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

I also have just had ‘flu or I’d write more. Love to all.

Your affectionate Godfather,

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen etc

31/1/51

My dear Arthur

Minto died a fortnight ago. Please pray for her soul.

Wd. it suit you if I arrived at your local inn on Sat. March 31st and left on Mon. April 16th? Can you let me know by return? And also if the inn cd. have me? 19 If they’re fed up with my choppings & changings you can truly tell them that my circumstances are wholly changed. God bless you.

Yours

Jack

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD): 20

Magdalen College

Oxford

31/1/51

My dear Roger

What two nights can you come to me? I prefer not a week end if you can possibly manage it. I suggest Feb 28 & 29th. (Feb 13, 20 & March 2nd no good). I miss you v. much. Love & duty to all of you.

Yours

Jack

TO MRS HALMBACHER(WHL):

Magdalen College,

January 1951

Dear Mrs Halmbacher

How very kind of you. This is absolutely the present I wanted, for the nuisance and waste of time of finding that one has’nt got an envelope at a critical moment is serious…

We are all chuckling over a certain West of England resort which is I’m told circulating the American tourist agencies to this effect–‘When you come to England come straight to—. We guarantee that we are taking absolutely no part in the Festival of Britain.’ 21

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

7/2/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

First, I must apologise for not having acknowledged Woodbridge on Nature. 22 It arrived safely: many thanks. I have not read it yet but it is on the waiting list. (You will understand that I am never in the position of looking for a book to read, but nearly always looking for time in which to read books!)

If ‘planning’ is taken in the literal sense of thinking before one acts and acting on what one has thought out to the best of one’s ability, then of course planning is simply the traditional virtue of Prudence and not only compatible with, but demanded by, Christian ethics. But if the word is used (as I think you use it) to mean some particular politico-social programme, such as that of the present British Govt, then one cd. only say after examining that programme in detail. I don’t think I have studied it enough to do that. As for the ‘planning’ involved in your social work I am of course even less qualified.

It is certainly not wrong to try to remove the natural consequences of sin provided the means by which you remove them are not in themselves another sin. (E.g. it is merciful and Christian to remove the natural consequences of fornication by giving the girl a bed in a maternity ward and providing for the child’s keep and education, but wrong to remove them by abortion or infanticide). Perhaps the enclosed article (I don’t want it back) will make the point clearer.

Where benevolent planning, armed with political or economic power, can become wicked is when it tramples on people’s rights for the sake of their good.

Your letter gave me great pleasure: you are apparently on the right road. With all blessings.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

On 8 February 1951 there was a vote for the Professor of Poetry by the MAs of Oxford University. C. S. Lewis was running against Cecil Day-Lewis. 23 Warnie Lewis wrote in his diary that evening: ‘While we were waiting to dine at the Royal Oxford…came the bad news that [Jack] had been defeated by C. Day Lewis for the Poetry Chair, by 194 votes to 173.J took it astonishingly well, much better than his backers.’ 24

TO SEYMOUR SPENCER (P): 25

Magdalen etc.

28/2/51

Dear Doctor Spencer

Thanks v. much for the bit from Fromm. 26

I enclose an offprint (I don’t want it back) from the Australian Twentieth Century wh. I hope makes my point clear. 27 Quote directly or indirectly from this at pleasure. I look forward to seeing yr. paper in the Month and wd. be happy to read the typescript if you think I can be of any help.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ‘MRS LOCKLEY ( L ): 28

[Magdalen College]

5 March 1951

How right you are: the great thing is to stop thinking about happiness. Indeed the best thing about happiness itself is that it liberates you from thinking about happiness—as the greatest pleasure that money can give us is to make it unnecessary to think about money. And one sees why we have to be taught the ‘not thinking’ when we lack as well as when we have. And I’m sure that, as you say, you will ‘get through somehow in the end’.

Here is one of the fruits of unhappiness: that it forces us to think of life as something to go through . And out at the other end. If only we could steadfastly do that while we are happy, I suppose we shd. need no misfortunes. It is hard on God really. To how few of us He dare send happiness because He knows we will forget Him if He gave us any sort of nice things for the moment…

I do get that sudden feeling that the whole thing is hocus pocus and it now worries me hardly at all. Surely the mechanism is quite simple? Sceptical, incredulous, materialistic ruts have been deeply engraved in our thought, perhaps even in our physical brains by all our earlier lives. At the slightest jerk our thought will flow down those old ruts. And notice when the jerks come. Usually at the precise moment when we might receive Grace. And if you were a devil would you not give the jerk just at those moments? I think that all Christians have found that he is v. active near the altar or on the eve of conversion: worldly anxieties, physical discomforts, lascivious fancies, doubt, are often poured in at such junctures…But the Grace is not frustrated. One gets more by pressing steadily on through these interruptions than on occasions when all goes smoothly…

I am glad you all liked ‘The Lion’. A number of mothers, and still more, schoolmistresses, have decided that it is likely to frighten children, so it is not selling very well. But the real children like it, and I am astonished how some very young ones seem to understand it. I think it frightens some adults, but very few children…

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

6/3/51

My dear Roger

(Of course, yes: I thought I had asked you to do so). You are quite right about a wood fire. 29 Wood keeps on glowing red again in the places you have already extinguished—phoenix-like. Even the large webbed feet of a marsh-wiggle couldn’t do it. Yet it must be a flat hearth, I think. Does peat go out easily by treading? As an Irishman I ought to know, but don’t. I think it will have to [be] a coal fire on a flat hearth. After all, Underland might well use coal, whereas wood or charcoal wd. have to be imported.

I finished the Antigeos book. 30 There are two and only two, good ideas in it: the (supposed) ‘fog’ on the voyage and the great tidal waves on the Antigosian sea. All else is as dull as ditchwater: a flat, featureless, landscape and deadly municipal restaurants. The inhabitants are less interesting than any other-worlders I have yet met.

I enjoyed our biduum 31 or pair-o’-days v. much. Love to both.

Yours

Jack

TO RUTH PITTER (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

17/3/51

Dear Miss Pitter

I hope you haven’t thought I was being such a brute beast as to obey your ‘Don’t write’. I was more innocently employed in having my third dose of influenza this year–or rather, now that I look at the date of your letter, it must have been my second and third, for the flash of daylight between the two tunnels was almost too short to notice.