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17/5/51
My dear Hamilton
Of course I’ll write an introduction to Ouroboros.
(#ulink_11d5f2c5-c6d7-58eb-89f0-d47f8ac6efb8) I’d deserve to be hanged if I wouldn’t. Mind you, one doesn’t always write best on what one most keenly and spontaneously enjoys. One writes best on the authors who are one’s acquired tastes (as happy love produces fewer great poems than mess and fuss like Donne’s or obsession like Catullus!) But I’ll do my damdest. When the matter is fixed (and I leave you to go on into that) can you come down for a night and talk it over? I shall want to pick your brains: especially for testimonies which I can quote from other admirers, yourself, and lames Stephens etc.
(#ulink_5007d1df-96e8-57d9-bde0-fb919f0af242) I remember the other Eddison v. well: give him my duty.
(#ulink_38f0b054-eb2e-5563-a366-fb7b7d5ac4c8)
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO RUTH PITTER(BOD): TS
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
18th May 1951.
Dear Miss Pitter,
It is I who have to thank you for making my little party a success. You supplied the fire and air. I wrote down Young’s
(#ulink_4b53dd59-7a90-52e6-938f-6518efecaaf7) address, and will write: many thanks. My own MS will go to you as soon as it is typed. Don’t let it be a bother: what I want is only a Yes or a No or Doubtful. It is very kind of you to undertake the job, for a job of course it is. Kindest regards to Miss O’Hara and yourself.
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO ANDREW YOUNG (BOD):
(#ulink_7f0bec5e-712f-5e75-9abf-58a1ad2be847) TS
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
18th May 1951
Dear Canon Young,
May a stranger take the liberty of offering his thanks for your poems? You appear to me a modern Marvell and a modern marvel: there has been nothing so choice, so delicate, and so controlled in this century. Every weir I see in this town of rivers now ‘combs the river’s silver hair’.
(#ulink_d09ab97c-47e0-5db1-b9cd-e408493d96bc) Thank you very much indeed.
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford
25/5/51
Dear Mrs. Van Deusen
About yr. idea that error in upbringing might be partly responsible for Genia’s trouble, does any trained psychologist agree with you? From what I hear such people say I shd. v. much doubt whether it cd. have had any ‘depth’ effect. Do not burden yourself with any unnecessary cares: I suspect you are not at all to blame. I pray for Genia every night.
About loving one’s country, you raise two different questions. About one, about there seeming to be (now) no reason for loving it, I’m not at all bothered. As Macdonald says ‘No one loves because he sees reason, but because he loves.’
(#ulink_bd080730-c0c7-5462-9112-0758b7826780) Or say there are two kinds of love: we love wise & kind & beautiful people because we need them, but we love (or try to love) stupid & disagreeable people because they need us. This second kind is the more divine, because that is how God loves us: not because we are lovable but because He is love, not because He needs to receive but because He delights to give.
But the other question (what one is loving in loving a country) I do find v. difficult. What I feel sure of is that the personifications used by journalists and politicians have v. little reality. A treaty between the Govts. of two countries is not at all like a friendship between two people: more like a transaction between two people’s lawyers.
I think love for one’s country means chiefly love for people who have a good deal in common with oneself (language, clothes, institutions) and is in that way like love of one’s family or school: or like love (in a strange place) for anyone who once lived in one’s home town. The familiar is in itself a ground for affection. And it is good: because any natural help towards our spiritual duty of loving is good and God seems to build our higher loves round our merely natural impulses—sex, maternity, kinship, old acquaintance, etc. And in a less degree there are similar grounds for loving other nations—historical links & debts for literature etc (hence we all reverence the ancient Greeks). But I wd. distinguish this from the talk in the papers. Mind you, I’m in considerable doubt about the whole thing. My mind tends to move in a world of individuals not of societies.
I’m afraid I have not read E. Gough’s book.
(#ulink_6c9d5e2b-5ce8-59bb-bcc4-e50cf9ddd967) With all blessings.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO SEYMOUR SPENCER (P):
Magdalen College.
29/5/51
Dear Dr. Spencer
Thank you v. much for letting me see the MS. of your article.
(#ulink_46d2b327-2d6e-579d-8d0a-0fec0956a964) My reading confirms the view I formed on hearing the earlier form of it read, that it is a most interesting and important piece of work.
On p. 3, para 4 the first sentence is a little obscure. It might mean that we shd. expect the admission of conscious mind to exclude freedom but it doesn’t inevitably do so. I take it that is not what you meant. Wd. it run better ‘the mere admission of a conscious mind leaves open the possibility of freedom’?
I still disagree with yr. view that bodily procreation is a consequence of the Fall, taking my stand, if you like, on Aquinas (Summa Theol. Pars I
. Quaest xcviii):
(#ulink_9a0b9e34-2232-5c07-a45e-849a03e9ef1c) and I think it a grave, tho’ not a fatal objection to your view that the same command crescite et multiplicamini
(#ulink_c7c4a81d-55be-5049-b316-387489718a5d) is addressed to beasts (Gen. I.22)
(#ulink_6a9d9667-230c-5c96-8b33-8cbd0f3be61a) and to Man (ibid 1.28). But I hope your view will be published, and discussed by better authors than me. I’m sorry that I have no record of the Number of the XXth Century in wh. my article appeared: and as you see, the silly asses don’t put it on the off-print.
