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1950

During the spring of 1949 Lewis began dreaming of lions and by May 1949 he had written the first of the Chronicles of Narnia–The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This was hardly finished when he had the idea for the next story, Prince Caspian–or ‘A Horn in Narnia’ as it was first called. By the time this volume of letters opens Lewis was at work on yet another Narnian story, The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’, the manuscript of which would be ready for Roger Lancelyn Green¹ to read when he visited Lewis at the end of February 1950.²

TO JONATHAN FRANCIS ‘FRANK’ GOODRIDGE (P): ³

Magdalen College

Oxford

[1 January 1950]

There have been very few pupils in my 26 years’ experience as a tutor for whom I can speak so confidently as I can for Mr. Frank Goodrich.⁴ As a scholar he has quality which his actual degree did not at all represent. The year in which he sat for his Final was one of strange surprises for many tutors about many pupils: but apart from that, his failure to do himself justice can be explained by two factors.

(1.) He is really too conscientious a student, too determined to get to the bottom of every question, to make an ideal examinee: good at probing and not at all good at advertising: incapable of ‘bluff’.

(2.) He gave rather more time than he could afford to his duties as secretary of a philosophical club.⁵ I saw a good deal of him in that capacity and it was his Minutes which first convinced me that he had attributes quite out of the ordinary. He could condense, and slightly popularise, the arguments of speakers (often very erudite) with less loss than any man I have ever known.

This satisfies me that he will be a good teacher: he might very well turn out to be one of the great teachers. His personal character won my respect from the beginning and this respect steadily increased during the time he was with me. He is one of the most disinterested—I think I could say one of the most selfless—men I have ever met: and, in spite of his good humour and patience, which are unfailing, I should not like to be the boy who tried to ‘rag’ him. If I had a son of my own there is no one to whom I would entrust him so gladly as to Mr. Goodrich.

C. S. Lewis

Fellow & Tutor of Magdalen

TO GEORGE ROSTREVOR HAMILTON (BOD): ⁶

Magdalen College

Oxford

Jan 3./50

Dear Hamilton

O nodes cenaeque deum!,⁷ it was a glorious evening, and the underworld of that Hotel can claim as well as Pluto sunt altera nobis sideral.⁸ And now, to sweeten memory, firstly I find that Virgil does use planta⁹ and Owen¹⁰ accordingly owes me 2/6, and secondly the Masque.

They really were asses not to play it, for it is a lovely thing in a genre now infinitely difficult. For we have mostly lost the power (taken for granted by our ancestors) of fitting works of art into ceremonial occasions. In this you have succeeded and what I admire more than any particular moments, tho’ I admire many of those too, is the combination throughout of what is extremely local and English and fresh with what is classical or timeless. One loses a lot (as one should) by not seeing it actually performed, for then it would be a real ,¹¹ a death & resurrection rite with a most powerful effect. It is full of niceties: the three feminine endings that give the droning effect after ‘What does he say?’ on p. 5.–the ‘small change’ in your paraphrase of Aeschylus—the rhyme scheme on p. 7–the use of the ‘Voices’. But I think you were wrong to use lines (tho’ good) from Masefield¹² where you might have made as good of your own.

I’m not liking the new year much so far, but wish you very well in it. With many thanks.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (W):¹³ TS

REF.50/23.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

7th January 1950.

Dear Professor Starr,

We both thank you for your kind card, and wish you every happiness in 1950.

On Tuesday morning we hope to drink your health at the ‘Bird and Baby’: pity you can’t be there to join us!¹⁴

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis¹⁵

TO SARAH NEYIAN (T): ¹⁶

Magdalen College,

Oxford

9/1/50

My dear Sarah

Yes, I did indeed get the mats and was only waiting to be sure of the right address before acknowledging them. They were so like lino-cuts that if I weren’t such an unhandy and messy person I wd. have been tempted to ink them and try making a few prints. Thanks very much indeed.

