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

You know, P. Progress is not, I find (to my surprise) everyone’s book. I know several people who are both Christians and lovers of literature who can’t bear it. I doubt if they were made to read it as children. Indeed, I rather wonder whether that ‘being made to read it’ has spoiled so many books as is supposed. I suspect that all the people who tell me they were ‘put off Scott by having Ivanhoe184 as a holiday task are people who wd. never have liked Scott anyway.

I don’t believe anything will keep the right reader & the right book apart. But our literary loves are as diverse as our human! You couldn’t make me like Henry James or dislike Jane Austen whatever you did. By the bye did Chesterton’s Everlasting Man (I’m sure I advised you to read it) succeed or fail with you?185 And how wd. it be likely to succeed with D. Dale?

All blessings.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/9/53

Just back from Donegal (wh. was as near heaven as you can get in Thulcandra)186 and of course piles of letters to plough through. Thanks v. much indeed for the revised T. of T187 and the nice things you say about me.

Here’s the latest Narnian book. Love to all.

J.

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

Magdalen College

Oxford

XV. Sept. MCMLIII

Pater dilectissime

Gratias ago pro epístola tua, data iii Sept., necnon pro exemplari libri cui nomen Instaurare Omnia in Christo.

De statu morali nostri temporis (cum me jusseris garrire) haec sentio. Seniores, ut nos ambo sumus, semper sunt laudatores temporis acti, semper cogitant mundum pejorem esse quam fuerit in suis juvenilibus annis. Ergo cavendum est ne fallamur. Hôc tamen proposito, certe sentio gravissima pericula nobis incumbere. Haec eveniunt quia maxima pars Europae apostasiam fecit de fide Christiana. Hinc status pejor quam illum statum quem habuimus ante fidem receptam. Nemo enim ex Christianismo redit in statum quem habuit ante Christianismum, sed in pejorem: tantum distat inter paganum et apostatam quantum innuptam et adulteram. Nam fides perficit naturam sed fides amissa corrumpit naturam. Ergo plerique homines nostri temporis amiserunt non modo lumen supernaturale sed etiam lumen illud naturale quod pagani habuerunt. Sed Deus qui Deus misericordiarum est etiam nunc non omnino demisit genus humanum. In junioribus licet videamus multam crudelitatem et libidinem, nonne simul videmus plurimas virtutum scintillas quibus fortasse nostra generatio caruit. Quantam fortitudinem, quantam curam de pauperibus aspicimus! Non desperandum. Et haud spernendus numerus (apud nos) iam redeunt in fidem.

Haec de statu praesenti: de remediis difficilior quaestio. Equidem credo laborandum esse non modo in evangelizando (hoc certe) sed etiam in quâdam praeparatione evangelica. Necesse est multos ad legem naturalem revocare antequam de Deo loquamur. Christus enim promittit remissionem peccatorum: sed quid hoc ad eos qui, quum legem naturalem ignorent, nesciunt se peccavisse. Quis medicamentum accipiet nisi se morbo teneri sciât? Relativismus moralis hostis est quem debemus vincere antequam Atheismum aggrediamur. Fere auserim dicere ‘Primo faciamus juniores bonos Paganos et postea faciamus Christianos’. Deliramenta haec? Sed habes quod petisti. Semper et tu et congregatio tua in orationibus meis.

Vale,

C. S. Lewis

*

Magdalen College

Oxford

15 September 1953

Dearest Father

Thank you for your letter dated 3rd September188 and also for the copy of the book entitled The Renewal of All Things in Christ.189

Regarding the moral condition of our times (since you bid me prattle on) I think this. Older people, as we both are, are always ‘praisers of times past’.190 They always think the world is worse than it was in their young days. Therefore we ought to take care lest we go wrong. But, with this proviso, certainly I feel that very grave dangers hang over us. This results from the apostasy of the great part of Europe from the Christian faith. Hence a worse state than the one we were in before we received the Faith. For no one returns from Christianity to the same state he was in before Christianity but into a worse state: the difference between a pagan and an apostate is the difference between an unmarried woman and an adulteress. For faith perfects nature but faith lost corrupts nature. Therefore many men of our time have lost not only the supernatural light but also the natural light which pagans possessed.

But God, who is the God of mercies,191 even now has not altogether cast off the human race. In younger people, although we may see much cruelty and lust, yet at the same time do we not see very many sparks of virtues which perhaps our own generation lacked? How much courage, how much concern for the poor do we see! We must not despair. And (among us) a not inconsiderable number are now returning to the Faith.

So much for the present situation. About remedies the question is more difficult. For my part I believe we ought to work not only at spreading the Gospel (that certainly) but also at a certain preparation for the Gospel. It is necessary to recall many to the law of nature before we talk about God.192 For Christ promises forgiveness of sins: but what is that to those who, since they do not know the law of nature, do not know that they have sinned? Who will take medicine unless he knows he is in the grip of disease? Moral relativity is the enemy we have to overcome before we tackle Atheism. I would almost dare to say ‘First let us make the younger generation good pagans and afterwards let us make them Christians.’

These are ravings? But you have what you requested.

Always you and your Congregation are in my prayers.

Farewell,

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD):

Magdalen etc.

15/9/53

Dear Mr. Kinter

I have been away in Donegal (which is glorious beyond all my dreams) and have only just got your letter of Aug 23d. It was nice to hear from you again. Yes: it is great watching these images of the Mountain, the Wood, the Island etc. as they pass from one man’s work to another’s. I don’t know Read’s Green Child,193 but have no difficulty in believing what you say of it. There is a deal of really Hellish literature going about at present. I am also interested in what you say about Messiaen (an odd name, by the way).194 But if I heard the works they wd. only probably be quite beyond me. Please remember me to your wife and accept my kindest regards.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

P. S. Harding is exciting, isn’t he?195

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): TS 28/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

17th September 1953.

My dear Bles,

Thanks for yours of the 16th. I am glad you pointed out that passage.196 No: it won’t do. Of course the children (except Aravis when telling her story in the grand manner)197 don’t talk Arabian Nights style anywhere: but they must’nt, I agree, go so far in the other direction as ‘rot’. I’ll mend it.

I hope you both had as good a holiday as I.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO PHYLLIDA (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

19/9/53

Dear Phyllida

I feel as one does when after ‘showing up’ one’s work one realises one has made the very same mistake one got into a row for last week! I mean, after sending off the book, I read it myself and found ‘Kids’ again twice. I really will take care not to do it again. The earlier part of Rilian’s story, told by the owl, was meant to sound further-off and more like an ordinary fairy-tale so as to keep it different from the part where I get on to telling it myself. I think the idea of making some difference is right: but of course what matters in books is not so much the ideas as how you actually carry them out.

All good wishes and love to both.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 1st 1953

Dear Ruth,

Rachel has been ready for a long time: you know I am of the generation who was brought up to hold that the initiative must come from you.198

Long Crendon–long since endeared to me because Owen Barfield used to live there–will now have a second good association. I shall be among the first etc–but this sounds rather like Mr. Collins!199 Warnie joins me in our duties and warm welcome to these parts. It is, as you have seen, a lovely village.

Yours in all service

Jack Lewis

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 3. 53

Dear Nell

My correspondence has lately been in much the same state as yours: that is, on coming back from a holiday in Ireland I found about 60 letters to deal with.

I had a lovely time over there: the best part in Donegal, all Atlantic breakers & golden sand and peat and heather and donkeys and mountains and (what is most unusual there) a heat wave and cloudless skies. Walks were much interrupted by blackberries: so big and juicy, and sweet that you just couldn’t pass without picking them. Some funny hotels, though. One has often found bathrooms with no hot water but I found one with no cold! You’ve no idea how tired one gets waiting for a bath to cool. In fact, with all the steam round you, it really means having a Turkish bath before the ordinary one!

I’m delighted to learn of your good year: how cosmopolitan you have become! Also thanks for telling me about Penelope and the books: give her my love.

You were a shrew to come so near without looking me up–and then, God bless my soul, to expect me to go to you! I’ll try one of these days all the same: it’s too nice to miss. I agree about prison–at least for Mrs. Hooker. She has so often been there, for similar offences, that it ought to be quite clear the treatment doesn’t work. Have you been having, like us, the most exquisite autumn? Love to Alan & yourself.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

3/10/53

Dear Mrs Van Deusen

I was extremely glad to get your letter. I was beginning to feel that my own had been presumptuous and intolerable and had been praying not that it might do good but that it might not do harm. Whether I was right or wrong, you came out of it with flying colours: if few can give good advice, fewer still can hear with patience advice either good or bad.

About your Project (it was, wasn’t it, for the founding of a sort of rest-home where people in psychological difficulties could get Christian advice, sympathy, and, if necessary, treatment?), the whole thing–as with most conceptions either practical or literary–turns on the execution. All depends on the quality of the individual helpers. I suspect you will find them only by what seems chance but is really an answer to prayer. No ‘machinery’ of committees and selection & references, however well devised, will do it, I imagine. And perhaps it is just by your discovering, or failing to discover, the right people, that God will show you whether He wishes you to do this or not (Beware here of my unsanguine temper, more tempted to sloth than to precipitance, and ready to despond: take my advice always with a grain of salt).

It is hard, when difficulties arise to know whether one is meant to overcome them or whether they are signs that one is on the wrong track. I suppose the deeper one’s own life of prayer and sacraments the more trustworthy one’s judgement will be.

You ‘get me where I live’ about Van’s Aunt. I have been in v. close contact with a case like that. It is harrowing. My doctor (a v. serious Christian) kept on reminding me that 50 much of an old person’s speech & behaviour must really be treated as a medical not a spiritual fact: that, as the organism decays, the true state of the soul can less and less express itself thro’ it. So that things may be neither so miserable (nor so wicked, we must sometimes add) as they seem. I sometimes wonder whether the incarnation of the soul is not gradual at both ends?-i.e. not fully there yet in infancy and no longer fully there in old age.

The first syllable of Donegal rhymes with FUN, the last with ALL, there are 3, and the accent is on the last-Dun-i-Gaúl. Blessings on all of you.

Yours (most relieved)

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 6/53

My dear Arthur

I have ordered Blackwells to send you a copy of Barfield’s (‘G. A. L. Burgeon’s’) book.200

I enclose one wh. I found worth reading but don’t want to keep. If you don’t like it, pass it on to someone else. You’ll agree with the author about Noise! I think you’ll find in him an approach to Christianity wh. you haven’t v. much met yet & wh. is worth knowing about; it is fairly widely spread here. Of course parts of it are too explicitly R.C. for us but a lot of common ground remains.

Here are some C. M. Yonge titles, all good books: The Daisy Chain and its sequel The Trial; The Pillars of the House; The Three Brides; The Two Sides of the Shield; Dynevor Terrace. Not so good (but W. differs from me) is Nutty’s Father.201

I wish you had enjoyed our holiday as much as I did! But I expect you’re enjoying yourself all the more now. All blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO JOHN RICHARDS (BOD):202 TS

449/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

13th October 1953.

Dear Mr. Richards,

Thank you for your kind and encouraging letter of the 11th. Tolkien’s great romance, The Lord of the Rings, of which the first volume will soon be published, just skirts the theme of the True West. You’ll find it immensely worth reading on other accounts as well.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Oct 15/1953

Dear Mrs. Jessup

It is a very long time since any letters passed between us. I am in fact in your debt, counting it strict ‘turn-about’, but I regarded your last letter as an answer–certainly not a question, for I think it contained none!

But you have not all this time been absent from my daily prayers. I have been very heavily worked, except for a holiday in Ireland, and I have not been very well: nothing serious, only the harmless complaint which is called sinusitis, which gives pain and rather ‘gets you down’, but nothing worse. I hope you are well and happy (as happiness goes with mortals like us–I know you are on earth, not in heaven!). Some time, where you have nothing urgent to do, write me a line to say how you go on. This of mine of course calls for no answer: it is only a little wave of the flag to show you I’m still here and never unmindful even when I’m silent.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 17/53

My dear Arthur

I wonder are you allowing for the fact that in the Heir203 one of the main characters is, and is meant to be, a horrible prig, and the other a man who believes himself to be under (almost) a hereditary curse? This justifies dramatically in both a degree of introspection which may not at all be C. M. Yonge’s idea of normal Christian life. Mrs Edmonstone (clearly a good woman) does not show the same trait, nor does Amy.

I shall of course be perfectly happy to spend our joint holiday in the Inn at C’burn this year, if it so falls out. If you are in England I think you might find a few nights in the College guest room not unendurable and I’d try to give you breakfast as late as the servants cd. be expected to bear. (There are, however, clocks that chime the quarters all over Oxford; perhaps that wd. be fatal.)

I’ll send you W’s book204 as soon as it is out. I think you’ll like it. V. difficult to write to Gundred about J.F.’s death, wasn’t it.205

This has been the most exquisitely beautiful autumn I can remember.

Yours

Jack

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 20th 53

My dear Bles

How stupid of me not to see that our old friend ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’ becomes nonsense when converted into ‘better the frying pan than the fire’. I’m glad you pointed it out. And I can’t think of any good substitute wh. cd. be fitted into the same number of spaces. So dele.206

The Phillips one is v. curious, because surely the argument at that point in Hebrews does precisely identify ‘man’ in the psalms with ‘the Man’, Our Lord.207

I am of course delighted at all you tell me about M.C. Very over-driven at present. We’re both well: kindest regards to both of you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen

Oct 25th 53

Dear Evans

I return the cuttings. I enjoyed them all, but the phrase-book items were the cream. And not only because you had good raw material: the showmanship was just right. I quite agree that when it comes to absurdity nature beats art: there’s nothing in the lists of imaginary ‘howlers’ as funny as things I have really seen when examining. You will hardly believe the following but we had it offered in the college entrance exam: ‘In any controversy half the people generally side with the majority and half with the minority’

I have no brief against co-education. I am, in principle, inclined (having no school-mastering experience I wd. not go further than an inclination either way) to approve it. But just as fine printing (in itself a delightful thing) has in fact got itself mixed up with pornography, so co-education has in fact got itself mixed up with crank schools, take Dartington Hall.208 I didn’t make Experiment House209 cranky because it was co-ed: I made it co-ed because it was cranky.

I must look up A. G. Pym:210 can’t remember if I’ve read it or not. With all good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY NEYLAN (T):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Nov 5/53

Alas, it couldn’t come at a worse time. I’m at it all day trying to finish the Bibliography (odious job) of my big OHEL book against time, in between tutorials: usually my day allows no leisure between 8.30 a.m. & 9.45 p.m. So I must hope to meet Sarah another time. Thanks pro orationibus.211 The sinus is not yet anything like so bad as it was last winter. Blessings on all—

C.S.L.

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Nov 5/53

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

This must be a hasty scrawl as I’m working against time at present & usually have no free moment between 8.30 a.m. & 9.45 p.m.

So glad to hear all your good news. About CSR212 I’m the last person to give an opinion. I am so much the reverse of the type that ‘joins things’ or ‘gets things up’ that I’d be no fair judge even if I knew the parish and the people. Of course it all depends what the latter are really like! On that turns whether it is (a.) A holy, beneficent & sensible activity (b.) A harmless, if rather fussy, hobby (c.) A pestilent coven of snoopers & busybodies (d) A mixture of all three. It might be anything almost! I’m afraid you’ll have to find out! Praying for ‘a right judgement in all things’.213

I hope in a few weeks I’ll be through my present furore of work & able to correspond properly again. Bless you all

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Nov. 6/53

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

Oh I am glad, I am glad. And here’s a thing worth recording. Of course I have been praying for you daily, as always, but latterly have found myself doing so with much more concern and especially about 2 nights ago, with such a strong feeling how very nice it would be, if God willed, to get a letter from you with good news. And then, as if by magic (indeed it is the whitest magic in the world) the letter comes today. Not (lest I should indulge in folly) that your relief had not in fact occurred before my prayer, but as if, in tenderness for my puny faith, God moved me to pray with especial earnestness just before He was going to give me the thing. How true that our prayers are really His prayers: He speaks to Himself through us.

I am also most moved at hearing how you were supported thro’ the period of anxiety. For one is sometimes tempted to think that if He wanted us to be as un-anxious as the lilies of the field He really might have given us a constitution more like theirs! But then when the need cornes He carries out in us His otherwise impossible instructions. In fact He always has to do all the things–all the prayers, all the virtues. No new doctrine, but newly come home to me. Forgive a short letter, quite inadequate to the subject: I am at present just so busy (tho’ not unhappily so) that I don’t know if I’m on my head or my heels. God bless you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

During the first week of November Joy Gresham arrived in London, this time with her two sons, David and Douglas. They took rooms in the Avoca House Hotel, 43 Belsize Park, Hampstead. A few days later they moved into a flat at 14 Belsize Park, in the hotel annexe.

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Nov 7th 53

Dear Mrs. Gebbert

This will have to be an inadequate scrawl for my brother, who drives the typewriter, is away and I’ve so much to do that I can hardly write–in the double sense that I’ve hardly time and that my right hand is stiff and tired with compulsory scribbling! Yes, babies (tho’ I know yours is quite unlike all other babies!) do look like Sir W.214 I wonder why? ‘Trailing clouds of glory’ I suppose.215

I’d love to have seen that shop window and hope they have done the same with all the Lions successors: there are 3 of these now, I hope you know.

Mrs. Williams216 lives at 23 ANTRIM MANSIONS, LONDON, N.W.3. I think life is pretty hard for her and am very glad to hear of your friend’s wish to write to her. You shd. warn her that Mrs. W is not at all intellectual.

How wrong you are when you think that streamlined planes and trains wd. attract me to America. What I want to see there is yourself and 3 or 4 other good friends, after New England, the Rip Van Winkle Mts., Nantucket, the Huckleberry Finn country, the Rockies, Yellowstone Park, and a sub-Artie winter. And I shd. never come if I couldn’t manage to come by sea instead of air: preferably on a cargo boat that took weeks on the voyage. I’m a rustic animal and a maritime animal: no good at great cities, big hotels, or all that. But this is becoming egotistical. And here comes my first pupil of the morning. All blessings, and love to all.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

I’d love to see a bear, a snow-shoe, and a real forest

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Nov 12th 53

My dear Bles

Right-oh. I’ll take the £17-0-0 and expect to have £8-10-0 Royalties deducted.

I can’t tell you how glad I am that you spotted that howler about the frying pan and the fire. I wonder no hostile reviewer seized on it.217

Yours

C. S. Lewis