With all good wishes and many thanks.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (P):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
29th May 1951
Dear Starr
This is the sort of thing that makes my blood boil. The events at Rollins College
(#ulink_80c63906-ac64-5757-8c5b-60877cf33b7c) seem to me to concentrate into one filthy amalgam every tendency in the modern world which I most hate and despise. And, as you say, this kind of thing will put an end to American scholarship if it goes on. Why then did I not cable to an American paper as you suggested?
My dear fellow, consider. What could unsolicited advice from a foreigner do except to stiffen the Wagnerian party by enlisting on its side every anti-British and every anti-God element in the state? You are asking me to damage a good cause by what would, from an unauthorised outsider like me, be simply impertinence. In a cooler moment (I don’t expect you to be cool at present) you will be thankful I didn’t. God help us all. It is terrible to live in a post-civilised age.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
Dear Starr
If you think there is anything to be gained by publishing my letter, you are at liberty to do so. My brother thanks you for your remembrances, and sends his lively sympathy.
But not the condemnatory part without the parts saying it wd. be impertinent of me to address a public on the matter.
C.S.L.
TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS
RER25/51.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
4th June 1951.
My dear Mr. Allen,
That perfection of packing, parcel no. 184 has just arrived, and I have spent a pleasant ten minutes dismembering it. Normally we won’t open your parcels when we get them, but reserve them for that moment of domestic crisis which so constantly arrives–‘We shall have to open one of Edward Allen’s parcels’ we say. But I tackled this one at once on account of the clothes.
The suit is just the thing I want for the summer, if there should happen to be a summer, which at the moment looks unlikely. (My brother skilfully annexed the last one you sent, and is still wearing it: on the strength of which he has the impudence to recommend this one to me)! Very welcome too was the sugar, for we are reduced to saccharine at the moment. We of course have our sugar ration, but it is never sufficient, and has to be ‘nursed’. I’ve no doubt that during the course of the week I shall find a grateful recipient for the dress. In fact an excellent parcel all round, for which I thank you very much.
Term is nearing its end in a whirlwind of work, and I shall be very glad to see the last of it. I always am, but this time especially, because I hope to be able to fit two holidays into the vacation—a week by the sea in the extreme west, Cornwall, a county I don’t know at all well, but which is very lovely: and then three weeks in the north of Ireland, two of them also seaside. I don’t think I have had so much holiday since I was a young man. I suppose you and Mrs. Allen will be thinking of going back to that bathing beach of yours? I looked with much envy last year at the photos you sent of yourselves there. We have already had quite a considerable American invasion of Oxford, and I’m sorry that our visitors will take away such a dreadful impression of our weather–for it can be fine in England in the early summer though not often. Of course Americans in Oxford are no novelty, but what I notice this year is the absence of the obviously very wealthy ones—who are I suppose on the continent; we are getting the nice, homely, quiet not so rich type (between ourselves a much nicer type), attracted I suppose by the devaluation of the pound. (On second thought I believe I should’nt have used the word ‘homely’. Does’nt it mean ugly in American? We mean by homely, just ordinary folk of our own kind of income etc.).
War and inflation are still the background of all ordinary conversation over here, to which has just been added the railway jam; our new railway organization has succeeded, so far as I can understand, in blocking every goods depot in the country. The tradespeople are grumbling, and the effect is just becoming apparent to the consumer.
With many good thanks, and kind remembrances to your Mother,
yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD):
Magdalen College,
Oxford
5/6/51
Dear Sister Penelope
My love for G. MacDonald has not extended to most of his poetry. I have naturally made several attempts to like it. Except for the Diary of An Old Soul
(#ulink_93947c70-110c-53bb-a97c-15d88ffb7819) it won’t (so far as I’m concerned) do. I have looked under likely titles for the bit you quote but I have not found it. I will make further efforts and let you know if I succeed. I suspect the lines are not by him. Do you think they might be Christina Rosetti’s?
I’m very glad to hear the work is ‘roaring’ (a good translation, by the way, of fervet opus!)
(#ulink_e386482b-af9e-5375-b421-6854b12664cf) and I much look forward to seeing the results. As for me I specially need your prayers because I am (like the pilgrim in Bunyan) travelling across ‘a plain called Ease’.
(#ulink_c7ea9cec-12cb-5fa7-bc48-26a6341c21d1) Everything without, and many things within, are marvellously well at present. Indeed (I do not know whether to be more ashamed or joyful at confessing this) I realise that until about a month ago I never really believed (tho’ I thought I did) in God’s forgiveness. What an ass I have been both for not knowing and for thinking I knew. I now feel that one must never say one believes or understands anything: any morning a doctrine I thought I already possessed may blossom into this new reality. Selah! But pray for me always, as I do for you. Will there be a chance of seeing you at Springfield St. Mary’s this summer?
(#ulink_1ba55554-970a-5196-9a26-b8ce6775ea74)
Yours very sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO MARTYN SKINNER (BOD):
As from Magdalen
June 11th 51
Dear Skinner—
