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

133 When in 1935 Oxford University Press conceived the idea of the mammoth Oxford History of English Literature (OHEL), Lewis was asked to contribute a volume covering the sixteenth century. He had been working on what was to be English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (1954) since 1936 and he was spending every available minute in the Bodleian Library trying to complete it. He called it his ‘O Hell!’ volume.

134 Acts 2:1-9: ‘And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting…They were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language…Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia.’

135 Ralph E. Hone was writing from 39 Leicester Square, London.

136 See Chad Walsh in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1078-81.

137 Daphne Harwood died on 14 July 1950.

138 Lewis was John Harwood’s tutor at Magdalen College, and John had just taken a fourth-class degree in Schools.

139 See St Giovanni Calabria in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1036-9. Don Giovanni Calabria was the founder of the Congregation of Poor Servants of Divine Providence in Verona. In 1947 he read The Screwtape Letters in Italian. Wishing to write to Lewis about his books and about Christian unity, but not understanding English, he began corresponding in Latin. Most of the correspondence between Lewis and Don Calabria was published as Letters: C. S. Lewis-Don Giovanni Calabria: A Study in Friendship, trans, and ed. Martin Moynihan (London: Collins, 1989). Unless otherwise stated, the letters were translated into English by Moynihan (see his biography in CL II, p. 615n). There is also an Italian edition of the correspondence, with some additional letters between Lewis, St Giovanni Calabria and Don Luigi Pedrollo, entitled Una Gioia Lnsolita: Lettere tra un prete cattolico e un laico anglicano, ed. Luciano Squizzato, trans. Patrizia Morelli (Milan: Jaca Book SpA, 1995). Those additional letters appear in the present volume.

140 Le Problème de la Souffrance, trans. Marguerite Faguer, with an introduction by Maurice Nédoncelle (Bruges: Desclées de Brouwer, 1950).

141 In Una Gioia Insolita Luciano Squizzato (p. 156, n. 92) notes that both Lodetti and Arnaboldi denied ever having received this volume, and that no copies can be found in St Giovanni Calabria’s private library. Calabria was at this time seriously ill; Fr Pedrollo, who answered this missive, was deeply concerned for his friend’s health, and may have simply been vague about the books; apparently, Lewis just sent one to him (see Lewis’s letter of 12 September 1950). For biographical information on Dr Romolo Lodetti see CLII, pp. 821-2. Fr Paolo Arnaboldi (1914-98) was the founder of FAC, a Catholic movement in part inspired by Calabria’s books Apostolica vivendi and Amare (see Squizzato, pp. 262-3); incidentally, these were the books Calabria sent to Lewis in the autumn of 1947 (see CL II, p. 807).

142 Maurice Nédoncelle (1905-1976), philosopher and lecturer in Theology at the Faculty of Theology in Strasburg.

143 Probably a reference to Mrs Moore’s continued decline.

144 He was referring to his Preface in Essays Presented to Charles Williams (1947).

145 i.e., of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

146 For an account of the wedding see Clement Freud, Freud Ego (2001), pp. 99-100.

147 In her note to this letter, written on 4 October 1972, Bodle explained that she was wondering whether to take a German boy, Franzel, to New Zealand. ‘He didn’t go,’ she said. ‘He now has a doctorate & is on the staff of a German university’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/4, fol, 247).

148 See Don Luigi Pedrollo in the Biographical Appendix. Fr Pedrollo, a member of the Congregation of Poor Servants of Divine Providence in Verona, was answering on behalf of Don Giovanni Calabria. This letter first appeared in Una Gtota Insolita and was translated by Dr C. M. Bajetta.

149 Towards the end of his life (after 1949) St Giovanni Calabria was affected by a mysterious illness, which underwent a particularly acute phase in 1950. After a period of relief, following the Pentecost of 1951, his infirmity worsened and he died in 1954.

