortnight in August, with daily bathing: not the best sort of bathing, but a sight better than none at all. For, being on a bay, there are practically no waves; and where the sea is perpetually calm, I would just as soon, indeed sooner, bathe in a river.

With all best wishes and many thanks to you both, from us both,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO DELMAR BANNER (W):⁷⁸ TS

REF.52/196

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29th April 1952.

My dear Banner,

Thanks for yours of yesterday. But in the words of the immortal Jeeves to Bertie Wooster, ‘I fear, Sir, I am unable to recede from my position.’⁷⁹

Yes indeed, I hope to visit your country before I die;⁸⁰ but I have many calls upon my time, and my own Ireland generally lures me to it when I can take a holiday.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

The knowledge that I could (liceret mihi)⁸¹ advise is no use because I know I couldn’t (non possem).⁸²

With the growing fame of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis was invited to address the Library Association during their Bournemouth conference, held between 29 April and 2 May. On 29 April he read a paper entitled ‘On Three Ways of Writing for Children’.⁸³

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

May 1/52

I think the Bournemouth Lecture was a success. One librarian said I had almost converted him to fairy-tales, he having hitherto taken the ‘real life’ stuff for granted.

Two librariennes said The Luck of the Lynns was in much demand and one praised The Wonderful Stranger.⁸⁴ I added that some of your unpublished & more ‘faerian’ books were even better. You were spoken of with much respect.

J.

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

May 5th 1952

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Thank you for your cheery letter and the delightful enclosures. I’ve seldom seen better photos of children. And the landscape lures one into it. I long to be tramping over those wooded—or, what is better, half wooded hills. I’m as sensitive as a German to the spell of das Feme⁸⁵ and all that.

About the high-low quarrels in the Church, whatever the merits of the dispute are, the ‘heat’ is simply and solely Sin, and I think parsons ought to preach on it from that angle.

By the way, the ‘conversation-piece’ by Paul & Mini is really excellent. I hope you will all go on having a lovely time. God bless you all.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W): TS

REF.52/205.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

6th May 1952.

Dear Mrs. Berners-Price,

Many thanks for your letter of the 4th. This is most kind of you, and I will very gladly accept your hospitality for the night of Wednesday 7th, tomorrow;⁸⁶ I should like to stop over Thursday too, but I fear that will be impossible. Indeed nothing but the Majesty of the Law would have got me out of Oxford for one night at the present moment. I come by a train which reaches Ramsgate at 6.8 p.m.

Yours gratefully,

C. S. Lewis

(modern blotting paper!)⁸⁷

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT:⁸⁸

Sir,–

The authorship of The Sheepheards Slumber (No. 133 in Englands Helicon, beginning ‘In Pescod time, when Hound to Home’) is not stated in any edition that I have been able to consult. The poem will be found in A pleasaunte Laborinth called Churchyardes Chance etc. London. Ihon Kyngston 1580. It is there entitled A matter of fonde Cupid, and vain Venus.

C. S. Lewis

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

May 9th 1952

Dear Mrs Berners Price

Thanks to you and your husband the trial now looms so small in the total adventure that I feel more like a man back from a holiday than a witness released from the box: not that it was a box, neither, being more like a nursery fender.

The actual scene in court was horrid. I never saw Justice at work before, and it is not a pretty sight. Any creature, even an animal, at bay, surrounded by its enemies, is a dreadful thing to see: one felt one was committing a sort of indecency by being present. What did impress me was the absence of any resentment or vindictiveness on the part of the witnesses: you two victims especially were, I thought, getting v. high marks. But, as I say, what I really remember most is a delightful visit to very nice people in a charming house. I am sorry I left my kind host without even a hand-shake: but my doom was upon me.

May I now book a room at Courtstairs (in the ordinary way) for the night of May 18th? I think Walsh said he wd. drive us to Canterbury on the morning of the 19th. I expect I can get on from Canterbury on the afternoon of the 19th.

I enclose ‘PC’⁸⁹ for Penelope.⁹⁰ And once again many, many thanks. I don’t really know why you should have been so kind to a stranger, whose very name must have rather sinister associations in both your minds by now!

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ‘MRS LOCKLEY (L):

[Magdalen College]

13/5/52

Dear ‘Mrs Lockley’

In Bp. Gore’s ‘Sermon on the mount’…I find the view that Christ forbade ‘divorce in such a sense as allowed re-marriage’.⁹¹ The question is whether He made an exception by allowing divorce in such a sense as allowed re-marriage when the divorce was for adultery. In the Eastern Church re-marriage of the innocent party is allowed: not in the Roman. The Anglican Bps. at Lambeth in 1888 denied re-marriage to the guilty party, and added that ‘there has always been a difference of opinion in the Ch. as to whether Our Lord meant to forbid re-marriage of the innocent party in a divorce’.⁹²

It wd. seem then that the only question is whether you can divorce your husband in such a sense as wd. make you free to re-marry. I imagine that nothing is further from your thoughts. I believe that you are free as a Christian woman to divorce him especially since the refusal to do so does harm to the innocent children of his mistress: but that you must (or should) regard yourself as no more free to marry another man than if you had not divorced him. But remember I’m no authority on such matters, and I hope you will ask the advice of one or two sensible clergymen of our own Church.

Our own Vicar whom I have just rung up, says that there are Anglican theologians who say that you must not divorce him. His own view was that in doubtful cases the Law of Charity shd. always be the over-riding consideration, and in a case such as yours charity directs you to divorce him…

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

May 14th 1952

Dear Mrs. Berners-Price

Those plaguey police (they seem to live on my telephone at present: it might be less trouble to be the prisoner than to be a witness!) have just rung to say that the trial will probably not be on May 19th after all and I’m to wait till I get a notice. So may I cancel my room at Courtstairs for the 18th? You’ll let me know if I’ve involved you in any loss, won’t you? And I shall probably be wiring for a room some other night when I’ve got the notice. Heigh-ho!

All the best to both of you, and Penelope. I wish the dog cd. be put in the witness box.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (W): TS

REF.52/219.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

15th May 1952.

Dear Hilton-Young,

I’ve no car and no wireless. You might try Professor G. Driver (this College) for a reading list on the Judith period.⁹³ But do take care: a story already very well told in an ancient text, is a bad thing to work on. The only hope is that the Babylonian stuff might start interesting you for its own sake, and lead to a quite new story in that setting. Otherwise…is there a single success in re-telling an ancient story with modern novelistic technique? It is stark ruin.

Thanks very much for the kind suggestion, but no can do. I am tangled up (only as witness) in a trial, and can make no plans. All good wishes,

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO GENIA GOELZ (L/P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

15 May 1952

Dear Genia

Thanks for your letter of the 9th. All our prayers are being answered and I thank God for it. The only (possibly, not necessarily) unfavourable symptom is that you are just a trifle too excited.⁹⁴ It is quite right that you should feel that ‘something terrific’ has happened to you (it has) and be ‘all glowy’. Accept these sensations with thankfulness as birthday cards from God, but remember that they are only greetings, not the real gift. I mean, it is not the sensations that are the real thing. The real thing is the gift of the Holy Spirit which can’t usually be—perhaps not ever—experienced as a sensation or emotion. The sensations are merely the response of your nervous system. Don’t depend on them. Otherwise when they go and you are once more emotionally flat (as you certainly will be quite soon), you might think that the real thing had gone too. But it won’t. It will be there when you can’t feel it. May even be most operative when you can feel it least.

Don’t imagine it is all ‘going to be an exciting adventure from now on’. It won’t. Excitement, of whatever sort, never lasts. This is the push to start you off on your first bicycle: you’ll be left to [do] lots of dogged pedalling later on. And no need to be depressed about it either. It will be good for your spiritual leg muscles. So enjoy the push while it lasts, but enjoy it as a treat, not as something normal.

Of course, none of us have ‘any right’ at the altar. You might as well talk of a non-existent person ‘having a right’ to be created. It is not our right but God’s free bounty. An English peer said, ‘I like the order of the Garter because it has no dam’ nonsense about merit!⁹⁵ Nor has Grace. And we must keep on remembering that as a cure for Pride.

Yes, pride is a perpetual nagging temptation. Keep on knocking it on the head but don’t be too worried about it. As long as one knows one is proud one is safe from the worst form of pride.

If Hoyle⁹⁶ answers your letter, then let the correspondence drop. He is not a great philosopher (and none of my scientific colleagues think much of him as a scientist), but he is strong enough to do some harm. You’re not David and no one has told you to fight Goliath! You’ve only just enlisted. Don’t go off challenging enemy champions. Learn your drill. I hope this doesn’t sound all like cold water! I can’t tell you how pleased I was with your letter.

God bless you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD): TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

16th May 1952.

Thank you both very much. It will give me great pleasure to dine with you at 7.30 on May 29th. I shall presume ordinary clothes, unless I hear from you to the contrary.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

In May 1952 John H. McCallum of Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, invited Lewis to contribute an article on Edmund Spenser to Volume I of Major British Writers, under the general editorship of G. B. Harrison. Lewis accepted, and his extant correspondence with Harcourt, Brace & World begins with the following letter:

TO JOHN H. MCCALLUM (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

May 21st 1952

Dear Mr. McCallum,

Thank you for yours of the 16th. I think I shall be able to keep all your ‘suggested rules’ except the first. The proportion 15, 45, 20 for Life, General Essay, Particular Analysis wd. not really be suitable for Spenser. The materials for his life do not really add up to a ‘character’: I don’t mean that I couldn’t write one, but if I did I should be contributing to historical fiction. Nor is his kind of poetry one which would yield much under detailed analysis of short passages. The chief thing we must do, indeed, is to encourage readers to remember that he is a romancier, à long haleine.⁹⁷ I cd. accept your suggested proportions alright if I were doing Milton: but they’d ruin an Introduction to Spenser.

My selections will be all from Faerie Queene and Epíthalamíon:⁹⁸ there’s no room for anything else. The bits from EQ. will be often arranged so as to yield something like continuous narrative: as soon as I looked into the matter I saw that a mere conglomeration of the best single stanzas wd. give no idea of his quality and wd., indeed, be almost unreadable. I hope this meets with your approval.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO JOAN PILE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

May 21st 1952

Dear Mrs. Pile

What a horrible business! Of course neither I nor anyone who knows you could believe the allegations for a moment. I don’t think I cd. do much good by writing to Ld. Nuffield, though I am prepared to try it if nothing better can be done. Have you tried your M.P. I mean, not about the expenses of the case but about the injustice of being forced to answer questions on oath and then accused of slander for answering them? In the meantime I am writing to a legal friend of my own for advice. I can’t tell you how sorry I am for you in this trouble. I will write again as soon as I have anything to report.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalen etc.

May 23rd 1952

Dear Vera Gebbert

Well, well, what next? Very hearty congratulations.⁹⁹ Everything in the photos is lovely except the goggles: and they, I suppose, are a Necessary Evil, like civilisation, government, medicine, education, law, and nearly everything else. You’ll have to watch those very depraved antelopes. If they are already addicted to gum and tobacco, they will soon develop a taste for cocktails. (Our college herd of deer used to be v. fond of bread soaked in port–in the days when wine was cheaper. They don’t get the chance now). I shall think, in all the extenuating circumstances, you might be excused for ‘neglecting your writing’. I don’t know that I’d really like to marry a girl who wrote fiction all the time on the honeymoon. (Of course if 7 did, that wd. be quite different and it wd. be most unreasonable of her to object.)

Nor can I quite believe that an avid expectation of my next book makes a very large part of your present experience. Anyway, it won’t be fulfilled. I’m busy at present finishing the heavy, academic work on 16th. Century literature wh. has occupied me (it has been the top tune—all the other books were only its little twiddly bits) for the last 15 years. When it is actually done I expect my whole moral character will collapse. I shall go up like a balloon that has chucked out the last sandbag.

My brother is away for a few days but wd. certainly join in all my felicitations if he were here. I hope you will both live happily ever afterwards and tell stories to your great-grandchildren, travelling in donkey carriages along the mountain roads with hair as white as the snows. God bless you both.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS OSB (W):¹⁰⁰

[Magdalen College]

28/5/52

My dear Dom Bede–

It isn’t chiefly men I am kept in touch with by my huge mail: it is women. The female, happy or unhappy, agreeing or disagreeing, is by nature a much more epistolary animal than the male.

Yes, Pascal does directly contradict several passages in Scripture and must be wrong. What I ought to have said was that the Cosmological argument is, for some people at some times, ineffective. It always has been for me. (By the way do read K. Z. Lorenz King Solomons Ring on animal—especially bird—behaviour.¹⁰¹ There are instincts I had never dreamed of: big with a promise of real morality. The wolf is a v. different creature from what we imagine.)

The stories you tell about two perverts belong to a terribly familiar pattern: the man of good will, saddled with an abnormal desire wh. he never chose, fighting hard and time after time defeated. But I question whether in such a life the successful operation of Grace is so tiny as we think. Is not this continued avoidance either of presumption or despair, this ever renewed struggle, itself a great triumph of Grace? Perhaps more so than (to human eyes) equable virtue of some who are psychologically sound.

I am glad you think J. Austen a sound moralist. I agree. And not platitudinous, but subtle as well as firm.

I’ll write to Skinner. Merlin was excellent. I haven’t written yet because someone has had my copy, till a day or two ago, almost ever since my first reading.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

P. S. Is the Elgin address going to be permanent?

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD): TS

[June? 1952]¹⁰²

Thank you for a letter which I prize very much. The sonnets, though in a manner which will win few hearers at the moment (drat all fashions) are really very remarkable.¹⁰³ The test is that I found myself at once forgetting all the personal biographical interest and reading them as poetry.

The image of sand is real imagination. I thought this was the better of the two at first: but now I don’t know. The second quatrain of The Gap is tip-top argument—and then the ground sinking behind.¹⁰⁴ Excellent.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO KATHARINE FARRER(BOD):¹⁰⁵

As from Magdalen

June 10th 1952

Dear Mrs. Farrer–

I brought home both The Missing Link¹⁰⁶ and Merlin¹⁰⁷ yesterday evening, intending to regale myself on light fiction for a bit before tackling poetry. But—well, you foresee what I am leading up to with elephantine delicacy. It happens, however, to be true. I never reached Merlin and sat up later than I intended to finish the M.L.

I thought it very well constructed, and it thoroughly excited me. That, of course, is not of much value because I’m such an inexperienced reader of Whodunnits. But there were a great many sources of pleasure besides the mystery. You do the atmosphere of the Wychwood country and of Liverpool docks (both of which I know) very well—though, by the way, on p. 141 ‘the familiar devil of the stairs’ completely defeated me. Is the text corrupt?¹⁰⁸ The description of Syd on pp. 24-25 is an excellent bit of writing. The Spanish captain is good. And, of course, there’s wit everywhere, and often with weight of thought behind the sting–‘Notice how he uses down (p. 50), and the bit about families ><¹⁰⁹ family allowances and houses >< housing bit on p. 127. Richard’s (delightfully preluded) remarks at the bottom of p. 104 and the top of 105 needed making. (Mrs. Luke, by the way, convinces me completely).

About your dialogue I’m not so happy. Mrs. Harman talks well. But if I were a spiteful reviewer I’d say that the advice ‘Don’t talk like a C.W. character’¹¹⁰ ought to have been given to Richard (and obeyed!) earlier. Not that C.W. isn’t a v. great man but one must not imitate the droop of Alexander’s shoulders. Richard is talking like a C.W. character at his worst on the top of p. 85. He (Richard, not C.W.) would have better manners than to quote poetry to Plummer who wd. certainly think he was being somehow made a fool of and be hurt.

I think dialogue is frightfully tricky: partly because it is so hard to stop writing it (characters will talk: at least so I find) and partly because so much that wd. be alright in real conversation looks different when it gets into print. Andrew’s clipped G’s for instance. It’s a v. small thing in real life: but ‘in” in print usually suggests huntin at once and all the odious literature written by people who admire those who say huntin and the yet more odious literature by those who dislike them. I dare say we’d be wise to re-read all our dialogue as it might be read by a dull, or vulgar, or hostile reader. And of course it’s the light dialogue (banter between lovers, small talk at a party) that is dangerous. But I don’t know what right I have to talk like this, especially without being asked!

It was a good idea to make the Links so silly that their trouble never really affects us. (Oh—by the way–does any ship carry her own gangways and pull them on board when she casts off? In my experience they always belong to the harbour and are pulled onto the quay.) Indeed you have done the Links so well that one wonders if it is a happy ending or whether the baby wouldn’t have had a better time being brought up by Pyng Pong ♀.

Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the book ‘yet had I rather if I were to choose Thy service in some graver subject use’¹¹¹–I’d like to see your remarkable powers of rendering atmosphere and swift action given their head in a good whacking heroical romance. But no doubt, in the present state of the publishing market, it wd. be crazy to advise you to do so.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

P.S. I’ve an uneasy feeling this is the sort of letter Dr. Field might have written—wh. raises another really dreadful idea.

TO MARG-RIETTE MONTGOMERY (W): ¹¹²

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 10th 1952

Dear Miss Montgomery,

(1.) My relations to Anthroposophy¹¹³ were these. When I was a student, all my friends and I were ordinary modern Atheists. Then two of my friends got caught up by Steiner.¹¹⁴ I loathed this and it led to frightful arguments for several years. During these arguments I heard nothing that would convert me to Anthroposophy: but the negative side of Steiner, his case against the common modern pseudo-scientific attitude, proved to be unanswerable. That is, I didn’t think what he affirmed was true, but I did think all his denials were right.

His shattering of the ordinary attitude left the way open for Christianity, so far as I was concerned. Since then I have always had a kindly feeling towards his system: and certainly the effect of it upon some anthroposophists I know appears to have been good. There is, however, an element of polytheism in it which I utterly reject. Steinerism is a species of Paganism (using that word in its proper sense, to mean the ancient pre-Christian religions). That is why it is (a.) Incompatible with Christianity: but (b.) Far nearer to Christianity than the ordinary modern materialism. For the Pagans knew more than the modern Ph.D’s. The right thing to say to your Ph.D. friends is ‘Yes. Steiner is nonsense: but nothing like such nonsense as the things you believe.’ There is more truth in his nonsense than in their sense. We are free to take out of Anthroposophy anything that suits us, provided it does not contradict the Nicene Creed.

(2.) Oh, I just ‘made up’ all those things in That Hideous Strength: i.e. I took existing evil tendencies and ‘produced’ them (in the geometrical sense–‘Produce the line AB to the point X’) to show how dreadful they might become if we didn’t take care. And you, apparently, have been living in a world where they had already in real life got a good deal nearer to my point X than I knew. Well, that is the trouble about satirising the modern world. What you put into your story as fantastically horrid possibilities becomes fact before your story is printed. The reality outstrips the satire!

With all good wishes. You can trust Steiner about fertilisers but not about the nature of Jesus Christ. (I think his architecture horrid, but that’s a matter of taste)

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

10/6/52

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

The new photos raise extreme Sehnsucht:¹¹⁵ each a landscape as fulfils my dreams. That is the America I wd. like to see, not the great cities, which, except superficially, are really much the same all over the earth.

I think psychiatry is like surgery: i.e. the thing is in itself essentially an infliction of wounds but may, in good hands, be necessary to avoid some greater evil. But it is more tricky than surgery because the personal philosophy & character of the operator come more into play. In setting a broken ankle all surgeons wd. agree as to the proper position to wh. the bones shd. be restored, because anatomy is an exact science. But all psychiatrists are not agreed as to the proper shape of the soul: where their ideas of that proper shape are based on a heathen or materialistic philosophy, they may be aiming at a shape we shd. strongly disapprove. One wants a Christian psychiatrist. There are a few of these, but nothing like enough.

If I can successfully say to Genia what you have often said in vain, that is not because of any quality in me but depends on a general (and at first sight cruel) law: we can all ‘take’ from a stranger what we can’t ‘take’ from our own parents. I listen with profit to elderly friends saying the very same things which I neglected or even resented when my father said them. Nay more: I can obey advice from others wh. I have often given myself in vain. I suppose this is one aspect of the vicariousness of the universe: Charles Williams’s view that every one can help to paddle every one else’s canoe better than his own. We must bear one another’s burdens because that is the only way the burdens can get borne: and ‘He saved others, himself He cannot save’¹¹⁶ is a fundamental law.¹¹⁷

Yes: ‘things’ continue almost alarmingly ‘better’ with me. God bless you all

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):¹¹⁸

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 11th 1952

Dear Mr. Borst–

It takes so long to get anything typed now-a-days that I thought you wd. prefer the lesser nuisance of reading the specimen (asked for in your letter of June 4th) in my own hand. I think it raises all the problems wh. are likely to occur in Spenser–who will not need such heavy glossing as Shakespeare. The only one I was doubtful about was remembrance = memento in line ll.¹¹⁹ Wd. they need that explained? (We don’t want to spoon-feed them more than is necessary.)

I am terrified by all the instructions about typing and doubt if I can master them. (You showed great discretion in not producing them at an earlier stage, as I shd. certainly not have touched the job had I known it involved all that!). I suppose # means ‘one-space’ and is not a challenge to a game of noughts and crosses. And what is meant by the typist ‘using’ the double right hand margin? In the specimen given she does precisely not use it but types straight on across it to the ultimate right hand margin. Do you mean ‘Let her draw a vertical line 8 spaces to the left of her actual right hand margin and then ignore this line in typing?’ As you begin to see, I have picked up none of the technique of a professional author. Sorry.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

P.S. You might let me have the specimen back.

TO HSIN’CHANG CHANG (BOD):¹²⁰ TS

REF.52/252.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

12th June 1952.

Dear Mr. Chang,

If you would care to call on me here at 12 o’c. on Friday 20th, it would give me great pleasure.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO ROBERT LONGACRE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

June 19th 1952

Dear Mr. Longacre–

All opinions on new poetry are uncertain: especially on poetry read because one has been asked to read it and with the knowledge (which freezes up all the faculties) that one must express a view on it to the author.

You must therefore not attach too much importance to my ‘re-action’. The truth is, these poems don’t work—with me: they might with other readers, and, I dare say, better readers than I. The poetic species to which they belong—which might be called the Rhapsodical—is one to which I am very insensitive: I can’t bear Walt Whitman.

My feeling is that the more vast and supersensible a poem’s subject is, the more it needs to be fixed, founded, incarnated in regular metre and concrete images. Thus I is, for me, the worst. Ill is better: the line about the candle in God’s window, the best thing in it. But they are not my sort of poetry. You won’t take this too seriously: they might well suit some other reader. I can’t tell you how I wish I could write something more encouraging: but between Christians the truth must be spoken.

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MONSIGNOR FERDINAND VANDRY (WHL): ¹²¹

[Magdalen College

? June 1952]

Dear Monsignor Vandry,

Please accept my sincere thanks for the great and unexpected honour offered me in your letter. I do not know whether in order to receive it, I must be present before the Special Convocation on September 22nd. If that is necessary then I am compelled, with great regret and undiminished gratitude, to refuse the Doctorate since my other engagements make it quite impossible for me to visit Quebec in September.

Even if it is possible for me to receive the degree in absence, the question remains whether that would be held to imply any disrespect for Convocation or any insensibility to the great favour you are showing me. Naturally I would rather lose it than receive it under conditions which the University might consider as ungracious on my part.

I await your kind advice on these points.

Whatever the decision may be, I shall retain a vivid sense of the University’s kindness.

Please convey to all concerned my most respectful and obliged greetings.

TO GENIA GOELZ (L/P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20 June 1952

Dear Genia

Thanks for yours of the 10th. I would prefer to combat the ‘I’m special’ feeling not by the thought ‘I’m no more special than anyone else’ but by the feeling ‘Everyone is as special as me.’ In one way there is no difference, I grant, for both remove the speciality. But there is a difference in another way. The first might lead you to think, ‘I’m only one of the crowd like anyone else’. But the second leads to the truth that there isn’t any crowd. No one is like anyone else. All are ‘members’ (organs) in the Body of Christ.¹²² All different and all necessary to the whole and to one another: each loved by God individually, as if it were the only creature in existence. Otherwise you might get the idea that God is like the government which can only deal with the people in the mass.

About confession, I take it that the view of our Church is that everyone may use it but none is obliged to. I don’t doubt that the Holy Spirit guides your decisions from within when you make them with the intention of pleasing God. The error wd. be to think that He speaks only within whereas, in reality, He speaks also through Scripture, the Church, Christian friends, books etc.

I haven’t written more than two nonsense poems¹²³ (I enclose the other) but I know my Just So stories.¹²⁴

God bless you.

C. S. Lewis

Travellers! In months without an R Beware the woods of Wongomar, For then the resident bumble-bear Booms all day through the thicket there. Its face is round, as is its rump, Its tail is a preposterous stump. Its eyes are shut, its whiskers dense, It lives on butterscotch and bats And lines its nest with bowler hats (Arranged in a volmonic¹²⁵ plan). It cannot talk, but thinks it can, And there it bumbles, there it hums, It knocks you down: it rubs its eyes Intending to apologise. But when it sees it’s laid you flat It takes offence and steals your hat.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 22nd 1952

My dear Arthur

I shall be free to be with you from Sat. Aug. 23rd till Mon. Sept. 8th when I sail for L’pool. These dates cannot be changed but if you like to spend all or any of this time motoring me about Ireland, I shd. like it v. much and will fall in with any dates (between those two) or any itinerary you choose. Just us two, of course: I wouldn’t face any third.* You and I know the worst about each other by now! I look forward to it immensely.

Yours

Jack

P.S. But I’d forgotten. My room at the C’burn Inn is already booked for that period. I’m afraid I couldn’t manage to pay it and other ones as well. Can you decide on your dates at once & then see if the Inn will cancel my room for the period of our tour without charging? If not, then I’d better stick to my original plan & you take your motor trip after I’ve gone. But I hope not. I shall be a little anxious till I hear from you again.

P.P.S. No sharing a room: but you’d hate it as much as I, so I’m safe!

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 22nd 1952

Dear Mr. Borst (or shall we stop mistering one another? Let’s)

Dear Borst,

Thanks for your most indulgent letter of the 17th which lifts a load from my mind. It occurs to me that the typist may understand perfectly easily the instructions that baffled me: if so, you shall get the MS. in the form you want. If she is as stupid as I (a pessimistic hypothesis) I shall avail myself of your concession.

I’ve finished the introduction wh. seemed to write itself, so that I could hardly keep up with it. If it is as good as it seems to me at the moment it’s a corker: but of course things never are. You will find one or two allusions in it that your students will not quite understand, but these have been left in on purpose. If they are too carefully shielded from the rumour of worlds they have not yet broken into, what will ever drive them on. Now I shall get on with the scissors and paste work. At the end of the first day everything in the room (except the bits of Spenser, perhaps) will be pasted to everything else. All will be in the most literal sense CO-HERENT. But no palm without paste.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

Interim Report¹²⁶

I merveill much that critiques doe complaine

Of bookes with scisers and with past compyld;

Certes who weenes this is a lesser payne

Then free invention is sore beguyld!

Witness myself who with sic labour vyld

Am oft so dased that I half repent

This great emprise, my fingers all defyld

With slimie stickphast foule and feculent

And deeme Dan Spenser self an easier journie went.

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):¹²⁷

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 22nd 1952

Dear Miss Bodle

It was a great joy to hear from you again. You have been daily in my prayers for a long time and, needless to say, will remain. I shall be grateful for a place in yours.

The work you are engaged in is a magnificent one (much in my mind because, as it falls out, I’ve just been reading Helen Keller’s book):¹²⁸ hard, no doubt, but you can never be attacked by the suspicion that it is not worth doing. There are jolly few professions of which we can say that. The translation of great stories into a limited vocabulary will, incidentally, be a wonderful discipline: you will learn a lot about thought and language in general before you are done. I hope you will sometimes let me know how you get on. God bless you.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

As from Magdalen

June 23rd 1952

My dear Roger

Shortly after you left me I took up From the World’s End¹²⁹ one night and re-read it: finding it so much better than I had remembered, or perhaps, perceived, that I think I ought to tell you so. The original reading must have caught me in an imperceptive mood. There are, as you yourself wd. now feel, one or two places where one can ‘see the works’, perceive you deliberately concocting an atmosphere—but they are few and once the main story (which hangs together v. well) takes hold they vanish.

The snatches of ‘modern’ poetry on p. 62 are exactly like it: you might have been reading Rostrevor Hamilton’s The Tell-Tale Article, but it was not published then.¹³⁰ The Voice is excellently managed. The most important thing is that (this time) I was really interested in the crisis it depicts throughout, wh. is significant because it never was my crisis.

Craigie’s Dark Atlantis¹³¹ has come and is an almost total disappointment. I don’t think he has much real imagination: and he certainly can’t write at all. The good reviews and the high praise from Grahame Greene (who certainly can write himself, whether one likes his books or not) alarm me. We here catch the critics on the sort of book we do understand, and that shows them to be without any standards at all. (Craigie thinks rights means rites and that the Atlanteans had a metal called ORICHALEUM!¹³² We are in the post-literate age

Yours

Jack

TO HARRY BIAMIRES (BOD):

Coll. Magd.

24/6/52

Dear Blamires

Yes, of course. I am sorry the book has not yet found a home. All the best.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford. 26/6/52

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

Incense and Hail Marys are in quite different categories. The one is merely a question of ritual: some find it helpful and others don’t, and each must put up with its absence or presence in the church they are attending with cheerful and charitably humility.

But Hail Marys raise a doctrinal question: whether it is lawful to address devotions to any creature, however holy. My own view would be that a salute to any saint (or angel) cannot in itself be wrong any more than taking off one’s hat to a friend: but that there is always some danger lest such practices start one on the road to a state (sometimes found in R.C.’s) where the B.V.M.¹³³ is treated really as a deity and even becomes the centre of the religion. I therefore think that such salutes are better avoided. And if the Blessed Virgin is as good as the best mothers I have known, she does not want any of the attention which might have gone to her Son diverted to herself.

It seems, nevertheless, quite clear that the Spirit of God is, or is more strongly with Kemper Hall than with P. A. Wolfe. In him you describe a type I know. I think we may except [accept] it as a rule that whenever a person’s religious conversation dwells chiefly, or even frequently, on the faults of other people’s religions, he is in a bad condition. The fact that he shakes your faith is significant. Pray for him but not, I shd. say, with him. If he insists on talking religion to you ask him for positive things: ask him to tell you what he knows of God.

All blessings. My ‘new trouble’ is still there: but I have much to be thankful for.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MISS REIDY (P): TS

REF.52/265.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th June 1952.

Dear Miss Reidy,

The point¹³⁴ was that as foolish people on a walk, when by their own errors they are off the course, think the map was wrong, so, when we do not find in ourselves the fruits of the Spirit which all our teachers promise, it is not that the promise was false, but that we have failed to use the Grace we have been given. The ‘map’ can be found in almost any Christian teaching.

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College.

28th June 52

My dear Arthur

Splendid. The manageress is right: Aug 21st is my first night at Crawfordsburn. Setting off with you on Mon. 25th will do fine. And of course I don’t want all day & every day in the car: we think just the same on that subject. I look forward to the trip immensely: the first time you and I have been away together since Portsalon in about 1916!¹³⁵ This time we shall at least not quarrel about Hair-Oil!

Yours

Jack

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): ¹³⁶

Coll. Magd.

28/6/52

My dear Bles,

Mycroft has been ill,¹³⁷ but is now better. I don’t foresee many occasions for copies of Le Lion,¹³⁸ but if you will kindly send me 2, they might come in useful. The translator deserves to be congratulated of course—French is a v. powerful language—the children become perfect little Frenchmen, but that is all to the good. What pleased and surprised me is the passage at the end where I made them talk like characters in Malory, and he has really got some of the quality of the French 13th century prose romances: grande honte en aurions¹³⁹– is exactly right.

May I have 10 copies of M.C.?¹⁴⁰ I had my first bathe at Parsons’ Pleasure yesterday: 68°.¹⁴¹

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (W):

[Magdalen College]

1/7/52

Dear Hilton Young,

(Shall we drop the honorifics on both sides?) Thanks very much for two copies of the C.J.¹⁴² As I said before, it is almost impossible to make an objective judgement on criticism of oneself, especially when it does one so very proud. But I suspect that your essay is a good one. Certainly the alterations have been made with great skill–invisible mending.

I’m glad Driver played up. I suppose he told you, as he told me, that Judith is already a novel.¹⁴³ I still hope that as you poke about among the realien they will blaze up and a new story will arise relegating Judith to the background.

What do you think of Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel, which I’ve just read in a v. bad translation?¹⁴⁴ Heavy, humourless. But has one merit wh. sets it apart from all other stories about the future. Unobtrusively, without any new machines or new forms of government, it really does give you the illusion of a society in which the general quality of thought is different from ours. I don’t think Wells or Aldous Huxley did that: nor Orwell, except in the epilogue on Newspeak.¹⁴⁵

All the best, and many thanks.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

REF.52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

3rd July 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

We both enjoyed your very interesting letters, and are glad to know that you are so happy. Pity about the antelopes, but inevitable. And we look forward greedily to the promised food parcel. Sun Valley Lodge looks a lovely place, and I hope that I may have the good fortune to see it some day. Here is the translation of the Latin:–Many things will be re-born which have now fallen (into disfavour), and many will fall (into disfavour) which are now fashionable.¹⁴⁶

With all best wishes to you both,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

Mere Christianity: A Revised and Amplified Edition, with a New Introduction of the Three Books, ‘Broadcast Talks’, ‘Christian Behaviour’ and ‘Beyond Personality’ was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 7 July 1952.

TO MARG-RIETTE MONTGOMERY (W): TS

REF.52/248.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

8th July 1952.

Dear Miss Montgomery,

Of course they¹⁴⁷ are right in making the Resurrection a cosmic event: what I am not so sure is whether they really regard Christ as the only-begotten Son of the only God.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

e Coll. Stae Mariae Magdalenae

Jul. XIV. MCMLII

Gratias ago, dilectissime pater, et pro opusculis Congregationis vestrae et pro hac epistolâ Jul vii datâ. Hora nostra, ut dicis, gravis est: utrum gravis ‘prae omnibus humanae historiae’ nescio. Sed semper malum quod proximum et gravissimum videtur esse; est enim, ut oculis, sic cordibus, sua ‘perspettiva’. Si tamen nostra tempestas rê verá pessima est, si rê vera Dies Illa nunc imminet, quid restât nisi ut gaudeamus quia redemptio nostra iam proprior est et dicamus cum Sancto Joanne ‘Amen; cito venias, domine Iesu.’ Interim sola securitas est ut Dies nos inveniat laborantes quemque in suo officio et praecipue (dissensionibus relictis) illud supremum mandatum ut invicem diligamus implentes. Oremus semper pro invicem. Vale: et sit tecum et mecum pax illa quam nemo potest auferre.

C. S. Lewis

*

from the College of St Mary Magdalen

July 14th 1952

Thank you, dearest Father, both for the tracts of your Congregation and for your letter dated July 7th.

The times we live in are, as you say, grave: whether ‘graver than all others in history’ I do not know. But the evil that is closest always seems to be the most serious: for as with the eye so with the heart, it is a matter of one’s own perspective. However, if our times are indeed the worst, if That Day¹⁴⁸ is indeed now approaching, what remains but that we should rejoice because our redemption is now nearer and say with St John: ‘Amen; come quickly, Lord Jesus.’¹⁴⁹

Meanwhile our only security is that The Day may find us working each one in his own station and especially (giving up dissensions) fulfilling that supreme command that we love one another.¹⁵⁰

Let us ever pray for each other.

Farewell: and may there abide with you and me that peace which no one can take from us.¹⁵¹

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD): TS

REF.52/294.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

16th July 1952.

Dear Miss Bodle,

Thanks for what you tell me.¹⁵² I will indeed. All good wishes to yourself. In great haste,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

July 21st 52

Dear Borst

I return the copy (signed) of your official letter. I am flattered that Mr. Dunn¹⁵³ should suppose me capable of making any useful comment. But he probably knows much more about Chaucer than I do and certainly knows more about the audience we are addressing.

Also, I must have a holiday from English poetry!¹⁵⁴ (I’m doing an orgy of the classics at present: feeling that, all said and done, the really delightful thing about any bit of ancient poetry is that it’s not English and doesn’t rhyme).* So I shall probably be able to do v. little about the Chaucer Reader. But give Mr. Dunn my compliments and don’t let him misunderstand my motives.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER(W):

Coll. Magd.

July 22nd 1952

My dear George

Hurrah! We look forward v. much to seeing you at the Kilns for such time as you choose from Sept 15 to 22nd. I hope you will choose the whole.

Tolkien does usually answer letters in the end. At present I can only plead for him that he is in the middle of Vivas.¹⁵⁵ I know he appreciated Moira’s letter v. much: he said he meant to run down to Malvern if you wd. have him for a night, and deliver you the next chunk of The Lord. I will jog him if I see him but I shan’t till Vivas are over. V. glad to hear you have better news. Love to Moira. I’d ask you to bring Sir Henry¹⁵⁶ with you only neither he or Pushkin like that sort of thing.

Yours

Jack

TO I. O. EVANS (W): TS

Magdalen Coll.

23/7/52.

Dear Evans,

Many thanks for the loan of the magazines; which my brother and I however found rather above our heads. It seems to me that we are reaching a stage at which scientifiction has far too much science and too little fiction to make an agreeable brew.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO ANNE SCOTT (BOD): ¹⁵⁷

Magdalen

July 28th 1952

Dear Mrs. Scott–

Thanks very much for your most rich and interesting letter which has brought Charles back to me v. vividly so that I shall feel for an hour or so as if I had met him again. It will also be a valuable permanent addition to my Caroline documents.¹⁵⁸

About your (1.), I think my view of ‘canonical Gawaine’ had some basis in something C.W. said,¹⁵⁹ but yours sounds likely too—in view of the parallel from the Meditation.¹⁶⁰ (2.) (‘Women in the world’s base’),¹⁶¹ I think you must be right. I can’t imagine why I didn’t see this.¹⁶² (3.) Clearly I was wrong about the date of composition of Prayers of the Pope.¹⁶³ But your words ‘points in the poem had coincided with points in the war’ implies I take it, that the images existed in some shape prior to the events: wh. was my main point.¹⁶⁴ (4.) I find your interpretation of Proofs, Roofs etc. v. hard. Even Mercury—Language–Proofs is to me v. strained, & after that I love the planets altogether. At least if that is what he meant it must be the worst passage in the whole cycle!¹⁶⁵

By the way ‘The time on my hands has gone to my head’ is a phrase you must make something of: it cries out for literary use.

Thanks v. much again. I’ve enjoyed this bit of the morning.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

REF.52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th July 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

(My brother remarks that ‘the new name is’nt properly run in yet, and does’nt slip easily off the typewriter’). Many thanks indeed for the grand parcel, which arrived this morning, and which we are putting aside as a consolation for the end of our holidays. If at the beginning I had known for how long and how generously you were going to provision us, I would have kept a record of what you have sent; it must run into the hundredweights by this time! To say nothing of the imponderable benefit of having made a good friend.

We both leave here on Wednesday morning, and if all goes well, slip through the Iron Curtain about noon on Thursday; it is quite a dramatic performance. You go chugging along in the Dublin express through rocks and heather (‘The Gate of the North’), and presently pass an enormous Union lack on the side of the track. As soon as you are past the flag, prices for drinks in the dining car drop about fifty per cent: you are through and out of the clutches of the Welfare State (now known by the way as ‘The Farewell State’). By tea time we shall be sitting on a bungalow verandah, three miles from anywhere, looking across Dundalk Bay at a range of blue mountains.

The weather has of course played its usual practical joke; we had a blistering month until Saturday night: during which the temperature dropped about twenty degrees without the slightest warning, and now the question is not how many white linen suits to take away with one, but how to pack a winter overcoat for the ‘summer’ evenings.

Does anyone in America understand American politics? Certainly no one over here can make out what is happening, in spite of numerous inspired articles by so called experts; people who pretend to know all about it—on the strength of a lecturing tour in the States–assure me that a Taft victory would have been a disaster and an Eisenhower one would be grand. Which, as they belong to the same party, seems odd to me; others tell me that as the Democrats are sure to get in anyhow, the Taft-Eisenhower battle was of no importance.¹⁶⁶ I thought I was going to learn something from an old lady in Connecticut the other day,¹⁶⁷ but at the end of eight pages so hot that they nearly burnt my fingers, all I could gather was that the ‘Dumbocrats’ as she called them, are a sort of mixture of Hitler, the Russian secret police, and the inmates of the village lunatic asylum: but no doubt this view is a little prejudiced.

I suppose by this time you have got Mr. Gebbert broken in, and trotting nicely in harness? Please give him my kind regards. I hope to hear from you soon again, as we are both eager to know how you are settling down amongst the elks, auks, reindeer, silver miners and so forth.

With all good wishes.

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Derryherk House Hotel,

Lough Melvin,

Ballyshannon,

Co. Donegal,

Ireland

Aug 31/52

My dear Roger

Good. I shall, D.V., breakfast in Woodside Hotel on the 9th and expect you there at about 10.¹⁶⁸

South Donegal is a terrifying country: I have much to tell, but you see what the pen is like. Have read Virgin of the Sun¹⁶⁹ & think it one of the 3 or 4 best books Haggard ever wrote. My duty to June.

Yours

Jack

TO JUNE LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept 11th 1952

Dear June

‘Roofers’¹⁷⁰ traditionally begin, I think, with the assurance that the writer arrived safely home—though it is not very easy to see why one’s hostess should be supposed to doubt this once she has got the letter. At any rate, I am not now writing from the other world. (Perhaps the idea is to assure the hostess that the guest has really gone: arrival at one place being the strongest evidence of departure from another.)

Well, thank you both very much. Last night was among the great nights (‘devilish’ or ‘famously snug’ as the last century said) and led through a flawless tunnel of sleep to a typically beautiful morning. I see one can’t blame Roger for always writing about his own house. By the way, tell him I finished his Lewis Carol¹⁷¹ (a word I don’t know how to spell) all but two pages in the train. It cd. hardly be better. If he ever has a chance he shd. take out 9 of every 10 exclamation marks, though. I feel about them as the Red Queen felt when she said ‘You needn’t say exactually, I can believe you without that.’¹⁷²

If this letter contains anything insane, take it all for the best and remember I have been writing for hours: mostly dull ones. But I really did love my sojourn, and am v. grateful. Blessings on you all.

Yours ever

Jack Lewis

TO FLORENCE (MICHAL) WILLIAMS (W):¹⁷³

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept 12/52

Dear Michal

What day are you coming? Wd. you and Michael¹⁷⁴ care to lunch? or (if you want more tête-à-tête, as well you may) can you meet me for a drink anywhere? Joy Gresham is an old & valued pen-friend of mine: I’m so glad you like her.¹⁷⁵ Prod her to say when she is coming to us.¹⁷⁶

Yours ever

Jack

TO MARG-RIETTE MONTGOMERY (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Sept 12th 1952

Dear Miss Montgomery

Thanks for your letter of July 24th. That’s right: keep on holding the life-line, like someone going down broken stairs into a dark cellar, anxious not to miss any treasure it may contain but even more determined not to make any step wh. can’t be retraced.

I think the Anthros¹⁷⁷ suffer not so much from heresies about the Son as from heresies—or total vagueness—about the Father. God keep you.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen etc.

Sept 12/52

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

I’ve just got back from Ireland & found your 2 letters among the mountain of mail. I’ve written to Genia. No time for a proper letter to you—I’ve had 9 hours’ letter-writing already! Blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’ was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 15 September 1952.

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen

15/9/52

My dear Bles

Achtung! Here’s an imperfect copy omitting the Preface but (comble de malheurl)¹⁷⁸ wearing the jacket wh. advertises the Preface. This is the only imperfect copy among those you sent me: but how many more are there? What on earth can be done?

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO FLORENCE (MICFLAL) WILLIAMS (W): PC

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/9/52

Good. Mitre Hotel. 12. noon. Wed. Sept 24th. Shall assume this unless I hear to the contrary.

C.S.L.

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

15/9/52

Dear Borst

I enclose

Introduction (2 copies)

Footnotes (2 copies)

Text of Selections (1 copy)

If the Introduction is too long I cd. excise some bits. As I shall be working from the MS. (where the pagination is of course different) if you want to refer to a particular paragraph in writing to me, I am afraid you must quote the opening words—as if it were a Papal Bull!

If the Selections are too long, my first choice wd. be to omit in toto No. XXI (Britomart in the House of Isis): my second, much more reluctant, to omit in toto No XIX (Scudamour in the House of Care). I have also noted some individual stanzas for possible omission, but they matter only if I’ve been very slightly too long.

I’ve only just come back from the West of Ireland. I hope you get on well with Horace. There are easier authors!

All the best.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Coll. Magd.

