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

Your hand is better than mine (to read, I mean—it may hurt more).

Yes, oremus, oremus.

Yours very sincerely.

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen etc

10/1/52

Dear Evans–

Thanks for the play,17 and for the other chap’s stories.18 I liked the play very much. You made the astrology of the Magi v. convincing and Simeon was quite a character. I hope the performance pleased you?

As for the stories—the author writes a great deal better than most of the ‘science fiction’ lot, and is pretty learned. But oh, if only he didn’t try to be comic! The Norse story19 was far the best, for in its atmosphere rough horse-play did no harm. But the attempts at humour in the other two ruined them for me. I can’t bear Britomart getting drunk and maudlin. In Ariosto’s world there is, of course, plenty of comedy: but not of the kind this author puts in! Perhaps I expected too much. With all good wishes for the new year.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO HARRY BIAMIRES (BOD):

Magdalen.

19/1/52

Dear Blamires (I wish you’d call me Lewis instead of Dr. Lewis)

I have read through the revised passages.20 They all seem to me v. sound now. A few minor points remain: p. 1. animal kind. Just a slight danger of anbiguity between kind = sort (i.e. are animalic) and kind = species (animal-kind or mankind). P. 24. para 3 especially brutal. I’d prefer cruel. Brutal is unfortunate because the use of brutal to mean cruel is itself an instance of the same figure that leads to inhuman meaning cruel. P. 72 End of footnote. Wd. common dependence be better than communal. The latter might mean that we don’t have in common a personal dependence but only a corporate dependence. P. 73 para 2. I’m not quite happy about ‘authority of service’. P. 74. Isn’t the quotation ‘come full circle’ not gone. (I haven’t looked this up).

About your kind compliment to me in the Preface, I like it of course. The real question is whether it will do you good or harm. I am much hated as well as much loved and the connection with me will damn you with certain reviewers. I’d advise you to omit it, but you must do exactly as you please.

They were wrong in saying I was away that Friday and I’m sorry they did, because I had staying with me a man whom I wd. like you to have met. He has read your previous books & likes them, and has in common with you the qualities of being (a.) A Christian—R. C. (b.) A schoolmaster (c.) An old pupil of mine. Not that you are exactly a schoolmaster. His name is G. Sayer (The College, Malvern)

Of course you were right to send me the MS. All best wishes: you are doing a most valuable work.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO CAROL JENKINS (W): 21

REF.52/60

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

22nd January 1952.

Dear Miss Jenkins,

It is a pleasure to answer your question. I found the name22 in the notes to Lane’s Arabian Nights:23 it is the Turkish for Lion. I pronounce it Ass-Ian myself. And of course I meant the Lion of ludah. I am so glad you liked the book.24 I hope you will like the sequel (Prince Caspian) which came out in November.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD): TS

REF.52/64.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

22nd January 1952.

Dear Mr. Kinter,

By an odd coincidence your very handsome and acceptable gift arrived by the same post as the enclosed letter: which I send to you as a proof that I was not so rude as to ignore your very interesting and welcome letter of last year. Wise after the event, I now see that you were merely on a visit to New York, and had not changed your permanent address.

You cannot imagine what the arrival of a ham means to the average British household these days: it would be untrue to say that we are short of food, but our sufficiency is a very monotonous one, and such luxuries as you have sent me have a very cheering effect.

With very many thanks, and all best wishes for 1952,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (P): 25

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Jan 31st 1952

Dear Mr. Hilton Young

Lanes26 have sent me a copy of your paper on my novels, and suggested that we shd. meet. If you could run down and lunch with me in college on any day next month except the 7th and 12th (Sundays are bad, but possible) I’d be delighted to have a talk afterwards. But—would it be a risk? I have an idea that a critic and a book are company, but that the author is de trop.27 Wd. my Milton book have been improved or ruined by a meeting with Milton? Because, you see, there is hardly any limit to our disagreements about my trilogy.

But ought you to take any notice of the fact? When I’ve said that there is no allegory in it, and that there’s nothing at all about the Second Coming in T.H.S.,28 you may reply ‘Well, that is what the books mean to an intelligent reader and what does it matter what you meant them to mean?’–a point of view I wholly agree with. Still, I hope you’ll come: we shd. probably have several other authors to discuss.

You could hardly conceive how different my approach was from yours. The germ of Perelandra was simply the picture of the floating islands themselves, with no location, no story, and no [?]29 The way you allegorise the 3 species on Mars is masterly: and those three, because—well, however one does invent things: presumably because I’m human and therefore can’t invent things except by splicing up human nature. Query—is it possible for any man to write a fantastic story which another man can’t read as an allegory? (The history of medieval criticism makes it clear that the answer is No).

Do come, and name your day: 1 o’ clock at the college lodge, and ask to be shown to the Smoking Room.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen

31/1/52

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

How singular! In the last year my life also became much ‘better’ and, just like you, I often feel a little frightened. We must both distinguish (a.) The bad Pagan feeling that the gods don’t like us to be happy and that it excites Nemesis: see Browning’s Caliban upon Setebos30 (b.) The good Christian caution lest we become soft and self indulgent and cease to recognise one’s dependence on God.

That suffering is not always sent as a punishment is clearly established for believers by the book of Job and by John IX. 1-4. That it sometimes is, is suggested by parts of the Old Testament and Revelation. It wd. certainly be most dangerous to assume that any given pain was penal. I believe that all pain is contrary to God’s will, absolutely but not relatively. When I am taking a thorn out of my finger (or a child’s finger) the pain is ‘absolutely’ contrary to my will: i.e. if I could have chosen a situation without pain I would have done so. But I do will what caused pain, relatively to the given situation: i.e. granted the thorn I prefer the pain to leaving the thorn where it is. A mother smacking a child wd. be in the same position: she wd. rather cause it this pain than let it go on pulling the cat’s tail, but she wd. like it better if no situation which demands a smack had arisen.

On the heathen, see I Tim. IV. 10.31 Also in Matt. XXV. 31-46 the people don’t sound as if they were believers. Also the doctrine of Christ’s descending into Hell* and preaching to the dead: wd. that would be outside time, and include those who died long after Him as well as those who died before He was born as Man. I don’t think we know the details: we must just stick to the view that (a.) All justice & mercy will be done, (b) But that nevertheless it is our duty to do all we can to convert unbelievers. All blessings.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHURCH TIMES (EC)?32

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sir,–

I welcome the letter from the Rural Dean of Gravesend,33 though I am sorry that anyone should have regarded it necessary to describe the Bishop of Birmingham as an Evangelical. To a layman, it seems obvious that what unites the Evangelical and the Anglo-Catholic against the ‘Liberal’ or ‘Modernist’ is something very clear and momentous, namely, the fact that both are thoroughgoing supernaturalists, who believe in the Creation, the Fall, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Second Coming, and the Four Last Things. This unites them not only with one another, but with the Christian religion as understood ubique et ab omnibus.34

The point of view from which this agreement seems less important than their divisions, or than the gulf which separates both from any non-miraculous version of Christianity, is to me unintelligible. Perhaps the trouble is that as supernaturalists, whether ‘Low’ or ‘High’ Church, thus taken together, they lack a name. May I suggest ‘Deep Church’; or, if that fails in humility, Baxter’s ‘mere Christians’?35

C. S. Lewis

TO JILL FREUD (T):

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/2/52

It lies on my mind that I talked some nonsense about a ‘tread mill’ in my note yesterday. Pretty good rot for a man who is being given full pay for doing what most people do in their spare time. Wash it out. I only meant the engine is happily doing N revs, per second!

J

TO VERA MATHEWS (W):

Magdalen College,

Magdalen

17/2/52

Dear Miss Mathews

You will think I have taken a terribly long time over the Nabob,36 but the only time I have for such things is the week ends and the last two have been fully occupied by going through proofs of a new translation (someone else’s) of the gospels.37 And now, before I say anything, remember that—as I think I said, the short story is not my Form at all, so that my criticism will be amateurish.

I think the general narrative manner is good, and, with certain reservations, the character of the wife. I don’t find Cobham so good: but my reasons will best come out as we go along. These are my notes;

P. 2. Having worked…everything seemed. Am I pedantic to object to the syntax? If everything is the subject of the sentence then it ought to be everything, not Hermione, who had ‘once worked’ etc

P. 3. just that. I don’t understand what these words mean. But perhaps it’s an American idiom that I don’t know. If so, O.K.

righteously felt sincerely? genuinely? I don’t know what ‘righteously feeling’ wd. mean

P. 4. his bent was military etc. This is the first of many passages in wh. you refer to C. as a soldier. But wouldn’t the governor of a province in India be in the I.C.S. (Indian Civil Service) not in the Army?

enlisted. Do you mean went in as a private soldier? (wh. is what enlist means to us). If so this is infinitely improbable for a young man of C’s social position at that time. You mean, don’t you, that he ‘went into the army’ i.e. got a commission?

P 5. to never yield, ‘never to yield’?

P. 6. What are the drafts?.

P. 9. para 3. v. good P. 20. How those vicars. But they wouldn’t, you know. They might have v. likely 100 or so years earlier. In Cs time they’d all have been talking about a God of love. I don’t mean that our Englishman in India, bitten with Oriental wisdom, might not say what C. does, but then he wd. be a fool, which you don’t mean C. to be.

savant. Doesn’t this suggest something academic and even scientific? Perhaps ‘sage’ wd. do.

