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Yours
Jack
TO HARRY BIAMIRES (BOD):
Coll. Magd.
24/6/52
Dear Blamires
Yes, of course. I am sorry the book has not yet found a home. All the best.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 26/6/52
Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–
Incense and Hail Marys are in quite different categories. The one is merely a question of ritual: some find it helpful and others don’t, and each must put up with its absence or presence in the church they are attending with cheerful and charitably humility.
But Hail Marys raise a doctrinal question: whether it is lawful to address devotions to any creature, however holy. My own view would be that a salute to any saint (or angel) cannot in itself be wrong any more than taking off one’s hat to a friend: but that there is always some danger lest such practices start one on the road to a state (sometimes found in R.C.’s) where the B.V.M.
(#ulink_61ec5c66-0851-5b22-8e9c-d96d0c24fbed) is treated really as a deity and even becomes the centre of the religion. I therefore think that such salutes are better avoided. And if the Blessed Virgin is as good as the best mothers I have known, she does not want any of the attention which might have gone to her Son diverted to herself.
It seems, nevertheless, quite clear that the Spirit of God is, or is more strongly with Kemper Hall than with P. A. Wolfe. In him you describe a type I know. I think we may except [accept] it as a rule that whenever a person’s religious conversation dwells chiefly, or even frequently, on the faults of other people’s religions, he is in a bad condition. The fact that he shakes your faith is significant. Pray for him but not, I shd. say, with him. If he insists on talking religion to you ask him for positive things: ask him to tell you what he knows of God.
All blessings. My ‘new trouble’ is still there: but I have much to be thankful for.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO MISS REIDY (P): TS
REF.52/265.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
28th June 1952.
Dear Miss Reidy,
The point
(#ulink_d8817c6d-917c-545b-a32b-05a81fc48213) was that as foolish people on a walk, when by their own errors they are off the course, think the map was wrong, so, when we do not find in ourselves the fruits of the Spirit which all our teachers promise, it is not that the promise was false, but that we have failed to use the Grace we have been given. The ‘map’ can be found in almost any Christian teaching.
C. S. Lewis
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):
Magdalen College.
28th June 52
My dear Arthur
Splendid. The manageress is right: Aug 21st is my first night at Crawfordsburn. Setting off with you on Mon. 25th will do fine. And of course I don’t want all day & every day in the car: we think just the same on that subject. I look forward to the trip immensely: the first time you and I have been away together since Portsalon in about 1916!
(#ulink_43204e80-7933-56da-8464-2991c7982206) This time we shall at least not quarrel about Hair-Oil!
Yours
Jack
TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):
(#ulink_6bdb311c-50dd-5e10-84ab-ae2fa7879adb)
Coll. Magd.
28/6/52
My dear Bles,
Mycroft has been ill,
(#ulink_3b7dce52-39a8-5c8a-a348-5f26ff37ed9a) but is now better. I don’t foresee many occasions for copies of Le Lion,
(#ulink_53f1f27a-608b-51ec-8e52-edcae5d94b45) but if you will kindly send me 2, they might come in useful. The translator deserves to be congratulated of course—French is a v. powerful language—the children become perfect little Frenchmen, but that is all to the good. What pleased and surprised me is the passage at the end where I made them talk like characters in Malory, and he has really got some of the quality of the French 13th century prose romances: grande honte en aurions
(#ulink_6b2f1bd3-bbc3-5e0b-a3e4-24020c54647d)– is exactly right.
May I have 10 copies of M.C.?
(#ulink_b1550613-d692-5c11-8b91-767ca2f4abce) I had my first bathe at Parsons’ Pleasure yesterday: 68°.
(#ulink_aef13267-00d3-507e-b9dd-6d23be0e1a0f)
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (W):
[Magdalen College]
1/7/52
Dear Hilton Young,
(Shall we drop the honorifics on both sides?) Thanks very much for two copies of the C.J.
(#ulink_3063fa0a-58c1-5389-a7af-03300eeacae1) As I said before, it is almost impossible to make an objective judgement on criticism of oneself, especially when it does one so very proud. But I suspect that your essay is a good one. Certainly the alterations have been made with great skill–invisible mending.
