1957

TO JOHN H. MCCALLUM (P):

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

3/1/57

Dear Mac

Thanks for yours of the 29th with enclosures. You are certainly doing me proud in the way of advertisement. Mr. Highet really ought to be congratulated:¹ he has understood the book better than any critic on either side of the Atlantic and writes so that others can understand him. There are few of his kind about!

All the best.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

4/1/57

Dear Mary Willis

Thank you for your letter of the 28th with enclosures. I must try not to let my own present unhappiness harden my heart against the woes of others! You too are going through a dreadful time. Ah well, it will not last forever. There will come a day for all of us when ‘it is finished’.² God help us all.

Yours sincerely

Jack

TO CHARLES A. BRADY (W):

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

Jan 5th 1957

Dear Brady

(We may both drop the honorific now, mayn’t we?) It’s cheek for any one with such a hand as mine to complain that yours is not v. legible! but as the revised proverb says ‘A pot is none the less black because a kettle calls it so.’³ Mine is partly due to neuritis, so I can’t answer you at the length your letter deserves.

I have to thank you for many kind and (what is even rarer) perceptive reviews. I don’t keep reviews, whether friendly or hostile they are not a diet good for the soul–so I can’t now talk about them in detail.⁴

Lor’ bless you, those dear friends were never ‘my school’.⁵ They were all older than I. Miss Sayers was an established author before I was heard of. Charles influenced me, not I him. And as for anyone influencing Tolkien, you might as well (to adapt the White King) try to influence a bandersnatch.⁶

I very much wish we may someday meet. With good wishes to you and all yours.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

Jan 5th 1957

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Thank you for your letter of Jan 1. I have a touch of neuritis which makes writing difficult, so I’ll do little more than ask your prayers.

I have just married a lady who is very ill, too probably dying, and acquired two schoolboy stepsons. We are none of us, as you may guess, very happy and need all the help our friends can give us.

All blessings, in wh. my brother joins me.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO DAVID GRESHAM (BOD):⁷

[The Kilns

10? January 1957]

Dear David–

I am sorry you feel you have had a raw deal in being sent off to Malvern without being consulted.⁸ But, you see, we were dreadfully worried as to how the arrangements in the house would work–I never dared to hope they would go as well as they are going–and felt that any chance of lightening work for the ‘Staff’ must be seized. And of course we could not foresee how amazingly you have grown up during the last term, and therefore could not foresee that you would be such a help.

Also, it seemed unfair to you that you should spend the whole holidays in a house of sickness.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

17/1/57

Dear Mary Willis

I’ve got such an attack of rheumatism in my right arm I can hardly write.

I have married a lady suffering from cancer. I think she will weather it this time: after that, life under the sword of Damocles. Very little chance (not exactly none) of a permanent escape. I acquire two schoolboy stepsons. My brother and I have been coping with them for their Christmas holidays. Nice boys, but gruelling work for 2 old bachelors! I’m dead tired now.

Yours very sincerely

Jack Lewis

TO MARTIN KILMER (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

22/1/57

Dear Martin

The books don’t tell us what happened to Susan.⁹ She is left alive in this world at the end, having by then turned into a rather silly, conceited young woman. But there is plenty of time for her to mend, and perhaps she will get to Aslan’s country in the end–in her own way. I think that whatever she had seen in Narnia she could (if she was the sort that wanted to) persuade herself, as she grew up, that it was ‘all nonsense’.

Congratulations on your good marks. I wish I was good at Maths! Love to all.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO CHAD WALSH (W):

Magdalene,

Cambridge

23/1/57

My dear Chad–

We were both moved by your letter of Jan. 15! Joy’s silence (with paper) has no medical significance except this: the enemy had almost eaten through her thigh bone, so that she is now in the position of a patient with a broken leg–i.e. in plaster wh. keeps her almost flat on her back and thus makes writing mechanically difficult. I think, please God, we’ll get her on her feet again–till when? For our highest hope is, after all, but that of living under the sword of Damocles. (I bet he read everything that came out about the strength of hair).

We both send our dear loves to both you. All who were ever dear to us seem somehow dearer now. Pray for us.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO SIR HENRY WILLINK (MC):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

24/1/57

Dear Master–

It occurred to me when Dennis¹⁰ and Ralph¹¹ were putting the cases of their pupils to-day that perhaps I might usefully tell you that I am one of the two trustees of a fund which exists for making gifts to individuals (that’s its idea–not hospitals or organised charities) who need help: whether help with the education (like undergraduates) or eleemosynary¹² help (as it might be disabled College servants or their widows).¹³ This fund is in a fairly flourishing condition at the moment, and sums of from £25 to £100 cd. be given not too infrequently. If, therefore, you ever feel that someone needs and deserves a sum which College could not well give, a private letter from you to me stating the case (such a letter as cd. be forwarded to the other trustee) wd. probably elicit a response. Of course such a transaction need not, and should not, come before the Governing Body, and my name need not be mentioned at any stage. The cheque would reach the recipient through my solicitor and ‘from an unknown donor’. Don’t bother answering until a case in point arises.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY CORNISH (T):¹⁴

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

26/1/57

Dear Mary Cornish

One of the first things Caspian did after he became King was to re-build Cair Paravel. He had said he would restore ‘Old Narnia’ and of course that meant having the court at C.P. If we had been ruled by the Germans for a long time and then at last got free and had a King of our own again, wouldn’t he probably re-build Windsor? I am so glad you like the books, and I hope My Adventures in Those Two Strange Lands will go well. It’s fun writing stories, isn’t it?

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge

29/1/57

Dear Mrs. Jessup–

But of course I remember your previous letters, for ‘John, Kim, and Mrs. Jessup’ have been in my prayers this long time. Your news is very good and I thank God for it. How little we know what the result of any event is going to be! A diseased limb of your family has been amputated and now that the pain of the operation is over, the whole body feels better.

I want your prayers now. I have lately married a very ill, probably a dying, woman. My world is not bleak or meaningless, but it is tragic.

If there is more pity and depth in my last book than in its predecessors, perhaps my own recent life has something to do with it. I am very glad you liked it: It has had a less favourable reception not only from critics but from most friends than any I ever wrote.

All blessings.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARTIN HOOTON (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

5/2/57

Dear Mr. Hooton

Thursday week (Feb 14th.) looks pretty good. Call on me about 6? I look forward to seeing you.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD): PC

Kilns

5/2/57

I’ll try to make the B & B but can do nothing else. All my spare hours are devoted to the Wingfield, where my wife lies ill–indeed, almost certainly dying. Pray for us

J

TO CLYDE S. KILBY (W):¹⁵

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

10/2/57

Dear Professor Kilby–

An author doesn’t necessarily understand the meaning of his own story better than anyone else, so I give you my account of the TWHF simply for what it’s worth. The ‘levels’ I am conscious of are these.

1. A work of (supposed) historical imagination. A guess at what it might have been like in a little barbarous state on the borders of the Hellenistic world with Greek culture just beginning to affect it. Hence the change from the old priest (of a very normal fertility mother-goddess) to Arnom: Stoic allegorisations of the myths standing to the original cult rather as Modernism to Christianity (but this is a parallel, not an allegory). Much that you take as allegory was intended solely as realistic detail. The Wagon men are Nomads from the steppes. The children made mud pies not for symbolic purposes but because children do. The Pillar Room is simply a room. The Fox is such an educated Greek slave as you might find at a barbarous court–and so on.

2. Psyche is an instance of the anima naturaliter Christiana¹⁶ making the best of the Pagan religion she is brought up in and thus being guided (but always ‘under the cloud’, always in terms of her own imagination or that of her people) towards the true God. She is in some ways like Christ not because she is a symbol of Him but because every good man or woman is like Christ. What else could they be like? But of course my interest is primarily in Orual.

3. Orual is (not a symbol but) an instance, a ‘case’, of human affection in its natural condition: true, tender, suffering, but in the long run, tyrannically possessive and ready to turn to hatred when the beloved ceases to be its possession. What such love particularly cannot stand is to see the beloved passing into a sphere where it cannot follow. All this, I hoped, would stand as a mere story in its own right. But–

4. Of course I had always in mind its close parallel to what is probably at this moment going on in at least 5 families in your own town. Someone becomes a Christian, or, in a family nominally Christian already, does something like becoming a missionary or entering a religious order. The others suffer a sense of outrage. What they love is being taken from them! The boy must be mad! And the conceit of him! Or is there something in it after all? Let’s hope it is only a phase! If only he’d listen to his natural advisers! Oh come back, come back, be sensible, be the dear son we used to know.

Now I, as a Christian, have a good deal of sympathy with these jealous, puzzled, suffering people (for they do suffer and out of their suffering much of the bitterness against religion arises). I believe the thing is common. There is very nearly a touch of it in Luke II, 48, ‘Son, why hast thou so dealt with us?’ And is the reply easy for a loving heart to bear?¹⁷

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JOHN H. MCCALLUM (P):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

11/2/57

Dear Mac

I’m afraid I was never less likely to come to America than now. Between ourselves (I don’t want a spate of correspondence) I am newly married to a lady who is v. ill, indeed probably dying. No time for trips.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER SHARROCK (P):¹⁸

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

11/2/57

Dear Sharrock

Alas, I am ‘retained’ for another candidate. I could of course referee for both, but I don’t think that does much good to either. I am most sorry to have to disappoint you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO CHAD WALSH (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

13/2/57

Dear Chad

After a severe attack on her morale and even her faith Joy has made a marvellous psychological and (please God) spiritual rally. During my two last week-ends in Oxford she has been in wonderful peace and even in high spirits. Physically, while the doctors hold out almost no long-term hope, she is, to a layman’s eye, improving: sitting up for a while daily, going out in a wheeled chair, eating and sleeping well. You wd. hardly believe how much happiness, not to say gaiety, we have together–a honeymoon on a sinking ship. Love to both.

Yours

Jack

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

13/2/57

Dear Mrs. Gebbert

Thanks for your letter of the 7th. I belong to a generation in which the idea of sending children under 12 to school was unheard of, so therefore I perhaps fail to see the Tycoon’s retirement into private life quite as you do.¹⁹ But of course in those days there were cooks and housemaids and Nannies and governesses. I don’t remember wanting the grown-ups to amuse me: one was always trying to avoid their interferences with one’s own amusements!

I say, I wonder are you wise about that novel of yours? I mean, are you likely to delight or interest others with what nauseates and bores yourself? I know people say it can be done–at least I’ve heard of high-brow authors affecting to care nothing about the successful thrillers they’ve written in their spare time. But I suspect them of hypocrisy: they really enjoy their own thrillers like anything, don’t you think? I don’t think there will be any more ‘juveniles’ for me. Seven is a good crop off an old field!

We have had almost no winter here and wonder whether we are going to escape without it or get it hideously late. No one can claim that our climate is dull!

With all good wishes to both of you. yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARTIN HOOTON (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

15/2/57

Dear Hooton

Thanks, I got your message alright. Wd. Tue March 5th do? I’m quite free that evg. and, if it suited you, we might dine together in some hotel,

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

17/2/57

Dear Mary Willis

There is no great mystery about my marriage. I have known the lady a long time: no one can mark the exact moment at which friendship becomes love. You can well understand how illness–the fact that she was facing pain and death and anxiety about the future of her children–would be an extra reason for marrying her or a reason for marrying her sooner.

If I write very shortly it is not because I am reticent but because I am tired and busy. My brother is also ill and causes a good deal of anxiety, and of course I lose his secretarial help: so that I have not only much to bear but much to do. I can’t type: you could hardly conceive what hundreds of hours a year I spend coaxing a rheumatic wrist to drive this pen across paper.

What a divine mercy about the last moment money for the rent! Clearly He who feeds the sparrows has you in His care. Never suppose that the amount ‘on my own plate’ shuts up my sympathy for the great troubles you are undergoing. I pray for you every day. Ah well, we shall all be out of it in a comparatively few years.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge

19/2/57

Dear Mrs. Jessup

Thank you for your most kind letter. For your prayers we shall be most grateful. There is nothing else you can do. The disease, as you have guessed, is cancer, diagnosed too late in its secondary stage. The little primary growth from which all started had been shown to several doctors on both sides of the Atlantic (my wife is an American) and pooh-poohed by them all.

