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

Let us by all means pray for one another: it is perhaps the only form of ‘work for re-union’ which never does anything but good. God bless you.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO J. R. R. TOLKIEN (P): 263

[Magdalen College]

Nov 13/52

My dear Tollers

Just a note to tell you with what agreeable warmth and weight your yesterday’s good news lies on my mind—with an inward chuckle of deep content.264 Foremost of course is the sheer pleasure of looking forward to having the book to read and re-read. But a lot of other things come in. So much of your whole life, so much of our joint life, so much of the war, so much that seemed to be slipping away quite spurlos265 into the past, is now, in a sort made permanent.

And I am of course very glad on your account too. I think the very prolonged pregnancy has drained a little vitality from you: there’ll be a new ripeness and freedom when the book’s out. And how pleased Priscilla266 and Mrs. Farrer will be.267 God bless you.

J.

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Nov. 13th 1952

Dear Mrs. Jessup

Yes, of course I will—for all six of you. I am very sorry to hear that your (temporal) news is so grim. Your spiritual news is perhaps better than you think. You seem to have been dealing with the dryness (or ‘the wall’ as you well name it) in the right way. Everyone has experienced it or will.

It is clearly what G.M. meant when he said ‘Have pity on us for the look of things, When desolation stares us in the face. Although the serpent-mask have lied before, It fascinates the bird.’268

It is v. important to remember that Our Lord experienced it to the full, twice—in Gethsemane when He sweated blood, and next day when he said ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’269 We are not asked to go anywhere where he has not gone before us. The shining quality may come back when we least expect it, and in circumstances which wd. seem to an outside observer (or to ourselves) to make it most impossible. (We must not reject it, as there is an impulse to do, on the ground that we ought, in the conditions, to be miserable).

What is most re-assuring to me, and most moving, is your sane and charitable recognition that others have as great, or worse, trials: one of those things wh. no one else can decently say to the sufferer but wh. are invaluable when he says them to himself. And of course there was no ‘conceit’ or ‘selfishness’ in your writing to me: are we not all ‘members of one another’.270 (I can’t reply about Eisenhower. I am no politician. I shd. suppose that the diverse views of his election taken in England depend entirely on the different ways in which our own political parties think they can make capital out of it. As you know public affairs seem to me much less important than private—in fact important only in so far as they affect private affairs.)

You are quite right (tho’ not in the way you meant) when you say I needn’t ‘work up’ sympathy with you! No, I needn’t. I have had enough experiences of the crises of family life, the terrors, despondencies, hopes deferred, and wearinesses. The trouble is that things go on 50 long, isn’t it? and one gets so tired of trying! No doubt it will all seem short when looked at from eternity. But I needn’t preach to you. You’re doing well: scoring pretty good marks! Keep on. Take it hour by hour, don’t add the past & the future to the present load more than you can help. God bless you all.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Nov. 17th 1952

Dear Mrs. Jessup

Thanks be to God for your good news. There is a comic, but also charming, contrast between the temperance with which you bore a great fear and the wild excess of your apologies for a wholly imaginary offence in writing that letter. You did perfectly right and there is nothing whatever for me to forgive. And I shd. be v. sorry if you carried out your threat (made, I know, from the best motives) of never writing to me again. You are not the kind of correspondent who is a ‘nuisance’: if you were you wd. not be now thinking you are one—That kind never does.

But don’t send me any newspaper cuttings. I never believe a word said in the papers. The real history of a period (as we always discover a few years later) has v. little to do with all that, and private people like you and me are never allowed to know it while it is going on. Of course you will all remain in my prayers. I think it v. wrong to pray for people while they are in distress and then not to continue praying, now with thanksgiving, when they are relieved.

Many people think their prayers are never answered because it is the answered ones that they forget. Like the others who find proof for a superstition by recording all the cases in wh. bad luck has followed a dinner with 13 at table and forget all the others where it hasn’t. God bless you. Write freely whenever you please.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Nov 18/52

My dear Arthur

Thanks v. much for the 2nd vol. of HJ. which arrived in good order a few days ago. It is really most generous of you. The Letters, even if they had no other interest, wd. be useful as an anthology of all the possible ways of apologising for not having written before—it sometimes goes on for 2 whole pages!

I really feel much as you do about big formal functions, and though I attend many more of them than you, I skip all I can. As I get older I become more impatient of being kept sitting on or hanging about after the meal is over.

I shan’t begin the Letters for a few days for I am at present re-reading Montaigne. Sharp frost here this morning: I wish we could have a walk to enjoy it together.