I’m glad Driver played up. I suppose he told you, as he told me, that Judith is already a novel.
(#ulink_a3f83560-f644-5644-a528-69ada0fbf472) I still hope that as you poke about among the realien they will blaze up and a new story will arise relegating Judith to the background.
What do you think of Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel, which I’ve just read in a v. bad translation?
(#ulink_7e6c9d48-3cac-5e20-a701-6ae984dc1f54) Heavy, humourless. But has one merit wh. sets it apart from all other stories about the future. Unobtrusively, without any new machines or new forms of government, it really does give you the illusion of a society in which the general quality of thought is different from ours. I don’t think Wells or Aldous Huxley did that: nor Orwell, except in the epilogue on Newspeak.
(#ulink_d0ceeac6-d30b-5441-a5ea-ff6e35f04703)
All the best, and many thanks.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS
REF.52/103.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
3rd July 1952.
Dear Mrs. Gebbert,
We both enjoyed your very interesting letters, and are glad to know that you are so happy. Pity about the antelopes, but inevitable. And we look forward greedily to the promised food parcel. Sun Valley Lodge looks a lovely place, and I hope that I may have the good fortune to see it some day. Here is the translation of the Latin:–Many things will be re-born which have now fallen (into disfavour), and many will fall (into disfavour) which are now fashionable.
(#ulink_e323ef99-a5ab-5a31-aa6b-49910d66219c)
With all best wishes to you both,
yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
Mere Christianity: A Revised and Amplified Edition, with a New Introduction of the Three Books, ‘Broadcast Talks’, ‘Christian Behaviour’ and ‘Beyond Personality’ was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 7 July 1952.
TO MARG-RIETTE MONTGOMERY (W): TS
REF.52/248.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
8th July 1952.
Dear Miss Montgomery,
Of course they
(#ulink_3abfc109-dd2e-5de1-98aa-24c535e5d611) are right in making the Resurrection a cosmic event: what I am not so sure is whether they really regard Christ as the only-begotten Son of the only God.
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):
e Coll. Stae Mariae Magdalenae
Jul. XIV. MCMLII
Gratias ago, dilectissime pater, et pro opusculis Congregationis vestrae et pro hac epistolâ Jul vii datâ. Hora nostra, ut dicis, gravis est: utrum gravis ‘prae omnibus humanae historiae’ nescio. Sed semper malum quod proximum et gravissimum videtur esse; est enim, ut oculis, sic cordibus, sua ‘perspettiva’. Si tamen nostra tempestas rê verá pessima est, si rê vera Dies Illa nunc imminet, quid restât nisi ut gaudeamus quia redemptio nostra iam proprior est et dicamus cum Sancto Joanne ‘Amen; cito venias, domine Iesu.’ Interim sola securitas est ut Dies nos inveniat laborantes quemque in suo officio et praecipue (dissensionibus relictis) illud supremum mandatum ut invicem diligamus implentes. Oremus semper pro invicem. Vale: et sit tecum et mecum pax illa quam nemo potest auferre.
C. S. Lewis
*
from the College of St Mary Magdalen
July 14th 1952
Thank you, dearest Father, both for the tracts of your Congregation and for your letter dated July 7th.
The times we live in are, as you say, grave: whether ‘graver than all others in history’ I do not know. But the evil that is closest always seems to be the most serious: for as with the eye so with the heart, it is a matter of one’s own perspective. However, if our times are indeed the worst, if That Day
(#ulink_083b44e3-faf4-5de6-9845-73c9e10b20f9) is indeed now approaching, what remains but that we should rejoice because our redemption is now nearer and say with St John: ‘Amen; come quickly, Lord Jesus.’
(#ulink_8a34d89f-c7e5-53a2-af2e-a9fcde0c8d1a)
Meanwhile our only security is that The Day may find us working each one in his own station and especially (giving up dissensions) fulfilling that supreme command that we love one another.