Perhaps you have read my wife’s book on the Commandments, published under the name Joy Davidman, Smoke on the Mountain?

All you say, and more, is true. She is in no pain, her faith unimpaired, her mind at peace, and her spirits good. You could hardly believe what happiness, even gaiety, there is between us.

The cold reception of the book,²⁰ far from being the last straw, is hardly even a straw. You need waste no sympathy for me on that score,

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY MARGARET MCCASLIN (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

19/2/57

Dear Mrs. McCaslin

Thank you for sending me your friend’s letter, which I return. With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY MARGARET MCCASLIN (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

25/2/57

Dear Mrs. McCaslin

Of course I didn’t mean you to pay for the book:²¹ it was a ‘complimentary copy.’ So glad you liked it.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO DEBORAH FRASER (P):

As from Magdalene College,

Cambridge

28/2/57

Dear Deborah Fraser

I am so glad you like my Narnian stories, and it was nice of you to write and tell me. I don’t feel I can do any more of them. After all there are seven of them and they cover the history of Narnia from its creation to the end!

Thank your father very much for his nice article. Tell him I am extra-specially glad he likes Till We Have Faces, because it is so far the most unpopular of my books. We have a hamster and a white rat and there’s a little wood full of owls in our garden.

All good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MURIEL BRADBROOK (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

1/3/57

Dear Muriel

(If after so many years I may take this liberty. People call me Jack) I enclose a first draft of the Chaucer paper.²² Hack freely. I am not used to this B and C decision but have tried to make a distinction. The B questions are supposed to call for knowledge and close argument: the C ones for critical power. You are far busier than I, so I don’t expect it back quickly. My address, from the end of Full Term, will be THE KILNS, HEADINGTON QUARRY, OXFORD.

Yours

Jack (Lewis)

TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Ash Wednesday [6 March 1957]

Dear Sister Penelope

Yes, it is true. I married (knowingly) a very sick, save by near-miracle a dying, woman. She is the Joy Davidman whose Smoke on the Mountain I think you read. She is in the Wingfield Morris Hospital at Headington. When I see her each week end she is, to a layman’s eyes (but not to a doctor’s knowledge) in full convalescence, better every week. The disease is of course cancer: by which I lost my mother, my father, and my favourite aunt. She knows her own state of course: I wd. allow no lies to be told to a grown-up and a Christian. As you can imagine new beauty and new tragedy have entered my life. You wd. be surprised (or perhaps you would not?) to know how much of a strange sort of happiness and even gaiety there is between us.

I look forward to the Pocket Book²³–our equivalent, I suppose, of Encheiridion.²⁴ All good wishes for your work on ‘eschatology hot, strong, and unmitigated’. I’ve heard a lot about The Third Eye²⁵ but it has not yet met me.

I don’t doubt that Joy and I (and David & Douglas, the two boys) will have your prayers. Douglas is an absolute charmer (11 1/2). David, at first sight less engaging, is at any rate a comically appropriate stepson for me (13), being almost exactly what I was–bookworm, pedant, and a bit of a prig.

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO KATHRYN STILLWELL (P):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

6/3/57

Dear Miss Stillwell

Thank you for your kind letter enclosing His and for the article which I was vain enough to enjoy.²⁶

You were quite right about the Studies for Grierson.²⁷ I was simply one of the contributors and had nothing else to do with it.

You cannot be more in the dark than I am as to what (or when, or where) my next book will be.

You’d be much wiser to get my books in the American edition as these now have larger print and better paper than our own.

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

7/3/57

Dear Van Auken

Yes, I have married (knowingly) a woman desperately ill, almost certainly dying: Joy Davidman whose Smoke on the Mountain you have probably read. She is in the Wingfield and of course I spend all of the week end I possibly can at her bedside.

If you cd. meet the 1.15 from Bletchley on Sat. we cd. lunch together at the Royal Oxford before I catch the bus for the hospital.²⁸

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

7/3/57

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

One goes on somehow–a queer, incredible life–sometimes, at Joy’s bedside, we have more happiness and even gaiety than I wd. have thought possible. Other times, great misery. I value your prayers and know we shall continue to have them.

I can’t write much.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO FATHER PETER MILWARD SJ (W):

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

10/3/57

Dear Father Milward

Thank you for your letter and the MS.,²⁹ which I return. The poem seems to me well conceived and perhaps well imagined: but to be frank, I cannot at all reconcile my ear to the rhythm. It is not weak: but its strength seems to have a hard monotony suggestive of the sound of machines. Of course this is only one man’s subjective impression–and one man whose troubles and distractions at the moment do not leave him much critical power. Continue to pray for me.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

14/3/57

Dear Mary

I can’t really write today but just send a line to thank you for your kind letter of March 8th. I am v. glad to hear about the job or jobs. All much the same at this end.

Yours

Jack

TO NAN DUNBAR (BOD):³⁰

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

15/3/57

Dear Miss Dunbar

Thanks for your letter and especially for the very kind words at the end. We shall indeed be most grateful for your prayers. If I cd. have found them I shd. have written on the cover of the off-print³¹ one of those bits where Thucydides says ‘Both having erected a trophy’³²–for you see I have partly yielded to your points and partly held my ground! All those in your letter I must defer to another time, for I have not the texts here. All luck with Aristophanes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

 

About the time Joy was admitted to hospital with cancer, Lewis discovered that William Gresham had been legally married before his marriage to Joy, and that his first wife had been alive at the time of this second marriage. Lewis took the view of the Catholic Church that his second marriage was therefore invalid, leaving Joy free to marry again. On 17 November 1956 he met the Bishop of Oxford, the Rt. Rev. Harry Carpenter, and asked if he would permit one of his priests to marry them. The rule in the Church of England being that all legal marriages are valid, Bishop Carpenter refused.³³

Shortly before this Lewis had heard of what he believed was a miracle performed by his friend, the Rev. Peter Bide of the Diocese of Chicester.³⁴ In the spring of 1954 there was a polio epidemic in Sussex where Bide had his parish, and numerous sufferers were moved to the ‘fever hospital’ where he was chaplain. A young lad, Michael Gallagher, seriously ill of cerebral meningitis, was believed to be dying. Bide laid his hands on the boy and prayed for his recovery. Michael recovered, and Lewis was one of those who believed a miracle had been worked.

Hoping the same might happen to Joy, Lewis wrote to Bide asking if he would come up and lay his hands on her. Bide arrived in Oxford on 20 March 1957, and later gave this account of the visit:

Shortly after my arrival at The Kilns [Lewis] said to me, ‘Peter, I know this isn’t fair, but do you think you could marry us? I asked the Bishop; I’ve asked my parish priest; I’ve asked all my friends on the Faculty; and they’ve said no. Joy is dying and she wants the Sacrament before she dies.’…I had myself for some time found the Church’s attitude to remarriage in church after divorce difficult…I asked Jack to leave me alone for a while and I considered the matter. In the end there seemed only one Court of Appeal. I asked myself what He would have done and that somehow finished the argument.³⁵

At 11 a.m. on 21 March 1957 Lewis and Joy were married in the Wingfield-Morris Hospital by Bide, who also laid his hands on Joy praying that she be healed. Warnie was there as a witness, and he left the following account of the wedding in his diary:

Sentence of death has been passed on Joy, and the end is only a matter of time. But today she had one little gleam of happiness…at 11 a.m. we all gathered in Joy’s room at the Wingfield–Bide, J, Sister, and myself, communicated, and the marriage was celebrated. I found it heartrending, and especially Joy’s eagerness for the pitiable consolation of dying under the same roof as J: though to feel pity for anyone so magnificently brave as Joy is almost an insult.

She is to be moved here next week, and will sleep in the common-room, with a resident hospital nurse installed in Vera’s room. There seems little hope but that there may be no pain at the end.³⁶

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

5/4/57

My dear Arthur–

I was meaning to write to you anyway when I got your letter of the 2nd–if only to tell you that there will be no likelihood of an Irish holiday for me this year. Next year, almost certainly, I shall be (in the sense I least desire it) ‘free’. Joy has now been sent home from hospital, not because she is better but because they can do nothing for her. She is completely bed-ridden–has to be lifted even onto the bed pan–and we have a resident nurse. I know you continue to pray for us. W. is being wonderful. God bless you.

Jack

TO CHAD WALSH (W):

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

5/4/57

Dear Chad–

Joy is now back from hospital, completely bed-ridden. She is very brave, but increasingly worn out with pains, discomforts, and weariness. We are entering on a period in wh. we must expect every day to be worse than yesterday and better than tomorrow. We need all your prayers. All send their love.

Yours

Jack

TO WILLIAM GRESHAM (W):

The Kilns

Kiln Lane

Headington Quarry

Oxford

6/4/57

Dear Bill

I have your letter of April 2nd and you, I think, will have received one from me before you get this. Of course I cannot judge between your account and Joy’s account of your married life; nor is it perhaps the chief point. What you and I have to think of is the happiness of the boys. I don’t remember that Joy ever denied your intention to support them: she doubted, and doubts, your power to do so. That you have done all you can is important to any one who is making a judgement on your character (which of course I am not); but if what you can is so little, the practical results will be the same for the boys, won’t they?

There is no question of your resigning yourself to ‘never seeing them again.’ Why should there not be a real, unconfused, reconciliation between you and them when they are grown up? But by forcing them back at a moment when their hearts are breaking you will not facilitate this but render it permanently impossible. The boys remember you as a man who fired rifles thro’ ceilings to relieve his temper, broke up chairs, wept in public, and broke a bottle over Douglas’s head. David knew, and resented, the fact that you were living with your present wife while still married to his mother. Children have indelible memories of such things and they are (let us admit) self-righteous.

Whose happiness wd. you foster by forcing them back to you now? Not your own. The most patient man on earth wdn’t be happy with two resentful boys who regard themselves as prisoners in his house. Not your wife! You bring her two extra mouths to feed, both mouths belonging to boys who do not like her. And certainly not the boys!

Wait, Bill, wait. Not now. A bone that breaks in a second takes long to heal. The relation between you and your sons has been broken. Give it time to mend. Forcible surgery (without anaesthetics) such as you are proposing is not the way.

Yours

Jack

TO WILLIAM GRESHAM (W): TS

80/57

The Kilns,

Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

6th April 1957.

Dear Bill,

Joy is far too ill to write and has asked me to answer yours of the 2nd. This is a ticklish job. If through clumsiness, in the effort to put things strongly, I sound like one who writes with animosity, believe me this is not so. I think there has never been any ill-feeling between you and me, and I very much hope there never will be.

Your letter reached Joy after a day of agony. The effect was devastating. She felt that the only earthly hope she now has had been taken away. You have tortured one who was already on the rack; heaped extra weights on one who is being pressed to death. There is nothing she dreads so much as a return of the boys to your charge. You perhaps do not understand that certain scenes (when you were not yourself) came early enough in their lives to make you a figure of terror to them. Their return to the U.S.A. when their education is finished is of course quite a different matter. Now, bitterly against their will, coming on top of the most appalling tragedy that can happen to childhood (I went through it and know), tearing them from all that has already become familiar and shattering all sense of security that remains to them, it would be disastrous. If you realized the cruelty of what you are proposing to do, I am sure you would not do it.

If you do not relent, I shall of course be obliged to place every legal obstacle in your way. Joy has, legally, a case. Her (documented) desire for naturalization (which there may still be time to carry out), and the boys’ horror of going back, will be strong points. What is certain is that a good deal of your money and mine will go into the lawyers’ hands. You have a chance to soothe, instead of aggravating, the miseries of a woman you once loved. You have a chance of recovering at some future date, instead of alienating for ever, the love and respect of your children. For God’s sake take it and yield to the deep wishes of everyone concerned except yourself.

You may suspect that a letter you will get from David was ‘inspired’ by Joy or me. In reality, it was expurgated, i.e. the letter he meant to send was much stronger, and Joy made him tone it down. Douglas burst into tears on hearing your plans. I assure you that they have never heard a word against you from me. No propaganda at all has ever gone on.

Yours,

Jack

TO MABEL DREW (BOD):³⁷

153/57

The Kilns,

Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

10th April 1957.

