Clive Lewis - Collected Letters Volume Three - Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963

The other side of the picture is the crushing expense—ten guineas a week wh. is well over £500 a year. (What on earth I shall do if poor Minto is still alive nine years hence when I have to retire, I can’t imagine.) The order of the day thus becomes for me stringent economy and such things as a holiday in Ireland are fantastically out of the question. So cancel all. I hardly know how I feel—relief, pity, hope, terror, & bewilderment have me in a whirl. I have the jitters! God bless you. Pray for me.

Yours

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

[Magdalen College]

May 6/50

My dear Arthur

Thanks for your wise and kind letter. Of course you’re perfectly right and I do try to ‘consider the lilies of the field’. 93 Nor do I doubt (with my reason: my nerves do not always obey it!) that all is sent in love and will be for all our goods if we have grace to use it aright. And thanks too for your immensely generous offer. I can’t accept it. She is miserable enough without being deprived of my daily visits. When you and I are meant to meet we shall.

God bless you.

Yours

Jack

TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD): 94

[The Kins]

22/5/50

My dear Cecil

I had taken it for granted that you wd. hardly be able to come with Owen: and also that you wd. come if, after all, it shd. be possible. In utrumque paratus. 95

It is the apparent strength of my craft and the apparent lightness of yours that make me so vividly aware of the stout captain in the one 96 and the mere Bellman (see Hunting of Snark) in the other. 97 One of the bye-products of your news 98 was to fill me with shame at the rattled condition in which I then was about troubles quite nugatory compared with yours.

My hand (such as it is and for so far as it can be) is always in yours and Daphne’s. It is terrible to think (and yet how did we ever forget it) that unless in rare cases of simultaneous accident, every marriage ends in something like this.

God bless you all.

Yours

Jack

TO HAROLD GILES DIXEY (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

23/5/50

Dear Mr. Dixey

Thanks for the trouble you took to tell me you liked the Alcaics. 99 In a like case I am afraid I shd. have said: ‘I’ll write to that fellow’ and wouldn’t have done it!

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis (= N.W.)

Sheppard’s pictures of paperchases etc. were not at all like my memories of joy in youth! 100

TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

June 5/50

My dear Cecil

You know about that Trust of mine wh. Owen calls the Agapargyro-meter? 101 If not, v. [ide] the Ramsden chapter in This Ever Diverse Pair. 102 You must be incurring a good many unusual expenses at present: and there may be other—alleviations—wh. you wd. like to incur for Daphne. Will you please write to Owen (he signs the cheques, not I) for any sums you want? The fund is in a most flourishing condition and there is no reason to stint yourself. You understand that nothing you draw impoverishes me, for all the money in that fund is already given away from me, tho’ the question ‘To whom?’ is answered at my direction from time to time.

We have so ruined the language that it wd. mean nothing if I said it ‘would be a pleasure’. But reverse the positions and yr. imagination will show you how very truly you wd. say, in my place, ‘it wd. be a relief . God bless you both: you are not often out of my mind.

Yours

Jack

TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

9/6/50

My dear Cecil

Good. Dip and spare not. 103 I can indeed imagine the heart-rending pathos of this increasing hope: and have often wondered whether our preference (in art) for the tragic over the pathetic is not partly due to cowardice—that the pathetic is unbearable. Still, one’s past agonies of pity and tenderness don’t fester and corrode in memory as their opposites would.

Still love to both: I wish it were of better quality—I am a hard, cold, black man inside and in my life have not wept enough.

Yours

Jack

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF.50/19.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

10th June 1950.

My dear Mr. Allen,

The precious parcel which your mother mentioned in her last letter has come in safely, and has turned us into capitalists of the richest type. I don’t suppose there is another home in Oxford which contains this fabulous quantity of sugar. Why there should be a shortage of sugar in England is to me a complete mystery: we grow it within the Empire, and at the moment are actually refusing sugar from the West Indies (or so at least the papers say). But who can understand the methods of a government?

I don’t remember ever noticing before, the words Brightwood Sta . on your mailing stamp, and have been idly wondering what they mean. With us Sta . is the usual abbreviation for Railway Station, and I thought it might stand for that: but my travelled brother assures me that Depot is the American for railway station.

Your blue suit, looking uncommonly smart, is sauntering round Oxford on the person of the aforesaid brother, and meets with much admiration in its walks. It also visited Ireland last year, where it tramped several scores of miles and very nearly went bathing one rough day: so you may also consider yourself as having had a good look round these islands by proxy.

We are just emerging from a heat wave, and very unpleasant it was: sent us by you I think, and the first American gift for which I have not been grateful. I am not and never will be a hot weather man—having been reared in the north of Ireland, by the sea, where fifty degrees is a cold day, and seventy a very hot one. Part of the trouble is that we have no apparatus over here for dealing with hot weather—fans, plentiful ice etc. Lecturing and tutoring with the thermometer high in the eighties is ‘not my cup of tea’.

With all best wishes to you both for a happy summer,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO STELLA ALDWINCKLE (W): 104

Magdalen College

Oxford

12/6/50

Dear Miss Aldwinckle

If I had carte blanche I should put up the following programme for next term 105 –

1. The Concept of Mind by Ryle 106 or a disciple: answered by H. H. Price. 107

2. The Concept of Man by a Sartrian: 108 answered by Sheed 109 or Christopher Dawson. 110

3. The Mystical Approach by someone of the Heard 111 or Huxley type: 112 ans. by Fr. Gleason? 113

4. Why I believe in God by Miss Anscombe (is that how you spell it?): 114 ans. by?

5. Pagan Christs by an Anthropologist: ans. by C. Hardie. 115

6. The Historical value of the N.T. 116 by Dr. Farrer: 117 ans. by?

7. Faith & Experience by Mr. Mitchell: 118 ans. by?

8. Religious Language by Prof. Ayer: 119 ans. by Owen Barfield.

I shd. press hard for No. 4. The lady is quite right to refute what she thinks bad theistic arguments, but does this not almost oblige her as a Christian to find good ones in their place: having obliterated me as an Apologist ought she not to succeed me? 120

I am v. sorry I can’t attend the meeting. The point I shd. make if I were there is that we must not be pre-occupied with novelty. Each generation of undergraduates needs to hear a fair number of the arguments we’ve had already.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

P.S. Does Dorothy Emmet ever read papers? 121

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS