TO MR ALLWOOD (P):

Magdalen College
Oxford
18/6/54

Dear Mr. Allwood

As far as I know any baptism given in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, whoever gives it, is valid. But any instructed parson will tell you for sure.

No, I don’t for a moment think that conversion wh. can be fixed to a definite date is in the least necessary

Do we need to know the answer to your third question? God bids us spread the Gospel & we must obey. How it all works out from this point of view I don’t think we know. If we have sinned by not spreading it in our pre-Christian days (and have we sinned? no man can give another what he hasn’t got himself), well, sins are forgiven. In great haste (middle of an exam.).

Yrs. sincerely

C. S. Lewis

 

The first suggestion that the Narnian stories be filmed came from Jane Douglass of New York. She wrote to Geoffrey Bles on 27 May 1954:

I am interested in the right to make a Radio and Television series of the Narnian stories by C. S. Lewis. In there anyone in New York with whom I could deal, as the idea may be repulsive to Mr. Lewis and he would doubtless like to hear from someone who had seen me and passed upon the project before saying yes or no?…I write in the second place because I realize the importance of having it done well.²⁷⁴

While waiting for an answer, Douglass wrote to Lewis about the proposal. The following is his reply:

TO JANE DOUGLASS (W):²⁷⁵TS

54/63.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
19th June 1954.

Dear Miss Douglas,

I have heard nothing from Jocelyn Gibb. I am sure you understand that Aslan is a divine figure, and anything remotely approaching the comic (above all anything in the Disney line) would be to me simple blasphemy. But how are you going to manage any of the animals? I would welcome a fuller account. Thanks for the kind things you say.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD): TS

54/63.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
19th June 1954.

Dear Mr. Gibb,

Thanks for your letter of the 18th. I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I’m incommunicado till October: and particularly at the end of this month, when I shall be racing against time to finish off the task of examining in Final Honours Schools.

I have heard nothing about the enclosed,²⁷⁶ which I return to you in case you want to refresh your memory. Could you tell me anything?

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

 

Over the next few days Jocelyn Gibb wrote to Douglass and Lewis, and in a letter to Lewis of 21 June 1954 he said:

The trouble about these Radio and Television adaptations is that whereas you have some control over them in this country, you have very little in the United States. In fact I suggest you would not wish to commit yourself without knowing what would be involved and that you could not know until the whole thing was irretrievably on its course towards production. However, you might like to know a little more if you think there is anything in the idea, and I will willingly write to Miss Douglas asking her for further and fuller particulars. Of course she still has to arouse someone’s interest on the Radio and Television side in a country where a good deal of both is intensely commercial.²⁷⁷

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

Magdalen College
Oxford
22/6/54

Dear Mr. Gibb

(1.) I wrote to Miss Douglass emphasising the fact that Aslan is a divine figure and I shd. regard any comic element in the treatment of him as blasphemous. For the rest, I left it to you. I feel we shd. allow it only under safeguards which the T.V. people will almost certainly not give us: i.e. specimen photos of the characters and a full script with a right of veto on our part.

(2.) I don’t see that the play cd. do any harm and it might do good. So ‘Yes’ as far as I’m concerned. I think Monopods & even the Mouse will be rather beyond the amateur producer, but that’s their funeral.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

 

P.S. I’ve made two small corrections to their script.

 

On 23 June 1954 Gibb wrote to Lewis about another important matter, the possibility of his religious books appearing in paperback:

I do not know if Bles discussed with you the question of doing any of your books in paper backs so I do not know your views on the subject. I was talking to Sir Allen Lane on Monday and he would very much like to do one of your books in Penguins.²⁷⁸ This would mean an initial printing of 50,000 to 100,000 and I told him at once that the present continuing sales of ‘Screwtape’ at 7s. 6d. made it unlikely we would agree to his taking that title. There are others, however, and from past experience, which I find confirmed by what has happened in Collins, I know these 2s. paper backs reach a much wider public and do nothing but good by hustling the sales of the more expensive books by the same author. On looking through the books I would suggest that THE PROBLEM OF PAIN has too much in common with ‘Screwtape’ in the way of sales to let it go…THE GREAT DIVORCE, however, is a possibility and perhaps better still might be MIRACLES as the gap between 2s. and 12s. 6d. is greater than between 2s. and 7s. 6d.²⁷⁹

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD): TS

54/63.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
25th June 1954.

Dear Mr. Gibb,

I would be quite in favour of trying either Great Divorce or Miracles^* as a Penguin. The result of the first experiment would gve us guidance about the other.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

 

* If Miracles, I wd. like to make a few alterations in one chapter first.²⁸⁰

TO CORBIN SCOTT CARNELL (W): TS

54/354.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
25th June 1954.

Dear Carnell,

Your letter finds me in the middle of exams, and an adequate reply is impossible. If you are losing your faith in argument, why trust the arguments that lead you to do so? (This scepticism about reason under-cuts itself). Some people can be converted on rational grounds, but more can’t. All rests with God, and one must not get flustered. If in a particular case He doesn’t use you or me as His instrument, no doubt he has excellent reasons. No general conclusion follows.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

Magdalen College
Oxford
July 10th 1954

Dear Mr. Gibb

Thanks: I think the £670 may as well wait till its ordinary time in Sept.

I really don’t know what to say about the Penguin question.²⁸¹ You are a better judge than I and both our interests are equally involved. I think I must leave you to decide. The result of the experiment will give us a clue what to do next time, if there is a ‘next time’.

I suppose the Abolition of Man, a v. poor seller so far, might not find the public it needs in Penguin?

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JOAN LANCASTER (BOD):²⁸²

Magdalen College
Oxford
12/7/54

Dear Joan

I am so busy marking examination papers that I can hardly breathe! The very good ones and the very bad ones are no trouble, but the in-between ones take ages.

Thanks for telling me the bits you liked (yes, I have old copies). Chautauqua sounds lovely. In great haste.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):

Magdalen College
Oxford
13/7/54

Dear Miss Bodle

Yes, I will indeed. We are in the midst of exams here, so you will forgive me for not writing more. With all blessings.

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO SIR HENRY WILLINK (MC):

Magdalen College
Oxford.
15/7/54

My dear Master

I am surprised–and you, though you waive it, have a good right to be equally surprised–that you have had no answer to your most kind letter of June 14th. I replied to it by return and have before me at this moment the draft I handed to my secretary.

It ran (and of course this runs) ‘I accept with the warmest gratitude your very kind arrangement: please thank my future colleagues most cordially on my behalf. I should be very happy to be present for a degree by incorporation. It sounds most ungracious of me not to run over and see you pretty soon. But Vivas do not end till the end of this month and I leave for Ireland on Aug 5th. Of the tiny interval some has already been stolen by a guest.’ There will be barely 48 hours left for shopping, packing etc.

I look forward very much to coming over when that dear thing Ordinary Life begins again in October. It troubles me that I begin an acquaintance which I hope will be a most valued friendship by being a nuisance.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

 

On 19 July Warnie wrote to Rhona Bodle:²⁸³

 

54/201.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
19th July 1954.

Dear Miss Bodle,

My brother tells me he has had a letter from you, and to explain that he is in the throes of examining in the Final Honour School twelve hours a day, seven days a week; and he feels sure that in the circumstances you will understand and excuse his not replying to you personally.

Yours sincerely,

W. H. Lewis

TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV (BOD):

Magdalen College
Oxford
July 30/54

Dear Sister Penelope

Yes, I have been made Professor of ‘Medieval & Renaissance English’ at Cambridge: the scope of the chair (a new one) suits me exactly. But it won’t be as big a change as you might think. I shall still live at Oxford in the Vac. and on many week ends in term. My address will be Magdalene, so I remain under the same Patroness. This is nice because it saves ‘Admin’ re-adjustments in Heaven: also I can’t help feeling that the dear lady would understand my constitution better than a stranger would.

I can’t read the title of St. Bernard’s book, but look forward to it. Forgive me for a meagre letter: I’ve had 14 days of Vivas and have huge arrears of correspondence to make up.

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER (BOD):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
July 30/54

Dear Mr. Kinter

I am afraid the name St. Anne’s²⁸⁴ was chosen merely as a plausible & euphonious name, and for no such deep reasons as you suggest. The Witch²⁸⁵ is of course Circe,²⁸⁶ Alcina²⁸⁷ etc because she is (and they are) the same Archtype we find in so many fairy tales. No good asking where any individual author got that. We are born knowing the Witch, aren’t we?