Dear Mrs Drew,

I am no scholar about the period involved,³⁸ but my colleague Professor Driver (one of the greatest authorities) sees nothing in the least alarming to Christians in the Scrolls. The book published on them,³⁹ he says, is ignorant and tendentious. Many of the things they regard as impairing Our Lord’s uniqueness were already known to most of us to be quotations from the Old Testament; an enormous amount of what Jesus said was. He came to ‘fulfil’ the Law and the Prophets.⁴⁰ It is His Person and Office that are unique–not some supposed ‘originality’.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO PENELOPE BERNERS-PRICE (W): TS

114/57

The Kilns, Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

13th April 1957.

My dear Penny,

Thanks for your letter and the pictures. You draw donkeys better than Pauline Baynes does. I am so glad you like the book. Please give my greetings and deep thanks to your father and mother. They will understand that I have hardly time to live at present, let alone write a decent letter.

With love, yours,

Jack

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W): TS

64/6[5]7

The Kilns,

Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

13th April 1957.

Dear Mary Willis,

My wife is now home, bed-ridden, and dying. We have two nurses. You really must not expect more than notes from me. I lead the life of a hospital orderly, and have hardly time to say my prayers or eat my meals.

Thanks for the Easter poem, and congratulations on the job.

Yours

Jack⁴¹

TO RUTH PITTER (BOD):

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

15/4/57

Dear Ruth

How can I thank you? Not, anyway, by accepting your offered kindness.⁴² There’s a good deal in the kitty still. But thank you again and again. Joy is home, doomed, and totally bed ridden. We have two nurses and much of my day is spent on the duties of a hospital orderly. But she is, thank God, without pain and wonderfully cheerful: at times even happy. I know we have your prayers. God bless you.

Yours

Jack

TO LAURENCE KRIEG (P):

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

April 21st 57

Dear Laurence

I think I agree with your order for reading the books more than with your mother’s.⁴³ The series was not planned beforehand as she thinks. When I wrote The Lion I did not know I was going to write any more. Then I wrote P. Caspian as a sequel and still didn’t think there would be any more, and when I had done the Voyage I felt quite sure it would be the last. But I found I was wrong. So perhaps it does not matter very much in which order anyone reads them. I’m not even sure that all the others were written in the same order in which they were published. I never keep notes of that sort of thing and never remember dates.

Well, I can’t say I have had a happy Easter, for I have lately got married and my wife is very, very ill. I am sure Aslan knows best and whether He leaves her with me or takes her to His own country, He will do what is right. But of course it makes me very sad. I am sure you and your mother will pray for us.

All good wishes to you both.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO JOAN LANCASTER (BOD):

179/57

The Kilns,

Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

25th April 1957.

Dear Joan,

Very nice to hear from you again after this long time. No, I’ve never had the chance to go to Bayreuth,⁴⁴ though of course I’ve heard the Ring at Covent Garden;⁴⁵ but I’m sure that is not at all the same thing, and I envy you your good luck; and as for the Flying Dutchman,⁴⁶ my hearing of it has been limited to gramophone records. My German is of the kindergarten variety I’m afraid; I don’t speak it, and can only read it with a dictionary at my elbow; I wish I did, for not to know German well is a considerable handicap I find.

I understand quite well what you mean by being ‘outside’ yourself, and it is not, I think, a common experience; the ordinary person probably never sees the world except from inside outwards, i.e. is not able to see him or herself objectively.

Our spring over here is a wonderful one; so hot by our standards–every day temperatures of 58–66. And the flowers and the bird music are a treat.

Best of luck with the Latin,

yours,

C.S.L.⁴⁷

TO MR PILGRIM (P):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

3/5/57

Dear Mr. Pilgrim

I’m not sure than I can make anything of the conception ‘biologically independent’. Independent of what? And poets wd. join with psychologists, I’d have thought, in repudiating the idea that we are specially independent when we fall in love. The verb fall may itself be significant of this: when is one so little one’s own as while falling down a flight of stairs?

I don’t think the idea of the State of Nature (wh. is theological and juristic as well as literary) originated in anything like Dryden’s Noble Savage.⁴⁸ Neither Stoicism nor Christendom represented it as savagery. After the conquest of America this idea creeps in, I fancy, because the explorers mistook for a normally isolated & monastic life the life of the savages they meant [met]: not knowing about the tightly compacted tribal structure–which indeed they themselves had largely shattered by their arrival.

From my own point of view (partly a theological one) independence (just like that) is impossible to a finite being. I am dependent on God, on my physical organism, on my unconscious, on my ancestry, on all the books I read, on food etc., on those who pay me, and on society. (And in varying degrees on different parts of that society. I don’t depend on the film industry or aviation as much as on miners and shipping). What I hope I have, within a certain tiny area, is some choice between the degree & kind of these various dependences at a given moment.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO PAULINE BAYNES (BOD): TS

183/57

The Kilns, Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

4th May 1957.

Dear Miss Baynes,

Very nice to hear from you again, and thanks for sending on the book, which I have returned to Lane. Thanks for your congratulations on the Carnegie, but is it not rather ‘our’ Medal?⁴⁹ I’m sure the illustrations were taken into consideration as well as the text.

I am well, and as happy as a man can be whose wife is desperately ill.

With all best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

7/5/57

Dear Gibb

Thanks for cheque (£1340 total) received to-day. All the best.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

8 May ’57

My dear Roger

Oh, I wish you’d written even a fortnight earlier. Too late now: I am up to my quota of night-guests for this term already. This is a sorrow to me. Can we nevertheless meet at the B&B?

Joy is home–alas–only because hospital can do no more for her–completely bed-ridden. But thank God, no pain, sleeping well, and often in good spirits.

I look forward to M. at M.⁵⁰ It is a pity about The Land.⁵¹ Making a book ‘more exciting’ is a most dangerous operation, I shd. think.

Love to both.

Yours

Jack

TO BICE CRICHTON-MILLER (BOD):⁵²

Magdalene College

Cambridge.

14 May 1957

Dear Miss Crichton Miller

I am afraid my preaching days are past.⁵³ I did a lot–too much–of that sort of thing for several years and I now find I can’t. This happens to many public speakers: they don’t all stop speaking when it does. You know too well what the result is like, for you have often sat through it! Tell the young ladies they shd. be very grateful to me for not coming.

To sit listening to the creak of the pump-handle is not exhilarating. With regret.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARTIN HOOTON (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

May 14th 1957

Dear Hooton

Could you come to our guest night on Wed. May 20th? Dinner jackets and meet in my room at, say, 6.45? Do.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO NAN DUNBAR (BOD):⁵⁴

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

May 16th [1957]

Dear Miss Dunbar

It isn’t a question of time, and certainly not of any disinclination for a discussion of Beowulf and The Birds.⁵⁵ But I’m dreadfully un-limber. I’ve hurt a muscle over the hip and I walk, kneel, & lie–in fact everything but sit–with painful caution. Any chance of your coming to drink a glass of sherry here some morning at about 11.30 or some evening about 6 o’clock? My last lecture will be next Tuesday and after that any day except Mondays, Sats, or Sundays wd. do. Wd. you suggest one?

Thanks for your prayers,

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

May 17/57

My dear Roger

Yes, June 20–24 is the obvious time. Will you lunch with me in Magdalen^*56 and let me take you home to meet Joy for tea afterwards? And we can presumably meet at B & B on the Monday. Till then (with love to all)

Yours

Jack

 

* On Fri. June 21.

TO OWEN BARFIELD (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

May 20/57

My dear Owen

The book is a stunner.⁵⁷ It rapt me out of myself at a time when I needed nothing more & expected nothing less. Colin Hardie says it is ‘exciting’. I’ll write again–still the last few chapters to read. Affects presence. The Scholarship-for-Africans one can obviously lie still & ‘thump approving tail’.⁵⁸

Yours

Jack

TO NAN DUNBAR (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

May 21 [1957]

Dear Miss Dunbar

Right. I shall expect you about 6. to-morrow. I can guess what your ‘simple questions’ about Beowulf will be like! A gruelling viva!

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO P. H. NEWBY (BBC):⁵⁹ TS

199/57

The Kilns, Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

22nd May 1957

Dear Mr Newby,

Many thanks for the kind invitation in your 04/HT/PHN of 20th. But I’m afraid I must refuse; to say nothing of pressure of work, serious illness in my home makes it impossible for me to do any outside jobs for a long time to come.

With regret. yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO BASIL WILLEY (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

May 23rd 1957

Dear Willey

I must apologise at once for skipping both Frost’s lecture and your party.⁶⁰ I have got a ‘slipped disc’ or something and a morning of examinations, ‘deep heat’, X-rays, and massage has left me in a state in which I can’t face either sitting through a lecture or standing at a sherry party. A jostle wd. elicit a scream! I am most disappointed. He is one of the few living poets for whom I feel something like reverence.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS JOHNSON (P):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

May 25/57

Dear Mrs. Johnson–

It was nice to hear from you again. I can’t remember how up to date you are with my news. Did I tell you that a new element of both beauty and tragedy had entered my life? I am newly married, and to a dying woman (She was the Joy Davidman whose Smoke on the Mountain, a lively modern treatment of the Ten Commandments, you may have read. An American). She is, and I try to be, very brave. I acquired two schoolboy stepsons. I myself am, not dangerously, but painfully and disablingly, ill with a slipped disc. So life is rather full.

Numinor is Atlantis and Tolkien (I don’t know what the J. stands for, but he’s usually called Ronald) has still published little about it.⁶¹ But you must read the really great sequel to The Hobbit. It embodied a fragment only of his mythology, adapted for children. The later book is the genuine article, heroic romance for adults. It is The Lord of the Rings in 3 vols., published separately. 1. The Fellowship of the Ring. 2. The Two Towers. 3. The Return of the King. It has had a wonderful success here even among the most unlikely readers.

Thanks for the photo. They both look absolute charmers. Of course Heaven is leisure (‘there remaineth a rest for the people of God’):⁶² but I picture it pretty vigorous too as our best leisure really is. Man was created ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’⁶³ Whether that is best pictured as being in love, or like being one of an orchestra who are playing a great work with perfect success, or like surf bathing, or like endlessly exploring a wonderful country or endlessly reading a glorious story–who knows? Dante says Heaven ‘grew drunken with its universal laughter.’⁶⁴

Pray for us both.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARTIN HOOTON (BOD):

Magdalene College.

Cambridge.

27 May 57

Dear Hooton

(Do drop the honorifics!) I hope v. much we can renew our beano next term, but I’m under the weather with a slipped disc at present: early hours, and evenings on sofas. Write early next term. Meantime, all the best,

Yours

C. S. Lewis

 

Joy was moved from the Wingfield-Morris Hospital to The Kilns on 2 April 1957. Although she was still bedridden, recent tests showed that her cancer was arrested, at least temporarily. As Lewis had hurt his back and Joy wanted something to do, it was decided that she would answer the occasional letter. This letter to Mrs Jessup was probably the first she wrote on behalf of her husband:⁶⁵

The Kilns
Headington Quarry
Oxford
May 27, 1957

Dear Mrs. Jessup,

I’m venturing to answer your last letter to my husband–partly because he, poor soul, has strained his back lifting me and is very busy just now getting massage, heat therapy, and what not; there isn’t much I can do to repay his loving care of me, but I can write letters. But mostly because I want to answer it. You and I seem to have much shared experience, and I’m grateful for the fellow feeling you express–as well as for the nice things you say about my book!

My husband’s sore back is not, so far as we know, anything to worry about, and he’s otherwise in the best of health. So am I–except for a permanently crippled and useless leg which makes it impossible for me to get out of bed. My cancer has been arrested for the time being–may become active again tomorrow or not for a couple of years. Meanwhile, I try to make the best of things. There is some faint hope that my damaged thigh-bone may knit enough to let me walk in a caliper–which is all I ask for my last years; it’s waiting for death when you’re full of energy and feel perfectly well!

What you say about Mr. Appleyard interests both of us, and we should be delighted to have him call on us here during July. (Of course, it will depend on whether my health holds out.) I think he’d better telephone us when he’s here; the number is Oxford 6963.

