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

I am terrified by all the instructions about typing and doubt if I can master them. (You showed great discretion in not producing them at an earlier stage, as I shd. certainly not have touched the job had I known it involved all that!). I suppose # means ‘one-space’ and is not a challenge to a game of noughts and crosses. And what is meant by the typist ‘using’ the double right hand margin? In the specimen given she does precisely not use it but types straight on across it to the ultimate right hand margin. Do you mean ‘Let her draw a vertical line 8 spaces to the left of her actual right hand margin and then ignore this line in typing?’ As you begin to see, I have picked up none of the technique of a professional author. Sorry.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

P.S. You might let me have the specimen back.

TO HSIN’CHANG CHANG (BOD):120 TS

REF.52/252.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

12th June 1952.

Dear Mr. Chang,

If you would care to call on me here at 12 o’c. on Friday 20th, it would give me great pleasure.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO ROBERT LONGACRE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

June 19th 1952

Dear Mr. Longacre–

All opinions on new poetry are uncertain: especially on poetry read because one has been asked to read it and with the knowledge (which freezes up all the faculties) that one must express a view on it to the author.

You must therefore not attach too much importance to my ‘re-action’. The truth is, these poems don’t work—with me: they might with other readers, and, I dare say, better readers than I. The poetic species to which they belong—which might be called the Rhapsodical—is one to which I am very insensitive: I can’t bear Walt Whitman.

My feeling is that the more vast and supersensible a poem’s subject is, the more it needs to be fixed, founded, incarnated in regular metre and concrete images. Thus I is, for me, the worst. Ill is better: the line about the candle in God’s window, the best thing in it. But they are not my sort of poetry. You won’t take this too seriously: they might well suit some other reader. I can’t tell you how I wish I could write something more encouraging: but between Christians the truth must be spoken.

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MONSIGNOR FERDINAND VANDRY (WHL): 121

[Magdalen College

? June 1952]

Dear Monsignor Vandry,

Please accept my sincere thanks for the great and unexpected honour offered me in your letter. I do not know whether in order to receive it, I must be present before the Special Convocation on September 22nd. If that is necessary then I am compelled, with great regret and undiminished gratitude, to refuse the Doctorate since my other engagements make it quite impossible for me to visit Quebec in September.

Even if it is possible for me to receive the degree in absence, the question remains whether that would be held to imply any disrespect for Convocation or any insensibility to the great favour you are showing me. Naturally I would rather lose it than receive it under conditions which the University might consider as ungracious on my part.

I await your kind advice on these points.

Whatever the decision may be, I shall retain a vivid sense of the University’s kindness.

Please convey to all concerned my most respectful and obliged greetings.

TO GENIA GOELZ (L/P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20 June 1952

Dear Genia

Thanks for yours of the 10th. I would prefer to combat the ‘I’m special’ feeling not by the thought ‘I’m no more special than anyone else’ but by the feeling ‘Everyone is as special as me.’ In one way there is no difference, I grant, for both remove the speciality. But there is a difference in another way. The first might lead you to think, ‘I’m only one of the crowd like anyone else’. But the second leads to the truth that there isn’t any crowd. No one is like anyone else. All are ‘members’ (organs) in the Body of Christ.122 All different and all necessary to the whole and to one another: each loved by God individually, as if it were the only creature in existence. Otherwise you might get the idea that God is like the government which can only deal with the people in the mass.

About confession, I take it that the view of our Church is that everyone may use it but none is obliged to. I don’t doubt that the Holy Spirit guides your decisions from within when you make them with the intention of pleasing God. The error wd. be to think that He speaks only within whereas, in reality, He speaks also through Scripture, the Church, Christian friends, books etc.

I haven’t written more than two nonsense poems123 (I enclose the other) but I know my Just So stories.124

God bless you.

C. S. Lewis

Travellers! In months without an R Beware the woods of Wongomar, For then the resident bumble-bear Booms all day through the thicket there. Its face is round, as is its rump, Its tail is a preposterous stump. Its eyes are shut, its whiskers dense, It lives on butterscotch and bats And lines its nest with bowler hats (Arranged in a volmonic125 plan). It cannot talk, but thinks it can, And there it bumbles, there it hums, It knocks you down: it rubs its eyes Intending to apologise. But when it sees it’s laid you flat It takes offence and steals your hat.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 22nd 1952

My dear Arthur

I shall be free to be with you from Sat. Aug. 23rd till Mon. Sept. 8th when I sail for L’pool. These dates cannot be changed but if you like to spend all or any of this time motoring me about Ireland, I shd. like it v. much and will fall in with any dates (between those two) or any itinerary you choose. Just us two, of course: I wouldn’t face any third.* You and I know the worst about each other by now! I look forward to it immensely.

