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(#ulink_42041504-3645-5201-a810-ea42bf30b0f7) on p. 8–‘Shack-Age’
(#ulink_9aa2d6e2-931b-59f4-9d31-52a592c19ad0) on p. 9–‘caged in comic bars of camouflage’
(#ulink_7140361c-e791-59ac-9073-ff28a9e5ff2c) on 39–and the really unbearable two lines about Time’s finger & the evening train on p. 81.
(#ulink_f639d0b3-f4a4-5861-b217-be921be7bef0)Ugh! The ones I liked best as wholes (wh. aren’t necessarily the ones from which I shall remember bits to quote) are Lion’s Eye–it has a perfect shape, couldn’t be either longer or shorter–The White Roe–the extra rhyming line added to some stanzas is delightful–I Am Not Resigned (I’d love to have thought of ‘greener centuries’)
(#ulink_8ff580e0-6da5-508b-a84f-c3fc03f46174)–Strange Country, and (perhaps best of all) Second Birth. A painful book—I understand R. Church’s fears
(#ulink_5345d9a4-5cba-53cd-b3ad-481bdd548c22)–but then most good poetry (tho’ not the very topmost best of all like parts of Dante) is.
I really am very glad you sent it. Remember me most kindly to dear old Herbert Palmer and accept my very best thanks, good wishes, and congratulations. Perhaps if you are ever in these parts you will come and see me.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):
Magdalen
11/10/52
My dear Arthur
James’s Letters vol. I arrived yesterday. I don’t know if I really ought to accept it, lames being so much more your kind of author than mine. On the other hand it is too big for an envelope and putting up parcels is one of the many things I can’t do. And there seems to be a good deal about books in it after all. Well, thanks very much indeed. Yes, I love my Father’s underlinings: the pencil (can’t you see him, with his spectacles far down on his nose, getting out the little stump?) so heavily used that, as W said, he didn’t so much draw a line as dig a line.
Term began yesterday, so I have now returned to harness after what has been perhaps the happiest year of my life. I began, appropriately, by cutting myself when I shaved, breaking my lace when I put on my shoes, and coming into College without my keys.
There have been some most perfect autumn days here lately and this is a well timbered country which they suit.
Love to l’Incroyable
(#ulink_2716eb69-26a0-5a26-b6d4-e3597e672e55) and your good self and all blessings.
Yours
Jack
TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
11th October 1952.
Dear Mrs. Gebbert,
But hang it all, if you come on the 18th and 19th I shall see so little of you—being engaged to dine out on Saturday; and I can’t put it off because it is with people I’ve had to refuse on several other occasions. Would you think us Pigs if we adhered to the original date? Not if it means you’ll have to sleep on the Embankment of course!
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO HERBERT PALMER (TEX):
Coll. Magd.
16/10/52
My dear Palmer
I wrote a letter to Miss Hesketh
(#ulink_6edddee0-541e-5125-a33d-040c59e4ae42) (I mean, a real one, not the mere acknowledgement) about the book
(#ulink_44a8593c-ee21-5451-a4f8-7de3df73f70e) some weeks ago. As Heinemann is one of those accursed firms that don’t put their address on the title page I sent it c/o their old address and it came back as a dead letter. I then sent it c/o my own publisher. Has Miss Hesketh not had it yet?
I liked many of the poems v. much, especially the phrasing. Do let me know if the letter has ever arrived. As for helping the book, what can one do against the massive rampart of false taste in our times? That is the ‘railway line’: you and Miss Hesketh are the real unmacadamised road or immemorial Right of Way across the field. But they are stopping the Right of Way. How are you these days? It was nice to hear from you again.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO JOHN ROWLAND (TEX):
(#ulink_5b55b5e9-b240-5865-92e1-7d88347bb315) PC
Magdalen College
Oxford
16/10/52
Good. My Mon. evgs. are, unhappily, always filled up by the Socratic Club. The safest thing (for an unspecified week) is Lunch on Monday and as much talk as you can spare me afterwards. If you can fix which Monday I will book it. I much look forward to meeting.
C. S. Lewis
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford
17/10/52
My dear Arthur
I’ve finished vol. I of the Letters of HJ. I announce this not to hurry you but to show that I have enjoyed yr. gift. I’m afraid he was a dreadful Prig, but he is by no means a bore and has lots of interesting things to say about books. Was it you sent me the Northern ‘Whig’?
(#ulink_e408873c-1d7b-5097-9ae6-27450dff95c8) If so thanks.
Yours
Jack
TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS 52/103.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
18th October 1952.
Dear Mrs. Gebbert,
What a misfortune for you, and what a disappointment for us! ‘Flu is a horrid thing at the best of times, but to contract it when on holiday, and in a strange city, is to have it under the most wretched conditions.
We hope that this does not mean a final cancellation of your visit: but I am making no alternative suggestion until I see what is in the letter you are writing me.
