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

We both leave here on Wednesday morning, and if all goes well, slip through the Iron Curtain about noon on Thursday; it is quite a dramatic performance. You go chugging along in the Dublin express through rocks and heather (‘The Gate of the North’), and presently pass an enormous Union lack on the side of the track. As soon as you are past the flag, prices for drinks in the dining car drop about fifty per cent: you are through and out of the clutches of the Welfare State (now known by the way as ‘The Farewell State’). By tea time we shall be sitting on a bungalow verandah, three miles from anywhere, looking across Dundalk Bay at a range of blue mountains.

The weather has of course played its usual practical joke; we had a blistering month until Saturday night: during which the temperature dropped about twenty degrees without the slightest warning, and now the question is not how many white linen suits to take away with one, but how to pack a winter overcoat for the ‘summer’ evenings.

Does anyone in America understand American politics? Certainly no one over here can make out what is happening, in spite of numerous inspired articles by so called experts; people who pretend to know all about it—on the strength of a lecturing tour in the States–assure me that a Taft victory would have been a disaster and an Eisenhower one would be grand. Which, as they belong to the same party, seems odd to me; others tell me that as the Democrats are sure to get in anyhow, the Taft-Eisenhower battle was of no importance.166 I thought I was going to learn something from an old lady in Connecticut the other day,167 but at the end of eight pages so hot that they nearly burnt my fingers, all I could gather was that the ‘Dumbocrats’ as she called them, are a sort of mixture of Hitler, the Russian secret police, and the inmates of the village lunatic asylum: but no doubt this view is a little prejudiced.

I suppose by this time you have got Mr. Gebbert broken in, and trotting nicely in harness? Please give him my kind regards. I hope to hear from you soon again, as we are both eager to know how you are settling down amongst the elks, auks, reindeer, silver miners and so forth.

With all good wishes.

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Derryherk House Hotel,

Lough Melvin,

Ballyshannon,

Co. Donegal,

Ireland

Aug 31/52

My dear Roger

Good. I shall, D.V., breakfast in Woodside Hotel on the 9th and expect you there at about 10.168

South Donegal is a terrifying country: I have much to tell, but you see what the pen is like. Have read Virgin of the Sun169 & think it one of the 3 or 4 best books Haggard ever wrote. My duty to June.

Yours

Jack

TO JUNE LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept 11th 1952

Dear June

‘Roofers’170 traditionally begin, I think, with the assurance that the writer arrived safely home—though it is not very easy to see why one’s hostess should be supposed to doubt this once she has got the letter. At any rate, I am not now writing from the other world. (Perhaps the idea is to assure the hostess that the guest has really gone: arrival at one place being the strongest evidence of departure from another.)

Well, thank you both very much. Last night was among the great nights (‘devilish’ or ‘famously snug’ as the last century said) and led through a flawless tunnel of sleep to a typically beautiful morning. I see one can’t blame Roger for always writing about his own house. By the way, tell him I finished his Lewis Carol171 (a word I don’t know how to spell) all but two pages in the train. It cd. hardly be better. If he ever has a chance he shd. take out 9 of every 10 exclamation marks, though. I feel about them as the Red Queen felt when she said ‘You needn’t say exactually, I can believe you without that.’172

If this letter contains anything insane, take it all for the best and remember I have been writing for hours: mostly dull ones. But I really did love my sojourn, and am v. grateful. Blessings on you all.

Yours ever

Jack Lewis

TO FLORENCE (MICHAL) WILLIAMS (W):173

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept 12/52

Dear Michal

What day are you coming? Wd. you and Michael174 care to lunch? or (if you want more tête-à-tête, as well you may) can you meet me for a drink anywhere? Joy Gresham is an old & valued pen-friend of mine: I’m so glad you like her.175 Prod her to say when she is coming to us.176

Yours ever

Jack

TO MARG-RIETTE MONTGOMERY (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Sept 12th 1952

Dear Miss Montgomery

Thanks for your letter of July 24th. That’s right: keep on holding the life-line, like someone going down broken stairs into a dark cellar, anxious not to miss any treasure it may contain but even more determined not to make any step wh. can’t be retraced.

I think the Anthros177 suffer not so much from heresies about the Son as from heresies—or total vagueness—about the Father. God keep you.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen etc.

Sept 12/52

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

I’ve just got back from Ireland & found your 2 letters among the mountain of mail. I’ve written to Genia. No time for a proper letter to you—I’ve had 9 hours’ letter-writing already! Blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’ was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 15 September 1952.

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen

15/9/52

My dear Bles

Achtung! Here’s an imperfect copy omitting the Preface but (comble de malheurl)178 wearing the jacket wh. advertises the Preface. This is the only imperfect copy among those you sent me: but how many more are there? What on earth can be done?

