TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

18/8/55

My dear Arthur

I arrive at Larne on the morning of Friday Sept 2nd and proceed at once to Crawfordsburn. My berth is booked for sailing from Belfast to Liverpool on the night of Tuesday Sept. 20th. Apparently I must have told you wrong, or made such a muddle that no one cd. understand me. I’m really very sorry. If the extra night’s booking at Rathmullan can’t be cancelled without expense, I will of course, in common fairness pay your share as well as my own. I am looking forward to our meeting v. much.

A nice, dull man from Eire (more W’s friend than mine)²⁵⁶ is to spend the night of Tue.²⁵⁷ Sept. 2nd at the Inn C’Burn; so we can’t do anything that evening. W. is not coming at all this year.

Sometime after Sept 15 a copy of my autobiography will arrive for you. (You can always sell it or give it as a Christmas present, you know!)

Yours

Jack

TO AUDREY CLEOBURY (BOD): TS

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

August 20, 1955

Dear Miss Cleobury,

Thank you for your kind and encouraging letter. I am so glad to find that you and your pupils enjoy the Narnian books.

With all good wishes,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

 

Lewis was on holiday in Ireland with Arthur Greeves from about 2 to 13 September. While there he told Greeves of a problem he was facing. For reasons unknown, the Home Office had refused Joy Gresham permission to live and work in England. As she was keen to stay–and as Lewis wanted her to stay–one solution seemed to be a register office marriage which would provide Joy and her sons with British nationality. Lewis made it clear that he did not regard this as a true marriage.

TO JOAN LANCASTER (BOD): TS

83/55

The Kilns, Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

14th September 1955

Dear Teensie,

(Since this is what you call yourself), heartiest congratulations on your First Prize; and how lucky you have been to have such a season of Opera. It must have been lovely. I don’t understand your weather; does it get cooler in America when August comes? With us–when we have a summer, which is about once every seven years–it gets hotter in August.

I’m very sorry indeed to hear about your father’s ill-health, but delighted to know that he has recovered; and please tell him so.

I’m just back from the mountains of Donegal, which are very beautiful, and where I had some grand walks and bathes.

With love,

yours,

C. S. Lewis²⁵⁸

TO WAYNE SHUMAKER (W):²⁵⁹ TS

186/55.

The Kilns, Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

14th September 1955.

Dear Mr. Shumaker,

Many thanks for your kindness in sending me the article which I have read with great interest.

With all best wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LISTENER:²⁶⁰

Cambridge.

Sir:–

Mr. St. John Ervine of course knew W. B. Yeats far better than I, who met him only twice. But on the strength of even two meetings²⁶¹ I feel obliged to dissent from Mr. Ervine’s view that Yeats had no humour.²⁶² I count him one of the funniest raconteurs I have ever heard; and in argument (his opponent was no ‘gumph’, but Fr Martindale)²⁶³ he had a wonderful–specially Irish–gift of combining his perfectly serious belief in magic with a mischievous audacity. An Englishman never knew where to have him; and the conclusion of the debate (‘Father Martindale, ye are a sceptic’) was excruciating.

Yours, etc.,

C. S. Lewis

 

Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 19 September 1955.

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD): PC

Kilns etc.

Sept 22/55

Have just got back from Ireland & found yours of 8th awaiting me. Presumably the questions have now settled themselves?

C. S. Lewis

TO FATHER PETER MILWARD SJ (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Sept 22/55.

Dear Fr. Milward–

I have only just got your letter of Aug 7th. By the way, I don’t now remember your Viva at all, but I expect that particular question was of no such importance as you suppose in determining your class.

What Malory meant, I have no idea. I doubt if he had any clear intention. To use an image I have used before, I think his work is like one of our old English cathedrals to which many generations have contributed in many different styles, so that the total effect was foreseen by no-one and must be regarded as something midway between a work of art and a work of nature.²⁶⁴ I therefore give up asking what M. meant: we can ask only what his book in fact means. And to me it means primarily neither the Grail story nor the Lancelot story but precisely the tension and interlocking between the two.

I know v. little about the Albigensians (except that Denis de Rougemont talks manifest nonsense!).²⁶⁵ If I undertook a study of the Grail, I shd begin by making up (you perhaps know it already) the history–with a v. exact chronology–of the doctrine of Transubstantiation and of contemporary controversies and reactions. I suspect the story is closely connected with these.

It is certainly a remarkable fact (I hadn’t noticed it before) that the post-medieval interest in Arthur has been almost exclusively Protestant. But one must beware of seeking causes too deep. Might it not be simply that the only nation wh. cd. regard Arthur as a national hero was a Protestant nation.

No, I never read St Ignatius.²⁶⁶ I must do so one of these days.

This is a short, dry letter, but not thro’ lack of interest: I have nearly three weeks’ mail to get through, having returned from Ireland today.

For yr. prayers, many thanks: you continue to have mine.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO JOHN H. MCCALLUM (P):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

Sept 22/55

Dear McCallum

I enclose photo.²⁶⁷ I think I can trust your people to cope with the proofs²⁶⁸–they can hardly be such bad proof-readers as I am myself. Watch the spelling: mine is atrocious. Addenda to the list of works: At the end of the For Children section:

The Magician’s Nephew

Separate section headed Fiction:

Out of the Silent Planet

Perelandra

That Hideous Strength

Cupid & Psyche²⁶⁹ has been (provisionally) finished. Everyone says it’s my best book.

All the best.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

25/9/55

Dear Arthur

I enclose cheque and hope you are now recovering from the fatigues of our journey. I arrived home with a 100 horse-power cold to find an empty house, W. having been drunk for a fortnight and now in his old nursing home. But it’s a lovely autumn morning to day. Blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO GILBERT MURRAY (W):²⁷⁰

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

26/9/55

Dear Professor Murray–

Yes, opposite sides of the fence, but in your middle and my early life the country on both sides had something in common which distinguished it from the country on both sides now. Hence the agnosticism of that age²⁷¹ is in some ways more congenial to me than the Christianity of this, and you have changed in my mind only from dolce maestro to dolce nemico.²⁷²

I am particularly glad to have Are our Pearls Real?²⁷³ for I still have Religio Grammatici²⁷⁴ (or think I have. It is the little books, not the big, that are great evils, for they are invisible on a shelf and won’t stand up and a man can never find them). This is a lovely lecture and I have enjoyed it very much. You certainly say nothing more than is just: perhaps less.