17/9/52

My dear Bles

The fact that I happened to get an imperfect copy didn’t matter two hoots. What worried me (for I never knew that a percentage of such things was normal) was the fear that half the edition might be like that! You have set my mind at ease.

I often smile when I compare my ignorance with the knowingness of some people who, on the strength of having published one book, seem to have the whole mystery of publishing, printing, & binding by heart. I’ll write to Miss Baynes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

P. S. I suppose there’ll be no difficulty about changing the title of the new one in galley. I want to call it Night Under Narnia

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20/9/52

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

This is indeed most joyous news and as unexpected as if a favourite character out of history or fiction came to England in the flesh! Now look. Shall we book for you at a hotel or will you come and stay with us? It is only fair to tell you that (tho’ we have an excellent hot water system) we have so little coal that there are no hot baths in our house, only hot water in jugs (This doesn’t mean that we never have baths: but then we bath in College, where ladies can’t). Otherwise, we hope the hardships wd. not be too great.

Now don’t start asking yourselves the Question which (I confess) this letter invites: viz ‘Does this mean that they’ll be hurt if we go to a hotel or that they’ll be bothered if we go to them? Which do they want?’. Because in fact it doesn’t mean either. We do really want you to do whichever you’ll like but: and we have enough imagination to understand either point of view–(A.) Oh, for the Lord’s sake, let’s be free and on our own in a hotel, or (B.) We shall have enough of hotels before we’re done, do let’s get a chance of an ordinary house.

The usual oriental formula ‘Everything in our house is yours’ acquires a new sense: so many things in our house in these last (how many years?) have been literally yours! It is outrageous generosity about the liquor and the mufflers. What can I say, except murmur ‘whiskey’! If we fight about the mufflers you shall look on and be the ‘store of ladies whose bright eyes rain influence and (once more literally) award the prize.’¹⁷⁹ Send us a wire with your decision. We are so excited.

TO ARTHUR G REEVE S (W):

Magdalen

20/9/52

My dear Arthur

No, please don’t send H.J.’s Letters.¹⁸⁰ The idea of your returning a present was applicable only on the assumption that it was useless to you. And anyway, if they’re not much about the books, they wd. be useless to me.

A retired naval captain whom you may have sometimes heard of in the papers (Bernard Acworth) tells me he was at Derryherk¹⁸¹ shortly before us and says the fishing was just as bad as the food. I wonder what the Magic Major is really up to.

I’ve got a 100 Horsepower cold but feel mentally & spiritually much the better from our holiday. It—and you—have done me lots of good. All blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO JONATHAN FRANCIS ‘FRANK GOODRIDGE (P): ¹⁸²

Coll. Magd.

22/9/52

My dear Goodridge

I’m going to give those lectures next term and cd. hardly separate myself from the notes at the moment.¹⁸³ But for the moment:–the trichotomy is not Hesperian, Aerial, or Celestial, but Terrestrial (Men), Aerial (Aerial Genii or daemons), Aetherial (Angels). At death Man goes from 1 to 2: from which, if they make the grade, they go on to 3, but if ploughed relapse into 1. 1 and 2 are mortal, 3 immortal. It’s at one’s second death (or an Aerial) that one either goes up or falls back.

Hence 11. 459-472¹⁸⁴ really mean (I believe) ‘Chastity carries us safely from terrestrial thro’ aerial up to aetherial, but sensuality draws us back to terrestrial. Ghosts are “ploughed” aerial longing to get back to their terrestrial state.’

The Attendant Spirit¹⁸⁵ is an aerial (i.e. a native aerial not an ex-human who has been promoted). For he lives not in the highest heaven but only ‘before’ its ‘threshold’ (l.)¹⁸⁶ among ‘aerial spirits’ (3.)¹⁸⁷ in ‘serene air’ (4.)¹⁸⁸ is called ‘daemon’ in Trinity MS., & returns to ‘suck the liquid air’ (980)¹⁸⁹ wh. Aerials live on, in a region still subject to mutability where Venus mourns Adonis (999-1002) and it is ‘far above’ (1003) his realm that Celestial Love consummates His marriage with human soul (1004-1011). That ought to keep them going for a bit! I am so glad you have a happy job.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARGARET SACKVILLE HAMILTON (BOD):¹⁹⁰

Magdalen College,

Oxford

23/9/52

Dear Mrs. Hamilton

The ancient books which put this view best are Plato’s Timaeus and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, Book V. (The Loeb Library edition of the latter has a nice 17th century English translation on the right hand pages).¹⁹¹ There is, however, no need to go back to the original sources. Modern statements will be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: (in the part called ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’)¹⁹² and in Von Hügel’s Eternal Life¹⁹³– the latter, I think, far easier. From the scientific angle try Eddington’s Nature of the Physical Universe.¹⁹⁴, There are what maybe regarded as evidences for the theory in Dunne’s Experiment with Time,¹⁹⁵ tho’ he (wrongly I believe) treats them as evidence for a different and unnecessarily complicated theory of what he calls Serialism.¹⁹⁶

The nearest we get to scriptural support is II. Peter 8-9 where St. Peter transforms the simple Old Testament saying that 1000 years are only one day to God (which in itself might mean only that God is permanent in time) by adding the new and important point that to God one day is like 1000 years.¹⁹⁷

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

Joy Gresham at this time was a 37-year-old New Yorker who had begun a correspondence with Lewis in 1950.¹⁹⁸ Her marriage to the novelist, William Lindsay Gresham, was under strain, and in August she had left their two children, David (b. 1944)¹⁹⁹ and Douglas (b. 1945),²⁰⁰ with their father and a cousin, Renée Pierce, to go to London for a few months, hoping during that time to meet Lewis.

During August and September she stayed in London with her old friend, Phyllis Williams. They invited Lewis to have lunch with them in Oxford, and on 24 September Lewis met Joy and Phyllis at the Eastgate Hotel, across the road from Magdalen College. A few days later Lewis invited them to lunch in his College rooms. Warnie was invited too, but when he withdrew George Sayer took his place. Sayer recalled the luncheon in Magdalen in his biography of Lewis:

The party was a decided success. Joy was of medium height, with a good figure, dark hair, and rather sharp features. She was an amusingly abrasive New Yorker, and Jack was delighted by her bluntness and her anti-American views. Everything she saw in England seemed to her far better than what she had left behind. Thus, of the single glass of sherry we had before the meal, she said: ‘I call this civilized. In the States, they give you so much hard stuff that you start the meal drunk and end with a hangover.’ She was anti-urban and talked vividly about the inhumanity of the skyscraper and of the new technology and of life in New York City…She attacked modern American literature…‘Mind you, I wrote that sort of bunk myself when I was young.’ Small farm life was the only good life, she said. Jack spoke up then, saying that, on his father’s wise, he came from farming stock. ‘I felt that,’ she said. ‘Where else could you get the vitality?’²⁰¹

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Coll. Magd.

26/9/52

My dear Roger–

I find Miss Graham’s criticism rather hard to understand. ‘Tone’ might conceivably refer to the emphasis on poaching or the poacher’s religious hypocrisy, but quite possibly masks some objection which she herself cannot understand. I don’t know what to advise, for the books you fail to publish seem to me sometimes better than, and sometimes no different from, your published ones. I shouldn’t be surprised if it all depends on the time of the month at which Miss G. reads the MS. I am old enough now to realise that one always has to reckon with that.

We also have had visitors. For heaven’s sake don’t let June increase her toils by bothering to write to me. But let me have her and your advice on my immediate problem wh. is the title of the new story. Bles, like you, thinks The Wild Waste Lands bad, but he says Night Under Narnia is ‘gloomy’. George Sayer & my brother say Gnomes Under N wd. be equally gloomy, but News under Narnia wd do. On the other hand my brother & the American writer Joy Davidman (who has been staying with us & is a great reader of fantasy and children’s books) both say that The Wild Waste Lands is a splendid title. What’s a chap to do?

Yours

Jack

TO MICHAEL IRWIN (P): TS

REF.52/373.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26th September 1952.

Dear Michael,

Thank you for writing. I am so glad you liked the Voyage. Your idea of a story about Asian in England is a good one, but I think it would be too hard for me to write—it would have to be so different. Perhaps you will write it yourself when you are grown up,

Love from

C. S. Lewis

TO PATRICK IRWIN (P):²⁰² TS

REF.52/373.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26th September 1952.

Dear Mr. Irwin,

I have written to Michael approving the idea, but saying it would be too difficult for me to do. I did’nt add that the story of Asian in this world (if not in England) has been written already. His letter gave me great pleasure, and so does yours.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

REF.52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

30th September 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

We are both delighted to hear that it is Proposition B, and are looking forward eagerly to your visit; and we note that, as one would expect from you, you come laden with gifts: which however you will have the novel experience of sharing with the recipients!

Yes, the dates suit excellently; I hope you will come down on one of the morning trains, in time for us all to have lunch here in my rooms before we go out to the house. Let me know in due course.

Is Andy the Antelope with you? Does he like iced water for breakfast? What brand of hay does he use?

With all best wishes to you both,

yours anticipatorily,

C. S. Lewis

TO CHARLES MOORMAN (L): ²⁰³

Magdalen

2/10/52

Dear Mr Moorman,

I am sure you are on a false scent.²⁰⁴ Certainly most, perhaps all the poems in Williams’s Taliessin volume were written before the last novel, All Hallows Eve, was even conceived,²⁰⁵ and there had been Arthurian poems (not of much value) in his earlier manner long before. I can’t tell you when he first became interested in the Arthurian story, but the overwhelming probability is that, like so many English boys, he got via Tennyson into Malory in his ‘teens. The whole way in which he talked of it implied a life-long familiarity. Much later (but even so, before I met him) came the link-up between his long-standing interest in Arthuriana and a new interest in Byzantium.

Everything he ever said implied that his prose fiction, his ‘pot boilers’, and his poetry all went on concurrently: there was no ‘turning from’ one to the other. He never said anything to suggest that he felt his themes ‘would not fit with ease into tales of modern life’. What would have expressed the real chronological relation between the novels would have been the words (tho’ I don’t think he ever actually said them) ‘I haven’t got much further with my Arthurian poems this week because I’ve been temporarily occupied with the idea for a new story’

The question when did he first come across the doctrine of ‘Caritas’ puzzled me. What doctrine do you mean? If you mean the ordinary Christian doctrine that there are three theological virtues and ‘the greatest of these is charity’²⁰⁶ of course he would never remember a time when he had not known it. If you mean the doctrine of Coinherence and Substitution, then I don’t know when he first met these.²⁰⁷ Nor do I know when he began the Figure of A.²⁰⁸ His knowledge of the earlier Arthurian documents was not that of a real scholar: he knew none of the relevant languages except (a little) Latin.

The VII Bears and the Atlantean Circle (in That Hideous Strength) are pure inventions of my own, filling the same purpose in the narrative that ‘noises off wd in a stage play.²⁰⁹ Numinor is a mis-spelling of Numenor which, like the ‘true West’, is a fragment from a vast private mythology invented by Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.²¹⁰ At the time we all hoped that a good deal of that mythology would soon become public through a romance which the Professor was then contemplating. Since then the hope has receded…²¹¹

TO PHOEBE HESKETH (W):²¹²

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Oct 4th 1952

Dear Miss Hesketh–

You will have given up expecting any acknowledgement of No Time for Cowards²¹³ which you so kindly sent me, and must think me no end of a curmudgeon. But you know what the alternative is—either to write a wholly perfunctory letter at once, or else to wait for that rare day and hour (it’s rarer as I get older) when one is receptive of a new book of poems. I now can really say Thank you, for I’ve got many real delights. You are a superb phrase-maker: ‘the bell-noised streams’²¹⁴ and ‘infant fists of fern’²¹⁵ on p. 8–‘Shack-Age’²¹⁶ on p. 9–‘caged in comic bars of camouflage’²¹⁷ on 39–and the really unbearable two lines about Time’s finger & the evening train on p. 81.²¹⁸Ugh! The ones I liked best as wholes (wh. aren’t necessarily the ones from which I shall remember bits to quote) are Lion’s Eye–it has a perfect shape, couldn’t be either longer or shorter–The White Roe–the extra rhyming line added to some stanzas is delightful–I Am Not Resigned (I’d love to have thought of ‘greener centuries’)²¹⁹–Strange Country, and (perhaps best of all) Second Birth. A painful book—I understand R. Church’s fears²²⁰–but then most good poetry (tho’ not the very topmost best of all like parts of Dante) is.

I really am very glad you sent it. Remember me most kindly to dear old Herbert Palmer and accept my very best thanks, good wishes, and congratulations. Perhaps if you are ever in these parts you will come and see me.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

Magdalen

11/10/52

My dear Arthur

James’s Letters vol. I arrived yesterday. I don’t know if I really ought to accept it, lames being so much more your kind of author than mine. On the other hand it is too big for an envelope and putting up parcels is one of the many things I can’t do. And there seems to be a good deal about books in it after all. Well, thanks very much indeed. Yes, I love my Father’s underlinings: the pencil (can’t you see him, with his spectacles far down on his nose, getting out the little stump?) so heavily used that, as W said, he didn’t so much draw a line as dig a line.

Term began yesterday, so I have now returned to harness after what has been perhaps the happiest year of my life. I began, appropriately, by cutting myself when I shaved, breaking my lace when I put on my shoes, and coming into College without my keys.

There have been some most perfect autumn days here lately and this is a well timbered country which they suit.

Love to l’Incroyable²²¹ and your good self and all blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

11th October 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

But hang it all, if you come on the 18th and 19th I shall see so little of you—being engaged to dine out on Saturday; and I can’t put it off because it is with people I’ve had to refuse on several other occasions. Would you think us Pigs if we adhered to the original date? Not if it means you’ll have to sleep on the Embankment of course!

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO HERBERT PALMER (TEX):

Coll. Magd.

16/10/52

My dear Palmer

I wrote a letter to Miss Hesketh²²² (I mean, a real one, not the mere acknowledgement) about the book²²³ some weeks ago. As Heinemann is one of those accursed firms that don’t put their address on the title page I sent it c/o their old address and it came back as a dead letter. I then sent it c/o my own publisher. Has Miss Hesketh not had it yet?

I liked many of the poems v. much, especially the phrasing. Do let me know if the letter has ever arrived. As for helping the book, what can one do against the massive rampart of false taste in our times? That is the ‘railway line’: you and Miss Hesketh are the real unmacadamised road or immemorial Right of Way across the field. But they are stopping the Right of Way. How are you these days? It was nice to hear from you again.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO JOHN ROWLAND (TEX):²²⁴ PC

Magdalen College

Oxford

16/10/52

Good. My Mon. evgs. are, unhappily, always filled up by the Socratic Club. The safest thing (for an unspecified week) is Lunch on Monday and as much talk as you can spare me afterwards. If you can fix which Monday I will book it. I much look forward to meeting.

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

17/10/52

My dear Arthur

I’ve finished vol. I of the Letters of HJ. I announce this not to hurry you but to show that I have enjoyed yr. gift. I’m afraid he was a dreadful Prig, but he is by no means a bore and has lots of interesting things to say about books. Was it you sent me the Northern ‘Whig’?²²⁵ If so thanks.

Yours

Jack

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS 52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

18th October 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

What a misfortune for you, and what a disappointment for us! ‘Flu is a horrid thing at the best of times, but to contract it when on holiday, and in a strange city, is to have it under the most wretched conditions.

We hope that this does not mean a final cancellation of your visit: but I am making no alternative suggestion until I see what is in the letter you are writing me.

With deepest sympathy to you both and best wishes for a short illness and speedy recovery,

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen etc.

Oct 20th 1952

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

I think you are perfectly right to change your manner of prayer from time to time and I shd. suppose that all who pray seriously do thus change it. One’s needs and capacities change and also, for creatures like us, excellent prayers may ‘go dead’ if we use them too long. Whether one shd. use written prayers composed by other people, or one’s own words or own wordless prayer, or in what proportion one shd. mix all three, seems to me entirely a question for each individual to answer from his own experience.

I myself find prayers without words the best, when I can manage it, but I can do so only when least distracted and in best spiritual and bodily health (or what I think best). But another person might find it quite otherwise.

Your question about old friendships where there is no longer spiritual communion is a hard one. Obviously it depends v. much on what the other party wants. The great thing in friendship as in all other forms of love is, as you know, to turn from the demand to be loved (or helped or answered) to the wish to love (or help or answer). Perhaps in so far as one does this one also discovers how much love one shd. spend on the sort of friends you mention. I don’t think a decay in one’s desire for mere ‘society’ or ‘acquaintance’ or ‘the crowd’ is a bad sign. (We mustn’t take it as a sign of one’s increasing spirituality of course: isn’t it merely a natural, neutral, development as one grows older?).

All that Calvinist question—Free-Will & Predestination, is to my mind undiscussable, insoluble. Of course (say us) if a man repents God will accept him. Ah yes, (say they) but the fact of his repenting shows that God has already moved him to do so. This at any rate leaves us with the fact that in any concrete case the question never arrives as a practical one. But I suspect it is really a meaningless question. The difference between Freedom & Necessity is fairly clear on the bodily level: we know the difference between making our teeth chatter on purpose & just finding them chattering with cold. It begins to be less clear when we talk of human love (leaving out the erotic kind). ‘Do I like him because I choose or because I must?’–there are cases where this has an answer, but others where it seems to me to mean nothing. When we carry it up to relations between God & Man, has the distinction perhaps become nonsensical? After all, when we are most free, it is only with a freedom God has given us: and when our will is most influenced by Grace, it is still our will. And if what our will does is not ‘voluntary’, and if ‘voluntary’ does not mean ‘free’, what are we talking about? I’d leave it all alone. Blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalen etc.

Oct 20th 1952

Poor dear Gebberts

I am sorry. Whatever may be said for foreign travel, it is horrid when one is ill: the wounded animal wants to creep away to its own den. But the total situation, you must now learn, is quite other than you supposed when you wrote on Saturday evening. That same evening our housekeeper (the only stay of our house and the nearest thing you wd. have had to a hostess) also went down with flu’. So if she had gone down 24 hours earlier we shd. have been wiring to put you off: and if you’d gone down 24 hours later our house wd. now be an amateur Nursing Home staffed by two elderly and incompetent bachelors–themselves liable at any moment to become two more patients. So all has not, perhaps, been quite so much for the worst as you supposed.

At any rate you have nothing to apologise for except what we should have had to apologise for if you hadn’t. (Don’t try to work this sentence out until your temperature is now normal). We had hoped that, tho’ we can’t now offer hospitality, you might have got down here for lunch some day, but I quite see how you can’t. Don’t feel in the least bad about the contre-temps: if you, and our Miss Henry, were to have flu’ the times couldn’t have fitted in better!²²⁶ And you keep that whiskey and drink it all yourselves: you’ll need it—and you won’t get any fit to drink over here. Thanks—blessings–sympathies—and all good wishes for a speedy recovery.

Yours,

W. H. Lewis

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

21/10/52

My dear Roger

Your letter was more than usually welcome: for tho’ reason assured me that so busy a man might have 100 motives for not writing, I had also a lurking fear that you might be offended. Forgive me the suspicion. It arose not at all because I judge you to be that kind of ass, or any kind, but because, we being ‘of one blood’, the loss of you wd. be a very raw gash in my life.

I had a letter from G. Greene’s secretary to say that he was abroad but wd. be shown my letter as soon as he returned. I fear that will make it too late for him to act on it even if he has justice enough to wish to. I have just finished Vol. I of Henry James’s letters. An interesting man, tho’ a dreadful prig: but he did appreciate Stevenson. A phantasmal man, who had never known God, or earth, or war, never done a day’s compelled work, never had to earn a living, had no home & no duties.

My brother is reading A.E.W.M.²²⁷ with great enjoyment. You seem to be getting a pretty good Press: congratulations.

Love to lune. I look forward to seeing you next month.

Yours

Jack

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS 52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

21st October 1952.

My dear Mr. and Mrs. Gebbert,

I am sure you will not misunderstand me when I say that the opening of your wonderful parcel this morning was a melancholy rather than joyful ceremony; we had both looked forward so much to its happening under very different circumstances—your presentation, our (for the first time verbal) thanks, the popping of a cork in front of the log fire in our sitting room—well, well, ‘man never is, but always to be blessed’. Once more it is a case of ‘thank you very, very much’ on the typewriter, instead of in person. By the way, it was very naughty of you to send the whisky, unless, as I hope, you had some more with you: for there is no better tonic after ‘flu–experto crede.²²⁸

We both hope that the second part of your holiday will be less unfortunate than its beginning, and that by this time you are really over your troubles; if you find time to send a post card letting us know how you fare, it would be very welcome. In any case I feel that climatically Munich must be a change for the better, and no doubt also financially.

Our Vera, Vera Henry does’nt look like escaping as well as you have done; she was removed to a nursing home yesterday, and the doctor talks in the roundabout way that doctors do, about a possible risk of pneumonia. But we shan’t know anything definite for a day or two.

While you are leaving a trail of golden dollars across Europe is perhaps hardly a tactful moment to talk about another holiday; but we do both hope that meeting you is but a pleasure postponed, and that another year you will venture to England again, and this time penetrate as far as Oxford.

With all best wishes to you both from us both,

yours,

W. H. Lewis

C. S. Lewis*

TO JOHN ROWLAND (TEX): TS

52/213.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

23rd October 1952.

Dear Rowland,

(Let’s drop the honorifics on both sides). November 3rd. would be best. I’ll wait for you in the College lodge about 1.10.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHURCH TIMES (EC): ²²⁹

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sir,–

I am, like Mr Eric Pitt,²³⁰ a layman, and would like to be instructed on several points before the proposal to set up a ‘system’ of Anglican canonization is even discussed. According to the Catholic Encyclopaedia, ‘saints’ are dead people whose virtues have made them ‘worthy’ of God’s ‘special’ love.²³¹ Canonization makes dulia²³² ‘universal and obligatory’; and, whatever else it asserts, it certainly asserts that the person concerned ‘is in heaven’.

Unless, then, the word ‘canonization’ is being used in a sense distinct from the Roman (and, if so, some other word would be much more convenient), the proposal to set up a ‘system’ of canonization means that someone (say, the Archbishops) shall be appointed

(a.) To tell us that certain named people are (i) ‘in heaven’, and (ii) are ‘worthy’ of God’s ‘special’ love.

(b.) To lay upon us (under pain of excommunication?) the duty of dulia towards those they have named.

Now it is very clear that no one ought to tell us what he does not know to be true. Is it, then, held that God has promised (and, if so, when and where?) to the Church universal a knowledge of the state of certain departed souls? If so, is it clear that this knowledge will discern varying degrees of kinds of salvation such as are, I suppose, implicit in the word ‘special’? And if it does, will the promulgation of such knowledge help to save souls now in viâ?. For it might well lead to a consideration of ‘rival claims’, such as we read of in the Imitation of Christ (Bk. Ill, ch. lvii), where we are warned, ‘Ask not which is greater in the kingdom of heaven…the search into such things brings no profit, but rather offends the saints themselves.’

Finally, there is the practical issue: by which I do not mean the Catholic Encyclopaedia’s neat little account of ‘the ordinary actual expenses of canonization’ (though that too can be read with profit), but the danger of schism. Thousands of members of the Church of England doubt whether dulia is lawful. Does anyone maintain that it is necessary to salvation? If not, whence comes our obligation to run such frightful risks?

C. S. Lewis

TO J. O. REED (P): ²³³

[Magdalen College

27 October 1952]

Dear Reed

Wd. this interest you?²³⁴ Mastership at W. would, I think, be a pretty good springboard for any academic job that turned up, and, I know, a very good springboard for any other schoolmastering job. It is just possible you might increase your academic chances by sticking to research & not flirting with school jobs–I’m not sure. On the other hand, the W. job wd. be a safety device in case no academic job is attained. The President might have good advice to give on the question of policy.²³⁵

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS 52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th October 1952.

Dear Gebberts,

Yes indeed, the whole parcel arrived intact, and I’m sorry that I did not make it clear that we had got your beautiful scarves (and the cigarettes) as well as the whiskey; and when the two latter gifts are, alas, nothing but a fragrant memory, we shall still be enjoying the scarves–which can be used with comfort for about nine months in the English year, as you can well imagine, after your disastrous experience. It is very welcome news that you are through your troubles, and are enjoying yourselves in Munich; it must be a great treat for Mr. Gebbert to have such a reunion after so many years. What you have to say about the re-building is very interesting: but I hope there is not going to be a political rebuild. Our papers are carrying an unpleasant story of a get together party of old concentration guards, anti-allied speeches, shouts of ‘Swinehound Eisenhower’ etc.

I’m sorry to say our Vera–may I say our other Vera?–so far from being better, has developed pneumonia, and is now in a nursing home; she is going along satisfactorily, but we are still not without anxiety about her. Largely her own fault, for she has since confessed that she had been feeling ill for at least a week before she took to her bed. Like all people who normally have perfect health, she is not a good patient, which I fear will retard her recovery.

We shall think of you next week on your way back to your own land, with, I hope, happy memories of the trip: and taking with you our hopes that you will repeat it in the not too distant future.

All good luck.

Yours sincerely,

W. H. Lewis

C. S. Lewis

TO PHOEBE HESKETH (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Oct 29th 1952

Dear Mrs. Hesketh

Surely I didn’t say that ‘really good’ poetry was not painful (which wd. make Lear not really good), but that the very best and certainly rarest kind of all was not painful?²³⁶

I hope very much you will come and see me when you are in Oxford. I have just given The Quenchless Flame a first reading. I predict it will grow either shorter or longer before it reaches its final form, but it is full of good things. The leaf escaping from the bondage of the tree at the v. beginning wins one’s good will for the whole poem. The six lines beginning ‘Consider beauty’ are particularly good.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARG-RIETTE MONTGOMERY (W): TS

REF.52/248.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

1st November 1952.

Dear Miss Montgomery,

It would be a bit hard to believe in Our Lord without believing in the Father, seeing that Our Lord spent most of his time talking about the Father. Also God.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO JOHN ROWLAND (TEX): TS

52/213.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

6th November 1952.

My dear Rowland,

There was no need at all to write, but it was nice of you to do so. I don’t forsee being in Brighton, but will certainly look you up if I am. No addresses to Literary Groups though!

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS JOHNSON (W):²³⁷

Magdalen etc,

Oxford.

Nov. 8 1952

Dear Mrs. Johnson

I am returning your letter with the questions in it numbered so that you’ll know wh. I am answering.

(1.)²³⁸ Some call me Mr. and some Dr. and I not only don’t care but usually don’t know which.

(2.)²³⁹ Distinguish (A) A second chance in the strict sense, i.e. a new earthly life in which you cd. attempt afresh all the problems you failed at in the present one (as in religions of Re-Incarnation). (B) Purgatory: a process by which the work of redemption continues, and first perhaps begins to be noticeable after death. I think Charles Williams depicts B, not A.

(3.)²⁴⁰ We are never given any knowledge of ‘What would have happened if…’

(4.)²⁴¹ I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god or to a v. imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know Him. For He is (dimly) present in the good side of the inferior teachers they follow.

In the parable of the Sheep & Goats (Matt. XXV. 31 and following) those who are saved do not seem to know that they have served Christ. But of course our anxiety about unbelievers is most usefully employed when it leads us not to speculation but to earnest prayer for them and the attempt to be in our own lives such good advertisements for Christianity as will make it attractive.

(5.)²⁴² It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to Him. When it becomes really necessary (i.e. for our spiritual life, not for controversy or curiosity) to know whether a particular passage is rightly translated or is Myth (but of course Myth specially chosen by God from among countless Myths to carry a spiritual truth) or history, we shall no doubt be guided to the right answer. But we must not use the Bible (our fathers too often did) as a sort of Encyclopedia out of which texts (isolated from their context and not read without attention²⁴³ to the whole nature & purport of the books in which they occur) can be taken for use as weapons.

(6.) Kill means murder. I don’t know Hebrew: but when Our Lord quotes this commandment he uses Gk phoneuseis (murder)²⁴⁴ not apokteinein (kill)²⁴⁵

[(7.)]²⁴⁶ The question of what you wd. ‘want’ is off the point. Capital punishment might be wrong tho’ the relations of the murdered man wanted him killed: it might be right tho’ they did not want this. The question is whether a Xtian nation ought or ought not to put murderers to death: not what passions interested individuals may feel.

(8.)²⁴⁷ There is no doubt at all that the natural impulse to ‘hit back’ must be fought against by the Xtian whenever it arises. If one I love is tortured or murdered my desire to avenge him must be given no quarter. So far as nothing but this question of retaliation comes in ‘turn the other cheek’ is the Christian law. It is, however, quite another matter when the neutral, public authority (not the aggrieved person) may order killing of either private murderers or public enemies in mass. It is quite clear that our earliest Christian writer, St Paul, approved of capital punishment—he says the ‘magistrate’ bears & should bear ‘the sword’.²⁴⁸ It is recorded that the soldiers who came to St John Baptist asking, ‘What shall we do?’²⁴⁹ were not told to leave the army. When Our Lord Himself praised the Centurion²⁵⁰ He never hinted that the military profession was in itself sinful. This has been the general view of Christendom. Pacifism is a v. recent & local variation. We must of course respect & tolerate Pacifists, but I think their view erroneous.

(9.)²⁵¹ The symbols under which Heaven is presented to us are (a) a dinner party,²⁵² (b) a wedding,²⁵³ (c) a city,²⁵⁴ and (d) a concert.²⁵⁵ It wd. be grotesque to suppose that the guests or citizens or members of the choir didn’t know one another. And how can love of one another be commanded in this life if it is to be cut short at death?

(10.)²⁵⁶ Whatever the answer is, I’m sure it is not that (‘erased from the brain’). When I have learnt to love God better than my earthly dearest, I shall love my earthly dearest better than I do now. In so far as I learn to love my earthly dearest at the expense of God and instead of God, I shall be moving towards the state in which I shall not love my earthly dearest at all. When first things are put first, second things are not suppressed but increased. If you and I ever come to love God perfectly, the answer to this tormenting question will then become clear, and will be far more beautiful than we cd. ever imagine. We can’t have it now.

(11.)²⁵⁷ Thanks v. much: but I haven’t a sweet tooth.

(12.)²⁵⁸ Not that I know of: but I’m the last person who wd. know.

(13.)²⁵⁹ There is a poor barber whom my brother and I sometimes help. I got up one day intending to go to him for a hair-cut preparatory to going to London. Got a message putting off London engagement and decided to postpone hair-cut. Something, however, kept on nagging me to stick to it–‘Get your hair cut.’ In the end, said ‘Oh damn it, I’ll go.’

All good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): TS 52/42.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

10th November 1952.

My dear Bles

I return Mr. Dell’s letter.²⁶⁰ I don’t think there’d be any point in republishing Spirits in Bondage. I don’t remember the ‘sermon in the midlands’,²⁶¹ but it was probably made from notes, and is now irrecoverable. There are, of course, several short pieces in prose and verse (from Spectator, Punch, Time and Tide etc.) which might be used some day.

I’m glad to hear the Dawn Treader goes on well.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Nov. 10th 1952

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

It is a little difficult to explain how I feel that tho’ you have taken a way which is not for me²⁶² I nevertheless can congratulate you—I suppose because your faith and joy are so obviously increased. Naturally, I do not draw from that the same conclusions as you—but there is no need for us to start a controversial correspondence!

I believe we are very near to one another, but not because I am at all on the Rome-ward frontier of my own communion. I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I wd. even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories.

Let us by all means pray for one another: it is perhaps the only form of ‘work for re-union’ which never does anything but good. God bless you.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO J. R. R. TOLKIEN (P): ²⁶³

[Magdalen College]

Nov 13/52

My dear Tollers

Just a note to tell you with what agreeable warmth and weight your yesterday’s good news lies on my mind—with an inward chuckle of deep content.²⁶⁴ Foremost of course is the sheer pleasure of looking forward to having the book to read and re-read. But a lot of other things come in. So much of your whole life, so much of our joint life, so much of the war, so much that seemed to be slipping away quite spurlos²⁶⁵ into the past, is now, in a sort made permanent.

And I am of course very glad on your account too. I think the very prolonged pregnancy has drained a little vitality from you: there’ll be a new ripeness and freedom when the book’s out. And how pleased Priscilla²⁶⁶ and Mrs. Farrer will be.²⁶⁷ God bless you.

J.

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Nov. 13th 1952

Dear Mrs. Jessup

Yes, of course I will—for all six of you. I am very sorry to hear that your (temporal) news is so grim. Your spiritual news is perhaps better than you think. You seem to have been dealing with the dryness (or ‘the wall’ as you well name it) in the right way. Everyone has experienced it or will.

It is clearly what G.M. meant when he said ‘Have pity on us for the look of things, When desolation stares us in the face. Although the serpent-mask have lied before, It fascinates the bird.’²⁶⁸

It is v. important to remember that Our Lord experienced it to the full, twice—in Gethsemane when He sweated blood, and next day when he said ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’²⁶⁹ We are not asked to go anywhere where he has not gone before us. The shining quality may come back when we least expect it, and in circumstances which wd. seem to an outside observer (or to ourselves) to make it most impossible. (We must not reject it, as there is an impulse to do, on the ground that we ought, in the conditions, to be miserable).

What is most re-assuring to me, and most moving, is your sane and charitable recognition that others have as great, or worse, trials: one of those things wh. no one else can decently say to the sufferer but wh. are invaluable when he says them to himself. And of course there was no ‘conceit’ or ‘selfishness’ in your writing to me: are we not all ‘members of one another’.²⁷⁰ (I can’t reply about Eisenhower. I am no politician. I shd. suppose that the diverse views of his election taken in England depend entirely on the different ways in which our own political parties think they can make capital out of it. As you know public affairs seem to me much less important than private—in fact important only in so far as they affect private affairs.)

You are quite right (tho’ not in the way you meant) when you say I needn’t ‘work up’ sympathy with you! No, I needn’t. I have had enough experiences of the crises of family life, the terrors, despondencies, hopes deferred, and wearinesses. The trouble is that things go on 50 long, isn’t it? and one gets so tired of trying! No doubt it will all seem short when looked at from eternity. But I needn’t preach to you. You’re doing well: scoring pretty good marks! Keep on. Take it hour by hour, don’t add the past & the future to the present load more than you can help. God bless you all.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Nov. 17th 1952

Dear Mrs. Jessup

Thanks be to God for your good news. There is a comic, but also charming, contrast between the temperance with which you bore a great fear and the wild excess of your apologies for a wholly imaginary offence in writing that letter. You did perfectly right and there is nothing whatever for me to forgive. And I shd. be v. sorry if you carried out your threat (made, I know, from the best motives) of never writing to me again. You are not the kind of correspondent who is a ‘nuisance’: if you were you wd. not be now thinking you are one—That kind never does.

But don’t send me any newspaper cuttings. I never believe a word said in the papers. The real history of a period (as we always discover a few years later) has v. little to do with all that, and private people like you and me are never allowed to know it while it is going on. Of course you will all remain in my prayers. I think it v. wrong to pray for people while they are in distress and then not to continue praying, now with thanksgiving, when they are relieved.

Many people think their prayers are never answered because it is the answered ones that they forget. Like the others who find proof for a superstition by recording all the cases in wh. bad luck has followed a dinner with 13 at table and forget all the others where it hasn’t. God bless you. Write freely whenever you please.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Nov 18/52

My dear Arthur

Thanks v. much for the 2nd vol. of HJ. which arrived in good order a few days ago. It is really most generous of you. The Letters, even if they had no other interest, wd. be useful as an anthology of all the possible ways of apologising for not having written before—it sometimes goes on for 2 whole pages!

I really feel much as you do about big formal functions, and though I attend many more of them than you, I skip all I can. As I get older I become more impatient of being kept sitting on or hanging about after the meal is over.

I shan’t begin the Letters for a few days for I am at present re-reading Montaigne. Sharp frost here this morning: I wish we could have a walk to enjoy it together.

Love to both of you.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

25. xi. 1952

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

No, by wordless prayer I didn’t mean the practice of the Presence of God. I meant the same mental act as in verbal prayer only without the words. The Practice of the Presence is a much higher activity. I don’t think it matters much whether an absolutely uninterrupted recollection of God’s presence for a whole lifetime is possible or not. A much more frequent & prolonged recollection than we have yet reached certainly is possible. Isn’t that enough to work on? A child learning to walk doesn’t need to know whether it will ever be able to walk 40 miles in a day: the important thing is that it can walk tomorrow a little further and more steadily than it did today.

I don’t think we are likely to give too much love and care to those we love. We might put in active care in the form of assistance when it wd. be better for them to act on their own: i.e. we might be busybodies. Or we might have too much ‘care’ for them in the sense of anxiety. But we never love anyone too much: the trouble is always that we love God, or perhaps some other created being, too little.

As to the ‘state of the world’ if we have time to hope and fear about it, we certainly have time to pray. I agree it is v. hard to keep one’s eyes on God amid all the daily claims & problems. I think it wise, if possible, to move one’s main prayers from the last-thing-at-night position to some earlier time: give them a better chance to infiltrate one’s other thoughts.

Thanks v. much for the stationery. I’m afraid I can’t find a W. Chambers book.²⁷¹ It’s better not to send the book. They all get lost in the pile on my table.

Yours sincerely, with love to all,

C. S. Lewis

TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26 xi 52

Dear Blamires

Yes, I did of course write to Edinburgh and did my best.²⁷² I was much hampered by the fact that my questioner laid great stress on practical ability as a teacher, and of course I could not pretend to have any first hand evidence to give on that. I am sorry the Philistines have won: but am sure you will not allow yourself to be too set down about it. All good wishes,

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26. xi. 1952

My dear Bles

Thanks for American M.C.²⁷³ and for reviews of D.T.²⁷⁴ No, I shan’t need any more copies of the former, so pray dispose of them as you think fit. No one, not even the artist, liked the Church Times picture.²⁷⁵ The Torso is not at all imminent:²⁷⁶ I’m very busy with ordinary work these days. All greetings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

28.xi.52

Dear Borst–

The copy has not yet come to hand but I have your letter of the 19th and I’m afraid the position is this. You can have a little more headnote (but not a statement what each passage ‘illustrates’–it is 50 bad for the students) and as many more glosses as you like: but you can’t have from me any drastic revision of the Selections. For one thing I have not now the leisure: but for another, I can’t have what is really Mr. Harrison’s Selections going under my name.

If you press for such a revision then I will make what seems to me a handsome offer. I will be content with 500 dollars for my introduction and for giving you my selections & glosses as a basis for someone else’s work. You will save money, for you needn’t get an expensive man to do you the kind of Selections you now want. It is work for any intelligent student. For my Selections were quite a different thing. With labour of which you have no conception I quarried a little F.Q. out of the great F.Q.: reproducing its real characteristics. Of course this involved omitting (within individual selections) stanzas that could be spared: and leaving the first appearances of characters as unprepared as S. leaves them: and being ‘tantalising’ as S. is tantalising: and omitting some (v. few) of the dear old Show-pieces. You have almost sensed what I was at: I don’t think Mr. Harrison has. And the result on you is v. significant. You now want more Spenser than you allowed me at first. Why? if not that the thing is acting on you as I hoped it wd. act on the students? If I’d simply chucked all the dear old favourites together in the old way you’d have taken them without a murmur and never asked for more.

As I say, you are quite free to get someone else (and, between ourselves, you need get only a hack). Yet I can’t help hoping you’ll keep my Selections: not for my sake (I shd. not be piqued and I can manage without the other 500 dollars) but for Spenser’s. Arrogant tho’ it may sound I can’t help saying ‘Borst, you know not what you do: let well alone. You’ve got here a new thing, a thing which will whet the students’ appetite as it whets yours. Think twice before throwing it away in favour of one more “specimens of Spenser” such as everyone has done, and no one enjoyed.’

Mr. Harrison is mistaken in thinking that Serena was a foundling of noble birth.²⁷⁷ S. does (emphatically) identify RCK²⁷⁸ and St George (I x. lxi.).²⁷⁹

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

28. xi. 52

Dear Evans

Thank you for The Space Serpent which I have read and return.²⁸⁰ Most interesting idea—and I fear I wd. never have noticed your ‘howler’ if you hadn’t warned me. But then, as you know, my interest in ‘science-fiction’ puts the emphasis entirely on the fiction end. I must re-read that excellent book Kipps,²⁸¹ and thanks you for reminding me of it. How tragically Wells decayed in his later work! With all good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ALAN AND NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Dec 2nd 1952

Dear Alan and Nell

I was going to write to you shortly (I mean ‘in a short time’, how difficult the English language is!) when your card came. I am sending off under separate cover my last story to your little girl. At least I hope that’s what the neat packet contains: I daren’t open it to see because I’m so bad at parcels that I’d never get it put up again nicely if I did. I’m afraid it is a poor gift compared with the chinchilla (is that how you spell it?) coat.

I’m afraid I haven’t a chance to get down to dear Court Stairs this vacation, though it is just the weather for the South Coast and I shd. love to join your merry circle round the fire. Is the old gentleman with the strong views still there? Your garden must look lovely in the snow.

I hope Nell has quite got over the impact of ‘my wife’ by now and that it is all sinking away from both of you, as it is for me, into the status of a dream—even a funny dream. All the same, however she may deserve it, I don’t enjoy remembering every now & then that she is still in jail. Well, dear friends, a merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you both.

Yours

Jack

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W): TS

REF.52/206.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

3rd December 1952.

Dear Nell,

Despite your kindness I can’t promise myself any definite date for coming down: there are so few ‘odd times’ in my life. I sometimes have to go into Sussex, and when that happens I’ll try to run over to Courtstairs.

I say—I suppose the Baron and the Countess are O.K. are they? I’m afraid if I’d had your experience I’d suspect every guest!

Greetings to all.

Yours,

Jack

TO I. O. EVANS (W): TS

REF.52/38.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

6th December 1952.

Dear Evans,

Your discourse on Nauthorship is a most interesting document, and tells us at least as much about writing as many theoretical high-brow articles. How right you are about getting the ‘wave-length’.

What I object to most in Wells is his everlasting Gallicism ‘figure to yourself’. ²⁸²

All the best.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

REF.52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

9th December 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

Many thanks for your letter of the 4th. The more I think of it the more I regret that our intercourse should have been that of heavenly bodies rather than human beings: that your orbit should have swung within thirty miles of ours without our making contact. And now you are back in your normal track, five thousand or more miles from Oxford. And, what is worse, the tone of your letter suggests that it will be a very long time before you risk the European adventure again. But take courage. One can visit London without getting influenza, and one can travel by Pan-American Airways without the agonies of sea-sickness. (Incidentally, why does everyone regard this frightful illness as a joke? With us, and I suppose with you too, it is like drunkenness or mothers-in-law, sure of getting what the actors call ‘a hand’ in any radio or stage performance.

I was surprised and impressed by what you had to say about Paris; I did’nt know that at this time of the day one could still hear the tumbrils rolling along to the place of the guillotine. Nor did I realize the shabbiness of present day Paris. The business and travel advertisements still hold up Paris to us as a little oasis of gaiety in a drab world. I’m very much afraid that the answer is that France is an extinct volcano; and can one wonder? For the last four hundred years France has been losing the best stuff in the nation in war after war, and no people can stand up to that indefinitely. Portugal, Spain, Holland, England, we’ve all had our innings: and now it is up to your country to go in and bat. If one looks far enough ahead, I’m inclined to think that—after our time thank goodness—China is going to come out on top: for she has unlimited manpower, unlimited grit, and a capacity for hard work on nothing a year paid quarterly which none of the white peoples possess.

I’m sorry to say that ‘the other Vera’ is not picking up as we had hoped. Of course she is a very bad patient, as are all these women who have been as strong as horses until they get into the ‘fifties, and then have a serious illness. The real trouble is that nothing will persuade her that she does’nt know better than the doctors; she has had specialists, X rays, and what have you, all assuring her that there is no organic defect, but she knows that they are just leading her up the garden path. What can one do with such a patient. However, she is out of the nursing home, and in a week or so we hope that she will be well enough to travel to Ireland, where we trust her own family will fatten her up and restore her to us in real good health.

I was interested in your account of Germany. Under the last government, things were much the same here—acute shortage of building materials, but plenty available for children’s swimming pools, community centres etc. It is I think part of the modern totalitarian pattern of life—neglect the home, but let the community be luxurious.

I envy Mr. Gebbert his garden, which contains luxuries unknown to us. ‘Winter peas’ indeed! We look forward to the arrival of the book.

With love to both of you from both of us,

yours ever,

C. S. Lewis

TO BELLE ALLEN (W): TS

REF.52/28.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

9th December 1952.

Dear Mrs. Allen,

How very nice it is to hear from you again, and I indeed have a sense of ‘pleasing satisfaction’ at hearing that in Westfield at any rate, my books are being read and enjoyed. Especially do I purr at the story of the minister withdrawing Xtian Behaviour²⁸³ from the sale. But this is the sin of pride, and must be suppressed.