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO FLORENCE (MICFLAL) WILLIAMS (W): PC

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/9/52

Good. Mitre Hotel. 12. noon. Wed. Sept 24th. Shall assume this unless I hear to the contrary.

C.S.L.

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

15/9/52

Dear Borst

I enclose

Introduction (2 copies)

Footnotes (2 copies)

Text of Selections (1 copy)

If the Introduction is too long I cd. excise some bits. As I shall be working from the MS. (where the pagination is of course different) if you want to refer to a particular paragraph in writing to me, I am afraid you must quote the opening words—as if it were a Papal Bull!

If the Selections are too long, my first choice wd. be to omit in toto No. XXI (Britomart in the House of Isis): my second, much more reluctant, to omit in toto No XIX (Scudamour in the House of Care). I have also noted some individual stanzas for possible omission, but they matter only if I’ve been very slightly too long.

I’ve only just come back from the West of Ireland. I hope you get on well with Horace. There are easier authors!

All the best.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Coll. Magd.

17/9/52

My dear Bles

The fact that I happened to get an imperfect copy didn’t matter two hoots. What worried me (for I never knew that a percentage of such things was normal) was the fear that half the edition might be like that! You have set my mind at ease.

I often smile when I compare my ignorance with the knowingness of some people who, on the strength of having published one book, seem to have the whole mystery of publishing, printing, & binding by heart. I’ll write to Miss Baynes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

P. S. I suppose there’ll be no difficulty about changing the title of the new one in galley. I want to call it Night Under Narnia

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20/9/52

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

This is indeed most joyous news and as unexpected as if a favourite character out of history or fiction came to England in the flesh! Now look. Shall we book for you at a hotel or will you come and stay with us? It is only fair to tell you that (tho’ we have an excellent hot water system) we have so little coal that there are no hot baths in our house, only hot water in jugs (This doesn’t mean that we never have baths: but then we bath in College, where ladies can’t). Otherwise, we hope the hardships wd. not be too great.

Now don’t start asking yourselves the Question which (I confess) this letter invites: viz ‘Does this mean that they’ll be hurt if we go to a hotel or that they’ll be bothered if we go to them? Which do they want?’. Because in fact it doesn’t mean either. We do really want you to do whichever you’ll like but: and we have enough imagination to understand either point of view–(A.) Oh, for the Lord’s sake, let’s be free and on our own in a hotel, or (B.) We shall have enough of hotels before we’re done, do let’s get a chance of an ordinary house.

The usual oriental formula ‘Everything in our house is yours’ acquires a new sense: so many things in our house in these last (how many years?) have been literally yours! It is outrageous generosity about the liquor and the mufflers. What can I say, except murmur ‘whiskey’! If we fight about the mufflers you shall look on and be the ‘store of ladies whose bright eyes rain influence and (once more literally) award the prize.’179 Send us a wire with your decision. We are so excited.

TO ARTHUR G REEVE S (W):

Magdalen

20/9/52

My dear Arthur

No, please don’t send H.J.’s Letters.180 The idea of your returning a present was applicable only on the assumption that it was useless to you. And anyway, if they’re not much about the books, they wd. be useless to me.

A retired naval captain whom you may have sometimes heard of in the papers (Bernard Acworth) tells me he was at Derryherk181 shortly before us and says the fishing was just as bad as the food. I wonder what the Magic Major is really up to.

I’ve got a 100 Horsepower cold but feel mentally & spiritually much the better from our holiday. It—and you—have done me lots of good. All blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO JONATHAN FRANCIS ‘FRANK GOODRIDGE (P): 182

Coll. Magd.

22/9/52

My dear Goodridge

I’m going to give those lectures next term and cd. hardly separate myself from the notes at the moment.183 But for the moment:–the trichotomy is not Hesperian, Aerial, or Celestial, but Terrestrial (Men), Aerial (Aerial Genii or daemons), Aetherial (Angels). At death Man goes from 1 to 2: from which, if they make the grade, they go on to 3, but if ploughed relapse into 1. 1 and 2 are mortal, 3 immortal. It’s at one’s second death (or an Aerial) that one either goes up or falls back.

Hence 11. 459-472184 really mean (I believe) ‘Chastity carries us safely from terrestrial thro’ aerial up to aetherial, but sensuality draws us back to terrestrial. Ghosts are “ploughed” aerial longing to get back to their terrestrial state.’

