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

176 See the passage on Joy Gresham following the letter to Margaret Sackville Hamilton of 23 September 1952.

177 i.e., Anthroposophists. See the letter to Montgomery of 10 June 1952.

178 ‘To cap it all!’ He was referring to Mere Christianity.

179 John Milton, L’Allegro (1645), 121-2: ‘With store of ladies, whose bright eyes/Rain influence, and judge the prize.’

180 Henry James, Letters, ed. Percy Lubbock, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1920). The copy referred to here had once belonged to Albert Lewis, and it had been given to Arthur.

181 The hotel where they had been staying: see the heading of the letter on p. 220.

182 This letter is a reply to a question Goodridge asked Lewis about John Milton’s Cornus (1637).

183 Lewis was planning to give his course of lectures on the ‘Prolegomena to Renaissance Poetry’ during Hilary Term, 1953.

184 Milton, Comus, 459-72.

185 ibid., opening stage direction: ‘The first Scene discovers a wild wood./The Attendant Spirit descends or enters.’

186 ibid., 1.

187 ibid., 3.

188 ibid., 4.

189 ibid., 980:.

190 Mrs Margaret Sackville Hamilton wrote to Walter Hooper from 4 Pagoda Avenue, Richmond, Surrey, on 31 May 1968: ‘I am a housewife, mother & grandmother of no academic qualification at all. However, being a lover of T. S. Eliot I wrote & asked C. S. Lewis after reading “Beyond Personality” Chapter III for more information re Ever Present Time & by return of post, in his own handwriting, I received the enclosed’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/2, fol. 1).

191 Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, with the English translations of’ ‘I.T.’ (1690), rev. H. F. Stewart (London: Heinemann, Loeb Classical Library, 1918).

192 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781).

193 Friedrich von Hügel, Eternal Life: A Study of its Implications and Applications (1912).

194 Arthur Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1928).

195 John William Dunne, An Experiment with Time (1927).

196 John William Dunne, The Serial Universe (London: Faber & Faber, 1934).

197 2 Peter 2:8: ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day’

198 See Joy Gresham Lewis in the Biographical Appendix.

199 See David Lindsay Gresham in the Biographical Appendix.

200 See Douglas Howard Gresham in the Biographical Appendix.

201 George Sayer, Jack: C. S. Lewis and His Times (London: Macmillan, 1988; 2nd ed. Hodder & Stoughton, 1997), ch. 19, pp. 214-15.

202 The Rev. Patrick Kevin Irwin (1907-65) was born on 2 October 1907 and read Modern History at Brasenose College, Oxford, graduating in 1929. He read Theology at Ely Theological College in 1930, and was ordained in 1931. He served as Curate of Helmsley, Yorkshire, 1930-3, and of Goldthorpe, 1934-8. He was Vicar of Sawston, 1941-2, Vicar of St Augustine, Wisbech, 1947-58, Rural Dean of Wisbech, 1954-8, and Rector of Fletton, Ely, 1958-65.

203 Charles Wickliffe Moorman (1925-96) was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on 24 May 1925. After serving in the Second World War, he graduated from Kenyon College, Ohio, in 1949. He earned Master’s and Doctoral degrees from Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1951 and 1954. He joined the English Department at the University of Southern Mississippi (then Mississippi Southern College), Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1954 and became department head in 1956, a position he held for twelve years. Moorman served as Dean of the Graduate School for two years, and as Academic Vice-president for twelve years. He stepped down in 1980 to resume full-time teaching and research, retiring in 1990. An expert in both Middle English and modern English literature, over the years he taught a wide variety of undergraduate and graduate courses. He died on 3 May 1996. His works include Myth and Medieval Literature: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1956), The Precincts of Felicity: The Augustinian City of the Oxford Christians (1966) and A Knyght There Was: The Evolution of the Knight in Literature (1967).

204 Moorman was collecting material for a work published as Arthurian Triptych: Myth Materials in Charles Williams, C. S. Lewis, and T. S. Eliot (1960).

205 Charles Williams, All Hallows’ Eve (1945).

206 1 Corinthians 13:13.

207 The three principles which Williams set great store by, and which run through his works, were Co-inherence, Exchange and Substitution. They are summarized in ‘Williams and the Arthuriad’, ch. 3, p. 123 of Arthurian Torso.