I wish you might feel inclined to give (and then print) a course of lectures on modern translations of the classics. For these are really a dark conspiracy, a concerted attempt (by men of whom some must know better) to convince the modern barbarian that the poetry of the past was, in its own day, just as mean, colloquial, and ugly as our own. C. Day Lewis really believes that ‘invisibility was reduced to almost nil’ is the modern equivalent of the manner of the Aeneid!²⁷⁵ Is Robt. Graves even honest when he translated Apuleius without a word in his text or preface to suggest that A. used anything but the current speech of his own day?²⁷⁶ It is time that someone whose qualifications can’t be disputed stomped once for all on the increasingly popular lie that Homer wrote the language of the streets. Thanks to this lie, the present spate of translations is really cutting us from the civilised past more than any neglect could do; far better leave the ancients alone than to disguise them as sponsors for the fatal error wh. (I suppose) began with the Preface to Lyrical Ballads.²⁷⁷ Wd. this theme attract you? You cd. make a delightful short book out of it. And perhaps you ought to–ne quid detrimenti.²⁷⁸ With v. many thanks.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JOHN GILFEDDER (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

27/9/55

Dear Gilfedder–

Thanks for your letter of the 10th. It arrived in a curious condition, the first and last line of every page having been somehow cut off. This made it rather difficult to follow exactly what you are saying! I think there is both an Australian and an English XXth Century, quite unconnected, and presume that you are referring to the Australian one. I subscribe to neither and have not (to my recollection) seen an article in either on C.W.

I must read the Taliessin cycle again. I hope I shall still put it easily top of the only three modern long poems that I admire. The other two are Edith Sitwell’s Sleeping Beauty²⁷⁹ and W. Penn Warren’s (an American) Brother to Dragons. The Sitwell is v. fantastic and musical, the Warren grim and realistic. I agree that the Listener is a nasty bit of work. The best intentioned weekly now (but no v. brilliant talents write for it regularly) is Time and Tide.

I hope you are well and thriving–you say v. little about yourself. Remember me to your wife.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO CARL HENRY (W):²⁸⁰

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

28/9/55

Dear Doctor Henry

Thank you for your letter of Sept 12th. I wish your project heartily well but can’t write you articles. My thought and talent (such as they are) now flow in different, though I think not less Christian, channels, and I do not think I am at all likely to write more directly theological pieces. The last work of that sort which I attempted had to be abandoned.²⁸¹ If I am now good for anything it is for catching the reader unawares–thro’ fiction and symbol. I have done what I could in the way of frontal attacks, but I now feel quite sure those days are over.

With many thanks.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W): PC

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

29/9/55

Your Marathoniad²⁸² has arrived and I much look forward to reading it as soon as I’ve finished the huge American novel which arrived before it. You have chosen a capital subject; and better too little archaeology than too much.

Have you read Golding’s The Inheritors about Neanderthal Man?²⁸³ A good story but in a sense too well written–the style too packed with minor felicities. So glad you liked S by J.

C.S.L.

 

I’d have re-written this after spilling the ink, only it’s my last P.C.!

TO JANET WISE (P):²⁸⁴

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

5/10/55

Dear Mrs. Wise

I am v. ill acquainted with modern theological literature, having seldom found it helpful. One book did a great deal for me: G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man. But I can’t give you such a list as you want. A pious and sensible man, who is necessarily knowing about books (Mr. Rogers, Bookseller, Newcastle-on-Tyne) wd. probably be able to advise.

My own position is not Fundamentalist, if Fundamentalism means accepting as a point of faith at the outset the proposition ‘Every statement in the Bible is completely true in the literal, historical sense.’ That wd. break down at once on the parables. All the same commonsense and general understanding of literary kinds wh. wd. forbid anyone to take the parables as historical statements, carried a v. little further, wd. force us to distinguish between (1.) Books like Acts or the account of David’s reign,²⁸⁵ wh. are everywhere dovetailed into a known history, geography, & genealogies (2.) Books like Esther, or Jonah or Job which deal with otherwise unknown characters living in unspecified periods, & pretty well proclaim themselves to be sacred fiction.

Such distinctions are not new. Calvin left the historicity of Job an open question²⁸⁶ and, from earlier, St Jerome said that the whole Mosaic account of creation was done ‘after the method of a popular poet’. Of course I believe the composition, presentation, & selection for inclusion in the Bible, of all the books to have been guided by the Holy Ghost. But I think He meant us to have sacred myth & sacred fiction as well as sacred history.

Mind you, I never think a story unhistorical because it is miraculous. I accept miracles. It’s almost the manner that distinguishes the fictions from the histories. Compare the ‘Once upon a time’ opening of Job with the accounts of David, St. Paul, or Our Lord Himself. The basis of our Faith is not the Bible taken by itself but the agreed affirmation of all Christendom: to wh. we owe the Bible itself.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

5/10/55

Dear Mary Willis

I have just got your letter of Oct. 1st. I don’t know quite what has happened, and it is possible a letter may have gone astray. I didn’t think I was so far behindhand. (You have, you know, recently stepped up the pace of the correspondence! I can’t play at that tempo, you know). I thought I had sent you a copy of my new book, Surprised by Joy. But that can be remedied when I’m back in Oxford this week end. I was there most of the vacation and then for a fortnight or so in Ireland:–Donegal, which is a most heavenly place. I found my brother ill when I got home and so lacked his usual secretarial help, so that for a while life seemed to consist almost entirely of letter writing–I wonder how many people besides you I have failed to answer! I am now, as you see, back in Cambridge, where the marvellous summer (I remember only one other so hot & dry in my life) is still going on, or only turning deliciously into still, misty, voluptuous autumn.

I am sorry you tell me so little about yourself in yr. letter, for even when I don’t write I pray. Your oppressed daughter & granddaughter are much in my mind. You have no idea how many instances of domestic nastiness come before me in my mail: how deceptive the smooth surface of life is! The only ‘ordinary’ homes seem to be the ones we don’t know much about, just as the only blue mountains are those 10 miles away. And now, I really must tackle the remaining letters. With all good wishes.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

7/10/55

My dear George

When are you coming to spend the night here (these university contacts being so necessary to a man of your profession)? Suggest Mon. Nov. 14–run up to Oxford in morning, meet at B &B, & travel on here together in afternoon. The date is a mere shot at a venture: any other weekday (preferably a Monday) wd. do as well. Love to both.

Yours

Jack

 

I have a v. gracious letter from the HM.²⁸⁷

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

As from Magdalene College,

Cambridge

9/10/55

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

I have just got your letter of the 3rd. The news wh. it contained came like a thunderbolt–especially as the letter began (and it was rather wonderful that it did begin) on such a trivial subject as my book. And if that first sentence flattered my egoism, imagine how I was rebuked when I came to the next, and was suddenly brought up against the real great issues.

It is difficult to write because you must know by now what I do not yet know. I can’t tell whether I am writing to one who is giving thanks for an escape (oh how I hope you are in that position) or to one who is right up against the Cross. Thank heaven it is His Cross and not merely ours. I was most struck by your saying ‘It doesn’t seem too bad: for me, that is.’ So I am sure you are being supported. (What must such a situation be to those, who are the majority, who have no faith, who have never thought of death, and to whom all affliction is a mere meaningless, monstrous interruption of a worldly happiness to which they feel they have a right?).

God bless and keep you: and your husband too. You will indeed, indeed, be in my prayers. I once had a bad scare about cancer myself, so that part I can, I think, imagine.²⁸⁸ But of course it is now, for you, either better or worse than a scare. If the reality is worse. At any rate it must be different. (The Litany distinguishes ‘thine agony & bloody sweat’ from ‘Thy cross & passion’, the fear from the reality).²⁸⁹ You know how I shall await your next letter.