The Attendant Spirit185 is an aerial (i.e. a native aerial not an ex-human who has been promoted). For he lives not in the highest heaven but only ‘before’ its ‘threshold’ (l.)186 among ‘aerial spirits’ (3.)187 in ‘serene air’ (4.)188 is called ‘daemon’ in Trinity MS., & returns to ‘suck the liquid air’ (980)189 wh. Aerials live on, in a region still subject to mutability where Venus mourns Adonis (999-1002) and it is ‘far above’ (1003) his realm that Celestial Love consummates His marriage with human soul (1004-1011). That ought to keep them going for a bit! I am so glad you have a happy job.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARGARET SACKVILLE HAMILTON (BOD):190

Magdalen College,

Oxford

23/9/52

Dear Mrs. Hamilton

The ancient books which put this view best are Plato’s Timaeus and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, Book V. (The Loeb Library edition of the latter has a nice 17th century English translation on the right hand pages).191 There is, however, no need to go back to the original sources. Modern statements will be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: (in the part called ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’)192 and in Von Hügel’s Eternal Life193– the latter, I think, far easier. From the scientific angle try Eddington’s Nature of the Physical Universe.194, There are what maybe regarded as evidences for the theory in Dunne’s Experiment with Time,195 tho’ he (wrongly I believe) treats them as evidence for a different and unnecessarily complicated theory of what he calls Serialism.196

The nearest we get to scriptural support is II. Peter 8-9 where St. Peter transforms the simple Old Testament saying that 1000 years are only one day to God (which in itself might mean only that God is permanent in time) by adding the new and important point that to God one day is like 1000 years.197

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

Joy Gresham at this time was a 37-year-old New Yorker who had begun a correspondence with Lewis in 1950.198 Her marriage to the novelist, William Lindsay Gresham, was under strain, and in August she had left their two children, David (b. 1944)199 and Douglas (b. 1945),200 with their father and a cousin, Renée Pierce, to go to London for a few months, hoping during that time to meet Lewis.

During August and September she stayed in London with her old friend, Phyllis Williams. They invited Lewis to have lunch with them in Oxford, and on 24 September Lewis met Joy and Phyllis at the Eastgate Hotel, across the road from Magdalen College. A few days later Lewis invited them to lunch in his College rooms. Warnie was invited too, but when he withdrew George Sayer took his place. Sayer recalled the luncheon in Magdalen in his biography of Lewis:

The party was a decided success. Joy was of medium height, with a good figure, dark hair, and rather sharp features. She was an amusingly abrasive New Yorker, and Jack was delighted by her bluntness and her anti-American views. Everything she saw in England seemed to her far better than what she had left behind. Thus, of the single glass of sherry we had before the meal, she said: ‘I call this civilized. In the States, they give you so much hard stuff that you start the meal drunk and end with a hangover.’ She was anti-urban and talked vividly about the inhumanity of the skyscraper and of the new technology and of life in New York City…She attacked modern American literature…‘Mind you, I wrote that sort of bunk myself when I was young.’ Small farm life was the only good life, she said. Jack spoke up then, saying that, on his father’s wise, he came from farming stock. ‘I felt that,’ she said. ‘Where else could you get the vitality?’201

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Coll. Magd.

26/9/52

My dear Roger–

I find Miss Graham’s criticism rather hard to understand. ‘Tone’ might conceivably refer to the emphasis on poaching or the poacher’s religious hypocrisy, but quite possibly masks some objection which she herself cannot understand. I don’t know what to advise, for the books you fail to publish seem to me sometimes better than, and sometimes no different from, your published ones. I shouldn’t be surprised if it all depends on the time of the month at which Miss G. reads the MS. I am old enough now to realise that one always has to reckon with that.

We also have had visitors. For heaven’s sake don’t let June increase her toils by bothering to write to me. But let me have her and your advice on my immediate problem wh. is the title of the new story. Bles, like you, thinks The Wild Waste Lands bad, but he says Night Under Narnia is ‘gloomy’. George Sayer & my brother say Gnomes Under N wd. be equally gloomy, but News under Narnia wd do. On the other hand my brother & the American writer Joy Davidman (who has been staying with us & is a great reader of fantasy and children’s books) both say that The Wild Waste Lands is a splendid title. What’s a chap to do?

Yours

Jack

TO MICHAEL IRWIN (P): TS

REF.52/373.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26th September 1952.

Dear Michael,

Thank you for writing. I am so glad you liked the Voyage. Your idea of a story about Asian in England is a good one, but I think it would be too hard for me to write—it would have to be so different. Perhaps you will write it yourself when you are grown up,

Love from

C. S. Lewis

TO PATRICK IRWIN (P):202 TS

REF.52/373.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26th September 1952.

Dear Mr. Irwin,

I have written to Michael approving the idea, but saying it would be too difficult for me to do. I did’nt add that the story of Asian in this world (if not in England) has been written already. His letter gave me great pleasure, and so does yours.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

REF.52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

30th September 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

We are both delighted to hear that it is Proposition B, and are looking forward eagerly to your visit; and we note that, as one would expect from you, you come laden with gifts: which however you will have the novel experience of sharing with the recipients!

