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C. S. Lewis
TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Oct 15/1953
Dear Mrs. Jessup
It is a very long time since any letters passed between us. I am in fact in your debt, counting it strict ‘turn-about’, but I regarded your last letter as an answer–certainly not a question, for I think it contained none!
But you have not all this time been absent from my daily prayers. I have been very heavily worked, except for a holiday in Ireland, and I have not been very well: nothing serious, only the harmless complaint which is called sinusitis, which gives pain and rather ‘gets you down’, but nothing worse. I hope you are well and happy (as happiness goes with mortals like us–I know you are on earth, not in heaven!). Some time, where you have nothing urgent to do, write me a line to say how you go on. This of mine of course calls for no answer: it is only a little wave of the flag to show you I’m still here and never unmindful even when I’m silent.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford
Oct 17/53
My dear Arthur
I wonder are you allowing for the fact that in the Heir
(#ulink_28149409-5190-5c2f-8d00-48099e5f850c) one of the main characters is, and is meant to be, a horrible prig, and the other a man who believes himself to be under (almost) a hereditary curse? This justifies dramatically in both a degree of introspection which may not at all be C. M. Yonge’s idea of normal Christian life. Mrs Edmonstone (clearly a good woman) does not show the same trait, nor does Amy.
I shall of course be perfectly happy to spend our joint holiday in the Inn at C’burn this year, if it so falls out. If you are in England I think you might find a few nights in the College guest room not unendurable and I’d try to give you breakfast as late as the servants cd. be expected to bear. (There are, however, clocks that chime the quarters all over Oxford; perhaps that wd. be fatal.)
I’ll send you W’s book
(#ulink_d1a17ae2-ed21-5195-a4fb-a07f11d3ca57) as soon as it is out. I think you’ll like it. V. difficult to write to Gundred about J.F.’s death, wasn’t it.
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This has been the most exquisitely beautiful autumn I can remember.
Yours
Jack
TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford
Oct 20th 53
My dear Bles
How stupid of me not to see that our old friend ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’ becomes nonsense when converted into ‘better the frying pan than the fire’. I’m glad you pointed it out. And I can’t think of any good substitute wh. cd. be fitted into the same number of spaces. So dele.
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The Phillips one is v. curious, because surely the argument at that point in Hebrews does precisely identify ‘man’ in the psalms with ‘the Man’, Our Lord.
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I am of course delighted at all you tell me about M.C. Very over-driven at present. We’re both well: kindest regards to both of you.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO I. O. EVANS (W):
Magdalen
Oct 25th 53
Dear Evans
I return the cuttings. I enjoyed them all, but the phrase-book items were the cream. And not only because you had good raw material: the showmanship was just right. I quite agree that when it comes to absurdity nature beats art: there’s nothing in the lists of imaginary ‘howlers’ as funny as things I have really seen when examining. You will hardly believe the following but we had it offered in the college entrance exam: ‘In any controversy half the people generally side with the majority and half with the minority’
I have no brief against co-education. I am, in principle, inclined (having no school-mastering experience I wd. not go further than an inclination either way) to approve it. But just as fine printing (in itself a delightful thing) has in fact got itself mixed up with pornography, so co-education has in fact got itself mixed up with crank schools, take Dartington Hall.
(#ulink_1783dc10-3a61-5965-81e1-34408b14e864) I didn’t make Experiment House
(#ulink_9f59f5f6-60da-5d63-a418-723e728f212c) cranky because it was co-ed: I made it co-ed because it was cranky.
I must look up A. G. Pym:
(#ulink_be87d291-97c7-5981-bd12-04a824ba5187) can’t remember if I’ve read it or not. With all good wishes.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO MARY NEYLAN (T):
Magdalen College
Oxford
Nov 5/53
Alas, it couldn’t come at a worse time. I’m at it all day trying to finish the Bibliography (odious job) of my big OHEL book against time, in between tutorials: usually my day allows no leisure between 8.30 a.m. & 9.45 p.m. So I must hope to meet Sarah another time. Thanks pro orationibus.
(#ulink_50478419-df3c-5123-a837-65f90beb685a) The sinus is not yet anything like so bad as it was last winter. Blessings on all—
C.S.L.