150 Horace, Carmina, I, 24, 1-2: ‘Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus/tam cari capitis?’: ‘Why blush to let our tears unmeasured fall/For one so dear?’.

151 i.e., Geoffrey Bles.

152 See the biography of Anne Ridler, friend of Charles Williams, in CL II, p. 658n, and Anne Ridler’s Memoirs (2004).

153 Ruth Pitter.

154 Charles Williams. Ridler criticised Williams’s use of ‘shend’ in a Taliessin poem.

155 See Martyn Skinner in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1072-3.

156 Martyn Skinner, Two Colloquies (1949).

157 ‘Collections’ are examination papers set by college tutors for their pupils. They take place either at the end of term (in which case students are tested on their work during the term) or at the beginning of term (on work set for the preceding vacation). In Magdalen, in Lewis’s day, Collections usually took place in Hall.

158 School Certificate examinations; for a definition see CL I, p. 612.

159 Skinner, Two Colloquies, ‘The Lobster and the Thatch’, 49.

160 ibid., 332.

161 ibid., ‘The Recluse, Part I, 13.

162 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘Milton’, 9.

163 Skinner, Two Colloquies, ‘The Lobster and the Thatch’, 220.

164 ibid., 239-43: ‘The sudden clatter of cutlery and crockery/As sliding through the ham the knife’s thin edge/Turns half to rose its honey-coloured wedge;/Or where the bronze pork sizzles still with heat/Clicks through the crackling to white mines of meat.’

165 John Milton, Works, vol. IV (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), Of Education, p. 286.

166 Skinner, Two Colloquies, ‘The Recluse’, Part II, 28.

167 ibid., ‘The Lobster and the Thatch’, 433.

168 King George I’s comment, ‘I hate all Boets and Bainters’ is found in John Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices (1949), ‘Lord Mansfield’.

169 See Harry Blamires in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, p. 1024. Blamires had been head of the English Department at King Alfred’s College, Winchester, since 1948.

170 Blamires had asked Lewis, his old tutor, to read and criticize his book English in Education (London: Bles, 1951).

171 ‘between ourselves’.

172 ‘Best professional judgement’.

173 Beowulf, I, xviii, 1206: ‘He was asking for trouble’.

174 The letter was unsigned.

175 See Mary Willis Shelburne in the Biographical Appendix. She is the author of Broken Pattern: Poems (Richmond: Dietz Press, 1951).

176 Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851-2), ch. 21: ‘“Do you know who made you?” “Nobody, as I knows on,” said the child, with a short laugh. The idea appeared to amuse her considerably, for her eyes twinkled, and she added–“I ‘sped I growed. Don’t think nobody never made me.” ‘

177 The Imitation of Christ is a manual of spiritual devotion first circulated in 1418 and traditionally ascribed to Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471). Lewis nearly always read this work in Latin, and when quoting it in English, he used his own translation.

178 The edition of this work used by Lewis was The Scale of Perfection by Walter Hilton, Augustinian canon of Thurgarton Priory, Nottinghamshire, modernized from the first printed edition of Wynkyn de Worde, London, 1494, by an oblate of Solesmes; with an introduction from the French of Dom M. Noetinger (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne Ltd [1927]).

179 In her letter of 20 November 1950 Mathews wrote: ‘I came upon such a beautiful message today by Era Giovanni (an extract from a letter, Anno Domini 1513) that I simply must pass it on to you’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Facs. c. 47, fol. 199). She went on to quote from Era Giovanni Giocondo (c. 1435-1515), A Letter to the Most Illustrious the Contesstna Allagta Delà Aldobrandeschi, Written Christmas Eve Anno Domini 1513 (193?). In 1970 the British Museum stated that it was impossible to identify Era Giovanni. The letter was published, probably in the 1930s, ‘with Christmas greetings’ from Greville MacDonald, son of George MacDonald, and his wife Mary. It is reprinted in various dictionaries of quotations.

180 Hermann Wilhelm Goering (1893-1946), German Nazi military leader, creator of the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, directed the German wartime economy. In 1939 he was named Hitler’s successor, but he later lost favour and in 1943 he was stripped of his command. ‘Guns will make us powerful,’ Goering said in a radio broadcast in 1936, ‘butter will only make us fat.’

181 George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906).

182 See Ruth Pitter in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1060-4.

* But fan mail from children is delightful. They don’t gas. They want to know whether Asian repaired Tumnus’s furniture for him. They take no interest in oneself and all in the story. Lovely

183 The Case for Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1943) was the American edition of Broadcast Talks.

184 Beyond Personality (London: Bles, 1944; New York: Macmillan, 1945).

185 J. B. Phillips, Letters to Young Churches: A Translation of the New Testament Epistles (1947). See Lewis’s letter to Phillips of 3 August 1943 (CL II, pp. 585-6).

186 Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876); The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

187 William Shakespeare, King Henry V (1600), IV, iii, 55.

188 Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24.

189 John 6:53.

190 i.e., in the Book of Common Prayer.

191 1 Corinthians 12:12: ‘For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.’

192 Mark 16:17-18: ‘These signs shall follow them that believe; In my name…they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.’

193 See Sheldon Vanauken in the Biographical Appendix. Vanauken’s ‘Notes on the Letters’ are in the Bodleian Library (MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/2, fols. 152b-c).

194 Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1977), ch. 2, p. 38.

195 ibid., ch. 4, pp. 87-8.

196 G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (1925).

197 Lewis uses the Chinese word ‘Tao’ in The Abolition of Man to mean natural law or morality.

198 The Rev. R. B. Gribbon, a relative of Arthur Greeves, was writing from Ballinderry Road, Easton, Maryland, USA.

199 i.e., The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

200 Rudyard Kipling, The Seven Seas (1896), ‘McAndrew’s Hymn’, II, 17-18: ‘Hail, snow an’ ice that praise the Lord: I’ve met them at their work,/An’ wished we had anither route or they anither kirk.’

201 In his second letter to Lewis, Vanauken said: ‘My fundamental dilemma is this: I can’t believe in Christ unless I have faith, but I can’t have faith unless I believe in Christ…Everyone seems to say: “You must have faith to believe.” Where do I get it? Or will you tell me something different? Is there a proof? Can Reason carry me over the gulf…without faith? Why does God expect so much of us?…If He made it clear that He is—as clear as a sunrise or a rock or a baby’s cry—wouldn’t we be right joyous to choose Him and His Law?’ (Vanauken, A Severe Mercy, ch. 4, pp. 90-1)

202 The Eleatic school of philosophers was founded by the Greek poet Xenophanes (born c. 570 BC), whose main teaching was that the universe is singular, eternal and unchanging. According to this view, as developed by later members of the Eleatic school, the appearances of multiplicity, change and motion are mere illusions.

203 William Shakespeare, Othello, The Moor of Venice (1622).

204 William Shakespeare, King Lear (1608).

205 Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711), II, 2.

206 Luke 10:7.

207 This note was added in Lewis’s hand.

208 ‘Let us pray for one another’.

209 ‘the beard of corn’.

210 Abul Kasim Mansur Firdausi (c. 950-1020), Persian poet, is the author of Shah-natneh. Considered the greatest national epic in world literature, the poem consists of 60,000 couplets. When the work was presented to the Sultan, he rewarded Firdausi with a pitiful amount of money. The disappointed Firdausi gave the money to a bath attendant and left for Afghanistan. Lewis regretted he could not read Persian, but in his poem ‘The Prodigality of Firdausi’, published in Punch, 215 (1 December 1948), p. 510, and reprinted in Poems and CP, he extols ‘Firdausi the strong Lion among poets’ and tells how handsomely he behaved at the hands of the Sultan.

211 Dorothy Wellesley, Duchess of Wellington (1889-1956), whose collected poems were published as Early Light (1955).

212 Sayer had asked if Pauline Baynes should illustrate all the Narnian stories. See Pauline Diana Baynes in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1018-22.

213 Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1643), II, x: ‘Great virtues and vices no less great’.

1951

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Jan 5/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Whether any individual Christian who attempts Faith Healing is prompted by genuine faith and charity or by spiritual pride is, I take it, a question we cannot decide. That is between God and him. Whether the cure occurs in any given case is clearly a question for the doctors. I am speaking now of healing by some act, such as anointing or laying on of hands. Praying for the sick—i.e. praying simply, without any overt act is unquestionably right and indeed we are commanded to pray for all men.1 And of course your prayers can do real good.

Needless to say, they don’t do it either as a medicine does or as magic is supposed to do: i.e. automatically. Prayer is Request—like asking your employer for a holiday or asking a girl to marry one. God is free to grant the request or not: and if He does you cannot prove scientifically that the thing wd. not have happened anyway. Just as the boss might (for all you know) have given you a holiday even if you hadn’t asked. (Cynical people of my sex will tell one that if a girl has determined to marry you, married you wd. have been whether you asked her or not!). Thus one can’t establish the efficacy of prayer by statistics as you might establish the connection between pure milk and fewer cases of tuberculosis. It remains a matter of faith and of God’s personal action: it would become a matter of demonstration only if it were impersonal or mechanical.2

When I say ‘personal’ I do not mean private or individual. All our prayers are united with Christ’s perpetual prayer and are part of the Church’s prayer. (In praying for people one dislikes I find it v. helpful to remember that one is joining in His prayer for them.)

With all best wishes for the New Year.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD): 3

Magdalen College

Oxford

Jan 5/51

Dear Mr. Van Auken

We must ask three questions about the probable effect of changing your research subject to something more theological.

(1.) Wd. it be better for your immediate enjoyment? Answer, probably but not certainly, Yes.

(2.) Wd. it be better for your academic career? Answer, probably No. You wd. have to make up in haste a lot of knowledge which cd. not be v. easily digested in the time.

(3.) Wd. it be better for your soul? I don’t know. I think there is a great deal to be said for having one’s deepest spiritual interest distinct from one’s ordinary duty as a student or professional man.

St Paul’s job was tent-making. When the two coincide I shd. have thought there was a danger lest the natural interest in one’s job and the pleasures of gratified ambition might be mistaken for spiritual progress and spiritual consolation: and I think clergymen sometimes fall into this trap.

Contrariwise, there is the danger that what is boring or repellent in the job may alienate one from the spiritual life. And finally someone has said ‘None are so unholy as those whose hands are cauterised with holy things’:4 sacred things may become profane by becoming matters of the job. You now want truth for her own sake: how will it be when the same truth is also needed for an effective footnote in your thesis? In fact, the change might do good or harm. I’ve always been glad myself that Theology is not the thing I earn my living by. On the whole, I’d advise you to get on with your tent-making. The performance of a duty will probably teach you quite as much about God as academic Theology wd. do. Mind, I’m not certain: but that is the view I incline to.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD): TS

REF.23/51.

Magdalen College,

6th January 1951

Dear Miss Pitter,

No, don’t! I mean don’t waste a copy on me. Contemporary pictures be blowed! It sounds horrible: the Ugly Duchess with a vengeance.

Incidentally, what is the point of keeping in touch with the contemporary scene? Why should one read authors one does’nt like because they happen to be alive at the same time as oneself? One might as well read everyone who had the same job or the same coloured hair, or the same income, or the same chest measurements, as far as I can see. I whistle, and plunge into the tunnel of term.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO PAULINE BAYNES (BOD):5 TS

RER20/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

8th January 1951.

Dear Miss Baynes,

My idea was that the map should be more like a medieval map than an Ordnance Survey–mountains and castles drawn—perhaps winds blowing at the corners—and a few heraldic-looking ships, whales and dolphins in the sea.6 Asian gazing at the moon would make an excellent cover design (to be repeated somewhere in the book; but do as you please about that.)

My brother once more joins me in all good wishes.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

You didn’t keep me a bit too long and I shd. have been v. glad if you’d stayed longer. I was hurried (I hope, not rudely so) only because I didn’t want to be left with a long vacancy between your departure and the next train).

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

8/1/51

Dear Mr. Van Auken

Look: the question is not whether we should bring God into our work or not. We certainly should and must: as MacDonald says ‘All that is not God is death.’7 The question is whether we should simply (a.) Bring Him in in the dedication of our work to Him, in the integrity, diligence, & humility with which we do it or also (b.) Make His professed and explicit service our job. The A vocation rests on all men whether they know it or not: the B vocation only on those who are specially called to it. Each vocation has its peculiar dangers & peculiar rewards. Naturally, I can’t say which is yours.

When I spoke of danger to your academic career on a change of subject I was thinking chiefly of time. If you can get an extra year, it wd. be another matter. I was not at all meaning that ‘intellectual history’ involving Theology wd. in itself he academically a bad field of research.

I shall at any time be glad to see, or hear from you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TOP. H. NEWBY(BBC): 8

C4/HT/PHN

Magdalen College

Oxford

11/1/51

Dear Mr. Newby

I don’t think I’d care to do a Work in Progress on my OHEL volume.9 I am hoping to drop rather a bomb by that book and don’t want to give too many warnings. Thanks for asking me.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER (BOD): 10

Magdalen College

Oxford

14/1/51

Dear Mr. (or Professor?) Kinter

The title of my children’s book (by the way, it is a single story not a collection) is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and the American edition is by Macmillan N. Y The only printed verse of mine outside the Regress (and a very early volume wh. I don’t want remembered)11 is a poem called Dymer, recently reprinted with a new preface by Dents.12 It first appeared in 1926 (I think—I’m weak on dates): also in Punch, over the signature N.W. (= Nat. Whilk = O.E. nát hwylc) several short pieces wh. are chiefly experiments in internal rhyme and consonance—not to be read unless you have strong metrical interests.

An amusing question whether my trilogy13 is an epic! Clearly, in virtue of its fantastic elements, it cd. only be an epic of the Ariosto type.14 But I shd. call it a Romance myself: it lacks sufficient roots in legend and tradition to be what I’d call an epic. Isn’t it more the method of Apuleius, Lucian and Rabelais, but diverted from a comic to a serious purpose?

No, I certainly didn’t know about the dissertation on Bernardus. And I’ve lost my own copy of the text!15

With many thanks & good wishes. Be sure and look me up if you’re ever rash enough to visit this conquered island.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF.25/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

18th January 1951.

My dear Mr. Allen,

If when you first began to keep us afloat I had known that your kindness was going to continue over a number of years, I would have kept a record of your parcels; the number must now run into scores, and the weight into hundredweights! How do you do it? As I said once before, it is not so much your generosity as your hard work which impressed me; if the case was reversed, I hope I should try to behave to you and Mrs. Allen as you have done to me. But I should draw the line at coming home from my job and settling down to packing! (Anyway, I could’nt do it, being one of those whose fingers are all thumbs). Both the 11th and 12th December parcels have come in, and we are both very grateful for them.

They have I’m afraid been here a few days, but it is the beginning of the term, and my brother has only just got up after an attack of ‘flu, which has put us all behindhand. This is one of the worst influenza years we have had for a long time, and is in fact a battle on two fronts; one ‘wave’ of the disease coming over from Norway, and the other working north across France from the Mediterranean. Different types too, which is not making the doctor’s work any easier. In the north it is so bad that work at the port of Liverpool is held up, and they are burying people by night, as in the plague days. This does nothing to dissipate the gloom with which we, and no doubt you too, regard the prospects for 1951.