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

I am spending most of my time at present ploughing through back numbers of learned periodicals less in the hope of fresh knowledge than in the fear I’ve missed something.133 In your subject, which is experimental, I suppose one doesn’t have to poke back so far, because everything before a certain date wd. be definitely superseded. With us literary blokes of course this absolutely decisive ‘supersession’ occurs only very rarely—say, as the result of a windfall like the discovery of a new MS., and views often disappear not because someone has proved them false but merely because they have gone out of fashion. In any forgotten article the really illuminating thing might lie hid: tho’ about 90 to 10 against. So that I mainly pass the hours reading rubbish. The worst rubbish being the pseudo-scientific—the attempt to apply, or the pretence of applying, the methods of your disciplines to ours.

The old lady whom I call my mother is now permanently in a Nursing Home, and I visit her daily. It is my first experience of this stage of paralysis; and, do you know, I am rather cheered by it. It does look so like childhood, only working backwards: the mind gradually withdrawing from the body in the last years as it was gradually settling in during the first. She was for many years of a worrying and, to speak frankly, a jealous, exacting, and angry disposition. She now gets gentler—I dare to hope not only through weakness. Certainly, I think she is a little happier, or a little less unhappy, than she usually was in health. You’d know more about all this than I do. My brother also has been ill (his old trouble) but is now better.

Is there any chance of your visiting England this year? If you want to meet plenty of fellow countrymen Oxford is the place! Indeed, not only Americans at present, but all nations—Medes (or at any rate Swedes) Parthians and Elamites.134 Also, torrential rain.

God bless you My dear friend. Have us all in your prayers.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

And thanks (which you forbid) for the hams (which I mustn’t mention). No two are quite alike and each has its individual beauties.

TO RALPH E. HONE (W):135 TS

REF.50/287.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29th July 1950.

Dear Mr. Hone,

I am sorry, but it so happens that you could hardly have struck a worse time. I am working at high pressure, and in the intervals have a Conference to attend, an invalid to look after, and several visitors. I’m afraid in the circumstances a meeting is hardly possible.

With thanks, good wishes, and regrets,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO CHAD WALSH (W): 136

Magdalen College

Oxford

5/8/50

My dear Walsh

Thank you for your letter of July 20th. I’m glad to hear about the ‘revolution’ in poetry, but I moderate my hopes. I think what really separates me from all the modern poets I try to read is not the technique, with all its difficulties, but the fact that their experience is so very unlike my own. They seem to be so constantly writing about the same sort of things that articles are written about: e.g. ‘the present world situation’. That means, for me, that they can only write for the top level of the mind, the level on which generalities operate. But even this may be a mistake. At any rate I am sure I never have the sort of experiences they express: and I feel them most alien where I come nearest to understanding them.

I am just back from attending a Russian Orthodox Eucharist. The congregation walk about a lot!

My brother joins me in all best wishes to you and yours.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD): 137

Magdalen College

Oxford

8/8/50

My dear Cecil

Thank you for your letter which is one of the most useful I have ever received. It brings home to me that aspect of Death which is now most neglected—Death as a Rite or Initiation Ceremony. And certainly something does come through into this world, among the survivors, at the time and for a little while after.

I am sorry about John’s Class138–and also that I feel I failed him badly at our last meeting. I had been wondering for about 24 hours whether the lightness of head and extreme lassitude that I was feeling were the beginning of an illness. After a day in which I had had no leisure at all and which had ended with a visit to the Nursing Home I had got back to College feeling ‘all in’. At that moment came his knock. It was the moment of all others (midway between his mother’s funeral and his own viva) at which a chap might expect some moral support from an older man even if that older man were not his tutor and a family friend. But I could make no response at all. I’m sorry.

A week end here, after your travels, can be arranged almost whenever you like. Of course you will be thrice welcome.

Yours ever

Jack

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V): 139

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

xxv. Aug. 1950

Dilectissime Pater,

venerunt mihi nuper in manus exemplaria quaedam libri mei De Aenigmate Doloris francogallice versi. Illam linguam, puto, bene intellegis. Quocirca, si tibi placuerit, mittam ad te exemplaria tria, primum tibi, alterum Dom. Lodettio, tertium Dom. Arnaboldio. Fac me certiorem si hoc tibi cordi fuerit. Isagogem satis doctam et elegantem addidit quidam Mauritius Nédoncelle.

Omnia omina nunc infausta; placeat Deo haec in melius verti, spectanti haud nostra sed Christi merita. Vale, mi Pater, et semper habe in orationibus tuis

C. S. Lewis

*

Magdalen College,

Oxford

25th August 1950

Dearest Father,

Some copies of my book The Problem of Pain translated into French have lately reached me.140 I think you know that language well. Therefore, if you so wish, I will send you three copies, one for you, another for Mr. Lodetti, and the third for Mr. Arnaboldi.141 Just let me know if it is of interest to you. A rather learned and elegant introduction has been added to it by one Maurice Nédoncelle.142

All the omens are, at present, unfavourable;143 may it please God to change these for the better, looking not at our, but at Christ’s merits. Farewell, my father, and keep me always in your prayers.

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th August 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

Many thanks for your letter of the 16th. August, and for the parcel of 17th. July, which ‘dead heated’ as the racing people say: and both are very welcome. No indeed, I can’t think of any item which I would like altered; I was going to say that we don’t want fruit, having plenty, but of course our fruit season will soon be over, and there is the winter to consider.

Eggs are off the ration, but the egg situation leaves us unmoved, as we, thank goodness, have our own fowls. According to what I read in the papers, their being off the ration does’nt help things much; by the time the innumerable hordes of inspectors have weighed and graded and stamped and sorted and packed them, they seem to be always stale and often bad by the time they reach the consumer.

I am glad you like the memoir on Charles Williams.144 Most certainly you shall have a signed copy of the book as soon as it appears.145 Are there any other of my books you have’nt got, and would care to have? If so, I might be able to get them for you.

I have been away for a few days in the Welsh mountains, and my brother—lucky man–is just back from a fortnight in Ireland, or Eire as they prefer to be called. He tells me that over there they are still living in a fool’s paradise; whilst the English—and no doubt American–papers were full of anxious discussion of the Korean war, the leading Irish paper carried banner headlines, WHAT IS WRONG WITH IRISH LUMPING? (It was Horse Show week). What is wrong with Irish THINKING would be more to the point.

With all best wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

Jill Flewett and Clement Freud were married in St James Church, Spanish Place, on 4 September 1950. Jack was unable to attend the wedding, but Warnie was there. 146

TO BELLE ALLEN (W): TS

REF.50/19.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

5th September 1950.

Dear Mrs. Allen,

How nice to hear from you again! No wonder you feel disinclined for letter writing, with so many more attractive occupations out of doors. Your river sounds delicious, and I would much like to see it. I wonder is your King bird what we call over here a Kingfisher? Ours is a smallish bird of a very beautiful vivid blue, which flies low over the water, and at a great speed. Our bitterns are I think extinct, but I have often read of the ‘booming’ of the bittern. Do yours boom, and what sort of noise is meant?

I envy you your visit to Madison beach. No, I did’nt get away to the sea this year, alas, but I did manage a few days down in the Welsh mountains, which are very lovely, and where I got some fine walking: came across an inn, miles from anywhere where the guests are fed in the kitchen, as was common practice a hundred and fifty years ago. This was not a show piece for tourists, but is still the way they live in the heart of Wales.

My brother, more lucky than I, took Edward’s suit for a treat to an Irish beach for a fortnight in August; when he came back he informed me that he had had thirteen wet days, ‘and on the fourteenth we had a shower’. He was astonished at the unreality of life in Ireland today. Current events are never referred to, and Ireland is quite happy about the future: she is to be neutral, and her defence is to be a first charge on American and English resources: and that’s that, and now lets talk about horses. (On one of the most critical days in the Korean fighting, the leading Irish newspaper carried banner headlines on the front page, WHAT IS WRONG WITH IRISH JUMPING?). They are certainly an odd people.

All that you have to say about those little churches is very interesting and charming, and I am amused at your both being the same colour as the negro congregation; it’s a great testimony to Madison Beach. Though it is possible, by devoting all your time to it, to do the same thing even in England. There has been a man at the Oxford bathing place this summer, who would have passed, if not for a negro, at least for a Malay: though how he acquired this tan in such a wet summer, I don’t know. They tell me you can now buy sunburn in a bottle, which is perhaps the answer. By the way, yes, the Thames is bathed in, and I use it regularly in good weather; but its not the same thing as the sea, though very pleasant.

Many thanks for all the too kind things you say about my books–and the hardship of authors.

My mother died in 1908, when I was nine and my brother thirteen; we have no sisters, and are a couple of confirmed old batchelors, sharing a rather nice house with an eight acre garden in the suburbs.

And now I really must stop, with all good wishes to you and Edward,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD): 147

Magdalen College

Oxford

Sept 7th 50

Dear Miss Bodle

The question ‘Is it better to live in cramped quarters with sister and Aunt-step-mother and bad prospects or to be uprooted and begin a new life elsewhere?’ immediately provokes the other question ‘Better for whom?‘

In other words it all turns on the actual character of, and relations between, Gertrude and Franzel. One can imagine a sort of home life wh. was worth clinging to at all costs, or one wh. was worth escaping from at all costs: and (troublesomely) the chances are that this home-life is between the two extremes. Now you hardly know enough to decide, and of course I know nothing. Mustn’t Franzel and Gertrude make the decision? Especially Franzel.

My own immediate feeling is that the uprooting wd. on the whole be the best thing for now. After all, what with jobs and marriage and one thing and another, most boys get pretty well uprooted anyway. But I think you can only offer, pray, and wait for their decision. Of course I can’t ‘see F’s point of view’. Boys are no more like one another than anyone else! With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO DON LUIGI PEDROLLO (V): 148

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept. 12, 1950

Reverende Pater

Contristatus sum audita dilecti D. J. Calabriae valetudine. Placeat Domino nostro diutius servare nobis ‘tam carum caput’. De nugis meis, mi crede, non scripsissem si putavissem virum aegritudine teneri: quo fit ut importunior esse viderer. Attamen quodcumque est libelli mitto. Saluta pro me D. J. Calabria: quem, cum tota domo vestra, benedicat benedictus Jesus Christus. Vale

C. S. Lewis

*

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept. 12, 1950

Reverend Father,

I am very sorry to hear of dear Fr. G. Calabria’s illness.149 May it please our Lord to preserve ‘tam carum caput’150 longer. Believe me, had I known he was unwell, I would not have written about my trifles, which may have seemed rather untimely. Anyway, I am sending the book, just in case. Give my regards to Fr. G. Calabria: may the blessed Christ bless him, and all of your house. Farewell

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20th September 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

To receive one of your kind gifts produces a perceptible lightening of the gloom which descends on an elderly tutor when he realizes that he is on the verge of beginning yet another term. Many thanks for your unwearying attentions. The parcel which has just arrived is that numbered 2999, posted at Beverly Hills on 14th. August.

This however is perhaps not the time to be gloomy, for if our domestic news has little in it to cheer us, at least the world situation is distinctly better. We are all following anxiously the despatches from Korea; they are not very informative, but it does seem as if the tide had really turned in your favour at last. (One should I suppose, to be pedantic, say in U.N.O.’s favour, but it seems rather absurd to call a ninety per cent American army the ‘UNO Army’). What surprises me most about the whole war is the extraordinary fighting qualities of the Koreans; I’d never heard of them as soldiers before the outbreak of this trouble, and my brother tells me that in his time in the East, they were regarded as primitive agricultural nonentitites. Even allowing for their immensely superior number, they appear to be putting up a remarkable show.

Of home politics the less said the better; you may have seen that we have chosen this period of rearmament of all possible periods to nationalize the steel industry–apparently against the wishes of the Steel masters, and of the Trades Union leaders concerned. But enough of this.

After one of the worst summers on record, we are entering upon what looks like a wet autumn, and one either carries a raincoat on hot, fine days, or goes out without it and gets soaked. Still, the country is looking lovely, and autumn is my favourite season. My brother and I took a day off last week, put sandwiches in our pockets, and tramped sixteen miles or more along the old Roman road–now a mere track–which runs from Dorchester Abbey to Oxford. Foreigners are apt to think of this island, I find, as just one huge factory site. But you would be surprised if you could see the unspoilt beauty and charm which can still be found, even in the purely industrial areas: and here, within a few miles of Morris Motors, there are plenty of villages off the main highways, where nothing seems to have happened for the last two hundred years or so.

I hope to send you the autographed children’s book by Christmas, but will probably know more about its progress this afternoon, as I am going out to lunch with my publisher151 in the Cotswold village of Burford, where he is on holiday.

With many thanks, and all good wishes to you and your father,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO ANNE RIDLER(BOD): 152

Magdalen College

Oxford

25/9/50

Dear Miss Ridler–

5 minutes after yr. departure I was kicking myself to having let you go without getting either yr. real name or yr. address. Well, I now have at any rate the address. No, no, I never confused you with R.P.153 And don’t you go looking down your nose at her poetry neither. The earlier vols (not the late, comic ones wh. are not to my taste) contain surely v. choice work. Do try them again in a favourable hour.

Thanks for the C.W.154 sonnet which, I agree, is good & characteristic in thought. Not bad in expression either, except for thrall. (Tho’ whether, in the long run the banishment of Poetic Diction & Archaism, wh. reduces us from the freedom of Greek, Anglo-Saxon & Skaldic verse, to the straight-waistcoast of classical French, may not shend us all, I’m not sure.) My duty remembered.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO JILL FREUD (T): TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29th September 1950.

Dearest June,

Hurrah! A book I’ve always wanted. I shall devour it. Thank Clay enormously.

(Here concludes the manuscript of C.S.L., and as he has left to week-end with Barfield at Abingdon, I can’t challenge his spelling of Clay—surely Clé: to whom all greetings. How delightful of you to send this excellent book; I remember from our lunch at the Royal Oxford that Clé is an expert in this sort of thing, and no gift could have pleased us better.

As for coming to see you, it is, in the jargon of the day, a priority programme: but I fear nothing can be done about it until this term is over; you remember what term is like for poor J.

I hope Mrs. Freud is very happy in her new life; I don’t send the same wishes to Cle, for if he is’nt happy, what would make him so?).

No news here. Minto continues much the same, some days recognizing us, some days not. It sounds horribly unChristian and callous, but I can’t help wishing she would die. Can you imagine anything more horrible than lingering on in this state? However, she seems fairly contented.

All love to you both.

Yours,

Warnie

P.S. Many thanks for the wedding cake. Pushkin is up to a bit of no good in the neighbour’s gardens, but will be made to sleep on his portion as soon as he comes back.

TO MARTYN SKINNER (BOD): 155

Magdalen College

Oxford

11/10/50

Dear Skinner

Great Heavens, what must you think of me by now! I see it is almost exactly a year since you so kindly sent me a copy of Two Colloquies:156 and all that time not even a word of acknowledgement. I reject a momentary temptation to tell you that the year has been spent in a continuous, intensive study of the text. The truth is, I didn’t want to write until I had given them a sympathetic reading and somehow I never was in the mood for them till tonight. (Reading collection papers,157 like marking School Cert.,158 I have always found a great whetter of appetite for poetry. Fact! I don’t know why). The right mood for a new poem doesn’t come so often now as it used to. There is so little leisure, and when one comes to that leisure untried—well, you know, Ink is a deadly drug. One wants to write. I cannot shake off the addiction.

They’re good. The puns may be a bit too frequent for my taste, but most of them excellent in quality. (I mean, I couldn’t make them myself!)–especially ‘Lies is for me a realistic word.’159 And other Wit too, and wit that involves wisdom, like ‘Doesn’t a cap still fit turned inside out.’160 ‘Shelley-shalley’161 is a verb in a thousand. But ‘me rather all that bowery etc,’162 I mean the bits (in the good, obvious, old fashioned sense of the word) more ‘poetical’. Everyone has had a try at dewy cobwebs: few better than yours on p. 7. And I liked ‘A branch’s beauty in a waggon’s curve’,163 and all p. 14 about the honey coloured ham and the white mines of pork inside the crackling made my mouth water.164 ‘Simple, sensuous, and passionate’165 egad! So too the whole bit beginning ‘This scene describes the hermit.’166 But what’s much the best of all, what gave me the authentic thrill (an ‘uncovenanted’ thrill for your metre and manner don’t, so to speak, contract to provide such, they are not on the menu) is the passage beginning at the bottom of p. 35 on the worlds in the skull. Which retrospectively enriches the close of the first ‘drink to the Utopia within’.167 Congratulations.

I expect this comes like last night’s joint appearing at breakfast, for of course you’re now writing something else and don’t particularly want to learn about the Colloquies. Can you forgive me? I assure you there are days when I could say with honest King George ‘I hate Bainting and Boetry’,168 and I wouldn’t like to have gulped you down in one of those. Last time you wrote to me didn’t you say you were contemplating a narrative poem? Has anything come of it?

I must go to bed. Once more thanks v. much for this very distinguished little book, and add to the kindness by forgetting my incivility.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

REF.50/81

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

16th October 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

Your parcels arrive at such frequent intervals that I am quite perplexed how to acknowledge them! Here is yet another, full of good things, which has just reached me, and for which I can, as usual, do no more than offer a simple thank you: and you know it is no empty form of words.

The international sky seems a trifle better than when I wrote last, and you must all be very proud of McArthur and your army: for, though called a UNO army, I fear the rest of us played a very small part in the victory. Let us hope that the whole sad affair will cause Stalin to change his policy, even at the eleventh hour: tho’ the boiling up of the trouble in French Indo-China does not look as if he was very repentant.

I am beginning the second week of a new term, and the harness still galls a little: but ‘the old horse for the hard road’ as we say. I expect I shall soon be trotting contentedly enough.

With many thanks and good wishes to yourself and your father,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: A Story for Children was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 16 October 1950.

TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD):169 TS

REF.50/362.

Magdalen College

Oxford.

18th October 1950.

Dear Blamires,

I wanted nothing altered except the things I noted: certainly I did not want what I should call a ‘re-writing’.170 But that is such a vague word, and we can only guess what it covers in Bles’s mind. I should advise you (if you are going to pursue the Bles avenue instead of trying another publisher) to make exactly the corrections you think proper–no more and no less—and then re-submit it. He will probably (entr nous)171 not remember the original text well enough to know how drastic the changes are! I can’t advise about other publishers: you’d know better than I. I hope it will find a home: I thought it a useful book.

In haste, with all good wishes,