Yes, the dates suit excellently; I hope you will come down on one of the morning trains, in time for us all to have lunch here in my rooms before we go out to the house. Let me know in due course.

Is Andy the Antelope with you? Does he like iced water for breakfast? What brand of hay does he use?

With all best wishes to you both,

yours anticipatorily,

C. S. Lewis

TO CHARLES MOORMAN (L): 203

Magdalen

2/10/52

Dear Mr Moorman,

I am sure you are on a false scent.204 Certainly most, perhaps all the poems in Williams’s Taliessin volume were written before the last novel, All Hallows Eve, was even conceived,205 and there had been Arthurian poems (not of much value) in his earlier manner long before. I can’t tell you when he first became interested in the Arthurian story, but the overwhelming probability is that, like so many English boys, he got via Tennyson into Malory in his ‘teens. The whole way in which he talked of it implied a life-long familiarity. Much later (but even so, before I met him) came the link-up between his long-standing interest in Arthuriana and a new interest in Byzantium.

Everything he ever said implied that his prose fiction, his ‘pot boilers’, and his poetry all went on concurrently: there was no ‘turning from’ one to the other. He never said anything to suggest that he felt his themes ‘would not fit with ease into tales of modern life’. What would have expressed the real chronological relation between the novels would have been the words (tho’ I don’t think he ever actually said them) ‘I haven’t got much further with my Arthurian poems this week because I’ve been temporarily occupied with the idea for a new story’

The question when did he first come across the doctrine of ‘Caritas’ puzzled me. What doctrine do you mean? If you mean the ordinary Christian doctrine that there are three theological virtues and ‘the greatest of these is charity’206 of course he would never remember a time when he had not known it. If you mean the doctrine of Coinherence and Substitution, then I don’t know when he first met these.207 Nor do I know when he began the Figure of A.208 His knowledge of the earlier Arthurian documents was not that of a real scholar: he knew none of the relevant languages except (a little) Latin.

The VII Bears and the Atlantean Circle (in That Hideous Strength) are pure inventions of my own, filling the same purpose in the narrative that ‘noises off wd in a stage play.209 Numinor is a mis-spelling of Numenor which, like the ‘true West’, is a fragment from a vast private mythology invented by Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.210 At the time we all hoped that a good deal of that mythology would soon become public through a romance which the Professor was then contemplating. Since then the hope has receded…211

TO PHOEBE HESKETH (W):212

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Oct 4th 1952

Dear Miss Hesketh–

You will have given up expecting any acknowledgement of No Time for Cowards213 which you so kindly sent me, and must think me no end of a curmudgeon. But you know what the alternative is—either to write a wholly perfunctory letter at once, or else to wait for that rare day and hour (it’s rarer as I get older) when one is receptive of a new book of poems. I now can really say Thank you, for I’ve got many real delights. You are a superb phrase-maker: ‘the bell-noised streams’214 and ‘infant fists of fern’215 on p. 8–‘Shack-Age’216 on p. 9–‘caged in comic bars of camouflage’217 on 39–and the really unbearable two lines about Time’s finger & the evening train on p. 81.218Ugh! The ones I liked best as wholes (wh. aren’t necessarily the ones from which I shall remember bits to quote) are Lion’s Eye–it has a perfect shape, couldn’t be either longer or shorter–The White Roe–the extra rhyming line added to some stanzas is delightful–I Am Not Resigned (I’d love to have thought of ‘greener centuries’)219–Strange Country, and (perhaps best of all) Second Birth. A painful book—I understand R. Church’s fears220–but then most good poetry (tho’ not the very topmost best of all like parts of Dante) is.

I really am very glad you sent it. Remember me most kindly to dear old Herbert Palmer and accept my very best thanks, good wishes, and congratulations. Perhaps if you are ever in these parts you will come and see me.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

Magdalen

11/10/52

My dear Arthur

James’s Letters vol. I arrived yesterday. I don’t know if I really ought to accept it, lames being so much more your kind of author than mine. On the other hand it is too big for an envelope and putting up parcels is one of the many things I can’t do. And there seems to be a good deal about books in it after all. Well, thanks very much indeed. Yes, I love my Father’s underlinings: the pencil (can’t you see him, with his spectacles far down on his nose, getting out the little stump?) so heavily used that, as W said, he didn’t so much draw a line as dig a line.

Term began yesterday, so I have now returned to harness after what has been perhaps the happiest year of my life. I began, appropriately, by cutting myself when I shaved, breaking my lace when I put on my shoes, and coming into College without my keys.

There have been some most perfect autumn days here lately and this is a well timbered country which they suit.

Love to l’Incroyable221 and your good self and all blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS