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Dear Professor Starr,
We both thank you for your kind card, and wish you every happiness in 1950.
On Tuesday morning we hope to drink your health at the ‘Bird and Baby’: pity you can’t be there to join us!
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Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
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TO SARAH NEYIAN (T):
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Magdalen College,
Oxford
9/1/50
My dear Sarah
Yes, I did indeed get the mats and was only waiting to be sure of the right address before acknowledging them. They were so like lino-cuts that if I weren’t such an unhandy and messy person I wd. have been tempted to ink them and try making a few prints. Thanks very much indeed.
I’m glad you like the Ballet lessons. I’m just back from a week end at Malvern and found an awful pile of letters awaiting me—so I am scribbling in haste. But I must tell you what I saw in a field—one young pig cross the field with a great big bundle of hay in its mouth and deliberately lay it down at the feet of an old pig. I could hardly believe my eyes. I’m sorry to say the old pig didn’t take the slightest notice. Perhaps it couldn’t believe its eyes either. Love to yourself and all,
Your affectionate
Godfather
C. S. Lewis
TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):
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Magdalen
9/1/50
Dear Miss Bodle,
Yes. Charles Williams often used the words ‘holy luck’.
(#ulink_35ca3f04-60db-5e26-8443-611d46c32dfd) Compare Spenser ‘It chanced, Almighty God that chance did guide’.
(#ulink_47c18588-f92b-55d6-bf84-a95fc205a3af) Bless you.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD):
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Magdalen College
Oxford
12/1/50
Dear Sister Penelope
The name of the graduate looks like KNIONAN, but this can hardly be right! It is embarrassing that as my own hand gets worse I also get worse at reading everyone else’s.
I am very sorry you have had no luck yet with the M.G.
(#ulink_8590db63-28cf-5d99-8ed1-c804c4efbdbc) But many a book that afterwards succeeded has been rejected by several publishers.
I read Butterfield and gave it exactly the same mark as you; and am glad of your support, for most even of my Christian friends think it bad.
(#ulink_666a6b62-23e8-5426-bb49-47a591a5cb21) All good wishes for St Bernard.
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My book with Professor Tolkien—any book in collaboration with that great but dilatory and unmethodical man—is dated, I fear, to appear on the Greek Kalends!
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I don’t quite know about those American veterans. Nearly all the books we shd. want to send are published in U.S.A. and there is a bad book famine in England.
Term begins on Sat. and there is a cruel mail today, so I am suffering incessant temptation to uncharitable thoughts at present: one of those black moods in which nearly all one’s friends seem to be selfish or even false. And how terrible that there shd. be even a kind of pleasure in thinking evil. A ‘mixed pleasure’ as Plato wd. say, like scratching?
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
Britain had been so weakened by the effects of the Second World War (1939-1945) that, despite American assistance, rationing was still in effect when Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952. Clothes rationing ended in 1949, but food continued to be rationed until 1954. For this reason many of Lewis’s friends in the United States, such as Edward A. Allen, were still sending him food parcels.
TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W):
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REF.50/19.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
24th January 1950.
My dear Mr. Allen,
This is something like a New Year’s greeting! And I am most grateful to you for it. I had to look closely at the label to make sure that the gift was from you, for we are so bemused at the moment with high pressure election literature that I thought it might be from our own Mr. Strachey.
(#ulink_55065dfa-bcf2-56ac-9f6c-aa82f4080a99) I don’t know whether it has appeared in your Press, but he has opened the government campaign here by saying how grateful he is to the public for their thanks for the ‘best Christmas in living memory’. The odd thing is that I can’t find anyone who told him that this was how we felt about the extra ounce of bacon or whatever it was that he gave us!
I hope your mother keeps well, and you also. Thanks to the photos you sent me. I picture you both always on a sea beach. But presumably you are now travelling on snow shoes.
With all best wishes and thanks
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO VERA MATHEWS (W):
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RER50/81.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
30th January 1950.
Dear Miss Mathews,
I was very sorry to hear about the miserable fiasco of your New York holiday. ‘Flu itself I don’t mind so much, especially in its later stages when the temperature has gone down, but the getting back to normality afterwards is beastly. I hope that by this time you are over the ‘wet rag’ stage, and feeling yourself once more.
Need I say how much we look forward to the parcel which you so kindly promise? It sounds most exciting, and will be very welcome: because, whether it blows fair and warm politically or not, it is anything but fair and warm in the literal sense. I suspect that in California you are exempt from such a day as we are having here—frost, followed by rain, followed by frost—every side walk converted by delighted small boys into an improvised skating rink—splendid opportunities of giving the passers by a good laugh every time you venture out!
With all best wishes for your health, and many thanks,
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO EDWARD T. DELL (P):
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REF.50/79
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
30th January 1950.
Dear Mr. Dell,
I think we mean very nearly the same.
(#ulink_984386eb-ed91-5e15-819e-342c4d48a72d) Evil is certainly not a ‘Thing’. But many states of affairs, or relations between things, are regrettable, ought not to have occurred, and ought to be removed. And ‘Evil’ is an elliptical symbol for this fact.
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO SISTER MARYROSE (L):
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[January 1950]
I am sorry if I misunderstood your letter: and I think that you misunderstood mine. What I meant was that if I replied to your original question (why I am not a member of the Roman Church) I shd. have to write a v. long letter. It would of course be answerable: and your answer would be answerable by me…and so on. The resulting correspondence would certainly not, of course, be in excess of the importance of the subject: but haven’t you and I both probably more pressing duties? For a real correspondence on such a subject wd. be nearly a wholetime job. I thought we cd. both discuss the matter more usefully with people nearer at hand. Even the two letters which we have exchanged have already revealed the pitfalls of argument by letter. With all good wishes.
TO NICOLAS ZERNOV(BOD):
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[Magdalen College]
3/2/50
Dear Zernov
Your news is a great shock to me. I will write to Spalding.
(#ulink_c51b6175-a70b-528e-80c6-4d332d354eba) It was a great pleasure to meet your wife the other night and altogether a splendid evening, as yours always are. Cd. you come & dine with me on Thurs. March 9? Do.
Yours
C.S.L.
TO MRS FRANK L. JONES (W):
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REE 50/18.
Magdalen College,