Love to both of you.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

25. xi. 1952

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

No, by wordless prayer I didn’t mean the practice of the Presence of God. I meant the same mental act as in verbal prayer only without the words. The Practice of the Presence is a much higher activity. I don’t think it matters much whether an absolutely uninterrupted recollection of God’s presence for a whole lifetime is possible or not. A much more frequent & prolonged recollection than we have yet reached certainly is possible. Isn’t that enough to work on? A child learning to walk doesn’t need to know whether it will ever be able to walk 40 miles in a day: the important thing is that it can walk tomorrow a little further and more steadily than it did today.

I don’t think we are likely to give too much love and care to those we love. We might put in active care in the form of assistance when it wd. be better for them to act on their own: i.e. we might be busybodies. Or we might have too much ‘care’ for them in the sense of anxiety. But we never love anyone too much: the trouble is always that we love God, or perhaps some other created being, too little.

As to the ‘state of the world’ if we have time to hope and fear about it, we certainly have time to pray. I agree it is v. hard to keep one’s eyes on God amid all the daily claims & problems. I think it wise, if possible, to move one’s main prayers from the last-thing-at-night position to some earlier time: give them a better chance to infiltrate one’s other thoughts.

Thanks v. much for the stationery. I’m afraid I can’t find a W. Chambers book.271 It’s better not to send the book. They all get lost in the pile on my table.

Yours sincerely, with love to all,

C. S. Lewis

TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26 xi 52

Dear Blamires

Yes, I did of course write to Edinburgh and did my best.272 I was much hampered by the fact that my questioner laid great stress on practical ability as a teacher, and of course I could not pretend to have any first hand evidence to give on that. I am sorry the Philistines have won: but am sure you will not allow yourself to be too set down about it. All good wishes,

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26. xi. 1952

My dear Bles

Thanks for American M.C.273 and for reviews of D.T.274 No, I shan’t need any more copies of the former, so pray dispose of them as you think fit. No one, not even the artist, liked the Church Times picture.275 The Torso is not at all imminent:276 I’m very busy with ordinary work these days. All greetings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

28.xi.52

Dear Borst–

The copy has not yet come to hand but I have your letter of the 19th and I’m afraid the position is this. You can have a little more headnote (but not a statement what each passage ‘illustrates’–it is 50 bad for the students) and as many more glosses as you like: but you can’t have from me any drastic revision of the Selections. For one thing I have not now the leisure: but for another, I can’t have what is really Mr. Harrison’s Selections going under my name.

If you press for such a revision then I will make what seems to me a handsome offer. I will be content with 500 dollars for my introduction and for giving you my selections & glosses as a basis for someone else’s work. You will save money, for you needn’t get an expensive man to do you the kind of Selections you now want. It is work for any intelligent student. For my Selections were quite a different thing. With labour of which you have no conception I quarried a little F.Q. out of the great F.Q.: reproducing its real characteristics. Of course this involved omitting (within individual selections) stanzas that could be spared: and leaving the first appearances of characters as unprepared as S. leaves them: and being ‘tantalising’ as S. is tantalising: and omitting some (v. few) of the dear old Show-pieces. You have almost sensed what I was at: I don’t think Mr. Harrison has. And the result on you is v. significant. You now want more Spenser than you allowed me at first. Why? if not that the thing is acting on you as I hoped it wd. act on the students? If I’d simply chucked all the dear old favourites together in the old way you’d have taken them without a murmur and never asked for more.

As I say, you are quite free to get someone else (and, between ourselves, you need get only a hack). Yet I can’t help hoping you’ll keep my Selections: not for my sake (I shd. not be piqued and I can manage without the other 500 dollars) but for Spenser’s. Arrogant tho’ it may sound I can’t help saying ‘Borst, you know not what you do: let well alone. You’ve got here a new thing, a thing which will whet the students’ appetite as it whets yours. Think twice before throwing it away in favour of one more “specimens of Spenser” such as everyone has done, and no one enjoyed.’

Mr. Harrison is mistaken in thinking that Serena was a foundling of noble birth.277 S. does (emphatically) identify RCK278 and St George (I x. lxi.).279

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

28. xi. 52

Dear Evans

Thank you for The Space Serpent which I have read and return.280 Most interesting idea—and I fear I wd. never have noticed your ‘howler’ if you hadn’t warned me. But then, as you know, my interest in ‘science-fiction’ puts the emphasis entirely on the fiction end. I must re-read that excellent book Kipps,281 and thanks you for reminding me of it. How tragically Wells decayed in his later work! With all good wishes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ALAN AND NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Dec 2nd 1952

Dear Alan and Nell

I was going to write to you shortly (I mean ‘in a short time’, how difficult the English language is!) when your card came. I am sending off under separate cover my last story to your little girl. At least I hope that’s what the neat packet contains: I daren’t open it to see because I’m so bad at parcels that I’d never get it put up again nicely if I did. I’m afraid it is a poor gift compared with the chinchilla (is that how you spell it?) coat.

I’m afraid I haven’t a chance to get down to dear Court Stairs this vacation, though it is just the weather for the South Coast and I shd. love to join your merry circle round the fire. Is the old gentleman with the strong views still there? Your garden must look lovely in the snow.

I hope Nell has quite got over the impact of ‘my wife’ by now and that it is all sinking away from both of you, as it is for me, into the status of a dream—even a funny dream. All the same, however she may deserve it, I don’t enjoy remembering every now & then that she is still in jail. Well, dear friends, a merry Christmas and a happy New Year to you both.

Yours

Jack

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W): TS

REF.52/206.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

3rd December 1952.

Dear Nell,

Despite your kindness I can’t promise myself any definite date for coming down: there are so few ‘odd times’ in my life. I sometimes have to go into Sussex, and when that happens I’ll try to run over to Courtstairs.

I say—I suppose the Baron and the Countess are O.K. are they? I’m afraid if I’d had your experience I’d suspect every guest!

Greetings to all.

Yours,

Jack

TO I. O. EVANS (W): TS

REF.52/38.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

6th December 1952.

Dear Evans,

Your discourse on Nauthorship is a most interesting document, and tells us at least as much about writing as many theoretical high-brow articles. How right you are about getting the ‘wave-length’.

What I object to most in Wells is his everlasting Gallicism ‘figure to yourself’. 282

All the best.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

REF.52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

9th December 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

Many thanks for your letter of the 4th. The more I think of it the more I regret that our intercourse should have been that of heavenly bodies rather than human beings: that your orbit should have swung within thirty miles of ours without our making contact. And now you are back in your normal track, five thousand or more miles from Oxford. And, what is worse, the tone of your letter suggests that it will be a very long time before you risk the European adventure again. But take courage. One can visit London without getting influenza, and one can travel by Pan-American Airways without the agonies of sea-sickness. (Incidentally, why does everyone regard this frightful illness as a joke? With us, and I suppose with you too, it is like drunkenness or mothers-in-law, sure of getting what the actors call ‘a hand’ in any radio or stage performance.

I was surprised and impressed by what you had to say about Paris; I did’nt know that at this time of the day one could still hear the tumbrils rolling along to the place of the guillotine. Nor did I realize the shabbiness of present day Paris. The business and travel advertisements still hold up Paris to us as a little oasis of gaiety in a drab world. I’m very much afraid that the answer is that France is an extinct volcano; and can one wonder? For the last four hundred years France has been losing the best stuff in the nation in war after war, and no people can stand up to that indefinitely. Portugal, Spain, Holland, England, we’ve all had our innings: and now it is up to your country to go in and bat. If one looks far enough ahead, I’m inclined to think that—after our time thank goodness—China is going to come out on top: for she has unlimited manpower, unlimited grit, and a capacity for hard work on nothing a year paid quarterly which none of the white peoples possess.

I’m sorry to say that ‘the other Vera’ is not picking up as we had hoped. Of course she is a very bad patient, as are all these women who have been as strong as horses until they get into the ‘fifties, and then have a serious illness. The real trouble is that nothing will persuade her that she does’nt know better than the doctors; she has had specialists, X rays, and what have you, all assuring her that there is no organic defect, but she knows that they are just leading her up the garden path. What can one do with such a patient. However, she is out of the nursing home, and in a week or so we hope that she will be well enough to travel to Ireland, where we trust her own family will fatten her up and restore her to us in real good health.

I was interested in your account of Germany. Under the last government, things were much the same here—acute shortage of building materials, but plenty available for children’s swimming pools, community centres etc. It is I think part of the modern totalitarian pattern of life—neglect the home, but let the community be luxurious.

I envy Mr. Gebbert his garden, which contains luxuries unknown to us. ‘Winter peas’ indeed! We look forward to the arrival of the book.

With love to both of you from both of us,

yours ever,

C. S. Lewis

TO BELLE ALLEN (W): TS

REF.52/28.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

9th December 1952.

Dear Mrs. Allen,

How very nice it is to hear from you again, and I indeed have a sense of ‘pleasing satisfaction’ at hearing that in Westfield at any rate, my books are being read and enjoyed. Especially do I purr at the story of the minister withdrawing Xtian Behaviour283 from the sale. But this is the sin of pride, and must be suppressed.

