Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

27/xi/53

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

Thank you for your letter of Nov. 23rd. We have a good many things in common at the moment, for I also am dead tired (cab-horse tired) and I also have sinusitis. I don’t think we exactly ‘call it catarrh’ over here. Intense catarrh is one symptom of sinusitis, and as none of us have heard of s. till quite lately I suppose cases of it used to be wrongly diagnosed as mere catarrh. I find myself that when it produces most catarrh it produces least pain and vice versa.

About sleep: do you find that the great secret (if one can do it) is not to care whether you sleep? Sleep is a jade who scorns her suitors but woos her scorners.

I feel exactly as you do about the horrid commercial racket they have made out of Christmas. I send no cards and give no presents except to children.

It is fun to see you agreeing with what you believe to be my views on prayer: well you may, for they are not mine but scriptural. Our prayers are God talking to Himself’ is only Romans, VII, 26-27.218 And ‘praying to the end’ is of course our old acquaintance, the parable of the Unjust Judge.219

I am sure you will be glad to hear that your recent adventures have been a great support and ‘corroboration’ to me. I am also v. conscious (and was especially so while praying for you during your workless time) that anxiety is not only a pain wh. we must ask God to assuage but also a weakness we must ask Him to pardon–for He’s told us take no care for the morrow. The news that you had been almost miraculously guarded from that sin and spared that pain and hence the good hope that we shall all find the like mercy when our bad times come, has strengthened me much. God bless you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Nov 28th 1953

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

Your letter links onto something I’ve been thinking of lately. There are two patterns of prayer in the N.T. (a) That in Gethsemane, ‘Not my will but thine’220 (b) That in Mark xi, 24.221

In the one the pray-er sees that what is asked may not be God’s will: in the other he has complete faith not only ‘in God’ but in God’s giving him the particular thing asked for. If both are taken as universal rules we get a contradiction for no one (so far as I can see) cd. follow both in the same prayer.

I can only suppose that neither is a universal rule, that each has its place, and that when-and-if God demands faith of the B type, He also gives it, & we shall know that we have to pray in the b manner, and that this is what happens to miracle workers.

If your Rector is such a person then he is right in praying that way himself, tho’ presumably wrong in demanding that everyone shd. do the same. If he is a presumptuous person who thinks he is in the A [B?] class and isn’t–well, that is not for us to judge.

As to whether God ever wills suffering, I think he is confused. We must distinguish in God, and even in ourselves, absolute will from relative will. No one absolutely wills to have a tooth out, but many will to have a tooth out rather than to go on with toothache. Surely in the same way God never absolutely wills the least suffering for any creature, but may will it rather than some alternative: e.g. He willed the crucifixion rather than that Man shd. go unredeemed (and so it was not, in all senses, His will that the cup shd. pass from His Son).

That’s how I see the theoretical side of the thing. As for the practical-oh dear, oh dear! I certainly can’t conceive any less suitable preparation for Holy Communion than a Discussion or any grosser abuse of language than to call a Discussion a ‘meditation’. I think you and you only can decide whether it’s your job to ‘lead’ a study group or not.

As for the ‘blasting’ sermon no doubt the type blasted is an evil one. Is there good evidence that the preacher meant you to be included in that type? It does sometimes happen that utterances intended to be general are given particular application by the hearers. If it really was addressed to you, then no doubt you must just try to forgive it (as you have done) and otherwise do nothing about it.

The Bishop sounds a good one and I don’t see how you can go wrong in following his orders. He will know much better than I cd. at what point the frustrations and the risk of loss of charity (in oneself or others) occasioned by your parochial activities begin to outweigh the probabilities of usefulness. What a coil it all is: so much so that (as in graver matters) only by putting the will of God first & other considerations nowhere can one have peace. So glad to hear that all goes well with the young people. Love to all.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Dec 1st 1953

Dear Mrs. Jessup

I am so glad to hear that certain mountains have shrunk to molehills. As to the problem of Thomas Merton versus C.W, E.U., G.M.,222 and C.S.L.:–

A. There are two meanings of World in N.T. (i) In ‘God so loved the World’223 it means the Creation–stars, trees, beasts, men, and angels, (ii) In ‘Love not the World’224 it means the ‘worldly’ life, i.e. the life built up by men in disregard of God, the life of money-making, ambition, snobbery, social success and ‘greatness’.

B. Most spiritual writers distinguish two vocations for Christians (i.) The monastic or contemplative life, (ii) The secular or active life. All Christians are called to abandon the ‘World’ (sense ii) in spirit, i.e. to reject as strongly as they possibly can its standards, motives, and prizes. But some are called to ‘come out of it’225 as far as possible by renouncing private property, marriage, their professions etc: others have to remain ‘in it’ but not ‘of it’.