Yours always

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

As from Magdalene,

Cambridge

9/10/55

Dear Mary Willis

I’ve just got your letter from the 3rd and am glad to find that the book has arrived: not least because it saves me doing one of the things which (in a small way) I dislike most in the world: putting up a Parcel. Thanks also for the almost scandalously munificent gift of stamps. But (seriously) never do it again. Stamps are money, and you have none to spare.

I envy your friends their 12 acre tract of woodland but shd. loathe a house that is nearly all glass. Not (I think) because I’m v. fond of throwing stones, but I like to feel in-doors when I’m in. The main charm of the view from a room is the fact that it is framed in, and unified by, the window. And I hate indoor sunlight. It makes shadows across the page of your book and turns the print green. All really open-air people (sailors, & farm labourers) like thick walls, small windows, and those shut! I couldn’t agree with you more about Games: but–dare I confess it?–I feel just the same about furs. I like them on the beasts of course.

I am sorry the trials come so thick & fast, but glad you shd. be so supported by Our dear Lord. All blessings.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO BARBARA REYNOLDS (W):²⁹⁰

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

13/10/55

Dear Dr. Reynolds

The guest, I understand, is there merely to join in the conversation and perhaps to be interrogated, not to ‘read a paper’ or even ‘open a discussion’!²⁹¹ On that understanding, I shd. very much like to come: on Wed. Oct²⁹² 2. And many thanks.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

 

During the Michaelmas Term of 1955–6 Lewis lectured twice weekly on ‘Some Major Texts: Latin and Continental Vernacular’. In one lecture, entitled ‘Dante’s Statius’, he examined Dante’s reasons for placing the Latin poet Statius (c. AD 40-c. 96) in Purgatory. Besides the legend that Statius was a Christian, Lewis thought Dante would have found in Statius’s Thebaid, the story of the quarrel between the sons of Oedipus, ‘an attitude to the sexual life which he would not easily have found in any other ancient text’.²⁹³ Lewis supported this with two passages from the Thebaid, Book II (lines 232–4, 255–6), quoted in the letter that follows. He went on to say,

It may be that the resemblance between Statius and some medieval moralists at this point is a mere accident. He may be thinking of some purely ritual obligation to Diana and Pallas, and culpa and excusatio may carry no meaning which we should recognise as ethical. But Dante would inevitably have read his words in a different spirit. Statius would seem to him to have written as a medieval moral theologian of the more rigorous type.²⁹⁴

In the audience was Nan Dunbar, a Research Fellow and College Lecturer in Classics at Girton College, Cambridge. Dunbar, a native of Glasgow, might have stepped right out of the pages of Sir Walter Scott. She fired off a letter to tell Lewis that he was wrong, that maidens of the ancient world were expected to behave themselves as well as Christian ones. Thus began a lively battle between Lewis and the young classical scholar who became, not only a friend, but something of a daughter.²⁹⁵

TO NAN DUNBAR (BOD):²⁹⁶

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

14/10/55

Dear Miss Dunbar

Thank you for all the kind things you say. In II 230 sq.,²⁹⁷ of course culpae was for me the real point (pudor, I agree, is common form). I don’t think Met 478²⁹⁸ supports you. Velut crimen exosa²⁹⁹ treats as a peculiar idea of Daphne’s what Statius seems to imply as the true view. I agree that culpa is v. commonly a ‘frailty’ a ‘slip’ (especially in love); v. much like (Eur Andr 223).³⁰⁰ Can you, though, find it used simply of a bridal night with approval of parents and all correct? Is it not generally used either of illicit loves or of infidelity to the precious lover or spouse? Dido, for all I can see, feels her nascent passion for Aeneas as a culpa because she thinks it an infidelity. She has already told us (si mihi non…fefellit. 15 sq.)³⁰¹ that she had made a resolve to remain a faithful widow. And culpam in IV 172³⁰² surely makes for my view rather than yours.

As for 255,³⁰³ I think I’m weaker here. Perhaps you can tell me more. One has heard of girls devoted, in a man-like way, to Artemis; was there a similar cult of Pallas?³⁰⁴

Notice also VIII 625,³⁰⁵ Ismene’s extreme horror at herself for dreaming of her fiancé, tho’, heaven knows, a less erotic dream cd. hardly be imagined; also (645) the saevus pudor³⁰⁶ she displays to him on his deathbed.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JOAN LANCASTER (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge

16/10/55

Dear Joan

Thanks for your letter of the 3rd. In this country we hardly ever have any snow worth talking about till January, or later. Once we had it at Easter after all the trees had their spring leaves on. So the snow could lie on the trees far heavier than if they had been bare, and there was great destruction in the way of broken branches.

We had our first frost last night–this morning the lawns are all grey, with a pale, bright sunshine on them: wonderfully beautiful. And somehow exciting. The first beginning of the winter always excites me: it makes me want adventures. I expect our autumn has gentler colours than your fall and it goes far slower. The trees, especially beeches, keep their leaves for weeks & weeks after they have begun to change colour, turning from yellow to gold & from gold to flame-colour.

I never knew a guinea-pig that took any notice of humans (they take plenty of one another). Of those small animals I think Hamsters are the most amusing–and, to tell you the truth, I’m still fond of mice. But the guinea pigs go well with your learning German. If they talked, I’m sure that is the language they’d speak.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO NAN DUNBAR (BOD):³⁰⁷

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

17/10/55

Dear Miss Dunbar

II 233. Culpae wd. not be merely an exaggeration of the loc. com³⁰⁸ about bridal coyness, but a move in a new direction.

II. Alright. Excusare³⁰⁹ may mean merely ‘to excuse to Pallas’. It needn’t. Choice between your view & mine must depend on what we think of the other passages.

VIII. 622 sq. Of course we all agree that Ismene’s honour was (reasonably) due to the ill-omened content of the dream. But pudet heu³¹⁰ is not an expression of horror at impending certainty. And now we differ on translating wh. is rash of me, for you’re a real classic and it’s years since I was.

a. I took tractarem sensu³¹¹ to mean ‘should be dealing with’ (in thought or emotion). For the senses I give to tractare and sensus are Lewis & Short.³¹² Can you convince me that tractare sensu cd. mean ‘to experience a fact’?

b. Even if they cd., what sense does it make for I. to say ‘She couldn’t be getting married even if there’d been no war’? That is surely the language of a modern girl who can choose for herself. I. wd. get married when she was told, wouldn’t she?

c. Conubia. Perhaps I’ve made a howler here. I took it to mean (meton.) the same as sponsum in the following line.³¹³ (cf , Eur. Electra, 481.³¹⁴ Murray’s translation.)

d. Unde.³¹⁵ I think your view & mine both possible.

Lavinia doesn’t help, does she?³¹⁶ The question is not whether shrinking brides are a loc.com (wh. I fully admit) but whether the Statius passages can, with security, be treated as simply instances of that Loc. com. Nor, of course, is the question whether the ancients thought dreams prophetic. You can’t have thought & denied that!

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MOIRA SAYER (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

18/10/55

Dear Moira

Stick a pin into George & make him answer letters! They say it’s wonderful what the influence of a good woman can do. Set Schwanda on to claw him. In other words, did he get my letter & is he coming here? I hope you keep well and are progressing with the Isle of the Undead.

Yours ever

Jack

TO GEORGE SAYER (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

19/10/55

Dear George

Telepathy? If I reckon the times aright, Moira and Schwanda must have begun their operations before my letter arrived. I’m afraid it must be Nov 14 (28th no good). I’ll look for you on the 14th at B&B from 11 onward.

All loves,

Jack

TO ALAN E. BOUCHER (BBC):³¹⁷

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

19/10/55

Dear Mr. Boucher

I am afraid I have nothing I want to say at present on the subject you mention. But thank you for the offer.

With regards.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

19/10/55

Dear Evans–

I return the article which interested me very much, for I have lately written a paper on the same subject for an undergraduate society.³¹⁸ I can’t send it, for it exists only in my own, almost illegible, MS. You seem to have dealt with the subject very well, and corrected some current errors.

I will certainly let you have a word about Olympic Runner when I have got round to reading it. You have no idea how little space for recreational reading there is in my life, and how long books have to stand in the queue.

All the best, and thanks

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO NAN DUNBAR (BOD):³¹⁹

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

20/10/55

Dear Miss Dunbar

On Bk II, I stick to my guns about culpae³²⁰ and think your view ‘not proven’ about excusare.

I think my rendering of tractarem sensu³²¹ makes perfectly good sense. Even if her marriage had not been postponed because of the war, she’s not the sort of girl who wd. ever allow her mind to dwell on such things. Compare Od. VI.66³²² where Nausikaa, less of a prude and living in ‘deep peace’, has been thinking of marriage but .³²³

I don’t think that on my view (i.e. that conubia = sponsum) the repetition of vidi and sopor attulit is at all ‘intolerable’. Such repetitions, in varied words, of what is logically the same proposition are surely in the manner of Latin poetry? Cf Aen III. 1–3³²⁴ tell me 4 times that Troy had fallen? (Of course V’s variations are richer and do more work than Statius’. He’s a better poet). Not only Latin poetry either. The Psalms, and Anglo-Saxon poetry, are full of it. Cf also the Cherry Tree Carol where it is simpler and more unblushing–‘Joseph was an old man, and an old man was he.’

It’s sporting of you to give me Virgil’s conjugium = conjugem wh. seems to me just the parallel I wanted for my sense of conubia.

Attulit³²⁵ of course on any view implies presence in the same room. People don’t need to be in bed together for fire, or anything else, to fall between them: nor for a mother-in-law to rush in saying ‘give me back my boy’. The text of course is consistent with your interpretation–as it wd. be consistent with their wrestling, having tea together, or playing chess. But your certitude that they were in actu veneris³²⁶ seems to me, not perverse, but gratuitous. Unless you mean, ‘they must have been, to explain pudet’. But wd. that not be within measurable distance of a petitio?³²⁷

It may be, of course, that my view of the text is influenced by having read it so much in sort of pluperfect-subjunctive mood ‘how it wd. have appeared to a medieval reader’. I wonder wd. you come so far in my direction as to admit that it is a curious chance which has brought so many passages that invite such reading (on your view, such a mis-reading) together in one poem?

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO NAN DUNBAR (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

24/10/55

Dear Miss Dunbar

Honestly, till you raised the question, it had never occurred to me that conubia might mean anything but sponsum, i.e. even if I was quite wrong, I wasn’t trying to twist anything. It seemed to me, I’m afraid, so like the way Latin poets talk, I was genuinely surprised when I found there weren’t dozens of parallels in L&S.³²⁸

I agree of course words are to be interpreted by–or rather, their meanings are discovered by–their contexts. The onus then rests on me, and I agree I haven’t proved my case. I fear the error goes deep: my whole general feeling as to what Latin is like must have been at fault. The same general feeling is strongly opposed to conubia vidi = I dreamed I was married. But one can’t bring forward a general feeling in a debate. I can’t prove my interpretation. Privately, I doubt if I can believe yours: but vicisti.³²⁹

The ‘unhappy chance’ wh. led me from the Middle Ages to Statius was of course determined by the fact that so many medieval poets were steeped in Statius–the same perversion that sometimes makes readers of Virgil look into Homer!

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO LAURENCE KRIEG (P):³³⁰

Magdalene College,

Cambridge

24/10/55

My dear Laurence–

I was very glad to get a letter from your Mother to-day because now I can answer one you wrote me a long time ago. The reason I could not answer you before was that the corner of your letter got wet before it reached me and the address was all blotted out so that I could not read it: so I did not know where to send my answer to.

Now: I don’t dislike Panthers at all, I think they are one of the loveliest animals there are. I don’t remember that I have put any bad panthers in the books (there are some good ones fighting against Rabadash in The Silver Chair,³³¹ aren’t there?) and even if I had that wouldn’t mean that I thought all Panthers bad, any more than I think all men bad because of Uncle Andrew, or all boys bad because Edmund was once a traitor.

I’m sorry my handwriting is so hard: it was very nice until about 10 years ago, but now I have rheumatism in my wrist. Please thank your Mother for her nice letter: I enjoyed it very much. And now goodbye. Don’t forget sometimes to put in a word for me when you say your prayers, and I’ll do the same for you.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

26/10/55

Dear Mary Willis

I have yr. letter of Oct. 21, and do feel the deepest sympathy for all your complication of troubles. Your dentist, I feel, ought to go to jail. I never heard (in modern times) of such an operation being done without anaesthetics. Here, you’d get it free. I didn’t quite understand the bit about the hypodermic nor what is the suspected cause of the pains.

The anxiety about the future is, however, a thing we can all understand, and very hard to bear. You were almost miraculously supported in such anxiety before and I pray you may be now. And I think it is happening. Your faith is a support to me as well as to yourself. But how one even ought to feel–let alone, how one can succeed in feeling–about your unspeakable son-in-law, is a problem. It is very hard to believe that all one’s indignation is simply bad: but I suppose one must stick to the text ‘The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God’.³³² I suppose one must keep on remembering that there is always something deeply wrong inside with a man so bad as this. For yourself I can only hope–and passages in your letter confirm my hope–that through all this you are being brought closer to God than you wd. have been otherwise. And it is not forever (wouldn’t it be ghastly to be immortal on earth, like the Wandering Jew?). It will all one day go away like a dream.

The only reason I’m not sick of all the stuff about the Princess is that I don’t read it.³³³ I never read the papers. Why does anyone? They’re nearly all lies, and one has to wade thru’ such reams of verbiage and ‘write up’ to find out even what they’re saying.

Well, must stop. Ten letters this morning and (one can’t get breakfast till 8.30 here) it’s now 11.25. Not a stroke of my own work done and all the cream of the day gone. God bless & keep you.