208 The Figure of Arthur, Arthurian Torso, pp. 5-90.

209 That Hideous Strength, ch. 13, part V, p. 316: ‘None hears us save the last of the seven bears of Logres’; ch. 12, vi, p. 290: ‘Who knows what the technique of the Atlantean Circle was really like?’

210 ibid., Preface, p. xii: ‘Those who would like to learn further about Numinor and the True West must (alas!) await the publication of much that still exists only in the MSS of my friend, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.’ Lewis had in mind that work of Tolkien’s published as The Silmarillion, ed. Christopher Tolkien (London: Allen & Unwin, 1977), ‘Akallabêth: The Downfall of Numenor’, pp. 259-82. In a letter to Roger Lancelyn Green of 17 July 1971, in Green and Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography, p. 210, Tolkien said: ‘With regard to “Numinor”, in the early days of our association Jack used to come to my house and I read aloud to him The Silmarillion so far as it had then gone…Numinor was his version of a name he had never seen written (Numenor) and no doubt was influenced by numinous.’

211 The ‘romance’ was of course Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), The Two Towers (1954) and The Return of the King (1955).

212 See Phoebe Hesketh in the Biographical Appendix.

213 Phoebe Hesketh, No Time for Cowards: Poems, Preface by Herbert Palmer (London: Heinemann, 1952).

214 ibid., p. 8, ‘The Secret in the Stone’, 5.

215 ibid., 10.

216 ibid., p. 9, 49.

217 ibid., ‘Zebras’, p. 39, 10-11.

218 ibid., p. 81, ‘Retrospection’, 4-5: ‘Where half-hearts join while Time’s black finger races/Towards the evening train.’

219 ibid., p. 72, ‘I Am Not Resigned’, 18.

220 Richard Thomas Church (1893-1972), poet, critic and novelist, author of Over the Bridge (1955).

221 Greeves’s dog.

222 See the letter to Phoebe Hesketh of 4 October 1952.

223 i.e., No Time for Cowards.

224 The Rev. John Rowland, B. Sc, was writing from 115 Mackie Avenue, Brighton.

225 The Northern Whig was a Belfast newspaper which began in 1824, and continued as Northern Whig and Belfast Post from 1919 until 1963 when it ceased publication.

226 Vera Henry, Mrs Moore’s goddaughter, sometimes acted as housekeeper for the Lewis brothers.

227 Roger Lancelyn Green, A. E. W. Mason, 1865-1948 (London: M. Parrish, 1952).

228 ‘trust one who has experience’.

* who has a suspicious headache himself at the moment. Who knows!…

229 This letter was published in the Church Times, CXXXV (24 October 1952), p. 763, under the title ‘Canonization’.

230 See Eric Pitt, ‘Canonization, Church Times, CXXXV (17 October 1952), p. 743.

231 The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church, 15 vols, ed. Charles G. Herbermann, etc. (New York: Robert Appleton Co., 1907-12).

232 A theological term signifying the honour paid to the saints.

233 John Oliver Reed (1929-) was born on 16 December 1929 in London, the son of E O. Reed. In 1941 he was awarded, on the result of the Junior County Scholarship Examination, a Foundation Scholarship to Bancroft’s School, Woodford. In December 1946 he was elected on examination to a Demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford. Before going up to Oxford he did his National Service, arriving at Magdalen in 1949. There he read English under Lewis, taking his BA in 1952. Reed was briefly an assistant master at Winchester College, after which he held assistant lectureships at the University of Edinburgh and at Kings College, London. From 1957 until he retired in 1996 he taught at universities in Africa and the Far East. See the letter to Reed of 8 July 1947 in the Supplement.

234 This letter to Reed is written on a letter Lewis received from A. R. Woolley, Educational Secretary of the Oxford University Appointments Committee, dated 24 October 1952. Woolley said: ‘The Headmaster of Winchester tells me that he will need to appoint either in 1953 or 1954 a man with a good degree in English…If there is anyone among your pupils who you think might be interested in this opening I wonder if you would kindly suggest to him that he make an appointment to come and see me.’

235 At this time Reed was in Oxford beginning a B. Litt. degree. Following Lewis’s suggestion, he sought the advice of the President of Magdalen College, Thomas Sherrer Ross Boase (1898-1974). In the end Reed was advised to give up work on his B. Litt. and take the job at Winchester College which began in January 1953. By mid 1953 he had accepted an appointment at the University of Edinburgh.