I of course am in the second class and write for those who are also in it. This isn’t to say that I may not be (you may be sure I am) far too much ‘of it’. You, and your friend, must help me against that with your prayers. In so far as she accuses me of ‘worldliness’ she is right: but if by ‘earthiness’ she means my tendency to ‘come down to brass tacks’ and try to deal with the ordinary petty sins & virtues of secular & domestic life, she is wrong. That is a thing that ought to be done and has not yet been done enough.

About avoiding amusements & noise, it depends a bit who one is. Is the temptation to be absorbed by them? Then avoid. Is the temptation to avoid them thro’ distaste when charity bids one to participate? Then participate. At least that’s how I see it.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS 192/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

1st December 1953.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

Many thanks for your kind letter of the 20th. November, which should have been answered sooner, but I am very behindhand, owing to the illness of my brother (nothing serious, and now happily over); but of course his absence always delays matters. He sends you all good wishes, and promises you a letter as soon as he has got himself ‘sorted out’. We both look forward with that schoolboy greediness which distinguishes the post-war Englishman, to the arrival of the little parcel, which we are sure will be of the standard which we have learnt to associate with the House of Gebbert. You shall indeed have a copy of the CHAIR, suitably autographed,226 and I only wish I could make you some better return for all your kindness to us.

I look forward to seeing the snapshot of the son and heir. So ignorant am I of all these matters, that I had always understood that all children were born with hair on their heads; apparently this is not the case? And that CM. beat fourteen other arrivals?

Life here flows on much as usual, with one important exception; we are having the most extraordinary ‘fall’ within living memory; believe it or not, last Sunday, 29th. November, down at Brighton, they had to dig the deck chairs out of winter storage to meet the demands of the crowds which wanted to sit and bask on the beach. Tell that to your millionaires who go to Florida at this time of the year! Your (I mean American) stock is high here at the moment, over your behaviour about the Bermuda conference; some journalist of genius sent over an excerpt from the American Press which said, that whilst entirely disbelieving in the utility of the performance, it must be held ‘because we must’nt run out on old Winnie’.227 We don’t think, any more than you, that the circus will accomplish anything, but this is the sort of small touch that counts in international relations.

Apropos of which, it seems a pity that our Queen could’nt have dropped in on America in the course of her tour; but I suppose international etiquette demands that, if she went there at all, it must be a full-dress state visit to Washington. Anyway I suppose a visit to the Republic of Panama is to all intents and purposes a visit to U.S.A.228

I am in the final agonies of producing a learned work for the Oxford Press, and very, very busy: so I hope you will excuse such a scanty letter.

With all best wishes to all three of you from us two,

yours ever,229

TO SIR STANLEY UNWIN (BOD): 230

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 4th 1953

Dear Mr. Unwin

I would willingly do all in my power to secure for Tolkien’s great book the recognition it deserves. Wd. the enclosed be any use? If not, tell me, and I will try again. I can’t tell you how much we think of your House for publishing it.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

It would be almost safe to say that no book like this has ever been written. If Ariosto rivalled it in invention (in fact he does not) he would still Jack its heroic seriousness. No imaginary world has been projected which is at once so multifarious and so true to its own inner laws; none so seemingly objective, so disinfected from the taint of an author’s merely individual psychology; none so relevant to the actual human situation yet so free from allegory. And what fine shading there is in the variations of style to meet the almost endless diversity of scenes and characters–comic, homely, epic, monstrous, or diabolic!

TO KATHARINE FARRER(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec. 4th 1953

Dear Mrs. Farrer

Yes, I know. That issue about the leonine form divides people sharply and you and I are on opposite sides of a fence.231

I too have got The Fellowship of the Ring and have gluttonously read two chapters instead of saving it all for the week-end. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it really succeeded (in selling, I mean)? It would inaugurate a new age. Dare we hope?

Yours sincerely

Jack Lewis

TO J. R R TOLKIEN (P):

[The Kilns]

Dec 7th 1953

Dear Tollers

I have been trying–like a boy with a bit of toffee–to take Vol. I slowly, to make it last, but appetite overmastered me and it’s now finished: far too short for me. The spell does not break. The love of Gimli232 and the departure from Lothlórien is still almost unbearable.233 What came out stronger at this reading than on any previous one was the gradual coming of the shadow–step by step–over Boromir.234

I wrote what I could to Unwin.235 Even if he and you approve my words, think twice before using them: I am certainly a much, and perhaps an increasingly, hated man whose name might do you more harm than good. In festina lente.236 All the best.

Yours

Jack

TO EDNA GREENE WATSON (BOD): TS 504/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

7th December 1953.

Dear Mrs. Watson,

How very kind indeed of you to send me such a nice Xmas present; for, though things are improving over here under Winston, we are still not exactly living in a land of milk and honey–cake in particular remaining something of a luxury. So your parcel comes in very apropos to ‘mend our cheer’ as the older writers would have put it.