Yours

Jack

 

In November, in his lectures on ‘Some Major Texts: Latin and Continental Vernacular’, Lewis publicly admitted that his proof was wanting–he could not definitely say that Ismene’s dream was an example of pagan prefigurement of Christian chastity. Although Nan Dunbar was in the audience, she and Lewis had still not met, and she may not have known he was referring to her when he said he had been ‘convinced by a learned member of the audience, not that I was wrong, but that I cannot prove what I had said’.³³⁴

TO NAN DUNBAR (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

27/10/55

Dear Miss Dunbar

Thanks for the Justin.³³⁵ I expect it has countless derivatives in Latin and I was remembering one of those. You are a fortunate seeker. You don’t happen to know (without re-reading the whole Leviathan) where Hobbes said ‘Men are grieved at mischief not as mischief but as injury’?³³⁶–wh. I want as an illustration of the older & better meaning of injury. N.E.D. has only a far inferior specimen from Bp. Butler.³³⁷

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

As from Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

30/10/55

My dear Arthur–

How nice to have a letter about a book from you again, even if it’s only my book. (I mean, it wd. be even more like old times if it weren’t mine. But of course it gives me a special, and different, pleasure that you shd. like this one.)

W. has now resolved to live as a tee-totaller and is doing splendidly at present. I know you will not cease your prayers.

The other affair remains where it did.³³⁸ I don’t feel the point about a ‘false position’. Everyone whom it concerned wd. be told. The ‘reality’ wd. be, from my point of view, adultery and therefore mustn’t happen. (An easy resolution when one doesn’t in the least want it!).

God bless you. That was a famous holiday we had this year. We never exasperated each other less!

Yours

Jack

TO NAN DUNBAR (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

1/10 [11]/55

Dear Miss Dunbar

Thanks very much. Your place in cap XV (tho’ not the one I thought I was remembering) will do beautifully–he might have written it for the very purpose.

I’m afraid the search for kerfuffle will stagger even your ichneutic powers, for I can say only that all my Scots orthography is either from the Waverley Novels³³⁹ or those of Geo. MacDonald or those of John Gault. The Waverleys usually have a glossary of dialectal words, but it’s a tiny taper in so huge a cavern, and I have wasted too much of your time already.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

As from Magdalene College,

Cambridge

9/11/55

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

It was a great relief to get your letter telling me the happy results of the medical examination. My prayers for you have been accompanied by thanks (By the way, it is important to keep on giving thanks. Otherwise, as one continues to pray for the others who have not yet been relieved, one simply fails to notice how many of one’s intercessory prayers have been granted–never notices how the list of Thank-you’s grows & perhaps outstrips the list of mere Please’s).

And talking of thanks, thank you for a rich gift of stamps. (Things get mixed–but when are they not?–on my table and I embarrassingly wrote and thanked someone else! Hence my uncivil delay).

I don’t know anything about syndromes. Presumably the suspicion of cancer arose from pain wh. has now turned out to be rheumatism or indigestion? If so, I can’t see how a Thrift Shop (whatever that may be!) shd. cure them. Am I being v. stupid? Try to tell me it all in words of one syllable: remembering that I am both ignorant & sceptical about psychology, especially the amateur psychology of the patient’s family. The ordinary hum-drum rules of spiritual and corporeal health–or else the professional doctor & the professional directeur seem to me the thing to rely on–and, of course, the recognition that as we grow older we shall have more ailments. But as you know I’m ‘of the earth, earthy’.³⁴⁰

Meanwhile, you are surely rejoicing. ‘Turn again to thy rest, oh my soul.’³⁴¹

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

148/55.

The Kilns,

Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

9th November 1955.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

Very nice to hear from you again, and we were both most interested by your account of the new home;³⁴² though my brother grumbles that he is so used to addressing to 510 N. Alpine Drive that he is sure to send a letter to you at Beverley Hills one of these days. It is particularly good news that not only do you like Carmel, but that it is a better climate for all three of you than Beverley; and we look forward to seeing the photos of what sounds a delightful house.

It surprises me greatly that you have open fires, a thing which I thought had not been known in America since Mark Twain’s time, or even earlier. Certainly there is nothing which gives a room such a homey appearance, but they have their drawbacks; at least in this country, with its chronic coal shortage. And then they make a lot of dirt in the rooms we find. Judging from the leaflet which you enclose, Carmel must be lovely, and I envy you those great stretches of open sea beach; can you bathe there? Someone, I forgot who, once told me that all along the American Pacific coast there runs so cold a current that bathing is, if not impossible, at least very much of an ordeal; but perhaps this is merely a traveller’s tale.

My brother’s historical sense is outraged by the costume attributed to Don Gaspar de Portola in 1769 in the leaflet; 1569 yes, but not 1769. So you can ‘call or write Stephen F. Williams’ and tell him he has got it all wrong. If I were you I shouldn’t roam where the wild boar do; they can be very unpleasant customers.

The naming of a house is always a difficult problem, and I think you got over the problem very sensibly. Here in our new building estates there is I notice a great craze for fancy and punning names; Bill marries May and they call their home Bilmay, and so on; or if Bill fancies himself as a wit, he will call it ‘Sootsme’ or something of that kind.

We are both very fit thanks, and life goes on much as usual; it is term time now, and my usual routine is to go over to Cambridge on Monday in the afternoon, returning to Oxford on Saturday morning, leaving my brother to guard the fort at Oxford. But another three weeks and I shall be in residence here for the vacation, which will of course be nicer for both of us.

I enclose a copy of the new book, and hope you will like it.

With best love to yourself, your mother, and the Tycoon, from us two,

yours ever,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

As from Magdalene,

Cambridge

9/11/55

Dear Mary Willis

Thanks for yours of the 3rd and very kind review.³⁴³ Kind, but not quite accurate when you say I met ‘Joy’ in the ‘whimsical creations of my boyish imagination’. Surely the book tells you very explicitly that I never met it there? But no matter. You give the core of it very well and with great economy and clarity: a good bit of work.

How it bucks one up to get a poem accepted! The children we are. I look forward to your article.

I agree: the only thing one can usually change in one’s situation is oneself. And yet one can’t change that either–only ask Our Lord to do so, keeping on meanwhile with one’s sacraments, prayers, and ordinary rule of life. One mustn’t fuss too much about one’s state. Do you read St. Francis de Sales? He has good things to say on this subject.³⁴⁴ All good wishes.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):

As from Magdalene,

Cambridge.

10/11/55

Dear Dorothy–

You’ll be thinking me rude by now. I put off answering your letter until I shd. have seen the review itself; and then, since I am neither a regular T&T reader nor a subscriber to any Press Cutting Agency, I missed the review³⁴⁵ when it appeared and got hold of the necessary back number only the other day. It’s a boss review, and thank you very much.

And when I say ‘boss’ I mean not only nice to me but so good that I’m afraid it’ll bring you into bad odour with the reviewers’ Trade Union. What? All about the book and nothing about yourself? And you’ve really read the book all through? And really tell us exactly what it’s about? Come, come: this is Blackleg work, this will never do.

For really it is astonishing how seldom any of these things are done. Don’t you find you are much less pained by honest & accurate reviews that are unfavourable than by favourable ones from some ass who praises you for saying what you never said.

I’ve heard nothing but good of the Purgatory from those who’ve read it. The general feeling seems to be that it is better than the Hell; perhaps without a full recognition that the original is better too.

Yours ever

Jack

TO DELMAR BANNER (W): TS

225.55.

The Kilns, Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

16th November 1955.

Dear Banner,

Many thanks for your kind and encouraging card of the 15th; it is a great pleasure to me to know that anything I have written should be of help to the School.³⁴⁶ Please give them all my best wishes.

I have never seen Chataway in the flesh, or even a profile photo of him, so can express no opinion of your portrait qua likeness; but even I, ignorant though I am on the subject, can admire the beauty and vigour of your drawing.³⁴⁷

I too hope that we may meet again.

With all best wishes.

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO HSIN-CHANG CHANG (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

17/11/55

Dear Mr. Chang

Thank you very much for the book, which is a most valuable present.³⁴⁸ It gives me a view of the subject I could not get anywhere else.

Could you come and lunch with me in Combination Room on Wed. Nov 23rd? If so, perhaps you would call in my rooms at 1 o’clock. It wd. give me great pleasure to meet again.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO HELMUT KUHN (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

17/11/55

Dear Kuhn–

It was pleasant to hear from you again, and of course (vanity is better than pride) none the less so because of the kind things you say about my work. Most unfortunately, though I by no means forgot, I mislaid your letter, and as I had of course not memorised the name Mander, I lost several days before I found it again. I have now written to the Senior Tutor at Trinity, leaving it to his choice either to answer me or to write directly to you. I shall be interested to know whether the ³⁴⁹ spoke the truth. I have no such guide myself and find my first impressions of people, whether favorable or the reverse, of no value at all: but I know that others have what I lack.

When shall we see you in this country again? Till then, cordial good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

24/11/55

Dear Gibb

Good. Come to lunch on Wed 30th in Combination Room,³⁵⁰ calling at my rooms at 1 o’clock. Unless of course it wd. suit you better to make lunch the epilogue rather than the prologue, in which case call as early before it as you please

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

27/11/55

Dear Dorothy–

Your letters always contain so many points one wants to take up. I am relieved you liked my treatment of my Father: the neatest compliment it has yet received was Colin Hardie’s ‘not at all Ham-handed’.

There was a lot more about Fantasy<>Invention in the original text. Obviously everyone has experienced 1. and few have experienced 2. Those who haven’t, picture it as being like 1, yet the distinction is fundamental. The only puzzling thing (for us who know both) is that large elements of 1 can enter into some works of art without destroying them–e.g. Jane Eyre. I had dimly realised that the old-fashioned way (my Father did it exquisitely) of talking to all young women was v. like an adult way of talking to small boys. It explains not only why some women grew up vapid but also why others grew up almost (if we may coin the word) viricidal. I don’t remember if it was the scent of the flowering currant did it–or not: it does now of course.

Yours

Jack

TO CHAD WALSH (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

3/12/55

Dear Chad–

I am glad to hear that neither ice, fog, tempest, shipwreck, mutiny, pirate, waterspout, maelstrom, sea-serpent, remora, kraken or siren kept you all from your natural shore. I haven’t run across your friend Leary. He must take the initiative. It always looks patronising or avuncular for the older man to do so: also, one always has the suspicion that the youngster does not want the acquaintance nearly so much as his friends say!

Saul might be a v. good subject for a play. Good material, but I think (wh. really matters more) not too much nor too good already. I think it a great mistake to choose a theme which is so well done already in the original sources as to kill one’s invention. Is it to be in verse or prose? I’ve often thought that if I wrote a play I’d do it in verse but type it as prose. In the present state of the human ear no publisher, manager, actor, or audience wd. recognise it, not even if it was in heroic couplets or the metre of Hiawatha. There’d then be a chance of it’s being judged as a real working play for the theatre, not an ‘interesting’ bit of Culture.

I look forward to Behold the Glory.³⁵¹

Please remember me most warmly to your wife & daughter,

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

5/12/55

Dear Mr Allen–

It was nice to hear from you again. With a year’s hindsight (as you say) I now pronounce the move to Cambridge a great success. However it may be with my new university, my new college is a smaller, softer, more gracious place than my old. The mental and social atmosphere is like the sunny side of a wall in an old garden. The only danger is lest I grow too comfortable and over-ripe. The town, after Nuffield-ruined and industrialised Oxford, is delightfully small and I can get a real country walk whenever I want. All my friends say I look younger.

Oddly enough the week-end journies are no trouble at all. I find myself perfectly content in a slow train that crawls thro’ green fields stopping at every station. Just because the service is so slow and therefore, in most people’s eyes, bad, these trains are almost empty and I have the compartment (you know the funny little boxes into which an English train is divided?) to myself, where I get through a lot of reading and sometimes say my prayers. A solitary railway journey is, I find, quite excellent for this purpose.

I’ve never been told the Landlord’s plans for Rome!³⁵² And there are all sorts of things about her I dislike. But she has her terrific good points too. I think she can boast more martyrs in the mission field than most of us.

I hope, my dear friends, you will all have a very happy Christmas and a very good New Year. My brother joins me in warmest good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

5/12/55

My dear Arthur–

Home for the Vacation to-day and all very well here. Thanks for the review,³⁵³ which I hadn’t seen. The phrase ‘eulogy of pederasty’ is a trifle misleading I shd. say!

Sorry my handwriting is so awful. I do try! Of course I don’t know anything about foreign schools: one gets the impression they are full of spies and informers (which is worse than pederasty) but I dare say one gets it wrongly.

I admired The Mill on the F. last time I read it. The one I can’t go back to is Adam B.³⁵⁴

Happy Christmas.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry.

Oxford

6/12/55

Dear Mary Willis–

I was most distressed by the news in your letter of Dec. 2nd. It was touching the way you spent the first page telling me nice things about my own books and the two adorable polio-cases, and then disclosed your own great trouble at the end. And I can’t help you, because under the modern laws I’m not allowed to send money to America. (What a barbarous system we live under. I knew a man who had to risk prison in order to smuggle a little money to his own sister, widowed in the U.S.A.). By the way, we mustn’t be too sure there was any irony about your just having refused that other job. There may have been a snag about it which God knew and you didn’t.

I feel it almost impossible to say anything (in my comfort and security–apparent security, for real security is in Heaven and thus earth affords only imitations) which wd. not sound horribly false and facile. Also, you know it all better than I do. I should in your place be (I have in similar places been) far more panic-stricken and even perhaps rebellious. For it is a dreadful truth that the state of (as you say) ‘having to depend solely on God’ is what we all dread most. And of course that just shows how very much, how almost exclusively, we have been depending on things. That trouble goes so far back in our lives and is now so deeply ingrained, we will not turn to Him as long as He leaves us anything else to turn to. I suppose all one can say is that it was bound to come. In the hour of death and the day of judgement, what else shall we have? Perhaps when those moments come, they will feel happiest who have been forced (however unwillingly) to begin practising it here on earth. It is good of Him to force us: but dear me, how hard to feel that it is good at the time.

The little Christmas poem was nice. I particularly liked ‘The curtain spread By the simplicity around’–a v. precise idea economically expressed.