One thing I’d like to say since you mention that you’ve been threatened with cancer. Before I had it, I had all the usual fear and horror of it; but since then I’ve found that it’s possible to live with your cancer and still get a great deal of happiness out of life. The pain, perhaps, is usually exaggerated. I’ve had three operations, a frightful time with deep X-rays, three months encased almost completely in plaster and the complication of a broken leg–and all this had involved a great deal of pain at times; but the pain came more from the treatments than from the disease, and was on the whole less than I would have expected. At the moment I’ve no pain at all! I’m not going to play Pollyanna about the blasted disease–it’s just that, bad as it is, one can take it without complete disintegration.

God bless you.

Yours sincerely

Joy Lewis

TO CLYDE S. KILBY (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

June 12/57

Dear Mr. Kilby

I am completely immobilised by the grave illness of my wife and by a slipped disc of my own, so I shall be speaking nowhere and doing nothing I can help this summer.

If you happen to be in Oxford and care to risk a call, it may be one of our good days and, if it is, I should be happy to meet you.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

 

Joy wrote again to Mrs Jessup on 12 June:⁶⁶

The Kilns, Kiln Lane
Headington Quarry
Oxford
June 12 [1957]

Dear Mrs Jessup,

Just a hurried and flurried note, I fear–I’ve got one boy coming home for his half-term holidays this afternoon and another in bed with German measles! and some American friends visiting with three as yet uninfected young daughters…not to mention repairs and redecoration going on indoors and out, bills to pay, and two articles of my husband’s I promised to type for him and have sinfully neglected for a week. If this letter gets a trifle incoherent, do forgive me!

The Appleyards must have made a mistake in telephoning, or else our line was out of order; for at the time they were home I never got out at all. But I’m much better now–almost normal. I can walk quite a long way, go for drives, scramble about in the woods, even do bits of light housework; and I’ve plunged into running the house and getting it all done over from top to bottom. The place hadn’t been touched in twenty-five years, and you can imagine how much was needed! And the woods were overcome with trespassers; we had to put up a barbed-wire fence, and I’ve been patrolling the boundaries with the dogs to warn people off.

So you can see I don’t feel useless any more! Quite the contrary–there’s so much to do, and to catch up with, that I feel like butter which is spread too thin over too much bread–But it’s wonderful to be able to do all this. I take a positive pleasure in making beds and clearing tables. Though quite lame, I’m very active and my bones showed up solid and healthy on my last X-ray; the doctors are calling my recovery miraculous.

I believe there is a Reading for the Blind foundation here, or something of the sort; at all events, I know some women in Oxford who regularly read to blind students. I don’t think they use recordings, but as each student’s work is individual, tapes might not be so much use. It’s a wonderful idea and of course we will pray for its success and expansion. I must suggest recordings to people here; now I come to think of it, there are certainly standard texts which could be done.

We’re often asked to come to the States, but my husband’s job at Cambridge and my health both make it doubtful whether we’ll ever be able to. Still, I hope to make it some day!

It is good to read of your happiness. We too are far happier now than we’ve ever been before–Two vans have just drawn up at the door; I must fly–God bless you.

Yours

Joy Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

June 18th 1957

Dear Mary Willis

We go on. Joy is to all appearance (blessedly or heart-breakingly) well and anyone but a doctor would feel sure she was recovering. My brother is well and very helpful. I have had and have some trouble in my back (perhaps I told you this before?) which produced a few muscle spasms and screams from me but is now only a wearisome ache. We have a heat wave. I heard from some one who knows you the other day–all about a rumour of my own death! I trust all goes well with you.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):

The Kilns

Headington Quarry

Oxford

June 25th 1957

Dear Dorothy–

You must by now have wondered whether I am dead, or in a furious temper, or disliked the book so much that I daren’t say, or am simply too rude or lazy to write. But all your hypotheses were wrong. While I was home for the last week-end of term a strain in my back which had seemed to be improving developed muscle spasms that made me roar much less like a sucking dove than a lion. Much as I wd. wish to spread myself on the theme of my sufferings (‘horrors portioned to a giant nerve’⁶⁷–spem vultu simulat, premit altum corde dolorem)⁶⁸ the relevant point is that return to Cambridge became, and is still, impossible.

And at Cambridge is your book,⁶⁹ with all the lines in the margin, and ticks which mean euge⁷⁰ or grande sophos,⁷¹ and some queries–all prepared for the ‘very judicious letter’ (see Biog. Lit).⁷² I was going to write you. I have only slowly come to admit that manners is more than judiciousness and that I’d better write a note even without my apparatus.

Well, I think this book even better than the first series.⁷³ Such wise play–the dialogue between Dante and Jeans (or was it Eddington?)⁷⁴ which might so easily have been merely the old Geo. Morrow Punch joke,⁷⁵ but is really the quickest and clearest way of instructing your readers–and the trick you play about the lives of Milton and Dante,⁷⁶ which is also so seriously to the point. I bet the critics will call both these ‘cheap’. If they went to acquire such wares for their own using they’d find the price higher than they thought. The one on the ?th (Dante also at Cambridge) Cornice⁷⁷ was also very good. But there were dozens of good and really illuminating things which I can’t remember. I’d like to go through the whole thing with you. You’ve never done better work in this kind: and the scraps of translation bode well for your Paradiso. Thank you very much indeed.

I ought to tell you my own news. On examination it turned out that Joy’s previous marriage, made in her pre-Christian days, was no marriage: the man had a wife still living. The Bishop of Oxford said it was not the present policy to approve re-marriage in such cases, but that his view did not bind the conscience of any individual priest. Then dear Father Bide (do you know him?) who had come to lay his hands on Joy–for he has on his record what looks v. like one miracle–without being asked and merely on being told the situation at once said he wd. marry us. So we had a bedside marriage with a nuptial Mass.

When I last wrote to you I would not have wished this: you will gather (and may say ‘guessed as much’) that my feelings had changed. They say a rival often turns a friend into a lover. Thanatos,⁷⁸ certainly (they say) approaching but at an uncertain speed, is a most efficient rival for this purpose. We soon learn to love what we know we must lose.

I hope you give us your blessing: I know you’ll give us your prayers. She is home now, not because she is better (tho’ in fact she seems amazingly better) but because they can do no more for her at the Wingfield: totally bed-ridden but–you’d be surprised–we have much gaiety and even some happiness. Indeed, the situation is not easy to describe. My heart is breaking and I was never so happy before: at any rate there is more in life than I knew about. My own physical pains lately (which were among the severest I’ve known) had an odd element of relief in them.

With thanks again and all good wishes,

Yours

Jack

TO JOHN H. MCCALLUM (P):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

[June? 1957]

Dear McCallum

Thanks for kind note. I forget how much of my news you know. I am latterly married (to a dying woman) and I myself have a rather painful disease of the bones. Oddly enough, this situation is not quite so bad as it sounds. I have indeed more unhappiness, but also more happiness, than I ever had before. I also have the hell of a mail to answer this morning, so–

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

July 1/57

Dear Dorothy–

Funny: I always thought that admirable formula for acknowledging a book (no doubt, you suffer, like me, from a plague of such gifts, which one is ashamed to throw away and equally ashamed to have on one’s shelves) was Lewis Carroll’s not Dizzy’s.

I know v. well how the audience moulds, and indeed ought to mould, the lecture. One discovers it sharply when the audience turns out to be quite unlike what one expected. I once did a paper for a society which, I supposed, wd. consist of High Brows, on Kipling:⁷⁹ allowing everything that cd. be said against him in the hope of extorting a reluctant admission that there was after all something to be said for him. The room however turned out to be full of general’s widows, retired admirals, and tweedy women who had obviously born 7 heroic sons each in the intervals of organising Conservative Clubs and riding to hounds. And they knew Kipling inside out too…But your book seems to me to suffer as little as possible from its lectorial origins.

I remember now one point I did want to make: on Astrology in the dialogue. I’m sure the statement (in a sense true) that the medieval Church discountenanced Astrology often gives a false impression. So far as I have been able to find out she discountenanced A. Total stellar determinism which wd. exclude free will. B. Practices wh. suggested Planetolatry. C. The lucrative imposture of prediction. But she never denied the general doctrine of planetary influences in natural objects, historical events, and human psychology.⁸⁰

No, sister Dinosaur, under the influence of Rosamund Tuve⁸¹ all the v. best youngest people have stopped using ‘rhetoric’ as a term of abuse. They’ll talk about the technique of Rhetoric till the cows come home. You are (bear it well) now in the vanguard of fashion on this point.

Joy and I both enjoyed your letter v. much and thought it full of sweetness & light (Hugo of S. Victor coupled lumen et dulcedo⁸² long before Swift, by the way)⁸³–and she felt the air from the Spanish Cloister coming in before I did.

I’ll think of osteopaths.

My brother is still with us. Between you and me, he had been for years a periodical dipsomaniac. The blessed & unexpected result of my marriage and the consequent disorganisation of his life (You know what a house with a Nurse in it is like) and the responsibilities wh. inevitably rest on him when I’m at Cambridge, has been to keep him absolutely sober and angelically helpful for months. It is wonderful. He was almost as much a friend of Joy’s as I when I was only a friend and they have French history in common. In fact if the medical were as good as the domestic situation I’d be the most fortunate man in England. Even the Nurse, tho’ she can’t help making work (and her conversation has a desperately narrative turn) is rather a dear, and the servants all love Joy and (apparently) me and (what is rarest of all) one another.⁸⁴ The house ripples with laughter and esoteric jokes.^*

I have bad spasms both of body and soul, but they all go on amidst a sort of ballet of agape, storge, and eros.

Apart from my brother’s old infirmity, none of my history is secret. So tell it to anyone you meet who is likely to be interested,

Yours

Jack

 

* The Bed-Pan is Caliban and the ‘fish-tailed female invalid urinal’ is Miranda. We have a family of pet mice (my stepsons’) growing up–absolute beauties. And, wd. you believe it, the Nurse is an expert mouse-fancier and inveterate murophil (myrophil?)⁸⁵–‘Who, going thro’ the vale of misery, use it for a well, and the pools are full of water.’⁸⁶ O God, if there were no such thing as the Future!

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

The Kilns etc.

July 3/57

Dear Mary Willis

Thanks for letter. I fear I must be very brief. I am sorry to hear of your renewed troubles. Yes, my wife was Joy Davidman: I hope you’ve read her Smoke on the Mountain.

What on earth is the trouble about there being a rumour of my death? There’s nothing discreditable in dying: I’ve known the most respectable people do it! Joy is in no pain and in wonderful (apparent) health and spirits.

All good wishes.

Yours

Jack

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):

The Kilns

July 4th 57

Dear Dorothy–

No, I don’t remember anything about Planetolatry in Dante. I get that from Albertus.⁸⁷ The orthodox position, as you know, is summed up in sapiens dominabitur astris:⁸⁸ i.e. just as we shd. say about physical, economic, or psychological causes for behaviour ‘Yes, these are operative but they always leave room for free will. They dispose but do not determine.’ Hence Aquinas (I think–my books aren’t here) Astrological predictions often in fact come true because most men don’t use their free will but obey the natural pre-dispositions.⁸⁹ The great exponent of total determinism was Pomponazzi.⁹⁰ You’re right in thinking it flourished more in the Renaissance than in the Middle Ages: but don’t let us replace the old habit of attributing anything nice to the Renaissance by the new one of attributing everything nasty to Protestantism.^* Pomponazzi was of course an Italian: and the two greatest (theoretical) exponents of Magic were Popish Pico⁹¹ and Protestant Paracelsus.⁹² Thanks for admirable sonnet and the only true history of the Hare & Tortoise,

Yours

Jack

 

* Tawney has done much harm.⁹³ And tho’ I’m no Calvinist I wish people who write about Calvin wd. read the Institutio first.⁹⁴

TO MRS JOHNSON (P):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

July 9th 57

Dear Mrs Johnson–

Thanks for your most kind letter of the 2nd. Joy is now home, home from hospital, completely bed-ridden. The cancer is ‘arrested’, which means, I fear, hardly any hope for the long term issue, but for the moment, apparently perfect health, no pain, eating & sleeping like a child, spirits usually excellent, able to beat me always at Scrabble and sometimes in argument. She runs the whole house from her bed and keeps a pack of women not only loving her but (what’s rarer) one another. We are crazily in love.

My back turns out to be not slipped disc but osteoporosis–a spongy condition of the bones that is common in men of 75 but almost unknown at my age (58). After full investigation by a great Professor of Pathology the cause remains quite obscure.⁹⁵ It has passed the stage of spasms and screams (each was rather like having a tooth out with no anaesthetic and you never knew when they were coming!), but I still ache a good deal and need sleeping draughts.

Can you realise the good side? Poor Joy, after being the sole object of pity & anxiety can now perform the truly wifely function of fussing over me–I’m in pain and sit it out–and of course the psychological effect is extremely good. It banishes all that wearisome sense of being no use. You see, I’m v. willing to have osteoporosis at this price.

The younger stepson is an outdoor, cheerful boy, everyone’s friend, just the right amount of mischief, and certain to fall on his feet anywhere. The elder is our problem child. V. like what I was at his age. V. studious, a bit of a pedant, perhaps a bit of a prig, lots of brains, but inclined to use them in every subject except his school work (tries to teach himself Hebrew and neglects his Latin!), a bad mixer, can be spiteful and feels his mother’s situation (poor little devil–I was thro’ all that at about his age) dreadfully. He’ll either be a great scholar or a total waster. No one can tell.

I am so glad to hear of your own happiness–I understand it so much better now. Golly!, how little I knew about life a year ago!

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO H. A. SCHULZE (P):⁹⁶

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

July 9th 1957

Dear Mr. Schulz

My wife and I are both ill, so I hope you will not think me churlish if I say I can see no visitors. My respect and gratitude are none the less.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARTIN KILMER (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

July 10th 57

Dear Martin

It was nice to hear from you again. The eldila⁹⁷ are meant to be angels, not fairies. Haven’t you noticed that they are always about Maledil’s⁹⁸ business? I admit I made the birth-rates of the Hrossa a bit too low: but of course you must remember I was picturing a world in its extreme old age–like an old man tranquilly and happily proceeding to his end.⁹⁹ I hope you are all well. That is splendid about Anne’s poetry prize: give her my heartiest congratulations.

I’ve been rather ill with a bad back but it is slowly mending. We’ve been having what we call a heat wave, though you Virginians wd. probably call it cool enough.

Love to all.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

 

On 11 July 1957 Jocelyn Gibb wrote to Lewis:

We are producing…an occasional journal…called FIFTY-TWO –Books and People…I wondered if you would mind if we had a pen portrait of you done by someone like Milton…

Sales are not too happy at the moment. I think everybody must be away at the seaside and not bothering about buying books. Your older books are falling off in sales which I suppose is bound to happen after some of them have been out for such a long time. TILL WE HAVE FACES goes along slowly but has lingered for some time around the 10,000 mark. On the other hand SURPRISED BY JOY still goes along briskly.¹⁰⁰

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

July 11th 1957

Dear Gibb

Thanks for the Dutch version.¹⁰¹ A pen portrait of oneself by Milton, when one remembers Smectymnuus and Colasterion, is sufficiently alarming.¹⁰² Has he learned charity since those days? Or is he in a place where he is likely to learn just the opposite. But one dare not, ob verecundiam,¹⁰³ refuse such a man. I’ll stand firm.

As I am now married, and my wife ill, and two stepsons to educate, and an illness of my own, the news about sales is just what I shd. have expected!

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

The Kilns

July 16th 57

My dear Roger

Oh, they’ve been cruel to you in Mystery at M. Whenever you escape into the v. slightly heroic and at any rate simpler style proper to the theme it goes well. But no doubt you were told–or knew in advance that you would be told–to keep it ruthlessly modern, even slangy. The effect is almost vulgar at times, almost as if Odysseus smoked a pipe. But it’s a good well-knit yarn.

What I really wanted to write about, though, is your article on Anstey in English.¹⁰⁴ This seems to me to mark a great advance in your critical style: a precision, economy, & absence of cliché, a firmness wh. you hadn’t, or hadn’t enough, before. V. hearty congratulations.

Joy continues apparently well & happy.

Yours

Jack

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):¹⁰⁵

The Kilns etc

July 17/57

Dear Gibb

A flash of stupidity–if it does flash–somehow put Milton W. quite out of my mind as the Milton you meant. Yes, by all means.

Troubles wouldn’t stop me writing if I were ‘with book’–but only tympanies, false pregnancies, occur: save in the academic (severely) direction, where I am writing hard. You couldn’t find a duller, less saleable, more erudite, work.¹⁰⁶ Thus the influence of a Chair spreads upwards.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO JOAN LANCASTER (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

July 18/57

Dear Joan

They tell me that one shd. never try to learn Spanish and Italian at the same time. The fact that they are so alike of course helps one a bit over the meanings of words (but Latin wd. help you almost equally for both) but it makes a confusion in one’s mind about grammar and idioms–in the end one makes a horrid soup out of both. I don’t know Spanish, but I know there are lovely things in Italian to read. You’ll like Boiardo,¹⁰⁷ Ariosto, and Tasso.¹⁰⁸ By the way good easy Latin reading to keep one’s Latin up with is the New Testament in Latin. Any Roman Catholic bookshop will have one: say you want a copy of the ‘Vulgate (VULGATE) New Testament’. Acts goes specially well in Latin.

I don’t think being good always goes with having fun: a martyr being tortured by Nero, or a resistance movement man refusing to give away his friends when tortured by the Germans, were being good but not having fun. And even in ordinary life there are things that wd. be fun to me but I mustn’t do them because they wd. spoil other people’s fun.

But of course you are quite right if you mean that giving up fun for no reason except that you think it’s ‘good’ to give it up, is all nonsense. Don’t the ordinary old rules about telling the truth and doing as you’d be done by tell one pretty well which kinds of fun one may have and which not? But provided the thing is in itself right, the more one likes it and the less one has to ‘try to be good’, the better. A perfect man wd. never act from sense of duty; he’d always want the right thing more than the wrong one. Duty is only a substitute for love (of God and of other people)–like a crutch, which is a substitute for a leg. Most of us need the crutch at times: but of course it’s idiotic to use the crutch when our own legs (our own loves, tastes, habits etc) can do the journey on their own!

With love,

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO FATHER PETER MILWARD SJ (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford, England

July 26/57

Dear Father Milward

Thanks for your letter. There’s not meant to be any position–even negative–about the Church, in my romances. But I am in no fit state for a discussion. I think I told you before that I am newly married and my wife is dying: I am now myself also suffering from a painful disease. So I need all the help your prayers can give me. I will continue mine for you.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD): TS

184/57

The Kilns, Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

1st August 1957.

Dear Gibb,

The Sunday Times does’nt often ask me to review books, and I’m ‘up to the neck’ at present with my wife’s illness and my own. I look forward to reading Armstrong’s little book.¹⁰⁹

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO ANNE AND MARTIN KILMER (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Aug 7th 1957

Dear Anne and Martin

The view that angels have no bodies of any kind has not always been held among Christians. The older idea (early Middle Ages) was that they had bodies of aether as we have bodies of gross matter. The opposite view (your one)¹¹⁰ was that of the great scholastics–Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas etc.¹¹¹ The old one was temporarily revived at the Renaissance by Italians like Ficino.¹¹² Of course I just took, for purposes of a story, the one that seemed most imaginable. I have no scruples about this because, religiously, the question seems to me of no importance. And anyway what do we mean by ‘matter’?

I am so glad you both like TWHF. I think it much my best book but not many people agree.

Hearty congratulations to Martin on his successes in Latin. Keep it up. To be able to read Latin easily (i.e. without having to translate it mentally as you go along) is an enormous advantage later on. Practice on the Latin New Testament where you know the story already and the style is very simple. Acts goes especially well in St. Jerome’s Latin.

The dragon in Beowulf certainly has wings. Shooting stars were often called fire-dragons in the Middle Ages and no one wd. have called them that unless he thought dragons flew. There might be a wingless variety as well, no doubt.

Why do I not care for Plutarch,¹¹³ I wonder? I’ve tried him many times, but I somehow don’t get on.

I think, Anne, the 3 sisters¹¹⁴ are not v. like goddesses. They’re just human souls. Psyche has a vocation and becomes a saint. Orual lives the practical life and is, after many sins, saved. As for Redival–well, we’ll all hope the best for everyone!

My bones feel a bit better now that I’ve got what they call a ‘surgical belt’. It’s really like your grandmother’s corsets. It gives me a wonderful schoolboy figure!

Love to all.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MICHAEL PAFFARD (P):¹¹⁵

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Aug 9th 1957

Dear Mr. Paffard

I found your essay¹¹⁶ most interesting and think it perfectly suitable for publication–tho’ I don’t know the modern periodicals well enough to say where you would have the best chance. Whether I agree with you matters v. little. I think Rowse and Forrest Reid are describing an experience like mine,¹¹⁷ while K. Clarke¹¹⁸ seems far away. But who knows? I may be simply suffering from the illusion (but, again, is that an illusion?) which leads so many pairs of lovers to think that their love is quite unlike all loves there ever were before!

May I suggest that in the first sentence of para 5, p. 6, there is a confused construction. Surely you shd. delete For and (in the next line) change these to their and delete they? Otherwise, if I may say so, it seems to me v. lucidly and agreeably written.

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Aug 12th 1957

Dear Mary Willis

Thanks for your kind letter of Aug. 8th. Of course I showed it to Joy who got great pleasure from it and sends you her love. I enclose both our autographs.

She continues (apparently) to mend–in fact (o irony!) her face now is that of a woman in better health than in the photo you have seen: much less drawn and intense and far livelier. (But of course no man ever approves the photos of the woman he loves!)

My osteoporosis doesn’t seem to get much better, but at least it has never been so bad again as it was when it began. I’m wearing a Surgical Belt–v. like one’s grandmother’s corsets. It gives me a wonderfully youthful figure.

Both my stepsons are now home from school for the summer holidays. They are well and seem happy enough.

Even our heat wave was trying: yours must have been ghastly. I sympathise with you for that and all your other afflictions.

Yours

Jack

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Aug 17/57

My dear Roger–

What a horrible accident for June, and how lightly (considering) she got off.¹¹⁹ Please give her my love. My rage against the Bodley Head reader is unbounded.¹²⁰ Yes, I hope we can manage a drink if you are both here in early September. Whatever change there is here is slightly for the better. In haste.

Yours

Jack

TO W. K. SCUDAMORE (T):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Aug 19th 1957

Dear Mr. Scudamore

Yes, yes, of course identifications have been made of people in F.Q.¹²¹ with contemporary real characters. That Elizabeth ‘is’ both Gloriana and Belphoebe, S. himself has told us in his prefatory letter to Raleigh, q.v.¹²² The identification of Duessa with Mary Q. of Scots is as old as James I. After these, conjecture begins. American learned periodicals pour out articles on new identifications all the time. The trouble is not that parallels between F.Q. and the history of the time are hard, but that they are too easy, to find. There is a waiting list of identifications for many episodes! This makes me a bit sceptical about any one in particular. Memo: it is impossible for the wit of man to devise a story in which the wit of another man cannot find, and quite plausibly, an allegory.

Your relation is as good a candidate as most, and if you contributed an article on him, as the origin of the Scudamour in F.Q.¹²³ to, say, the Proceedings of the Modern Language Association it wd. probably be accepted. The case against him wd., for me, rest precisely on the identity of names. This surely makes your view not more, but less, probable: it wd. be v. odd to have all the other characters in masquerade and one under his real name–as odd as meeting a Giant Jeffreys in Bunyan.¹²⁴ But odd or not, it does occur over Burbon in Book V.¹²⁵ You will have to make the most of this.

I can quite sympathise with your interest–if I had any chance of finding a relation of my own in F.Q. I’d probably fight for him tooth and nail. In general, however, as one who loves F.Q. I regard the historical allegory as a regrettable error of Spenser’s, and take no interest in the attempts to unravel it. I fancy they are chiefly made by those who find the poem itself a bore–we begin thinking about the private life of the actors when the play ceases to grip us.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

[The Kilns]

Aug. 21 [1957]

My dear Arthur,

They did give me Deep Heat alright as long as the trouble was supposed to be a slipped disc or anything rheumatic. But as soon as the x-rays showed osteoporosis they dropped Deep Heat at once. And I do sleep with [a] board under my mattress.

This disease is, I fancy, quite different from what you had: the cure, if there is one, depends on getting the system to turn into bone more of the calcium one’s ordinary food contains–a question of blood & metabolism. But enough of this.

Telephone call from Eire to say that W. was dead drunk and they were trying to get him into the Lourdes Hospital. Then, a day or two later, letter from W., not in Lourdes Hospital, to say he has been diagnosed as having a heart complaint wh. will kill him in a year. It may be true–he says anything in his alcoholic spasms–and I’ve written to the Rev. Mother asking for the facts.¹²⁶ It’s weary waiting for an answer. It always might be true this time.

But perhaps it is a good thing that troubles never come singly. Any one of my present woes (Joy, W., myself) wd. possibly affect me more if it was the only one. At any rate, when life gets very bad (do you find?) a sort of anaesthesia sets in. There is at least a mercy in being always tired: it takes the edge off things.

Sun this morning for the first time after many days. I hope the view from your house is bathed in it too–I’d love to see it this moment. You must have had a tough time when you and Esther¹²⁷ were both laid up. Did Peter¹²⁸ make a good nurse?

Yours

Jack

TO JANE GASKELL (BOD):¹²⁹

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Sept 2/57

Dear Miss Gaskell–

My wife and I have just been reading your book¹³⁰ and I want to tell you that I think it a quite amazing achievement–incomparably beyond anything I could have done at that age. The story runs, on the whole, very well and there is some real imagination in it. The idea of the gigantic spoiled brat (had you a horrid baby brother once?) is really excellent: perhaps even profound.¹³¹ Unlike most modern fantasies your book also has a firm core of civilised ethics. On all these grounds, hearty congratulations.

On the other hand there is no reason at all why your next book should not be at least twice as good. I hope you will not think it impertinent if I mention (this is only one man’s opinion of course) some mistakes you can avoid in future.

1. In all stories which take one to another world, the difficulty (as you and I know) is to make something happen when we’ve got there. In fact, one needs ‘filling’. Yours is quite sufficient in quantity (almost too much) but not quite, I think, of the right sort. Aren’t all these economic problems and religious differences too like the politics of our own world? Why go to faerie for what we already have? Surely the wars of faerie should be high, reckless, heroical, romantic wars–concerned with the possession of a beautiful queen or an enchanted treasure? Surely the diplomatic phase of them should be represented not by conferences (which, on your own showing, are as dull as ours) but by ringing words of gay taunt, stern defiance, or Quixotic generosity, interchanged by great warriors with sword in hand before the battle joins?

2. This is closely connected with the preceding. In a fantasy every precaution must be taken never to break the spell, to do nothing which will wake the reader and bring him back with a bump to the common earth. But this is what you sometimes do. The moving bar on which they travel is a dull invention at best, because we can’t help conceiving it as mechanical. But when you add upholstered seats, lavatories, and restaurants, I can’t go on believing in faerie for a moment. It has all turned into commonplace technological luxury!¹³² Similarly even a half-fairy ought not climb a fairyhill carrying a suitcase full of new nighties. All magic dies at this touch of the commonplace. (Notice, too, the disenchanting implication that the fairies can’t make for themselves lingerie as good as they can get–not even in Paris, which wd. be bad enough–but, of all places, in London.)¹³³

3. Never use adjectives or adverbs which are mere appeals to the reader to feel as you want him to feel. He won’t do it just because you ask him: you’ve got to make him. No good telling us a battle was ‘exciting’. If you succeeded in exciting us the adjective will be unnecessary: if you don’t, it will be useless. Don’t tell us the jewels had an ‘emotional’ glitter; make us feel the emotion.¹³⁴ I can hardly tell you how important this is.

4. You are too fond of long adverbs like ‘dignifiedly’, which are not nice to pronounce. I hope, by the way, you always write by ear not by eye. Every sentence shd. be tested on the tongue, to make sure that the sound of it has the hardness or softness, the swiftness or languor, which the meaning of it calls for.

5. Far less about clothes, please! I mean, ordinary clothes. If you had given your fairies strange and beautiful clothes and described them, there might be something in it. But your heroine’s tangerine skirt!¹³⁵ For whom do you write? No man wants to hear how she was dressed, and the sort of woman who does seldom reads fantasy: if she reads anything it is more likely to be the Women’s Magazines.

By the way, these are a baneful influence on your mind and imagination. Beware! they may kill your talent. If you can’t keep off them, at least, after each debauch, give your imagination a good mouth-wash by a reading (or wd. it be a re-reading) of the Odyssey, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, E. R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros, the romances of James Stephens, and all the early mythical plays of W. B. Yeats. Perhaps a touch of Lord Dunsany too.

6. Names not too good. They ought to be beautiful and suggestive as well as strange: not merely odd like Enaj (wh. sounds as if it came out of Butler’s Erewhon).

I hope all this does not enrage you. You’ll get so much bad advice that I felt I must give you some of what I think good.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

[The Kilns]

Sept. 5/57

My dear Arthur–

I’ve now got the real news about W., wh. is much less alarming. The heart trouble is slight & curable: it was a bye-product of acute alcoholism and pneumonia.

Sorry about Peter’s operation and your wrist. Yes, yes, I’ve been examined for a whole morning by the biggest pathologist here, had instruments shoved up my bottom and specimens sucked out of my marrow, & x-ray photos and all.

God bless.

Yours

Jack

TO LUCY MATTHEWS (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Sept 14th 1957

Dear Lucy Matthews

I am so glad you like the Narnian stories and it was nice of you to write and tell me. I love E. Nesbit too and I think I have learned a lot from her about how to write stories of this kind. Do you know Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings? I think you wd. like it. I am also bad at Maths and it is a continual nuisance to me–I get muddled over my change in shops. I hope you’ll have better luck and get over the difficulty! It makes life a lot easier.

It makes me, I think, more humble than proud to know that Aslan has allowed me to be the means of making Him more real to you.

Because He could have used anyone–as He made a donkey preach a good sermon to Balaam.¹³⁶ Perhaps, in return, you will sometimes say a prayer for me?

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Sept 18/57

My dear Roger–

This is bad luck for you but perfectly alright for us. We’ll have Douglas booted & spurred and waiting on Tue 24 at 10. a.m.¹³⁷ I wish we cd. have asked June and you to spend the night–but you know we are a rabbit warren! Love to all.

Yours

Jack

TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry

Oxford

Sept 21/57

My dear Cecil–

I am very much better. But I no longer take each period of pain for a permanent deterioration nor each free period for permanent recovery. They are both indirect results of the bone disease and of v. little symptomatic importance.

I mustn’t travel any more than I can help but shall be delighted to see you both (discuss with Owen) next term.

You needn’t pity me too much. The private side (farewell indefinitely, perhaps finally, to walks and bathes) never worries me at all. Pain or even discomfort puts mere loss of pleasure quite out of account. What one can’t do one soon ceases to want to do.

Wof was the most completely lovable man, I admit, I ever knew. I am so glad to have known him, that it almost obliterates the loss.¹³⁸

My wife has made wonderful progress, quite unexpected by the doctor. Can it be?–dare one hope? I suppose not. But we are often a great deal happier, merrier, delighted, than you wd. think possible. We are at present being accorded all the privileges of shorn lambs!

Love to both.

Yours

Jack Your letter warmed my heart.

TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS OSB (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

Sept 24th. 57

My dear Dom Bede–

Thanks for your letter of the 15th. My wife’s condition, contrary to the expectation of the doctors, has improved, if not miraculously (but who knows?) at any rate wonderfully. (How wd. one say that in Latin?). No one, least of all herself, encourages me to dream of a permanent recovery, but this is a wonderful reprieve. Tho’ she is still a cripple, her general health is better than I have ever seen it, and she says she has never been happier.

It is nice to have arrived at all this by something which began in Agape, proceeded to Philia, then became Pity, and only after that, Eros. As if the highest of these, Agape, had successfully undergone the sweet humiliation of an incarnation.

My own trouble, after one terrible fortnight, has taken a turn for the better. No one suggests that the disease is either curable or fatal. It normally accompanies that fatal disease we call Senility! but no one knows why I have got it so early (comparatively) in life.

Of course when you write about the young man, I can say that you are a man of sense and honesty. Some at Magdalene have pleasant memories of your one visit there.

There is lots more to say but my days are very full. God bless you and all your hopes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

 

Thank you v. much for your prayers: you are always in mine

 

The following was to be Lewis’s last letter to Dorothy L. Sayers, who died suddenly on 17 December 1957.

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Sept 29th 1957

Dear Dorothy–

Thank you very much for a copy of Roland.¹³⁹ I devoured the introduction which seemed to me a masterpiece of popular, but not too popular exposition. Your demonstration of the poem’s unity, which I take to be wholly new, is entirely convincing.

On the translation itself I’d be able to speak better if my text of the original weren’t at Cambridge: and also if I knew as much Old French as you. But it certainly gets over the hurdle which matters more than all the other hurdles put together: it is a good, swinging, readable story. I must confess it is in places too slangy for my own taste. But then I’ve no way of knowing how the original sounded to contemporary ears. Do you think anything in it belonged for them to the level where, for us, ‘You’ve got us in this mess’ belongs?¹⁴⁰ Perhaps it did, and certainly your opinion on that point is worth more than mine.

Let me hasten to add that what I cd. remember of the O. French soon made me realise you were tackling an insoluble problem–far harder, really, than Dante sets you. The unadorned is the least translatable style in the world. For instance the exclamation Dieus! One is sure it wasn’t at all like God! as now used in conversation: but what else to do with it? Lord! is no better, my God! (apart from its being two syllables) is worse. It is unlikely that anyone wd. have got out of the scrape as well as you. I’ve seen no reviews. The critics, whether scholarly or on the R. Mortimer level,¹⁴¹ will, I bet, not realise that there is a scrape at all.

My wife continues to defeat all the doctors’ predictions most gloriously and my own little trouble is much eased.

Thanks and blessings,

Yours

Jack

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

Sept 31 [30]/57

Dear Evans–

If you have a copy of your world history¹⁴²–thus you succeed Orosius,¹⁴³ Raleigh,¹⁴⁴ and Wells¹⁴⁵–absolutely eating its head off, of course we’d like to see it. But I know how quickly one’s free copies fade away and I’d advise you to plant it where it might be some use to you: or else give it to some young, impecunious chap whose empty shelves ache for books. I cd. do the book no good¹⁴⁶ (no one’d listen to me on such a topic) and my problem is to find room for books! So put me last on your list of possible recipients. Thanks all the same.

I wd. have loved a book about Astronomy as a boy and cd. have endured one about Geology. But lives of astronomers–and scrambled with those of geologists–seems absolutely crazy!¹⁴⁷ But I suppose if science is to be run as a kind of religion they feel it must have saints’ lives.

Yes, I read Sinister Barrier:¹⁴⁸ as good a story of its kind as I know.

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ALAN HINDLE (BOD):¹⁴⁹

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Oct. 7th 1957

Dear Mr. Hindle,

It is nice to find people still reading that book! I can’t now remember why (if I had a reason) I said nothing about the Song of Songs.¹⁵⁰ Next time I re-read the latter I must consider it from the point of view you suggest. Speaking from memory, I shd. say the thing that brings it closest to Courtly Love is ‘terrible as an army with banners’.¹⁵¹ The description of the beloved’s body cd. of course come in medieval poetry, but cd. it not equally come in any love poetry at any period when the contemporary canon of decorum did not exclude it? Whether the orthodox allegorical interpretation about Christ and the Church cd. make an influence on courtly love more probable or less, I can’t make up my mind. It might work either way, mightn’t it?

As you see, I’m in no position to ‘put you right’ on the matter. For many years I have not thought much about Courtly Love and I am, so to speak, ‘out of training’. You are quite as likely to be right as I.

With good wishes,

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Oct 15/57

Dear Gibb

Thanks for cheque. I enclose receipt. No, I much prefer Miss Baynes.¹⁵² These have their wit but they belong to a school which thinks (a.) That whatever is meant for children must be comic. (b.) That the right way to be comic for children is to parody their own attempts at drawing. All a bit of patronising grown-up facetiousness.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Oct 16th 57

Dear Gibb

Wd. you please send one copy each of

Mere Christianity

Miracles

Lion, W. and W.

Till We have Faces

to

Stefano Barragato, Sociedad de Hermanos

Primavera,

Alto Paraguay,

Sth. America.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Oct 20th 1957

Dear Mary Willis

We are shocked and distressed at the news in your letter of the 15th. I think I see from what you say that God is already giving you new spiritual strength with which to meet this terrible affliction–just as He did to us in Joy’s worst times. But pain is pain. I wish I could relieve any of it for you–one is so ineffective. The great thing, as you have obviously seen, (both as regards pain and financial worries) is to live from day to day and hour to hour not adding the past or future to the present. As one lived in the Front Line ‘They’re not shelling us at the moment, and it’s not raining, and the rations have come up, so let’s enjoy ourselves.’ In fact, as Our Lord said, ‘Sufficient unto the day’.¹⁵³ You may be sure you will be v. much in our prayers. All my news is good, very good up-to-date, tho’ of course we live always under the sword of Damocles. God bless and keep you, dear friend. It’ll be nice when we all wake up from this life which has indeed something like nightmare about it.

Yours

Jack

 

During the autumn of 1957, while continuing to work on Studies in Words, Lewis wrote Reflections on the Psalms. He asked Austin Farrer, the theologian, to look it over while it was still in manuscript. The book was being typed when he wrote the following letter to Katharine Farrer.

TO KATHARINE FARRER (BOD):

The Kilns

Oct 22/57

Dear K–

We both still have flu’. I had no pupil called HEWART: you probably mean Dick HEWITT.¹⁵⁴ I know nothing about him in relation to women. In every other context he is one of the straightest, most rigidly conscentious men I know. Very pious, tho’ not always in the ways we’d like–he was (is no longer) in Moral Rearmament. All things are possible: but I’d bet on his integrity and kindness as soon as on anybody’s.

I hope all four of us will soon be better & able to meet. The stuff about the Psalms is still with the typist. Thank Austin very much.

Yours

Jack

TO MURIEL BRADBROOK (W): PC

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Oct 24/57

Thanks! How v. nice of you to let me know. I hope to be back on Monday. Salute all on my behalf.

Jack

TO MARTIN HOOTON (BOD):

As from Magdalene,

Cambridge

Oct 24/57

It turned out to be not a slipped disk but a disease (neither dangerous nor curable) called osteoporosis. At the moment I’m having flu’ at Oxford but hope to be back at College next week. After that, if all’s well, any week-day you like (let’s dine at Ely or the like) except Nov 12 and 13. Will you suggest?

C.S.L.

TO KATHRYN STILLWELL (P):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Oct 29th 1957

Dear Miss Stillwell–

Your thesis arrived yesterday and I read it at once.¹⁵⁵ You are in the centre of the target everywhere.

For one thing, you know my work better than anyone else I’ve met: certainly better than I do myself. (I’ve no recollection whatever of The World’s Last Night and can’t imagine what it was about!).¹⁵⁶

But secondly, you (alone of the critics I’ve met) realise the connection, or even the unity, of all the books–scholarly, fantastic, theological–and make me appear a single author not a man who impersonates half a dozen authors, which is what I seem to most. This wins really very high marks indeed.

There is one place (pp. 93, 94) where, tho’ I am sure you are not misunderstanding, you express yourself in a way wh. might make it seem to the reader that you were. It sounds as if you thought I was talking primarily about animals in that poem, whereas you know I’m using the animals to suggest crusty humans like Johnson & Cobbett.¹⁵⁷

Of course it involves sympathy for the animals, wh. is your point. But most readers will misunderstand if you give them the slightest chance. (It’s like driving cattle: if there’s an open gateway anywhere on the road, they’ll go into it!).

If you understand me so well, you will understand other authors too. I hope that we shall have some really useful critical works from your hand.

With thanks and good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARTIN HOOTON (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Oct 29/57

Dear Hooton

Good. I shall expect you from 6 to 6.15 on Thurs 7th. November,

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

As from Magdalene College,

Cambridge

Nov 3d 1957

Dear Mary Willis

Oh what bad luck! Tooth troubles on top of all the rest. The financial side of it is probably really the least formidable. As our ancestors used to say, you have ‘lived at God’s charges’ so far, and no doubt He will continue to foot the bill. Nor do I think you are in the least danger of getting ‘queer’–except that we’re all queer. We’ve been having influenza and the few days in bed seem (so odd is my complaint) to have done my bones harm–i.e. they’re not so good as they were three weeks ago, but they’re not so bad as they were 6 weeks ago. Joy continues to make progress. All blessings & sympathy.

Yours

Jack

TO KATHLEEN RAINE (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Nov 7th 1957

Dear Mrs. Madge

This is an absolute stunner:¹⁵⁸ one of the most important discoveries (of that kind) made in our times. What it doesn’t explain, and no Quellenforschung ever will explain, is how what ought to be an intolerable metre and what seems the flattest of language make such an enchanting poem. Still, the first step is to know what it is about and you have got us up that.

Pre-existence, by the way, however condemned, could be dabbled in during the Middle Ages (see Bernardus Silvester De Mundi Universitate, II, Prosa 3):¹⁵⁹ and of course came back with the Renaissance Platonists. But there’s no reason why you shd. take any notice of that.

I haven’t lost or forgotten One Foot in Eden¹⁶⁰ but am still hoping to find myself in the right mood for it. You know how tricky these things are.

With very many thanks,

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD): TS

184/57

The Kilns, Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

9th November 1957.

Dear Gibb,

Thanks for the Dutch Silver Chair, which as you say, has been well done.¹⁶¹ I have corrected the Psalms typescript this week, and hope you will like the book.

Yes, thanks, I am really much better, in spite of having followed the fashion of having Asian ’flu.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

The Kilns, Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

12th November 1957.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

We were both very pleased to hear from you again, and in such a nice long interesting letter–and glad that you have at last disposed of your Californian White Elephant. We too know something of the ‘hope deferred which maketh the heart sick’¹⁶² in the matter of house property; having still vivid recollections of disposing of our old home after our father’s death in 1929.

You will I’m sure rejoice with me when I tell you that the improvement in my wife’s condition is, in the proper use of the word, miraculous; now not only is there no pain, but she is walking. She can now get about the ground floor of the house alone, with of course, a stick and a special shoe for the leg which is permanently shortened; and here of course there is no hope of any improvement; but when I see her state now, and contrast it with that in which she was six months ago, I realize what deep cause for gratitude we both have.

As regards myself, I’m glad to say that the osteoporosis makes progress, and I am feeling much better; though I am still something of an invalid, and miss the walking exercise to which I have always been accustomed. But here again, I should rather be grateful for the improvement than resentful that it is not rapider and more complete.

If we can accept as true what our papers tell us, the Queen’s trip has been a real success, and I was amused at your account of the part played in it by you and the Tycoon.¹⁶³ I don’t suppose royalty feels the same embarrassment at these kinds of reception as we luckier mortals would in their place. After all, they have been in the limelight since they could walk almost. Look at Princess Anne and Prince Charles–still very young children, and I suppose they would find it odd if they were not photographed when they went out!

I don’t feel that ‘Sputnik’ in itself is anything very dangerous, but one does’nt like the underlying implication, i.e. that its existence proves that Russia is far ahead of your country in inter-continental missiles.¹⁶⁴ But what has alarmed me much more than Sputnik is an article on the behaviour of the American troops in Korea which appeared in a recent New Yorker. It is by an American doctor who was out there, and contains some shocking facts; for instance that in the prison camp the Americans threw their own sick comrades out to die in the snow. Let us hope that it is much exaggerated.

We are both busy here; I have a little book on the Psalms coming out, and my brother has one of his French History things due to be published next March¹⁶⁵–also another accepted for a later date. So you will see that Lewis Bros. factory Inc. is in full employment and production! I think my brother has already told you that your name is down for a copy of his book when it comes out.

I should think you are wise in moving out of New York; my wife, a former resident of that city, does not speak well of it as a place to live, more especially in the summer months; and I understand it can be bitter cold in the winter. I don’t know anything about Virginia except that I’m told it is where the Virginia tobacco does not come from. We shall both be interested to hear how your plans go.

With love to you all from us all, yours ever,

C. S. Lewis

 

P. S. I’d already written this before I noticed that you say it should be held up until we have your new address. But I’m sending it all the same in the hope that it will reach you.

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

As from Magdalene

Nov 16th 57

Dear Gibb

No one but a fool reads an advertisement with belief, but when I reflect (as I believe I may) that dear Milton believed this as he wrote, I don’t know whether to purr or blush or…weep. The bit about the Martyr’s Memorial will carry its full ambivalence only to those who know it as the ugliest thing in Oxford. Well, use it, and thanks to M. W.¹⁶⁶

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO HERBERT PALMER (TEX):

As from Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Nov. 17th 1957

My dear Palmer–

I am flattered that you should think me worth consulting.¹⁶⁷ I have not had the solitude or leisure to read it as carefully as I shd. have wished. Not without keeping you waiting too long. I felt a deep sympathy with your point of view throughout. I enjoyed many things–the snowing stars on p. 17,¹⁶⁸ the Earth marrying the Moon and rolling a withered eye on p. 21,¹⁶⁹ the three concluding lines on p. 22. I’m not sure that I understand everything. Wrist for altering (p. 20, l. 5)¹⁷⁰ conveys nothing to me–has ‘altering’ a slang or technical sense (other than the vet’s = castrating)? The best thing in the whole sequence (as you probably know) is the ‘Ride’ itself.¹⁷¹ There is an excitement like that of a literal gallop here, v. well combined with the unearthly circumstance. The one, to be honest, which I don’t like at all is ‘Song of Spirit and Soul’. I wonder have you some art of reading it aloud which makes it good and do you thus fail to anticipate what a ruthless jig it will become on most other lips? (I know Blake can make heavenly music out of the most seemingly intolerable metres, but who can bend Ulysses’ bow?)

I am cheered at your appreciation of Till We Have Faces, and needed some cheering: for, to judge by reviews and sales, it is my biggest failure yet. I’ve had a funny bone-disease most of this year. It is now much better but, I believe, will never be quite so. I hope you wear better than I. If you are ever in Cambridge it wd. be a great pleasure to meet again. Good hunting!

Yours

C. S. Lewis

 

P.S. I spotted no literals–but then I never do.

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Nov 17th 1957

My dear Roger–

It was nice to see us appearing together in to-day’s Sunday Times¹⁷² and nice, too, to read a reasonable review of M. at M. in the T.L.S.¹⁷³

But nicest of all was getting your new book,¹⁷⁴ which I should still be reading if Joy, after the manner of wives (how I have ‘dwindled into a husband’!)¹⁷⁵ had not taken it out of my hands. What a lot there is in it, and how much I didn’t know! The Lunar Hoax interested me especially, not principally as a hoax, tho’ that is good fun too, but because some of it is really the best invention and description of extra-terrestrial landscape (the animals are less good) before First Men in the Moon.¹⁷⁶

I think you are hard on Wells. Obviously, he touches off something in you which he didn’t in me. I still think that a v. good book indeed and don’t dislike the Selenites themselves so much as you do. Bedford is of course a cad.¹⁷⁷

I’m with you about the ‘ghastly materialistic’ tenacity of Stapledon’s humans.¹⁷⁸ And of course I enjoyed the kind things you say about myself: as also the moving inscription in my copy.¹⁷⁹

By the way Douglas, when home for half term, quite unmotivated, produced a testimonial to Shirard whom he described as ‘very popular’ and then (oh the delicious superiority of small fry over smaller) ‘one of the most promising New-Boys he had known’. So strike the stars with your sublime head,¹⁸⁰ for this, you know, is ‘beyond all Greek, beyond all Roman fame’.¹⁸¹ We both send our love to June and you.

Yours

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Nov. 27th 57

My dear Arthur

Our news is all very good. Joy’s improvement has gone beyond anything we dared to hope and she can now (limping, of course, and with a stick) get about the house and into the garden. My osteoporosis is also very much better. I have no pain worth talking about now: wake up a bit sore in the mornings but that wears off by the time I’m shaved and bath’d. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to take a real walk again nor to leave off my surgical belt; but I cd. hardly have believed, if it had been foretold me, how little either of these prospects bothers me. I began to get better about 4 weeks before term began. I have to hire a car at the beginning and end of term for the journey because I can’t handle the luggage, but I go to & fro by train on week ends quite comfortably. Indeed a corner-seat in a railway carriage is one of my best positions.