I am so sorry to hear about Ed’s cold, and can sympathize with him, for I am a chronic sufferer from colds myself; though so far this winter I have been very lucky. Snow indeed! You should have been in Oxford for the last ten days, where we have had what is for us, very severe weather: and of course the usual fuel shortage. All very unexpected (except the fuel shortage), for we generally don’t get our cold weather until well after Christmas. Like you, we have our roads and footwalks practically impassible, and very annoying it is. As my brother says, ‘I hate having to go out when you have no chance of thinking, but must concentrate all your attention on the art of walking.’

At the moment, after a fortnight of it, we are having a thaw, but there is of course the chance of its freezing tonight, and ‘the last state of that road will be worse than the first’,284 to paraphrase the Bible. I used to run a car, but gave it up before the war; first, because our roads are now so crowded that there is no longer any pleasure motoring, and secondly because I find it much cheaper and just as convenient to use the bus service.

As you say, we shall no doubt have large numbers of Americans in England for the Coronation, and some of them may not be a good advertisement for your country; but it is an odd thing that I have noticed, that since the war, the type of American visitor we have had is much nicer on the whole than that which came to us between the wars. I suppose it is that, owing to the drop in sterling, we are now getting the Americans of modest means. And it has been my experience that the rich of any country are usually the least attractive specimens of the nation.*

Talking of Americans, we have just had a ‘pen friend’ of long standing, from New York (state not city) stopping with us;285 she belongs to the small income group, and is delightful—a rolling stone, authoress, journalist, housewife and mother, and has been ‘doing’ England in a way which few Americans must have done before. Last time I heard from her, she had been at a Cockney wedding in the East End of London, where the guests slept on the kitchen floor after the festivities! She comes back to us next week before sailing for America, and we look forward to hearing her experiences. She ran out of money a little while ago, but has apparently supported herself quite comfortably by giving treatment in ‘dianetics’286 (whatever that maybe).

You say with your usual kindness ‘speak up’. But how or why? We have never had a gift from you which did not give great pleasure and satisfaction; so what am I to say? A tin of peacock’s brains? Some frozen lark’s tongues by air mail? Whatever you like to send us, you may be sure will be very welcome. With love and all Christmas blessings to both of you,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO PHYLLIS ELINOR SANDEMAN (W): 287

As from Magdalen College,

Oxford

10.xii.52

Dear Mrs.* Sandeman,

I have read Treasure on Earth and I don’t believe you have any notion how good it is.288 You have done a most difficult thing: the only parallel (for I won’t admit that odious work Brideshead Revisited) is Lubbock’s Earlham.289 I’ve never seen the hushed internal excitement of a child on Christmas Eve better done. That is something we can all recognise. For the rest, nous autres290 who grew up in villas or ‘mansions’ on the outskirts of industrial towns, might seem ill-qualified to judge: yet perhaps not. ‘Nothing is great or small except by position’ and the house one grows up in has always a certain immemorial grandeur in one’s mind. At least, everywhere else, all one’s life, is new, raw, colonial. The big difference is that your houses are given to the Nation while ours simply disappear, pulled down, and the new ‘estates’ rise over them. It is like the difference between a Mummy and a burial at sea!

I don’t know how you could bear to revisit your house: the Epilogue almost made me cry. And it isn’t only Houses: the very earth is being destroyed, the shapes of the hills disappear, the rabbits are gassed–‘All things are taken from us and become Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.’291 Of course they survive somewhere–1910 can’t be any less (or more) real in eternity than 1952.1 wonder whose they are? Do those panels belong to the Vaynes or to Grinling Gibbons?292

Oh, by the way, thank you for telling me (I had always suspected it) that knives and forks grate unpleasantly on silver, and therefore presumably on gold: it might add a realistic detail to some high banquet in Narnia.293

The only page that I can’t enter into at all is p. 83. I can’t conceive not being afraid, as a child, of those unseen presences.294 I shd. have behaved like little Jane Eyre in the Red Room when she dried her tears for fear a ghostly voice should awake to comfort her.295 One wd. rather be scolded by a mortal than comforted by a ghost.

You will notice when you re-read your book in a different mood that it doesn’t really give the impression of a very happy childhood. Ecstatic, yes: shot through with raptures and tingling delights, but not very secure, not very consoled. And that, I believe, is absolutely true: I fancy happy childhoods are usually forgotten. It is not settled comfort and heartsease but momentary joy that transfigures the past and lets the eternal quality show through. (I sometimes eat parsnips because their taste, which I dislike, reminds me of my prep-school, which I disliked: but those two dislikes don’t in the least impair the strange joy of ‘being reminded’.)

One could go on meditating on these things indefinitely—Very many thanks for the book: it is that rare thing (rare at our age) a present one really likes. The illustrations are good too, as much of them as the coarse printing and paper has not murdered, but don’t believe anyone who says you draw better than you write. The reverse is true. With much gratitude and all good wishes.