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

Hero & Leander 74 has no Original in the strict sense. The Greek poem on the subject is late, rather charmingly precious, and was falsely attributed to the primeval and mythical Musaeus: the real author is unknown—some Alexandrian, I think. But neither the Marlovian nor the Chapmanic part is anything like a translation—not so close to pseudo-Musaeus as Tennyson is to Malory.

Have you read Andrew Young’s Into Hades, 75 and what do you think of it. I found the content absorbing and the images like all his, simply enchanting (There’s a bit about reflected water-drops from a raised oar rushing up to meet the real water drops—lovely!) but my ear was a bit unsatisfied. I believe ‘Blank Verse’, unrhymed five footers, is not a metre to be written loosely. I think the unrhymed Alexandrine, written without a break at the 6th syllable wd. be far better: e.g.

I know far less of spiders than that poetess Who (like the lady in Comus in the perilous wood) Can study nature’s infamies with secure heart …

The third line is here the best: one wants plenty of trisyllables to leap across the threatened medial pause. Try a few. Commending me to you in the lowliest wise that I can or may.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF.52/28.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

19th April 1952.

My dear Allen,

I got back today from a delightful three days break in the country, just a little dissatisfied to be at my desk again, and therefore just in the mood for the welcome fillip which your admirable parcel administered. You must by this time be as tired of hearing C.S.L. on the English food situation as I am tired of enduring it: so I will say no more than that all these good things will be a wonderful help at the house, and thank you once again for your kindness.

I have been stopping with an ex-pupil, now a master at my old school, Malvern: 76 a pleasant little town, about sixty miles from here, lying under the foot of a four miles range of hills, two thousand feet high, in the Severn valley. Of course this is nothing much in the way of height, but they rise so abruptly from the level that one gets the effect of miniature mountains; and there is splendid air and exercise to be had in tramping them. To add to the joy, our curious climate has suddenly decided to give us an advance instalment of summer—at least one hopes it is only an instalment and not the summer. It was 75 degrees yesterday, and as hot today; all the women in summer frocks and so forth. Malvern town is a perfect and melancholy example of the change which has come over this country since my schooldays; then, it was a town of large ugly, comfortable Victorian houses, designed to be run by four or five servants apiece. The same houses are still there, but at least seven out of every ten are now either schools, offices, or boarding houses.

I occasionally glance at the news of your Presidential elections with that respectful bewilderment with which one regards another nation’s domestic affairs. To us, the question naturally presents itself from the viewpoint of which candidate will be most sympathetic to our troubles. Most people here seem to hope for Eisenhower, and are most afraid of Taft: who, rightly or wrongly, seems to have the reputation of being the old style Isolationist. 77 It is being said that if he is returned, his foreign policy will be that America should be defended in America, and not in Europe. But I suspect that this must be a crude exaggeration.

I hope Mrs. Allen keeps well: please remember me very kindly to her. Do you both propose to go to the seaside this year? If all goes well, I shall be in Eire for a fortnight in August, with daily bathing: not the best sort of bathing, but a sight better than none at all. For, being on a bay, there are practically no waves; and where the sea is perpetually calm, I would just as soon, indeed sooner, bathe in a river.

With all best wishes and many thanks to you both, from us both,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO DELMAR BANNER (W): 78 TS

REF.52/196

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29th April 1952.

My dear Banner,

Thanks for yours of yesterday. But in the words of the immortal Jeeves to Bertie Wooster, ‘I fear, Sir, I am unable to recede from my position.’ 79

Yes indeed, I hope to visit your country before I die; 80 but I have many calls upon my time, and my own Ireland generally lures me to it when I can take a holiday.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

The knowledge that I could (liceret mihi ) 81 advise is no use because I know I couldn’t (non possem). 82

With the growing fame of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Lewis was invited to address the Library Association during their Bournemouth conference, held between 29 April and 2 May. On 29 April he read a paper entitled ‘On Three Ways of Writing for Children’. 83

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

May 1/52

I think the Bournemouth Lecture was a success. One librarian said I had almost converted him to fairy-tales, he having hitherto taken the ‘real life’ stuff for granted.

Two librariennes said The Luck of the Lynns was in much demand and one praised The Wonderful Stranger. 84 I added that some of your unpublished & more ‘faerian’ books were even better. You were spoken of with much respect.

J.

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

May 5th 1952

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Thank you for your cheery letter and the delightful enclosures. I’ve seldom seen better photos of children. And the landscape lures one into it. I long to be tramping over those wooded—or, what is better, half wooded hills. I’m as sensitive as a German to the spell of das Feme 85 and all that.

About the high-low quarrels in the Church, whatever the merits of the dispute are, the ‘heat’ is simply and solely Sin, and I think parsons ought to preach on it from that angle.

By the way, the ‘conversation-piece’ by Paul & Mini is really excellent. I hope you will all go on having a lovely time. God bless you all.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W): TS

REF.52/205.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

6th May 1952.

Dear Mrs. Berners-Price,

Many thanks for your letter of the 4th. This is most kind of you, and I will very gladly accept your hospitality for the night of Wednesday 7th, tomorrow; 86 I should like to stop over Thursday too, but I fear that will be impossible. Indeed nothing but the Majesty of the Law would have got me out of Oxford for one night at the present moment. I come by a train which reaches Ramsgate at 6.8 p.m.

Yours gratefully,

C. S. Lewis

(modern blotting paper!) 87

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT: 88

Sir,–

The authorship of The Sheepheards Slumber (No. 133 in Englands Helicon , beginning ‘In Pescod time, when Hound to Home’) is not stated in any edition that I have been able to consult. The poem will be found in A pleasaunte Laborinth called Churchyardes Chance etc. London. Ihon Kyngston 1580. It is there entitled A matter of fonde Cupid, and vain Venus .

C. S. Lewis

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

May 9th 1952

Dear Mrs Berners Price

Thanks to you and your husband the trial now looms so small in the total adventure that I feel more like a man back from a holiday than a witness released from the box: not that it was a box, neither, being more like a nursery fender.