Yours

Jack

P.S. But I’d forgotten. My room at the C’burn Inn is already booked for that period. I’m afraid I couldn’t manage to pay it and other ones as well. Can you decide on your dates at once & then see if the Inn will cancel my room for the period of our tour without charging? If not, then I’d better stick to my original plan & you take your motor trip after I’ve gone. But I hope not. I shall be a little anxious till I hear from you again.

P.P.S. No sharing a room: but you’d hate it as much as I, so I’m safe!

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 22nd 1952

Dear Mr. Borst (or shall we stop mistering one another? Let’s)

Dear Borst,

Thanks for your most indulgent letter of the 17th which lifts a load from my mind. It occurs to me that the typist may understand perfectly easily the instructions that baffled me: if so, you shall get the MS. in the form you want. If she is as stupid as I (a pessimistic hypothesis) I shall avail myself of your concession.

I’ve finished the introduction wh. seemed to write itself, so that I could hardly keep up with it. If it is as good as it seems to me at the moment it’s a corker: but of course things never are. You will find one or two allusions in it that your students will not quite understand, but these have been left in on purpose. If they are too carefully shielded from the rumour of worlds they have not yet broken into, what will ever drive them on. Now I shall get on with the scissors and paste work. At the end of the first day everything in the room (except the bits of Spenser, perhaps) will be pasted to everything else. All will be in the most literal sense CO-HERENT. But no palm without paste.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

Interim Report126

I merveill much that critiques doe complaine

Of bookes with scisers and with past compyld;

Certes who weenes this is a lesser payne

Then free invention is sore beguyld!

Witness myself who with sic labour vyld

Am oft so dased that I half repent

This great emprise, my fingers all defyld

With slimie stickphast foule and feculent

And deeme Dan Spenser self an easier journie went.

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):127

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 22nd 1952

Dear Miss Bodle

It was a great joy to hear from you again. You have been daily in my prayers for a long time and, needless to say, will remain. I shall be grateful for a place in yours.

The work you are engaged in is a magnificent one (much in my mind because, as it falls out, I’ve just been reading Helen Keller’s book):128 hard, no doubt, but you can never be attacked by the suspicion that it is not worth doing. There are jolly few professions of which we can say that. The translation of great stories into a limited vocabulary will, incidentally, be a wonderful discipline: you will learn a lot about thought and language in general before you are done. I hope you will sometimes let me know how you get on. God bless you.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

As from Magdalen

June 23rd 1952

My dear Roger

Shortly after you left me I took up From the World’s End129 one night and re-read it: finding it so much better than I had remembered, or perhaps, perceived, that I think I ought to tell you so. The original reading must have caught me in an imperceptive mood. There are, as you yourself wd. now feel, one or two places where one can ‘see the works’, perceive you deliberately concocting an atmosphere—but they are few and once the main story (which hangs together v. well) takes hold they vanish.

The snatches of ‘modern’ poetry on p. 62 are exactly like it: you might have been reading Rostrevor Hamilton’s The Tell-Tale Article, but it was not published then.130 The Voice is excellently managed. The most important thing is that (this time) I was really interested in the crisis it depicts throughout, wh. is significant because it never was my crisis.

Craigie’s Dark Atlantis131 has come and is an almost total disappointment. I don’t think he has much real imagination: and he certainly can’t write at all. The good reviews and the high praise from Grahame Greene (who certainly can write himself, whether one likes his books or not) alarm me. We here catch the critics on the sort of book we do understand, and that shows them to be without any standards at all. (Craigie thinks rights means rites and that the Atlanteans had a metal called ORICHALEUM!132 We are in the post-literate age

Yours

Jack

TO HARRY BIAMIRES (BOD):

Coll. Magd.

24/6/52

Dear Blamires

Yes, of course. I am sorry the book has not yet found a home. All the best.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford. 26/6/52

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

Incense and Hail Marys are in quite different categories. The one is merely a question of ritual: some find it helpful and others don’t, and each must put up with its absence or presence in the church they are attending with cheerful and charitably humility.

But Hail Marys raise a doctrinal question: whether it is lawful to address devotions to any creature, however holy. My own view would be that a salute to any saint (or angel) cannot in itself be wrong any more than taking off one’s hat to a friend: but that there is always some danger lest such practices start one on the road to a state (sometimes found in R.C.’s) where the B.V.M.133 is treated really as a deity and even becomes the centre of the religion. I therefore think that such salutes are better avoided. And if the Blessed Virgin is as good as the best mothers I have known, she does not want any of the attention which might have gone to her Son diverted to herself.