I’ve been writing nothing but academic work except for a very unambitious little work on the Psalms, wh. is now finished and ought to come out next spring.

I like Cambridge better all the time: also my new job–or rather my new leisure for I’ve never been so under-worked since I first went to school.

Please congratulate Peter on his successful operation. You say nothing about yourself: I hope this means there is nothing but good to say? Give my love to Janie and the Glenmachonians: and give God thanks on my behalf for all His mercies. Bless you.

Yours

Jack

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Nov 27th 1957

My dear Van Auken–

It hardly seems a quarter of a year since you were such a welcome visitor in Oxford.

I note what you say, that you are now in your second bereavement: that which bereaves one of the bereavement itself.¹⁸² And, as you unflinchingly see, it is ‘according to the Law’.¹⁸³ I feel you are probably right in thinking that the fading of the beloved as-she-was is a necessary condition of the trans-mortal and eternal relation. May we not conjecture (am I repeating myself?) that when Our Lord said ‘It is expedient that I go away’¹⁸⁴ he stated something true par excellence of Himself, but also true, in their degree, of all his followers?

My own news continues better than we ever dared to hope. The cancerous bones have rebuilt themselves in a way quite unusual and Joy can now walk: on a stick and with a limp, it is true, but it is a walk–and far less than a year ago it took 3 people to move her in bed and we often hurt her. Her general health, and spirits, seem excellent. Of course the sword of Damocles hangs over us. Or shd. I say that circumstances have opened our eyes to see the sword which really hangs always over everyone.

I forget if I had begun my own bone disease (osteoporosis) when you were with us. Anyway, it is much better now and I am no longer in pain. I wear a surgical belt and shall probably never be able to take a real walk again, but it doesn’t somehow worry me. The intriguing thing is that while I (for no discoverable reason) was losing the chalcium from my bones, Joy, who needed it much more, was gaining it in hers. One dreams of a Charles Williams substitution! Well, never was a gift more gladly given: but one must not be fanciful.

It is nice being in love with Hellas, I expect. My brother is well. Write from time to time. Of course you are in my prayers as I am in yours.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

As from Magdalene College,

Cambridge

Nov. 30th 1957

Dear Mary Willis

Thanks for your letter of Nov. 22d. Yes: moves are desolating things.¹⁸⁵ The wind of Time blows cold at these corners, doesn’t it?–and one’s belongings have a sort of squalid pathos about them once they are packed. But one often feels better afterwards and I hope you will find this. Of course the new home is a tiring nuisance until the new ways which it demands have become habits. After that, it may begin to have a certain rejuvenating quality. You don’t mention the heart-trouble: I hope that means you are feeling a great deal better.

All goes wonderfully well with Joy: we are very blessed at present. My own bone disease (osteoporosis) will, I gather, be always with me, but I am not in a painful condition now. I’ll never be able to take real walks again–field-paths and little woods and wonderful inns in remote villages, farewell!–but it’s wonderful how mercifully the desire goes when the power goes.

With all good wishes.

Yours

Jack

TO WALTER HOOPER (UNC):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Dec 2nd 1957

Dear Mr. Hooper,

Thank you for most interesting and cheering letter of Nov. 28th.

Of course I shall be happy to meet you whenever you come to this country.

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO R. W. CHAPMAN (BOD):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Dec 3, 1957

My dear Chapman–

Thank you for your most kind letter. My wife’s improvement is almost miraculous. My own ailment was a prematurely senile condition of the bones, v. painful at first but now no worse than mild rheumatism. So far as I can gather it is neither mortal nor curable. I wear corsets!

If I can possibly manage the journey I will certainly try to come and see you next Vacation. Yes–in your situation even a small thing like flu’ wd. be a nuisance. It’s like crossing the Atlantic in a 15-tonner: alright till one of the crew of two breaks his arm or something.

Aren’t you sick of modern biographies? I don’t want in the least to know about anyone’s vie in time.¹⁸⁶

Please remember me most kindly to your wife.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS FRANK JONES (W):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Dec 9th 1957

Dear Mrs. Jones–

I am most sorry to hear of your disc. You don’t say much about the pain, but knowing from my own experience what muscles do when bones are wrong even without touching that horrible sciatic nerve, I expect it is excruciating. I do hope it will soon be better.

I am very much better: no pain worth talking about now. So is my brother. My wife incredibly better: almost a miracle. We shall be sorry if you can’t accompany your husband to England: but we hope very much to see him even if he is alone.

Yes, I’m afraid close does rhyme with Dose (of medicine). Strictly it means a square of buildings with only one break in it, so that you have to come out the same way you went in. But it is generally used of any square in the centre of which a cathedral stands. The buildings which surround it wd. usually be the Deanery, houses of canons, with perhaps a cathedral school and (if you are lucky) a bit of an old monastery and castle. And there’d be rooks cawing overhead and some trees and possibly cobbled stones under-foot and little or no wheeled traffic.

With all good wishes and sympathy, in which my brother joins.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Dec 10. ’57

My dear Roger–

Yes, I hope to beat the B&B on Mon Dec. 16.¹⁸⁷ Congratulations on Land of the LHT.¹⁸⁸ Joy is now walking: with a stick and a limp, to be sure, but we never dreamed of getting so far. Love to June and yourself.

I suppose it will not fit in with your programme to come and see us both here on Sat. or Sun. afternoon? You wd. of course be most welcome if you had the time on your hands: but I expect you have not.

Yours

Jack

TO LAURENCE HARWOOD (BOD):¹⁸⁹

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Dec 12th 1957

My dear Lawrence–

Thanks for your most interesting letter. I envy you your hills and gillies and shepherds. I am surprised at your finding the Scotch (why shd. I not call them Scotch even if they don’t call themselves so? I call the Français ‘French’, don’t I?) less bookish, class for class, than the English. I had always thought, and have sometimes found, them more so.

Pipes, in the open air, give me a strange pleasure, though not perhaps a strictly musical one. More an affair of the nerves: they are the only thing that make me feel martial ardour.

All my news is good. My wife has made an almost miraculous, certainly an unexpected, recovery. I myself am quite free from pain again now. I have to wear a surgical belt, though: a thing like my mother’s, or your grandmother’s corsets! It’s surprising how one gets used to the contraption–except when one wants to scratch some part which it covers.

I enclose an offering. With love & good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO BELLE AND EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

57/57

The Kilns, Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

13th December 1957.

My dear Allens,

How very kind of you both to remember us at this season, and how very grateful my wife and I are for your prayers–prayers which have indeed been answered, for my wife is almost miraculously better.

She will, alas, always be an invalid, but X Ray photos show beyond any shadow of doubt that the diseased bone is healing; and now she can walk about the house, and even in the garden, with the aid of a stick. When I remember that this time last year she was under sentence of death, I have indeed much to be thankful for. She even plans to begin literary work again, and does now sit up at the table and type her own letters without any discomfort.

The boys are something of a problem for a couple of old men who have had no dealings with the species since their own childhood–and the two differ remarkably. The elder is I’m afraid a problem child, intelligent, but moody and spiteful; the younger is just plain boy, with all the appeal (and infuriating qualities) of twelve years of age. We hope all will go well for both of them.

I wish your own news was more cheerful, but at least it is something to learn that the slack period has not affected Ed personally–and I pray that it may not. I am very ignorant of the ways of ‘big business’ and you give me no hint–perhaps do not know yourself–if this is merely a temporary set-back in U.S. prosperity, or the beginning of that bogey ‘recession’ which I often hear mentioned. We are as frightened of it as you, for apparently–for reasons I can’t follow–a recession in America will automatically reproduce the same conditions over here.

How right Mrs Allen is about the folly of this competition in satellites; I see that the last American attempt cost over thirty nine million pounds–money just thrown away in one big bang. And even supposing the rocket had become a satellite, who would have been a penny the better off for it?

I could not agree more with Mrs Allen’s letter to the Press, but surely it is not only women who hate the very idea of war? I have yet to meet any one who wants World War III, civilian or soldier. Indeed my brother often remarks that the only real pacifists he has ever met are professional soldiers–they know too much about the game to be fire-eaters.

With all love and good wishes to you both for a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year,

yours ever,

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD): TS

312/57

The Kilns, Kiln Lane,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

16th December 1957.

Dear Gibb,

Would you please send one copy each of PROBLEM OF PAIN and MERE CHRISTIANITY to:–

Hjalmar Jagerstrom,

Sidsjons Sjukhus,

Sundsvall,

Sweden.

And charge to my account. All best wishes for a happy Christmas.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Dec. 16th 1957

Dear Mrs. Gebbert

Thank you for your bright card and cheery letter. We are delighted to hear that you have escaped ‘the asphalt jungle’ (how horrid all great cities are for more than a fortnight!) and can almost share your enjoyment of trees, squirrel, and common grass.¹⁹⁰ One might add even the sky–the wide unframed sky of the country.

My wife’s recovery has been almost a miracle, at any rate a surprise for the doctors. My brother is also well and, as usual, busy. I am much better myself and quite–or as near as makes no matter–free from pain. Whether I shall ever take a ‘real walk’ again is doubtful. You’d think this would be dreadful, but it isn’t. With the power, nature kindly removes most of the desire. If I were merely forbidden (say by police order) to go more than a mile from this house on foot, no doubt I’d find it intolerable. But as I can’t, I find I don’t mind. Quaere:¹⁹¹ is it on the same principle more humane (in a house with no cats of course) to pinion a bird and let it hop everywhere than to put it unmutilated even in the largest cage? In the light of my own experience I suspect that it is.

There are faint springtide stirrings that suggest my wife (you may have read her, as Joy Davidman) may soon begin to write again. Then all three of us will be at it and I’ll put up a plate at the door reading Lewis, Lewis, and Lewis Inc., Book Factory.

We all join in every good wish.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

 

On 17 December Dorothy L. Sayers went to London from her home at Witham in Essex to do some Christmas shopping. As Barbara Reynolds, editor of Sayers’ letters and her goddaughter, explains:

The expedition tired her and after calling in at a gallery where she looked for a time at the portrait of herself by Sir William Hutchison¹⁹² she caught a train home to Witham. Her taxi-driver, Jack, met her at the station and drove her to her door. On entering she went upstairs, put her hat and coat on her bed and went downstairs to feed three hungry cats. They remained hungry: their mistress fell forward at the foot of the stairs and died of a coronary thrombosis. Her body was found the following morning by Bradford the gardener.¹⁹³

TO LAURENCE KRIEG (P):

Magdalene College,

Cambridge.

Dec 23rd 1957

Dear Laurence

It is lovely to hear that you still enjoy the Narnian stories. I hope you are well. I forget how much of my news you and your mother know. It is wonderful. Last year I married, at her bedside in hospital, a woman who seemed to be dying: so you can imagine it was a sad wedding. But Aslan has done great things for us and she is now walking about again, showing the doctors how wrong they were, and making me very happy. I was also ill myself but am now better. Good wishes to you all.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO JOCELYN GIBB (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford

Christmas Day 1957

Dear Gibb–

Your parcel, as it happened, was opened before your letter, so you had a good joke in absentia. We did wonder a little whether there were any core or whether we were peeling an onion. But the golden treasure surpassed the wrappings in value more than they surpassed it in bulk:¹⁹⁴ I had a stanza of this edible poem for breakfast to-day with much enjoyment. Thank you very much.

Marry gup! The hymn, which you miscall a psalm, truly hath in that place ‘to pay the price of sinne’ which paying the price of sinne I do suppose to be all one with redeeming.¹⁹⁵ Go to. You lie at the catch, neighbour.¹⁹⁶ Nor is it unfit that I admonish printers concerning printing and publishers concerning publishing, the which if I now were to handle I might chance to recall that old saw ex sutore medicus¹⁹⁷ and snibbe the ultracrepidations of cobblers.¹⁹⁸ With what stomach, think you, would Tullie¹⁹⁹ have borne the sosii²⁰⁰ going about to mende his periods?

Mid-day dinner with a generous burgundy is perhaps a mistake–Vinum locutum est.²⁰¹ I wish you a merry Christmas retrospectively.

Yours

C. S. Lewis