Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963

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

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

With all good wishes and many thanks.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29th May 1951

Dear Starr

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

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

Yours

C. S. Lewis

Dear Starr

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

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

C.S.L.

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

RER25/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

4th June 1951.

My dear Mr. Allen,

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

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

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

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

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

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

5/6/51

Dear Sister Penelope

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

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

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARTYN SKINNER (BOD):

As from Magdalen

June 11th 51

Dear Skinner—

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

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

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

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

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen etc

11/6/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

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

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

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

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GENIA GOELZ (P/Z): 118

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

13/6/51

Dear Mrs. Goelz

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

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

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

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

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

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

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

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

[The Kilns]

16/6/51

My dear Arthur

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

Love to the Unbelievable and to yourself.

Yours

Jack

TO WARFIELD M. FIROR(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

22/6/51

Dear Firor

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

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

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

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROBERT C. WALTON (BBC): 122

04/SB/RCW

Magdalen College,

Oxford

10/7/51

Dear Mr. Walton

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

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

14/7/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

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

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

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

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

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

17/7/51

Dear Miss Pitter

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

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

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

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

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD):

REF.310/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

17th July 1951.

Dear Mr. Kinter,

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

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

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

With many thanks and all good wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W): TS

RER328/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

27th July 1951.

Dear Mrs. Jessup,

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

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

With all best wishes,

yours sincerely,

WH Lewis

Secretary.

(Dictated by Mr. Lewis)

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

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sir,—

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

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

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W): 127

As from Magdalen College,

Oxford

4/8/51

Dear Evans

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

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS C. VULLIAMY (W):129 TS

RER347/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

10th August 1951.

Dear Mrs. Vulliamy,

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

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER(W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/8/51

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

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

J

TO GENIA GOELZ (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

September 12, 1951

Dear Mrs Goelz

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

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen etc

Sept 12/1951

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

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