P. 24. What are physical virtues? It ought to mean good muscles, good digestion, sound teeth etc, but I don’t think that’s what you do mean.

P. 25. better stayed. No English speaker wd. omit the have.

P. 26. She might even laugh…wd. not have. Oh but surely—surely—a man so near renunciation and enlightenment as you mean C. to be wd. have got beyond the stage of minding whether people laughed at him or not ages ago. You might as well introduce a great pianist who has difficulty about five finger exercises!

visit the Tower. More what schoolboys, foreigners, or very country cousins wd. do—not an ‘Indian Civilian’ and his bride. They’re not like that.

P 28. Period is purely American. The English is ‘full stop’. But of course you may be entitled to translate, just as you’d make ancient Egyptians talk modern American if you were writing a story about them. Still, it raises awkward problems when the two languages are almost identical.

P 29. I’m kind. Wouldn’t anyone say ‘I am kind’?

P. 30. would they laugh…military man. See notes on pp. 26 and 4.

P. 36. I’m not quite clear what is meant by putting God ‘primarily’ above everything.

P. 34. beg apology. Surely one begs a pardon or makes an apology?

P. 36. soldier etc. see on pp. 4, and 30.

I’m like you…bloody Mary. This sounds to me like the language of an utterly commonplace old grumbler, not one far advanced in the mystic path.

I will pay you the compliment (for it is one: the naked truth is not for fools) of giving you a perfectly honest criticism. I don’t think the story, as it stands, will do. But its partial failure does not prove (this is what you most want to know) an absence of literary talent. That, I think, you probably have. What is wrong with this story is due to inexperience. You have set yourself two handicaps, either one of which wd. be enough to wreck most authors. (1.) You are writing about a society you don’t know. I don’t know much about Anglo-Indian life myself, but your picture somehow smells all wrong. (2.) You have tried to put across a marvel (the lévitation. Whether Swamiji wd. have let us call it a ‘miracle’ or not doesn’t concern us as literary critics).

Now there were only two ways to make us accept it. One was by making the whole story fantastic—like a fairy tale—from the word go. That, of course I see, wd. have been quite inconsistent with the mood you wanted to create. The other was so to build up the spirituality of Cobham or Swamiji or (better) both, that we could believe anything of them. And that’s where you come down. We see v. little of Swamiji and what we do see has no aura of grandeur or mystery, nothing numinous, about it. As for Cobham, he is incredible as a mystic. There’s no trace of serenity or love, and his numerous speeches to Hermione are in a vein both of censoriousness and of slangy bullying which is not only unlike a budding sage but quite untrue to the social group he wd. belong to. In other words the difficulties of the theme have, on this occasion, defeated you. I await with interest a story with a better chosen scene and subject. There is nothing amateurish about the actual writing and you have, I think, the gift for ordonnance.38

Are we still friends? I hope so,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (P):

Magdalen

24/2/52

Dear Hilton-Young–

I think I muffled the point I was trying to make yesterday about the significance-unknown-to-the-artist in a work of art. I certainly didn’t intend to treat ‘Either Inspiration or the Unconscious’ as an exhaustive alternative for its source.

It’s more like this. Every fiction, realistic or fantastic, uses forms taken from the real world: a woman, a ship, a gun, a horse etc. Now the total significance of these in the real world (call it T) is known to nobody. And the fraction of it known to each is slightly (or, it may be) widely different. The fraction in the artist’s mind (both conscious and unconscious) is T/A: in the reader’s T/R. An extreme case of difference wd. be, say, if a child who didn’t yet know the facts of generation put a marriage into a story. His ignorance might make that bit of his story simply comic & absurd to the adult reader: but it might also make that bit to the adult reader far more significant than the child had ever intended it to be.

Now I hope no individual reader of my work is to me as adult to child. But the aggregate experiences of my readers, contributing to each from T/Rl + T/R2 etc, presumably are. At any rate a classic, wh. has been read by great minds for 1000 years, and discussed, will have all its forms interpreted by a composite mind, which ought to see in them more than the artist intended. This is not a complete substitution of a new work for his original one, for it is his particular grouping of forms which evoke the whole response. (As if successive generations learned better and better dances to one original tune: a certain formal element in it remaining constant but being more richly & subtly filled).

All this is only an elaboration of the old maxim that what you get out of work depends on what you bring to it. Humanity as a whole brings to the Aeneid more than Virgil could: therefore it must get more out. After all, you as an Atheist have to believe that in admiring natural beauty we are getting out of it what no-one put in: why shd. we not equally get out of verbal compositions what the composer didn’t put in?