The stone²⁸⁸ has a glance at the stone tables of the Mosaic Law and its breaking to our liberation from the curse of the law at the crucifixion. Mr. Sensible²⁸⁹ is that type of which Montaigne was the best specimen: inferior ones wd. be Horace, Ld. Chesterfield,²⁹⁰ Walter Pater,²⁹¹ Matthew Arnold²⁹²

(as critic, not as poet), George Saintsbury,²⁹³ Prof. Walter Raleigh,²⁹⁴ George Gordon.²⁹⁵ The closest conscious debt to Dante in G. Divorce is the angel who drives the bus: of Inferno IX, 79–102. The unsuccessful meeting between the ‘Tragedian’ and his wife is a sort of pendant to the successful meeting of D. and Beatrice in the Earthly Paradise.²⁹⁶

I’m not sure I know what Xtian humanism is. I think T.H.S. is about a triple conflict: Grace against Nature and Nature against Anti-Nature (modern industrialism, scientism, & totalitarian politics). I shd. be v. surprised if I owe anything to Politian or Ascham.²⁹⁷ Taking the word Humanist in the old sense in wh. they are Humanists, I am solidly anti-Humanist: i.e. tho’ I love the classics I loathe classicism. My OHEL volume ought to be out this Sept and will make the last sentence clearly [clear].²⁹⁸

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (W):

Magdalen College
Oxford
July 30th 54

Dear Starr

K.A. Today arrived just when I was in need of a new book and I romped through it. I think it is a useful and friendly book and almost sure I shd. have read it even if it had come to me as the work of a stranger. It tells me of several Arthuriana I didn’t know. Which means of course that I can’t tell you how good it is on that side: I mean, you probably know, but I don’t, and you are safe from any reviewers’ saying ‘incredible as it may seem, while finding room for some v. minor living writers, Mr. Starr wholly ignores the epoch-making works of Bluff, Bloggs, and Picksniffe’

It’s nice to find you are a sound Nennian!²⁹⁹ I’ve seen nothing of a B. and B³⁰⁰ for weeks having been busy examining–3 shifts an hour, 9 hours a day! My brother joins me in hearty greetings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
July 31/54

Dear Roger

We never defined the details of our tryst on Sept. 16th.³⁰¹ Same as last time, no doubt. But I’ve quite forgotten what we did last time! Did I await you at Woodside Hotel or on the Belfast boat? And do you remember what I did with the luggage, other than pack?

I leave here for Ireland on Aug 6th. If your reply can’t reach me before then, a safe address is J. A. GREEVES ESQ, SILVER HILL, CRAWFORDSBURN, CO DOWN, NORTHERN IRELAND.

Love to all.

Yours

Jack

TO F. MORGAN ROBERTS (W):³⁰²

Magdalen College
Oxford
July 31st 1954

Dear Mr Roberts

Thanks for your kind letter of the 23rd. I am certainly unfit to advise anyone else on the devotional life. My own rules are (1.) To make sure that, wherever else they may be placed, the main prayers should not be put ‘last thing at night’. (2.) To avoid introspection in prayer–I mean not to watch one’s own mind to see if it is in the right frame, but always to turn the attention outward to God. (3.) Never, never to try to generate an emotion by will power. (4.) To pray without words when I am able, but to fall back on words when tired or otherwise below par. With renewed thanks. Perhaps you will sometimes pray for me?

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY MARGARET MCCASLIN (W):³⁰³

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Aug 2 d 54

Dear Mrs. McCaslin

Thank you for your letter of the July 25th. I will certainly put you in my prayers. I can well believe that you were divinely supported at the time of your terrible calamity. People often are. It is afterwards, when the new and bleaker life is beginning to be a routine, that one often feels one has been left rather unaided. I am sure one is not really so. God’s presence is not the same as the feeling of God’s presence and He may be doing most for us when we think He is doing least.

Loneliness, I am pretty sure, is one of the ways by which we can grow spiritually. Until we are lonely we may easily think we have got further than we really have in Christian love: our (natural and innocent, but merely natural, not heavenly) pleasure in being loved–in being, as you say, an object of interest to someone–can be mistaken for progress in love itself, the outgoing active love which is concerned with giving, not receiving. It is this latter which is the beginning of sanctity.

But of course you know all this: alas, so much easier to know in theory than to submit to day by day in practice! Be very regular in your prayers and communions: and don’t value special ‘guidances’ any more than what comes thro’ ordinary Christian teaching, conscience, and prudence.

I am shocked to hear that your friends think of following me. I wanted them to follow Christ. But they’ll get over this confusion soon, I trust.

Please accept my deepest sympathy.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO CHAD WALSH (W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Aug 5/54

Dear Chad

It’s true. I become ‘chair borne’ and do less work for more pay. But I shall still live at Oxford most of the year and hope to see you all in some of our old haunts. I look forward to your children’s book. I shall be seeing both Joy and my brother to-day, I expect, & will give them your message. My skill on the recorder about equal to that of Rosencrantz.³⁰⁴ All the best,

Yours

Jack

 

Some months earlier, Bill Gresham had filed for divorce from Joy on the grounds of desertion and incompatibility. He received his divorce in Miami, Florida, on 5 August 1954. He married Renée Pierce that same day.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD): TS

Magdalen College
Oxford
August 6, 1954

My dear Arthur

We ought to have been crossing tonight, but Warnie is in a nursing home (the usual thing). I will get across by hook or crook for my jaunt with you, arriving Crawfordsburn Monday, August 30th. I am writing to the Inn to cancel the original bookings and confirm a room for myself on the night of the 31st. But so many letters to that blasted Inn have gone astray that I’d be very glad if you would walk round and see for yourself that they’ve got these instructions all right.

Blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO CYNTHIA DONNELLY (P):³⁰⁵

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
August 14, 1954

Dear Mrs Donnelly

Thank you for your most kind and encouraging letter. I think you have a mistaken idea of a Christian writer’s duty. We must use the talent we have, not the talents we haven’t. We must not of course write anything that will flatter lust, pride or ambition. But we needn’t all write patently moral or theological work. Indeed, work whose Christianity is latent may do quite as much good and may reach some whom the more obvious religious work would scare away.

The first business of a story is to be a GOOD STORY. When Our Lord made a wheel in the carpenter shop, depend upon it it was first and foremost a GOOD WHEEL. Don’t try to ‘bring in’ specifically Christian bits: if God wants you to serve him in that way (He may not: there are different vocations) you will find it coming in of its own accord. If not, well–a good story which will give innocent pleasure is a good thing, just like cooking a good nourishing meal. (You don’t put little texts in your family soup, I’ll be bound.)

By the way, none of my stories began with a Christian message. I always start from a mental picture–the floating islands, a faun with an umbrella in a snowy wood, an ‘injured’ human head. Of course my non-fiction works are different. But they succeed because I’m a professional teacher and explanation happens to be one of the things I’ve learned to do.

But the great thing is to cultivate one’s own garden, to do well the job which one’s own natural capacities point out (after first doing well whatever the ‘duties of one’s station’ impose). Any honest workmanship (whether making stories, shoes, or rabbit hutches) can be done to the glory of God. I hope you can read this!

With heartiest good wishes to all.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College
Oxford
Aug 15/54

My dear Arthur

W. and I sail tomorrow & go straight to the South. I hope to be at C’burn on the 30th and have now booked a room there for 30th and 31st. I am sorry you come in for a share of the bother. If I had my wits more about me perhaps I cd. have spared you: but I am a muddler at the best of times and was then in a good deal of distress. I embark on the ‘holiday’ with W. full of gloomiest forebodings.

Let me have your prayers: I am tired, scared, & bewildered.

Yours

Jack

TO MRS SACHER (P):

Magdalen College
Oxford
Aug 18. 54.

Dear Mrs. Sacher

Certainly I had no right to assume development after death. I wd. have been taking a safer line if I had said ‘not so bad to live with for 70 years, but Hell to live with forever’.³⁰⁶ At the same time, who knows if Hell is not, in fact, simply the working out of the soul’s evil to its logical conclusions? No one had pointed out this passage to me before.

Thank you for the kind things you say.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Silver Hill etc.
Aug 31st 54

My dear Roger

V. good. I await you after breakfast in Woodside Hotel on Sept 16, and dine & sleep (thanks hugely) with you on 17th. I’m afraid I must get to Oxford on the 18th.

V. sorry to hear about the Buzzard. I don’t understand their views at all.

Yours with love to all.

Jack

 

The Horse and His Boy was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 6 September 1954.

On 9 September Warnie wrote to Jocelyn Gibb:

 

54/63.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
9th September 1954

Dear Mr. Gibb,

I am ‘holding the fort’ for my brother, C. S. Lewis, who is in the west of Ireland and has–very wisely–left me no address; so all that I can say about your letter of the 6th is that he shall have it as soon as he returns. Probably in about a fortnight’s time. The six copies of the new book arrived a couple of days ago, and I’m sure he will be as pleased as I am with the get-up.

Yours sincerely,

W. H. Lewis

TO JOAN LANCASTER (BOD): TS

54/232.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
9th September 1954.

Dear Joan,

Many thanks for your nice letter of 31st August, which I found most interesting. You are lucky that at your age you are having such lovely dreams: and how very well you describe them. This, I may add, is not just compliment, I really mean that what you write is good. I do see your Coloured Mountains. When I was young, all my dreams were horrors–insects the size of small ponies which closed in upon me, etc.

I’ve never seen Aida,³⁰⁷ but I’ve known the music since I was a small boy: and how good it is. It’s rather the fashion over here now amongst the musical snobs to look down their noses when Verdi is mentioned and talk about the ‘cheapness of his thematic material’. What they really mean is that Verdi could write tunes, and they can’t!

With love,

Yours,

C. S. Lewis³⁰⁸

 

English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama, Vol. III of the Oxford History of English Literature, was published by the Clarendon Press of Oxford on 16 September 1954.

TO MARY MARGARET MCCASLIN (W):

Magdalen College
Oxford
Sept 19. 54.

Dear Mrs. McCaslin

I got your letter only yesterday on my return from Ireland. I can’t refrain from playing back over the net to your Rom x. 14³⁰⁹ with I Cori. 12–14.³¹⁰ Then, I suppose, we can call it a draw?

I must have expressed myself badly if you thought I denied that purely human love cd. be outgoing & giving as well as in-drawing and receptive. I only meant that the former was more essentially love & more divine: especially when expended (as it can be by saints) on an unlovable object. All this is much better said by Geo. MacDonald. Look at him in my G. MacDonald: an Anthology.³¹¹

I can’t boast as many jobs as you (how do you keep up with them?) but at present I have 5 weeks’ accumulation of letters to answer with my own hand, so you will not wonder why this is short. All blessings.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

 

You have been in my daily prayers ever since your first letter.

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College
Oxford
Sept 19/54

Dear Mary Willis–

I got back from my holiday yesterday, to the usual pile of letters wh. makes one wonder if holidays are worth it. (I had been in Ireland, Donegal, which is lovely. All the mountains look like mountains in a story, and there are wooded valleys, & golden sands, & the smell of peat from every cottage). I’m glad I wasn’t in your heatwave! Your description fully reconciles me to the unusually cold & wet summer we have had here. But I wd. like to have a stage-door acquaintance with a star Rabbit! I was v. glad to hear about Jeannie. (How different girls are from boys. To me at her age clothes wd. have been the dullest of all presents).

About the lack of religious education: of course you must be grieved, but remember how much religious education has exactly the opposite effect to that wh. was intended, how many hard atheists come from pious homes. May we not hope, with God’s mercy, that a similarly opposite effect may be produced in her case? Parents are not Providence: their bad intentions may be frustrated as their good ones. Perhaps prayers as a secret indulgence which Father disapproves may have a charm they lacked in houses where they were commanded.

And congratulations on the Virginia Anthology. All you tell me about yr. daughter’s position is dreadful: and I can well understand yr. fears about old age. And of course you are doing the v. best thing in meditating on the sufferings of Our Lord. (Drat–on top of all the letters comes a telephone call to say that ‘a lady’ in the Lodge wants to come across & see me).

I’ve been made a Professor at Cambridge, which will mean less work & therefore of course (’tis the way of the world) more pay. I’ve also got rheumatism, but not v. bad: only like always feeling you’ve just had a 20 mile walk on a rather hard road! It is nice to be able to write again: I’ve had a very hectic summer. You are always in my prayers.

Yours

Jack

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Sept 25th 1954

Dear Mr. Gibb

Wd. you kindly get them to send the Narnian stories (complete set up to date) to Miss M. Radcliffe, Treetops, Sandheath Rd, Hindhead, Surrey?³¹² THAHB³¹³ has arrived & looks v. nice. Collins is coming down to lunch one day soon. I gather you and he are now in harness together, so I can discuss all questions about the paper-backs with him?

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Sept 25th 54

Dear Dorothy

(1.) The enclosed, from a friend, gave me a shock. I know nothing of a BBC programme. Do you?

(2.) Did you know when you wrote it–or have 1000 other busybodies told you since–that the phrase wh. started Harriet’s sonnet in Gaudy Night had probably come into her mind from Milton (P.L. VIII 164–5)?³¹⁴

Yours

Jack

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

54/229.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
25th September 1954.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

Many thanks for your nice letter of the 15th., though it would have given both of us more pleasure if your account of your own state had been better: which I hope it now is. And I’m so glad that the HORSE helped to see you through an illness, which I trust is now a thing of the past. My brother thanks you too for all the kind things you say of the CENTURY,³¹⁵ and says he hopes to have another book out either late this year or early next, of which you shall have a copy.

I’m afraid it would be sheer dishonesty to pretend that we now have any kitchen needs; this government has done a magnificent job in getting us on our feet again, and a few weeks back, we solemnly burnt our Ration Books. Everything is now ‘off ration’, and though at first of course, prices went up with a rush, they are now dropping. But cheer up, if our friends the Socialists get back into power, you will be able to exercise your unfailing kindness once more by supplying us, not with little luxuries, but with the necessities of life!

‘How is Cambridge?’ Well, so to speak, it is’nt; in other words, I have not yet begun my Cambridge career. And when I do, the break will not be so big as you might imagine; for I shall be non-resident. Cambridge will be content with my presence there from Tuesdays to Saturdays in term time, so I shall be able to keep on the house at Oxford and become what I think you call a ‘commutor’ don’t you? Our sister college, Magdalene, has been good enough to give me a set of rooms, so I shall be very snug during the week.

I hope you will soon have all this wretched business of yours finished,³¹⁶ and it must be a great consolation to you to know that the Tycoon³¹⁷ is flourishing and growing up in your own home atmosphere. We look forward to the pictures.

With love from us both to you both,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Sept 27/54

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

I was delighted to hear through your letter to my brother that all goes well with Genia, and of your Father’s lovely end. If we cd. all go like that! I had a lovely time in Donegal (tho’ I picked up some rheumatism) and am now externally, but happily, busy. Love to all.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS ‘JONES’³¹⁸(W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Sept 27th 1954

Dear Mrs.

‘Why has sex become man’s chief stumbling block?’ But has it? Or is it only the most recognisable of the stumbling blocks? I mean, we can mistake Pride for a good conscience, and Cruelty for zeal, and Idleness for the peace of God etc. But when Lust is upon us, then, owing to the obvious physical symptoms, we can’t pretend it is anything else. Is it perhaps only the least disguisable of our dangers. At the same time I think there is something in what you say. If marriage is an image of the mystical marriage between Christ & the Church, then adultery is an image of apostasy. Also, all the sexual vices have this unfair advantage that the very temptation is itself pleasurable: whereas the temptations, say, to Anger or Cowardice are in themselves unpleasant.

I don’t think I can solve yr. question about the pains of childbirth. I can only say that vicarious suffering seems to be deeply embedded in the post-fall world so that the Atonement is simply the supreme instance of a universal law. Wd. the inequality between man’s & woman’s share of the cause be less marked if Man (or selected, fortunate men) had not now managed to evade his share? If he still in person tilled the earth and fought the wild beasts? And has civilisation increased the woman’s pain? I’ve heard of savage women who suffer much less. But I am only offering conjectures. I don’t know the answer.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Sept 28th 1954

Dear Gibb (If we may drop the honorific both sides)

Thanks for cheque (£1156–12–10) and letter.

I dare say neither G.B.³¹⁹ nor anyone else is to blame for my not fully understanding the situation: I am such a duffer at business that an explanation wh. wd. have been clear to any experienced person may have been made and failed of ‘reception’!

I think I’ve got it now. Anyway, all that matters from my point of view is such an understanding between Collins & you as will save you both the trouble of writing, and me of answering, two different letters about any one transaction.

My new job is Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English in the U. of Cambridge. It is a new Chair. I shall not be regularly resident at Cambridge till January next. I shd. welcome a visit (lunch or dinner & bed) from you here this term.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO PAULINE BAYNES (BOD):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Oct 2nd 1954

Dear Miss Baynes

I say! You have learned something about animals in the last few months: where did you do it. This Horse,³²⁰ whether charging with his hansom,³²¹ or growing his wings,³²² or flying,³²³ is the real thing: and so is the elephant.³²⁴ Congratulations! I mention the beasts first because they show the greatest advance: the ruins of Charn³²⁵ and the dwarfs³²⁶ and the landscape are excellent too–but then I knew they wd. be. Indeed, indeed, you have not let the side down. R. Hugh says I’ve got to reject 6, so I have reluctantly done so: none of your favourites, I think. I was v. sorry to lose Aunt Letty mending the mattress–a nice, homely scene–but doomed her in the end because she is dressed more in the style of the 1860’s than in that of the 1900’s.³²⁷ (The difference naturally seems more to me than to you!).

My brother, who is well, joins me in cordial greetings. I hope you will go on from triumph to triumph.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W): TS

54/70.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
2nd October 1954.

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen,

This is indeed luxury; I have’nt seen so much ‘candy’ all in a heap since I was a small boy at Christmas time. Many thanks for your kindness, and my brother asked to be joined in this. I often wonder if in the England of a couple of hundred years ago, ‘candy’ was the term for all kinds of sweetmeats, and whether the Pilgrim Fathers took the word over to America; for with us now, as I dare say you know, ‘candy’ is a word for a special kind of sweet, being short for ‘sugar candy’–an amber coloured stuff, too hard to bite, which you suck.

We are at present ‘enjoying’ the sort of weather which I most dislike–grey skies, humid air, and a temperature of about 60: hotter indeed than it has been during the so-called ‘summer’, but I’d prefer some real autumn weather. Most of your sex I know, do not like autumn, but to me, crisp sunny autumn days, with the leaves changing colour, is the crown of the year.

With renewed thanks, and all best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis³²⁸

TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (W): TS

54/240.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
4th October 1954.

Dear Starr,

Lockhard is the kindest and most courteous of men, so your friend can be quite sure that the Post Office must be to blame for his silence. He had better try again, for Lockhard (and he alone) knows the answer to all the questions.

I had a delightful visit from your sister:³²⁹ please remember me to her. There are excellent pubs at Cambridge; and I speak from first-hand knowledge, having just returned from a week of spying out the land there. I’m afraid one must admit that, architecturally, Cambridge beats Oxford; there is so much more variety in Cambridge.

Yes, Mrs. C. Williams³³⁰ is still alive (address, 23, Antrim Mansions, London, N.W.3), and I’m sure would not object to being approached; whether she would have anything of value to communicate is another matter.

My brother joins me in cordial greetings, and asks me to point out to you that I shall still be spending my week-ends and vacations in Oxford: so that, when you return to these shores, you will find the B. & B. still functioning.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD): TS

54/178.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
8th October 1954.

Dear Blamires,

I should be very flattered (indeed touched) by a dedication but I think it would be a mistake.³³¹ Those who like my kind of book are the people already most likely to welcome yours, so the dedication won’t help you with them. And it will deter those who don’t like my kind. Also, the more you associate yourself with me, the less you will be regarded as a new phenomenon. This is serious advice, and I’d value the compliment of your following it more than that of a dedication. I look forward to the trilogy very much.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Oct 9th 54

Dear Mary Willis–

Thanks for your letter of the 6th, enclosing poem which I enjoyed. Fairies–the people of the Shidhe (pronounced Shee)–are still believed in many parts of Ireland and greatly feared. I stayed at a lovely bungalow in Co. Louth where the wood was said to be haunted by a ghost and by fairies. But it was the latter who kept the country people away. Which gives you the point of view–a ghost much less alarming than a fairy. A Donegal man told a parson I know that one night when he was walking home on the beach a woman came up out of the sea and ‘her face was as pale as gold’. I have seen a leprechaun’s shoe, given to a doctor by a grateful patient. It was the length, and hardly more than the breadth, of my forefinger, made of soft leather and slightly worn on the sole. But get out of your head any ideas of comic or delightful creatures. They are greatly dreaded, and called ‘the good people’ not because they are good but in order to propitiate them. I have found no trace of anyone believing or ever having believed (in England or Ireland) in the tiny fairies of Shakespeare, wh. are a purely literary invention. Leprechauns are smaller than men, but most fairies are of human size, some larger.

I don’t know that a professorial chair or anything else will now provide for a comfortable old age in this country. You see pensions & investments are taxed as ‘unearned income’ and that leaves v. little of them.

It will be a pretty tough job translating a French book with no more knowledge of French than a dictionary can give! I don’t see how any dict. will enable one to understand a phrase like est ce qu’il y en avait.³³² Get the French trans. of some book you have in English (say the Bible) and try to get the hang of the language from that. Or perhaps the French Lion, Witch, & W.,³³³ which I enclose, would be more up to date and idiomatic. Between ourselves, I don’t think you’ll translate your present book very well, but you’ll learn quite a lot of French in struggling with it and then your next attempt might be good. I wish I cd. relieve any of your various troubles–but it is v. clear that the Holy Ghost is leading you through them all. With every blessing.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO JOAN LANCASTER (BOD): TS

54/232.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
20th October 1954.

Dear Joan Lancaster,

It was very nice of you to send me the telegram, and I am so glad you liked the Horse and his Boy. I was going to send this to your New York home, but I see you are still on holidays in Florida. I hope it has been nicer than my seaside holiday, when it was very cold, and rained nearly all the time.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

 

The Milton Society of America had invited Lewis to ‘A Milton Evening in honor of Douglas Bush and C. S. Lewis’ to be held in New York City on 28 December 1954. Following this letter to Chad Walsh is Lewis’s undated reply to their invitation.

TO CHAD WALSH (W): TS

54/274.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
25th October 1954.

Dear Chad,

Many thanks for your note of the 21st. I’ve already told Roberts that I can’t come;³³⁴ am in the middle of, or rather on the edge of all the tohobohu of evacuating Magdalen, Oxford for Magdalene, Cambridge, where I take up my new post at the beginning of next year. And then will come the job of digging in and consolidating my position. I’m very sorry, for I should have welcomed not only the chance of meeting the Miltonists, but many old friends, not least yourself. My brother sends his greetings and good wishes.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO THE MILTON SOCIETY OF AMERICA:³³⁵

Magdalen College,
Oxford.

To the Milton Society of America.

 

Gentlemen

Mr. Hunter³³⁶ informs me that your Society has done me an honour above my deserts. I am deeply grateful to be chosen for it and also delighted by the very existence of such a Society as yours. May it have a long and distinguished history!

The list of my books which I send in answer to Mr. Hunter’s request will, I fear, strike you as a very mixed bag. Since he encourages me to ‘make a statement’ about them, I may point out that there is a guiding thread. The imaginative man in me is older, more continuously operative, and in that sense more basic than either the religious writer or the critic. It was he who made me first attempt (with little success) to be a poet. It was he who, in response to the poetry of others, made me a critic, and, in defence of that response, sometimes a critical controversialist. It was he who, after my conversion led me to embody my religious belief in symbolical or mythopoeic forms, ranging from Screwtape to a kind of theologised science-fiction. And it was, of course, he who has brought me, in the last few years to write the series of Narnian stories for children; not asking what children want and then endeavouring to adapt myself (this was not needed) but because the fairy-tale was the genre best fitted for what I wanted to say.

But you see already that it is dangerous to ask an author to talk about his own work. The difficulty is to make him stop: and I should ill repay your kindness if I did not sternly draw rein.

With many thanks, Gentlemen, I remain

Yours most obliged, obedient

Servant

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

54/229.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
26th October 1954.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

Many thanks for your kind letter of the 23rd. You have both our sympathy and our prayers in the ordeal through which you have passed, and are about to pass, and we hope that the ‘waking up’ as you call it, will bring you peace.³³⁷ I don’t think many of us in this country take to motoring–even in the nursery–at the Tycoon’s age, and I should like to see him travelling in reverse. I must have been six or seven before I acquired my first vehicle, a tricycle with solid tyres; but it was for use out of doors. I pity the modern child here its toy shops when I see the miserable quality and variety of toys as compared with the displays when I was a child; with the tycoon it is no doubt embarras de richesses. We look forward to the photos.

There is a neat wooden case reposing on my table which emits a pleasing gurgling noise, and my brother and I have been speculating on its contents; now we know, and we shall proceed to investigate the matter in due course–‘due course’ in this context probably meaning Christmas.³³⁸ It is very good of you indeed, and will be a great treat; for, while we can now buy plenty of so called whiskey, all the real stuff is reserved for the export market only.

I am in the preliminary agonies of casting one shell and growing another. On 31st December I have to move all my goods and chattels out of these rooms and distribute them between Cambridge and the Kilns; indeed when your letter arrived, we were going round with a stick of chalk, marking the destination of each piece of furniture. I need hardly say I shall be very glad when the move is completed.

With love to you all from both of us, yours, C. S. Lewis

TO J. O. REED (P): TS

54/478.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
26th October 1954.

My dear Reed,

Of course, with pleasure, and all good wishes. It would be hard luck if you had to write testimonials and could’nt get others to write one for you! Anyway, its only a referee you want, is’nt it?

I expect the OHEL is full of things you’ve heard me say already.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (W): TS

54/240.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
26th October 1954.

Dear Starr,

I never heard Charles Williams mention the Mark Twain story.³³⁹ I fear the Grail has been ‘found’ pretty often, and Archdeacons (not very rare in real life) are common in fiction.³⁴⁰ It would be hard to discover if there was more than a co-incidence here.

My horse, though of course he talks, is rather an ass.³⁴¹ Not at all like Swift’s.³⁴² My brother joins me in greetings. Remember me to your sister when you meet.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER (BOD): TS

54/407.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
28th October 1954.

Dear Kinter,

Thanks for your most interesting letter. I simply don’t know how my Lion is related to Spenser’s. Aslan is the Turkish word for a lion: I chose it for the sound. I can’t see the misprint on p. 392.³⁴³

With all good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO BELLE ALLEN (L):

[Magdalen College]
1/11/54

Dear Mrs Allen

I think it would be dangerous to suppose that Satan had created all the creatures that are disagreeable or dangerous to us for (a) those creatures, if they could think, wd. have just the same reason for thinking that we were created by Satan. (b) I don’t think evil, in the strict sense, can create. It can spoil something that Another has created. Satan may have corrupted other creatures as well as us. Part of the corruption in us might be the unreasoning horror and disgust we feel at some creatures quite apart from any harm they can do us. (I can’t abide a spider myself.) We have scriptural authority for Satan originating diseases–see Luke XIII.16.³⁴⁴

Do you know, the suffering of the innocent is less of a problem to me v. often than that of the wicked. It sounds absurd: but I’ve met so many innocent sufferers who seem to be gladly offering their pain to God in Christ as part of the Atonement, so patient, so meek, even so at peace, and so unselfish that we can hardly doubt they are being, as St Paul says, ‘made perfect by suffering’.³⁴⁵ On the other hand I meet selfish egoists in whom suffering seems to produce only resentment, hate, blasphemy, and more egoism. They are the real problem.

Christian Scientists seem to me to be altogether too simple. Granted that all the evils are illusions, still, the existence of that illusion wd. be a real evil and presumably a real evil permitted by God. That brings us back to exactly the same point as we began from. We have gained nothing by the theory. We are still faced with the great mystery, not explained, but coloured, transmuted, all through the Cross. Faith, not wild over-simplifications, is what will help, don’t you think? It is so v. difficult to believe that the travail of all creation which God Himself descended to share, at its most intense, may be necessary in the process of turning finite creatures (with free wills) into–well, into Gods….

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen
Nov 1st 54

Dear Mary Willis–

If you tell me that you don’t know French, of course I believe you! If you were only coying and found my literal acceptance of the statement a shock–well, it’ll ‘larn you’ to practice mock modesty another time. It never works with me, I assure you. If a man tells me he can’t do something I always believe him: he ought to know!

I am v. sorry to hear you have been ill. You don’t give me any idea what the ‘old trouble’ is. Anyway, I hope it has stood off again.

About copies of the Lion et la Sorcière I presume the price and publisher’s name & address are printed in the one you have, and an order to that publisher enclosing the requisite sum will elicit the goods! (People so often ask me how to get a book, and it seems an odd question. Are they equally puzzled how to order a cwt. of coals or a bottle of gin?) I’m afraid I don’t know about E. Charllier.³⁴⁶

No, my rheumatism is not really bad. It only produces extreme foot-soreness in the left foot, so that after 50 yards, tho’ the right one is fresh as a daisy the left keeps on whimpering ‘Stop! Stop! We’ve been 25 miles already.’ The real nuisance is that I am beginning to get horribly fat and this foot comes just when I ought to be slimming by long walks. I have had to give up potatoes, milk, & bread: perhaps having to fast for medical reasons is a just punishment for not having fasted enough on higher grounds!

Did I tell you I’ve been made a professor at Cambridge? I take up my duties on Jan. 1st at Magdalene College, Cambridge (Eng.). Note the difference in spelling. It means rather less work for rather more pay. And I think I shall like Magdalene better than Magdalen. It’s a tiny college (a perfect cameo architecturally) and they’re so old fashioned, & pious, & gentle and conservative–unlike this leftist, atheist, cynical, hard-boiled, huge Magdalen. Perhaps from being the fogey and ‘old woman’ here I shall become the enfant terrible there.

It is nice to be still under the care of St. Mary Magdalene: she must by now understand my constitution better than a stranger wd., don’t you think. The allegorical sense of her great action³⁴⁷ dawned on me the other day. The precious alabaster box wh. one must break over the Holy Feet is one’s heart. Easier said than done. And the contents become perfume only when it is broken. While they are safe inside they are more like sewage. All v. alarming.

Yours

Jack

TO P. H. NEWBY (BBC):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Nov. 3rd 1954

Dear Mr. Newby

Thanks for your offer of Nov 2nd. I am tempted, but I must resist.³⁴⁸ I have too much on the plate already. I still have hopes of someday talking into a Microphone again, but I can’t at present.

With regards.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS (BOD):

[Magdalen College]
Nov 5/54

Dear Dom Bede–

The best Dickens always seems to me to be the one I have read last! But in a cool hour I put Bleak House top for its sheer prodigality of invention.

About death, I go through different moods, but the times when I can desire it are never, I think, those when this world seems harshest. On the contrary, it is just when there seems to be most of Heaven already here that I come nearest to longing for the patria. It is the bright frontispiece [which] whets one to read the story itself. All joy (as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement) emphasises our pilgrim status: always reminds, beckons, awakes desire. Our best havings are wantings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):³⁴⁹TS

54/63. Magdalen College,
Oxford.
12th November 1954.

Dear Gibb,

Golly! It will be nice for royalties, tho’ rather horrifying in some ways. Thanks for letting me know.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):

As from Magdalen,
Oxford
Nov 14th 1954

Dear Dorothy–

Your Introductory Papers³⁵⁰ have given me a regular feast. They have even enlarged my vocabulary. If you had looked into my mind (in-mee’d yourself)³⁵¹ as I puzzled over p. 193 you wd. have smiled on me as a mother smiles on her desirous babe. I was ready to admit that one bull-finch might be bigger than another, and even–I am no ornithologist–that there might be a black variety, altho’ ne’ vedi stesso ne’ credo che posse.³⁵² But how a man on a horse ‘negotiated’ a songbird, or why the bird sat still to be ‘negotiated’–then I asked my brother who told me what a bullfinch was. (Dialectical form of ‘bull-fence’? a hedge thick and high enough to confine a bull? The suggestion is his. And he sends his duty).

It is a lovely book. I suppose the absolute high light is The City of Dis–we all do Hell best, not quite for the reason our critics suppose–but every essay and nearly every page enriched me. Do you know? I’d never seen the Virgilian parallel you point out on pp 16–17. Nor have I read Isaac Pennington: if your quotation is at all characteristic, I must certainly do so.³⁵³ You ‘do’ the angel (p. 27) magnificently and the point–that D. can be ‘awful’ but his Hell is, rightly, not awful–is just what was needed.³⁵⁴ Your bit of evidence from Belsen on p. 33 (I didn’t know it) makes all the difference to Ugolino’s line.³⁵⁵

The distinction between Spenser & D. on pp 35–36, excellent. Perhaps on p. 37 you make too much of tace:³⁵⁶ tacente luna, you know, is good classical Latin and D. wd. have known it. Your point stands, but is really more a point about language in general (‘language is a perpetual Orphic song’)³⁵⁷ than about D’s language.