I am so sorry to hear about Ed’s cold, and can sympathize with him, for I am a chronic sufferer from colds myself; though so far this winter I have been very lucky. Snow indeed! You should have been in Oxford for the last ten days, where we have had what is for us, very severe weather: and of course the usual fuel shortage. All very unexpected (except the fuel shortage), for we generally don’t get our cold weather until well after Christmas. Like you, we have our roads and footwalks practically impassible, and very annoying it is. As my brother says, ‘I hate having to go out when you have no chance of thinking, but must concentrate all your attention on the art of walking.’

At the moment, after a fortnight of it, we are having a thaw, but there is of course the chance of its freezing tonight, and ‘the last state of that road will be worse than the first’,²⁸⁴ to paraphrase the Bible. I used to run a car, but gave it up before the war; first, because our roads are now so crowded that there is no longer any pleasure motoring, and secondly because I find it much cheaper and just as convenient to use the bus service.

As you say, we shall no doubt have large numbers of Americans in England for the Coronation, and some of them may not be a good advertisement for your country; but it is an odd thing that I have noticed, that since the war, the type of American visitor we have had is much nicer on the whole than that which came to us between the wars. I suppose it is that, owing to the drop in sterling, we are now getting the Americans of modest means. And it has been my experience that the rich of any country are usually the least attractive specimens of the nation.*

Talking of Americans, we have just had a ‘pen friend’ of long standing, from New York (state not city) stopping with us;²⁸⁵ she belongs to the small income group, and is delightful—a rolling stone, authoress, journalist, housewife and mother, and has been ‘doing’ England in a way which few Americans must have done before. Last time I heard from her, she had been at a Cockney wedding in the East End of London, where the guests slept on the kitchen floor after the festivities! She comes back to us next week before sailing for America, and we look forward to hearing her experiences. She ran out of money a little while ago, but has apparently supported herself quite comfortably by giving treatment in ‘dianetics’²⁸⁶ (whatever that maybe).

You say with your usual kindness ‘speak up’. But how or why? We have never had a gift from you which did not give great pleasure and satisfaction; so what am I to say? A tin of peacock’s brains? Some frozen lark’s tongues by air mail? Whatever you like to send us, you may be sure will be very welcome. With love and all Christmas blessings to both of you,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO PHYLLIS ELINOR SANDEMAN (W): ²⁸⁷

As from Magdalen College,

Oxford

10.xii.52

Dear Mrs.* Sandeman,

I have read Treasure on Earth and I don’t believe you have any notion how good it is.²⁸⁸ You have done a most difficult thing: the only parallel (for I won’t admit that odious work Brideshead Revisited) is Lubbock’s Earlham.²⁸⁹ I’ve never seen the hushed internal excitement of a child on Christmas Eve better done. That is something we can all recognise. For the rest, nous autres²⁹⁰ who grew up in villas or ‘mansions’ on the outskirts of industrial towns, might seem ill-qualified to judge: yet perhaps not. ‘Nothing is great or small except by position’ and the house one grows up in has always a certain immemorial grandeur in one’s mind. At least, everywhere else, all one’s life, is new, raw, colonial. The big difference is that your houses are given to the Nation while ours simply disappear, pulled down, and the new ‘estates’ rise over them. It is like the difference between a Mummy and a burial at sea!

I don’t know how you could bear to revisit your house: the Epilogue almost made me cry. And it isn’t only Houses: the very earth is being destroyed, the shapes of the hills disappear, the rabbits are gassed–‘All things are taken from us and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.’²⁹¹ Of course they survive somewhere–1910 can’t be any less (or more) real in eternity than 1952.1 wonder whose they are? Do those panels belong to the Vaynes or to Grinling Gibbons?²⁹²

Oh, by the way, thank you for telling me (I had always suspected it) that knives and forks grate unpleasantly on silver, and therefore presumably on gold: it might add a realistic detail to some high banquet in Narnia.²⁹³

The only page that I can’t enter into at all is p. 83. I can’t conceive not being afraid, as a child, of those unseen presences.²⁹⁴ I shd. have behaved like little Jane Eyre in the Red Room when she dried her tears for fear a ghostly voice should awake to comfort her.²⁹⁵ One wd. rather be scolded by a mortal than comforted by a ghost.

You will notice when you re-read your book in a different mood that it doesn’t really give the impression of a very happy childhood. Ecstatic, yes: shot through with raptures and tingling delights, but not very secure, not very consoled. And that, I believe, is absolutely true: I fancy happy childhoods are usually forgotten. It is not settled comfort and heartsease but momentary joy that transfigures the past and lets the eternal quality show through. (I sometimes eat parsnips because their taste, which I dislike, reminds me of my prep-school, which I disliked: but those two dislikes don’t in the least impair the strange joy of ‘being reminded’.)

One could go on meditating on these things indefinitely—Very many thanks for the book: it is that rare thing (rare at our age) a present one really likes. The illustrations are good too, as much of them as the coarse printing and paper has not murdered, but don’t believe anyone who says you draw better than you write. The reverse is true. With much gratitude and all good wishes.

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO PHYLLIS ELINOR SANDEMAN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Dec 11th 1952

Dear Mrs Sandeman

You were perfectly right to put in the bit about the friendly ghosts. I think the absence of fear is, as far as it goes, probable evidence that the experience was not merely imaginary. Everyone fears lest he should meet a ghost, but there seems to be some ground for supposing that those who really meet them are often quite unafraid. Notice that angels, on the other hand, seem in Scripture to be nearly always terrifying & have to begin by saying ‘Fear not’.²⁹⁷

In Ireland I stayed at a lonely bungalow last summer which the peasants avoided not because a ghost had been seen near it (they didn’t mind ghosts) but because the Good People, the Faerie, frequented that bit of coast. So apparently ghosts are the least alarming kind of spirit.

With all good wishes and thanks. You’ll enjoy Earlham I’m sure. And congratulations, it’s nice to be reprinting.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Dec. 13. 52

My dear Roger

You’ll be wondering why I haven’t acknowledged the Searching Satyrs.²⁹⁸ After reading it I wanted to compare it with the original, but the Fragments aren’t in my Sophocles, and I’ve never done it. Your version reads v. crisp & pleasant, almost Gilbertian in places. And what a lovely book? It must be nice to have anything of one’s own printed so beautifully. Very many thanks.

Love and Christmas wishes to all of you.

Yours

Jack

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen etc

Dec 13. 52

Dear Evans

Thank you for your kind letter. I am so glad you liked the story. What is one to do with illustrators—especially if, like mine, they are (a far surer defence than obstinacy) timid, shrinking young women who, when criticised, look as if you’d pulled their hair or given them a black eye? My resolution was exhausted by the time I’d convinced her that rowers face aft not (as she thinks) forward.²⁹⁹

All that about the earlier text of the “War of the Worlds is most interesting. With all good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD): ³⁰⁰

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Dec 15th 1952

Dear Miss Bodle

I think the little book quite excellent. The ‘baldness & flatness’ as you call them—I shd. say ‘economy & simplicity’ are its great merit. I want only one change: in the prayer beginning ‘bless mother & father’ there should be some indication that we are to pray for particular people by name: a child might think that ‘all the people I like’ was a rigid formula and that one oughtn’t to individualise. And the same with all the clauses of the prayer. You have the rare happiness of being engaged on a work of real & undoubted value: more power to your elbow!

I can quite understand that your brief English life will sometimes seem a mere entracte in your N.Z. life. But it doesn’t matter what it seems (emotionally & imaginatively) so long as what happened to you in England is operative in your will, both at work and elsewhere. But of course you know this. All good wishes. You (and that unnamed colleague of yours) are always in my prayers.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARG-RIETTE MONTGOMERY (W): TS

REF.52/248.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

16th December 1952.

Dear Miss Montgomery,

Thanks for the cutting, and for the picture of the charming little church. But you ought to know more about the Father than the Galaxy! Our Lord said ‘He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father’,³⁰¹ but also ‘My Father is greater than I’,³⁰² and St. Paul said ‘He is not far from any one of us’.³⁰³ Don’t let the Anthros turn it all into a fog for you. You know better. All good wishes.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO CLYDE S. KILBY (W):³⁰⁴ TS

REF52/509.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

17th December 1952.

Dear Mr. Kilby,

Thank you for your very kind and encouraging letter of the 10th. It would give me pleasure to meet you during your visit to Oxford, and I shall expect to hear from you more definitely when your plans are settled. So far as can be foreseen at the moment, I shall probably be out of Oxford for August and the earlier part of September. With all best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

Joy Gresham had arrived at The Kilns during the second week of December to visit the Lewis brothers. As indicated by Lewis’s letter to his godson, Laurence Harwood, of 19 December, there appears to have been a misunderstanding about the length of her stay.

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

18th December 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

Many thanks for the book which has just arrived, and which judging from a hasty dip, I am going to enjoy. It is kind of you to send it. I hope that by this time your journey across the Atlantic is a fast fading memory, and that it has not given you both a determination never to cross it again. Courage! Next time (I much hope there will be a ‘next time’), try crossing over it rather than on it.

We have an American visitor with us at the moment, who is starting for home on the 3rd. of next month, and is not much cheered by the fact that we are now having a succession of gales. Is’nt it an astonishing thing that whenever one has a guest in the home, the weather turns freakish? And the host always feels that he is somehow to blame for it. We are now getting the weather which normally we never have until after Christmas—ice, snow, bitter wind etc. However, either out of native politeness or because it is true, the lady assures us that the worst English winter weather is not to be compared for general beastliness with that of New York state. What she does criticise is the heating of the English home: not so much of the rooms, but of the passages and so forth.

As your last letter was dated from Alpine Drive, I send this note there; though of course by the time it gets to California, you may be enjoying the society of Andy on his native heath once more. In whichever spot you are, you may congratulate yourselves on having fled homewards when you did. You would like England even less now than when you visited it!

With warmest good wishes to you both from us both for a happy and prosperous New Year,

yours as ever,

C. S. Lewis

TO LAURENCE HARWOOD (BOD): ³⁰⁵

Coll. Magd.

Dec 19th 1952

Dear Laurence

Here’s something for usual expenses. I am completely ‘circumvented’ by a guest, asked for one week but staying for three, who talks from morning till night. I hope you’ll all have a nicer Christmas than I. I can’t write (write? I can hardly think or breathe. I can’t believe it’s all real).

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS JOHNSON (W): TS

REF.52/183

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

19th December 1952.

Dear Mrs. Johnson,

Though it is true that I have not a sweet tooth, I must confess that I eat notepaper and envelopes, so your very kind gift may be described as being of that edible variety that is customary at this season of the year. And I am most grateful to you for it: for paper here is of a miserable quality, and it is not always easy to get hold of. (To say nothing of the fact that one so often runs out at some inconvenient moment, and has to sally out to the shops).

Apropos of shops, one could hardly have a worse time to run out of essentials than this; we—like you no doubt—are in the climax of the ‘Christmas rush’, a time which I always regard with horror. I hope I am not a Scrooge, but with every year that passes I find myself more and more in revolt against the commercialized racket of ‘Xmas’. With us, it now begins about the third week in November, and by now, one is urged—with holly leaves—to buy anything from boots to bathing trunks because they are the perfect expression of the Christmas spirit. If I seem a little peevish about the whole spiritual atmosphere, it is perhaps because the material one is so disagreeable; we have been having snow, ice, sleet, hurricanes and all the kind of treats in fact which we do not expect until well on into the new year. A freak season in fact. But I should be chastened by the fact that a visiting American friend tells me that unless we have seen winter in New England, we don’t know what winter is: and that what we are grumbling about is just nice mild seasonable weather. (But this expression of opinion doesn’t make it seem any warmer)!

With many thanks, and all best wishes for a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen etc.

Dec. 20th 52

Dear Mrs. Jessup

Yes: you are very blessed: and I take the communication as a high compliment—though there are a good many words I can’t read, for your hand is almost as illegible as mine tho’ a great deal neater!

You won’t expect me to reply at length when I tell you that we have a visitor, that our usual domestic help is ill, and there are mountains of mail. How wretchedly the Christian festival of Christmas has got snowed under by all the fuss and racket of commercialised ‘Xmas’. Blessings to all.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO EDNA GREEN WATSON (BOD): TS

REE52/9

Magdalen College,

Oxford, [p]

22nd December 1952.

Dear Mrs. Watson,

How very kind indeed of you to sweeten my Christmas with the cake, which arrived this morning: externally in good condition, and before the day is out I shall be examining the internal condition of the parcel. It arrives very apropos, as my brother and I are without our housekeeper, who is convalescing after an illness, and in consequence we two batchelors are having to maintain a ‘skeleton service’ out at the house—one which does not provide for such luxuries as cakes, and in which the can opener is very much in evidence!³⁰⁶

This is the season when I envy you, living in what is I am told called ‘The Deep South’; I suppose you are hardly aware that it is winter? Here we are having a most unpleasant freak season—ice, snow, blizzard, all the joys which we don’t generally get until well after Christmas. However, though we have been pitying ourselves an American visitor from New York told me recently that we don’t know what winter is: and that this is mild weather! So whatever else is in short supply on this unhappy planet, at least it is’nt weather.

I returned to work in the autumn from a year’s academic leave: which was not as attractive as it sounds, for it was granted me for the express purpose of finishing a considerable literary task, and my nose was kept pretty close to the grindstone. But my brother and I managed to get the best part of a month’s real holiday in Eire, ‘on the other side of the iron curtain’ as we call it, and came back much the better for it.

It is I’m afraid too late to wish you a happy Christmas but I do send you my very best wishes for a happy and prosperous 1953.

With many thanks,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD): TS

REF.52/519.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

23rd December 1952.

Dear Mr. Kinter,

Thanks for your kind card. I am so glad you liked The Dawn Treader. Who am I to say whether Grace works in my own stories? One can only be sure on a much humbler level, that if anything is well done, we must say Non nobís.³⁰⁷

All good wishes.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER(W):

Coll. Magd.

Dec 23rd 1952

Dear George and Moira

Happy Christmas! I hope what I have to say will not make it happier, though. I’m booked to visit your enchanted house on Jan 1st. But it’s all No Go. We have a visitor (U.S.A.) who will last till then³⁰⁸ and beyond her looms a fellowship examination.

The whole Vac. is in fact a shambles. Perpetual conversation is a most exhausting thing. I begin to wonder if I have a vocation for La Trappe. I am sick at these numbers. But I love you both: it is one of my most frequent and tonic activities. Blessings upon you.

Yours

(what is left of) Jack

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS 52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26th December 1952.

My dear Mrs. Gebbert,

Many thanks. Doubtless a reproduction of a fresco of the early Middle Ages from a Narnian catacomb?

With all blessings to you both for the New Year,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO BONAMY DOBRÉE (W):³⁰⁹ PC

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Dec. 30/52

No, no. The context and, a literal translation, will put Wanderer 12 in a different light: ‘There is now no one alive to whom I dare clearly declare my mind: I know for a truth that it is an excellent quality in a man that he should firmly bind in what his heart contains—let him think what he pleases.’³¹⁰

The poet is not talking about tears at all but about keeping one’s own counsel, holding one’s tongue among strangers. Also I think ‘the high brow’ a mistranslation. Earl means that in prose, but in verse is the heroic word for Man (ANMP).³¹¹ All good wishes.

C.S.L.

1 Winston Churchill was re-elected Prime Minister in 1951, and on 5 January 1952 he went to Washington, DC, to renew Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States.

2 Clement Attlee (1883-1967) was the Labour Prime Minster, 1945-51.

3 ‘Maleldil’ is the ‘Old Solar’ name given in Lewis’s interplanetary novels to God the Son.

4 Pitter had been trying since 1949 to transcribe a passage from Lewis’s Perelandra into Spenserian stanzas. She said in a note to Lewis’s letter of 17 November 1949 (CL II, p. 997): ‘The passage…was to have been included in one of my books, but I think John Hayward…finally decided that (copy-right trouble, apart) it didn’t do anything that the original hadn’t done a lot better’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/3, fol. 84).

5 He was referring to the poem ‘The Earwig’s Complaint’ in Pitter’s A Mad Lady’s Garland (1934). Pitter said of this poem: ‘The earwig is imagined as a sort of little fiery Elizabethan soldier of fortune—he gets by chance into a lady’s bed, is much struck by her beauty, has the misfortune to tickle, and of course she throws him out—he laments the episode in what I thought a fine heroic tragical strain, but reflects finally that he has wings, after all, she not! It is an image, I suppose, of the scruffy neglected poet, a failure too in love, consoling himself (MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/3, fol. 107).

6 i.e., the poet George Herbert (1593-1633).

7 The Flying Enterprise was a 6,711-ton cargo ship. Built during the Second World War, it became a commercial cargo vessel after the war. On Christmas Day 1951 it left England and headed into the Atlantic Ocean on route for the United States through a turbulent sea. By the next day the Atlantic was hit by one of the worst storms in history, winds rising to hurricane force. On the bridge was Captain Henrik Kurt Carlsen, a Dane of extraordinary courage who remained aboard his ship for almost two weeks as efforts were made to tow her to port. He was finally forced to abandon ship when her list increased to a fatal degree on 10 January 1952, only about 40 miles away from Falmouth, England. The ordeal of the Flying Enterprise and Captain Carlsen was worldwide news at the time and remains one of the great stories of endurance and courage at sea. See Gordon Holman, Carlsen of the Flying Enterprise (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1952). On 22 June 2001 a team of divers discovered the lost ship resting on her side in a depth of 280 feet on the seabed of the western approaches to the English Channel.

8 p.p.

9 Sister Penelope’s imagination had been fired by an article in The Times (6 December 1951), p. 5, entitled ‘A Mystery of Everest: Footprints of the “Abominable Snowman” ‘. The British mountaineer Eric Shipton wrote about a discovery his team made on Mount Everest on 8 November 1951: ‘At 4 o’clock we came upon some strange tracks in the snow. [Our guide] immediately announced them to be the tracks of “yetis” or “Abominable Snowmen”…The tracks were mostly distorted by melting into oval impressions, slightly longer and a good deal broader than those made by our large mountain boots. But here and there, where the snow covering the ice was thin, we came upon a well preserved impression of the creature’s foot. It showed three broad “toes” and a broad “thumb” to the side. What was particularly interesting was that where the tracks crossed a crevice one could see quite clearly where the creature had jumped and used its toes to secure purchase on the snow on the other side.’ The first reliable report of the Yeti appeared in 1925 but the best tracks ever seen were photographed by Shipton and published in The Times (7 December 1951), p. 13.

10 Genesis 6:1-4: ‘And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair: and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown.’

11 Cf. Psalm 45:11.

12 He means the confusion between the Latin homo, ‘human being’, and vir, ‘(adult male) man’.

13 Austin Farrer, The Glass of Vision, The Bampton Lectures for 1948 (1948).

14 See CL II, p. 961.

15 Simone Weil, Waiting on God, trans. Emma Craufurd (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1951).

16 ‘A Religious of CSMV (Sister Penelope), They Shall Be My People: The Bible Traversed in a Course of Reading Plays, 2 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1951).

17 I. O. Evans, Led By the Star: A Christmas Play (London: Rylee, 1952).

18 L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, The Roaring Trumpet (1940); The Mathematics of Magic (1940); The Incomplete Enchanter (New York: Pyramid Books, 1941).

19 i.e., The Incomplete Enchanter.

20 These notes relate to Blamires’s unpublished book on the Christian philosophy of education.

21 Carol Jenkins was writing from Westmead, 35 Flushcombe Lane, Bath.

22 i.e., the name Asian.

23 The Thousand and One Nights: Commonly Called, in England, The Arabian Nights’ Entertainments, trans. Edward William Lane (1838-40).

24 i.e., The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

25 Wayland Hilton Young (1923-), who became the 2nd Baron Kennet in 1960, is the son of Edward Hilton Young, 1st Baron Kennet (1879-1960) and Lady Edith Agnes Kathleen Bruce (1878-1947). He was born in London on 2 August 1923, and educated at Stowe School. He served in the Royal Navy, 1942-5. Following the war he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, taking his BA in 1946. Young entered the Foreign Office in 1946 and was Parliamentary Secretary for the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, 1966-70, Opposition spokesman on foreign affairs and science policy, 1971-4, a Member of the European Parliament, 1978-9, and SDP spokesman in the House of Lords on foreign affairs and defence, 1981-90. In 1948 he married Elizabeth Adams, daughter of Captain Bryan Fullerton Adams, and they had six children. His many published books and pamphlets, on subjects such as defence, disarmament, the environment and architecture, include Deadweight (1952), Now or Never (1953), The Monten Scandal (1957), Still Alive Tomorrow (1958), Strategy for Survival (1959), The Futures of Europe (1976), The Rebirth of Britain (1982) and Northern Lazio (1990).

26 i.e., John Lane The Bodley Head, the publishers of Lewis’s interplanetary trilogy.

27 ‘excessive’ or ‘in the way’.

28 That Hideous Strength.

29 A word is missing from the text.

30 A poem by Robert Browning included in his Dramatis Personae (1864).

31 1 Timothy 4:10: ‘We both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe.’

* i.e. Hades, the land of the dead: not Gehenna, the land of the lost.

32 This letter was first published in the Church Times, CXXXV (8 February 1952), p. 95, under the title ‘Mere Christians’.

33 R. D. Daunton-Fear, ‘Evangelical Churchmanship’, Church Times, CXXXV (1 February 1952), p. 77.

34 An abbreviated form of the quotation from St Vincent of Lerins, Commonitorium, IV, section 3: ‘Id teneamus, quod ubique, quod semper, quod ab omnibus creditum est’: ‘Let us hold on to that which has been believed everywhere, always, by everyone.’

35 Richard Baxter, Church-history of the Government of Bishops and their Councils (1680), ‘What History is Credible, and What Not’, p. xv: ‘You know not of what Party I am of, nor what to call me; I am sorrier for you in this than for my self; if you know not, I will tell you, I am a CHRISTIAN, a MERE CHRISTIAN, of no other Religion; and the Church that I am of is the Christian Church, and hath been visible where ever the Christian Religion and Church hath been visible.’

36 This was a short story Mathews had written.

37 The Gospels, trans, into modern English by ]. B. Phillips (London: Bles, 1952).

38 ‘general presentation’.

39 One or two words are missing from the facsimile copy.

40 Genia Goelz was being baptized.

41 The twelve-week period between the end of Trinity Term, which ends on 6 July, and the beginning of Michaelmas Term, which starts on 1 October.

42 Helen D. Calkins, who first wrote to Lewis from India, had returned to the United States and was now writing from 915 Taylor Street, Albany, California.

43 Calkins’s unpublished work, ‘India Looks’, mentioned in the letter of 29 March 1952.

44 See the biography of John Alexander Chapman (1875-1968) in CL II, p. 954n.

45 J. A. Chapman, War (Windsor: Savile Press, 1951).

46 Warnie.

47 Lewis usually stayed at the Old Inn in Crawfordsburn when visiting Greeves.

48 Anthony Trollope, The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867).

49 Mark 9:24.

50 John 7:17.

51 Roger Lancelyn Green, The Luck of the Lynns: A Story of Hidden Treasure (1952).

52 For some time Lewis had been planning a holiday with Arthur Greeves in Northern Ireland. He expected to arrive at Greeves’s house on 21 August, and leave on the night of 8 September. Lewis and Green had long wanted to visit the ruined castles of North Wales, beginning with Beaumaris Castle, Anglesey.

53 Liverpool.

54 This letter is found only in Vanauken, A Severe Mercy, ch. 5, p. 110.

55 Michael Kevin Irwin (1944-), a schoolboy who wrote to Lewis about the Narnian stories, was born on 2 December 1944. He was educated at St Edward’s School, Oxford, and was the son of the Rev. Patrick Irwin, to whom Lewis wrote on 26 September 1952.

56 E. Nesbit, The Phoenix and the Carpet (1904); The Story of the Amulet (1906).

57 J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit: or There and Back Again (1937).

58 George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin (1872); The Princess and Curdie (1883).

59 Baloo is the sleepy brown bear in Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.

60 Bulkeley Arms Hotel, Beaumaris.

61 Richard Hughes, A High Wind in Jamaica (1929).

62 Ralph Waldo Emerson, May-day and Other Pieces (1867), ‘Brahma’, 11.

63 In Miracles: A Preliminary Study (London: Bles, 1947; Fount, 1998), pp. 90, 110, Lewis quotes from Alfred North Whitehead’s Science and the Modern World (1925).

64 See Mary Neylan, mother of Sarah Neylan, in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1054-5.

65 i.e., Charles Williams.

66 Joseph Stalin.

67 Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory (1940). This novel, usually regarded as Greene’s best, is set in Mexico during a time of religious persecution. It describes the desperate last wanderings of a priest, the central character in the book, who is never given a name. The priest, who ‘carried a wound, as though a whole world had died’, commits the moral sin of fornication with the peasant woman Maria, after falling into the worst sin of ‘despair’. The only priest left in the state who has not either escaped or died, or conformed to the atheistic government, he returns to the village where Maria lives with their illegitimate daughter. Despite the fact that he believes himself to be condemned by God, he knows he can nevertheless bring salvation to others. In the end he achieves holiness and eventually martyrdom by virtue of, rather than in spite of, his sins.

68 Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. See the letter to Christian Hardie of 22 March 1951.

69 William Shakespeare, Macbeth (1623).

70 Lewis’s confessor was Father Walter Adams SSJE of Cowley, Oxford. He had been Lewis’s confessor since Lewis began going to confession in 1940. Father Adams died on 3 March 1952, but Lewis is curiously wrong about his dying at the altar. He died peacefully at the home of friends in Headington. See Father Walter Adams SSJE in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1015-16.

71 The words quoted seem to be a conflation of two very similar passages. The first is Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Book IV, Ch. 4, 3: ‘et tu fons es semper plenus et super abundans, ignis semper ardens et numquam deficiens’: ‘and you are a fountain ever full and over abundant, a flame always burning and never failing’. This passage has a textual problem: sometimes ‘ignis semper ardens’ is read as ‘ignis iugiter ardens’, ‘a flame continually burning’. Lewis’s text presumably read ‘ignis iugiter ardens’. Then there is the passage from Book IV, Ch. 16, 3: ‘cum tu sis ignis semper ardens et numquam deficiens, amor corda purificans et intellectum illuminans’: ‘since you are a flame always burning and never failing, a love that purifies the heart and illuminates the intellect’. Lewis seems to have conflated the two passages in his memory, creating something like this: ‘cum tu sis ignis iugiter ardens et numquam deficiens, amor corda…’

72 John 17:21.

73 Lewis had sent Pitter a ticket to his lecture on ‘Hero and Leander’, given to the British Academy on 20 February 1952. The lecture is reprinted in SLE.

74 Christopher Marlowe and George Chapman, Hero and Leander (1598). Marlowe wrote the first two books of this poem, and Chapman (? 1559-1634) the remaining four. See English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Pt. III, Ch. 3, Sect. 3.

75 Andrew Young, Into Hades (1952).

76 i.e., George Sayer.

77 The incumbent President, Harry S. Truman, decided against seeking re-election in 1952. He threw his support behind Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson—not Robert A. Taft—who was drafted in as the Democratic nominee. Stevenson proved no match for General Dwight D. Eisenhower who won a landslide victory.

78 See the biography of Delmar Banner, artist, in CL II, p. 537n.

79 P. G. Wodehouse, Thank You, Jeeves (1934), ch. 1: ‘I fear I cannot recede from my position.’

80 Banner had invited Lewis to his home at The Bield, Little Langdale, in the Lake District.

81 ‘I could’.

82 ‘I couldn’t’.

83 Library Association Proceedings, Papers and Summaries of Discussion at the Bournemouth Conference on 29 April to 2 May 1952 (1952), pp. 22-8, and reprinted in Of This and Other Worlds, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Collins, 1982; HarperCollins, 2000); published in the United States as On Stories: and Other Essays on Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982).

84 Roger Lancelyn Green, The Wonderful Stranger (1950).

85 ‘the far country’.

86 See Nell Berners-Price in the Biographical Appendix. Lewis had to be present as a witness at Mrs Hooker’s trial in Canterbury on 8 May. Nell Berners-Price had invited him to spend the night before the trial at Courtstairs Hotel, so that he would be near Canterbury. Following the trial Mrs Hooker was sent to Holloway Prison in London.

87 Lewis had smudged his signature when using a piece of blotting paper.

88 This letter was published in The Times Literary Supplement (9 May 1952), p. 313, under the title ‘The Sheepheard’s Slumber’.

89 Prince Caspian.

90 Penelope was the seven-year-old daughter of Mr and Mrs Berners-Price.

91 Charles Gore, The Sermon on the Mount (1896), Appendix III, p. 215: ‘Christ, by a distinct act of legislation, prohibited divorce among His disciples in such sense as allows of remarriage, except in the case of adultery of one of the parties.’

92 Conference of Bishops of the Anglican Communion, Holden at Lambeth Palace in July 1888 (London: SPCK, 1888), pp. 43-4: ‘No. 3.–Divorce…a. That, inasmuch as our Lord’s words expressly forbid divorce, except in the case of fornication or adultery, the Christian Church cannot recognize divorce in any other than the excepted case, or give any sanction to the marriage of any person who has been divorced contrary to this law, during the life of the other party.

‘b. That under no circumstances ought the guilty party, in the case of a divorce for fornication or adultery, to be regarded, during the lifetime of the innocent party, as a fit recipient of the blessing of the Church on marriage.

‘c. That, recognizing the fact that there always has been a difference of opinion in the Church on the question whether our Lord meant to forbid marriage to the innocent party in a divorce for adultery, the Conference recommends that the clergy should not be instructed to refuse the sacraments or other privileges of the Church to those who, under civil sanction, are thus married.’

93 Sir Godfrey Rolles Driver (1892-1975), Old Testament scholar and Semitic philologist, was elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1919 and was Professor of Semitic Philology, 1938-62. He was intimately concerned with the New English Bible, and his works include The Judaean Scrolls (1965). Young was interested in writing a novel based on the Book of Judith from the Old Testament Apocrypha.

94 Mrs Goelz was being confirmed in the Episcopal Church.

95 David Cecil, Lord M.: or The Later Life of Lord Melbourne (London: Constable, 1954), p. 6: ‘[Lord Melbourne] loved to defend the indefensible. “What I like about the Order of the Garter,” he once remarked, “is that there is no damned merit about it.”‘

96 Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001) was Plumian Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge University, and the founder of the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy.

97 ‘writer of extended romances’.

98 Edmund Spenser, Epíthalamíon (1595).

99 Vera Mathews had married K. H. Gebbert, and they were now living at Sun Valley Lodge, Sun Valley, Idaho, where Mr Gebbert had was working.

100 Since 21 December 1951 Griffiths had been at the Benedictine priory at Pluscarden, Elgin, Moray, Scotland, where he was novice master.

101 Konrad Z. Lorenz, King Solomon’s Ring: New Light on Animal Ways (1952).

102 The top of this letter was torn off, and with it the date and salutation.

103 During the Summer Term 1952 Vanauken sent Lewis copies of his ‘Oxford Sonnets’: ‘I sent round the whole six sonnets, though he had seen two of them, to C. S. Lewis, and he replied, in part: “I think all the sonnets really good. The Sands is v. good, indeed. So is Advent, perhaps it is best. (L. 5 is a corker)” ‘(Vanauken, A Severe Mercy, ch. 5, p. 123). All six sonnets are included in A Severe Mercy.

104 ibid., ch. 4, p. 100, ‘The Gap’, iii, 1-4: ‘Between the probable and proved there yawns/A gap. Afraid to jump, we stand absurd,/Then see behind us sink the ground and, worse,/Our very standpoint crumbling.’

105 See Austin and Katharine Farrer in the Biographical Appendix.

106 Katharine Farrer, The Missing Link (London: Collins, 1952). This was the first of Farrer’s detective novels.

107 i.e., Martyn Skinner’s The Return of Arthur: Merlin.

108 Farrer, The Missing Link, ch. 11, p. 141: ‘He moodily watched Plummer and Thomas go into the watchman’s hut and turned towards the darkness and the familiar devil of the stairs.’ This sentence was changed in the Penguin paperback of 1955 to read: ‘He moodily watched Plummer and Thomas go into the watchman’s hut and turned towards the darkness to wrestle with his hopes and despairs.’

109 Ibid., p. 127: ‘not families, family-allowances’ etc.

110 i.e., a character in one of the novels of Charles Williams.

111 John Milton, At a Vacation Exercise in the College, part Latin, part English (1673), ‘The Latin Speeches ended, the English thus began’, 29-30: ‘Yet I had rather, if I were to choose,/Thy service in some graver subject use.’

112 Miss Marg-riette Montgomery was writing from San Antonio, Texas.

113 See the biography of Rudolf Steiner, founder of Anthroposophy, in CL I, p. 671n.

114 i.e., Owen Barfield and Cecil Harwood.

115 Lewis used this German word in SBJ, ch. 1, to mean the ‘intense longing’ or ‘Joy’ which played a large part in his conversion.

116 Mark 15:31.

117 Charles Williams, He Came Down from Heaven (1938), ‘The Practice of Substituted Love’.

118 William Borst, an editor in the college department of Harcourt, Brace & World, was handling Lewis’s essay on Spenser for Major British Writers.

119 Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I, i, 2, 1-2: ‘But on his brest a bloudie Crosse he bore/ The deare remembrance of his dying Lord.’

120 Hsin-Chang Chang was born in China. He attended the University of Shanghai before taking a D. Phil, in English from Edinburgh University. For some years he was a lecturer in English at the University of Malaya in Singapore. In 1959 he returned to England to become University Lecturer in Chinese. He later became University Lecturer in Chinese Studies and Fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He is the author of Allegory and Courtesy in Spenser: A Chinese View (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1955) and Chinese Literature, 3 vols (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1973-83). In ‘Memories’, In Search of C. S. Lewis, ed. Stephen Schofield (South Plainfield, New Jersey: Bridge Publishing Co., 1983), Chang said (p. 104): ‘I did not then realize, as I have since come to think…that we had much in common. For his hero was Sir Philip Sidney…and Sidney, too, was mine. And indeed Sidney had embodied in his life both chivalry and courtesy. My ingrained belief that a definite code ought to govern the tone of one’s writing as well as one’s conduct—which in essence is Confucian but not uninfluenced by European chivalry—must have appealed to Lewis and made him readier, in later years, to accept me as a friend. Certainly a vein of chivalry underlies all his own writings, and this explains for me the style and verve of his literary criticism.’

121 Monsignor Ferdinand Vandry (1887-1967), Rector of Université Laval, Quebec, wrote to Lewis on 6 June 1952 to say the University wanted to confer on him an Honorary Doctorate of Literature. No difficulties were put in the way of Lewis receiving the degree in absentia, and it was duly conferred upon him on 22 September 1952.

122 1 Corinthians 12:27.

123 The two nonsense poems referred to are the one reproduced above, and ‘Awake, My Lute!’, published in The Atlantic Monthly, CLXXII (November 1943), pp. 113, 115, and reprinted in Poems and CR

124 Rudyard Kipling, Just So Stories (1902).

125 A vol is a heraldic symbol consisting of a pair of outstretched wings, connected together at the shoulders without any bird’s body in the middle.

* Except the Unbelievable, of course: he has more sense than we have!

126 It is not known which of the letters to Borst this undated poem, in the style of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, accompanied. It seems likely that it was sent with the letter of 22 June 1952.

127 In 1950-1 Bodle trained at the Department of Education of the Deaf at Manchester University, and at this time she was teaching at the Manchester Royal School for the Deaf.

128 Helen Keller, The Story of My Life (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1903). Born blind and deaf, Helen Keller (1880-1968) learned to read, write and speak from her teacher, Anne Sullivan. She graduated from Radcliffe College, and lectured widely on behalf of deaf people.

129 Roger Lancelyn Green, From the World’s End: A Fantasy (Leicester: E. Ward, [1948]).

130 See Lewis’s comments on George Rostrevor Hamilton’s The Tell-Tale Article: A Critical Approach to Modern Poetry (1949) in the letter to Hamilton of 14 August 1949 (CL II, pp. 966-7).

131 David Craigie, Dark Atlantis (1951).

132 ‘Orichalcum’ is golden copper.

133 Blessed Virgin Mary.

134 Of his poem, ‘The Pilgrim’s Problem’, first published in The Month, VII (May 1952), p. 275, and reprinted in Poems and CP.

135 See the letter to Greeves of 18 September 1916 (CL I, pp. 221-3).

136 See the biography of Geoffrey Bles in CL II, p. 554n.

137 ‘Mycroft’ was Bles’s name for Warnie, a joke the Lewis brothers greatly enjoyed. Mycroft is the name Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave the mysterious elder brother of Sherlock Holmes. He is first mentioned in ‘The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter’ in Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes (1894), in which Holmes says: ‘My brother would be the greatest criminal agent that ever lived. But he has no ambition and no energy. He would not even go out of his way to verify his own solutions, and would rather be considered wrong than take the trouble to prove himself right.’ The mysterious brother is also mentioned in ‘The Adventure of the Bruce–Partington Plans’ in His Last Bow (1917). In that story Holmes says Mycroft ‘has the tidiest and most orderly brain, with the greatest capacity for storing facts, of any man living’.

138 Lewis was referring to Le Lion et la Sorcière Blanche, trans. Émile-R. Blanchet (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1952), the French translation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

139 Le Lion et la Sorcière Blanche, ch. 17, p. 185: ‘great shame would we have’.

140 Mere Christianity.

141 On ‘Parson’s Pleasure’ see CL I, p. 304n.

142 Young published his essay on Lewis’s trilogy as ‘The Contented Christian’ in the Cambridge Journal, V (July 1952), pp. 603-12.

143 Driver probably had in mind Richard Capper’s Judith: An Historical Drama (1867).

144 Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game, trans. Mervyn Savill (London: Aldus, 1949).

145 In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

146 Horace, Ars Poética, 70-1: ‘Multa renascentur quae iam cecidere, cadentque/quae nunc surit in honore.’ (The next word in the poem, vocabula, refers not to ‘many things’ but ‘many words’–words that go in and out of favour in literary language.)

147 i.e., Anthroposophists. See the letter to Montgomery of 10 June 1952.

148 Lewis was referring to the Latin poem, ‘Dies Irae, dies ilia’ (‘Day of wrath’) by Thomas of Celano (c. 1200-1260), companion and biographer of St Francis of Assisi. The poem forms a part of the requiem Masses in the Roman Missal.

149 Revelation 22:20.

150 John 13:34.

151 John 16:22.

152 Bodle was returning to New Zealand to teach at the School for the Deaf, Titirangi, Auckland, and she had asked for Lewis’s prayers.

153 Charles Williams Dunn (1915–) was one of the editors of Major British Writers. He was also editing at this time A Chaucer Reader: Selections from the Canterbury Tales (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1952). Dunn was the editor (with E. T. Byres) of Middle English Literature (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1973) and many other works.

154 Lewis had just finished his mammoth English Literature in the Sixteenth Century.

* And also has real grammar, not like Middle English!

155 One part of the examination system at Oxford University consists in a spoken or viva voce (‘by the living voice’) examination.

156 George Sayer’s cat.

157 See Anne Barbara Scott in the Biographical Appendix. She had attended Charles Williams’s lectures when an undergraduate, and she and Williams became close friends.

158 The draft of Scott’s letter of 26 July 1952 referred to here by Lewis is preserved in the Bodleian Library (MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/7, fols. 10-14).

159 In his Commentary in Arthurian Torso, Containing the Posthumous Fragment of The Figure of Arthur by Charles Williams and A Commentary on The Arthurian Poems of Charles Williams (London: Oxford University Press, 1948), Lewis wrote: ‘Between this poem and the Last Voyage we should probably place The Meditation of Mordred. The doom of Logres is almost accomplished. Gawaine, the king’s nephew, son of Morgause and Lot, whom Williams calls “the canonical Gawaine” because the canon or code of earthly honour is his only principle, urged on by his half-brother Mordred, has revealed to Arthur the loves of Guinivere and Lancelot’ (ch. 5, p. 177).

160 ‘The Meditation of Mordred’ in Charles Williams, The Region of the Summer Stars (1944). Scott said in her letter: ‘(1) “Canonical G.” is surely the ecclesiastical equivalent of “legitimate G.”–his birth was approved by the laws of both Church & State, as that of Mordred was forbidden by both. Thus, in the Meditation, M. refers to the K. as “my uncanonical father” ‘(Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/7, fol. 13).

161 Williams, Taliessin Through Logres, ‘The Departure of Merlin’, XIII, 4.

162 Scott asked in her letter: ‘(2) Is not “the world’s base” Caucasia, & “the worm in the world’s base” the Caucasian women, all loving naturally as opposed to arch-naturally? Guinevere’s vocation was to “exhibit the glory” so clearly & resplendently to the women of Logres that they should not be able to help being “brought to a flash of seeing” (or as my husband more forcibly puts it “her job was to make the silly ones sit up & take notice”)’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/7, fol. 13).

163 Williams, The Region of the Summer Stars, ‘The Prayers of the Pope’, pp. 46-55.

164 Arthurian Torso, ‘The Grail and the Morte’, p. 180: ‘In The Prayers of the Pope we are invited to study more fully this extinguishing of lights. The situation which “the young Pope Deodatus, Egyptian-born” contemplates is of course very like that which Williams contemplated in 1944 and which we still contemplate in 1946. But the poem is not simply a tract for the time. We are seeing, partly, the real present; partly the imaginary world of the poem; partly the real past, the division of Christendom which culminated with the breach between Pope and Patriarch in 1054 and the great retreat of Christendom before Islam which had preceded it.’ In her letter of 26 July 1952 Scott observed: ‘(3) About the “women of Burma” in The Prayers of the Pope, there was an explanation on the level you reject as well as the other, & far more important, meanings. Towards the end of my time at Oxford I went to walk, on most afternoons…with Charles Williams…& at one such time when he was working on that poem, he was speaking of the difficulty of devising some method of defeat for the octopus & saying, of course playfully but seriously in the game, that points in the Taliessin poems had coincided with points in the war so often that he must hurry up and do it, or the Japanese would have taken India before he had thought how to stop them’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/7, fol. 13).

165 Williams, Taliessin Through Logres, ‘The Coming of Galahad’: XIII, 1-3: ‘But he: “Proofs were; roofs were: 1/ what more? Creeds were; songs were. Four/zones divide the empire from the Throne’s firmament.” ‘Scott commented: ‘I am sure that he said the “proofs”, “roofs”, “creeds” & “songs” were connected forwards with the four planetary Zones, & not backwards with the five Houses…“Proofs” I suppose might appropriately be connected with Mercury, the Lord of Language. Could “roofs”, as providing shelter which you can make use of if you choose, be connected with preferences? “Creeds” seem to fit “irony & defeated irony”, the irony being in the absurdity of saying, as creeds must, this is Thou about Him of whom we must instantly add neither is this Thou, & the defeated irony in the absolute necessity of doing just that. And Saturn, beyond the rest & nearest to, though still utterly divided from, “the Throne’s firmament” might fitly represent poetry which Charles certainly held to be able to express truth in a way which the prose of creeds could not’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/7, fol. 14).

166 Before the presidential election of 1952 Robert A. Taft (1889-1953) ran against Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) as candidate for the Republican Party. Eisenhower was chosen, and in the election, held on 4 November, he defeated the Democratic candidate, Adlai Stevenson.

167 i.e., Mrs Frank Jones.

168 Green met Lewis at the Woodside Hotel, Liverpool, on 9 September. They visited Beaumaris Castle and spent that night at the Bulkeley Arms Hotel. Lewis spent the following night as the guest of Roger and June Lancelyn Green at Poulton Hall, Bebington, returning to Oxford on 11 September.

169 H. Rider Haggard, The Virgin of the Sun (1922).

170 Thank-you notes addressed to one’s hostess.

171 Roger Lancelyn Green, The Story of Lewis Carroll (London: Methuen, 1949).

172 Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, ch. 5. Asked by the White Queen how old she is, Alice answers, ‘I’m seven and a half, exactly’ ‘“You needn’t say ‘exactually’,” the Queen remarked. “I can believe it without that.” ‘

173 For the biography of Florence (Michal) Williams, wife of Charles Williams, see Charles Walter Stansby Williams in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1081-6.

174 Michael Williams (1922-2000) was the son of Charles and Michal Williams.

175 In his diary entry for 5 November 1956 Warnie wrote of the correspondence between Joy Gresham and his brother: ‘Until 10th January 1950 neither of us had ever heard of her; then she appeared in the mail as just another American fan, Mrs. W. L. Gresham from the neighbourhood of New York. With however the difference that she stood out from the ruck by her amusing and well-written letters, and soon J and she had become “pen-friends.” ‘(BF, p. 244). Unfortunately, none of Joy’s letters to Lewis has come to light, and the only letters from Lewis to Joy that survive are those in this volume of 22 December 1953, 11 March and 19 November 1959.

176 See the passage on Joy Gresham following the letter to Margaret Sackville Hamilton of 23 September 1952.

177 i.e., Anthroposophists. See the letter to Montgomery of 10 June 1952.

178 ‘To cap it all!’ He was referring to Mere Christianity.

179 John Milton, L’Allegro (1645), 121-2: ‘With store of ladies, whose bright eyes/Rain influence, and judge the prize.’

180 Henry James, Letters, ed. Percy Lubbock, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1920). The copy referred to here had once belonged to Albert Lewis, and it had been given to Arthur.

181 The hotel where they had been staying: see the heading of the letter on p. 220.

182 This letter is a reply to a question Goodridge asked Lewis about John Milton’s Cornus (1637).

183 Lewis was planning to give his course of lectures on the ‘Prolegomena to Renaissance Poetry’ during Hilary Term, 1953.

184 Milton, Comus, 459-72.

185 ibid., opening stage direction: ‘The first Scene discovers a wild wood./The Attendant Spirit descends or enters.’

186 ibid., 1.

187 ibid., 3.

188 ibid., 4.

189 ibid., 980:.

190 Mrs Margaret Sackville Hamilton wrote to Walter Hooper from 4 Pagoda Avenue, Richmond, Surrey, on 31 May 1968: ‘I am a housewife, mother & grandmother of no academic qualification at all. However, being a lover of T. S. Eliot I wrote & asked C. S. Lewis after reading “Beyond Personality” Chapter III for more information re Ever Present Time & by return of post, in his own handwriting, I received the enclosed’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/2, fol. 1).

191 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, with the English translations of’ ‘I.T.’ (1690), rev. H. F. Stewart (London: Heinemann, Loeb Classical Library, 1918).

192 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781).

193 Friedrich von Hügel, Eternal Life: A Study of its Implications and Applications (1912).

194 Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1928).

195 John William Dunne, An Experiment with Time (1927).

196 John William Dunne, The Serial Universe (London: Faber & Faber, 1934).

197 2 Peter 2:8: ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day’

198 See Joy Gresham Lewis in the Biographical Appendix.

199 See David Lindsay Gresham in the Biographical Appendix.

200 See Douglas Howard Gresham in the Biographical Appendix.

201 George Sayer, Jack: C. S. Lewis and His Times (London: Macmillan, 1988; 2nd ed. Hodder & Stoughton, 1997), ch. 19, pp. 214-15.

202 The Rev. Patrick Kevin Irwin (1907-65) was born on 2 October 1907 and read Modern History at Brasenose College, Oxford, graduating in 1929. He read Theology at Ely Theological College in 1930, and was ordained in 1931. He served as Curate of Helmsley, Yorkshire, 1930-3, and of Goldthorpe, 1934-8. He was Vicar of Sawston, 1941-2, Vicar of St Augustine, Wisbech, 1947-58, Rural Dean of Wisbech, 1954-8, and Rector of Fletton, Ely, 1958-65.

203 Charles Wickliffe Moorman (1925-96) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on 24 May 1925. After serving in the Second World War, he graduated from Kenyon College, Ohio, in 1949. He earned Master’s and Doctoral degrees from Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1951 and 1954. He joined the English Department at the University of Southern Mississippi (then Mississippi Southern College), Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1954 and became department head in 1956, a position he held for twelve years. Moorman served as Dean of the Graduate School for two years, and as Academic Vice-president for twelve years. He stepped down in 1980 to resume full-time teaching and research, retiring in 1990. An expert in both Middle English and modern English literature, over the years he taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses. He died on 3 May 1996. His works include Myth and Medieval Literature: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1956), The Precincts of Felicity: The Augustinian City of the Oxford Christians (1966) and A Knyght There Was: The Evolution of the Knight in Literature (1967).

204 Moorman was collecting material for a work published as Arthurian Triptych: Myth Materials in Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, and T. S. Eliot (1960).

205 Charles Williams, All Hallows’ Eve (1945).

206 1 Corinthians 13:13.

207 The three principles which Williams set great store by, and which run through his works, were Co-inherence, Exchange and Substitution. They are summarized in ‘Williams and the Arthuriad’, ch. 3, p. 123 of Arthurian Torso.

208 The Figure of Arthur, Arthurian Torso, pp. 5-90.

209 That Hideous Strength, ch. 13, part V, p. 316: ‘None hears us save the last of the seven bears of Logres’; ch. 12, vi, p. 290: ‘Who knows what the technique of the Atlantean Circle was really like?’

210 ibid., Preface, p. xii: ‘Those who would like to learn further about Numinor and the True West must (alas!) await the publication of much that still exists only in the MSS of my friend, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.’ Lewis had in mind that work of Tolkien’s published as The Silmarillion, ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: Allen & Unwin, 1977), ‘Akallabêth: The Downfall of Numenor’, pp. 259-82. In a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green of 17 July 1971, in Green and Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography, p. 210, Tolkien said: ‘With regard to “Numinor”, in the early days of our association Jack used to come to my house and I read aloud to him The Silmarillion so far as it had then gone…Numinor was his version of a name he had never seen written (Numenor) and no doubt was influenced by numinous.’

211 The ‘romance’ was of course Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954) and The Return of the King (1955).

212 See Phoebe Hesketh in the Biographical Appendix.

213 Phoebe Hesketh, No Time for Cowards: Poems, Preface by Herbert Palmer (London: Heinemann, 1952).

214 ibid., p. 8, ‘The Secret in the Stone’, 5.

215 ibid., 10.

216 ibid., p. 9, 49.

217 ibid., ‘Zebras’, p. 39, 10-11.

218 ibid., p. 81, ‘Retrospection’, 4-5: ‘Where half-hearts join while Time’s black finger races/Towards the evening train.’

219 ibid., p. 72, ‘I Am Not Resigned’, 18.

220 Richard Thomas Church (1893-1972), poet, critic and novelist, author of Over the Bridge (1955).

221 Greeves’s dog.

222 See the letter to Phoebe Hesketh of 4 October 1952.

223 i.e., No Time for Cowards.

224 The Rev. John Rowland, B. Sc, was writing from 115 Mackie Avenue, Brighton.

225 The Northern Whig was a Belfast newspaper which began in 1824, and continued as Northern Whig and Belfast Post from 1919 until 1963 when it ceased publication.

226 Vera Henry, Mrs Moore’s goddaughter, sometimes acted as housekeeper for the Lewis brothers.

227 Roger Lancelyn Green, A. E. W. Mason, 1865-1948 (London: M. Parrish, 1952).

228 ‘trust one who has experience’.

* who has a suspicious headache himself at the moment. Who knows!…

229 This letter was published in the Church Times, CXXXV (24 October 1952), p. 763, under the title ‘Canonization’.

230 See Eric Pitt, ‘Canonization, Church Times, CXXXV (17 October 1952), p. 743.

231 The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church, 15 vols, ed. Charles G. Herbermann, etc. (New York: Robert Appleton Co., 1907-12).

232 A theological term signifying the honour paid to the saints.

233 John Oliver Reed (1929-) was born on 16 December 1929 in London, the son of E O. Reed. In 1941 he was awarded, on the result of the Junior County Scholarship Examination, a Foundation Scholarship to Bancroft’s School, Woodford. In December 1946 he was elected on examination to a Demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford. Before going up to Oxford he did his National Service, arriving at Magdalen in 1949. There he read English under Lewis, taking his BA in 1952. Reed was briefly an assistant master at Winchester College, after which he held assistant lectureships at the University of Edinburgh and at Kings College, London. From 1957 until he retired in 1996 he taught at universities in Africa and the Far East. See the letter to Reed of 8 July 1947 in the Supplement.

234 This letter to Reed is written on a letter Lewis received from A. R. Woolley, Educational Secretary of the Oxford University Appointments Committee, dated 24 October 1952. Woolley said: ‘The Headmaster of Winchester tells me that he will need to appoint either in 1953 or 1954 a man with a good degree in English…If there is anyone among your pupils who you think might be interested in this opening I wonder if you would kindly suggest to him that he make an appointment to come and see me.’

235 At this time Reed was in Oxford beginning a B. Litt. degree. Following Lewis’s suggestion, he sought the advice of the President of Magdalen College, Thomas Sherrer Ross Boase (1898-1974). In the end Reed was advised to give up work on his B. Litt. and take the job at Winchester College which began in January 1953. By mid 1953 he had accepted an appointment at the University of Edinburgh.

236 See the letter to Hesketh of 4 October 1952.

237 Mrs Johnson was given the pseudonym ‘Mrs Ashtorï in L.

238 Mrs Johnson asked ‘What is your correct title?’ The following notes indicate the questions she asked (the original of her list is in the Wade Center).

239 ‘Do people get another chance after death? I refer to Charles Williams.’

240 ‘What would happen if I had died an atheist?’

241 ‘What happens to Jews who are still waiting for the Messiah?’

242 ‘Is the Bible infallible?’

243 Lewis originally wrote ‘not read with attention’, but altered this to ‘without’, presumably overlooking that he had written ‘not read’. But his meaning is ‘isolated from their context and read without attention…’

244 фονχεύσετς as in Matthew 19:18.

245 άποχτεíναι as in John 8:37.

246 ‘If a thief killed Eileen would I be wrong to want him to die?’

247 ‘Is killing in self defense all right?’

248 Romans 13:4.

249 Luke 3:14.

250 Matthew 8:10.

251 ‘Will we recognize our loved ones in Heaven?’

252 Matthew 22:4.

253 Matthew 22:2-12; Luke 12:36.

254 Hebrews 11:16; 12:22.

255 Revelation 5:8-14.

256 ‘If Wayne didn’t go to Heaven I wouldn’t want to either. Would his name be erased from my brain?’

257 ‘Do you like sweets?’

258 ‘Are you handsome?’

259 ‘Tell me the story about the barber.’

260 Edward T. Dell Jr had written to Bles on 30 October 1952 that those essays by Lewis ‘chiefly found in pamphlet form or as articles in the “Spectator” might, with an appropriate preface, make an interesting book of essays…There is also a sermon that might be included as well. It was delivered in a church in the midlands on Apr. 7, 1946…I imagine Dr Lewis would scoff at the idea of a reprinting of his first book Spirits in Bondage but to me the book seems to merit it just as much as did Dymer’ (Bodleian Library, Dep. c. 771, fol. 9).

261 On 7 April 1946 Lewis preached a sermon entitled ‘Miserable Offenders’ in St Matthew’s Church, Northampton. It was included in a booklet, Five Sermons by Laymen (April-May 1946), and is reprinted in EC.

262 Mrs Shelburne, formerly an Anglican or Episcopalian, in 1951 converted to the Catholic Church.

263 See J. R. R. Tolkien in the Biographical Appendix to CL I, pp. 1022-4.

264 Lewis had read the typescript of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in October 1949, and he wrote to his friend about it on 27 October 1949 (CL II, pp. 990-1). Since then Tolkien had been trying to get it published, hoping whoever published it would also publish the unfinished Silmarillion. Rayner Unwin, the son of the publisher Sir Stanley Unwin (1884-1968) of Allen & Unwin publishers, believed it to be a very great work and his father left it to him to decide whether the firm should accept it. After calculations and discussions with others in Allen & Unwin, Rayner wrote to Tolkien on 10 November 1952 saying the firm would like to publish the book under a profit-sharing agreement, under which Tolkien would receive nothing until the sales of the book had covered its publishing costs, but would afterwards share equally with the publishers any profits that might accrue. Tolkien was delighted The Lord of the Rings had been accepted, and he wrote at once to tell Lewis what had happened. Lewis replied with this letter.

265 ‘without trace’.

266 Priscilla was Tolkien’s daughter.

267 Katharine Farrer had been corresponding with Tolkien about The Lord of the Rings.

268 MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul, November 3: ‘Have pity on us for the look of things,/Where blank denial stares us in the face./Although the serpent mask have lied before/It fascinates the bird.’

269 Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34.

270 Romans 12:5.

271 Mrs Van Deusen may have suggested sending Lewis the autobiography of the American political writer Whittaker Chambers (1901-61), best known for his accusation and testimony against Alger Hiss (1904-96), the architect of the Yalta Conference and Secretary General of the San Francisco conference that created the United Nations. Chambers’ autobiography, Witness, was published in 1952.

272 Blamires had applied for a job in Edinburgh.

273 The US edition of Mere Christianity was published by Macmillan of New York on 11 November 1952.

274 The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’.

275 During the autumn of 1952 the Church Times featured a number of pencil drawings of ‘Portraits of Personalities’; that of Lewis, by Stanley Parker, appeared in the Church Times, CXXXV (21 November 1952), p. 844.

276 This was possibly the working title for an intended collection of Lewis’s essays.

277 Serena is a young lady whose adventures are recounted in Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book VI.

278 The Red Cross Knight.

279 Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I, x, 61, 8: ‘Thou Saint George shalt called bee.’

280 There is no evidence that this story was ever published.

281 H. G. Wells, Kipps (1905).

282 e.g. H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898), ch. 6: ‘You may figure to yourself the hum of voices along the road in the gloaming.’

283 Christian Behaviour (New York: Macmillan, 1943).

284 ‘Luke 11:26: the last state of that man is worse than the first’ Matthew 12:45.

* There are v. important exceptions. Also, on further thought, I don’t believe much in ‘French, American, or English people.’ There are only individuals really.

285 i.e., Joy Gresham.

286 For a while Joy and Bill Gresham dabbled in Ron Hubbard’s philosophy of Dianetics or spiritual healing. See Lyle Dorsett, And God Came In: The Extraordinary Story of Joy Davidman, Her Life and Marriage to C. S. Lewis (New York: Macmillan, 1983), ch. 3, p. 71.

287 See the biography of the Honourable Phyllis Elinor Sandeman (1895-1986) in CL II, p. 788n. Mrs Sandeman was brought up in Lyme Park, one of the most magnificent houses in Cheshire. Home to the Legh family for 600 years, the original Tudor house was transformed by the Venetian architect, Giacomo Leoni, into an Italianate palace. In 1946 Mrs Sandeman’s brother, the 3rd Baron Newton, Richard Legh, gave Lyme Park to the National Trust.

296 Lewis had put his finger on ‘Mrs’ while the ink was still wet.

288 Phyllis Sandeman, Treasure on Earth: A Country House at Christmas, illustrated by the author (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1952), an account of a Christmas spent at Lyme Park during her childhood.

289 Percy Lubbock, Earlham (1922).

290 ‘we others’.

291 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott, And Other Poems (1833), ‘The Lotus Eaters’, IV, 8-9: ‘All things are taken from us, and become/Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.’

292 Sandeman, Treasure on Earth, p. 26: ‘It was a large lofty room with walls of darkly gloomy cedar-wood, Corinthian pilasters arranged in pairs dividing the long panels and each of these adorned down its centre with swags of elaborate wood-carvings. From looped garlands and palm leaves and cupids’ heads hung a host of diverse objects, bunches of fruit and flowers, musical instruments, trophies, fish and birds, all carved to the life in soft yellow pear-wood by the hand of the master—the one and only Grinling Gibbons.’ In Mrs Sandeman’s book the owners of the house–the Newtons–are given the pseudonym ‘Vayne’. Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721) was the most famous English woodcarver of all time.

293 ibid., p. 62: ‘They would begin with Grace said by the Canon and then the meal would proceed eaten off silver plates, not so pleasant as the china service because scratchy under the knife and fork.’

294 ibid., p. 83: ‘The Long Gallery…could be a little frightening at night, and generally Phyllis avoided going there alone after dark. One night after summer holidays, however, resentful and unhappy from what she considered an unjust rebuke by her parents, she had run there, and flinging herself on one of the deep window seats, burst into tears of self-pity But almost at once, breaking in upon her grief with a gentle but increasing pressure, she seemed to detect a sympathy in the surrounding atmosphere as if unseen presences thronging about her were offering their love and consolation.’

295 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847), ch. 2.

297 Genesis 15:1; Luke 2:10.

298 The Ichneutai of Sophocles: The Searching Satyrs, the Fragment Freely Translated into English Rhyming Verse and Restored by Roger Lancelyn Green (Leicester: E. Ward, 1946).

299 Lewis had sent Evans a copy of Prince Caspian, and he was here referring to the first illustration in Chapter 3. Pauline Baynes wrote to Walter Hooper on 15 August 1967: ‘[Lewis] only once asked for an alteration–& then with many apologies—when I (with my little knowledge) had drawn one of the characters rowing a boat facing the wrong direction’ (CL II, p. 1020).

300 Having returned to New Zealand, Bodle sent Lewis a little book of prayers for deaf children that she had written.

301 John 14:9.

302 John 14:28.

303 Acts 17:27.

304 See Clyde S. Kilby in the Biographical Appendix.

305 Laurence was the second son of Cecil Harwood and Lewis’s godson. See Laurence Harwood in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1051-2.

306 At this time Vera Henry was back in her native Ireland. She never recovered from her illness and died in April 1953. The only person at The Kilns who could help with the cooking was the gardener, Fred Paxford (see his biography in CL II, p. 213n). When it was clear that Vera would not be returning, Lewis hired as his housekeeper Mrs Molly Miller, who lived close by in Kiln Lane. There are photographs of Fred Paxford and Molly Miller in Douglas Gilbert and Clyde S. Kilby, C. S. Lewis: Images of His World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), pp. 67, 69.

307 ‘Not to us.’ Psalm 115 (Vulgate): ‘Non nobis, Domine, non nobis; Sed nomini tuo da gloriam’: ‘Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your Name give glory.’

308 It is known Joy Gresham left for the United States on 3 January 1953.

309 Bonamy Dobrée (1891-1974) was born in London on 2 February 1891 and educated at Haileybury College and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He served with the Royal Horse Artillery and Royal Field Artillery during the First World War. After the war he went to Christ’s College, Cambridge (1920-1). In the following years he published many scholarly books. In 1936 he was appointed to the Chair of English Literature at the University of Leeds, where he remained until his retirement in 1955. Dobrée was one of the General Editors of the Oxford History of English Literature, and his contribution to the series was English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, 1700-1740 (1959). He died on 3 September 1974.

310 The Wanderer is an Anglo-Saxon poem of 115 lines. This is Lewis’s translation of lines 9-14.

311 Lewis probably meant by this ‘A Normal Male Person’.

* Please forgive. The smudge has a long and complicated history, if you but knew. First I always was a clumsy brute: ten thumbs and not a finger among them.²⁹⁶

1953

TO J. KEITH KYLE (BBC):¹ TS

REF.3/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

1st January 1953.

Dear Mr. Kyle,

I wish the series every success, but am snowed under with work at present, and cannot assist: anyway, if the public does’nt by now know what I believe I should’nt enlighten them much in 3 1/2 minutes more!

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Jan 2nd 1953

Dear Miss Pitter–

The year, which I had not thought much of so far, begins to mend with a letter and a prime article from you. And then, as you say, the skies.

It was beautiful, on two or three successive nights about the Holy Time, to see Venus and Jove blazing at one another, once with the Moon right between them: Majesty and Love linked by Virginity—what could be more appropriate?

The Return to Poetic Law is a noble piece and would do good if any of those who most need it were at all likely to take any notice.² But they are all in Groups and Parties. What matters to them is not what is said but who says it: one of the Party or an outsider. ‘A minor specialist’s subject’, as you say. Yet some one or two may heed you: you are right to testify.

I do most heartily agree with you about having had too much shame. (Do you, by the way, remember the character-study of Shame in the Pilgrims Progress, all in a conversation between Christian and Hopeful?³ It is superb fun). It is v. sinister that ‘embarrassing’ or ‘embarrassingly bad’ has become an ordinary term of criticism: this, you see, is a direct appeal away from the reader’s consciousness of the poem to his social self-consciousness. While he reads he must be aware that the set are watching him reading.

That is a bad business, losing your country home. I have lost mine while remaining in it, i.e. it has ceased to be country. Not that I’d quite say ‘All things are taken from us and become Parcels and portions of the dreadful past’. Dreadful isn’t the word at all. But it’s thrilling to hear of your ‘closing in on’ Oxford.⁴ It wd. be lovely if you became a neighbour.

My brother joins me in best wishes for the year. How many—and how few—of these here years there seem to be!

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

During her weeks at The Kilns Joy Gresham received a letter from her husband, Bill, saying that while he knew Joy would never be anything but a writer, ‘Renée has a different orientation: her only interest is in taking care of her husband and children and making a home for them.’ The ‘optimum solution, as he saw it, ‘would be for you to be married to some swell guy, Rene and I to be married, both families to live in easy calling distance so that the Gresham kids could have Mommy and Daddy on hand.’⁵

Joy showed this letter to Lewis and she told Chad Walsh that she asked him for advice. ‘He strongly advised me to divorce Bill,’ she said.⁶ After a fortnight at The Kilns, Joy returned to the United States on 3 January

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V): ⁷

Collegium Stae Mariae Magdalenae

apud Oxonienses

Vig. fest. Trium Regum

MCMLIII [5 January 1953]

Dilectissime Pater

Grato animo, ut semper, paternas tuas benedictiones accepi. Sit tibi, precor, suavissima gustatio omnium hujus temporis gaudiorum et inter curas et Dolores consolatio. Tractatum Responsabilità apud Amicum (Dec.) invenire nequeo. Latet aliquis error. Orationes tuas peto de opera quod nunc in manibus est dum conor componere libellum de precibus privatis in usum laicorum praesertim eorum qui nuper in fidem Christianam conversi sunt et longo stabilitoque habitu orandi adhuc carent. Laborem aggressus sum quia videbam multos quidem pulcherrimosque libros de hac re scriptos esse in usum religiosorum, paucos tamen qui tirones et adhuc (ut ita dicam) infantes in fide instruunt. Multas difficultates invenio nee certe scio utrum Dominus velit me hoc opus perficere an non. Ora, mi pater, ne aut nimia audacitate in re mihi non concessâ persistam aut nimia timiditate a labore debito recedam: aeque enim damnati et ille qui Arcam sine mandato tetigit et ille qui manum semel aratro impositam abstrahit.

Et tu et congregatio tua in diurnis orationibus meis. Haec sola, dum in via sumus, conversatio: liceat nobis, precor, olim in Patria facie ad faciem congredi. Vale.

C. S. Lewis

Adhuc spero tractatum Responsabilità accipere.

*

The College of St Mary Magdalen, Oxford

n Vigil of the Feast of the Three Kings, 1953

[5 January 1953]

Dearest Father

Thank you, as always, for your fatherly blessings.

May you, I pray, have the sweetest relish of all the joys of this life and consolation amid cares and griefs.

I am unable to find the article ‘Responsibility’ in the December issue of Friend. There is some unexplained mistake here.⁸

I invite your prayers about a work which I now have in hand. I am trying to write a book about private prayers for the use of the laity, especially for those who have been recently converted to the Christian faith and so far are without any sustained and regular habit of prayer. I tackled the job because I saw many no doubt very beautiful books written on this subject of prayer for the religious but few which instruct tiros and those still babes (so to say) in the Faith. I find many difficulties nor do I definitely know whether God wishes me to complete this task or not.⁹

Pray for me, my Father, that I neither persist, through over-boldness, in what is not permitted to me nor withdraw, through too great timidity, from due effort: for he who touches the Ark without authorization¹⁰ and he who, having once put his hand to the plough, draws it back are both lost.¹¹

Both you and your Congregation are in my daily prayers. While we are in the Way, this is our only intercourse: be it granted to us, I pray, hereafter, to meet in our True Country face to face.

C. S. Lewis

I still hope to receive the article ‘Responsibility’.

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

e Coll. Stae Mariae Magdalenae

apud Oxonienses

Jan. vii. MCMLIII

Tandem, pater dilectissime, venit in manus exemplar Amid (Oct.) quod continent tractatum tuum de clade illa Serica. De illa natione quum ibi per multos annos evangelistae haud infeliciter laboravissent, equidem multa sperabam: nunc omnia retro fluere, ut scribis, manifestum est. Et mihi multa atrocia multi de illa re epistolis renuntiaverunt ñeque aberat ista miseria a cogitationibus et precibus nostris. Neque tamen sine peccatis nostris evenit: nos enim justitiam illam, curam illam pauperum quas (mendacissime) communistae praeferunt debueramus jam ante multa saecula rê verâ effecisse. Sed longe hoc aberat: nos occidentales Christum ore praedicavimus, factis Mammoni servitium tulimus. Magis culpabiles nos quam infideles: scientibus enim volunta-tem Dei et non facientibus major poena. Nunc unicum refugium in contritione et oratione. Diu erravimus. In legendo Europae historiam, seriem exitiabilem bellorum, avaritiae, fratricidarum Christianorum a Christianis persecutionum, luxuriae, gulae, superbiae, quis discerneret rarissima Sancti Spiritus vestigia? Oremus semper. Vale.

C. S. Lewis

*

from The College of St. Mary Magdalen

Oxford

Jan 7th 1953

At last, dearest Father, there has come to hand that copy of Friend (Oct.) which contains your article on that Chinese disaster. I used myself to entertain many hopes for that nation, since the missionaries have served there for many years not unsuccessfully: now it is clear, as you write, that all is on the ebb. Many have reported to me too, in letters on this subject, many atrocities, nor was this misery absent from our thoughts and prayers.¹²

But it did not happen, however, without sins on our part: for that justice and that care for the poor which (most mendaciously) the Communists advertise, we in reality ought to have brought about ages ago. But far from it: we Westerners preached Christ with our lips, with our actions we brought the slavery of Mammon. We are more guilty than the infidels: for to those that know the will of God and do it not, the greater the punishment.

Now the only refuge lies in contrition and prayer. Long have we erred. In reading the history of Europe, its destructive succession of wars, of avarice, of fratricidal persecutions of Christians by Christians, of luxury, of gluttony, of pride, who could detect any but the rarest traces of the Holy Spirit?

Let us pray always. Farewell,

C. S. Lewis

TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD):

Coll Magd.

Jan 9th 1953

Dear Sister Penelope

As usual, your letter is full of interest, and I shall chew it over very thoroughly. That is, I shall go on wondering whether ooa can mean quite the same as ¹³ and whether it is or is not an objection that your interpretation involves the assumption that what is being prayed for is something internal. One couldn’t (or could one?) believe that a dead man had risen before you saw him rise. I don’t know. You might believe the prayer had been answered before he did. By the way, what are Aramaic tenses like? Does it have futures and preterits?

The poor old soul in Holloway is a famous confidence trickster, Mrs. Hooker, against whom I had to appear as a witness because she had borrowed money by pretending to be my wife! I am sure you will pray for her. It was nice to meet the other day.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO J. O. REED (P): TS

REF.34/53.

Magdalen College,

9th January 1953.

Dear Reed,

Can you meet me for a pot of beer in the Eastgate at 12.30 tomorrow, Saturday 10th?

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

E Coll. Stae Mariae Magdalenae

apud Oxonienses

Jan. xiv LIII

Pater dilectissime

Multo gaudio accepi epistolam tuam die ix Jan. datam: credo jampridem te meam accepisse quam de tractatu Responsabilità scripsi. Et vides me per errorem putavisse te auctorem esse et Sac. P. Mannam esse id quod Galli vocant nomen plumae. At minime refert quum liber De Imitatione nos doceat ‘Attende quid dicatur, non quis dixerit’. Multas ex corde gratias refero, quia tanta caritate ob libellum meum propositum meditare et orare voluisti. Sententiam tuam pro signo accipio. Et nunc, carissime, audi de quâ difficultate máximo haesito. Duo paradigmata orationis videntur nobis in Novo Testamento expósita esse quae inter se concillare haud facile est. Alterum est ipsa Domini oratio in horto Gethsemane (‘si possibile est…nihilominus non quod ego volo sed quod tu vis’). Alterum vero apud Marc XI, v. 24 ‘Quidquid petieritis credentes quod accipietis, habebitis’. (Et nota, loco quo versio latina accipietis habet et nostra vernacula similiter futurum tempus shall receive, graecus textus tempus praeteritum έλάβετε, accepistis, id quod difficillimum est). Nunc quaestio: quomodo potest homo uno eod-emque momento temporis et credere plenissime se accepturum et voluntati Dei fortasse negantis se submittere? Quomodo potest dicere simul ‘Credo firmiter te hoc daturum esse’ et ‘si hoc negaveris, fiat voluntas tua’. Quomodo potest unus actus mentis et possibilem negationem excludere et tractare? Rem a nullo doctorum tractatam invenio.

Nota bene: nullam difficultatem mihi facit quod Deus interdum non vult faceré ea quae fidèles petunt. Necesse est quippe ille sapiens et nos stulti sed cur apud Marc. XI 24 pollicetur se omnia (quidquid) facere quas plena fide petimus? Ambo loci Dominici, ambo inter credenda. Quid faciam? Vale. Et pro te et pro congregatione tua oro et semper orabo.

C. S. Lewis

*

from The College of St Mary Magdalen

Oxford

14th January 1953

Dearest Father

I received your letter dated 9th Jan. with much joy. I trust that long since you have received my letter on the tract Responsabilità. And you see that I mistakenly thought that you yourself were the author and that ‘Sac. P. Mannam’¹⁴ was what the French call a nom de plume.

But it is of no consequence since the De Imitatione teaches us to ‘Mark what is said, not who said it.’¹⁵

I send you many heartfelt thanks for your charity in being willing to meditate on my proposed little book¹⁶ and pray for it. I take your opinion as a good sign.

And now, my dearest friend, hear what difficulty leaves me in most doubt. Two models of prayer seem to be put before us in the New Testament which are not easy to reconcile with each other.

One is the actual prayer of the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane (‘if it be possible¹⁷…nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt’).¹⁸

The other, though, is in Mark XI v. 24. ‘Whatsoever you ask believing that you shall receive you shall obtain’ (and observe that in the place where the version has, in Latin, accipietis-and our vernacular translation, similarly, has the future tense, ‘shall receive’-the Greek text has the past tense έλάετε = accepistis-which is very difficult).

Now the question: How is it possible for a man, at one and the same moment of time, both to believe most fully that he will receive and to submit himself to the Will of God–Who perhaps is refusing him?

How is it possible to say, simultaneously, ‘I firmly believe that Thou wilt give me this’, and, ‘If Thou shalt deny me it, Thy will be done’? How can one mental act both exclude possible refusal and consider it? I find this discussed by none of the Doctors.

Please note: it creates no difficulty for me that God sometimes does not will to do what the faithful request. This is necessary because He is wise and we are foolish: but why in Mark XI 24, does He promise to do everything (whatsoever) we ask in full faith? Both statements are the Lord’s; both are among what we are required to believe. What should I do?¹⁹

Farewell. And for you and for your Congregation I pray and shall ever pray.

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD): TS

REF.51/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

17th January 1953.

Dear Mr. Kinter,

Yes. Eustace, Edmund, Jane, and Mark²⁰ are all meant to be recipients of Grace.

All good wishes.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Jan. 19th 1953

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

Thank you for your kind letter of Dec. 29th which arrived today. I am afraid I have no idea what the first editions of Screwtape or the Divorce sell at: I haven’t even got a first of the former myself. But you would be foolish to spend a cent more on them than the published price: both belong to the worst war-period and are scrubby little things on rotten paper–your American editions are far nicer.

Your letter was most cheering and I am full of agreements. Of course we’ll help each other in our prayers. God bless you.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO BELLE ALLEN (L, WHL):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

19 January 1953

I don’t wonder that you got fogged in Pilgrim’s Regress. It was my first religious book and I didn’t then know how to make things easy. I was not even trying to very much, because in those days I never dreamed I would become a ‘popular’ author and hoped for no readers outside a small ‘highbrow’ circle. Don’t waste your time over it any more. The poetry is my own…We all feel ashamed of receiving so much from you and are not even sure-now-whether our scarcities are any worse than your high prices. Don’t you think you ought to stop?…

TO MARG’RIETTE MONTGOMERY (W): TS

REF.65/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

21st January 1953

Dear Miss Montgomery,

This is a splendid poem of Edna Millay’s and the last two lines put the whole of one’s experience in a nut-shell.²¹ You were right not to send me the R.S.²² books: I have several Anthroposophical friends here who would readily supply me with all his works. And by the way, the point about a musician is surely her music, not her advice about reading! Keep your independence.

All good wishes.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO NELL BERKERS’PRICE (W): TS

REE67/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

21st January 1953.

Dear Nell,

Your letter is tantalisingly cryptic, but as I have to go to Holloway next Sunday, no doubt I shall see for myself!

Love to all.

Yours,

Jack

TO CHAD WALSH (W): TS

RER73/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

24th January 1953.

Dear Chad,

I wonder if I may trouble you to do me a service? You will already guess what it is when you have read the enclosed note, which was an answer to Revd. Iones B. Shannon,²³ who kindly invited me to lecture at his College. The only address he gave was:–

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church,

State College,

Pennsylvania

and the U.S. mail has returned the letter, stamped ‘No Post Office named’. You presumably have his full address, and I would take it kindly if you would send my note to him. Thank you.

Joy Gresham left here on the first of the month for New York; and I think really enjoyed her English adventures. She visited Oxford twice, and I saw quite a lot of her. She certainly got well off the beaten tourist track, her adventures including attendance at a wedding in the East End of London, where she and the other guests were invited to spend the night on the kitchen floor. It was pleasant news that she is about to join the church, and will shortly be confirmed.²⁴

How goes it with you? We got a little news of you from Joy, but would have liked more.

With all blessings,

yours,

lack Lewis

TO SARAH NEYIAN (T): PC

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Ian 26/53

Thanks for most interesting letter and congratulations on the good time you seem to be having. lust as you are going back to old experiences in liking parties again, so I am by pulling out one of my teeth with fingers the other day, wh. I can’t have done for many a year!*

I liked Mrs. Masham’s Repose²⁵ far the best of White’s books myself. Our Christmas was conditioned by having a visitor for nearly 3 weeks: very nice one but one can’t feel quite free. Love to all.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Jan. 26th 1953

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Thank you for your letter of the 17th and the wholly delightful photographs. I am glad things are still Fine. I’ve never thought of becoming an Associate of anything myself and feel difficulty about advising. You mention externals–what Associates have to do and that they have asked you to become one–but say nothing about the motives in your own mind either for or against it.²⁶ They are the real point, aren’t they? I don’t think one ought to join an Order, however much one might like it or however nice the people who have asked you-unless one thinks that God especially presses one to do so as the only, or the best, way of doing some good to others or receiving some good oneself. And if one does think that, then I suppose one must join however much one disliked it & however nasty the particular inviters were! It is not as if it were a club! Why not try living according to their Rule for a bit without joining them and seeing what it is like for a person such as you in circumstances such as yours?

Confession, of course, you can have without joining anything. I think it is a good thing for most of us and use it myself.

That is v. good news about really good people beginning to go into government jobs, and at a sacrifice. I have always thought of how that the greatest of all dangers to your country is the fear that politics were not in the hands of your best types and that this, in the long run, might prove ruinous. A change in that, the beginning of what might be called a volunteer aristocracy, might have incalculable effects. More power to your myriad elbows!

M. James is wrong.²⁷ It is my brother, not I, who is or was a vestryman.²⁸

With love to all.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF.53/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26th January 1953.

My dear Edward,

Many thanks for your letter of the 21st: and for the welcome news that a ‘guided missile’ is even now winging its way from Highland Avenue to Magdalen College. Yes, anticipation v. realization is a very old problem, is’nt it? Certainly there is a time when realization always falls flat, as compared with anticipation; but one of the advantages of old age–naturally a stripling of 45 like you won’t appreciate this–is that anticipation comes to be pitched so low that realization generally exceeds it.

The G.B.S.²⁹ remark was new to me; and is a typical example of what he thought funny and others would think merely ill-bred. A silly man I feel, in spite of his great ability; for you must have noticed that while a fool cannot be clever, a clever man can often be silly. Do you know the story of how this same G.B.S. once got more than he bargained for? He had been asked to stay with Lady Londonderry, a great society hostess in the old days, and sent her a letter warning her that it was not his habit to eat the bodies of dead and often putrefying animals and birds and so on, in typical Shaw style; he got his answer by telegram-‘Know nothing of your habits: trust they are better than your manners.’

We will certainly take you at your word and let you have a critical review of the contents of package 204; but as I cannot at the moment remember ever having had a useless article in an Allen parcel, I don’t think there will be much to say except ‘very many thanks’. Yes, things seem to be looking up a bit in the ration world here; there is even talk of de-rationing meat in 1954-a pretty safe thing though to say, for by that time the politicians will have found some excellent excuse for not doing so. Meat, butter, and sugar are still on rations over here: meat and sugar because we can’t afford to buy them, and butter because there is a world shortage–or so our papers say. Though how this can be so, I don’t quite see. Are you short of it in U.S.A.?

I am ungallant enough to suspect that perhaps R. L. Stevenson said the last word on the marrying or not marrying question: ‘marriage is terrible, but so is a lonely old age’.³⁰ Not a very consoling remark, but there it is. My brother and I can both sympathize with you over rheumatism: having had it for several years, and it being a family heirloom. We often talk ruefully of the days when we used to think it a comic disease, and laugh at our elder’s complaints about it!

It is heartening and rebuking to think of your father rising superior to his sufferings and producing champion dahlias; and is, as you say, a sermon on the value of work as an alternative to worry. May he long be spared to continue at his gardening.

With anticipatory thanks for the parcel, and with all best wishes to you and your mother from both of us.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Feb 3rd 1953

Dear Starr

Thanks for your immensely interesting letter from antipodean Po’Lu.³¹ I shall be v. intrigued to hear more of the Arthurian story as told there, tho’ more so to hear what their own chivalric stories are like.

I have no adventures to tell you in return–unless it is an adventure that I have at last finished, and am now reading proofs of, my volume on 16th Century literature. It is an adventure to me to be free of that 12-15 year labour. I know now how Ariel felt,³² or how a balloon feels when the sandbags are thrown out.

Your F. H. Heard sounds worth following up. I have just read two books by an American ‘scientifiction’ author called Ray Bradbury. Most of that genre is abysmally bad, a mere transference of ordinary gangster or pirate fiction to the sidereal stage, and a transference which does harm not good. Bigness in itself is of no imaginative value: the defence of a ‘galactic’ empire is less interesting than the defence of a little walled town like Troy. But Bradbury has real invention and even knows something about prose. I recommend his Silver Locusts.³³

When do you revisit Europe? Don’t stay out yonder till you grow yellow. And try to correct your young friend’s idea of what it wd. be like meeting someone who’d been to Heaven! All good wishes for this (so far not v. attractive) year.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

P.S. (By the other Lewis). I too greatly enjoyed the letter. Remember seeing the tomb of the 47 Ronin when I was in Japan, but no one cd. tell me who they were or what they did.³⁴ This is Tuesday, Bird and Baby day, and I’m off to drink good luck to you.

W.H.L

TO ANTHONY BOUCHER (P): ³⁵

Magdalen College

Oxford

5/ii/53

Dear Mr. Boucher

This is a delightful meeting. I did indeed value St. Aquin very highly and I have also greatly enjoyed Star-Dummy in its different way.³⁶ This wd. go for nothing if I were the real out-and-out S F reader who is, within that field, omnivorous. In reality I’m extremely hard to please. Most of the modern work in this genre seems to me atrocious: written by people who just take an ordinary spy-story or ship-wreck story or gangster story and think it can be improved by a sidereal or galactic setting. In reality the setting, so long as it is a mere setting, does harm: the wreck of a schooner is more interesting than that of a space-ship and the fate of a walled village like Troy moves us more than that of a galactic empire. You, and (in a different way) Ray Bradbury, are the real thing.

All my imagination at present is going into children’s stories. When that is done, I may try another fantasy for adults, but it wd. be too quiet and leisurely for your magazine.

I don’t belong to a press-cutting agency and so miss, along with many brickbats, some bouquets intended for me. I must thank you in the dark, therefore, for kind things you have apparently said about my work. (I found that neither the favourable nor the unfavourable reviews helped one at all: they merely either soothed or wounded one’s vanity-neither a very beneficial experience. They v. often hadn’t even read the book with any accuracy).

The ‘Antiparody’ (a word we need) of the Lord’s Prayer in Star Dummy was very fine.

Thank you v. much for the year of F & S F. I hope there will be plenty of your work in it.

If you are ever in England or I in U.S.A. we must most certainly meet and split a CH³ CH² OH together. Urendi Maleldil.³⁷

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W): TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

5th February 1953.

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen,

I am writing to Genia, and you have my deepest sympathy. Of course you all have my prayers. No doubt by this time you have had my answer to your last letter.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): TS

REF.28/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

6th February 1953.

My dear Bles,

Thanks for the highly satisfactory statement and the cheque for £793-12-3.1 would like very much to come up to lunch and go through the new illustrations when they arrive.

We are both pretty well thanks: I had no more of the ‘flu than could be settled by a week-end of aspirin and early hours. I hope you have both been equally fortunate. How many more false springs are we to have before the real one?

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF.53/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

7th February 1953.

My dear Edward,

Many thanks for your letter of the 2nd. Your point about the internal combustion engine and the lady-bird is both true and interesting. Yes, ‘gentleman’ is a word which has ceased to have any particular meaning; with us it now means ‘male’ and lady ‘female’.* There are of course many more, e.g. any boat in which it is possible to spend the night, and which is privately owned is ‘luxury-yacht’, every cinema is ‘Super-cinema’ and so on. Please give our belated congratulations to your mother on her birthday, with our wishes for many more happy ones.

This is indeed good of you about the tea and sugar, and I think you have just about hit the right proportions; the business of payment on delivery is rather erratic, sometimes one is charged, sometimes not. But I’ll let you know what happens.

Please excuse such a short and scrappy note, but I am snowed under with a vast stack of examination papers for correction.

All the best.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD): ³⁸

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Feb 9th 1953

Dear Miss Bodle

Thanks for your interesting letter of Feb 1st wh. arrived today. It is difficult to one, who, like me, has no experience, to give an opinion of these problems, which, I see, are v. intricate. The story about the girl who had reached the age of 16 under Christian teachers without hearing of the Incarnation is an eye-opener. For ordinary children (I don’t know about the Deaf) I don’t see any advantage in presenting the Gospels without some doctrinal comment. After all, they weren’t written for people who did not know the doctrine, but for converts, already instructed, who now wanted to know a bit more about the life and sayings of the Master. No ancient sacred books were intended to be read without a teacher: hence the Ethiopian eunuch in the Acts says to St. Philip ‘How can I understand unless someone tells me?’³⁹

Could the bit–and I think there must be something-about people I don’t like come in as a comment on the Forgive clause in the Lord’s Prayer?⁴⁰

It is freezing hard here and one takes ones life in one’s hand every time one walks.

What an excellent work you are doing! All blessings.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR C. CLARKE (BOD):⁴¹

Magdalen College

Oxford

Feb. 14th [?] 1953

Dear Mr. Clarke

I hope I shd. not be deterred by the danger!⁴² The fatal objection is that I should be covering ground I have already covered in print and on which I have nothing to add. I know that is how many lectures are made, but I never do it. I might at a pinch show great fortitude about the boredom of the audience, but then there’s my own. But thank your society very much for the invitation and convey my good wishes to them as regards everything but interplanetary travel.

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

Probably the whole thing is only a plan for kidnapping me and marooning me on an asteroid! I know the sort of thing.

TO ROBIN OAKLEY-HILL (M): ⁴³

Magdalen College

Oxford

Feb 16th 1953

Dear Oakley-Hill

It came over me like a thunderclap about 30 seconds after I had left you in the Lodge this afternoon that I must seem to you to have committed, in one very short conversation, all the most unprovoked and indeed inexplicable kinds of rudeness there are.⁴⁴ I implore you to try to understand–and believe–how it came about with no such intention.

The starting point was the fact that I have never noticed the slightest inequality in your gait. Seeing it for the first time when I was waiting behind you to cross the street I therefore immediately assumed some temporary mishap to be the cause: no alternative explanation entered my head. My evil genius then led me to ask you about it-largely because two people who see each other once a week can’t very well meet on an ‘island’ and say just nothing. After your answer I ought of course to have apologised and dropped the subject at once: but by that time I had completely lost my head.

You are not the first to suffer this kind of thing from me: I am subject to a kind of black-out in conversation which every now and then leads me to ask and say the utterly wrong thing–the Brobdingnagianly tactless thing.⁴⁵ I have (quite against my will) made many enemies this way. I hope very much you will not become one of them: give me a fool’s pardon.

If I raised a subject which may be painful to you, I am now punished by having to deal with one that is equally painful for me. It is an old sore: it began in my almost nursery days: and if we could find a suitable magician I think I’d gladly swop my Tendency to the Faux Pas for your leg. Please accept my sincere, and greatly embarrassed, apology.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W):

REF.53/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

21st February 1953.

My dear Ed,

Just a note whilst overwhelmed with one thing and another, to let you know that nineteen pounds twelve ounces of comfort, posted on the 20th of January, arrived in the usual excellent condition this morning. And very many thanks indeed for it. Much needed, though I really do begin to believe that this government intends to deal with the question seriously; tea is now ‘off the ration’, so are sweets, and they’re beginning to put pork in the sausages. This I should think will probably turn the younger generation into lifelong dispeptics, for it has grown up to think of a sausage as an ounce of soya bean flour fried in a skin! But anyway, we have got rid of the suspicion of rationing for rationing’s sake which one felt under the late administration, whose slogan was supposed to be ‘jobs for the boys’.

I am somehow or other in the middle of a very heavy term–examining, seeing a big book through the press and other odd jobs, besides of course the regular grind. But I hope to get away for a day or two over Easter, which will freshen me up until the summer vacation looms up on the horizon.

I’m sorry to cut you so short, but ‘it’s one of those mornings’ as we say. Do you know the expression? It means that everything that can go wrong has gone wrong, and I’m in need of two brains and four hands, to say nothing of a day of forty eight hours.

With all best wishes to you both,

Yours,

Jack Lewis

TO CHAD WALSH (W): TS

REF.73/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

21st February 1953.

Dear Chad,

It’s disappointing to hear that your English visit is postponed, but nice to hear from you at all: and thrilling to find that you also are doing a (odious word) ‘juvenile’.⁴⁶ I’m an examiner for three years now, so I certainly shan’t be able to embark on any American lectures: exciting and attractive tho’ the idea may be.

The book on Prayer comes on very slowly. The simplest questions about it seem to be the ones no one has ever dealt with.

Sorry I cut you so short: infinite other letters to answer, if possible, before my first pupil comes.

My brother joins me in cordial greetings.

Yours,

lack Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Feb 21st 1953

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

No, I don’t think the motives you describe are too emotional: I think they are good ones. Obviously, where one is ‘more sure that God wants one to be’ is the place one must go: and even if the surety shd. in fact be mistaken I expect we may rely on God to bring it about that good will come of it. I presume, anyway, that you have to take no irrevocable vows! It looks to me as if you should go on and enter.⁴⁷ I hope it will be a great blessing to you.

I traced in Genia’s letter a growing concern for you, and was v. pleased. She is obviously fighting against the temptation to self-centredness wh. comes with ill health. It is all most cheering.

Your question about Communists-in-government really raises the whole problem of Democracy. If one accepts the basic principle of Govt. by majorities, how can one consistently try to suppress those problems of public propaganda and getting-into-govt, by which majorities are formed. If the Communists in this country can persuade the majority to sell in to Russia, or even to set up devil-worship and human sacrifice, what is the democratic reply? When we said ‘Govt. by the people’ did we only mean ‘as long as we don’t disagree with the people too much’? And is it much good talking about ‘loyalty’? For on strictly democratic principles I suppose loyalty is obligatory (or even lawful) only so long as the majority want it. I don’t know the answer.

Of course there is no question of its being our duty (the minority’s duty) to obey an anti-God govt. if the majority sets it up. We shall have to disobey and be martyred. Perhaps pure democracy is really a false ideal.

God bless you all. In great haste.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

[Magdalen College]

[25] Feb. 1953

My dear Roger

My brother and I have now both finished Armadale⁴⁸ and we enjoyed it very much. One can see, no doubt, why it is so much less popular than the famous two.⁴⁹ The ‘common reader’ is right. It has no characters to compare with Fosco⁵⁰ and it involves some excessive improbabilities. But it has the true Collins atmosphere and no dull parts. Thank you very much.

I am having mild flu’ at present and solaced myself yesterday with re-reading From the World’s End. I was more surprised than ever at my own insensibility to this story when I first read it, and I believe it is now going to be one of my regular books. The feeling of summer-evenings-miles-from-anywhere-and-much-later-than-one-intended-to-be is really very well caught in chapter I. And there are some jewels I hadn’t noticed before such as ‘Peeping Tom boasting because he was not Tarquín’⁵¹ (p. 30-a smashing blow from the shoulder, that!) or ‘supreme surrender and a supreme assumption of responsibility’ (p. 83).⁵² That I believe is entirely new and of immense importance.

Since you can write like that, then, though of course exactly the same type wouldn’t do, you must introduce the same precision into your factual works.

We’ve never talked about Aylwin⁵³ have we? I don’t know it.

Something funny has happened to the spelling of Danae and Pasiphae on p. 79.⁵⁴ I suppose you assumed that [because] Lat. æ (dipthong) = Gr αι in some places, it therefore does in all. But in those two fem. names the ē (η) is the ordinary fem. ending as in Phoebē and the preceding a has nothing to do with the matter.

Give my love and duty to June.

I’ve nearly finished the last chronicle.⁵⁵

Yours ever

Jack

Dănăe but Mōīrāī

TO CLIFFORD W. STONE (BOD): ⁵⁶

Magdalen College

Oxford, England

Feb. 27. 1953

Dear Mr. Stone

Thank you very much for Report from Paradise which turned up a few days ago.⁵⁷ I read it always with amusement and at times with deep interest. Of course one mustn’t expect from it the edge and force of a story on the same subject either by a real believer or a real militant sceptic like Anatole France: but within its limits it is good. How v. unexpected that Mark Twain of all people shd. tell us at such length that Heaven is not egalitarian. That raised my opinion of his insight. And what a light it casts on his religious upbringing that all the great ones of his Heaven are from the Old Testament–prophets and patriarchs, not a word about apostles and martyrs!

I met his work first in a very funny way-reading the Yankee at the Court of K. Arthur⁵⁸ as a small boy simply and solely for the sake of the Arthurian stuff in it and ignoring the satiric or burlesque elements. Only years later did I come to know & love the great work–by wh. I mean Huckleberry Finn.

With v. many thanks and all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVFS (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Feb 27. 53

My dear Arthur

I wd. love to come away with you this year again but it couldn’t be earlier than last year. I have been put on to examine this year which will keep me busy at Oxford into the first week of August. My jaunt with W. could be made to come after my jaunt with you instead of before it if you wish, I expect. I hope this doesn’t spoil things for you?

Someone has given me Armadale. It is clearly not so good as the famous two but well worth reading.

I’m in such pain with sinusitis today I can’t think straight: so if any of this letter doesn’t make sense you’ll understand! I’m not lecturing at Queen’s.

Yours

Jack

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

ii/iii/53

My dear Bles

I return the drawings⁵⁹ which I think the best set Miss Baynes has done for us yet. There is, as always, exquisite delicacy: and I think the faces (human faces) are greatly improved. It is difficult to find 10 that one wd. willingly reject. The ones I suggest for omission are:

6. ‘She found she could lie on her back.’ No real sense of wind in it. Her hair ought to be blowing straight forward. 8. ‘Leaning one hand’ etc.

10. The poet. Not our idea of a blind bard at all!

17. The stone-throwing giants. Has its merits, but the travellers ought to be carrying packs, not parcels in their hands like trippers!

36. The gnome. I think better of this than you do but he is too like a human brat out of Dickens’s London, and since we must cut some, this is a good candidate.

39. The Dance. Her dances are usually lovely, but this is not one of her best.

42. The Centaurs.

43. Ruined by the utterly un-numinous, foreshortened Asian in the background. (I wish you, who live in town, wd. take an afternoon off and conduct Miss Baynes round the Zoo! In quadrupeds claudicat.)⁶⁰

That’s as many as I can find it in my heart to turn down.

In 19, could the shield be painted out in Chinese White & then obliterated? Knights didn’t wear shields on the right arm.

2 wd. be lovely in colour if it cd. be afforded.

You will hear with mixed feelings that I have just finished the seventh & really last of the Narnian stories. That means there are 3 more. Are you still game? If so, tell me when to send you the next.

The Book of Prayer makes some progress: and will, I hope, make more when term and ill-health are over. As some deaf people suffer from head-noises, I, who cannot now smell anything in the outer world, suffer from nose-smells. I live in a stench: like one of the nastier circles in Dante. Phew! Good apothecary, an ounce of Civet to sweeten my imagination.⁶¹ No doubt it is an allegory. My kindest regards to both of you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO HERBERT PALMER (TEX):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

3/iii/53

My dear Palmer

Alas, I wd. be perfectly useless.⁶² When I first began to sell I had the idea that this would give my opinion about other people’s books some weight with publishers. I was soon undeceived. Never once in my whole career has any publisher taken my advice about a book–except, of course, when he had asked for it. I suspect it is a principle with them. ‘Do not let your Authors act as volunteer Readers.’ It is even possible that such volunteered recommendations do harm. I do sympathise deeply with you.

And there’s no sign yet of the present dark dynasty weakening. Not that the modern kind of poet is read except by a coterie: but he somehow keeps the rest of you out. With much regret & affection.

Yours always

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD): TS

REF.162/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

3rd March 1953.

Dear Roger,

Alas, I shall be at Malvern in Easter week. Did you know that slithy was a word long before Lewis Carroll?⁶³ I found it in Bunyan:⁶⁴ but see N.E.D.⁶⁵

Love to both of you.

Yours,

Jack

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

4/iii/53

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

Thank you for your letter of Feb. 26 wh. arrived today. I think the poem succeeds and has both the lightness and massiveness you wanted. I’m not quite sure about his in 1. 7. It gives the effect of being put in only to fill the line. In so far as you pass from God simply to ‘our God’ I think you’re weakening the very effect you want at that moment. But I don’t know how to mend it: diagnosis is often easier than cure. ‘Majestic shapes more formidably fair’ is a most august line. (Old Solar grammar a bit weak. Eldila is the true plural: but you can Anglicise it as eldils?)⁶⁶

I am delighted that yr. lecturer approved my angels. I was v. definitely trying to smash the 19th century female angel. I believe no angel ever appears in Scripture without exciting terror: they always have to begin by saying ‘Fear not’.⁶⁷ On the other hand the Risen Lord excites terror only when mistaken for a ghost, i.e. when not recognised as risen. For we are in one most blessed sense nearer to Him than to them: partly of course because He has deigned to share our humanity, but partly, I take it, because every creature is nearer to its creator than it can be to superior creatures. By the way, none of my Eldila wd. be anything like so high up the scale as Cherubim & Seraphim. Those orders are engaged wholly in contemplation, not with the ruling the lower creatures. Even the Annunciation was done by–if I may so put it!-a ‘mere archangel’. Did your lecturer point out my heavy debt to Ezekiel?⁶⁸

Of course I knew you weren’t asking for a copy of a ‘First’: but I wanted to explain why I was not offering one–quite a different matter!

I also am having a kind of flu’ that seems never to get beyond early convalescence, tho’ nothing like so acute as yours. For that, and also else, deepest sympathy. Let us continue to pray for each other.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): TS

REF.28/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

4th March 1953.

My dear Bles,

This is awkward. I am struggling along at present with sinusitis and the kind of ‘walking’ ‘flu by dint of getting up late and going to bed early and doing as little as I possibly can.

A day in London, even tho’ soothed by your Apician**⁶⁹hospitality, would knock me up. How long can you afford to wait without serious inconvenience? Or would it be safe to send them by registered post. Sorry to be a nuisance, but I’m the ghost of a man at present. And thanks, and love to both,

yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO W. K. SCUDAMORE (W): ⁷⁰

Magdalen College

Oxford

lO/iii/53

Dear Mr. Gardamole⁷¹

Thank you for your most interesting letter. Your explanation produced–I was going to say ‘complete conviction’, but as you rightly say, one can never be certain that any interpretation of an image in C.W. is complete. But I shall be v. surprised if the Druidical sacrifice is not the master key. I now think I was rather stupid not to have seen it before. My copy of Taliessin is out of the house and I am in College to the end of the week, so I can’t look up any of the passages, and therefore can’t help about the worshipped Duke. Could it be Aeneas? With many thanks.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO W. K. SCUDAMORE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

13/iii/53

There are few names I wd. so regret having mangled!⁷² But when a man rides (or writes) with his beaver down-! C.S.L.

On 16 March Warnie wrote to Arthur Greeves: ⁷³

Magdalen College, Oxford. 16th March 1953.

My dear Arthur,

What between sinus and examinations, poor Jack is sunk fathoms deep this morning. However, we talked over your letter of the 11th last night, and he has asked me to ask you whether Saturday 29th August to Saturday 12th September would suit you for the jaunt: to which he is very eagerly looking forward. These dates are tentative, so if you don’t like them, please say so. But let us know as soon as possible, as it is part of a ‘master plan and we have all kinds of other things to make fit in with it.

Incidentally, if the dates suit, I hope to be with J. at Craw-fordsburn for a few days before you and he set out, and am looking forward to more than one meeting with you. I daresay amongst other things, we may be having a supper with our Jane,⁷⁴ and a drive home across the Holywood hills.

Love to Lily, Janie, and any others of my old friends you meet; and kindest regards to those good Samaritans, your neighbours and relations, who gave us drinks that Sunday morning.

Can you forsee any end to this winter?

Yours ever,

Warren

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

17/iii/53

My dear Bles

I don’t feel as you do about the alteration of it and he, but I will be guided by your advice.⁷⁵ That is, I will try to normalise on he throughout (tho’ a few it’s are sure to slip through by infirmity). Don’t blame me if this means heavier corrections than usual!

I see I must write a treatise on the aesthetics of gender!⁷⁶

I’m a bit better, thanks. At least, the smell is.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Mart, xvii MCMLIII

Dilectissime Pater

Gavisus sum, ut semper, de epistola tua. Res mira est et corrobora-tio fidei duas animas loco, natione, lingua, oboedentiâ, aetate diversas sic in dulcem familiaritatem adductas esse; adeo ordo spirituum ordinem materialem superat. Reddit faciliorem illam necessariam doctrinam, nos arctissime conjungi et cum peccatore Adamo et cum justo lesu quamquam (secundum carnem, tempus et locum) tam diversi ab ambobus viximus. Haec unitas totius humani generis extat: utinam extaret praestantior illa unio de quo scribis. Nullum diem sine oratione pro illo opiato fine praetereo. Quae dicis de praesenti statu hominum vera sunt: immo deterior est quam dicis. Non enim Christi modo legem sed etiam legem Naturae Paganis cognitam neglegunt. Nunc enim non erubescunt de adulterio, proditione, perjurio, furto, ceterisque flagitiis quae non dico Christianos doctores, sed ipsi pagani et barbari reprobav-erunt. Falluntur qui dicunt ‘Mundus iterum Paganus fit.’ Utinam fieret! Re vera in statum multo pejorem cadimus. Homo post-Christianus non similis homini prae-Christiano. Tantum distant ut vidua a virgine: nihil commune est nisi absentia sponsi: sed magna differentia intra absentiam sponsi venturi et sponsi amissi! Adhuc laboro in libro de oratione. De hac quaestione quam tibi subjeci, omnes theologos interrogo: adhuc frustra.

Oremus semper pro invicem, mi pater. Vale,

C. S. Lewis

*

Magdalen College

Oxford

17 March 1953

My dearest Father

I was delighted, as always, by your letter.

It is a wonderful thing and a strengthening of faith that two souls differing from each other in place, nationality, language, obedience and age should have been thus led into a delightful friendship; so far does the order of spiritual beings transcend the material order.

It makes easier that necessary doctrine that we are most closely joined together alike with the sinner Adam and with the lust One, Jesus, even though as to body, time and place we have lived so differently from both. This unity of the whole human race exists: would that there existed that nobler union of which you write. No day do I let pass without my praying for that longed-for consummation.

What you say about the present state of mankind is true: indeed, it is even worse than you say.

For they neglect not only the law of Christ but even the Law of Nature as known by the Pagans.⁷⁷ For now they do not blush at adultery, treachery, perjury, theft and the other crimes which I will not say Christian Doctors, but the Pagans and the Barbarians have themselves denounced.

They err who say ‘the world is turning pagan again’. Would that it were! The truth is that we are falling into a much worse state.

‘Post-Christian man’ is not the same as ‘pre-Christian man’. He is as far removed as virgin is from widow: there is nothing in common except want of a spouse: but there is a great difference between a spouse-to-come and a spouse lost.⁷⁸

I am still working on my book on Prayer.

About this question which I submitted to you, I am asking all theologians: so far in vain.

Let us ever pray for each other, my Father.

Farewell,

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20/3/53

My dear Bles

Here is the next tale.⁷⁹

My view about He and It was that the semi-humanity cd. be kept before the imagination by an unobtrusive mixture of the two. Your re-action, however, shows that either such a mixture cd. not be unobtrusive or else that I, at any rate, could not make it so. Of course I cherish a secret hope that you are merely playing the ‘normalising scribe’, well known to textual critics: see the Preface to the Oxford Virgil (Hirtzel) on those who corrígere studentes, floríbus Musarum delicatis-simis saepius insultaverint.,⁸⁰ That is my hope: but my sober fear is that you are right.

Your friend thinks I am ‘smelling things’ in the same sense in which the D.T.⁸¹ patient ‘sees things’. But it’s not quite as bad as that. My smell (ambiguous phrase) is subjective only in the sense that it does not come from the outer world. There is a real physical stimulus within the body–a sinus discharging its corrupt humours just under the olfactory nerves. So don’t be alarmed lest in my next letter I tell you that a marsh-wiggle called on me or something of that sort. ‘My pulse with yours doth temperately keep time.’⁸²

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

20/3/53

Dear Nell

I am indeed sorry to hear about your Mother. In a way you were most fortunate to have had her so long (mine died when I was a little boy), yet in another way it probably makes it worse, for you have lived into the period when the relationship is really reversed and you were mothering her: and of course, the more we have had to do for people the more we miss them–loving goes deeper than being loved. But it must be nice for her. Getting out of an old body into the new life–like stripping off tiresome old clothes and getting into a bath–must be a most wonderful experience.

I return Mrs. Hooker’s letter. I think ‘both sincere and insincere’ is about right. She certainly sounds more sensible in the letter than she did when I saw her.

Ugh! Holloway does give one the creeps, doesn’t it? But I see it doesn’t give them to you. It does me. If ever I go to jail (which may happen to anyone now-a-days) I do hope my cell will be white-washed and not that ghastly green!

I’ve been having a rather thin time with Sinusitis for about 4 weeks. In case you don’t know this complaint, it feels like toothache but since it is not a tooth you can’t have it out.

It’s nice to think of you and Alan working away in that delightful garden. I expect you are further on down there than we are in the midlands. Our daffodils are out and the catkins are all pussy and strokable, but the weather remains wretchedly cold.

I trust the nasty-taste of the Hooker crisis has now all gone away. The far more serious sorrow about your Mother will presumably have put paid to that. Remember me to Alan & God bless you all.

Yours ever

lack Lewis

By the way, Mrs. H’s letter is curiously uneducated. All that about her learning must have been imaginary too. Poor creature–there’s not much of her when one takes away the fantasies.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

21/3/53

My dear Arthur

I hope you weren’t shocked at getting an answer from W. instead of me the other day. On Monday I was both rather ill and also engaged in viva-voce examinations from 9.15 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., so I couldn’t well write, and I thought you wd. like to have all those dates at the earliest moment.

Yours

Jack

TO MICHAEL (W): ⁸³

Magdalen College

Oxford

21/3/53

Dear Michael

I see I have thanked your Father for a kind present which really came from you. Let me now say Thank you, very much indeed. I think it was wonderful of you. At least I know that when I was a boy, though I liked lots of authors, I never sent them anything. The reason there is so much boiled food here is, of course, that we have so little cooking-fat for roasting or frying.

The new book is The Silver CHAIR, not CHAIN. Don’t look forward to it too much or you are sure to be disappointed. With 100,000 thanks and lots of love.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

23/iii/53

Dear Mrs. Gebbert

Your first story (about mistaking it for sea-sickness) is one of the funniest I ever heard.⁸⁴ In our country there are usually alterations of shape wh. wd. throw grave doubts on the sea-sick hypothesis!…but no doubt you manage things better in America. Any way, congratulations and encouragements. As to wishing it had not happened, one can’t help momentary wishes: guilt begins only when one embraces them. You can’t help their knocking at the door, but one mustn’t ask them in to lunch. And no doubt you have many feelings on the other side. I am sure you felt as I did when I heard my first bullet, ‘This is War: this is what Homer wrote about.’⁸⁵ For, all said and done, a woman who has never had a baby and a man who has never been either in a battle or a storm at sea, are, in a sense, rather outside-haven’t really ‘seen life’-haven’t served. We will indeed have you in our prayers.

Now as to your other story, about Isaiah 66?⁸⁶ It doesn’t really matter whether the Bible was open at that page thru’ a miracle or through some (unobserved) natural cause. We think it matters because we tend to call the second alternative ‘chance.’ But when you come to think of [it] there can be no such thing as chance from God’s point of view. Since He is omniscient His acts have no consequences which He has not foreseen and taken into account and intended. Suppose it was the draught from the window that blew your Bible open at Isaiah 66. Well, that current of air was linked up with the whole history of weather from the beginning of the world and you may be quite sure that the result it had for you at that moment (like all its other results) was intended and allowed for in the act of creation. ‘Not one sparrow,’⁸⁷ you know the rest. So of course the message was addressed to you. To suggest that your eye fell on it without this intention, is to suggest that you could take Him by surprise. Fiddle-de-dee! This is not Predestination: your will is perfectly free: but all physical events are adapted to fit in as God sees best with the free actions He knows we are going to do. There’s something about this in Screwtape.⁸⁸

Meanwhile, courage! Your moments of nervousness are not your real self, only medical phenomena. All blessings.

Yours ever,

C. S. Lewis

TO HSIN’CHANG CHANG (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

March 24th 53

Dear Mr. Chang

The humble one, having burned the appropriate charms, has emerged from the Tenacious Mud Formation (Delay) and read the chapters, and the introduction, with very great interest.⁸⁹ It would be no mere ceremonial modesty to describe my opinion on it as ‘foolish’. I have not enough cultural background to know whether the effects produced on me are at all like those intended by the author. Thus I do not know which parts are comic and which are not. The giant who smashed a hole in the mountain with his head, I can take as (rather grotesquely) serious: the angry man whose beard knocked the table over is to me funny. What would be their effect on the Chinese reader? Some images are quite baffling to a foreigner. I cannot imagine a ‘fairy nun’ whether Taoist or otherwise! But this may be due to the fact that neither fairy nor nun is a really exact translation: though no doubt (for your English is not only correct but sensitive and elegant) both are the best a European language affords. Perhaps ‘goddess priestess’ (which I can just imagine) would be an alternative. But I found it all interesting, except the long scene about the slaves’ names in the Copper Formation: this inevitably loses its force in any language except the original. What moved and affected me most–a real, poetic experience–was the stripping-away of the man’s whole life in riches. I am wondering if a larger selection (but with frequent omissions) from the whole romance wd. possibly be published in England.

My brother, who is interested in everything Chinese because he spent some v. happy years in Shanghai, wd. like to read the MS. May I keep it for this purpose a week or two longer?

There are only two places where I think your English cd. be criticised. On p. 10 you use immune as a verb. It should be ‘to make immune’: or perhaps even ‘to protect’ would do. On p. 22 ‘them five’ should be either ‘those five’ or ‘these five’-unless you intend to represent the speaker as uneducated.

With very many thanks. Be sure to come and see me if you are in Oxford again.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD): TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

25th March 1953.

My dear Arthur

On looking into the matter further, it would suit me better to prolong our jaunt for another 48 hours, i.e. for me to cross on Monday 14th September instead of Saturday 12th. The Sunday train service on the English side is practically useless–one train, and no restaurant car. Will 14th suit you?

Yours,

Jack

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

28/3/53

Dear Mr Kinter

I think Ransom is a figura Christi⁹⁰ only in the same sense (‘only’-my hat!) in wh. every Christian is or should be. But the bus-driver in the Divorce is certainly, and consciously, modelled on the angel at the gates of Dis,⁹¹ just as the meeting of the ‘Tragedian’ with his wife is consciously modelled on that of Dante & Beatrice at the end of the Purgatorio:⁹² i.e. it is the same predicament, only going wrong. I intended readers to spot these resemblances: so you may go to the top of the class!

‘By the Furioso⁹³ out of the Commedia’ is not far wrong. My real model was David Lyndsay’s Voyage to Arcturus wh. first suggested to me that the form of ‘science fiction’ cd. be filled by spiritual experiences.⁹⁴ And as the Furioso was in some ways the science-fiction of its age, your analogy works. But mind you, there is already a science-fiction element in the Commedia: e.g. Inferno xxxiv 85-114.

It’s fun laying out all my books as a cathedral. Personally I’d make Miracles and the other ‘treatises’ the cathedral school: my children’s stories are the real side-chapels, each with its own little altar.

No, I never read Perceforest.⁹⁵ The only O.R⁹⁶ prose romance I’ve read is Balain.⁹⁷ How lovely, how like water–or Grace–that limpid O.E prose is. Damn the Renaissance.

I return cordially your wishes for a blessed Easter.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO JOHN GILFEDDER(W): ⁹⁸

Magdalen College

Oxford

30/iii/53

Dear Gilfedder

(I wish you’d call me Lewis not Sir) Thanks both for card of Florence and for your letter of the 15th.

I think a glossarial Index (I call it that because your specimens are partly index as well as glossary) wd. be a most useful addition to C.W.’s cycle.⁹⁹ But the chances of the O.U.P. ever re-printing Taliessin, let alone adding any matter to the volume, are infinitesimal. They wd. only do that if it showed signs of becoming a popular success: which of course it doesn’t.

I am glad you are settled down and hope you are enjoying your work. Please remember me to your wife; all good wishes to both for a happy Easter.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

31/3/53

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

I’ve no time for a proper letter today but this is just a scrape of the pen to thank you for yours of the 27th and to wish you a v. blessed Easter. I expect Jeannie will grow up the most devoted grand-daughter ever. Your silly son-in-law doesn’t realise the charm of forbidden fruit: a grandmother one is forbidden to see rises almost into the status of a fairy godmother!

Apropos of horrid little fat baby ‘cherubs’, did I mention that Heb. Kherub is from the same root as Gryphon? That shows what they’re really like!

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD):

Magdalen

1/4/53

Dear Sister Penelope

I am simply delighted with The Coming of the Lord;¹⁰⁰ delighted, excited, and most grateful. I think it is the best book you have yet done, and the best theological book by anyone I have read for a long time. (You are, among other things, the only person I ever meet who gives me real light on the Old Testament). Chap VIII now convinces me completely.

I was talking nonsense when we last discussed this matter: I hadn’t really grasped the point that Man is the true Temple. That is a splendid bit on p. 76¹⁰¹ about the true sense of ‘it is finished’-the sword ‘finished’ when its life as a sword can begin)¹⁰² How did you think of it? Why did all the rest of us non And the explanation on p. 26 of why the Bride is never mentioned, is brilliant.¹⁰³ Indeed, I’ll say it is clever-why should we acquiesce in that word’s sliding into a contemptuous meaning. And many, many thanks for St. Bernard’s conception of the Palm Sunday procession.¹⁰⁴ And the daring use of larval at the bottom of p. 45 is a complete success: I wanted to clap my hands when I came to it.¹⁰⁵

Now for a few tiny flaws, or what I think to be such.

P. 3. ‘Expectation, therefore, is a specifically human exercise.’¹⁰⁶ Yes, in the peculiar sense you give it of ex-spectation. But you haven’t explained that yet, have you? Won’t the reader take it in the current sense of ¹⁰⁷ and say that ‘expectation’, far from being specifically human, is seen at its v. maximum in a dog waiting to be taken for a walk or to have a ball thrown for it?

P. 5. at top. Basis or foundation wd. for many reasons be a better word than fundament.¹⁰⁸

P 5 later. Oh, oh why should an attitude almost impossible to a Pagan be called ‘neo-Paganism’?¹⁰⁹ You know that no Pagan, bless him, wd. ever have dreamed of thinking the sky belonged to Man. They had their faults, but that is just the sort of sin they never committed. They had too much αίδώσ,¹¹⁰ and δειδαιμονα,¹¹¹ and all that. You are falling into the common error of equating the post-Christian with the pre-Christian. They are as different as an unmarried girl is from a woman who has deserted her husband.

P. 44. Here I’m not sure, but, as the barristers say, I ‘put it to you.’ Can we take χóσμον¹¹² to mean Universe (as dist. from Earth) in view of other Johannine uses of it? But you are so often right that I dare say you will convince me on this point too.

Anyway, it is a lovely little book. I am very much in your debt. All blessings.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO CORBIN SCOTT CARNELL (W):¹¹³

Magdalen College

Oxford

5/4/53

Dear Mr. Carnell

I am myself a little uneasy about the question you raise:¹¹⁴ there seems to be almost equal objection to the position taken up in my footnote and to the alternative of attributing the same kind and degree of historicity to all the books of the Bible. You see, the question about Jonah and the great fish does not turn simply on intrinsic probability. The point is that the whole Book of Jonah has to me the air of being a moral romance, a quite different kind of thing from, say, the account of K. David or the N.T. narratives, not pegged, like them, into any historical situation.

In what sense does the Bible ‘present’ this story ‘as historical’? Of course it doesn’t say ‘This is fiction’: but then neither does Our Lord say that His Unjust Judge, Good Samaritan, or Prodigal Son are fiction. (I wd. put Esther in the same category as Jonah for the same reason). How does a denial, or doubt, of their historicity lead logically to a similar denial of N.T. miracles?

Supposing (as I think is the case) that sound critical reading reveals different kinds of narrative in the Bible, surely it wd. be illogical to conclude that these different kinds shd. all be read in the same way? This is not a ‘rationalistic approach’ to miracles. Where I doubt the historicity of an O.T narrative I never do so on the ground that the miraculous as such is incredible. Nor does it deny ‘a unique sort of inspiration’: allegory, parable, romance, and lyric might be inspired as well as chronicle. I wish I could direct you to a good book on the subject, but I don’t know one. With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

6/4/53

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

I think our official view of confession can be seen in the form for the Visitation of the Sick where it says ‘Then shall the sick person be moved (i.e. advised, prompted) to make a…Confession…if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter.’ That is, where Rome makes Confession compulsory for all, we make it permissible for any: not ‘generally necessary’ but profitable. We do not doubt that there can be forgiveness without it. But, as your own experience shows, many people do not feel forgiven, i.e. do not effectively ‘believe in the forgiveness of sins’, without it. The quite enormous advantage of coming really to believe in forgiveness is well worth the horrors (I agree, they are horrors) of a first confession.¹¹⁵

Also, there is the gain in self-knowledge: most of [us] have never really faced the facts about ourselves until we uttered them aloud in plain words, calling a spade a spade. I certainly feel I have profited enormously by the practice. At the same time I think we are quite right not to make it generally obligatory, which wd. force it on some who are not ready for it and might do harm.

As for conduct of services, surely a wide latitude is reasonable. Has not each kind–the v. ‘low’ & the v. ‘high’-its own value?

I don’t think I owe Genia a letter, and I think advice is best kept till it is asked for. Of course she, and you, are always in my prayers. I think she is of the impulsive type, but one must beware of meddling.

Yours, with all blessings,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

7/4/53

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

I don’t think gratitude is a relevant motive for joining an Order. Gratitude might create a state of mind in which one became aware of a vocation: but the vocation would be the proper reason for joining. They themselves wd. surely not wish you to join without it? You can show your gratitude in lots of other ways.

Is there in this Order, even for lay members such as you wd. be, not something like a noviciate or experimental period? If so, that wd. be the thing, wouldn’t it? If not, I think I can only repeat my previous suggestion of undergoing a sort of unofficial noviciate by living according to the Rule for 6 months or so and seeing how it works. Most of it is the things you probably do anyway and are things we ought to do. (The only one I’m doubtful about is the ‘special intention’ clause in No. 3. I’m not quite sure what the theological implications are.) The question is whether the fact of being compelled to it by a vow wd. act as a useful support or be a snare and a source of scruples: I don’t think I can tell you the answer to that. Is the vow irrevocable or can you contract out again?

About putting one’s Christian point of view to doctors and other unpromising subjects I’m in great doubt myself. All I’m clear about is that one sins if one’s real reason for silence is simply the fear of looking a fool. I suppose one is right if one’s reason is the probability that the other party will be repelled still further & only confirmed in his belief that Christians are troublesome & embarrassing people to be avoided whenever possible. But I find it a dreadfully worrying problem. (I am quite sure that an importunate bit of evangelisation from a comparative stranger would not have done me any good when I was an unbeliever.)

I hope it’s all true about the President.¹¹⁶ But let us hope he will not pursue the line of ‘Godliness for the sake of national strength’. We can’t use God as a means to any end.

About Democracy and all that. Surely we stand by equality before the Law? If no law disqualifies a man from office, and if he has broken no law, are we entitled to exclude him because we dislike his views? But I don’t really know the facts of your situation well enough to apply this.

Thanks for the charming photos of Genia. Yes, I do hope & pray she’ll be in smooth water now. Blessings on you all.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

13/4/53

My dear Bles

Thanks for your letter of the 8th.

I’m glad you like the new story. The title needs a little thinking of as this tale is sung or recited after dinner in Chap III of the Silver Chair and we must harmonise. What are your reactions to any of the following? The Horse and the Boy (wh. might allure the ‘pony-book’ public)-The Desert Road to Narnia–Cor of Archenland–The Horse stole the Boy–Over the Border–The Horse Bree. Suggestions will be welcomed.

Please dedicate The Silver Chair to Nicholas Hardie. Thanks for reminding me.

As to realism in the new one, Miss Baynes may base her ideas of Calormene culture either on the picture of the Arabian Nights world, or on her picture of Babylon and Persepolis (all the Herodotus and Old Testament orient) or any mixture of the two. But their swords must be curved because it says so in the text. And we want her to try v. hard to make Bree look like a war-horse–big fetlocks etc.

I’ve had a nice time walking in the Malvern area & feel much better. I hope you are both in good form.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

17/4/53

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

I’m not quite so shocked as you by the story of Charles and Mary. If even adult and educated Christians in trying to think of the Blessed Trinity have to guard constantly against falling into the heresy of Tri-theism, what can we expect of children. And ‘another of whom he was not quite sure’ is perhaps no bad beginning for a knowledge about the Holy Ghost.

About my fairy-tales, there are three published by Macmillan, New York (The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader). Local bookshops are often very unhelpful. If your friend wants these books she shd., of course, write to the publisher at New York.

I expect there is a photo of me somewhere, but my brother, who knows where things are, is away and I couldn’t find it today. Ask me again at a more favourable hour!-if you still have the fancy for this v. undecorative object.

I’d sooner pray for God’s mercy than for His justice on my friends, my enemies, and myself. With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARGARET DENEKE (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

18/4/53

Dear Miss Deneke

I do not see what I could put in a preface except a dilution of what I have already sent you: and that wd. be no good.¹¹⁷

The next step is to try the old device of publishing by subscription. We’ll all subscribe of course and it will go hard but we’ll raise over £48. A List of subscribers gives a fine 18th. century air to a book, too. What wd. Mr. Johnson (whose advice is much more valuable than mine) say to this.

My brother would join me in good wishes if he were not away.

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

22/4/53

My dear Bles

A priori I shd. have thought that a series which doesn’t sell too well once a year wd. sell worse if the tempo was speeded up: but I presume you think otherwise and of course your opinion on such a point is much more informed than mine. Of course, then, do exactly as you think fit. No author, on general grounds, ever thinks his book appears too soon!

Was it and his Boy or and its Boy?. I’m completely neutral on the point: print which you prefer.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

Your correspondence has contained no Latin verse for a long time!

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

22/4/53

Dear Mr. Van Auken

It was very nice to hear from you. I hope my interest in you both is something less blasphemous than that of a Creator in a creature (it wd. anyway be begetting not creating, see Philemon 10).¹¹⁸ My feeling about people in whose conversion I have been allowed to play a part is always mixed with awe and even fear: such as a boy might feel on first being allowed to fire a rifle. The disproportion between his puny finger on the trigger and the thunder & lightning wh. follow is alarming. And the seriousness with which the other party takes my words always raises the doubt whether I have taken them seriously enough myself. By writing the things I write, you see, one especially qualifies for being hereafter ‘condemned out of one’s mouth’.¹¹⁹ Think of me as a fellow-patient in the same hospital who, having been admitted a little earlier, cd. give some advice.

The semi-Christians (in dog-collars) that you speak of are a great trial. Our College chaplain is rather of that kind. I’m glad you have something better in your own church.

I feel an amused recognition when you describe those moments at wh. one feels ‘How cd. I–I, of all people–ever have come to believe this cock & bull story’ I think they will do us no harm. Aren’t they just the reverse side of one’s just recognition that the truth is amazing? Our fathers were more familiar with the opposite danger of taking it all for granted: which is probably just as bad.

God bless you both: you are always in my prayers. I hope we may meet again one day.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (W): TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

25th April 1953.

Dear Starr,

By all means give Masato Hori an introduction,¹²⁰ but don’t give him the illusion that I’m a mystic or an authority on mysticism. Dozens of things in your letter are exciting, but this is the first day of term. In haste. We both send greetings.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

27/4/53

Dear Evans

I am really very sorry. The Devil you Say¹²¹ got put on a pile of ‘books received’-most of them (I don’t include yours) a major plague of my life–and I forgot all about it. I have now read a few pages: there was nothing to tempt one to go on. It certainly seems to be a gross plagiarism: I am writing to New York Macmillan to draw their attention to it. Thanks v. much for sending it. With all good wishes, and thanks also to your American friend.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W): TS

54/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

9th May 1953.

Dear Mrs. Shelburne,

There’s very little time today, so I must be short. I am afraid it is certainly true in England that Christians are in the minority. But remember, the change from, say, thirty years ago, consists largely in the fact that nominal Christianity has died out, so that only those who really believe now profess. The old conventional church-going of semi-believers or almost total unbelievers is a thing of the past. Whether the real thing is rarer than it was would be hard to say. Fewer children are brought up to it: but adult conversions are very frequent.

I’m so glad to hear you have had a more satisfactory talk with your daughter.

I enclose a copy of the only photo which I have at the moment; it’s only a passport one I’m afraid.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): TS

28/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

9th May 1953.

My dear Bles,

Cunning man, you don’t say how long the MS is! If it can be read in a week-end and put up in a large envelope (I’m no good at parcels), I’ll read it. But I have honestly neither health nor leisure at present for more than very slight extra jobs.

All sympathy to Madame. I return Stewart’s letter.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

May 12th 1953

Dear Miss Pitter

Or (to speak more accurately)

Bright Angel!

I’m in a sea of glory! Of course I haven’t had time to read it properly, and there’ll be another, more sober, letter presently. This is just a line to be going on with, and to assure you at once that the new volume is an absolute Corker.¹²² I had feared that you might be one of those who, like poor Wordsworth, leave their talent behind at conversion:¹²³ and now–oh glory–you came up shining out of the font far better than you were before. ‘Man’s despair is like the Arabian sun’¹²⁴-I seriously doubt if there’s any religious lyric between that one and Herbert on the same level. And then my eye strays to the opposite page and gets the ‘dying-dolphin green’.¹²⁵ And ‘What we merit–A silence like a sword’.¹²⁶

I wonder have you yourself any notion how good some of these are?

But, as you see, I’m drunk on them at this present. Glory be! Blessings on you! As sweet as sin and as innocent as milk. Thanks forever.

Yours in great excitement

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): TS

Magdalen College

Oxford

12th May 1953.

My dear Bles,

MS duly received: and end leaf returned with thanks. I had seen it, but forgot that end leaves naturally are’nt included in the paper-back proof, and thence foolishly wondered if it had somehow miscarried. Authors with book, like expectant mothers, have their wayward fancies.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

May 15th 1953

Dear Miss Pitter

The brightness does not fade: appealing from Lewis drunk to Lewis sober, I still find this an exquisite collection. When I start picking out my favourites, I find I am picking out nearly all. Tree at Dawn is full of delight for eye and ear. Great Winter is extremely new and delightful in rhythm: and ‘storm of suns’¹²⁷ is wonderful. The Other has, I think, a few flaws (the second stanza on p. 15 seems to use words that precious poets have sucked all the juice out of) but also v. great virtues. The noises all through Herding Lambs-not only at ‘rainlike rustle of feet’,¹²⁸ tho’ that is the most striking single aural image–are wonderfully conveyed. Captive Bird is pure gold all through: so lovely fair my ‘sense aches with it’: and I still think as I did about World is Hollow (A v. tough undergraduate to whom I showed it thinks the same as I). Cedar is, I expect, extremely good in imagery, but I’d need a real cedar before me by which to judge. That’s the trouble about very visual writing. On the other hand the colours in Hill & Valley came through really well. Penitence is taut & accurate as a Yeats poem. Narrow but Deep & Aged Man to Y.M.¹²⁹ show you in a v. different vein: not the one I like best, but v. good. May is a fine meaty, yet not heavy, meditation. The Five Dreams do, I don’t know how, build up to a whole greater than the parts. The only one in the book I don’t much like is Father Questioned. I think Rostrevor Hamilton (see The Tell-Tale Article) wd. justly have something to say about the stanza at the top of p. 24.¹³⁰

I do congratulate you again and again. I hope you are as happy about the poems as you ought to be.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JOHN H. MCCALLUM (P):¹³¹ TS

218/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

18th May 1953.

Dear Mr. McCallum,

I am greatly shocked at your news. My correspondence with Borst was so pleasant and even so intimate that I feel his death as, in some sort, a personal loss. I am sure it will be deeply felt by all of you in many ways. I will try not to give Miss Boxill as much trouble as I gave her predecessor.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO ELSIE SNICKERS (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

May 18th 1953

Dear Mrs Snickers

No. I don’t think sin is completely accounted for by faulty reasoning nor that it can be completely cured by re-education. That view has, indeed, been put forward: by Socrates and, in the early 19th Century, by Godwin. But I think it overlooked the (to me) obviously central fact that our will is not necessarily determined by our reason. If it were, then, as you say, what are called ‘sins’ wd. not be sins at all but only mistakes, and would require not repentances but merely correction.

But surely daily experience shows that it is just not so. A man’s reason sees perfectly clearly that the resulting discomfort and inconvenience will far outweigh the pleasure of the ten minutes in bed. Yet he stays in bed: not at all because his reason is deceived but because desire is stronger than reason. A woman knows that the sharp ‘last word’ in an argument will produce a serious quarrel which was the very thing she had intended to avoid when that argument began and which may permanently destroy her happiness. Yet she says it: not at all because her reason is deceived but because the desire to score a point is at the moment stronger than her reason. People–you and I among them-constantly choose between two courses of action the one which we know to be the worse: because, at the moment, we prefer the gratification of our anger, lust, sloth, greed, vanity, curiosity or cowardice, not only to the known will of God but even to what we know will make for our own real comfort and security. If you don’t recognise this, then I must solemnly assure you that either [you] are an angel, or else are still living in ‘a fool’s paradise’: a world of illusion.

Of course it is true that many people are so mis-educated or so psychopathic that their freedom of action is v. much curtailed & their responsibility therefore v. small. We cannot remember that too much when we are tempted to judge harshly the acts of other people whose difficulties we don’t know. But we know that some of our own acts have sprung from evil will (proud, resentful, cowardly, envious, lascivious or spiteful will) although we knew better, and that what we need is not-or not only-re-education but repentance, God’s forgiveness, and His Grace to help us to do better next time. Until one has faced this fact one is a child.

And it is not the function of psychotherapy to make us face this. Its work is the non-moral aspects of conduct. You must not go to the psychologists for spiritual guidance. (One goes to the dentist to cure one’s toothache, not to teach one in what spirit to bear it if it cannot be cured: for that you must go to God and God’s spokesmen).

For this reason I am rather sorry that you have taken Psychology as a subject for your academic course. A continued interest in it on the part of those who have had psychotherapeutic treatment is usually, I think, not a good thing. At least, not until a long interval has elapsed and their personal interest in it, the interest connected with their own case, has quite died away. At least that is how it seems to me. All blessings.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W): TS

REF.67/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20th May 1953.

Dear Nell,

By all means rope me in as a reference to ‘the integrity of the family’: a subject on which I feel I can speak with conviction. I return the form. Court Stairs must be looking lovely now. Love to Alan and yourself. I’d write more, but there is the devil of a mail this morning.

Yours ever,

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

May 20th 1953

Dear Miss Bodle

Your letter written on Good Friday reached me today. I was a little shocked at first to hear of a child who found The Pilgrims Progress boring:¹³² but then I remembered that the dialogue, of which there is a good deal, does interrupt the story with matter no child cd. be expected to enjoy.

The restraints imposed on you by ‘secular education’ are, no doubt, very galling.¹³³ But I wonder whether secular education will do us all the harm the secularists hope. Secular teachers will. But Christian teachers in secular schools may, I sometimes think, do more good precisely because they are not allowed to give religious instruction in class. At least I think that, as a child, I shd. have been very allured and impressed by the discovery–which must be made when questions are asked–that the teacher believed firmly in a whole mass of things he wasn’t allowed to teach! Let them give us the charm of mystery if they please.