In one way we are exceptionally lucky this year, and that is in having so far a freak winter. I am writing in an unwarmed room, temperature 60, though it is a dull, sunless day; and the Sunday before last, the crowds were out sun-bathing on Brighton beach! Yesterday it was reported on the wireless that the butter-cups are out in Switzerland, the tulips in Holland, and that wild strawberries are being gathered in Norway; whilst in Petrograd they are having what I suppose seems to them like a heat wave–temperature in the open, 41. I hope you too in America are benefiting by this postponement of winter; not that I, personally, think it very healthy, but no doubt the real winter is lurking not far away.

Weather apart, there is not much to report here. Term is just over, and I have finished a troublesome academic book, and look forward to my vacation. But, alas, at my time of life, vacations get shorter and shorter: though to be sure, so do terms. With all best wishes for a happy Christmas, and many thanks,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO R. B. GRIBBON (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec. 10th 1953

Dear Mr. Gribbon

Thanks for your letter of the 7th, and all good wishes to the readers of Lucretius.237

Harding has fought his way towards genuinely Christian Theism, but whether he has yet quite reached it is another matter.238 I think his ‘God’ could be said to ‘transcend’. Isn’t each being in his hierarchy related to the one below it rather as my consciousness is related to any obscure consciousness there may be in my particles. And ‘I’ am not related to them (I think) simply as a Pantheistic god is to finite beings: for I am something v. much more than their sum or even their organising principle. Of course H’s God is immanent in all things: but it is not the affirmation of immanence, but the denial of transcendence that constitutes Pantheism. In fact my main objection to Harding’s system wd. be a v. different one: that we are in it completely cut off from God. There can be no I-Thou relation between Him and us any more than between me and my particles. Memo: I said in the preface that I wasn’t at all sure whether his method of trying to restore reality to the universe wd. work. It was the mere attempt to do so which seemed to me so important and welcome.239

You’ll have fun with Lucretius. I looked into him the other day & came to the melancholy conclusion that I didn’t know so much Latin as I had done 30 years ago. With all good wishes.

Yours very sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W): 240

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 16th. 1953

Dear Miss Sayers,

Thank you for a really august card. I have spent several minutes doing the Paper Pilgrimage with the aid of the pen-knife point–dig- and it shall be opened. Not all the doors in my copy do actually open: but that admits (only too easily) of an allegorical interpretation.241

I see we have been in the pillory together along with company which I enjoy less than yours. Have you read Miss Nott yet?242 And should I? I had hoped she might send us all (as someone said) UN complimentary copies: for I’m an Ulster Scot and don’t like spending good siller243 on the lady. As for answering her (if one can) the trouble is that the people who read answers have hardly ever read the attack.

When may we expect the Purgatorio?244 It is perhaps my favourite part of the Comedy and I look forward very much to going up and round the terraces with your guidance. (By the way some of the paths on the Malvern hills are exactly like them.

I hope you are reading my brother’s Splendid Century. It is his first book, tho’ he is three years my senior, but he has been at the court of Louis XIV pretty well all his life. It seems to be going down well. I have got my huge 16th. c volume for the Oxford History of English Literature nearly off my chest now, and feel inclined never to do any work again as long as I live.

It seems very long since we met. Are you at all likely to be here in 1954? I hope so. In the meantime, all good wishes, all my duty,

yours ever

C. S. Lewis

Lewis invited Joy and her sons to The Kilns for a three-day visit, from 17 to 20 December. Renée Pierce had now divorced her husband, Claude, preparatory to marrying Bill Gresham.

TO PHYLLIDA (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 18th 53

Dear Phyllida

Thanks for your most interesting cards. How do you get the gold so good? Whenever I tried to use it, however golden it looked on the shell, it always looked only like rough brown on the paper. Is it that you have some trick with the brush that I never learned, or that gold paint is better now than when I was a boy? The ‘conversation-piece’ (I think that is what the art critics wd. call your group) is excellent and most interesting. If you hadn’t told me your Father was mixing putty I shd. have thought he was mixing colours on a palette, but otherwise everything explains itself. I never saw a family who all had such a likeness to their Mother.

I’m not quite sure what you meant about ‘silly adventure stories without any point’. If they are silly, then having a point won’t save them. But if they are good in themselves, and if by a ‘point’ you mean some truth about the real world wh. one can take out of the story, I’m not sure that I agree. At least, I think that looking for a ‘point’ in that sense may prevent one from getting the real effect of the story in itself–like listening too hard for the words in singing which isn’t meant to be listened to that way (like an anthem in a chorus). I’m not at all sure about all this, mind you: only thinking as I go along.

We have two American boys in the house at present, aged 8 and 61/2.245 Very nice. They seem to use much longer words than English boys of that age would: not showing off but just because they don’t seem to know the short words. But they haven’t as good table manners as English boys of the same sort would.