P. 44 is, as we expected of you, ‘the stuff to give ’em’.³⁵⁸ P. 47, 6 lines from end, I wish that instead of ‘could no more’³⁵⁹ you’d said ‘could much less’. Surely a poet does add to himself by the poem. (We know better what we mean, and we mean it more, if we can express it in a poem). P. 52 is a blaze of (just) splendour. (Drat our homophones: by just I don’t mean ‘nothing but’, I mean ‘justified’, ‘veracious’)

Thank you for the fine contrast between the Islamic, and the real, Heaven on pp 58–9.³⁶⁰ Poor old Santayana! I thought he would have known better, for he had, hadn’t he, his own Pagan nobility–if only in his style.³⁶¹

What a good (and now obvious) point about the Fall story at the bottom of p. 63!³⁶² And some fine, chastening comedy on pp. 64–5. I’m not sure (p. 63) whether there’d be simultaneity in Hell. Von Hügel says the opposite, if I remember rightly: that as the rising above time to one’s wholeness (in God) will be part of beatitude, so the ever more total submergence in time, the falling apart into utterly inconsistent succession–each mood hostile to the last–might be part of perdition.³⁶³ It is already the mark of the ruining soul that she ‘isn’t the same for two minutes together’. (That may be why our Gigadibs’s³⁶⁴ are now so ‘decade-conscious’!)

P. 97 is you at your very best: and how good you can be! On P. 114, para 3, l 4 I have my only grumble. Surely ‘evolving in the direction of perfectibility’ says twice over what you meant to say once? If a thing is capable of evolving to perfection then it is perfectible. You don’t want it to ‘become capable of being capable of perfection’ do you? For that, after all, wd. be the same as ‘being capable of perfection’ tout court? P. 122 to the end of that essay is first class.

I am just a little divided in my mind about the comedy of the Comedy (not especially the essay of that name, but your view on that subject throughout). On the one hand, I have no doubt at all that your resolute stand against the ‘awful’ Miltonic, Caryish,³⁶⁵ high-brow D., and your defence of all the comic, novelistic, and science-fiction elements (I, of course, wd. have made more of the last) is right, and will turn out hereafter to give you your chief permanent place in the history of Dantology. That is the great debt we all owe you.

But I’ve a feeling that in handling particular passages you are too certain that whatever is comic to us was, and was meant to be, comic at the time. Because, as any one can see even from the old Punches, nothing changes so quickly as the sense of humour: so that in reading any old book there is nothing we are less sure of than which places wd. welcome a smile. And oughtn’t we to start by a recognition that our generation (yours & mine) was quite abnormally ‘tickle o’ the sere’³⁶⁶ (already the young people are less so). The strength of your case depends on the number of passages wh. admit a high-comedy reading: this is quite consistent with a tinge of dubiety about many of them individually. (Not of course about the farcical devils: there, we know there is a wide, unmistakable tradition). Don’t give me the next set, I’ll buy it. And do put in an essay on D. as ‘poet’ in the old, narrowest sense–his sheer poeticalness. Otherwise we shall have some ass saying that because you like so many other qualities, you are oblivious to that. A 1000 thanks. By the way, why ‘matter of Brittany’?³⁶⁷ Why not ‘Britain’

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO JILL FREUD (T): TS

54/147.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
15th November 1954.

My dear June,

How very nice. Yes, of course we shall be delighted to see you here (College) for lunch on the 20th, as near 1 p.m. as you can make it. I am assuming that Miss Freud³⁶⁸ will not be of the party, but if she is coming, let me know. Warnie will pass on your warnings and hints about Susie³⁶⁹ to Paxford, but points out that the result will be very like talking into a disconnected telephone!

With love to all,

yours,

Jack

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Nov 17. 54

Dear Mary Willis

No time to write properly but just a line to thank you for two letters. There is no need to apologise for your joke about the French: its only fault, as a joke, is that it is a bit complicated! Neuralgia in the ear is an old friend of mine & I think it usually comes from a draught. All blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Nov 20/54

Dear Mary Willis

Thanks for the magazine. I think your ‘pome’³⁷⁰ gets the awe and rigidity of the Byzantine atmosphere very well. As for McCarthy³⁷¹ I never met anyone, American or English, who did not speak of him with horror. A very intelligent American pupil said ‘He is our potential Hitler’.

In haste.

Yours

Jack

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Nov 22nd 54

Dear Dorothy

Oh, I’ll fight to the death for your lighter & freer view of D.³⁷² against the outer world. I was only hinting, among ourselves, a faint doubt about the particular applications. If he’d meant to write one of the great Kinds,³⁷³ he wouldn’t have called it a Comedy and used the vernacular in qua et mulierculae etc³⁷⁴ (How to translate that?).

Hell might be perpetual without being eternal: i.e. might really be what some suppose Heaven to be–endless succession. It is almost too horrid, tho’, even for Hell.

The Inaugural is not till the 29th³⁷⁵ so I don’t know how it went. That’s the trouble about our kind of time!

Yours

Jack

TO DANIEL DAVIN (OUP):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Nov 22/54

Dear Davin

I am greatly obliged to you for the kind things you say and to Mr. Davis for taking more trouble about another man’s book than I (apparently) have taken with my own.

I enclose a list wh. adopts nearly all his corrections and adds one of my own. I have tried hard to make the spaces fairly equal on p. 547.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

Eng. Lit. in the 16th Century Excluding Drama³⁷⁶

 

p. 24. l 4 from foot	For changing read changeless
p. 74. l 20	For came read come
p. 81. l para 31.2	For Eneydon read Eneydos
p. 82. l 11 from foot	For kaleyard read kailyard
p. 122. l 9.	For the poem is its treatment of enemies. It read his poem is its treatment of enemies. He
p. 123. l. 12	For Horstman read Horstmann
p. 124. footnote l. 3 & 4	Hyphen between Church and yard
p. 128. l. 27	For Passtime read Pastime
p. 134. para 2. l 6	For Pelèrinage read Plèrinage
p. 140 para 2. l. 17	For Ny read By
p. 193 footnote l. 8–9	Delete being used
p. 357 para 2 l. 2. last line	For order do read order, do For 1579, read 1579
p. 365 para 3 l. 3 from foot	For form, be read form be
p. 386. l. 12	For wordly read worldly
p. 492 l. 13	For delicious; read delicious:
p. 526. para 2 l. 1	For 1562 read 1563?
p. 547 ll. Ad ff.	For I do not think…Heroides.’ read This piece need not have been written after Drayton’s Heroical Epistles: if with Donne’s editor we call it ‘heroical’ we mean only that it is in the manner of the Heroides.
p. 597 l. 8.	Delete first

 

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Nov. 23rd 1954

My dear Van Auken–

It is a long time since you wrote and told me of your wife’s grave illness.³⁷⁷ You asked my prayers and of course have had them: not only daily, for I never wake in the night without remembering you both before God. I have sometimes tried, by sophistical arguments, to persuade myself that your silence might somehow be interpreted as a good omen…but how could it?

If you can bear, will you tell me your news. If she has gone where we can feel no anxiety about her, then I must feel anxious about you. I liked you both so well: never two young people more. And to like is to fear. Whatever has happened and in whatever state you are (I have horrid pictures in my mind) all blessings on you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

 

On 29 November 1954 Lewis gave his inaugural lecture, ‘De Descriptione Temporum’, as the new Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English, University of Cambridge.

TO RUTH PITTER (BOD): TS

The Kilns,
Kiln Lane,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford.
30th November 1954.

Dear Ruth,

Will you please note that this will be my address from 1st January 1955.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W): TS

The Kilns,
Kiln Lane,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford.
30th November 1954.

Dear Miss Sayers,

Will you please note that this will be my address from 1st January 1955.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis.

TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (W): TS

The Kilns,
Kiln Lane,
Headington Quarry, Oxford.
30th November 1954.

Dear Starr,

Will you please note that this will be my address from 1st January 1955.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis³⁷⁸

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W): TS

The Kilns,
Kiln Lane,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford.
30th November 1954.

Dear Mrs Shelburne,

Will you please note that this will be my address from 1st January 1955.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

The Kilns,
Kiln Lane,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford.
30th November 1954.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

Will you please note that this will be my address from 1st January 1955.

All good wishes for Xmas.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. LEWIS.³⁷⁹

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER (BOD): TS

The Kilns,
Kiln Lane,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford.
30th November 1954.

Dear Mr Kinter,

Will you please note that this will be my address from 1st January 1955.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. LEWIS

TO CAROL JENKINS (W):

As from Magdalene College,
Cambridge.
Nov 30th 1954

Dear Miss Jenkins

Thank you for your very kind and also percipient letter and for the sonnet: which in its quite Wordsworthian way (unfashionable now) has, I think, distinct merit. Incidentally, it brought out for me a point about Predestination which is not often mentioned, namely that it is a doctrine shatteringly complimentary to Man. It makes each individual so important.

All good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ALASTAIR FOWLER (BERG):³⁸⁰

Magdalen College
Oxford
30/11/54

(1.) Congratulations³⁸¹

(2.) How cd. you?

(3.) Can you look in about 11 on Mon morning (the 6th)?

(4.) Rats! I don’t believe a word of it.

C.S.L.

TO WALTER HOOPER (UNC):³⁸²

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Nov 30th 1954

Dear Mr. Hooper

Thank you for your kind letter of the 23rd.³⁸³ I am glad if I have been the instrument of Our Lord’s help to you: in His hands almost any instrument will do, otherwise none.

We should, I believe, distrust states of mind which turn our attention upon ourselves. Even at our sins we should look no longer than is necessary to know and to repent them: and our virtues or progress (if any) are certainly a dangerous object of contemplation. When the sun is vertically above a man he casts no shadow: similarly when we have come to the Divine meridian our spiritual shadow (that is, our consciousness of self) will vanish. One will thus in a sense be almost nothing: a room to be filled by God and our blessed fellow creatures, who in their turn are rooms we help to fill. But how far one is from this at present!

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO J. B. PHILLIPS (BOD):³⁸⁴TS

54/528.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
3rd December 1954.

Dear Mr. Phillips,

No, I could’nt take on the job you suggest. My powers (whatever they were) as a speaker have declined, and I no longer do that kind of work. I also have a great deal of other kinds to do. Thanks for telling me so fairly how horrid it would have been if I could have gone.³⁸⁵ I can only wish you a speedy convalescence from the strain.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

 

On 4 December 1954 Warnie Lewis recorded in his diary: ‘J finished his last tutorial at ten minutes to one today: after twenty nine years of it’.³⁸⁶

On the same day Lewis’s friend Don Giovanni Calabria died in Verona.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College,
Oxford,
Dec. 4th 54

My dear Arthur,

No: both were ‘for keeps’. The J.A. article is from a periodical: the other article wh. you get a bit of is by someone else.³⁸⁷ What you have got is what they call an ‘Off-print’.³⁸⁸ It’s all rot to say that a man of your intelligence can’t understand Barfield’s book.³⁸⁹ Read it again.

Yes: the move looms large and black–all the things to ‘see to’ and all the decisions to make.

Blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO JANE DOUGLASS (W): TS

54/390.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
4th December 1954.

Dear Mrs. Douglas,

Thank you for your kind letter, and condolences on the accident. I shall be living in Magdalene^* next term, and perhaps we can arrange to meet then?

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

 

* Cambridge

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD): TS

54/63.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
4th December 1954.

Dear Gibb,

Thanks very much for the reviews:³⁹⁰ the more welcome since we’re not getting many in England. I wish I knew what ‘the Thing’ in the N. Y. Herald is a misprint for!

With all good wishes,

yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Dec 4th 1954

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

I was just wondering when I shd. hear from you again. There’s no need to ‘ration yourself’: provided you will not be hurt or puzzled if replies are sometimes tardy or snappy!

By the way, others must eat the candies (wh. doesn’t make me the less grateful). I’m getting terribly fat and have had to diet: almost no bread & potatoes, and of course no sweets. Not that I’m worried either about my appearance–I’ve long since given it up–but I can’t afford to buy a new wardrobe every few months! But the dieting has already done wonders: trousers wh. were like Victorian corsets last August are now quite comfortable again. Courage!

The great merit of Nygren,³⁹¹ so far as I’m concerned, was that he gave one a new tool of thought: it is so v. convenient and illuminating to be able to talk (and therefore to think) about the two elements of love as Eros & Agape. You notice that I say ‘elements’. That is because I think he drives his contrast too hard and even talks as if the one cd. not exist where the other was. But surely in any good friendship or good marriage, tho’ Eros may have been the starting point, the two are always mixed and one slips out of one into the other a dozen times a day?³⁹²

I think I agree with all your notes except that I don’t remember what Tertullian said, and I doubt whether even fallen man is totally incapable of Agape. It is prefigured even on the instinctive level. Maternal affection, even among animals, has the dawn of Agape. So, in a queer way, has even the sexual appetite, for each sex wants to give pleasure as well as to get it. So there is a soil even in nature for A. to strike roots in, or a trellis up wh. it can grow.

Your rector’s story is tragic enough: but I can’t help being glad he is going.

You know I am going as a Professor to Cambridge? My new college is Magdalene, Cambridge: a tiny little place compared with this, but a perfect gem architecturally and (I think) much more congenial socially & spiritually.

All blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

 

Lewis did not know, when writing the following letter, that Don Giovanni Calabria had died on 4 December 1954.

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

Magdalen College,
Oxford
Dec V^o 1954

Heus, pater dilectissime, quantum inter nos silentium! Magnopere mihi cordi erit si iterum de te et rebus tuis rescripseris. Mihi quidem mox migrandum est ex Oxonia in Cantabriggiam in qua universitate electus sum Professor Anglarum Literarum Medii Aevi et Renascentiae. Coelestem patronam tamen non mutabo, nam apud Cantabriggienses adscribor Collegio Stae. M. Magdalenae. Orthographiâ vero discrepant (Oxonienses Magdalen, Cantabriggienses vero Magdalene scribunt) sed idem sonant, i.e. Mdlin. Fides Christiana, ut puto, magis valet apud Cantabrigienses quam apud nostros; communistes rariores sunt et pestiferi philosophi quos logicales positivistos vocamus haud aeque pollent.

Sed tu quid agis? Valesne adhuc? Scito saltem me semper pro te orare, et nunc praesertim dum nos paramus ad suavissimum festum Sanctae Nativitatis. Congaudeamus, mi pater, quamvis loco divisi, spiritu tamen et caritate uniti, et ora semper pro

C. S. Lewis

 

Magdalen College,
Oxford
Dec 5th 1954

Good Heavens, dearest Father, what a long silence there has been between us!

It will be a great delight to me if you write back to me again about yourself and your affairs.

As for me, I have soon to migrate from Oxford to Cambridge at which University I have been elected Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English Literature.

However, I shall not change my heavenly Patroness because at Cambridge I shall be a member of the College of St Mary Magdalene. In spelling they indeed differ (Oxford writes Magdalen, Cambridge on the other hand Magdalene) but they are pronounced the same, i.e. Mdlin.

The Christian Faith, as I think, counts for more among Cambridge men than among us; Communists are rarer and those plaguey philosophers whom we call Logical Positivists are not so powerful.³⁹³

But what are you doing? Are you still in good health?

Know at least that I always pray for you, and especially at this time when we are preparing for that dearest of festivals, the Feast of the Holy Nativity.

Let us rejoice together, my Father: though divided in space, yet in spirit and charity we are united: and may you ever pray for

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY MARGARET MCCASLIN (W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Dec 7th 1954

Dear Mrs. McCaslin

Thanks for ‘Concerning Gifts’.³⁹⁴ I feel very strongly as you do about the hollowness of all this interminable ‘Xmas’ racket and the slightness of its connection with the real Christmas. A good little article. With all blessings & good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JANE DOUGLASS (W): TS³⁹⁵

54/390.
Magdalen College
Oxford
9th December 1954.

Dear Mrs. Douglass,

If you care to call here at twelve noon on Wednesday 15th, I shall be pleased to see you.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Dec 10th 1954

Dear Evans

How v. kind of you to think of writing both about the book and the Chair. The latter (I am almost ashamed to say this to you who have just undergone something like the opposite process!) means rather more pay for–I trust–a good deal less work.

I believe I shall like Magdalene College, Cambridge, wh. is my new home, very well. Architecturally it is a perfect little gem: and the people seem extremely nice so far. Much more old-fashioned and less hardboiled than Magdalen Oxford.

You inflict, as well as suffering, the punishment of Tantalus in your description of your new job. I can’t imagine what sort of books that library contains. Is it titles like Seven Ways of Spoiling a Landscape, The War Against Agriculture, Amenities are Bunk and Liberty: Its Cause and Cure? But I expect you wd. commit the sin of Tantalus if you told me.

The Horse gets good reviews in USA but few, and chilly, in England.

With all good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO DON LUIGI PEDROLLO (V):³⁹⁶

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Dec. xvi. MCMLIV

Reverende Pater

Doleo et vobis condoleo de obitu dilectissimi amici. Ille quidem ex aerumnis hujus saeculi, quas gravissime sentire solebat in patriam feliciter migravit; vobis procul dubio acerbus luctus. Gratias ago pro photographia quam mittendo bene fecisti. Aspectus viri talis est qualem auguratus sum; senilis gravitas bene mixta et composita cum quadam juvenili alacritate. Semper et ipsius et congregationis vestrae memoriam in orationes habebo; et vos idem pro me facturos spero.