236 See the letter to Hesketh of 4 October 1952.

237 Mrs Johnson was given the pseudonym ‘Mrs Ashtorï in L.

238 Mrs Johnson asked ‘What is your correct title?’ The following notes indicate the questions she asked (the original of her list is in the Wade Center).

239 ‘Do people get another chance after death? I refer to Charles Williams.’

240 ‘What would happen if I had died an atheist?’

241 ‘What happens to Jews who are still waiting for the Messiah?’

242 ‘Is the Bible infallible?’

243 Lewis originally wrote ‘not read with attention’, but altered this to ‘without’, presumably overlooking that he had written ‘not read’. But his meaning is ‘isolated from their context and read without attention…’

244 фονχεύσετς as in Matthew 19:18.

245 άποχτεíναι as in John 8:37.

246 ‘If a thief killed Eileen would I be wrong to want him to die?’

247 ‘Is killing in self defense all right?’

248 Romans 13:4.

249 Luke 3:14.

250 Matthew 8:10.

251 ‘Will we recognize our loved ones in Heaven?’

252 Matthew 22:4.

253 Matthew 22:2-12; Luke 12:36.

254 Hebrews 11:16; 12:22.

255 Revelation 5:8-14.

256 ‘If Wayne didn’t go to Heaven I wouldn’t want to either. Would his name be erased from my brain?’

257 ‘Do you like sweets?’

258 ‘Are you handsome?’

259 ‘Tell me the story about the barber.’

260 Edward T. Dell Jr had written to Bles on 30 October 1952 that those essays by Lewis ‘chiefly found in pamphlet form or as articles in the “Spectator” might, with an appropriate preface, make an interesting book of essays…There is also a sermon that might be included as well. It was delivered in a church in the midlands on Apr. 7, 1946…I imagine Dr Lewis would scoff at the idea of a reprinting of his first book Spirits in Bondage but to me the book seems to merit it just as much as did Dymer’ (Bodleian Library, Dep. c. 771, fol. 9).

261 On 7 April 1946 Lewis preached a sermon entitled ‘Miserable Offenders’ in St Matthew’s Church, Northampton. It was included in a booklet, Five Sermons by Laymen (April-May 1946), and is reprinted in EC.

262 Mrs Shelburne, formerly an Anglican or Episcopalian, in 1951 converted to the Catholic Church.

263 See J. R. R. Tolkien in the Biographical Appendix to CL I, pp. 1022-4.

264 Lewis had read the typescript of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in October 1949, and he wrote to his friend about it on 27 October 1949 (CL II, pp. 990-1). Since then Tolkien had been trying to get it published, hoping whoever published it would also publish the unfinished Silmarillion. Rayner Unwin, the son of the publisher Sir Stanley Unwin (1884-1968) of Allen & Unwin publishers, believed it to be a very great work and his father left it to him to decide whether the firm should accept it. After calculations and discussions with others in Allen & Unwin, Rayner wrote to Tolkien on 10 November 1952 saying the firm would like to publish the book under a profit-sharing agreement, under which Tolkien would receive nothing until the sales of the book had covered its publishing costs, but would afterwards share equally with the publishers any profits that might accrue. Tolkien was delighted The Lord of the Rings had been accepted, and he wrote at once to tell Lewis what had happened. Lewis replied with this letter.

265 ‘without trace’.

266 Priscilla was Tolkien’s daughter.

267 Katharine Farrer had been corresponding with Tolkien about The Lord of the Rings.

268 MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul, November 3: ‘Have pity on us for the look of things,/Where blank denial stares us in the face./Although the serpent mask have lied before/It fascinates the bird.’

269 Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34.

270 Romans 12:5.

271 Mrs Van Deusen may have suggested sending Lewis the autobiography of the American political writer Whittaker Chambers (1901-61), best known for his accusation and testimony against Alger Hiss (1904-96), the architect of the Yalta Conference and Secretary General of the San Francisco conference that created the United Nations. Chambers’ autobiography, Witness, was published in 1952.

272 Blamires had applied for a job in Edinburgh.

273 The US edition of Mere Christianity was published by Macmillan of New York on 11 November 1952.

274 The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’.

275 During the autumn of 1952 the Church Times featured a number of pencil drawings of ‘Portraits of Personalities’; that of Lewis, by Stanley Parker, appeared in the Church Times, CXXXV (21 November 1952), p. 844.

276 This was possibly the working title for an intended collection of Lewis’s essays.

277 Serena is a young lady whose adventures are recounted in Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book VI.

278 The Red Cross Knight.

279 Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I, x, 61, 8: ‘Thou Saint George shalt called bee.’

280 There is no evidence that this story was ever published.

281 H. G. Wells, Kipps (1905).

282 e.g. H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898), ch. 6: ‘You may figure to yourself the hum of voices along the road in the gloaming.’

283 Christian Behaviour (New York: Macmillan, 1943).

284 ‘Luke 11:26: the last state of that man is worse than the first’ Matthew 12:45.

* There are v. important exceptions. Also, on further thought, I don’t believe much in ‘French, American, or English people.’ There are only individuals really.

285 i.e., Joy Gresham.

286 For a while Joy and Bill Gresham dabbled in Ron Hubbard’s philosophy of Dianetics or spiritual healing. See Lyle Dorsett, And God Came In: The Extraordinary Story of Joy Davidman, Her Life and Marriage to C. S. Lewis (New York: Macmillan, 1983), ch. 3, p. 71.

287 See the biography of the Honourable Phyllis Elinor Sandeman (1895-1986) in CL II, p. 788n. Mrs Sandeman was brought up in Lyme Park, one of the most magnificent houses in Cheshire. Home to the Legh family for 600 years, the original Tudor house was transformed by the Venetian architect, Giacomo Leoni, into an Italianate palace. In 1946 Mrs Sandeman’s brother, the 3rd Baron Newton, Richard Legh, gave Lyme Park to the National Trust.

296 Lewis had put his finger on ‘Mrs’ while the ink was still wet.

288 Phyllis Sandeman, Treasure on Earth: A Country House at Christmas, illustrated by the author (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1952), an account of a Christmas spent at Lyme Park during her childhood.

289 Percy Lubbock, Earlham (1922).

290 ‘we others’.

291 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott, And Other Poems (1833), ‘The Lotus Eaters’, IV, 8-9: ‘All things are taken from us, and become/Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.’

292 Sandeman, Treasure on Earth, p. 26: ‘It was a large lofty room with walls of darkly gloomy cedar-wood, Corinthian pilasters arranged in pairs dividing the long panels and each of these adorned down its centre with swags of elaborate wood-carvings. From looped garlands and palm leaves and cupids’ heads hung a host of diverse objects, bunches of fruit and flowers, musical instruments, trophies, fish and birds, all carved to the life in soft yellow pear-wood by the hand of the master—the one and only Grinling Gibbons.’ In Mrs Sandeman’s book the owners of the house–the Newtons–are given the pseudonym ‘Vayne’. Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721) was the most famous English woodcarver of all time.

293 ibid., p. 62: ‘They would begin with Grace said by the Canon and then the meal would proceed eaten off silver plates, not so pleasant as the china service because scratchy under the knife and fork.’

294 ibid., p. 83: ‘The Long Gallery…could be a little frightening at night, and generally Phyllis avoided going there alone after dark. One night after summer holidays, however, resentful and unhappy from what she considered an unjust rebuke by her parents, she had run there, and flinging herself on one of the deep window seats, burst into tears of self-pity But almost at once, breaking in upon her grief with a gentle but increasing pressure, she seemed to detect a sympathy in the surrounding atmosphere as if unseen presences thronging about her were offering their love and consolation.’

295 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847), ch. 2.

297 Genesis 15:1; Luke 2:10.

298 The Ichneutai of Sophocles: The Searching Satyrs, the Fragment Freely Translated into English Rhyming Verse and Restored by Roger Lancelyn Green (Leicester: E. Ward, 1946).

299 Lewis had sent Evans a copy of Prince Caspian, and he was here referring to the first illustration in Chapter 3. Pauline Baynes wrote to Walter Hooper on 15 August 1967: ‘[Lewis] only once asked for an alteration–& then with many apologies—when I (with my little knowledge) had drawn one of the characters rowing a boat facing the wrong direction’ (CL II, p. 1020).

300 Having returned to New Zealand, Bodle sent Lewis a little book of prayers for deaf children that she had written.

301 John 14:9.

302 John 14:28.

303 Acts 17:27.

304 See Clyde S. Kilby in the Biographical Appendix.

305 Laurence was the second son of Cecil Harwood and Lewis’s godson. See Laurence Harwood in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1051-2.

306 At this time Vera Henry was back in her native Ireland. She never recovered from her illness and died in April 1953. The only person at The Kilns who could help with the cooking was the gardener, Fred Paxford (see his biography in CL II, p. 213n). When it was clear that Vera would not be returning, Lewis hired as his housekeeper Mrs Molly Miller, who lived close by in Kiln Lane. There are photographs of Fred Paxford and Molly Miller in Douglas Gilbert and Clyde S. Kilby, C. S. Lewis: Images of His World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), pp. 67, 69.

307 ‘Not to us.’ Psalm 115 (Vulgate): ‘Non nobis, Domine, non nobis; Sed nomini tuo da gloriam’: ‘Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your Name give glory.’

308 It is known Joy Gresham left for the United States on 3 January 1953.

309 Bonamy Dobrée (1891-1974) was born in London on 2 February 1891 and educated at Haileybury College and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He served with the Royal Horse Artillery and Royal Field Artillery during the First World War. After the war he went to Christ’s College, Cambridge (1920-1). In the following years he published many scholarly books. In 1936 he was appointed to the Chair of English Literature at the University of Leeds, where he remained until his retirement in 1955. Dobrée was one of the General Editors of the Oxford History of English Literature, and his contribution to the series was English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, 1700-1740 (1959). He died on 3 September 1974.

310 The Wanderer is an Anglo-Saxon poem of 115 lines. This is Lewis’s translation of lines 9-14.

311 Lewis probably meant by this ‘A Normal Male Person’.

* Please forgive. The smudge has a long and complicated history, if you but knew. First I always was a clumsy brute: ten thumbs and not a finger among them.296

1953

TO J. KEITH KYLE (BBC):1 TS

REF.3/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

1st January 1953.

Dear Mr. Kyle,

I wish the series every success, but am snowed under with work at present, and cannot assist: anyway, if the public does’nt by now know what I believe I should’nt enlighten them much in 3 1/2 minutes more!

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Jan 2nd 1953

Dear Miss Pitter–

The year, which I had not thought much of so far, begins to mend with a letter and a prime article from you. And then, as you say, the skies.

It was beautiful, on two or three successive nights about the Holy Time, to see Venus and Jove blazing at one another, once with the Moon right between them: Majesty and Love linked by Virginity—what could be more appropriate?

The Return to Poetic Law is a noble piece and would do good if any of those who most need it were at all likely to take any notice.2 But they are all in Groups and Parties. What matters to them is not what is said but who says it: one of the Party or an outsider. ‘A minor specialist’s subject’, as you say. Yet some one or two may heed you: you are right to testify.

I do most heartily agree with you about having had too much shame. (Do you, by the way, remember the character-study of Shame in the Pilgrims Progress, all in a conversation between Christian and Hopeful?3 It is superb fun). It is v. sinister that ‘embarrassing’ or ‘embarrassingly bad’ has become an ordinary term of criticism: this, you see, is a direct appeal away from the reader’s consciousness of the poem to his social self-consciousness. While he reads he must be aware that the set are watching him reading.

That is a bad business, losing your country home. I have lost mine while remaining in it, i.e. it has ceased to be country. Not that I’d quite say ‘All things are taken from us and become Parcels and portions of the dreadful past’. Dreadful isn’t the word at all. But it’s thrilling to hear of your ‘closing in on’ Oxford.4 It wd. be lovely if you became a neighbour.

My brother joins me in best wishes for the year. How many—and how few—of these here years there seem to be!

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

During her weeks at The Kilns Joy Gresham received a letter from her husband, Bill, saying that while he knew Joy would never be anything but a writer, ‘Renée has a different orientation: her only interest is in taking care of her husband and children and making a home for them.’ The ‘optimum solution, as he saw it, ‘would be for you to be married to some swell guy, Rene and I to be married, both families to live in easy calling distance so that the Gresham kids could have Mommy and Daddy on hand.’5

Joy showed this letter to Lewis and she told Chad Walsh that she asked him for advice. ‘He strongly advised me to divorce Bill,’ she said.6 After a fortnight at The Kilns, Joy returned to the United States on 3 January