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford
Nov 5/53
Dear Mrs. Van Deusen
This must be a hasty scrawl as I’m working against time at present & usually have no free moment between 8.30 a.m. & 9.45 p.m.
So glad to hear all your good news. About CSR
(#ulink_b4742bb6-396f-55f1-9804-33338b05db99) I’m the last person to give an opinion. I am so much the reverse of the type that ‘joins things’ or ‘gets things up’ that I’d be no fair judge even if I knew the parish and the people. Of course it all depends what the latter are really like! On that turns whether it is (a.) A holy, beneficent & sensible activity (b.) A harmless, if rather fussy, hobby (c.) A pestilent coven of snoopers & busybodies (d) A mixture of all three. It might be anything almost! I’m afraid you’ll have to find out! Praying for ‘a right judgement in all things’.
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I hope in a few weeks I’ll be through my present furore of work & able to correspond properly again. Bless you all
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford
Nov. 6/53
Dear Mrs. Shelburne
Oh I am glad, I am glad. And here’s a thing worth recording. Of course I have been praying for you daily, as always, but latterly have found myself doing so with much more concern and especially about 2 nights ago, with such a strong feeling how very nice it would be, if God willed, to get a letter from you with good news. And then, as if by magic (indeed it is the whitest magic in the world) the letter comes today. Not (lest I should indulge in folly) that your relief had not in fact occurred before my prayer, but as if, in tenderness for my puny faith, God moved me to pray with especial earnestness just before He was going to give me the thing. How true that our prayers are really His prayers: He speaks to Himself through us.
I am also most moved at hearing how you were supported thro’ the period of anxiety. For one is sometimes tempted to think that if He wanted us to be as un-anxious as the lilies of the field He really might have given us a constitution more like theirs! But then when the need cornes He carries out in us His otherwise impossible instructions. In fact He always has to do all the things–all the prayers, all the virtues. No new doctrine, but newly come home to me. Forgive a short letter, quite inadequate to the subject: I am at present just so busy (tho’ not unhappily so) that I don’t know if I’m on my head or my heels. God bless you.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
During the first week of November Joy Gresham arrived in London, this time with her two sons, David and Douglas. They took rooms in the Avoca House Hotel, 43 Belsize Park, Hampstead. A few days later they moved into a flat at 14 Belsize Park, in the hotel annexe.
TO VERA GEBBERT (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford
Nov 7th 53
Dear Mrs. Gebbert
This will have to be an inadequate scrawl for my brother, who drives the typewriter, is away and I’ve so much to do that I can hardly write–in the double sense that I’ve hardly time and that my right hand is stiff and tired with compulsory scribbling! Yes, babies (tho’ I know yours is quite unlike all other babies!) do look like Sir W.
(#ulink_8c47d5cb-841e-5fe7-aa84-ca83929d53aa) I wonder why? ‘Trailing clouds of glory’ I suppose.
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I’d love to have seen that shop window and hope they have done the same with all the Lions successors: there are 3 of these now, I hope you know.
Mrs. Williams
(#ulink_9fa82fdc-b93f-5246-9d43-e67150ccc92d) lives at 23 ANTRIM MANSIONS, LONDON, N.W.3. I think life is pretty hard for her and am very glad to hear of your friend’s wish to write to her. You shd. warn her that Mrs. W is not at all intellectual.
How wrong you are when you think that streamlined planes and trains wd. attract me to America. What I want to see there is yourself and 3 or 4 other good friends, after New England, the Rip Van Winkle Mts., Nantucket, the Huckleberry Finn country, the Rockies, Yellowstone Park, and a sub-Artie winter. And I shd. never come if I couldn’t manage to come by sea instead of air: preferably on a cargo boat that took weeks on the voyage. I’m a rustic animal and a maritime animal: no good at great cities, big hotels, or all that. But this is becoming egotistical. And here comes my first pupil of the morning. All blessings, and love to all.
Yours,
C. S. Lewis
I’d love to see a bear, a snow-shoe, and a real forest
TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford
Nov 12th 53
My dear Bles
Right-oh. I’ll take the £17-0-0 and expect to have £8-10-0 Royalties deducted.
I can’t tell you how glad I am that you spotted that howler about the frying pan and the fire. I wonder no hostile reviewer seized on it.
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