It was v. nice to hear from you again. All blessings on you and your work.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

May 21st 1953

Dear Roger

A good many disturbances made me postpone reading the new story¹³⁴ and then (for much longer) writing about it. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It is best after they have left the Castle–the night in the cave is the high light of the whole story–but all enjoyable. My brother read it with such gusto that he was moved to go back & read The Luck of the Lynns and then the Lewis Carroll, all with great satisfaction.

It is a very odd fact that I enjoy a story no more, and perhaps even a little less, for having been at the scene of operations. It certainly isn’t your fault, for I have had the same experience with other authors: but certainly the memory of the real Beaumaris did not help me. I thought the way in which the malapropisms were slightly toned down in this book–appropriately, as the malapropist gets older–was v. skilful.

I’m not in the best of health at present but perhaps better than I was. The last Narnian story is complete & shall go to you when typed: my present leisure, such as it is, goes mainly on proofs and bibliography for the OHEL volume.

Love to all of you and many thanks for the book.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

May 30th 1953

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

Thank you for your letter of the 26th. I am particularly glad to hear that you had a ‘fairly pleasant’ talk with your daughter

Yes, we are always told that the present wide-spread apostasy must be the fault of the clergy, not of the laity. If I were a parson I shd. always try to dwell on the faults of the clergy: being a layman, I think it more wholesome to concentrate on those of the laity. I am rather sick of the modern assumption that, for all events, ‘WE’, the people, are never responsible: it is always our rulers, or ancestors, or parents, or education, or anybody but precious ‘US’, WE are apparently perfect & blameless. Don’t you believe it. Nor do I think the Ch. of England holds out many attractions to the worldly. There is more real poverty, even actual want, in English vicarages than there is in the homes of casual labourers.

I look forward to Martin’s¹³⁵ ‘appreciations’. Yes, we have the word ‘dither’-and the thing too. And our offices are in a dither too. This is so common that I suspect there must be something in the very structure of a modern office which creates Dither. Otherwise why does our ‘College Office’ find full time work for a crowd of people in doing what the President of the College, 100 years ago, did in his spare time without a secretary and without a typewriter? (The more noise, heat, & smell a machine produces the more power is being wasted!)

I’d rather like to see one of your hail storms: our climate is in comparison, v. tame. Have you read S. V. Benét’s Western Stan¹³⁶ Excellent, I think.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II took place in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953.

TO HELEN D. CALKINS (W):¹³⁷

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 3rd 1953

Dear Miss Calkins

Your yesterday’s cable was a gracious and cheering surprise. I can only reply, God bless Miss Calkin: God bless California! The weather was not what one wd. have wished for a Coronation, but it was lovely getting the news about Everest on the same day.¹³⁸ With heartiest good wishes.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO HILA NEWMAN (W): ¹³⁹

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 3rd 1953

Dear Hida (is that right) Newman

Thank you so much for your lovely letter and pictures. I realised at once that the coloured one was not a particular scene but a sort of line-up like what you would have at the very end if it was a play instead of stories. The Dawn Treader is not to be the last: There are to be 4 more, 7 in all. Didn’t you notice that Asian said nothing about Eustace not going back? I thought the best of your pictures was the one of Mr. Tumnus at the bottom of the letter.

As to Asian’s other name, well I want you to guess. Has there never been anyone in this world who (1.) Arrived at the same time as Father Christmas. (2.) Said he was the son of the Great Emperor. (3.) Gave himself up for someone else’s fault to be jeered at and killed by wicked people. (4.) Came to life again. (5.) Is sometimes spoken of as a Lamb (see the end of the Dawn Treader). Don’t you really know His name in this world. Think it over and let me know your answer!

Reepicheep in your coloured picture has just the right perky, cheeky expression. I love real mice. There are lots in my rooms in College but I have never set a trap. When I sit up late working they poke their heads out from behind the curtains just as if they were saying, ‘Hi! Time for you to go to bed. We want to come out and play’

All good wishes,

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 8th 1953

Dear Mrs Van Deusen

Yes, I think your position is the right one. If one is asked for advice, then, and then only, one has to have an opinion about the exact rule of life which wd. suit some other Christian. Otherwise, I think the rule is to mind one’s own business.

St. Paul goes further than this: it may even be proper at times to adopt practices which you yourself think unnecessary, and which are unnecessary to you, if your difference on such points is a stumbling-block to the Christians you find yourself among. Hence, you see, other Christians’ practices concern us, when at all, as a ground for concessions on our part, not for interference or complacent assertion that our way is best. This is in Romans chap XIV:¹⁴⁰ read the chapter and meditate on it. I am very glad you have seen the real point.

My ‘troubles’, thanks, are in abeyance, except that I am suffering from Sinusitis: but that too is better than it was.

Don’t doubt that you and Genia are in my daily prayers. Hasn’t what you are kind enough to say about our Coronation a wider relevance?—that nothing stirs us if it has the sole purpose of stirring us: i.e. the stirring must be a by-product.

God bless you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD): TS

REF.162.53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

11th June 1953.

My dear Roger,

You have been having a time, have’nt you? I’m glad you are now in calmer waters. I shall be away on July 2nd, but am good for July 1st. Will you dine then? You can sleep too,* if that helps.

Yours,

Jack

TO MILDRED BOXILL (P): ¹⁴¹

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 14th 1953

Dear Miss Boxill

Thank you for yours of the 11th. I am sending off to you to day by registered post the corrected galleys, but retaining the carbon of the footnotes (for which many thanks) for later use. In the meantime I send you some corrections of the footnotes on the chance that they might reach you in time to be of use. If they do not I should [be] glad to have this list back again. Like an ass I have in it italicised all that is meant to be printed, which of course I ought not to have done: perhaps someone in the office can re-type it or you can explain to the printer.

In the general list of Contents (for which, again, thanks) I think the words ‘Books I-VI’ after Faerie Queene shd. be deleted. They are not, as you see from the Mutability section, quite accurate, and we are selecting from the whole poem: i.e. the Books of P.L.¹⁴² in Bush’s Milton section are not a parallel.¹⁴³

I put in references to Book and Canto at the head of each selection before the proofs of the notes arrived and showed me that it had been done thus. I suppose you will delete whichever is more easily deleted on technical grounds.

I have added a Headnote to the Epithalamion.

I have put in such cross-references as occurred to me in the margin of the galleys: not knowing where or in what form they will appear in the book. Some (not most) of their re-duplicate parallels appear already in the notes.

Accents, being given in the text, need not be repeated in the note: if this occurs anywhere, it shd. be deleted. I’m glad you agreed about having them all restored. Lor bless you, metre doesn’t guide the modern student, on either side of the Atlantic. He wholly ignores it. It is not a question of metre guiding him to the pronunciation: we are giving him pronunciation to guide him (‘tis a faint hope) to metre. Of course it’s a losing battle: but let’s fight for the ship till she goes down under us.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD): TS

REF.307/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

15th June 1953.

Dear Blamires,

Heartiest congratulations.¹⁴⁴ This is a most important turning-point: on the other line you would have been in danger of writing what was substantially the same book over and over again. Lloyd is a good man, and we have every reason to believe he is right.¹⁴⁵

How right you are to put the house first in your budget: it is ‘the bread and tea of life’ that really matter.

All good wishes.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 16th 1953

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

It was a kind thought on your part to send on these two little items. Whether it’s good for me to hear them is another matter! One of the things that make it easier to believe in Providence is the fact that in all trains, hotels, restaurants and other public places I have only once seen a stranger reading a book of mine, tho’ my friends encounter this phenomenon fairly often. Things are really very well arranged. I hope you keep well? With all blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

June 20th 53

Dear Mrs. Gebbert

The young gentleman looks already, as he should, fathomlessly American: not so much the current model as the heavy millionaire of earlier fiction and film (you’d hardly remember) who was always bringing his clenched fist down on the desk and saying ‘We gotta smash the Medicine Hat toothbrush combine.’ He clearly has a will of his own. From the height of your new technical expertise you will despise me when I say that the score of 6 lbs 14 oz. means nothing to me. I have no idea what a baby ought to weigh: you will not object to my assuming that he breaks all records within the memory of man! Yes, it must be strange and new for you: and for Charles Marion too of course: one is perhaps tempted to forget that side of it. You’ll bring him up v. badly if you start his reading with The Lion? Peter Rabbit & Benjamin Bunny¹⁴⁶ ought to come a long way before it.

Mal-de-Mère¹⁴⁷ is surely rather a good pun.

Blessings and congratulations to you all.

Yours ever,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

June 22nd 1953

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

Thank you for your letter of the 18th. I am very sorry to hear of your fall (that sounds sinister, doesn’t it!). They are very nasty things: even worse than the subsequent pain, I think, is the dreadful split second in which one knows one is falling and it’s too late to do anything about it. It always brings back to one vividly one’s childish days when a fall was one of the commonest catastrophes, and I think it really hurt then more than it does now: one of the many things that people forget when they wish they were children again! You and I who still enjoy fairy tales have less reason to wish actual childhood back. We have kept its pleasures and added some grown-up ones as well. One hasn’t kept the senses, though. What a comparatively tasteless thing an egg or a strawberry is now! Yes: I think the palate is the only part of me that need regret the early years

I am so glad you saw your daughter. I can’t understand that whole business. One is always told over here that America is a country where Women are on top: but the real evidence I have (and I’ve had a good deal by now) suggests a degree of male tyranny that is quite unknown here.

By the way did the reviewers mean ‘writes like a woman’ to be dispraise? Are the poems of Sappho¹⁴⁸ or, if it comes to that, the Magnificat,¹⁴⁹ to be belittled on the same ground.

You are quite right, I didn’t go to the Coronation. I approve of all that sort of thing immensely and I was deeply moved by all I heard of it; but I’m not a man for crowds and Best Clothes. The weather was frightful.

As you had forgotten what called for my remarks about WE, THE PEOPLE, so I have now quite forgotten what the said remarks were! That is one way correspondence differs from conversation. On the other hand neither party can interrupt! Oh–I’m often in a dither: usually when I’ve made two engagements for the same time in different places.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO HILA NEWMAN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

23/6/53

Dear Hila

(I never met this name before. What language?) You have got it right. No: the three stories you know are the only three that have yet come out. The fourth will be out this Fall (as you say: we say ‘this Autumn’). I am so glad your friends like the books. It’s funny they all began with the second one.

All good wishes,

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO CLYDE S. KILBY (W): TS

REF.325/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26th June 1953.

Dear Mr. Kilby,

Thanks for your letter of the 24th. I should be happy to see you at noon on Wednesday 1st July in my rooms here, if that would fit in with your plans.¹⁵⁰

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WARHELD M. FIROR(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 27th 53

Dear Firor–

I was reminded of my sins (to you and to many other correspondents) the day before yesterday on receiving a visit from a coal-king called Hishop of (I think) Ohio, who turned out to be an old patient of yours. Apparently you ‘carved him as a dish fit for the gods’, and even proceeded, while his wounds were yet green, to the more drastic operation of lending him the Screwtape Letters. In spite of that he is your v. warm admirer.

I have been neglecting everything except the bare minimum of routine duties for many months, being worn to a ravelling by continued sinusitis in all its varying phases of much catarrh and little pain, much pain and little catarrh, and (sometimes) much of both. I have rejected the operation because I keep on meeting people who have had it and been no better afterwards. It now begins to clear. This disease has, however, one excellent quality: its pain, unlike all other pains I have known, always gets better at night. But I mustn’t spread myself on the symptoms since hearing symptoms is rather ‘a busman’s holiday’ (have you that phrase?) for you. One may perhaps add that the internal smell (‘bad smell in the nose’ like ‘bad taste in the mouth’) is rather allegorical: the world seems to stink, but (as often) the real corruption is in the observer.

I’ve just read S. V. Benét’s Western Star which I thought, as far as it went, even better than John Browns Body.¹⁵¹ Certainly more interesting and of more real value (so far as any comparison is possible) than any of the ‘modern’ poetry produced on this side of the Atlantic. I wish your bad poets weren’t so exportable! You sent us Eliot in the flesh and Pound in the spirit.

My brother and I are both ‘with book’ at present and read proofs all day.¹⁵² Mine is a big and (to the taste) dull, academic work.

I always hope to hear that you are coming to Oxford again. All blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June [2] 9th 53

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

I never know what to say in cases like that of the sick child’s mother whom you mention. There seems plenty of evidence that God does sometimes, in answer to prayer, heal in miraculous fashion: sometimes, it wd. appear, not. No doubt there are very good reasons for both.

I wouldn’t quite say that ‘religious Practices help the search for truth’ for that might imply that they have no further use when the Truth has been found. I think about the practices what a wise old priest said to me about a ‘rule of life’ in general-‘It is not a stair but a bannister’ (or rail or balustrade–I don’t know what you call it in America), i.e. it is, not the thing you ascend by but it is a protective against falling off and a help-up. I think thus we ascend. The stair is God’s grace. One’s climb from step to step is obedience. Many different kinds of bannisters exist, all legitimate. It is possible to get up without any bannisters, if need be: but no one wd. willingly build a staircase without them because it would be less safe, more laborious, and a little lacking in beauty. Give my love to Genia. I am so glad all goes well.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

July 10th 1953

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

Thanks for your letter of June 30th. I found the poem interesting–especially metrically interesting. From that point of view 1. 3 is the important one: notice how it keeps the five beats because one is forced to give full value to the two long monosyllables-‘one goal’–

‘Remémber the ónly, the óne góal of lífe’

L.2 where you collapse into a 4 beat-rhythm is not, I think, nearly so good. ‘God speed’ at the end is a trifle weak isn’t it? And if one puts it into God’s mouth–as the context invites one to do–a little comic: like in the old miracle play where God, in a moment of excitement, is made to exclaim ‘By God!’

You know, over here people did not get that fairy-tale feeling about the coronation. What impressed most who saw it was the fact that the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it. Hence, in the spectators, a feeling of (one hardly knows how to describe it)-awe–pity–pathos–mystery. The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be His vice-regent and high priest on earth, yet feeling so inadequate. As if He said ‘In my inexorable love I shall lay upon the dust that you are glories and dangers and responsibilities beyond your understanding.’ Do you see what I mean? One has missed the whole point unless one feels that we have all been crowned and that coronation is somehow, if splendid, a tragic splendour.

I am so glad about your short but precious conversation with your granddaughter. The whole unnatural situation is v. hard for me to understand. Perhaps it will end. We must both pray.

By the way isn’t a motor-car the safest place to be in a thunderstorm: isolated from the earth by rubber tyres wh. are non-conductors? Or do I only display my ignorance?

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen

July 10th 1953

My dear Roger

Thank you very much for The Mahatma & the Hare.¹⁵³ (But you must stop doing this sort of thing: I didn’t forbid roofers in order to get presents instead!). The narrative of the hare is almost unbearable, as it was meant to be, yet unfairly, for it depends on giving poor Wat a human mind. If he had that he would perhaps have guns too. The book is impressive, and shows much more restraint than R.H. usually does in vision literature.

But far more important is your K. Arthur.¹⁵⁴ I read every word and think you have done, in general, a v. good job. The non-Malory parts are just as good as the Malory parts. You have managed the events, such as the begetting of Galahad, which present difficulties in a children’s book, with wonderful skill. The style is exactly right: no unwelcome modernity, so that only close inspection reveals the absence of archaisms. The only place where, I think, you go wrong is on pp. 275-6 where you use the word mysterious four times. It wouldn’t be a good adjective if used only once. I forget whether I have said before–and anyway I am going to say now-that Adjectives which are a direct command to the reader to feel a certain emotion are no use. In vain do we tell him that a thing was horrible, beautiful, or mysterious. We must so present it that he exclaims horrible! beautiful! or mysterious! There are exceptions but we must talk of that another time. Despite this blot, it’s a grand book: many, many thanks.

Love to all.

Yours

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

July 13/53

My dear Arthur

We have both of us been a little flustered, it seems. First you wrote a letter of wh. you sent me only part: at least, so I conclude from the fact that it had no signature and broke off in the middle of a sentence. Then I got it on a day when I was just going for a journey and lost it. So sorry. The facts are these.

Aug. 20th W. and I arrive Crawfordsburn.

Aug. 28th W. departs by L’pool boat.

Sept. 14th I depart

I hope this fits in with you?

R. L. Green has written a v. good Arthurian book for children in the Puffin series–not merely a re-telling of Malory, something much better than that, wh. he explains in the preface. I am sending you a copy when it comes out: if you want to refresh your memory of that cycle, you can get it all here with the ‘brasting’ left out.¹⁵⁵

Yours

Jack

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

16 July 53

Dear Mrs. Gebbert

Pounds and ounces don’t need translating, for we use the same tables (plagues they were at school, too) over here. It’s babies need translating. Tho’ indeed, now that I come to think of it, I’m not much better on adult weights. I’ve no idea of my own, and can’t understand the interest of the question. I can understand people, and especially women, being interested in their shape (tho’ those who can mistake mal de mère for mal de mer¹⁵⁶ must be an exception) but there seems to be a non sequitur in relating shape to weight quite so directly as is commonly done.

Screwtape as a ‘stunt’ idea (like Swift’s Lilliput and Brobdingnag) is only good for a short use. I never showed more discretion, I believe, than in cutting that book short and never writing a sequel. The very fact that people ask for more proves it was the right length.

As to the reward for printed work (apart from money) one’s first good reviews are v. sweet-perhaps dangerously so–and fame has one really solid good about it in so far as it makes some strangers approach you with a friendliness they would not have felt otherwise. It may even win you their prayers (as I hope I have yours: you certainly have mine). The rest is all in the order of those things wh. it is painful to miss but not really v. nice to get. (It is painful not to be able to scratch a place in the middle of one’s back, yet scratching doesn’t rank v. high among our pleasures).

We are both well, thanks and go to Ireland in August. It is on the whole a cold and wet summer here. This last week it has been more like what we usually get in April: alternate sun and showers with high winds. As the man rightly said, ‘All weathers have their own beauty: if only people wd. enjoy that instead of always comparing it with some other weather.’ I hope Charles (and the play) will grow in goodness, intelligence, wit, and kindness.

All blessings. Love from both.

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

July 16/53

My dear Roger

Hail to the young Richard.¹⁵⁷ Give June my warmest love and congratulations.

Look: I think I must abandon the idea of an expedition on my way back from Ireland, for this year. It is becoming clear that I shan’t finish the proofs and horrible bibliography of my OHEL volume before we sail on Aug. 11th. That being so, every day between our return and the beginning of Michaelmas term becomes precious as gold: for if the job once drags on into another term, I don’t know what will become of me. Anyway, the jus trium liberorum¹⁵⁸ will be keeping you pretty busy. Do you know why liberi means both ‘freemen’ & ‘children’? Think it over and see if your historical imagination can solve the problem.

Yours

Jack

TO GEORGE SAYER(W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

July 17/53

My dear George

It is I who shd. be shamed for I wrote asking you both to come & see Comus at Ludlow: but as I sent the letter to an address in U.S.A. you naturally never answered!

Thanks, George, for your prayers: I never doubted that I had them, as you both have mine. The catarrh phase of the sinus is quite gone: the pain remains, but never at night (which is a great mercy) and for a decreasing number of hours daily. And thanks also for the invitation. But we’ll be in Ireland in Aug. We were hoping you’d come to us for some days after Sept 15. Can this be managed: any time between then and your term?

I’m damned with doing Bibliographies for my OHEL vol. How goes The Isle of the Undead?¹⁵⁹ All love.

Yours ever

Jack

TO MRS JOHNSON (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

July 17/53

Dear Mrs. Johnson

There are many interesting points in your letter of June 8. I’m v. glad you’ve seen that Christianity is as hard as nails: i.e. hard and tender at the same time. It’s the blend that does it: neither quality wd. be any good without the other. You needn’t worry about not feeling brave. Our Lord didn’t–see the scene in Gethsemane.

How thankful I am that when God became Man He did not choose to become a man of iron nerves: that wd. not have helped weaklings like you and me nearly so much. Especially don’t worry (you may of course pray) about being brave over merely possible evils in the future. In the old battles it was usually the reserve, who had to watch the carnage, not the troops who were in it, whose nerve broke first. Similarly I think you in America feel much more anxiety about atomic bombs than we do: because you are further from the danger. If and when a horror turns up, you will then be given Grace to help you. I don’t think one is usually given it in advance. ‘Give us our daily bread’¹⁶⁰ (not an annuity for life) applies to spiritual gifts too: the little daily support for the daily trial. Life has to be taken day by day & hour by hour.

The writer you quote (‘in all those turning lights’) was very good at the stage at wh. you met him: now, as is plain, you’ve got beyond him. Poor boob!-he thought his mind was his own! Never his own until he makes it Christ’s: up till then merely a result of heredity, environment, and the state of his digestion. I become my own only when I give myself to Another.

‘Does God seem real to me?’ It varies: just as lots of other things I firmly believe in (my own death, the solar system) feel more or less real at different times. I have dreamed dreams but not seen visions:¹⁶¹ but don’t think all that matters a hoot. And the saints say that visions are unimportant.¹⁶² If Our Lord did seem to appear to you at your prayer (bodily) what, after all, could you do but go on with your prayers? How cd. you know that it was not an hallucination?

You’ve got the Coronation right too: especially a sacrificial, even a tragic rite. And a symbol: for we (Man) have had laid on us the heavy crown of being lords of this planet, and the same contract between the frail, tiny person–the huge ritual goes for us all.

Did England, collectively, spend much on it? I shd. have thought most of the money was spent in England, transferred from one pocket to another. (Never forget that these personifications ‘England does this’ ‘America does that’ are only figures of speech: one has to figure out what they really mean).

No, no, I’m not committed to a real belief in Arthur, Merlin etc: all that comes in a story.¹⁶³ I haven’t the faintest idea whether there was a real Grail or not. Of course I believe that people are still healed by faith: whether this has happened in any particular case, one can’t of course say without getting a real-Doctor-who-is-also-a-real-Christian to go through the whole case-history.

All you say about your little girl is delightful. Bless her and all of you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS FRANK JONES (W): TS

REF.18/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

17th July 1953.

My dear Mrs. Jones,

Many thanks for your interesting letter. To us, the high light naturally is the news that you plan to visit this benighted country; and you shall indeed have two words with my brother and myself–and a lot more than two I hope; indeed we are optimistic enough to imagine that you might come and stay with us for a day or two in our suburban residence, and see how bachelors live. It would make a little break from the routine of hotels, and especially of English hotels. We shall be interested to hear your plans when the time draws nearer.

Oddly enough, we too have been seeing a college reunion, and mainly American at that, here in Oxford. The University had the bright idea of celebrating the Cecil Rhodes centenary by inviting all old Rhodes Scholars to visit Oxford, live in their old College rooms, and attend sundry dinner parties and so forth; there was a large gathering, and they all seemed to enjoy it.¹⁶⁴

I am glad the film interested you; my brother saw the actual coronation on the television, and was very much impressed with it: especially with the real devout piety shown by the Queen, who obviously took her vows very seriously. Like you, we have’nt got a set, and don’t propose to get one; it is I think a very bad habit to develop. People who have sets seem to do nothing but go into a huddle over them every evening of their lives, instead of being out walking, or in their gardens. And of course, like all things which begin as luxuries, they end up by being necessities; an unofficial cost of living survey was recently held in our midland manufacturing districts, and quite a large percentage of the working class interviewed complained that if prices did’nt come down, or wages go up, they would not be able to maintain their payments on their television sets–which have now become part of the worker’s basic standard of living. Just think of men drawing perhaps $40 a week, considering an article costing–cash down–perhaps $250, a necessity!

I wish next time you send me a parcel, you would fill it with some of your summer weather; here for the past week and more, it has been just like April–patches of sunshine between heavy showers, and the morning temperature 54-58. No sign of any improvement today, and I have to go up to town this afternoon for a garden party. You would think I would have more sense at my time of life, would’nt you?

With all best wishes to you both, and to Freiherr von und zu Brock von Grabenbruch,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis¹⁶⁵

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

July 23rd 53

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

I think your decision ‘a rule of life, without membership’ is a good one. It is a great joy to be able to ‘feel’ God’s love as a reality, and one must give thanks for it and use it. But you must be prepared for the feeling dying away again, for feelings are by nature impermanent. The great thing is to continue to believe when the feeling is absent: & these periods do quite as much for one as those when the feeling is present.

It sounds to me as if Genia had a pretty good husband on the whole. So much matrimonial misery comes to me in my mail that I feel those whose partner has no worse fault than being stupider than themselves may be said to have drawn a prize! It hardly amounts to a Problem. I take it that in every marriage natural love sooner or later, in a high or a low degree, comes up against difficulties (if only the difficulty that the original state of ‘being in love’ dies a natural death) which force it either to turn into dislike or else to turn into Christian charity. For all our natural feelings are, not resting places, but points d’appui, springboards. One has to go on from there, or fall back from there. The merely human pleasure in being loved must either go bad or become the divine joy of loving. But no doubt Genia knows all this. It’s all quite in the ordinary run of Christian life. See I Peter iv, 12 ‘Think it not strange etc.’¹⁶⁶

I don’t remember any question of Genia’s to wh. the answer wd. have been ‘Read my children’s books’! I have to guard against making my letters into advertisements, you know!

The sinusitis is much better, if not quite gone. You are all in my prayers: and now I must go to my work.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen etc.

Aug. 1st [1953]

Dear Mrs. Shelburne–

Thanks for yours of the 16th. Our climatic troubles are just the opposite of yours; one of the coldest and wettest summers I remember. But I’d dislike your heat v. much more than our cold.

I am so glad you gave me an account of the lovely priest. How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing (and perhaps, like you, I have met it only once) it is irresistible.¹⁶⁷

If even 10% of the world’s population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before a year’s end?

Yes, I too think there is lots to be said for being no longer young: and I do most heartily agree that it is just as well to be past the age when one expects or desires to attract the other sex. It’s natural enough in our species, as in others, that the young birds shd. show off their plumage–in the mating season. But the trouble in the modern world is that there’s a tendency to rush all the birds on to that age as soon as possible and then keep them there as late as possible, thus losing all the real value of the other parts of life in a senseless, pitiful attempt to prolong what, after all, is neither its wisest, its happiest, or most innocent period. I suspect merely commercial motives are behind it all: for it is at the showing-off age that birds of both sexes have least sales-resistance!

Naturally I can have no views on a choice between Richmond and Washington any more than on one between Omsk and Teheran! But of course you shall have my prayers.

Sorry to hear about the fall: they’re nasty things. I must stop now, for I’m dead tired from standing at catalogue-shelves in a library all morning verifying titles of books & editions. I think, like the Irishman in the story ‘I’d sooner walk 10 miles than stand one’. I go to Ireland on the 11th so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me again till the end of September. All blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO LAURENCE HARWOOD (BOD):

Magdalen

Aug 2nd 53

My dear Lawrence–

I was sorry to hear from Owen Barfield that you have taken a nasty knock over History Prelim.¹⁶⁸ Sorry, because I know it can’t be much fun for you: not because I think the thing is necessarily a major disaster. We are now so used to the examination system that we hardly remember how very recent it is and how hotly it was opposed by some quite sincere people. Trollope (no fool) was utterly sceptical about its value: and I myself, tho’ a don, sometimes wonder how many of the useful, or even the great, men of the past wd. have survived it. It doesn’t test all qualities by any means: not even all qualities needed in an academic life. And anyway, what a small part of life that is. And if you are not suited for that, it is well to have been pushed forcibly out of it at an earlier rather than a later stage. It is much worse to waste three or more years getting a Fourth or a Pass. You can now cut your losses and start on something else.

At the moment, I can well imagine, everything seems in ruins. That is an illusion. The world is full of capable and useful people who began life by ploughing in exams. You will laugh at this contre temps¹⁶⁹ some day. Of course it wd. be disastrous to go to the other extreme and conclude that one was a genius because one had failed in a prelim-as if a horse imagined it must be a Derby winner because it couldn’t be taught to pull a four-wheeler!-but I don’t expect that is the extreme to which you are temperamentally inclined.

Are you in any danger of seeking consolation in Resentment? I have no reason to suppose you are, but it is a favourite desire of the human mind (certainly of my mind!) and one wants to be on one’s guard against it. And that is about the only way in which an early failure like this can become a real permanent injury. A belief that one has been misused, a tendency ever after to snap and snarl at ‘the system’-that, I think, makes a man always a bore, usually an ass, sometimes a villain. So don’t think either that you are no good or that you are a Victim. Write the whole thing off and get on.

You may reply ‘It’s easy talking.’ I shan’t blame you if you do. I remember only too well what a hopeless oyster to be opened the world seemed at your age. I would have given a good deal to anyone who cd. have assured me that I ever wd. be able to persuade anyone to pay me a living wage for anything I cd. do. Life consisted of applying for jobs which other people got, writing books that no one wd. publish, and giving lectures wh. no one attended. It all looks perfectly hopeless. Yet the vast majority of us manage to get in somewhere and shake down somehow in the end.

You are now going through what most people (at any rate most of the people I know) find in retrospect to have been the most unpleasant period of their lives. But it won’t last: the road usually improves later. I think life is rather like a lumpy bed in a bad hotel. At first you can’t imagine how you can lie on it, much less sleep in it. But presently one finds the right position and finally one is snoring away. By the time one is called it seems a v. good bed and one is loth to leave it.

This is a devilish stodgy letter. There’s no need to bother answering it. I go to Ireland on the 11th. Give my love to all & thank Sylvia for my bathing suit.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS EMILY MCLAY (W): ¹⁷⁰

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Aug 3rd 1953

Dear Mrs. McLay

I take it as a first principle that we must not interpret any one part of Scripture so that it contradicts other parts: and specially we must not use an Apostle’s teaching to contradict that of Our Lord. Whatever St Paul may have meant, we must not reject the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt. XXV. 30-46). There, you see there is nothing about Predestination or even about Faith–all depends on works. But how this is to be reconciled with St Paul’s teaching, or with other sayings of Our Lord, I frankly confess I don’t know. Even St Peter you know admits that he was stumped by the Pauline epistles (II Peter III. 16-17).¹⁷¹

What I think is this. Everyone looking back on his own conversion must feel–and I am sure the feeling is in some sense true-‘It is not 7 who have done this. I did not choose Christ: He chose me. It is all free grace, wh. I have done nothing to earn.’ That is the Pauline account: and I am sure it is the only true account of every conversion from the inside. Very well. It then seems to us logical & natural to turn this personal experience into a general rule ‘All conversions depend on God’s choice’.

But this I believe is exactly what we must not do: for generalisations are legitimate only when we are dealing with matters to which our faculties are adequate. Here, we are not. How our individual experiences are in reality consistent with (a) Our idea of Divine justice, (b) The parable I’ve just quoted & lots of other passages, we don’t & can’t know: what is clear is that we can’t find a consistent formula. I think we must take a leaf out of the scientists’ book. They are quite familiar with the fact that, for example, Light has to be regarded both as a wave in the ether and as a stream of particles. No one can make these two views consistent. Of course reality must be self-consistent: but till (if ever) we can see the consistency it is better to hold two inconsistent views than to ignore one side of the evidence.

The real inter-relation between God’s omnipotence and Man’s freedom is something we can’t find out. Looking at the Sheep & the Goats every man can be quite sure that every kind act he does will be accepted by Christ. Yet, equally, we all do feel sure that all the good in us comes from Grace. We have to leave it at that. I find the best plan is to take the Calvinist view of my own virtues and other people’s vices: and the other view of my own vices and other people’s virtues.¹⁷² But tho’ there is much to be puzzled about, there is nothing to be worried about. It is plain from Scripture that, in whatever sense the Pauline doctrine is true, it is not true in any sense which excludes its (apparent) opposite.

You know what Luther said: ‘Do you doubt if you are chosen? Then say your prayers and you may conclude that you are.’¹⁷³

Yrs. Sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): TS

365/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

5th August 1953.

My dear Bles,

I know naught of these people: but perhaps it will do if I ask you to send them Mere Christianity and Miracles. A Portuguese American Presbyterian must be a most fearful wildfowl!-or am I mistranslating.¹⁷⁴

Kind regards to both.

Yours,¹⁷⁵

TO MRS EMILY MCIAY (W):

Magdalen

Aug 8th 1953

Dear Mrs. McLay

Your experience in listening to those philosophers gives you the technique one needs for dealing with the dark places in the Bible. When one of the philosophers, one whom you know on other grounds to be a sane and decent man, said something you didn’t understand, you did not at once conclude that he had gone off his head. You assumed you’d missed the point. Same here. The two things one must NOT do are (a) To believe, on the strength of Scripture or on any other evidence, that God is in any way evil. (In Him is no darkness at all.)¹⁷⁶ (b) To wipe off the slate any passage which seems to show that He is.¹⁷⁷ Behind that apparently shocking passage, be sure, there lurks some great truth which you don’t understand. If one ever does come to understand it, one will see that [He] is good and just and gracious in ways we never dreamed of. Till then, it must be just left on one side.

But why are baffling passages left in at all? Oh, because God speaks not only for us little ones but for the great sages and mystics who experience what we only read about, and to whom all the words have therefore different (richer) contents. Would not a revelation which contained nothing that you and I did not understand, be for that v. reason rather suspect? To a child it wd. seem a contradiction to say both that his parents made him and that God made him, yet we see both can be true.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

Collegium Stae Mariae

Magdalenae apud

Oxonienses

Aug. x. MCMLIII

Dilectissime Pater–

Accepi litteras tuas Vto Augusti datas. Expecto cum gratiarum actione opuscula, specimen artis vestrae typographicae: quae tamen non videbo nisi post V hebdomadas quia pertransibo eras (si Deo placuerit) in Hiberniam; incunabula mea et dulcissimum refugium, quoad amoenitatem locorum et caeli temperiem quamquam rixis et odiis et saepe civilibus armis dissentientium religionum atrocissimam. Ibi sane et vestri et nostri ‘ignorant quo spiritu ducantur’: carentiam caritatis pro zelo accipiunt et reciprocam ignorantiam pro orthodoxia. Puto, fere omnia facinora quae invicem perpetraverunt Christiani ex illo evenerunt quod religio miscetur cum re politica. Diabolus enim supra omnes ceteras humanas vitae partes rem politicam sibi quasi propriam–quasi arcem suae potestatis–vindicat. Nos tamen pro viribus (sc. quisque) suis mutuis orationibus incessanter laboremus pro caritate quae ‘multitudinem peccatorum tegit.’ Vale, sodes et pater.

C. S. Lewis

*

The College of St Mary Magdalen

Oxford

Aug. 10 1953

Dearest Father–

I have received your letter dated the 5th August. I await with gratitude the pamphlets–a specimen of your people’s printing skill: which however I shall not see for 5 weeks because tomorrow I am crossing over (if God so have pleased) to Ireland: my birthplace and dearest refuge so far as charm of landscape goes, and temperate climate, although most dreadful because of the strife, hatred and often civil war between dissenting faiths.

There indeed both yours and ours ‘know not by what Spirit they are led’.¹⁷⁸ They take lack of charity for zeal and mutual ignorance for orthodoxy.

I think almost all the crimes which Christians have perpetrated against each other arise from this, that religion is confused with politics. For, above all other spheres of human life, the Devil claims politics for his own, as almost the citadel of his power. Let us, however, with mutual prayers pray with all our power for that charity which ‘covers a multitude of sins’.¹⁷⁹ Farewell, comrade and father.

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen

Aug. 10th 53

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

I have just got your letter of the 6th. Oh I do so sympathise with you: job-hunting, even in youth, is a heartbreaking affair and to have to go back to it now must be simply–I was going to say ‘simply Hell’, but no one who is engaged in prayer and humility, as you are, can be there, so I’d better say ‘Purgatory’. (We have as a matter of fact good authorities for calling it something other than Purgatory. We are told that even those tribulations wh. fall upon us by necessity, if embraced for Christ’s sake, become as meritorious as voluntary sufferings and every missed meal can be converted into a fast if taken in the right way).¹⁸⁰

I suppose–tho’ the person who is not suffering feels shy about saying it to the person who is-that it is good for us to be cured of the illusion of ‘independence’. For of course independence, the state of being indebted to no one, is eternally impossible. Who, after all, is more totally dependent than what we call the man ‘of independent means’. Every shirt he wears is made by other people out of other organisms and the only difference between him and us is that even the money whereby he pays for it was earned by other people. Of course you ought to be dependent on your daughter and son-in-law. Support of parents is a most ancient & universally acknowledged duty. And if you come to find yourself dependent on anyone else you mustn’t mind. But I am very, very sorry. I’m a panic-y person about money myself (which is a most shameful confession and a thing dead against Our Lord’s words)¹⁸¹ and poverty frightens me more than anything else except large spiders and the tops of cliffs: one is sometimes even tempted to say that if God wanted us to live like the lilies of the field He might have given us an organism more like theirs! But of course He is right. And when you meet anyone who does live like the lilies, one sees that He is.

God keep you and encourage you. I am just about to go off to Ireland where I shall be moving about, so I shan’t hear from you for several weeks. All blessings and deepest sympathy.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

The Silver Chair was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 7 September 1953.

On 8 September Warnie wrote to Geoffrey Bles:

REF.28/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

8th September 1953.

Dear Mr. Bles,

My brother will be in Eire until the 14th and I have just returned from that delectable land to find a heavy accumulation of mail. From you, I have to acknowledge on his behalf,

(1). Spanish Screwtape.

(2). Proofs of The horse and his boy, and

(3). Statement and cheque for £886-16-1. He will no doubt be writing to you himself after his return.

With all good wishes,

yours sincerely,

Mycroft

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

14/9/53

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

I am just back from Donegal (wh. was heavenly) and find as usual a ghastly pile of unanswered letters, so I must be brief. The important idea of a Christian sanatorium is worth a whole letter, but I want to use this one for another subject. I hope you won’t be angry at what I’m going to say–

I think that idea of Genia’s job being to concentrate on ‘bringing out the best of Eddie’ is really rather dangerous. Wouldn’t you yourself think it sounded–well, to put it bluntly, a bit priggish, if applied to any other couple? It sounds as if the poor chap were somehow infinitely inferior.

Are you giving full weight to the very raw deal he has had in marrying a girl who has nearly always been ill? Men haven’t got your maternal instinct, you know. To find a patient where one hoped for a helpmeet is much more frustrating for the husband than for the wife. And by all I hear he has come through the test v. well. But if just as she is ceasing to be a patient she were to become the self-appointed Governess or Improver–well, wd. any camel’s back stand that last straw? I don’t think Genia is at present inclined (or not much) to start ‘educating’ her husband. I am sure you will take care not to influence her in that direction. Because, really, you know, it wd. be so easy, without in the least intending it, to glide into the rôle (I shudder to write it) of the traditional home-breaking mother-in-law. All those old jokes have something behind them.

I do hope I haven’t made you an enemy for life. If I have taken too great a liberty, you have rather lured me into it. And I did feel signs of danger. And don’t you think in general that a girl who has a faithful, kind, sober husband (there are so many of the other kind) whom she has promised to love, honour, & obey, had better just get on with the job? Do forgive me if I misunderstand and put the point too crudely. At any rate, my prayers will not cease.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO PHYLLIDA (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

14th Sept 1953

Dear Phyllida

Although your letter was written a month ago I only got it today, for I have been away in Donegal (which is glorious). Thanks v. much: it is so interesting to hear exactly what people do like and don’t like, which is just what grown-up readers never really tell.

Now about Kids. I also hate the word. But if you mean the place in P. Caspian chap 8, the point is that Edmund hated it too.¹⁸² He was using the rottenest word just because it was the rottenest word, running himself down as much as possible, because he was making a fool of the Dwarf–as you might say ‘Of course I can only strum when you really knew you could play the piano quite as well as the other person. But if I have used Kids anywhere else (I hope I haven’t) then I’m sorry: you are quite right in objecting to it. And you are also right about the party turned into stone in the woods. I thought people would take it for granted that Asian would put it all right. But I see now I should have said so.

By the way, do you think the Dark Island is too frightening for small children? Did it give your brother the horrors? I was nervous about that, but I left it in because I thought one can never be sure what will or will not frighten people.

There are to be 7 Narnian stories altogether. I am sorry they are so dear: it is the publisher, not me, who fixes the price. Here is the new one.¹⁸³

As I say, I think you are right about the other points but I feel sure I’m right to make them grow up in Narnia. Of course they will grow up in this world too. You’ll see. You see, I don’t think age matters so much as people think. Parts of me are still 12 and I think other parts were already 50 when I was 12: so I don’t feel it v. odd that they grow up in Narnia while they are children in England.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

14/9/53

Dear Miss Boddle

I have had ‘Miss Boddle’s colleague’ in my daily prayers for a long time now: is that the same young man you mention in your letter of July 3rd, or do I now say ‘colleagues’? Yes: don’t bother him with my books if an aunt (it somehow would be an aunt-tho’ I must add that most of my aunts were delightful) has been ramming them down his throat.

You know, P. Progress is not, I find (to my surprise) everyone’s book. I know several people who are both Christians and lovers of literature who can’t bear it. I doubt if they were made to read it as children. Indeed, I rather wonder whether that ‘being made to read it’ has spoiled so many books as is supposed. I suspect that all the people who tell me they were ‘put off Scott by having Ivanhoe¹⁸⁴ as a holiday task are people who wd. never have liked Scott anyway.

I don’t believe anything will keep the right reader & the right book apart. But our literary loves are as diverse as our human! You couldn’t make me like Henry James or dislike Jane Austen whatever you did. By the bye did Chesterton’s Everlasting Man (I’m sure I advised you to read it) succeed or fail with you?¹⁸⁵ And how wd. it be likely to succeed with D. Dale?

All blessings.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/9/53

Just back from Donegal (wh. was as near heaven as you can get in Thulcandra)¹⁸⁶ and of course piles of letters to plough through. Thanks v. much indeed for the revised T. of T¹⁸⁷ and the nice things you say about me.

Here’s the latest Narnian book. Love to all.

J.

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

Magdalen College

Oxford

XV. Sept. MCMLIII

Pater dilectissime

Gratias ago pro epístola tua, data iii Sept., necnon pro exemplari libri cui nomen Instaurare Omnia in Christo.

De statu morali nostri temporis (cum me jusseris garrire) haec sentio. Seniores, ut nos ambo sumus, semper sunt laudatores temporis acti, semper cogitant mundum pejorem esse quam fuerit in suis juvenilibus annis. Ergo cavendum est ne fallamur. Hôc tamen proposito, certe sentio gravissima pericula nobis incumbere. Haec eveniunt quia maxima pars Europae apostasiam fecit de fide Christiana. Hinc status pejor quam illum statum quem habuimus ante fidem receptam. Nemo enim ex Christianismo redit in statum quem habuit ante Christianismum, sed in pejorem: tantum distat inter paganum et apostatam quantum innuptam et adulteram. Nam fides perficit naturam sed fides amissa corrumpit naturam. Ergo plerique homines nostri temporis amiserunt non modo lumen supernaturale sed etiam lumen illud naturale quod pagani habuerunt. Sed Deus qui Deus misericordiarum est etiam nunc non omnino demisit genus humanum. In junioribus licet videamus multam crudelitatem et libidinem, nonne simul videmus plurimas virtutum scintillas quibus fortasse nostra generatio caruit. Quantam fortitudinem, quantam curam de pauperibus aspicimus! Non desperandum. Et haud spernendus numerus (apud nos) iam redeunt in fidem.

Haec de statu praesenti: de remediis difficilior quaestio. Equidem credo laborandum esse non modo in evangelizando (hoc certe) sed etiam in quâdam praeparatione evangelica. Necesse est multos ad legem naturalem revocare antequam de Deo loquamur. Christus enim promittit remissionem peccatorum: sed quid hoc ad eos qui, quum legem naturalem ignorent, nesciunt se peccavisse. Quis medicamentum accipiet nisi se morbo teneri sciât? Relativismus moralis hostis est quem debemus vincere antequam Atheismum aggrediamur. Fere auserim dicere ‘Primo faciamus juniores bonos Paganos et postea faciamus Christianos’. Deliramenta haec? Sed habes quod petisti. Semper et tu et congregatio tua in orationibus meis.

Vale,

C. S. Lewis

*

Magdalen College

Oxford

15 September 1953

Dearest Father

Thank you for your letter dated 3rd September¹⁸⁸ and also for the copy of the book entitled The Renewal of All Things in Christ.¹⁸⁹

Regarding the moral condition of our times (since you bid me prattle on) I think this. Older people, as we both are, are always ‘praisers of times past’.¹⁹⁰ They always think the world is worse than it was in their young days. Therefore we ought to take care lest we go wrong. But, with this proviso, certainly I feel that very grave dangers hang over us. This results from the apostasy of the great part of Europe from the Christian faith. Hence a worse state than the one we were in before we received the Faith. For no one returns from Christianity to the same state he was in before Christianity but into a worse state: the difference between a pagan and an apostate is the difference between an unmarried woman and an adulteress. For faith perfects nature but faith lost corrupts nature. Therefore many men of our time have lost not only the supernatural light but also the natural light which pagans possessed.

But God, who is the God of mercies,¹⁹¹ even now has not altogether cast off the human race. In younger people, although we may see much cruelty and lust, yet at the same time do we not see very many sparks of virtues which perhaps our own generation lacked? How much courage, how much concern for the poor do we see! We must not despair. And (among us) a not inconsiderable number are now returning to the Faith.

So much for the present situation. About remedies the question is more difficult. For my part I believe we ought to work not only at spreading the Gospel (that certainly) but also at a certain preparation for the Gospel. It is necessary to recall many to the law of nature before we talk about God.¹⁹² For Christ promises forgiveness of sins: but what is that to those who, since they do not know the law of nature, do not know that they have sinned? Who will take medicine unless he knows he is in the grip of disease? Moral relativity is the enemy we have to overcome before we tackle Atheism. I would almost dare to say ‘First let us make the younger generation good pagans and afterwards let us make them Christians.’

These are ravings? But you have what you requested.

Always you and your Congregation are in my prayers.

Farewell,

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD):

Magdalen etc.

15/9/53

Dear Mr. Kinter

I have been away in Donegal (which is glorious beyond all my dreams) and have only just got your letter of Aug 23d. It was nice to hear from you again. Yes: it is great watching these images of the Mountain, the Wood, the Island etc. as they pass from one man’s work to another’s. I don’t know Read’s Green Child,¹⁹³ but have no difficulty in believing what you say of it. There is a deal of really Hellish literature going about at present. I am also interested in what you say about Messiaen (an odd name, by the way).¹⁹⁴ But if I heard the works they wd. only probably be quite beyond me. Please remember me to your wife and accept my kindest regards.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

P. S. Harding is exciting, isn’t he?¹⁹⁵

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): TS 28/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

17th September 1953.

My dear Bles,

Thanks for yours of the 16th. I am glad you pointed out that passage.¹⁹⁶ No: it won’t do. Of course the children (except Aravis when telling her story in the grand manner)¹⁹⁷ don’t talk Arabian Nights style anywhere: but they must’nt, I agree, go so far in the other direction as ‘rot’. I’ll mend it.

I hope you both had as good a holiday as I.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO PHYLLIDA (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

19/9/53

Dear Phyllida

I feel as one does when after ‘showing up’ one’s work one realises one has made the very same mistake one got into a row for last week! I mean, after sending off the book, I read it myself and found ‘Kids’ again twice. I really will take care not to do it again. The earlier part of Rilian’s story, told by the owl, was meant to sound further-off and more like an ordinary fairy-tale so as to keep it different from the part where I get on to telling it myself. I think the idea of making some difference is right: but of course what matters in books is not so much the ideas as how you actually carry them out.

All good wishes and love to both.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 1st 1953

Dear Ruth,

Rachel has been ready for a long time: you know I am of the generation who was brought up to hold that the initiative must come from you.¹⁹⁸

Long Crendon–long since endeared to me because Owen Barfield used to live there–will now have a second good association. I shall be among the first etc–but this sounds rather like Mr. Collins!¹⁹⁹ Warnie joins me in our duties and warm welcome to these parts. It is, as you have seen, a lovely village.

Yours in all service

Jack Lewis

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 3. 53

Dear Nell

My correspondence has lately been in much the same state as yours: that is, on coming back from a holiday in Ireland I found about 60 letters to deal with.

I had a lovely time over there: the best part in Donegal, all Atlantic breakers & golden sand and peat and heather and donkeys and mountains and (what is most unusual there) a heat wave and cloudless skies. Walks were much interrupted by blackberries: so big and juicy, and sweet that you just couldn’t pass without picking them. Some funny hotels, though. One has often found bathrooms with no hot water but I found one with no cold! You’ve no idea how tired one gets waiting for a bath to cool. In fact, with all the steam round you, it really means having a Turkish bath before the ordinary one!

I’m delighted to learn of your good year: how cosmopolitan you have become! Also thanks for telling me about Penelope and the books: give her my love.

You were a shrew to come so near without looking me up–and then, God bless my soul, to expect me to go to you! I’ll try one of these days all the same: it’s too nice to miss. I agree about prison–at least for Mrs. Hooker. She has so often been there, for similar offences, that it ought to be quite clear the treatment doesn’t work. Have you been having, like us, the most exquisite autumn? Love to Alan & yourself.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

3/10/53

Dear Mrs Van Deusen

I was extremely glad to get your letter. I was beginning to feel that my own had been presumptuous and intolerable and had been praying not that it might do good but that it might not do harm. Whether I was right or wrong, you came out of it with flying colours: if few can give good advice, fewer still can hear with patience advice either good or bad.

About your Project (it was, wasn’t it, for the founding of a sort of rest-home where people in psychological difficulties could get Christian advice, sympathy, and, if necessary, treatment?), the whole thing–as with most conceptions either practical or literary–turns on the execution. All depends on the quality of the individual helpers. I suspect you will find them only by what seems chance but is really an answer to prayer. No ‘machinery’ of committees and selection & references, however well devised, will do it, I imagine. And perhaps it is just by your discovering, or failing to discover, the right people, that God will show you whether He wishes you to do this or not (Beware here of my unsanguine temper, more tempted to sloth than to precipitance, and ready to despond: take my advice always with a grain of salt).

It is hard, when difficulties arise to know whether one is meant to overcome them or whether they are signs that one is on the wrong track. I suppose the deeper one’s own life of prayer and sacraments the more trustworthy one’s judgement will be.

You ‘get me where I live’ about Van’s Aunt. I have been in v. close contact with a case like that. It is harrowing. My doctor (a v. serious Christian) kept on reminding me that 50 much of an old person’s speech & behaviour must really be treated as a medical not a spiritual fact: that, as the organism decays, the true state of the soul can less and less express itself thro’ it. So that things may be neither so miserable (nor so wicked, we must sometimes add) as they seem. I sometimes wonder whether the incarnation of the soul is not gradual at both ends?-i.e. not fully there yet in infancy and no longer fully there in old age.

The first syllable of Donegal rhymes with FUN, the last with ALL, there are 3, and the accent is on the last-Dun-i-Gaúl. Blessings on all of you.

Yours (most relieved)

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 6/53

My dear Arthur

I have ordered Blackwells to send you a copy of Barfield’s (‘G. A. L. Burgeon’s’) book.²⁰⁰

I enclose one wh. I found worth reading but don’t want to keep. If you don’t like it, pass it on to someone else. You’ll agree with the author about Noise! I think you’ll find in him an approach to Christianity wh. you haven’t v. much met yet & wh. is worth knowing about; it is fairly widely spread here. Of course parts of it are too explicitly R.C. for us but a lot of common ground remains.

Here are some C. M. Yonge titles, all good books: The Daisy Chain and its sequel The Trial; The Pillars of the House; The Three Brides; The Two Sides of the Shield; Dynevor Terrace. Not so good (but W. differs from me) is Nutty’s Father.²⁰¹

I wish you had enjoyed our holiday as much as I did! But I expect you’re enjoying yourself all the more now. All blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO JOHN RICHARDS (BOD):²⁰² TS

449/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

13th October 1953.

Dear Mr. Richards,

Thank you for your kind and encouraging letter of the 11th. Tolkien’s great romance, The Lord of the Rings, of which the first volume will soon be published, just skirts the theme of the True West. You’ll find it immensely worth reading on other accounts as well.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Oct 15/1953

Dear Mrs. Jessup

It is a very long time since any letters passed between us. I am in fact in your debt, counting it strict ‘turn-about’, but I regarded your last letter as an answer–certainly not a question, for I think it contained none!

But you have not all this time been absent from my daily prayers. I have been very heavily worked, except for a holiday in Ireland, and I have not been very well: nothing serious, only the harmless complaint which is called sinusitis, which gives pain and rather ‘gets you down’, but nothing worse. I hope you are well and happy (as happiness goes with mortals like us–I know you are on earth, not in heaven!). Some time, where you have nothing urgent to do, write me a line to say how you go on. This of mine of course calls for no answer: it is only a little wave of the flag to show you I’m still here and never unmindful even when I’m silent.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 17/53

My dear Arthur

I wonder are you allowing for the fact that in the Heir²⁰³ one of the main characters is, and is meant to be, a horrible prig, and the other a man who believes himself to be under (almost) a hereditary curse? This justifies dramatically in both a degree of introspection which may not at all be C. M. Yonge’s idea of normal Christian life. Mrs Edmonstone (clearly a good woman) does not show the same trait, nor does Amy.

I shall of course be perfectly happy to spend our joint holiday in the Inn at C’burn this year, if it so falls out. If you are in England I think you might find a few nights in the College guest room not unendurable and I’d try to give you breakfast as late as the servants cd. be expected to bear. (There are, however, clocks that chime the quarters all over Oxford; perhaps that wd. be fatal.)

I’ll send you W’s book²⁰⁴ as soon as it is out. I think you’ll like it. V. difficult to write to Gundred about J.F.’s death, wasn’t it.²⁰⁵

This has been the most exquisitely beautiful autumn I can remember.

Yours

Jack

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 20th 53

My dear Bles

How stupid of me not to see that our old friend ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’ becomes nonsense when converted into ‘better the frying pan than the fire’. I’m glad you pointed it out. And I can’t think of any good substitute wh. cd. be fitted into the same number of spaces. So dele.²⁰⁶

The Phillips one is v. curious, because surely the argument at that point in Hebrews does precisely identify ‘man’ in the psalms with ‘the Man’, Our Lord.²⁰⁷

I am of course delighted at all you tell me about M.C. Very over-driven at present. We’re both well: kindest regards to both of you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen

Oct 25th 53

Dear Evans

I return the cuttings. I enjoyed them all, but the phrase-book items were the cream. And not only because you had good raw material: the showmanship was just right. I quite agree that when it comes to absurdity nature beats art: there’s nothing in the lists of imaginary ‘howlers’ as funny as things I have really seen when examining. You will hardly believe the following but we had it offered in the college entrance exam: ‘In any controversy half the people generally side with the majority and half with the minority’

I have no brief against co-education. I am, in principle, inclined (having no school-mastering experience I wd. not go further than an inclination either way) to approve it. But just as fine printing (in itself a delightful thing) has in fact got itself mixed up with pornography, so co-education has in fact got itself mixed up with crank schools, take Dartington Hall.²⁰⁸ I didn’t make Experiment House²⁰⁹ cranky because it was co-ed: I made it co-ed because it was cranky.

I must look up A. G. Pym:²¹⁰ can’t remember if I’ve read it or not. With all good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY NEYLAN (T):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Nov 5/53

Alas, it couldn’t come at a worse time. I’m at it all day trying to finish the Bibliography (odious job) of my big OHEL book against time, in between tutorials: usually my day allows no leisure between 8.30 a.m. & 9.45 p.m. So I must hope to meet Sarah another time. Thanks pro orationibus.²¹¹ The sinus is not yet anything like so bad as it was last winter. Blessings on all—

C.S.L.

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Nov 5/53

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

This must be a hasty scrawl as I’m working against time at present & usually have no free moment between 8.30 a.m. & 9.45 p.m.

So glad to hear all your good news. About CSR²¹² I’m the last person to give an opinion. I am so much the reverse of the type that ‘joins things’ or ‘gets things up’ that I’d be no fair judge even if I knew the parish and the people. Of course it all depends what the latter are really like! On that turns whether it is (a.) A holy, beneficent & sensible activity (b.) A harmless, if rather fussy, hobby (c.) A pestilent coven of snoopers & busybodies (d) A mixture of all three. It might be anything almost! I’m afraid you’ll have to find out! Praying for ‘a right judgement in all things’.²¹³

I hope in a few weeks I’ll be through my present furore of work & able to correspond properly again. Bless you all

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Nov. 6/53

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

Oh I am glad, I am glad. And here’s a thing worth recording. Of course I have been praying for you daily, as always, but latterly have found myself doing so with much more concern and especially about 2 nights ago, with such a strong feeling how very nice it would be, if God willed, to get a letter from you with good news. And then, as if by magic (indeed it is the whitest magic in the world) the letter comes today. Not (lest I should indulge in folly) that your relief had not in fact occurred before my prayer, but as if, in tenderness for my puny faith, God moved me to pray with especial earnestness just before He was going to give me the thing. How true that our prayers are really His prayers: He speaks to Himself through us.

I am also most moved at hearing how you were supported thro’ the period of anxiety. For one is sometimes tempted to think that if He wanted us to be as un-anxious as the lilies of the field He really might have given us a constitution more like theirs! But then when the need cornes He carries out in us His otherwise impossible instructions. In fact He always has to do all the things–all the prayers, all the virtues. No new doctrine, but newly come home to me. Forgive a short letter, quite inadequate to the subject: I am at present just so busy (tho’ not unhappily so) that I don’t know if I’m on my head or my heels. God bless you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

During the first week of November Joy Gresham arrived in London, this time with her two sons, David and Douglas. They took rooms in the Avoca House Hotel, 43 Belsize Park, Hampstead. A few days later they moved into a flat at 14 Belsize Park, in the hotel annexe.

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Nov 7th 53

Dear Mrs. Gebbert

This will have to be an inadequate scrawl for my brother, who drives the typewriter, is away and I’ve so much to do that I can hardly write–in the double sense that I’ve hardly time and that my right hand is stiff and tired with compulsory scribbling! Yes, babies (tho’ I know yours is quite unlike all other babies!) do look like Sir W.²¹⁴ I wonder why? ‘Trailing clouds of glory’ I suppose.²¹⁵

I’d love to have seen that shop window and hope they have done the same with all the Lions successors: there are 3 of these now, I hope you know.

Mrs. Williams²¹⁶ lives at 23 ANTRIM MANSIONS, LONDON, N.W.3. I think life is pretty hard for her and am very glad to hear of your friend’s wish to write to her. You shd. warn her that Mrs. W is not at all intellectual.

How wrong you are when you think that streamlined planes and trains wd. attract me to America. What I want to see there is yourself and 3 or 4 other good friends, after New England, the Rip Van Winkle Mts., Nantucket, the Huckleberry Finn country, the Rockies, Yellowstone Park, and a sub-Artie winter. And I shd. never come if I couldn’t manage to come by sea instead of air: preferably on a cargo boat that took weeks on the voyage. I’m a rustic animal and a maritime animal: no good at great cities, big hotels, or all that. But this is becoming egotistical. And here comes my first pupil of the morning. All blessings, and love to all.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

I’d love to see a bear, a snow-shoe, and a real forest

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Nov 12th 53

My dear Bles

Right-oh. I’ll take the £17-0-0 and expect to have £8-10-0 Royalties deducted.

I can’t tell you how glad I am that you spotted that howler about the frying pan and the fire. I wonder no hostile reviewer seized on it.²¹⁷

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

27/xi/53

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

Thank you for your letter of Nov. 23rd. We have a good many things in common at the moment, for I also am dead tired (cab-horse tired) and I also have sinusitis. I don’t think we exactly ‘call it catarrh’ over here. Intense catarrh is one symptom of sinusitis, and as none of us have heard of s. till quite lately I suppose cases of it used to be wrongly diagnosed as mere catarrh. I find myself that when it produces most catarrh it produces least pain and vice versa.

About sleep: do you find that the great secret (if one can do it) is not to care whether you sleep? Sleep is a jade who scorns her suitors but woos her scorners.

I feel exactly as you do about the horrid commercial racket they have made out of Christmas. I send no cards and give no presents except to children.

It is fun to see you agreeing with what you believe to be my views on prayer: well you may, for they are not mine but scriptural. Our prayers are God talking to Himself’ is only Romans, VII, 26-27.²¹⁸ And ‘praying to the end’ is of course our old acquaintance, the parable of the Unjust Judge.²¹⁹

I am sure you will be glad to hear that your recent adventures have been a great support and ‘corroboration’ to me. I am also v. conscious (and was especially so while praying for you during your workless time) that anxiety is not only a pain wh. we must ask God to assuage but also a weakness we must ask Him to pardon–for He’s told us take no care for the morrow. The news that you had been almost miraculously guarded from that sin and spared that pain and hence the good hope that we shall all find the like mercy when our bad times come, has strengthened me much. God bless you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Nov 28th 1953

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

Your letter links onto something I’ve been thinking of lately. There are two patterns of prayer in the N.T. (a) That in Gethsemane, ‘Not my will but thine’²²⁰ (b) That in Mark xi, 24.²²¹

In the one the pray-er sees that what is asked may not be God’s will: in the other he has complete faith not only ‘in God’ but in God’s giving him the particular thing asked for. If both are taken as universal rules we get a contradiction for no one (so far as I can see) cd. follow both in the same prayer.

I can only suppose that neither is a universal rule, that each has its place, and that when-and-if God demands faith of the B type, He also gives it, & we shall know that we have to pray in the b manner, and that this is what happens to miracle workers.

If your Rector is such a person then he is right in praying that way himself, tho’ presumably wrong in demanding that everyone shd. do the same. If he is a presumptuous person who thinks he is in the A [B?] class and isn’t–well, that is not for us to judge.

As to whether God ever wills suffering, I think he is confused. We must distinguish in God, and even in ourselves, absolute will from relative will. No one absolutely wills to have a tooth out, but many will to have a tooth out rather than to go on with toothache. Surely in the same way God never absolutely wills the least suffering for any creature, but may will it rather than some alternative: e.g. He willed the crucifixion rather than that Man shd. go unredeemed (and so it was not, in all senses, His will that the cup shd. pass from His Son).

That’s how I see the theoretical side of the thing. As for the practical-oh dear, oh dear! I certainly can’t conceive any less suitable preparation for Holy Communion than a Discussion or any grosser abuse of language than to call a Discussion a ‘meditation’. I think you and you only can decide whether it’s your job to ‘lead’ a study group or not.

As for the ‘blasting’ sermon no doubt the type blasted is an evil one. Is there good evidence that the preacher meant you to be included in that type? It does sometimes happen that utterances intended to be general are given particular application by the hearers. If it really was addressed to you, then no doubt you must just try to forgive it (as you have done) and otherwise do nothing about it.

The Bishop sounds a good one and I don’t see how you can go wrong in following his orders. He will know much better than I cd. at what point the frustrations and the risk of loss of charity (in oneself or others) occasioned by your parochial activities begin to outweigh the probabilities of usefulness. What a coil it all is: so much so that (as in graver matters) only by putting the will of God first & other considerations nowhere can one have peace. So glad to hear that all goes well with the young people. Love to all.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Dec 1st 1953

Dear Mrs. Jessup

I am so glad to hear that certain mountains have shrunk to molehills. As to the problem of Thomas Merton versus C.W, E.U., G.M.,²²² and C.S.L.:–

A. There are two meanings of World in N.T. (i) In ‘God so loved the World’²²³ it means the Creation–stars, trees, beasts, men, and angels, (ii) In ‘Love not the World’²²⁴ it means the ‘worldly’ life, i.e. the life built up by men in disregard of God, the life of money-making, ambition, snobbery, social success and ‘greatness’.

B. Most spiritual writers distinguish two vocations for Christians (i.) The monastic or contemplative life, (ii) The secular or active life. All Christians are called to abandon the ‘World’ (sense ii) in spirit, i.e. to reject as strongly as they possibly can its standards, motives, and prizes. But some are called to ‘come out of it’²²⁵ as far as possible by renouncing private property, marriage, their professions etc: others have to remain ‘in it’ but not ‘of it’.

I of course am in the second class and write for those who are also in it. This isn’t to say that I may not be (you may be sure I am) far too much ‘of it’. You, and your friend, must help me against that with your prayers. In so far as she accuses me of ‘worldliness’ she is right: but if by ‘earthiness’ she means my tendency to ‘come down to brass tacks’ and try to deal with the ordinary petty sins & virtues of secular & domestic life, she is wrong. That is a thing that ought to be done and has not yet been done enough.

About avoiding amusements & noise, it depends a bit who one is. Is the temptation to be absorbed by them? Then avoid. Is the temptation to avoid them thro’ distaste when charity bids one to participate? Then participate. At least that’s how I see it.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS 192/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

1st December 1953.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

Many thanks for your kind letter of the 20th. November, which should have been answered sooner, but I am very behindhand, owing to the illness of my brother (nothing serious, and now happily over); but of course his absence always delays matters. He sends you all good wishes, and promises you a letter as soon as he has got himself ‘sorted out’. We both look forward with that schoolboy greediness which distinguishes the post-war Englishman, to the arrival of the little parcel, which we are sure will be of the standard which we have learnt to associate with the House of Gebbert. You shall indeed have a copy of the CHAIR, suitably autographed,²²⁶ and I only wish I could make you some better return for all your kindness to us.

I look forward to seeing the snapshot of the son and heir. So ignorant am I of all these matters, that I had always understood that all children were born with hair on their heads; apparently this is not the case? And that CM. beat fourteen other arrivals?

Life here flows on much as usual, with one important exception; we are having the most extraordinary ‘fall’ within living memory; believe it or not, last Sunday, 29th. November, down at Brighton, they had to dig the deck chairs out of winter storage to meet the demands of the crowds which wanted to sit and bask on the beach. Tell that to your millionaires who go to Florida at this time of the year! Your (I mean American) stock is high here at the moment, over your behaviour about the Bermuda conference; some journalist of genius sent over an excerpt from the American Press which said, that whilst entirely disbelieving in the utility of the performance, it must be held ‘because we must’nt run out on old Winnie’.²²⁷ We don’t think, any more than you, that the circus will accomplish anything, but this is the sort of small touch that counts in international relations.

Apropos of which, it seems a pity that our Queen could’nt have dropped in on America in the course of her tour; but I suppose international etiquette demands that, if she went there at all, it must be a full-dress state visit to Washington. Anyway I suppose a visit to the Republic of Panama is to all intents and purposes a visit to U.S.A.²²⁸

I am in the final agonies of producing a learned work for the Oxford Press, and very, very busy: so I hope you will excuse such a scanty letter.

With all best wishes to all three of you from us two,

yours ever,²²⁹

TO SIR STANLEY UNWIN (BOD): ²³⁰

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 4th 1953

Dear Mr. Unwin

I would willingly do all in my power to secure for Tolkien’s great book the recognition it deserves. Wd. the enclosed be any use? If not, tell me, and I will try again. I can’t tell you how much we think of your House for publishing it.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

It would be almost safe to say that no book like this has ever been written. If Ariosto rivalled it in invention (in fact he does not) he would still Jack its heroic seriousness. No imaginary world has been projected which is at once so multifarious and so true to its own inner laws; none so seemingly objective, so disinfected from the taint of an author’s merely individual psychology; none so relevant to the actual human situation yet so free from allegory. And what fine shading there is in the variations of style to meet the almost endless diversity of scenes and characters–comic, homely, epic, monstrous, or diabolic!

TO KATHARINE FARRER(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec. 4th 1953

Dear Mrs. Farrer

Yes, I know. That issue about the leonine form divides people sharply and you and I are on opposite sides of a fence.²³¹

I too have got The Fellowship of the Ring and have gluttonously read two chapters instead of saving it all for the week-end. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it really succeeded (in selling, I mean)? It would inaugurate a new age. Dare we hope?

Yours sincerely

Jack Lewis

TO J. R R TOLKIEN (P):

[The Kilns]

Dec 7th 1953

Dear Tollers

I have been trying–like a boy with a bit of toffee–to take Vol. I slowly, to make it last, but appetite overmastered me and it’s now finished: far too short for me. The spell does not break. The love of Gimli²³² and the departure from Lothlórien is still almost unbearable.²³³ What came out stronger at this reading than on any previous one was the gradual coming of the shadow–step by step–over Boromir.²³⁴

I wrote what I could to Unwin.²³⁵ Even if he and you approve my words, think twice before using them: I am certainly a much, and perhaps an increasingly, hated man whose name might do you more harm than good. In festina lente.²³⁶ All the best.

Yours

Jack

TO EDNA GREENE WATSON (BOD): TS 504/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

7th December 1953.

Dear Mrs. Watson,

How very kind indeed of you to send me such a nice Xmas present; for, though things are improving over here under Winston, we are still not exactly living in a land of milk and honey–cake in particular remaining something of a luxury. So your parcel comes in very apropos to ‘mend our cheer’ as the older writers would have put it.

In one way we are exceptionally lucky this year, and that is in having so far a freak winter. I am writing in an unwarmed room, temperature 60, though it is a dull, sunless day; and the Sunday before last, the crowds were out sun-bathing on Brighton beach! Yesterday it was reported on the wireless that the butter-cups are out in Switzerland, the tulips in Holland, and that wild strawberries are being gathered in Norway; whilst in Petrograd they are having what I suppose seems to them like a heat wave–temperature in the open, 41. I hope you too in America are benefiting by this postponement of winter; not that I, personally, think it very healthy, but no doubt the real winter is lurking not far away.

Weather apart, there is not much to report here. Term is just over, and I have finished a troublesome academic book, and look forward to my vacation. But, alas, at my time of life, vacations get shorter and shorter: though to be sure, so do terms. With all best wishes for a happy Christmas, and many thanks,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO R. B. GRIBBON (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec. 10th 1953

Dear Mr. Gribbon

Thanks for your letter of the 7th, and all good wishes to the readers of Lucretius.²³⁷

Harding has fought his way towards genuinely Christian Theism, but whether he has yet quite reached it is another matter.²³⁸ I think his ‘God’ could be said to ‘transcend’. Isn’t each being in his hierarchy related to the one below it rather as my consciousness is related to any obscure consciousness there may be in my particles. And ‘I’ am not related to them (I think) simply as a Pantheistic god is to finite beings: for I am something v. much more than their sum or even their organising principle. Of course H’s God is immanent in all things: but it is not the affirmation of immanence, but the denial of transcendence that constitutes Pantheism. In fact my main objection to Harding’s system wd. be a v. different one: that we are in it completely cut off from God. There can be no I-Thou relation between Him and us any more than between me and my particles. Memo: I said in the preface that I wasn’t at all sure whether his method of trying to restore reality to the universe wd. work. It was the mere attempt to do so which seemed to me so important and welcome.²³⁹

You’ll have fun with Lucretius. I looked into him the other day & came to the melancholy conclusion that I didn’t know so much Latin as I had done 30 years ago. With all good wishes.

Yours very sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W): ²⁴⁰

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 16th. 1953

Dear Miss Sayers,

Thank you for a really august card. I have spent several minutes doing the Paper Pilgrimage with the aid of the pen-knife point–dig- and it shall be opened. Not all the doors in my copy do actually open: but that admits (only too easily) of an allegorical interpretation.²⁴¹

I see we have been in the pillory together along with company which I enjoy less than yours. Have you read Miss Nott yet?²⁴² And should I? I had hoped she might send us all (as someone said) UN complimentary copies: for I’m an Ulster Scot and don’t like spending good siller²⁴³ on the lady. As for answering her (if one can) the trouble is that the people who read answers have hardly ever read the attack.

When may we expect the Purgatorio?²⁴⁴ It is perhaps my favourite part of the Comedy and I look forward very much to going up and round the terraces with your guidance. (By the way some of the paths on the Malvern hills are exactly like them.

I hope you are reading my brother’s Splendid Century. It is his first book, tho’ he is three years my senior, but he has been at the court of Louis XIV pretty well all his life. It seems to be going down well. I have got my huge 16th. c volume for the Oxford History of English Literature nearly off my chest now, and feel inclined never to do any work again as long as I live.

It seems very long since we met. Are you at all likely to be here in 1954? I hope so. In the meantime, all good wishes, all my duty,

yours ever

C. S. Lewis

Lewis invited Joy and her sons to The Kilns for a three-day visit, from 17 to 20 December. Renée Pierce had now divorced her husband, Claude, preparatory to marrying Bill Gresham.

TO PHYLLIDA (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 18th 53

Dear Phyllida

Thanks for your most interesting cards. How do you get the gold so good? Whenever I tried to use it, however golden it looked on the shell, it always looked only like rough brown on the paper. Is it that you have some trick with the brush that I never learned, or that gold paint is better now than when I was a boy? The ‘conversation-piece’ (I think that is what the art critics wd. call your group) is excellent and most interesting. If you hadn’t told me your Father was mixing putty I shd. have thought he was mixing colours on a palette, but otherwise everything explains itself. I never saw a family who all had such a likeness to their Mother.

I’m not quite sure what you meant about ‘silly adventure stories without any point’. If they are silly, then having a point won’t save them. But if they are good in themselves, and if by a ‘point’ you mean some truth about the real world wh. one can take out of the story, I’m not sure that I agree. At least, I think that looking for a ‘point’ in that sense may prevent one from getting the real effect of the story in itself–like listening too hard for the words in singing which isn’t meant to be listened to that way (like an anthem in a chorus). I’m not at all sure about all this, mind you: only thinking as I go along.

We have two American boys in the house at present, aged 8 and 61/2.²⁴⁵ Very nice. They seem to use much longer words than English boys of that age would: not showing off but just because they don’t seem to know the short words. But they haven’t as good table manners as English boys of the same sort would.

Well–all good wishes to you all for Christmas, and very many thanks.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

PS. Of course you’re right about the Narnian books being better than the tracts: at least, in the way a picture is better than a map.

TO LAURENCE HARWOOD (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 21st 1953

My dear Lawrence,

What luck now? I enclose a trifle for current expenses. Please tell your father how sorry I was I couldn’t have him for either of the two days he mentioned: we have had an American lady staying in the house with her two sons, eldest 91/2 Whew! But you have younger brothers, so you know what it is like. We didn’t: we do now. Very pleasant, but like surf bathing, leaves one rather breathless. Love to yourself and Sylvia and all.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

Millions of letters to write.

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 21st 53

My dear Ruth

Welcome to what Tolkien calls the Little Kingdom, at least to the marches of it. Its centre lies about Worminghall: see his Farmer Giles of Ham.²⁴⁶ I hope much happiness awaits you there. It will be interesting to see how soon you rusticate–grow slow-witted like us and believe that the streets of Thame (now your metropolis) are paved with gold and shiver delightfully at the thought of its mingled wickedness and splendour.

Warnie (short for Warren, for my mother’s mother was of that stock so we have ¼ of gentle blood in us the rest being peasant and bourgeois) and I are dazed: we have had an American lady staying in the house with her two sons aged 91/2 and 8. I now know what we celibates are shielded from. I will never laugh at parents again. Not that the boys weren’t a delight: but a delight like surf-bathing which leaves one breathless and aching. The energy, the tempo, is what kills. I have now perceived (what I always suspected from memories of our childhood) that the way to a child’s heart is quite simple: treat them with seriousness & ordinary civility–they ask no more. What they can’t stand (quite rightly) is the common adult assumption that everything they say shd. be twisted into a kind of jocularity. The mother (Mrs. Gresham) had rather a boom in USA in the entre-guerre as the poetess Joy Davidman: do you know her works?

This Vac. is pretty chock-a-block so far (oh if we could have Christmas without Xmas!) so that I rather hope than expect to knock on your door. Meanwhile, all greetings to you both. God bless the house, as we say in Ireland.

Yours

Jack

TO JOY GRESHAM (BOD):

Dec 22/53

Dear Joy–

As far as I can remember you were non-committal about Childhood’s End:²⁴⁷ I suppose you were afraid that you might raise my expectations too high and lead to disappointment. If that was your aim, it has succeeded, for I came to it expecting nothing in particular and have been thoroughly bowled over. It is quite out of range of the common space-and-time writers; away up near Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus and Wells’s First Men in the Moon.²⁴⁸ It is better than any of Stapleton’s.²⁴⁹ It hasn’t got Ray Bradbury’s delicacy, but then it has ten times his emotional power, and far more mythopoeia.

There is one bit of bad execution, I think: caps 7 and 8, where the author doesn’t seem to be at home. I mean, as a social picture it is flat and stiff, and all the gadgetry (for me) is a bore. But what there is on the credit side! It is rather like the effect of the Ring²⁵⁰–a self-riching work, harmony piling up on harmony, grandeur on grandeur, pity on pity. The first section, merely on the mystery of the Overlords, wd. be enough for most authors. Then you find this is only the background, and when you have worked up to the climax in chap 21, you find what seems to be an anti-climax and it slowly lifts itself to the utter climax. The first climax, pp 165-185 brought tears to my eyes. There has been nothing like it for years: partly for the actual writing–’She has left her toys behind but ours go hence with us’,²⁵¹ or ‘The island rose to meet the dawn’,²⁵² but partly (still more, in fact) because here we meet a modern author who understands that there may be things that have a higher claim than the survival or happiness of humanity: a man who cd. almost understand ‘He that hateth not father and mother’²⁵³ and certainly wd. understand the situation in Aeneid III between those who go on to Latium & those who stay in Sicily.²⁵⁴

We are almost brought up out of psyche into pneuma.²⁵⁵ I mean, his myth does that to us imaginatively. Of course his own thoughts about what that higher level might be are not, in our eyes, very new or very profound: but that doesn’t really make so much difference. (Though, by the way, it wd. have been better, even on purely literary grounds, to leave it in its mystery, to philosophise less.) After all, few authors’ glosses on their own myths are as good as the myths: unless, like Dante, they take the glosses from other men, real thinkers. The second climax, the long (not too long) drawn-out close is magnificent.

There is only one change (in conception) that I wd. want to make. It is a pity that he suggests a jealousy and a possible future revolt on the part of the Overlords. The motive is so ordinary that it cannot excite interest in itself, and as it is never going to be worked out the handling cannot compensate for the banality. How much better, how much more in tune with Clarke’s own imagined universe, if the Overlords were totally resigned, submissive yet erect in an eternal melancholy–like the great heroes and poets in Dante’s Limbo who live forever ‘in desire but not in hope’.²⁵⁶ But now one is starting to re-write the book…

Many minor dissatisfactions, of course. The women are all made up out of a few abstract ideas of jealousy, vanity, maternity etc. But it really matters v. little: the thing is great enough to carry far more faults than it commits. It is a strange comment on our age that such a book lies hid in a hideous paper-backed edition, wholly unnoticed by the cognoscenti, while any ‘realistic’ drivel about some neurotic in a London flat–something that needs no real invention at all, something that any educated man could write if he chose, may get seriously reviewed and mentioned in serious books–as if it really mattered. I wonder how long this tyranny will last? Twenty years ago I felt no doubt that I should live to see it all break up and great literature return: but here I am, losing teeth and hair, and still no break in the clouds.

And now, what do you think? Do you agree that it is AN ABSOLUTE CORKER?²⁵⁷

TO PHYLLIS ELINOR SANDEMAN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 22d 1953

Dear Mrs. Sandeman–

First, you may be quite sure that I realise (I’d be a fool if I didn’t) that there is something in a loss like yours which no unmarried person can understand. Secondly, that nothing I or anyone can say will remove the pain. There are no anaesthetics. About the bewilderment and about the right and wrong ways of using the pain, something may perhaps be done: but one can’t stop it hurting. The worst way of using the pain, you have already avoided: i.e. resentment.

Now about not wanting to pray, surely there is one person you v. much want to pray for: your husband himself.²⁵⁸ You ask, can he help you, but isn’t this probably the time for you to help him. In one way, you see, you are further on than he: you had begun to know God. He couldn’t help you in that way: it seems to me quite possible that you can now help more than while he was alive. So get on with that right away. Our Lord said that man & wife were one flesh and forbade any man to put them asunder:²⁵⁹ and we maybe sure He doesn’t do Himself what He forbade us to do. Your present prayers for yr. husband are still part of the married life.

Then as for your own shock in discovering that you hadn’t got nearly as far as you thought towards loving the God who made your husband & gave him to you more than the gift. Well, no. One keeps on thinking one has crossed that bridge before one has. And God knows that it has to be crossed sooner or later, in this life or in another. And the first step is to discover that one has not crossed it yet. I wonder could He have really shown you this in any other way? Or even if we can’t answer that, can’t we trust Him to know when and how best the terrible operation can be done? Of course it is easy (I know) for the person who isn’t feeling the pain to say all these things. You yourself wd. have been able to say them of anyone else’s loss. Whatever rational grounds there are for doubt, you knew them all before: can it be rational (of course, it is natural) to weight them so differently simply because, this time, oneself is the sufferer? Doesn’t that make it obvious that the doubts come not from the reason but from the shrinking nerves? At any rate, don’t try to argue with them: not now, while you are crippled. Ignore them: go on. Be regular in all your religious duties. Remember it is not being loved but loving wh. is the high & holy thing. You are now practising the second without the full comfort of the first. It was certain from the beginning that you wd. some day have to do this, for no human love passes onto the eternal level in any other way. God knows, many wives have had to learn it by a path harder than even bereavement: having to love unfaithful, drunken, or childish husbands. And have succeeded too: as God succeeds in loving us. May He help you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

192/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

23rd December 1953.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

‘Thank heavens’ said my brother, knee deep in Christmas cards and packing paper, ‘here’s something like a real present at last!’ And of course, he was right, though we have so far merely got down to the package: for, like good little boys, we would not for worlds open the box until the morning of the 25th. Thank you very much for your kindness in remembering us. Though the calendar says it is Christmas week, there is nothing about the weather to indicate the fact: still mild, indeed at times warm, and no signs of snow; and I gather that conditions are just the same in eastern America.

My brother was much interested in your recommendation of the Panama Canal route in your last letter, and has often told me of it: he having come by cargo boat from Shanghai to Boston in his army days. He adds that if you ever take a vacation in the Eastern States, you would find it great fun to join the ship at San Pedro, Cal, and go via Panama and the West Indies.

We have not much news here; the chief event has been that last week we entertained a lady from New York for four days, with her boys, aged nine and seven respectively. Can you imagine two crusted old batchelors in such a situation? It however went swimmingly, though it was very, very exhausting; the energy of the American small boy is astonishing. This pair thought nothing of a four mile hike across broken country as an incident in a day of ceaseless activity, and when we took them up Magdalen tower, they said as soon as they got back to the ground, ‘Let’s do it again!’ Without being in the least priggish, they struck us as being amazingly adult by our standards and one could talk to them as one would to ‘grown-ups’–though the next moment they would be wrestling like puppies on the sitting room floor. The highlights of England for them are (a), open coal fires, especially if they can get hold of the bellows and blow it up, and (b), English policemen for whom they keep a smart look-out. The latter they seemed to find even more thrilling than what they call the ‘toy soldiers’, i.e. the Guards in scarlet outside Buckingham Palace. But I am forgetting that to you there is nothing exotic about American small boys, and no doubt at present your interest is concentrated on one American small boy–who I hope is in the best of health and spirits.

Do you know the admirable French word Tohu-bohu? In Scots, a ‘kerfuffle’? Meaning a domestic upsidedownedness which overtakes us all at this season? When it has subsided, I plan to go down to Malvern for a couple of days to prepare myself for the ordeal of the oncoming term with a few walks over the hills.

With all best wishes to you and both the Mr. Gebberts for a happy and a prosperous 1954,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 26. 53

Dear Nell

What a lovely card! Please give Penelope my very great thanks. Indeed ‘card’ is the wrong word. You, or she, also included a piece of blotting paper: is this a subtle way of suggesting that some previous letter of mine looked as if I were rather short of that commodity-? Well, anyway, I usually am, and welcome a new piece. I am delighted to hear that Peter is doing so well at school: how proud you must be of him.

My brother and I have just had the experience (a v. rum one for two hardened old bachelors) of an American lady to stay with us accompanied by her two sons, aged 91/2 and 8. Whew! Lovely creatures-couldn’t meet nicer children–but the pace! I realise I have never respected you married people enough and never dreamed of the Sabbath calm wh. descends on the house when the little cyclones have gone to bed and all the grown-ups fling themselves into chairs and the silence of exhaustion.

Christmas is now catching me up too: so far as I can see I have several thousands of letters to answer. Please give my love to all, and best wishes for a good 1954.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD): ²⁶⁰

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 26/53

Dear Miss Bodle

Thanks for yr. most interesting letter. I am delighted to hear of your success in getting some Christian knowledge across to these children. It is wicked that they shd. be so deprived. Even an agnostic who does not believe the stories to be true ought to see that they are, at the very least, part of our common heritage, like Homer and the Arthurian stories.

About re-reading books: I find like you that those read in my earlier ‘teens often have no appeal, but this is not nearly so often true of those read in earlier childhood. Girls may develop differently, but for me, looking back, it seems that the glories of childhood and the glories of adolescence are separated by a howling desert during which one was simply a greedy, cruel, spiteful little animal and imagination, in all but the lowest form, was asleep.

I hope your new house will be very blessed. It was Charles Williams from whom I got the words ‘holy luck’. And now for piles of Christmas letters: many of them, unlike yours, from people I don’t want to write to at all. Every blessing.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (W): PC, TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26th December 1953.

Dear Starr,

Yes, Hori did call: an interesting man. Glad you’re home again, and no doubt so are you.

All good wishes from us both for a happy and prosperous New Year.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 28th 53

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Thanks for yr. letter of the 20th: my congratulations to yr. husband on his interesting work. About Paul, I believe (having been a sickly child myself) that there are compensations. I think that from many minor illnesses in the first 12 years one develops sometimes a certain amount of immunity later on: ones system has had so much practice in dealing with bacilli. It also probably helps to make one a reader: not that there isn’t a danger of falling or sinking too far into the life of the imagination, but a habit of reading is a great source of happiness.

I think someone ought to write a book on ‘Christian life for Laymen under a bad Parish Priest’ for the problem is bound to occur in the best churches. The motto wd. be of course Herbert’s lines about the sermon ‘If all Jack sense, God takes a text and preaches patience’.²⁶¹

Like you, we suffer (but under a v. good priest) from the virtual extinction of Morning Prayer in favour of an 11 o’clock Celebration.²⁶² But I suppose there is something to be said for it. This is the only ritual act Our Lord commanded Himself. It is the one we can have only thro’ a priest, whereas we can all read Matins to ourselves or our families at home whenever we please. So here I have no difficulty in submission.

Is there not something especially good (and even, in the end, joyful) about mere obedience (in lawful things) to him who bears our Master’s authority, however unworthy he be–perhaps all the more, if he is unworthy? Perhaps we are put under tiresome priests chiefly to give us the opportunity of learning this beautiful & happy virtue: so that if we use the situation well we can profit more, perhaps, than we shd. have done under a better man. I have seen lovely children under not v. nice parents, & good troops under bad officers: and a good dog with a bad master is a lesson to us all. I mean, of course, as long as the bad orders are not in themselves wrong: and attendance at Holy Communion can’t be that!

Yes, we must both go on thinking about the two kinds of prayer. I think the one in Mark xi is for very advanced people: and you point out it was said to the disciples, not to the crowds. All blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO PHYLLIS ELINOR SANDEMAN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 31/53

Dear Mrs Sandeman–

You have of course been much in my prayers since your first letter and today’s seems like an answer to them. I was afraid of some real crack in the structure! Now it is clear that you have to deal only with what we may call a ‘clean pain’.

I can well understand how in addition to, and mingling with, the void and loneliness, there is a great feeling of unprotectedness and a horror of coping with all the things–the harsh, outer world–from which you have hitherto been shielded. I first met this ‘cold blast on the naked heath’²⁶³ at about 9, when my Mother died, and there has never really been any sense of security and snugness since. That is, I’ve not quite succeeded in growing up on that point: there is still too much of ‘Mammy’s little lost boy’ about me. Your position is of course v. different, both because dependence on a husband is more legitimate than dependence (after a certain age) on one’s Mother, and also because, at your age, tho’ it will feel just as bad, it is not so likely to go down into the unconscious and produce a trauma. And one sees too (tho’ it sounds brutal to say it) how this miserable necessity of fending for oneself might be an essential part of your spiritual education. I suppose God wants a bit of Imogen and Portia in you, having worked in the Miranda and Perdita part enough²⁶⁴ (it is sometimes helpful to think of oneself as a picture wh. He is painting).

By the way, I share to the full–no words can say how strongly I share–that distaste for everything communal and collective wh. you describe in your husband. I really believe I wd. have come to Christianity much less reluctantly if it had not involved the Church. And I don’t wonder you failed to convince him that that community is perfectly right. It is holy and commanded: not at present (I think) perfect! No doubt he is learning ‘togetherness’ now as you, alas, are learning ‘aloneness’. Both painful lessons: it can so seldom happen that what we need is what we like (for if we liked it we’d have helped ourselves to it already & wouldn’t need it–aren’t children made to eat fat wh. they hate?). You will be all right, Mrs. Sandeman. All will be well in the end, tho’ by hard ways. All earthly loves go thro’ some fire before they can inherit the Kingdom. If it weren’t this, it wd. be some other fire. God bless you. Let us pray for one another.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

P.S. Of course, I’m not obeying your request, ‘Help me to find some comfort in faith again.’ We shan’t find faith by looking for comfort. That’s why, even brutally, I can’t help talking in terms of a work to be done. You are, on my view, being moved into a higher form of the great school and set harder work to do. Comfort will come as you master that work, as you learn more & more to be a channel of God’s grace to your husband (and perhaps to others): not for trying to get back the conditions you had in the lower form.

Keep clear of Psychical Researchers.

1 J. Keith Kyle of the North American Service of the BBC wrote to Lewis on 31 December 1952: ‘The Columbia Broadcasting System with whom the North American Service of the BBC often co-operates…has invited us to assist them with a series called “This I Believe”…It is designed to put on the air a number of statements of personal conviction from “men and women in all stations of life, who have been successful in their chosen profession.” The CBS emphasizes that the contributions should be extremely personal in approach and as they are to be only 3 1/4 minutes in length, complete simplicity is obviously essential.’

2 Pitter gave a lecture entitled ‘A Return to Poetic Law’ to the Royal Institution of Great Britain on 22 February 1952. A copy can be found in the Pitter Papers, Temporary Box, Bodleian Library.

3 Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, First Part, pp. 73-4: ‘I thought again, this Shame tells me what men are; but it tells me nothing what God or the Word of God is. And I thought moreover, That at the day of doom, we shall not be doomed to death or life according to the hectoring spirits of the world, but according to the Wisdom and Law of the Highest. Therefore thought I, what God says, is best, though all the men in the world are against it…But indeed this Shame was a bold villain; I could scarce shake him out of my company; yea, he would be haunting of me, and continually whispering me in the ear, with some one or other of the infirmities that attend Religion; but at last I told him, Twas but in vain to attempt further in this business; for those things that he disdained, in those did I see most glory; And so at last I got past this importunate one.’

4 Since 1930 the Pitter family had owned a cottage in Felsted, Essex, where Ruth taught herself viticulture. The cottage, however, had to be left behind when Ruth and her companion of many years, Kathleen O’Hara, decided to buy a house in the village of Long Crendon, Buckinghamshire. ‘The Hawthorns’ in Chilton Road was set in several acres of garden and orchard, and was within reach of Oxford and London. They moved in shortly before Christmas 1953. Pitter noted: ‘In coming to the neighbourhood of Oxford, of course I had hoped to see a little more of Lewis, of David Cecil, and others, and to attend open lectures, plays, etc. But we could not find anything near enough to make this at all easy’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/3, fol. 113).

5 Dorsett, And God Came In, ch. 3, pp. 90-1.

6 ibid., p. 91.

7 This is a reply to a letter from Don Giovanni of 9 January 1953 (?), which appears in Letters: C. S. Lewis-Don Giovanni Calabria, pp. 76-7.

8 There had been a mistake. The article, ‘Responsabilité’–which was not by Don Giovanni Calabria but by Padre Paolo Manna—was published in L’Amico, 8 (Sep.-Oct. 1952), pp. 122-4. The article is reproduced in Una Gioia Insolita, pp. 283-5.

9 Lewis had only recently begun writing the book on prayer mentioned here. He mentioned it to Don Giovanni again in a letter of 17 March 1953, but had abandoned it by the following year (see the letter to Sister Penelope of 15 February 1954). He could not think how to go on with the book until, in the spring of 1963, he found the form for what he wanted to say. The result was Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (London: Bles, 1964; Fount, 1998).

10 1 Chronicles 13:9-10: ‘And when they came unto the threshingfloor of Chidon, Uzza put forth his hand to hold the ark; for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzza, and he smote him, because he put his hand to the ark: and there he died before God.’

11 Luke 9:62: ‘And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.’

12 In ‘Responsabilità’ Fr Manna pleads for greater recognition of the gravity of Communist persecution of Christians (hospital workers as well as missionaries) in China. He argues that if a Communist (e.g., French Communist Party leader Jacques Duelos) is arrested in the West, the Communists rise in protest. There should be no less an outcry on behalf of victimized missionaries.

13 ‘so far as’; ‘whenever’.

14 i.e., Paolo Manna.

15 Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, Bk. I, ch. 5.

16 i.e., the book on prayer.

17 Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:35.

18 Luke 22:42.

19 Lewis read a paper on this same problem to the Oxford Clerical Society on 8 December 1953. It was published as ‘Petitionary Prayer: A Problem Without an Answer’ in Christian Reflections, ed. Walter Hooper (London: Bles, 1967; Fount, 1998).

20 Eustace and Edmund are characters in the Narnian stories; Jane and Mark Studdock are the married couple in That Hideous Strength.

21 Lewis probably had in mind the last two lines of the title poem of Edna St Vincent Millay’s Renascence, and Other Poems (1925): ‘Ah, awful weight! Infinity/Pressed down upon the finite Me!’

22 Rudolf Steiner.

23 The Rev. Jones B. Shannon was executive director of the Church Society of College Work, Washington, DC.

24 In February 1953 Joy became a member of the Episcopal Church and was confirmed in the Cathedral of St John the Divine, New York.

* This is the beginning of Act V, I suppose?

25 T. H. White, Mistress Masham’s Repose (1946).

26 Mrs Van Deusen, an Episcopalian, was in touch with the Order of the Holy Cross, a Benedictine Anglican monastic order in West Park, New York. The order had suggested she become one of the Associates of Holy Cross. These lay associates lived under a modified form of the Benedictine rule suitable to laymen.

27 James was probably a clergyman Mrs Van Deusen knew.

28 Warnie served for a number of years on the vestry of Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, Oxford. Vestrymen help the churchwardens deal with the temporal affairs of a parish church.

29 George Bernard Shaw.

30 Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (1901), ch. 1, ‘Virginibus Puerisque’: ‘Marriage is terrifying, but so is a cold and forlorn old age.’

31 In Charles Williams’s Region of the Summer Stars, ‘P’o-l’u’ is in the Antipodean Ocean. Starr was spending the academic year at Kansai University, Osaka, Japan as a Fulbright Scholar. He was then offered a professorship at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he stayed until his retirement.

32 William Shakespeare, The Tempest (1623), I, ii, 250-93. Ariel, a spirit of the air, was once the servant of Sycorax, a wicked sorceress who imprisoned him in a ‘cloven pine’ for refusing to fulfil her commands. He was trapped inside the tree for twelve years until Prospero arrived on the island, released him, and bound him to his service.

33 Ray Bradbury, The Silver Locusts (1951).

34 The forty-seven Ronin were Samurai retainers who in 1701 avenged their master’s death by killing his enemy, and then awaiting the death sentence to be passed on them by the government. The act of defying the government, and following instead the way of the Samurai to be faithful to their lord unto death, won them everlasting fame. Every year on 14 December people gather at their graves at Sengakuji Temple in Tokyo.

35 Anthony Boucher was the pseudonym of William Anthony Parker White (1911-68), critic and author. He wrote a column on mystery stories, ‘Criminal at Large’, for the New York Times, 1951-68, and was the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1949-58. He is the author of many works of mystery and science fiction, and it was at his suggestion that Lewis contributed two short stories, ‘The Shoddy Lands’ and ‘Ministering Angels’-reprinted in The Dark Tower and Other Stories- to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

Boucher’s short story, ‘The Quest for St. Aquin’ was first published in New Tales of Space and Time, ed. Raymond J. Healy (New York: Holt, 1951), and ‘The Star Dummy’ was published in Fantastic (Fall 1952). They are reprinted in The Compleat Boucher: The Complete Short Science Fiction and Fantasy of Anthony Boucher (1998).

37 Old Solar for ‘God bless you.’ It is found several times in the last chapter of That Hideous Strength when Ransom blesses those who have fought with him at St Anne’s on the Hill.

* The porter at Holloway Jail told me it was ‘a ladies’ prison’

38 Bodle said of this letter: ‘I had spoken of a girl in my class at Manchester who was intelligent and had a great deal of language as she had acquired it before being deafened. In answer to her anxieties about the remoteness of God I had tried to explain who Christ is and why He had come. Then she herself said with unusual relief “Then Jesus is God”-a conception entirely new to her. I think that I must have been wondering how much of the teaching about Christ I could present with the Gospel story–a problem which I still find very difficult’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/4, fols. 248-9).

39 Acts 8:31.

40 Matthew 6:12.

41 See Sir Arthur Charles Clarke in the Biographical Appendix to CX II, pp. 1024-5.

42 Clarke, in his capacity as chairman of the British Interplanetary Society, wrote to Lewis on 13 February 1953: ‘I am now trying to arrange this Society’s lecture programme for October ’53-April ’54, and the suggestion has been put forward that you might care to propose a notion that interplanetary travel is a bad thing!…It would be only fair to point out that your position might be somehow analogous to that of a Christian martyr in the arena, but I trust that consideration would not deter you’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/4, fol. 16).

43 Robin Oakley-Hill (1932-) was born on 30 May 1932, the son of Dayrell R. Oakley-Hill. He went up to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1950 where he read English under Lewis. After taking his BA in 1953 he worked as an administrative officer in the Architects’ Department of the London City Council.

44 In a note dated August 2003 Oakley-Hill said of this letter: ‘I was walking from the boathouse back to college on an unpleasantly raw winter afternoon after an unsatisfactory session of coxing when I was joined by CS Lewis waiting to cross the High. He said something like “You’re limping–did you hurt yourself?” I said no, I’d had polio, in a fairly unfriendly manner, because I was fed up with the weather, the unsatisfactory rowing and the tedious unfinished work I was going back to. He looked embarrassed and said “Oh, poor chap,” and we went our separate ways. I was astounded to get the letter next day, and was inclined to reply that it didn’t signify, but a confidant warned me to take the apology in a serious manner because otherwise it would seem that I did not appreciate the trouble he had taken in writing the letter, and I did so.’

45 In the country of Brobdingnag in Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) the people are as tall as steeples, and everything else is in proportion.

46 Chad Walsh, Nellie and her Flying Crocodile, illus. Marc Simont (New York: Harper, 1956).

47 That is, become an Associate of Holy Cross.

48 Wilkie Collins, Armadale (1866).

49 Wilkie Collins, The Woman in White (1860); The Moonstone (1868).

50 In The Woman in White.

51 Green, From the World’s End, ch. 5, p. 70. In Roman legend Tarquín raped Lucrece.

52 ibid., p. 83: ‘a supreme surrender and a supreme assumption of responsibility.

53 Theodore Watts-Dunton, Aylwin (1898).

54 Green spelled the names ‘Danai’ and ‘Pasiphai’.

55 i.e., The Last Battle (1956).

56 Clifford W. Stone was writing from PO Box 528, El Dorado, Kansas.

57 Mark Twain, Report from Paradise, with drawings by Charles Locke (New York: Harper & Bros., 1952). For many years Twain played with the idea of writing an account of heaven that would debunk Christian revelation. In 1909 he published ‘Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven’, a fragment of his manuscript. Report from Paradise contains ‘Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven’ as well as the other surviving chapters of Twain’s unfinished work.

58 Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889).

59 For The Silver Chair.

60 ‘he is limping’.

61 Shakespeare, King Lear, IV, vi, 133-4: ‘Give me an ounce of civet, good apothecary, to sweeten my imagination.’

62 Palmer wanted Lewis to recommend one of his books to a publisher.

63 Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, ch. 6: ‘’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/Did gyre and gimble in the wabe’.

64 John Bunyan, The Life and Death of Mr. Badman (1680), ch. 8: ‘For they are a shame to religion, I say, these slithy, rob-shop, pick-pocket men, they are a shame to religion, and religious men should be ashamed of them.’

65 The New English Dictionary, the precursor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

66 See the reference to the eldila in the letter to Douglas Harding of 25 March 1951.

67 e.g., Luke 1:30: ‘And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God.’ See also Genesis 15:1; Luke 2:10.

68 In Perelandra, ch. 16, p. 202, during the attempt to make themselves visible to Ransom, the eldila or Oyéresu of Mars and Venus appear as ‘concentric wheels moving with a rather sickening slowness one inside the other’. This imagery was inspired by the appearance of angels in Ezekiel 1:16: ‘Their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel.’ We should notice too Miracles, ch. 14, pp. 120-1: ‘[Jahweh’s] appearance to Ezekiel is attended with imagery that does not borrow from Nature, but (it is a mystery too seldom noticed) from those machines which men were to make centuries after Ezekiel’s death. The prophet saw something suspiciously like a dynamo’

* This is not an afterthought. Mycroft funked it!

69 ‘Apiciarí had been added in Lewis’s hand.

70 W. K. Scudamore was writing from 3 Maurice Road, Seaford, Sussex.

71 This was Lewis’s ‘mangling’ of Scudamore’s name.

72 Sir Scudamour is the lover of Amoret in Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, as well as the name of Lewis’s hero in The Dark Tower.

73 Bodleian Library.

74 Jane (‘Janie’) Agnes McNeill (1889-1959) was a close friend from Strandtown. See her biography in CL I, p. 117n.

75 In his letter of 16 March 1953 Bles said: ‘With some trepidation I venture to address you again on the gender of mythological creatures…On returning to the galleys of “The Silver Chair”…I find the same thing has happened again, not only with the Dwarf but with that curious creature, the Marsh-wiggle…It looks to me as though the discrepancies are due to the fact that, although, for some philological reason, you try to keep Dwarf and Marsh-wiggle neuter, you naturally think of them as persons–as indeed most readers would. If I may say so, this neuter business seems strained and artificial, and in places reminds me of Mark Twain’s joke about the German language, “The girl took the spoon and fork. It laid him and her on the table’” (Bodleian Library, Dep. c. 771, fol. 20).

76 Bles replied on 18 March 1953: ‘I am so glad that you agree to a “he” for the Dwarf and the Marshwiggle. I would suggest this Rule: when mythological creatures speak like human beings, masculine/feminine gender; when they are personae mutai [silent characters] neuter’ (ibid., fol. 22).

77 Lewis probably had in mind the following three statements regarding natural law. The classical definition is found in St Thomas Aquinas: ‘The natural law is nothing other than the light of understanding placed in us by God; through it we know what we must do and what we must avoid. God has given this light or law at the creation’ (Collationes in decent praeceptis, 1). Cicero (51 BC) said in De Republica, 11:33: ‘There is in fact a true law–namely, right reason–which is in accordance with nature, applies to all men and is unchangeable and eternal.’ The chief New Testament text on which natural law is based is Romans 2:14-15: ‘When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness.’ Lewis’s writings on natural law include the first book of Mere Christianity, The Abolition of Man, and ‘The Poison of Subjectivism’ and ‘On Ethics’ in Christian Reflections.

78 These reflections were to be repeated the following year in Lewis’s inaugural lecture at Cambridge, ‘De Descriptione Temporum: ‘It is hard to have patience with those Jeremiahs, in Press or pulpit, who warn us that we are “relapsing into Paganism”. It might be rather fun if we were. It would be pleasant to see some future Prime Minister trying to kill a large and lively milk-white bull in Westminster Hall. But we shan’t. What lurks behind such idle prophecies, if they are anything but careless language, is the false idea that the historical process allows mere reversal; that Europe can come out of Christianity “by the same door as in she went” and find herself back where she was. It is not what happens. A post-Christian man is not a Pagan; you might as well think that a married woman recovers her virginity by divorce. The post-Christian is cut off from the Christian past and therefore doubly from the Pagan past’ (SLE, p. 10). See ‘A Cliché Came Out of Its Cage’, CP, p. 17, which begins: ‘You said “The world is going back to Paganism”. Oh bright Vision!’

79 i.e., the tale which was eventually to be titled The Horse and His Boy.

80 P. Vergili Maronis: Opera, ed. Frederick Arthur Hirtzel (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1900), p. [iii]: ‘Eager to correct what they consider errors, they more often trample upon the most delicate flowers of the Muses.’

81 Delirium tremens.

82 Shakespeare, Hamlet, III, iv, 140: ‘My pulse, as yours, doth temperately keep time.’

83 Michael was an American schoolboy.

84 In her letter to Lewis of 18 March, Gebbert wrote: ‘A physical condition…caused my mind to wander and speculate for too long now, and recently drove me to a doctor. He told me in no uncertain terms that my husband and I can expect an heir or heiress in a month or two! And all along I had been blaming everything on seasickness!’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Facs. c. 47, fol. 238).

85 Lewis ends SBJ, ch. 12, ‘Guns and Good Company’ with these same words.

86 In her letter of 18 March Gebbert continued: ‘I was so dismayed at the doctor’s diagnosis that, for a moment, I wished it had not happened–that I was not going to have a child. I know I was guilty of the lowest form of ignorance: fear, and that night, as I was dining alone in my library, my eyes fell upon the Bible I keep open on the table. It had been open to Psalms for several days-1 had been reading them off and on and had not turned or disturbed the pages in any way. Nor had anyone else. This night, then, as I glanced from the food to the Book, I saw and read the verse: “Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth? saith the Lord: shall I cause to bring forth, and shut the womb? saith thy God.” Isaiah, Chap. 66, Verse 9. How did the pages get turned from Psalms? And by whom? In such ways, at times, do we receive the miracle of His rebuke, His admonition, His comfort, and the workings of His plan? Am I wrong to take the words I read as a rebuke? Am I wrong in assuming my eye fell on the chapter and verse it was supposed to?’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Facs. c. 47, fol. 238).

87 Matthew 10:29: Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.’

88 The Screwtape Letters (London: Bles, 1942; Fount, 1998), Letter 27, pp. 106-7: ‘If you tried to explain to [the Patient] that men’s prayers today are one of the innumerable co-ordinates with which the Enemy [God] harmonizes the weather of tomorrow, he would reply that then the Enemy always knew men were going to make those prayers and, if so, they did not pray freely but were predestined to do so…What he ought to say, of course, is obvious to us; that the problem of adapting the particular weather to the particular prayers is merely the appearance, at two points in his temporal mode of perception, of the total problem of adapting the whole spiritual universe to the whole corporeal universe; that creation in its entirety operates at every point of space and time, or rather that their kind of consciousness forces them to encounter the whole, self-consistent creative act as a series of successive events.’

89 Chang had sent Lewis his translation of a Chinese allegory to read.

90 ‘model of Christ’.

91 The Great Divorce, Preface, p. 5: ‘It was a wonderful vehicle, blazing with golden light, heraldically coloured. The Driver himself seemed full of light and he used only one hand to drive with. The other he waved before his face as if to fan away the greasy steam of the rain.’ Cf. The Comedy of Dante Alighieri the Florentine: Cántica I Hell L’Inferno, trans. Dorothy L. Sayers (London: Penguin, 1949), IX, 82: ‘His left hand, moving, fanned away the gross/Air from his face, nor elsewise did he seem/At all to find the way laborious.’

92 The Great Divorce, ch. 12, cf. Dante, Purgatorio, XXX.

93 i.e., Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando Furioso.

94 See the discussion of David Lindsay’s A Voyage to Arcturus (1920) in CL II, pp. 440, 541, 630, 753.

95 A vast French prose romance of the fourteenth century, in which the anonymous author sought to link the legends of Alexander the Great and King Arthur.

96 Old French.

97 The story of Balin, or Balain, is recounted in the Old French Suite du Merlin and in Malory’s Morte dArthur. Balin and Balan are tragic brothers who, despite their nobility, wind up killing each other.

98 John Francis Gilfedder (1925-), musician, was born in Melbourne, Australia, on 27 January 1925. After studying medicine, he began composing music in 1948. In 1951-2 he studied composition with Benjamin Frankel and Raymond Jones in England, and it was in 1952 that he met Lewis. On returning to Australia, he studied at the University of Melbourne and graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree in 1958. This was followed by a Dip. Ed. in 1959, and a B. Ed. in 1962, also from the University of Melbourne. Gilfedder was employed by the Victorian Education Department, 1953-69, before taking up a position at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music in 1970. His works include The Timeless Land Symphony, which had its premiere in 2002.

99 Gilfedder suggested Lewis provide a glossary of obscure terms to go with the Arthurian poems of Charles Williams, Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars.

100 A Religious of CSMV (Sister Penelope), The Coming of the Lord: A Study in the Creed (London: Mowbray, 1953; 2nd impression, 1954).

101 Lewis was reading the typescript of the book; the page numbers of the typescript differ from those in the published book which are the ones given below.

102 ibid., ch. 8, p. 48: ‘When a smith says of a sword, “It is finished,” he means that it is ready to be used. Only when it has served its purpose and has no longer any raison d’être, does the end of a thing mean its ceasing to exist. The two Ends that our Lord is seeing in St. Mark xiii exactly illustrate this difference. The End of the Temple was the destruction of the Temple, because the type was no longer needed when the thing typified, the New Humanity, had come. But when Man comes to his End, he will be finished in the sense of being ready, at last, for the purpose for which he was made.’

103 ibid., ch. 6, pp. 34-5: ‘Except for the saying of John the Baptist, “He that hath the bride is the bridegroom,” the bride is never mentioned in the Gospels. Why? Surely because she did not yet exist, because the New Eve had yet to be created, as the Fathers loved to say, out of the pierced side of the Second Adam on the Cross. Later in the New Testament St. Paul, in Ephesians v.22 ff., uses the husband and wife analogy for the relation between Christ and His Church, but does not expressly name her either wife or bride. In the Apocalypse, however, right to the end she is only the bride, the wife to be. For the Church is not yet wholly one with Christ, as man was one with God before the Fall; and the consummation of “the marriage of the Lamb” with the bride of His own redeeming and remaking is itself the consummation for which the whole creation waits.’

104 ibid., pp. 37-8: ‘There is so much that is obvious about Palm Sunday, our Lord’s deliberate and literal fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy about the peaceful king, the bitter contrast between that triumph and the Passion following, that other things no less significant often get overlooked…That impromptu procession of the Passover pilgrims on the first Palm Sunday combined the themes and types of both those two great Feasts. But over and above all that, the festal coming of Christ to Jerusalem was a symbol of His final, finished Coming to the Father as the Son of Man. That, at least, is how St. Bernard sees it. The liturgical palm procession, he says, which re-enacts that entry, represents the glory of our heavenly fatherland.’

105 ibid., ch. 9, pp. 58-9: ‘The Greek says, “He was metamorphosed before them,” He changed His form. Metamorphosis, change of form at different stages on the way to perfection, is common in the natural world, the most familiar instance being that of the creature which ends up as a butterfly, after being successively an egg, a caterpillar, and a chrysalis. The Transfiguration of Christ suggests that Man also is a metamorphic creature…After death [Christ] passed again to His perfection, this time finally. In that perfected body, that yet bore the marks of what its larval form had borne on Calvary, He was touched and handled, as well as seen and heard, by many of His friends during the Great Forty Days.’

106 ibid., ch. 2, p. 9.

107 ‘waiting for’.

108 Sister Penelope removed this word from the book.

109 The word ‘neo-Paganism’ was also removed from the book.

110 ‘respect’.

111 ‘fear of the gods’.

112 ‘world’ as in John 9:39: ‘For judgement I am come into this world.’

113 Corbin Scott Carnell (1929-) was born in Ormond, Florida, on 7 July 1929, the son of Stanley and Doris (Scott) Carnell. He received a BA from Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois, 1952, and an MA from Columbia University in New York, 1953. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Florida in 1960 where his dissertation topic was ‘The Dialectic of Desire: C. S. Lewis’ Interpretation of “Sehnsucht” ‘. Carnell was, successively, Teaching Associate, Associate Professor, and Assistant Professor of English at Bethany College, West Virginia, 1953-76. He served as Professor of English at the University of Florida, 1976-2000. His thesis was published as Bright Shadow of Reality: C. S. Lewis and the Reeling Intellect (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974).

114 Carnell said of this letter: ‘I inquired about the lengthy footnote in Miracles which asserts that some Biblical miracles are to be understood rather literally, others not.’ The footnote he was inquiring about is a reference to the book of Jonah in Miracles, ch. 15, note 1: ‘A consideration of the Old Testament miracles is beyond the scope of this book and would require many kinds of knowledge which I do not possess. My present view…would be that just as, on the factual side, a long preparation culminates in God’s becoming incarnate as Man, so, on the documentary side, the truth first appears in mythical form and then by a long process of condensing or focusing finally becomes incarnate as History…The Hebrews, like other people, had mythology: but as they were the chosen people so their mythology was the chosen mythology–the mythology chosen by God to be the vehicle of the earliest sacred truths, the first step in that process which ends in the New Testament where truth has become completely historical…I take it that the Memoirs of David’s court come at one end of the scale and are scarcely less historical than St Mark or Acts; and that the Book of Jonah is at the opposite end.’

115 On Lewis’s first confession see his letters to Sister Penelope of 24 October and 4 November 1942 (CL II, pp. 450-2, 453-4).

116 President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in a speech of 16 April 1953, reported in The Times (17 April 1953), p. 8, under the title ‘President Eisenhower’s Appeal to Russia’: ‘Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children…This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.’

117 See the biography of Margaret Deneke attached to letter of 3 October 1944 in supplement. Deneke was making plans to produce a volume of reminiscences about her kinsman, P. V. M. Benecke. The book was published as Paul Victor Mendelssohn Benecke (1868-1944) (Oxford: A. T. Broome & Son, 1954), and Lewis’s contributions are found on pp. 3, 31-4.

118 Philemon 10: ‘I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I have begotten in my bonds.’

119 Matthew 12:37.

120 Professor Masato Hori was a teacher at Kansai University, Osaka, Japan.

121 Joseph A. Breig, The Devil You Say: Report from Hell (Milwaukee: Bruce Pub. Co, 1952).

122 Ruth Pitter, The Ermine: Poems 1942-1952 (1953).

123 This was Pitter’s first book after becoming a Christian.

124 Pitter, The Ermine, p. 19, ‘The World is Hollow’, III, 1.

125 ibid., p. 18, ‘The Captive Bird of Paradise’, II, 4.

126 ibid., p. 15, ‘The Other’, X, 3-4.

127 ibid., p. 9, ‘Great Winter’, III, 3.

128 ibid., ‘Herding Lambs’, p. 16, I, 3-4.

129 ibid., p. 38, ‘Aged Man to Young Mother’.

130 See Lewis’s letter to George Rostrevor Hamilton of 14 August 1949 on The Tell-Tale Article (CL II, pp. 966-7).

131 John H. McCallum, head of the trade department at Harcourt, Brace & World, was Lewis’s American editor at the time.

132 Bodle had sent her own simplified version of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress to the deaf daughter of a friend.

133 Bodle said of this letter: ‘I had explained that in N.Z. government schools religious instruction cannot be given by teachers. I was feeling frustrated. The principal did, however, allow me to take classes after school for any children who wanted to come’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/4, fol. 249).

134 Roger Lancelyn Green, The Secret of Rusticoker (1953).

135 Martin Kilmer was a member of the ‘Kilmer family’ to whom The Magicians Nephew was dedicated.

136 Stephen Vincent Benêt (1898-1943), Western Star (1943).

137 Calkins wrote on this letter; ‘Reply to my cable at the time Elizabeth II was crowned.’

138 News reached the British public on the eve of the Coronation that Edmund Hillary and the Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, had set foot on the summit of the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, on 29 May.

139 Hila Newman was an eleven-year-old girl from New York who sent Lewis some drawings of the characters in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

140 Romans 14:13-17: ‘Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way. I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died. Let not then your good be evil spoken of. For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink: but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’

* Later: not, I hope, concurrently. We may then discuss further plans

141 Mildred Boxill was an editor in the Harcourt Brace college department in New York.

142 John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667).

143 Douglas Bush was the editor of the section on John Milton in Major British Writers. See his biography in CL II, p. 22 In.

144 Blamires had found a publisher for his book, The Devil’s Hunting-grounds: A Fantasy (London: Longmans, 1954).

145 The Rev. Canon Roger Bradshaigh Lloyd (1901-66) was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge and ordained in 1924. He served as residentiary canon of Winchester Cathedral, 1937-66. During the 1950s he was a reader for Longmans Green. He recommended The Devil’s Hunting-grounds to Longmans and was in contact with Blamires about the book. His own works include The Mastery of Evil (1941) and The Borderland: An Exploration of Theology in English Literature (1960). Lloyd was also a keen railway enthusiast, and his books on that subject include Farewell to Steam (1956).

146 Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901); The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904).

147 ‘mother-sickness’. The pun consists in substituting ‘mal de mere for the familiar ‘mal de mer’ (sea-sickness). See the letter to Gebbert of 16 July 1953.

148 A poet born at Mitylene, Lesbos, about the middle of the seventh century BC.

149 The song of praise (Luke 1:46-55) sung by the Blessed Virgin Mary when her cousin Elizabeth greeted her as Mother of the Lord.

150 See Kilby’s account of this meeting, ‘Visit with C. S. Lewis’, in the Wheaton College literary magazine, Kodon, 8 (December 1953), pp. 11, 28, 30.

151 Stephen Vincent Benét, John Brown’s Body (1928), a narrative poem of the Civil War.

152 Warnie was correcting the proofs of his first book, The Splendid Century: Some Aspects of Life in the Reign of Louis XLV (1953), and his brother was correcting those of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century.

153 H. Rider Haggard, The Mahatma and the Hare (1911).

154 Roger Lancelyn Green, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1953).

155 See the reference to ‘brasting and fighting’ in the letter to Greeves of 20 June 1916 (CL I, pp. 196-7).

156 See the letter to Gebbert of 20 June 1953.

157 Richard Lancelyn Green (1953-2004) was born at Poulton Hall on 10 July 1953, the second son, and third child, of Roger and June Lancelyn Green.

158 According to the Roman law of Jus Trium Liberorum, every man who had been a father of three children had particular honours and privileges.

159 A story Sayer was writing, which has never been published.

160 Matthew 6:11; Luke 11:3.

161 Joel 2:28: ‘Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.’ Acts 2:17: ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’

162 Lewis may have had in mind the two great Carmelite doctors of the Church, St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. St Teresa felt visions were unimportant because of their ‘sensual nature’. St John of the Cross, in the Ascent of Mount Carmel, is blunt and states that visions should be ignored.

163 In That Hideous Strength.

164 Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902), British financier and colonizer, left the greater part of his fortune for the establishing of a scholarship fund. The Rhodes Scholarships to Oxford University were intended to reward applicants who exhibited qualities of character and physical ability, with the aim of promoting cross-cultural understanding and peace between nations. The scholarships have been awarded annually since 1903 by the Rhodes Trust in Oxford, where centenary celebrations were held in June 1953.

165 p.p.

166 1 Peter 4:12: ‘Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you.’

167 See the description of his confessor, Fr Walter Adams SSJE, in the letter to Mary Neylan of 30 April 1941 (CL II, p. 482): ‘If I have ever met a holy man, he is one.’

168 Laurence Harwood matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1952 and began reading modern history. Unfortunately, in June 1953 he failed the preliminary examination which is designed to ensure that students are sufficiently prepared to proceed to the honours degree in the second or third year. As a result he had to leave Oxford.

169 ‘mishap’.

170 Mrs Emily McLay was writing from 4 Denham Avenue, Fulwell, Sunderland, County Durham.

171 2 Peter 3:16-17: ‘As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness.’

172 John Calvin (1509-64) maintained in his Institutes of Christian Religion (1536), Bk. II, ch. 1, section 8, that: Our nature is not only utterly devoid of goodness, but so prolific in all kinds of evil, that it can never be idle…everything which is in man, from the intellect to the will, from the soul even to the flesh, is defiled.’ The ‘other view’ was that of the Arminians, after Jacobus Arminius (1560-1609). They insisted that the divine sovereignty was compatible with a real human free will; that Jesus Christ died for all and not just for the elect.

173 English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Introduction, p. 34: ‘In a single sentence of the Tischreden [Table Talk] Luther tosses the question aside for ever. Do you doubt whether you are elected to salvation? Then say your prayers, man, and you may conclude that you are.’

174 Lewis had received a letter dated 23 June 1953 from the Seminario Presbiteriano Do Sul, Campinas, Est. de S. Paulo, Brazil, in which the Librarian of the Seminary wrote: ‘We have a deep regard for your wonderful books on Christianity and its stand today. Of course, for quite a long time we have been eager to acquire them. However, we have no funds available for this purpose. Hence, we felt that perhaps you might be willing to offer them, as well as any other works you might think it fitting, to our library, at this Seminary’ (Bodleian Library, Dep. c. 771, fol. 30).

175 The letter is unsigned.

176 1 John 1:5: ‘God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.’

177 Lewis probably had in mind the ‘hard sayings’ of Jesus, among them Matthew 7:13: ‘Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat’; Matthew 13:49-50: ‘So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth’; Matthew 25:41: ‘Then shall he say…unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels’.

178 Luke 9:55.

179 1 Peter 4:8.

180 Lewis probably had in mind Colossians 1:24: ‘I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church’ (RSV).

181 Matthew 6:25-6: ‘“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?…’” (RSV).

182 Prince Caspian, ch. 8: ‘When they came out into the daylight Edmund turned to the Dwarf very politely and said, “I’ve got something to ask you. Kids like us don’t often have the chance of meeting a great warrior like you. Would you have a little fencing match with me? It would be frightfully decent.” ‘

183 The Silver Chair.

184 Sir Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1819).

185 See the letter to Bodle of 31 December 1947 (CL II, p. 823).

186 The name given to the planet Earth in Lewis’s interplanetary trilogy.

187 Roger Lancelyn Green, Tellers of Tales: An Account of Children’s Favourite Authors from 1839 to the Present Day (1946; new edn, 1953).

188 For Don Giovanni Calabria’s letter of 3 September 1953 see Letters: C. S. Lewis-Don Giovanni Calabria, pp. 84-7.

189 Giovanni Calabria, Instaurare Omnia in Christo (Verona: Vescovile Casa Buoni Fanciulli, 1952).

190 Horace, Ars Poetica, 169-74: ‘Multa senem circumveniunt incommoda, vel quod quaerit et inventis miser abstinet ac timet uti,/vel quod res omnis timide gelideque ministrat,/dilator, spe longus, iners, avidusque futuri,/difficilis, querulus, laudator temporis acti/se puero, castigator censorque minorum’: ‘Many troubles assail an old man, whether because he seeks gain, and then wretchedly abstains from what he possesses and is afraid to use it, or because he attends to all his affairs feebly and timidly; a procrastinator, he is apathetic in his hopes and expectations, sluggish and fearful of the future, obstinate, always complaining; he devotes himself to praising times past, when he was a boy, and to being the castigator and moral censor of the young.’

191 2 Corinthians 1:3.

192 This had been Lewis’s chief intention in The Abolition of Man.

193 Herbert Read, The Green Child (1935).

194 The French composer, Olivier Messiaen (1908-92).

195 Probably Douglas Edison Harding, author of The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth.

196 In The Hone and His Boy.

197 ibid., ch. 7.

198 Lewis was referring to Rachel, son of Laban. According to Genesis 29:20: ‘Jacob served seven years for Rachel.’ In her note to his letter Pitter said: ‘I had now known Lewis for seven years, and thought perhaps he would not mind if we now used Xtian names…I had asked “if I might now have Rachel”, alluding to Jacob’s seven-year service’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/3, fol. 119).

199 The foolish clergyman in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), who is excessively obsequious to persons of high rank.

200 G. A. L. Burgeon (Owen Barfield), This Ever Diverse Pair, introduction by Walter de la Mare (London: Gollancz, 1950). See the description of this book in CL II, p. 937n.

201 Charlotte M. Yonge, The Daisy Chain (1856); The Trial (1864); The Pillars of the House (1873); The Three Brides (1876); The Two Sides of the Shield (1885); Dynevor Terrace (1857); Nutty’s Father (1886).

202 John Richards (1918-95) was born in London on 23 June 1918. He went to Brockley County School in Forest Hill, after which he read English at King’s College, London. Before he could complete his degree the Second World War intervened and he spent most of the war years working in an anti-aircraft battery in Northern Ireland. After VE Day Richards was transferred to the Foreign Office. He soon left, returning to King’s College to complete his degree. In 1949 he realized his long-time ambition and began work in the Ministry of Education, where he served as Under-Secretary, 1973-7. A convert to Roman Catholicism in 1940, he afterwards contributed to many Catholic periodicals. See Lewis’s letter to Richards of 5 March 1945 in the Supplement.

203 Charlotte M. Yonge, The Heir of Redclyffe (1853).

204 i.e., The Splendid Century.

205 John Forrest, who had just died, was the husband of Lewis’s cousin, Gundreda Ewart Forrest. See The Ewart Family in the Biographical Appendix to CL I.

206 The words ‘better the frying pan than the fire’ were removed from The Silver Chair before the book was published.

207 Lewis had probably been asked to examine J. B. Phillips’s translation of Acts, The Young Church in Action: The Acts of the Apostles, published by Geoffrey Bles in 1955. The reference is to Phillips’s translation of Acts 2:22-4.

208 The fourteenth-century manor Dartington Hall was bought in 1925 by Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, who opened it in 1926 as an experiment in co-education. From the first one of its purposes was to renovate the large Dartington Hall estate. The school featured a ‘pupil-defined curriculum’ based upon the individual. There were few rules for older students, no uniforms, no religious education, and no church services. Emphasis was placed on ‘co-operation rather than competition’. Lewis’s pupil, Mary Neylan, taught there for a number of years. See Mary Neylan in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1054-5.

209 The school in The Silver Chair.

210 Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1850).

211 ‘for the prayers’.

212 Congregation of Sisters of the Holy Redeemer, a lay order within the Order of the Holy Cross.

213 Book of Common Prayer, Collect for Whitsunday.

214 The story is told of a friend saying to Sir Winston Churchill, ‘How wonderfully your new grandson looks like you.’ ‘All babies look like me,’ replied Sir Winston. ‘But then, I look like all babies.’

215 William Wordsworth, ‘Ode, Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood’ (1807), 63-6: ‘Not in entire forgetfulness,/And not in utter nakedness,/ But trailing clouds of glory do we come/From God, who is our home.’

216 i.e., Florence ‘Michal’ Williams, the widow of Charles Williams.

217 Lewis forgot he had asked Bles, in his letter of 20 October, to remove the words from The Sliver Chair.

218 Romans 8:26-7: ‘We know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.’

219 Luke 18:2: ‘And he spake a parable unto them to this end, that men ought always to pray, and not to faint.’

220 Luke 22:42.

221 Mark 11:24: ‘Therefore I say unto you, What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them and ye shall have them.’

222 Charles Williams, Evelyn Underhill, George MacDonald.

223 John 3:16.

224 1 John 2:15.

225 Revelation 18:4.

226 Mrs Gebbert had asked if Lewis would autograph a copy of The Stiver Chair for her son, Charles Marion Gebbert.

227 The Bermuda Summit, 4-8 December 1953, was held at the initiative of Sir Winston Churchill and included Britain, the United States, France and the USSR. In the aftermath of loseph Stalin’s death and the Soviet development of a hydrogen bomb, Churchill hoped to gain President Eisenhower’s support for a top-level dialogue with the new Soviet leadership. He was motivated primarily by a wish to break the stalemate of the Cold War and avert a possible nuclear conflict.

228 Panama was Queen Elizabeth II’s and Prince Philip’s first port of call (29 November 1953) on their visit to Australia, which was part of the Queen’s first Commonwealth tour.

229 The letter is unsigned.

230 Sir Stanley Unwin (1884-1968), publisher, was the son of Edward Unwin, a London printer. In 1904 he joined his lather’s stepbrother, T. Fisher Unwin, in his publishing firm. At 28 he began his own firm and soon afterwards bought George Allen & Sons. With the new company, George Allen & Unwin, he quickly built a formidable list of authors. In 1926 Unwin published The Truth about Publishing, which became the authoritative textbook on the subject. He was a tireless worker, but spared time for his other passion–tennis, which he played every weekend throughout the year. In 1937, acting on the recommendation of his ten-year-old son, Rayner, he published Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Again at the recommendation of Rayner, he published The Lord of the Rings. Because that book was so difficult to describe, Unwin asked Lewis if he would write something to serve as a ‘blurb’ for its cover. Lewis included such a piece with this letter. Unwin was knighted in 1946.

231 Mrs Farrer took exception to Lewis’s portrayal of God as, not male, but masculine. In That Hideous Strength, ch. 14, part V, p. 350, Ransom tells Jane Studdock: ‘You are offended by the masculine itself: the loud, irruptive, possessive thing–the gold lion, the bearded bull–which breaks through hedges and scatters the carefully made bed. The male you could have escaped, for it exists only on the biological level. But the masculine none of us can escape. What is above and beyond all things is so masculine that we are all feminine in relation to it.’ that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.’

232 Lewis was referring to the love of the dwarf, Gimli, for Galadriel, Queen of the Elves, in The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Bk. II, ch. 7: ‘The Dwarf, hearing the names given in his own ancient tongue, looked up and met her eyes, and it seemed to him that he looked suddenly into the heart of an enemy and saw there love and understanding.’

233 In The Fellowship of the Ring, Bk. II, ch. 8, ‘Farewell to Lórien’, the Fellowship takes leave of the security of Lothlórien to destroy the Ring.

234 In the final chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring, the noble Boromir covets the Ring so badly he tries to take it from Frodo: ‘“It is by our own folly that our Enemy will defeat us,” cried Boromir. “How it angers me! Fool! Obstinate fool! Running wilfully to death and ruining our cause. If any mortals have claim to the Ring, it is the men of Númenor, and not Halflings. It is not yours save by unhappy chance. It might have been mine. It should be mine. Give it to me!”’

235 See the letter to Sir Stanley Unwin of 4 December 1953.

236 ‘make haste slowly’.

237 The Roman poet Lucretius (c. 99-c. 55 BC).

238 Lewis was referring to D. E. Harding’s The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth.

239 ibid., Preface, p. 12: ‘It would be affectation to pretend that I know whether Mr. Harding’s attempt, in its present form, will work. Very possibly not. One hardly expects the first, or the twenty-first, rocket to the Moon to make a good landing. But it is a beginning.’

240 See Dorothy L. Sayers in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1065-72.

241 Lewis had received one of Sayers’ Christmas cards. The text, ‘The Days of Christ’s Coming’, was by Sayers, with a painting by Fritz Wegner, and the card was printed by Hamish Hamilton. The picture had 27 numbered doors to be opened from 14 December to 7 January

242 Kathleen Nott had just published The Emperor’s Clothes (London: Heinemann, 1953), described on the jacket as ‘An attack on the dogmatic orthodoxy of T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, Dorothy Sayers, C. S. Lewis, and others.’

243 A Scots word for money or silver.

244 Sayers’ first part of Dante’s Divine Comedy had been published in 1949. She was now working on her translation of the Purgatorio.

245 David Gresham was in fact nine and a half years old and Douglas eight.

246 The ‘Little Kingdom’ of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Farmer Giles of Ham (1949) is set in that pleasant area east of Oxford which includes Thame, Long Crendon and Worminghall.

247 Arthur C. Clarke, Childhood’s End (New York: Ballantine, 1953).

248 H. G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon (1901).

249 Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950), whose Last and First Men (1930) and Star Maker (1937) are mentioned in CL II, pp. 236, 594.

250 i.e., Richard Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung, one of Lewis’s oldest loves. See the references to it in CL I, pp. 29, 139n, 381-2.

251 Clarke, Childhood’s End, ch. 21, p. 163.

252 ibid., p. 164.

253 Luke 14:26.

254 But in Book V when they have returned to Sicily, the women try to burn the ships so they need not go to Latium. See CL 11, p. 750, N. 148. In Virgil, Aeneid, Book III Aeneas and his companions build a fleet and set off in search of the land that first bore the Trojan race (Italy). They have many strange adventures along the way, but eventually reach Libya.

255 That is, from matters of the soul (psyche) to those of the spirit (pneuma).

256 Dante, Inferno, IV, 42.

257 The letter was unsigned.

258 Her husband, Henry Gerard Walter Sandeman, died on 19 January 1953.

259 Matthew 19:5-6; Mark 10:8-9.

260 Titirangi School for the Deaf had now merged with the Kelston Deaf Education Centre, New Lynn, Auckland, and Bodle had moved to New Lynn to continue her teaching.

261 Herbert, The Temple, ‘The Church-porch’, Stanza 72, 5-6: ‘If all want sense, God takes a text, and preacheth Patience.’

262 The Rev. Canon Ronald Edwin Head (1919-91) was appointed Curate of Holy Trinity, Headington Quarry, in 1952, and Vicar in 1956. When he arrived in the parish Holy Communion was celebrated at 8 a.m. and Morning Prayer at 11 a.m. He was responsible for reversing the times of these services.

263 Lewis may have been remembering Joanna Baillie (1762-1851), ‘The Storm-Beat Maid’ (1790), XL, 1: ‘I’ll share the cold blast on the heath.’

264 The four women are characters in the works of William Shakespeare. Imogen is the heroine of Cymbeltne (1623), Portia the heroine of The Merchant of Venice (1600). Miranda is a character in The Tempest, and Perdita appears in The Winter’s Tale (1623). While Miranda and Perdita grew up in sheltered circumstances and made happy marriages, Imogen and Portia had complicated and eventful lives which nevertheless turned out well in the end.

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