All’s well–I’m half ashamed it should be–with me. God bless and keep you. You shall be constantly in my prayers by day & night.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO NAN DUNBAR (BOD):³⁵⁵

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

7/12/55

Dear Miss Dunbar–

Optat ephippia bos piger.³⁵⁶ I could sometimes wish to be a classic–all those nice, well-edited, clearly printed texts. And Herodotus: I re-read him the summer before last and wd. put no one above him. Nor, in a different way, above Tacitus. But Froissart,³⁵⁷ Snorri,³⁵⁸ Joinville³⁵⁹ and your own Pitscottie³⁶⁰ are nearly as good. (I feel no impulse to go back to Thucydides).

It was extremely kind of you to write, for it’s 30 years since I lectured to so small an audience. Very good for my soul, I expect. I hope Douglas won’t disappoint.³⁶¹ Miss Bradbrook³⁶² says I make books sound better than they really are.

The trouble, as you imply, is that one has so little time. Here’s two of us who don’t know a word of classical Persian–where, I gather, there’s enough first-class poetry to last for a lifetime.

Many thanks, & all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

10/12/55

Dear Gibb

(1.) You say you enclose a copy of The A. of M³⁶³ but, believe me, it’s no such thing! But don’t. I can’t find the marked copy and the single addition to the Appendix is of no importance. Get someone more reliable than me (hardly anyone is less) to look thro’ it for scribal errors and then go ahead.

(2.) On the contrary, I shd. very much like an omnibus of the Children’s Stories,³⁶⁴ as soon as the seventh and last is published, and I am not greatly enamoured of the illustrations (Faith, ’twould be easier to be enamoured of her that made them).³⁶⁵ I think I’ve already told Hegner what order they shd. come in. But of course if a better deal can be made, make it.

(3.) Thanks for reviews.

(4.) I’ve no objection to Irish Digest quoting a bit as long as this (wh. I return) but I don’t wish to have a bit about my Father selected. Too like the sin of Ham.³⁶⁶ They won’t know their Old Testament, but they can ask their instructors. So the answer (rê this passage) is No.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

12/12/55

My dear Blamires–

I have been disappointed at (what I partly saw) the cold reception of your trilogy. It deserved better: especially the last one, which is far the best.³⁶⁷

I have had some experience of such disappointments myself, first as an unpublished, and then as an unnoticed, author. It is like bereavement in this way, that one’s thoughts, long deeply engaged in one object, continue (20 times an hour) to set out on a familiar, and once delightful, road only to come up each time against the same roadblock. This sorh is geniwod³⁶⁸ and it is not one blow but a recurrent hammering. I find the only way is to treat it frankly as a pretty serious tribulation and deal with it, before God, as one wd. deal with any other. If one in-direct result of this is to reduce it to its proportions, to make one feel how trivial it is compared with a real bereavement (or even a sound toothache!) so much the better. If not, all the more one must treat it on that level. But of course you know all this. The tide may yet turn, but I never thought that a good support: ‘Hope is the fawning traitor of the heart.’³⁶⁹

yours

C. S. Lewis

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):³⁷⁰

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

14/12/55

Dear Dorothy–

Don’t forget there’s some light in Tolkien’s lecture on Fairy Tales in the C.W. volume to which we both contributed;³⁷¹ and a very interesting bit in Trollope’s Autobiography.³⁷²

I think we have to distinguish (1.) The mere image-making faculty, the ‘mind’s eye’ (also its nose, ear etc.) wh. ought to be called imagination if we literary meddlers hadn’t spoiled that word for its plain sense. (2.) The uses (or abuses) of this (a) By the Holy Ghost in visions proprement dites.³⁷³ (b.) By the body and the unconscious to produce dreams. (c.) By our (waking) starved wishes or suppressed fears to produce reverie in wish-fulfilment or fear fulfilment. (d.) By pathological agencies to produce hallucinations. (e.) By I-don’t-know-what, call it the Muse, to produce (with or without our conscious volition) figments (‘I thought of Mr. Pickwick’).

Now distinct from all these we have the plastic, inventive, or constructive power, homo faber.³⁷⁴ This wants to make things out of any plastic material, whether within the mind or without; stone, metals, clay, wood, cloth, memory, & imagination. It will take from imagination any of the material I’ve enumerated. In my own stories it usually takes chiefly 2e: pictures, arising I don’t know how, are got hold of by invention which wants to connect them & build a thing.

Don’t let’s believe anything people like us tell one another about the new towns & dormitory suburbs.³⁷⁵ When one really meets these traduced people one finds them far less confused about art & reality than most of the ‘clerks’. I don’t think they ever dream of applying to real life, mistaking for history or science, what they find in the films & the comics. Talk to an intelligent milkman about the v. improbable happy ending of a film, & he’ll reply ‘Oh well, they got to put that in to finish it off like.’ He never dreamed of demanding the sort of realism that critics demand: there’s his safeguard. No child, and no adult–except a ‘clerk’, wd. ask what the ring in J.R.R.T’s book was. That’s an idol of the cave, not of the market place. I admit that people write me letters asking if I really know someone who has been to Mars & Venus, but I think that’s because they are mentally disordered, not because they live in new towns,

Yours

Jack

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

16/12/55

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

About the psychological causes of illness I think I’m probably a bit more sceptical than you, but as we’re both mere laymen I daresay this only means we’re following different fashions. About 25 years ago when Coué’s³⁷⁶ name was on everyone’s lips the doctors were v. fond of finding all one’s ills to be ‘psychogenic’: a reaction has now set in and since almost my greatest friend is a doctor I suppose I am influenced by it. But what do I know?

Well, I think I do know that any work for the POW,³⁷⁷ which is all (as the parable tells us)³⁷⁸ done really to Him, and especially if it is undertaken in the teeth of one’s natural inclination, is a good thing. So the Gift Shop is a good thing. Whether it will cure headaches I’ve no idea: but I’m sure it’s grand for the soul. But don’t be sorry if you grow to like it. Surely that is what ought to happen? Isn’t duty only a second-best to keep one going until one learns to like the thing, and then it is a duty no more? When love fulfils the Law, Law (as such) flies out of the window. Isn’t that part of what St. Paul meant by being free from the Law?³⁷⁹ And of what St. Augustine meant by ‘Have charity and do what you like’?³⁸⁰ Re-read Psalms 36, taking oneself as the wicked man in verses 1–4, and oneself under Grace as speaking for the rest of the Psalm (except that the ‘foot of pride’ and ‘the ungodly’ in 11, 12 are one’s old self again, trying to come back).³⁸¹ Aren’t 5 and 6 absolute corkers? And what unabashed Hedonism in 8!³⁸²

Pediatrician is a new word to me. I suppose it is someone who advised other people how to bring up their children! I hope this one has children of her own and that they are good advertisements for her skill? Otherwise one wd. be tempted to quote the Scotch proverb ‘Maid’s bairns are aye well guided’–old maids’s children are always educated well. But now that I come to think of it, this has a lovely whimsical truth for us: for we know only one Maid that had a Bairn,³⁸³ and no doubt He was ‘well guided’.