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (P): PC

Magdalen College

Oxford

27/2/52

Yes. T/Rn is only an aggregate unless either (A.) [?]39 are real, as Plato & Hegel, in a different way, thought or (B.) Each educated T/R is, through tradition & critical discussion modified by the other T/Rs. Now I think A is probably and B is certainly true. Thanks for kind offer of hospitality: I’ll try to make it one of these days.

C.S.L.

TO GENIA GOELZ (Z/P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29 Feb 1952

Dear Mrs. Goelz (or may I, being old, and bold, and avuncular, say dear Genia?

I learn from Mrs. Van Deusen that you are ‘taking the plunge’.40 As you have been now for so long in my prayers, I hope it will not seem intrusive to send my congratulations. Or I might say condolences and congratulations. For whatever people who have never undergone an adult conversion may say, it is a process not without its distresses. Indeed, they are the very sign that it is a true initiation. Like learning to swim or to skate, or getting married, or taking up a profession. There are cold shudderings about all these processes. When one finds oneself learning to fly without trouble one soon discovers (usually. There are blessed exceptions where we are allowed to take a real step without that difficulty), by waking up, that it was only a dream.

All blessings and good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29/2/52

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

How odd and delightful that you should meet James! Give him my kind regards.

He has perhaps not given you quite the right idea about our ‘Long Vacation’.41 It is precisely that part of the year on which both dons and serious students rely for their real work: the term for lectures & discussion, the Vacations, and especially the ‘Long’ for steady reading. I think your universities suffer from not having it. Mine, this year, will be v. busy indeed, and no question of holidays to America.

But don’t think I am the less touched or grateful for your most kind offer of hospitality. I am speaking of the ‘Long’ as it has now come to be: of course originally this prolonged summer gap in all our English institutions–Parliament, Law courts, etc—dates, no doubt, from the days when we were an agricultural community and no one cd., at that time of the year, be spared from the land.

I have written to Genia. Your news is v. good. In a way it is [a] good sign, isn’t it?, that the Rector shd. not be a person she particularly likes. I will indeed continue my prayers for her. With love to all.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO HELEN D. CALKINS (W):42 TS

REE 52/123.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

1st March 1952.

Dear Mrs. Calkins,

I will read it with pleasure,43 but I must’nt write a foreword. I have done far too many of them. It begins to make both the authors and me ridiculous, and also I run dry. I wish the book all success.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO THE ROYAL LITERARY FUND (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

7/3/52

Sir

I write in support of an application which, I understand, my very deeply respected friend Mr. J. A. Chapman44 is making to your Committee. Mr. Chapman has in his old age a serious devotion both to his art and to humanity which we usually meet only in the young; if he has spent on the publication of his poem45 a sum very serious to him, though not large, I trust, by the standards of the R.L.E, I am sure he has been moved to do so not by an author’s vanity but by a sense of his mission. A grant to him would be a proper recognition of a long and arduous life devoted to letters and learning in a spirit of self-dedication.

I am, Sir,

Yours faithfully

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR G REEVE S (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

8/3/52

My dear Arthur

I hope to arrive at Crawfordsburn with W.46 on Aug. Wed. 20th. He will leave on Aug. Sat. 23rd. If agreeable I wd. like to stay on at the Hotel47 for a fortnight of your society, i.e. sail again on Mon. Sept 8th. Will that suit you? I can’t manage the Easter as well.

In the Last Chronide48 I think all the London parts (the ‘Bayswater Romance’) a bore and now always skip them. But I think the Crawley parts splendid.

I am wondering how your date with Tchainie went? Give her my love. Blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD): PC

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/3/52

Excellent. I’ll be (D.V.) in the Eastgate about 12 noon on Sat. March 22 d.

C.S.L.

TO GENIA GOELZ (L/P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

18 March 1952

Dear Genia

Don’t bother at all about that question of a person being ‘made a Christian’ by baptism. It is only the usual trouble about words being used in more than one sense. Thus we might say a man ‘became a soldier’ the moment that he joined the army. But his instructors might say six months later ‘I think we have made a soldier of him’. Both usages are quite definable, only one wants to know which is being used in a given sentence. The Bible itself gives us one short prayer which is suitable for all who are struggling with the beliefs and doctrines. It is: ‘Lord I believe, help Thou my unbelief.’49 Would something of this sort be any good?: Almighty God, who art the father of lights and who hast promised by thy dear Son that all who do thy will shall know thy doctrine:50 give me grace so to live that by daily obedience I daily increase in faith and in the understanding of thy Holy Word, through lesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W):

Magdalen etc.

22/3/52

Dear Miss Mathews