Well–all good wishes to you all for Christmas, and very many thanks.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

PS. Of course you’re right about the Narnian books being better than the tracts: at least, in the way a picture is better than a map.

TO LAURENCE HARWOOD (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 21st 1953

My dear Lawrence,

What luck now? I enclose a trifle for current expenses. Please tell your father how sorry I was I couldn’t have him for either of the two days he mentioned: we have had an American lady staying in the house with her two sons, eldest 91/2 Whew! But you have younger brothers, so you know what it is like. We didn’t: we do now. Very pleasant, but like surf bathing, leaves one rather breathless. Love to yourself and Sylvia and all.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

Millions of letters to write.

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 21st 53

My dear Ruth

Welcome to what Tolkien calls the Little Kingdom, at least to the marches of it. Its centre lies about Worminghall: see his Farmer Giles of Ham.246 I hope much happiness awaits you there. It will be interesting to see how soon you rusticate–grow slow-witted like us and believe that the streets of Thame (now your metropolis) are paved with gold and shiver delightfully at the thought of its mingled wickedness and splendour.

Warnie (short for Warren, for my mother’s mother was of that stock so we have ¼ of gentle blood in us the rest being peasant and bourgeois) and I are dazed: we have had an American lady staying in the house with her two sons aged 91/2 and 8. I now know what we celibates are shielded from. I will never laugh at parents again. Not that the boys weren’t a delight: but a delight like surf-bathing which leaves one breathless and aching. The energy, the tempo, is what kills. I have now perceived (what I always suspected from memories of our childhood) that the way to a child’s heart is quite simple: treat them with seriousness & ordinary civility–they ask no more. What they can’t stand (quite rightly) is the common adult assumption that everything they say shd. be twisted into a kind of jocularity. The mother (Mrs. Gresham) had rather a boom in USA in the entre-guerre as the poetess Joy Davidman: do you know her works?

This Vac. is pretty chock-a-block so far (oh if we could have Christmas without Xmas!) so that I rather hope than expect to knock on your door. Meanwhile, all greetings to you both. God bless the house, as we say in Ireland.

Yours

Jack

TO JOY GRESHAM (BOD):

Dec 22/53

Dear Joy–

As far as I can remember you were non-committal about Childhood’s End:247 I suppose you were afraid that you might raise my expectations too high and lead to disappointment. If that was your aim, it has succeeded, for I came to it expecting nothing in particular and have been thoroughly bowled over. It is quite out of range of the common space-and-time writers; away up near Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus and Wells’s First Men in the Moon.248 It is better than any of Stapleton’s.249 It hasn’t got Ray Bradbury’s delicacy, but then it has ten times his emotional power, and far more mythopoeia.

There is one bit of bad execution, I think: caps 7 and 8, where the author doesn’t seem to be at home. I mean, as a social picture it is flat and stiff, and all the gadgetry (for me) is a bore. But what there is on the credit side! It is rather like the effect of the Ring250–a self-riching work, harmony piling up on harmony, grandeur on grandeur, pity on pity. The first section, merely on the mystery of the Overlords, wd. be enough for most authors. Then you find this is only the background, and when you have worked up to the climax in chap 21, you find what seems to be an anti-climax and it slowly lifts itself to the utter climax. The first climax, pp 165-185 brought tears to my eyes. There has been nothing like it for years: partly for the actual writing–’She has left her toys behind but ours go hence with us’,251 or ‘The island rose to meet the dawn’,252 but partly (still more, in fact) because here we meet a modern author who understands that there may be things that have a higher claim than the survival or happiness of humanity: a man who cd. almost understand ‘He that hateth not father and mother’253 and certainly wd. understand the situation in Aeneid III between those who go on to Latium & those who stay in Sicily.254

We are almost brought up out of psyche into pneuma.255 I mean, his myth does that to us imaginatively. Of course his own thoughts about what that higher level might be are not, in our eyes, very new or very profound: but that doesn’t really make so much difference. (Though, by the way, it wd. have been better, even on purely literary grounds, to leave it in its mystery, to philosophise less.) After all, few authors’ glosses on their own myths are as good as the myths: unless, like Dante, they take the glosses from other men, real thinkers. The second climax, the long (not too long) drawn-out close is magnificent.

There is only one change (in conception) that I wd. want to make. It is a pity that he suggests a jealousy and a possible future revolt on the part of the Overlords. The motive is so ordinary that it cannot excite interest in itself, and as it is never going to be worked out the handling cannot compensate for the banality. How much better, how much more in tune with Clarke’s own imagined universe, if the Overlords were totally resigned, submissive yet erect in an eternal melancholy–like the great heroes and poets in Dante’s Limbo who live forever ‘in desire but not in hope’.256 But now one is starting to re-write the book…