All good wishes to all. We are both well.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO FATHER PETER MILWARD SJ (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

17/12/55

Dear Father Milward–

Thank you for yr letter of Nov. 17. The enclosed card was one of the v. few I have been pleased at getting. Christmas cards in general and the whole vast commercial drive called ‘Xmas’ are one of my pet abominations: I wish they could die away and leave the Christian feast unentangled. Not of course that even secular festivities are, on their own level, an evil: but the laboured and organised jollity of this–the spurious childlikeness–the half-hearted and sometimes rather profane attempts to keep up some superficial connection with the Nativity–are disgusting. But yr. card is most interesting as an application of Japanese style to a Christian subject: and, me judice,³⁸⁴ extremely successful.

Albigensianism, and ancient Celtic Paganism, are both increasingly popular ‘sources’ for medieval story: but, I fear, they are an asylum ignorantiae,³⁸⁵ chosen because we know so v. little about either. The facts I’d try to hold onto are (1.) The name Galahad (Gilead). (2.) The resemblance of the Grail to manna (see, I think, Wisdom:³⁸⁶ the reference is at Cambridge.) (3) The (I think proved) Cistercian provenance.

Enthusiasm is Ronny Knox’s worst book.³⁸⁷ And of course you won’t be misled by de Rougemont’s nonsense in L’Amour et l’Occident. (Not that the ethics of the last chapter–l’amour cesse d’être un démon quand il cesse d’être un dieu³⁸⁸–aren’t excellent; but the historical parts are wildly speculative.)

One quite sees the chivalric idea in St Ignatius,³⁸⁹ but of course the chivalry of Amadis³⁹⁰ (an excellent romance, by the way) is pretty different from that of Arthuriana in general, let alone Sangrealiana in particular.

Oremus pro invicem: Give thanks for me, for a great family anxiety has been lifted and perhaps forever removed. No doubt you have found, like me, that if one regularly transfers people from one’s urgent-petition-list to one’s thanksgiving list, the mere statistics of the two lists are some corroboration of faith. (Not of course that the efficacy of prayer cd. strictly be either proved or disproved by empirical evidence.)

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

19/12/55

Dear Mrs. Gebbert–

Elevation of fireplace, study of Tycoon, and view of house in landscape on some other planet, received with thanks. How that boy of yours grows! Do you now ever feel that a few minutes of the period when he didn’t talk wd. be rather nice if they came back? We both purr at the nice things you say about our books. And by the same token, when are you going to write a story again?

The Latin is

Without thy power

There is nothing in Man,

There is nothing unharmful…³⁹¹

I translate numine ‘power’ but no English word is exactly right: ‘deity’ or even ‘sway’ wd. do almost as well. If you wanted to say, quite vaguely, in a forest, ‘I feel there is some great power brooding over this place’ you’d use numen.

Of course our information about your beaches was all wrong. All information is. I only discovered the other day that igloos are not made of ice or snow: and I bet some one has told you that Magdalen-Oxford and Magdalene-Cambridge are pronounced differently.

And thank you, thank you (but you really shouldn’t) for the beautiful sleek, shining bottle of good cheer. It’s a feast even for the eyes; mouth shall have its share on Christmas day.

We both wish you and the Tycoon every blessing, and are both well ourselves.

yours ever

W. H.} Lewis

C. S.}

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

The Kilns etc.

19/12/55

Dear Mary Willis

Thanks for your letter of Dec. 15. I don’t see anything wrong with the way in which you tell your story St. Anthony’s Feet: wrong in the stylistic way, I mean. You have made it sound at one point as if Episcopalians didn’t think suicide a sin! but no doubt that is unintentional. I think the narrative good.

I do hope you will get the nicer of those two jobs, which is certainly the one I also wd. prefer in your place. Not of course that one can be sure what either is like till one has got inside. Things turn out both so much [better] and so much worse than they look, don’t they? Be sure you remain very much in my thoughts and prayers.

I seem to have been writing Christmas letters most of this day! I’m afraid I hate the weeks just before Christmas, and so much of the (v. commercialised & vulgarised) fuss has nothing to do with the Nativity at all. I wish we didn’t live in a world where buying & selling things (especially selling) seems to have become almost more important than either producing or using them.

All blessings. ‘Beneath are the everlasting arms’³⁹² even when it doesn’t feel at all like it.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

22/12/55

Dear Dorothy–

Thanks for handsome (this is an Empsonian double meaning) card.³⁹³

Yes, there may be this new class, as much (but otherwise) educated as the clerks, and they may be as the clerks describe them. But have you actually met them? I at any rate am not prepared–till I have more evidence–to believe all the abundant evil which the clerks say about them. I more and more suspect that it is the clerks themselves who are the real disaster in modern society and a great deal of what they say about other groups is simply the vindictive rage of pseudo-artists who (deservedly) get no audience save each other. Deservedly, because the popular art they despise is superior to theirs as a live dog is to a dead lion: in so far as, aiming at mere entertainment, it does in fact entertain, while they don’t actually ‘work’ at all.

I hadn’t really thought about it before, but of course Tolkien’s females are as you describe them.³⁹⁴ And one couldn’t, from internal evidence, diagnose the cause, because so many causes are equally possible.

My brother joins me in all good wishes. May some tiny little island for the feast of the Nativity be left us amid all the horrors and tediums of ‘Xmas’ (with a plague upon it!)

Yours

Jack

TO JOAN LANCASTER (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

26/12/55

Dear Joan

Thanks very much for your gay card and lovely bookmarker. And 100,000 good wishes. Can’t write properly–there are dreadful mails at present–I write letters all day–it spoils Christmas completely. A fox has killed one of our geese.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO GUNDREDA FORREST (P):³⁹⁵

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

27/12/55

My dear Gundred

Thanks very much for your letter. I am relieved to find that the Mountbracken part was acceptable,³⁹⁶ for writing about old friends is a tricky business. I hope you thought my attempt at K’s profile was successful and saw what I meant? And I hope she didn’t get merely the general impression that I said she was like a horse!³⁹⁷ I wish now I’d put in something about both Graham and Palmer, ‘we shall not look upon their likes again.’³⁹⁸

No, I don’t agree that the streamlined car is more useful than the large beautifully run house. One’s in the car only at times: the house is affecting one all day and all night.

Warnie is in splendid health and form and has been for months: me too.

You don’t say a word about Adrian, Primrose,³⁹⁹ or Kelsie, so I hope that means they’re all well. Give Warnie’s and my love to them all, and to Janie, and to yourself.

Your affectionate cousin

Jack

 

I’m sorry my writing is so horrid: the harder I try, the more illegible it seems to get.

TO SARAH NEYLAN (T):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

27/12/55

My dear Sarah

Thank you very much for the wholly admirable mug, out of which I hope often to drink your very good health. And do you know, it reminded me that I’d completely ignored all my godchildren this year, which I don’t think ever happened before. I am a Pig: porcissimus. Somehow the whole horrible business of ‘Xmas’ (which I distinguish sharply from Christmas), with the huge mails coming in every half hour, has quite got me down this year and I wasn’t really in my right mind till yesterday evening. I now enclose a belated present.

When I last met your father and mother, mice were weighing rather heavily on their minds. I should think the population runs into millions by now.

Love to them (I mean your parents, tho’ of course I don’t mind–at a distance–including the mice too) and yourself and all good wishes for 1956.

Yours affectionately

C. S. Lewis