Vale

C. S. Lewis

 

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Dec. 16 1954

Reverend Father

I grieve and condole with you at the death of a most dearly loved friend. He, indeed, from the troubles of this world which he used to feel most heavily, has happily passed over into his own Country; to you without doubt the grief is keen.

I thank you for the photograph which it was good of you to send me. His appearance is such as I had imagined: the gravity of age well mixed and combined with a certain youthful vivacity. I shall always make remembrance of him and of your Congregation in my prayers and I hope that you will do the same for me.

Farewell

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford
Dec. 17th 1954

Dear Mrs. Gebbert

Thank you very much for your card and the splendid photo of the Tycoon: upon my word, he looks more like one than ever! I don’t think you need worry about his being a late talker. The other late talker I knew talks alright now. The photo shows him to be bright and sturdy and not at all as if there were any trouble on the mental side. And, no doubt, he makes enough non-verbal noises to assure you that there is nothing wrong with the physical apparatus.

I suppose I must congratulate you, as you must thank God, about the divorce. But what things we are driven to be thankful for. I am most deeply sorry for all you have been through. I have seen so much of that sort of thing one way and another. Well, God bless you.

Wd. you believe it: an American schoolgirl has been expelled from her school for having in her possession a copy of my Screwtape! I asked my informant whether it was a Communist school, or a Fundamentalist school, or an R.C. school, and got the shattering answer ‘No, it was a select school.’ That puts a chap in his place, doesn’t it!

We have had floods here: exquisitely beautiful from my windows–a great glassy lake in winter sunshine with trees rising out of it here and there.

I’m sorry my handwriting has got so bad. My brother joins me in all good wishes for Christmas and 1955.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO EDNA GREENE WATSON (W): TS

54/552.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
18th December 1954.

Dear Mrs. Watson,

How very kind of you to send me such a nice Christmas present; which too, arrives at a most suitable moment, for in a day or two I shall be entertaining a brace of schoolboys. Thank you so much. The gift would have been even more welcome if you had at the same time let me have some news of yourself.

This day fortnight I shall be leaving Oxford, after twenty nine years in this [these] rooms; a wrench in some ways, but I also look forward to the change. I take up a professorship at Cambridge in the New Year, and shall live in our sister College, Magdalene, when in residence; but we continue to keep on our house in the suburbs of Oxford for vacation purposes.

After the worst summer in living memory we have entered on a winter which looks like creating a record for wetness; we have had floods all over the country, sea walls breached, railway bridges carried away, and immense damage done everywhere. Not many miles below us on the Thames–which is a mere brook by American standards–there are riverside towns where the people go shopping by boat. Can there, one wonders, be any truth in the story that the atom bomb is slowly altering the climate of the world?

With renewed thanks, and all best wishes to you for 1955,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

54/96.

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
20th December 1954.

My dear Edward,

Many thanks for your interesting letter. My brother knows more about General Fuller³⁹⁷ than I do–they wear the same ‘old school tie’–but I have at least heard of him. He was one of those soldiers whom one found in every army, who were quietly sidetracked in the late ’twenties and early ’thirties because he would insist in indulging in wild fantasies of the H. G. Wells sort: thought about tanks and dive bombers when all respectable old-fashioned war departments wanted to think in terms of hussars and dragoons. And he has nobly refrained ever since from saying ‘I told you so’. I am entirely in agreement with him, and so no doubt are you; war cannot be eliminated until original sin is eliminated.

Talking of books, have you come across Visa for Moscow by a French newspaper man called Gery?³⁹⁸ So far as one can judge very fair and objective in his account of life in Moscow and other big cities in 1950; but very depressing, for to talk to Russians is apparently like trying to make contact with intelligences from another planet. They think quite in a different manner to us. He is however clear (or was then) that the USSR does not want war, and is frankly very frightened of your country, which of course they have been educated to believe is working hard to get ready for a surprise attack on Russia. Because, believe it or not, you are jealous of Russia’s cultural superiority and higher standard of living and want to pull ’em down to your level.

This will be the last letter I shall be writing to you from the old address, and I think you have my new one? The Kilns, Kiln Lane, Headington Quarry, Oxford. On 12th January I take up my ‘Chair’ at Cambridge, but I shall not be giving up my house here; will in term-time go over to Cambridge every week from Monday to Saturday, and come back here for the week end. Our sister College, Magdalene, Cambridge is very kindly putting a set of three rooms at my disposal, so I shall be very comfortable. In many ways I am of course sorry to leave the old shop after twenty nine years, but I shall welcome the easier life of a Professor, which will let me devote much more time to my non-academic work.

With love and blessings to you and your mother, and good wishes for 1955,

yours ever,

C. S. Lewis

TO JANE DOUGLASS (W): PC

[Magdalen College]
21/12/54

Both by J. R. R. Tolkien:

‘Fairy Tales’ in Essays Presented to Charles Williams ed. C. S. Lewis (Oxford University Press, London)

2. The Lord of the Rings.

Pt. I. The Fellowship of the Ring 1954.

Pt. II The Two Towers 1954

Pt. III The Return of the King (to appear shortly)

All by Allen & Unwin, London. Booksellers will tell you it is a juvenile but this is untrue.

With all good wishes

C.S.L.

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Dec 22nd 1954

Dear Gibb–

I never had a handsomer present³⁹⁹ (both in bibliophile’s and in Mr Woodhouse’s sense of the word handsome).⁴⁰⁰ Perhaps these two charming volumes will teach me at last to have for the bodies of my own books the same reverence I have for the bodies of all other books. For it is a curious fact that I never can regard them as being really books: the boards and print, in however mint a condition, remain a mere pretence behind which one sees the scratchy, inky old MS. You might do a little research to find out if it is so with all authors. Thank you so much. Who did them?

I am always glad to hear of anyone’s taking up that Cinderella, The Great Divorce.

With renewed thanks and all good wishes for Christmas and the New Year.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Dec 22nd 1954

My dear Evans–

Thank you very much for the card–as a logician, if for nothing else, I like them to have some connexion with Christmas!–and for the cheery book of verses. I think there is lots of room for light verse and shall regret it when the art decays: as perhaps it will, if the modern Gigadibs gets his way. Yours go with a swing. The opening 3 lines of The Mummy’s Ghost are almost too good: one wants you to go on at that level. The sonnet to the Conchy is very right. (An undergraduate I knew, hearing, when himself already in the forces, that a friend’s ‘conscientious objection’ had been allowed, said ‘That is one of the things we are fighting for’). One of the best things in the book is To the Reader.

About the word ‘hiking’ my own objection wd. lie only against its abuse for something so simple as taking an ordinary ‘walk’: i.e. to the passion for making specialised & self-conscious stunts out of activities which have hitherto been as ordinary as shaving or playing with the kitten. Kipling’s Janeites,⁴⁰¹ where he makes a sort of secret-society-ritual out of (of all things!) reading Jane Austen is a specimen. Or professionals on the BBC playing to an audience the same games we used to play for ourselves at children’s parties. I expect any day to find a book written on how to swing your stick when you walk or a club (with badges) formed for Singers in the Bath.

There was a grain of seriousness in my rally against the Civil Service. I don’t think you have worse taste or worse hearts than other men. But I do think that the State is increasingly tyrannical and you, inevitably, are among the instruments of that tyranny–

The weight of Crichel Down upon your backs,

The blood of Mr. Pilgrim on your heads.

This doesn’t matter for you who did most of your service when the subject was still a freeman. For the rising generation it will become a real problem, at what point the policies you are ordered to carry out have become so iniquitous that a decent man must seek some other profession. I expect you really feel at least as strongly as I do about it. All good wishes

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):⁴⁰²

Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Dec 27th 1954

Dear Dorothy, I’m puzzling hard
What underlies your cryptic card.

Are you the angel? and am I
The figure pointed at? Oh fie!

Or do you mean some timely warning
Well suited to Hangover morning?

If so, which allegorical sense
Am I expected to draw thence?

The lady with the mirror might
Be luxury and lewd Delight,

Or Venus rising from the foam,

Or (equally) the Church of Rome.

No matter, for I’m certain still
It comes to me with your good will;

Which, with my prayer, I send you back–

Madam, your humble servant, Jack⁴⁰³