With deepest sympathy to you both and best wishes for a short illness and speedy recovery,
Yours,
C. S. Lewis
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):
Magdalen etc.
Oct 20th 1952
Dear Mrs. Van Deusen
I think you are perfectly right to change your manner of prayer from time to time and I shd. suppose that all who pray seriously do thus change it. One’s needs and capacities change and also, for creatures like us, excellent prayers may ‘go dead’ if we use them too long. Whether one shd. use written prayers composed by other people, or one’s own words or own wordless prayer, or in what proportion one shd. mix all three, seems to me entirely a question for each individual to answer from his own experience.
I myself find prayers without words the best, when I can manage it, but I can do so only when least distracted and in best spiritual and bodily health (or what I think best). But another person might find it quite otherwise.
Your question about old friendships where there is no longer spiritual communion is a hard one. Obviously it depends v. much on what the other party wants. The great thing in friendship as in all other forms of love is, as you know, to turn from the demand to be loved (or helped or answered) to the wish to love (or help or answer). Perhaps in so far as one does this one also discovers how much love one shd. spend on the sort of friends you mention. I don’t think a decay in one’s desire for mere ‘society’ or ‘acquaintance’ or ‘the crowd’ is a bad sign. (We mustn’t take it as a sign of one’s increasing spirituality of course: isn’t it merely a natural, neutral, development as one grows older?).
All that Calvinist question—Free-Will & Predestination, is to my mind undiscussable, insoluble. Of course (say us) if a man repents God will accept him. Ah yes, (say they) but the fact of his repenting shows that God has already moved him to do so. This at any rate leaves us with the fact that in any concrete case the question never arrives as a practical one. But I suspect it is really a meaningless question. The difference between Freedom & Necessity is fairly clear on the bodily level: we know the difference between making our teeth chatter on purpose & just finding them chattering with cold. It begins to be less clear when we talk of human love (leaving out the erotic kind). ‘Do I like him because I choose or because I must?’–there are cases where this has an answer, but others where it seems to me to mean nothing. When we carry it up to relations between God & Man, has the distinction perhaps become nonsensical? After all, when we are most free, it is only with a freedom God has given us: and when our will is most influenced by Grace, it is still our will. And if what our will does is not ‘voluntary’, and if ‘voluntary’ does not mean ‘free’, what are we talking about? I’d leave it all alone. Blessings.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO VERA GEBBERT (W):
Magdalen etc.
Oct 20th 1952
Poor dear Gebberts
I am sorry. Whatever may be said for foreign travel, it is horrid when one is ill: the wounded animal wants to creep away to its own den. But the total situation, you must now learn, is quite other than you supposed when you wrote on Saturday evening. That same evening our housekeeper (the only stay of our house and the nearest thing you wd. have had to a hostess) also went down with flu’. So if she had gone down 24 hours earlier we shd. have been wiring to put you off: and if you’d gone down 24 hours later our house wd. now be an amateur Nursing Home staffed by two elderly and incompetent bachelors–themselves liable at any moment to become two more patients. So all has not, perhaps, been quite so much for the worst as you supposed.
At any rate you have nothing to apologise for except what we should have had to apologise for if you hadn’t. (Don’t try to work this sentence out until your temperature is now normal). We had hoped that, tho’ we can’t now offer hospitality, you might have got down here for lunch some day, but I quite see how you can’t. Don’t feel in the least bad about the contre-temps: if you, and our Miss Henry, were to have flu’ the times couldn’t have fitted in better!
(#ulink_b7d97c69-4a89-5da8-b366-c1aedefa7199) And you keep that whiskey and drink it all yourselves: you’ll need it—and you won’t get any fit to drink over here. Thanks—blessings–sympathies—and all good wishes for a speedy recovery.
Yours,
W. H. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
21/10/52
My dear Roger
Your letter was more than usually welcome: for tho’ reason assured me that so busy a man might have 100 motives for not writing, I had also a lurking fear that you might be offended. Forgive me the suspicion. It arose not at all because I judge you to be that kind of ass, or any kind, but because, we being ‘of one blood’, the loss of you wd. be a very raw gash in my life.
I had a letter from G. Greene’s secretary to say that he was abroad but wd. be shown my letter as soon as he returned. I fear that will make it too late for him to act on it even if he has justice enough to wish to. I have just finished Vol. I of Henry James’s letters. An interesting man, tho’ a dreadful prig: but he did appreciate Stevenson. A phantasmal man, who had never known God, or earth, or war, never done a day’s compelled work, never had to earn a living, had no home & no duties.
My brother is reading A.E.W.M.
(#ulink_dba43808-d760-57a3-ab9a-2d77089d3aca) with great enjoyment. You seem to be getting a pretty good Press: congratulations.
Love to lune. I look forward to seeing you next month.
Yours
Jack
TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS 52/103.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
21st October 1952.
