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

C. S. Lewis

TO PHYLLIDA (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

19/9/53

Dear Phyllida

I feel as one does when after ‘showing up’ one’s work one realises one has made the very same mistake one got into a row for last week! I mean, after sending off the book, I read it myself and found ‘Kids’ again twice. I really will take care not to do it again. The earlier part of Rilian’s story, told by the owl, was meant to sound further-off and more like an ordinary fairy-tale so as to keep it different from the part where I get on to telling it myself. I think the idea of making some difference is right: but of course what matters in books is not so much the ideas as how you actually carry them out.

All good wishes and love to both.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 1st 1953

Dear Ruth,

Rachel has been ready for a long time: you know I am of the generation who was brought up to hold that the initiative must come from you. 198

Long Crendon–long since endeared to me because Owen Barfield used to live there–will now have a second good association. I shall be among the first etc–but this sounds rather like Mr. Collins! 199 Warnie joins me in our duties and warm welcome to these parts. It is, as you have seen, a lovely village.

Yours in all service

Jack Lewis

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 3. 53

Dear Nell

My correspondence has lately been in much the same state as yours: that is, on coming back from a holiday in Ireland I found about 60 letters to deal with.

I had a lovely time over there: the best part in Donegal, all Atlantic breakers & golden sand and peat and heather and donkeys and mountains and (what is most unusual there) a heat wave and cloudless skies. Walks were much interrupted by blackberries: so big and juicy, and sweet that you just couldn’t pass without picking them. Some funny hotels, though. One has often found bathrooms with no hot water but I found one with no cold! You’ve no idea how tired one gets waiting for a bath to cool. In fact, with all the steam round you, it really means having a Turkish bath before the ordinary one!

I’m delighted to learn of your good year: how cosmopolitan you have become! Also thanks for telling me about Penelope and the books: give her my love.

You were a shrew to come so near without looking me up–and then, God bless my soul, to expect me to go to you! I’ll try one of these days all the same: it’s too nice to miss. I agree about prison–at least for Mrs. Hooker. She has so often been there, for similar offences, that it ought to be quite clear the treatment doesn’t work. Have you been having, like us, the most exquisite autumn? Love to Alan & yourself.

Yours

Jack

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

3/10/53

Dear Mrs Van Deusen

I was extremely glad to get your letter. I was beginning to feel that my own had been presumptuous and intolerable and had been praying not that it might do good but that it might not do harm. Whether I was right or wrong, you came out of it with flying colours: if few can give good advice, fewer still can hear with patience advice either good or bad.

About your Project (it was, wasn’t it, for the founding of a sort of rest-home where people in psychological difficulties could get Christian advice, sympathy, and, if necessary, treatment?), the whole thing–as with most conceptions either practical or literary–turns on the execution. All depends on the quality of the individual helpers. I suspect you will find them only by what seems chance but is really an answer to prayer. No ‘machinery’ of committees and selection & references, however well devised, will do it, I imagine. And perhaps it is just by your discovering, or failing to discover, the right people, that God will show you whether He wishes you to do this or not (Beware here of my unsanguine temper, more tempted to sloth than to precipitance, and ready to despond: take my advice always with a grain of salt).

It is hard, when difficulties arise to know whether one is meant to overcome them or whether they are signs that one is on the wrong track. I suppose the deeper one’s own life of prayer and sacraments the more trustworthy one’s judgement will be.

You ‘get me where I live’ about Van’s Aunt. I have been in v. close contact with a case like that. It is harrowing. My doctor (a v. serious Christian) kept on reminding me that 50 much of an old person’s speech & behaviour must really be treated as a medical not a spiritual fact: that, as the organism decays, the true state of the soul can less and less express itself thro’ it. So that things may be neither so miserable (nor so wicked, we must sometimes add) as they seem. I sometimes wonder whether the incarnation of the soul is not gradual at both ends?-i.e. not fully there yet in infancy and no longer fully there in old age.

The first syllable of Donegal rhymes with FUN, the last with ALL, there are 3, and the accent is on the last-Dun-i-Gaúl. Blessings on all of you.

Yours (most relieved)

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Oct 6/53

My dear Arthur

I have ordered Blackwells to send you a copy of Barfield’s (‘G. A. L. Burgeon’s’) book. 200

I enclose one wh. I found worth reading but don’t want to keep. If you don’t like it, pass it on to someone else. You’ll agree with the author about Noise! I think you’ll find in him an approach to Christianity wh. you haven’t v. much met yet & wh. is worth knowing about; it is fairly widely spread here. Of course parts of it are too explicitly R.C. for us but a lot of common ground remains.

Here are some C. M. Yonge titles, all good books: The Daisy Chain and its sequel The Trial; The Pillars of the House; The Three Brides; The Two Sides of the Shield; Dynevor Terrace . Not so good (but W. differs from me) is Nutty’s Father. 201

I wish you had enjoyed our holiday as much as I did! But I expect you’re enjoying yourself all the more now. All blessings.

Yours

Jack

TO JOHN RICHARDS (BOD): 202 TS

449/53.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

13th October 1953.

Dear Mr. Richards,

Thank you for your kind and encouraging letter of the 11th. Tolkien’s great romance, The Lord of the Rings , of which the first volume will soon be published, just skirts the theme of the True West. You’ll find it immensely worth reading on other accounts as well.

Yours sincerely,

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.