It seems, nevertheless, quite clear that the Spirit of God is, or is more strongly with Kemper Hall than with P. A. Wolfe. In him you describe a type I know. I think we may except [accept] it as a rule that whenever a person’s religious conversation dwells chiefly, or even frequently, on the faults of other people’s religions, he is in a bad condition. The fact that he shakes your faith is significant. Pray for him but not, I shd. say, with him. If he insists on talking religion to you ask him for positive things: ask him to tell you what he knows of God.

All blessings. My ‘new trouble’ is still there: but I have much to be thankful for.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MISS REIDY (P): TS

REF.52/265.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th June 1952.

Dear Miss Reidy,

The point134 was that as foolish people on a walk, when by their own errors they are off the course, think the map was wrong, so, when we do not find in ourselves the fruits of the Spirit which all our teachers promise, it is not that the promise was false, but that we have failed to use the Grace we have been given. The ‘map’ can be found in almost any Christian teaching.

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College.

28th June 52

My dear Arthur

Splendid. The manageress is right: Aug 21st is my first night at Crawfordsburn. Setting off with you on Mon. 25th will do fine. And of course I don’t want all day & every day in the car: we think just the same on that subject. I look forward to the trip immensely: the first time you and I have been away together since Portsalon in about 1916!135 This time we shall at least not quarrel about Hair-Oil!

Yours

Jack

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): 136

Coll. Magd.

28/6/52

My dear Bles,

Mycroft has been ill,137 but is now better. I don’t foresee many occasions for copies of Le Lion,138 but if you will kindly send me 2, they might come in useful. The translator deserves to be congratulated of course—French is a v. powerful language—the children become perfect little Frenchmen, but that is all to the good. What pleased and surprised me is the passage at the end where I made them talk like characters in Malory, and he has really got some of the quality of the French 13th century prose romances: grande honte en aurions139– is exactly right.

May I have 10 copies of M.C.?140 I had my first bathe at Parsons’ Pleasure yesterday: 68°.141

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (W):

[Magdalen College]

1/7/52

Dear Hilton Young,

(Shall we drop the honorifics on both sides?) Thanks very much for two copies of the C.J.142 As I said before, it is almost impossible to make an objective judgement on criticism of oneself, especially when it does one so very proud. But I suspect that your essay is a good one. Certainly the alterations have been made with great skill–invisible mending.

I’m glad Driver played up. I suppose he told you, as he told me, that Judith is already a novel.143 I still hope that as you poke about among the realien they will blaze up and a new story will arise relegating Judith to the background.

What do you think of Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel, which I’ve just read in a v. bad translation?144 Heavy, humourless. But has one merit wh. sets it apart from all other stories about the future. Unobtrusively, without any new machines or new forms of government, it really does give you the illusion of a society in which the general quality of thought is different from ours. I don’t think Wells or Aldous Huxley did that: nor Orwell, except in the epilogue on Newspeak.145

All the best, and many thanks.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

REF.52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

3rd July 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

We both enjoyed your very interesting letters, and are glad to know that you are so happy. Pity about the antelopes, but inevitable. And we look forward greedily to the promised food parcel. Sun Valley Lodge looks a lovely place, and I hope that I may have the good fortune to see it some day. Here is the translation of the Latin:–Many things will be re-born which have now fallen (into disfavour), and many will fall (into disfavour) which are now fashionable.146

With all best wishes to you both,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

Mere Christianity: A Revised and Amplified Edition, with a New Introduction of the Three Books, ‘Broadcast Talks’, ‘Christian Behaviour’ and ‘Beyond Personality’ was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 7 July 1952.

TO MARG-RIETTE MONTGOMERY (W): TS

REF.52/248.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

8th July 1952.

Dear Miss Montgomery,

Of course they147 are right in making the Resurrection a cosmic event: what I am not so sure is whether they really regard Christ as the only-begotten Son of the only God.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

e Coll. Stae Mariae Magdalenae

Jul. XIV. MCMLII

Gratias ago, dilectissime pater, et pro opusculis Congregationis vestrae et pro hac epistolâ Jul vii datâ. Hora nostra, ut dicis, gravis est: utrum gravis ‘prae omnibus humanae historiae’ nescio. Sed semper malum quod proximum et gravissimum videtur esse; est enim, ut oculis, sic cordibus, sua ‘perspettiva’. Si tamen nostra tempestas rê verá pessima est, si rê vera Dies Illa nunc imminet, quid restât nisi ut gaudeamus quia redemptio nostra iam proprior est et dicamus cum Sancto Joanne ‘Amen; cito venias, domine Iesu.’ Interim sola securitas est ut Dies nos inveniat laborantes quemque in suo officio et praecipue (dissensionibus relictis) illud supremum mandatum ut invicem diligamus implentes. Oremus semper pro invicem. Vale: et sit tecum et mecum pax illa quam nemo potest auferre.

C. S. Lewis

*

from the College of St Mary Magdalen

July 14th 1952

Thank you, dearest Father, both for the tracts of your Congregation and for your letter dated July 7th.

The times we live in are, as you say, grave: whether ‘graver than all others in history’ I do not know. But the evil that is closest always seems to be the most serious: for as with the eye so with the heart, it is a matter of one’s own perspective. However, if our times are indeed the worst, if That Day148 is indeed now approaching, what remains but that we should rejoice because our redemption is now nearer and say with St John: ‘Amen; come quickly, Lord Jesus.’149

Meanwhile our only security is that The Day may find us working each one in his own station and especially (giving up dissensions) fulfilling that supreme command that we love one another.150

Let us ever pray for each other.

Farewell: and may there abide with you and me that peace which no one can take from us.151

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD): TS

REF.52/294.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

16th July 1952.

Dear Miss Bodle,

Thanks for what you tell me.152 I will indeed. All good wishes to yourself. In great haste,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

July 21st 52

Dear Borst

I return the copy (signed) of your official letter. I am flattered that Mr. Dunn153 should suppose me capable of making any useful comment. But he probably knows much more about Chaucer than I do and certainly knows more about the audience we are addressing.

Also, I must have a holiday from English poetry!154 (I’m doing an orgy of the classics at present: feeling that, all said and done, the really delightful thing about any bit of ancient poetry is that it’s not English and doesn’t rhyme).* So I shall probably be able to do v. little about the Chaucer Reader. But give Mr. Dunn my compliments and don’t let him misunderstand my motives.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER(W):

Coll. Magd.

July 22nd 1952

My dear George

Hurrah! We look forward v. much to seeing you at the Kilns for such time as you choose from Sept 15 to 22nd. I hope you will choose the whole.

Tolkien does usually answer letters in the end. At present I can only plead for him that he is in the middle of Vivas.155 I know he appreciated Moira’s letter v. much: he said he meant to run down to Malvern if you wd. have him for a night, and deliver you the next chunk of The Lord. I will jog him if I see him but I shan’t till Vivas are over. V. glad to hear you have better news. Love to Moira. I’d ask you to bring Sir Henry156 with you only neither he or Pushkin like that sort of thing.

Yours

Jack

TO I. O. EVANS (W): TS

Magdalen Coll.

23/7/52.

Dear Evans,

Many thanks for the loan of the magazines; which my brother and I however found rather above our heads. It seems to me that we are reaching a stage at which scientifiction has far too much science and too little fiction to make an agreeable brew.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO ANNE SCOTT (BOD): 157

Magdalen

July 28th 1952

Dear Mrs. Scott–

Thanks very much for your most rich and interesting letter which has brought Charles back to me v. vividly so that I shall feel for an hour or so as if I had met him again. It will also be a valuable permanent addition to my Caroline documents.158

About your (1.), I think my view of ‘canonical Gawaine’ had some basis in something C.W. said,159 but yours sounds likely too—in view of the parallel from the Meditation.160 (2.) (‘Women in the world’s base’),161 I think you must be right. I can’t imagine why I didn’t see this.162 (3.) Clearly I was wrong about the date of composition of Prayers of the Pope.163 But your words ‘points in the poem had coincided with points in the war’ implies I take it, that the images existed in some shape prior to the events: wh. was my main point.164 (4.) I find your interpretation of Proofs, Roofs etc. v. hard. Even Mercury—Language–Proofs is to me v. strained, & after that I love the planets altogether. At least if that is what he meant it must be the worst passage in the whole cycle!165

By the way ‘The time on my hands has gone to my head’ is a phrase you must make something of: it cries out for literary use.

Thanks v. much again. I’ve enjoyed this bit of the morning.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

REF.52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th July 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

(My brother remarks that ‘the new name is’nt properly run in yet, and does’nt slip easily off the typewriter’). Many thanks indeed for the grand parcel, which arrived this morning, and which we are putting aside as a consolation for the end of our holidays. If at the beginning I had known for how long and how generously you were going to provision us, I would have kept a record of what you have sent; it must run into the hundredweights by this time! To say nothing of the imponderable benefit of having made a good friend.