I’m glad you like the Ballet lessons. I’m just back from a week end at Malvern and found an awful pile of letters awaiting me—so I am scribbling in haste. But I must tell you what I saw in a field—one young pig cross the field with a great big bundle of hay in its mouth and deliberately lay it down at the feet of an old pig. I could hardly believe my eyes. I’m sorry to say the old pig didn’t take the slightest notice. Perhaps it couldn’t believe its eyes either. Love to yourself and all,

Your affectionate

Godfather

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD): ¹⁷

Magdalen

9/1/50

Dear Miss Bodle,

Yes. Charles Williams often used the words ‘holy luck’.¹⁸ Compare Spenser ‘It chanced, Almighty God that chance did guide’.¹⁹ Bless you.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD): ²⁰

Magdalen College

Oxford

12/1/50

Dear Sister Penelope

The name of the graduate looks like KNIONAN, but this can hardly be right! It is embarrassing that as my own hand gets worse I also get worse at reading everyone else’s.

I am very sorry you have had no luck yet with the M.G.²¹ But many a book that afterwards succeeded has been rejected by several publishers.

I read Butterfield and gave it exactly the same mark as you; and am glad of your support, for most even of my Christian friends think it bad.²² All good wishes for St Bernard.²³

My book with Professor Tolkien—any book in collaboration with that great but dilatory and unmethodical man—is dated, I fear, to appear on the Greek Kalends!²⁴

I don’t quite know about those American veterans. Nearly all the books we shd. want to send are published in U.S.A. and there is a bad book famine in England.

Term begins on Sat. and there is a cruel mail today, so I am suffering incessant temptation to uncharitable thoughts at present: one of those black moods in which nearly all one’s friends seem to be selfish or even false. And how terrible that there shd. be even a kind of pleasure in thinking evil. A ‘mixed pleasure’ as Plato wd. say, like scratching?

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

Britain had been so weakened by the effects of the Second World War (1939-1945) that, despite American assistance, rationing was still in effect when Queen Elizabeth II came to the throne in 1952. Clothes rationing ended in 1949, but food continued to be rationed until 1954. For this reason many of Lewis’s friends in the United States, such as Edward A. Allen, were still sending him food parcels.

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W):²⁵ TS

REF.50/19.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

24th January 1950.

My dear Mr. Allen,

This is something like a New Year’s greeting! And I am most grateful to you for it. I had to look closely at the label to make sure that the gift was from you, for we are so bemused at the moment with high pressure election literature that I thought it might be from our own Mr. Strachey.²⁶ I don’t know whether it has appeared in your Press, but he has opened the government campaign here by saying how grateful he is to the public for their thanks for the ‘best Christmas in living memory’. The odd thing is that I can’t find anyone who told him that this was how we felt about the extra ounce of bacon or whatever it was that he gave us!

I hope your mother keeps well, and you also. Thanks to the photos you sent me. I picture you both always on a sea beach. But presumably you are now travelling on snow shoes.

With all best wishes and thanks

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W):²⁷ TS

RER50/81.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

30th January 1950.

Dear Miss Mathews,

I was very sorry to hear about the miserable fiasco of your New York holiday. ‘Flu itself I don’t mind so much, especially in its later stages when the temperature has gone down, but the getting back to normality afterwards is beastly. I hope that by this time you are over the ‘wet rag’ stage, and feeling yourself once more.

Need I say how much we look forward to the parcel which you so kindly promise? It sounds most exciting, and will be very welcome: because, whether it blows fair and warm politically or not, it is anything but fair and warm in the literal sense. I suspect that in California you are exempt from such a day as we are having here—frost, followed by rain, followed by frost—every side walk converted by delighted small boys into an improvised skating rink—splendid opportunities of giving the passers by a good laugh every time you venture out!

With all best wishes for your health, and many thanks,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD T. DELL (P):²⁸ TS

REF.50/79

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

30th January 1950.

Dear Mr. Dell,

I think we mean very nearly the same.²⁹ Evil is certainly not a ‘Thing’. But many states of affairs, or relations between things, are regrettable, ought not to have occurred, and ought to be removed. And ‘Evil’ is an elliptical symbol for this fact.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO SISTER MARYROSE (L): ³⁰

[January 1950]

I am sorry if I misunderstood your letter: and I think that you misunderstood mine. What I meant was that if I replied to your original question (why I am not a member of the Roman Church) I shd. have to write a v. long letter. It would of course be answerable: and your answer would be answerable by me…and so on. The resulting correspondence would certainly not, of course, be in excess of the importance of the subject: but haven’t you and I both probably more pressing duties? For a real correspondence on such a subject wd. be nearly a wholetime job. I thought we cd. both discuss the matter more usefully with people nearer at hand. Even the two letters which we have exchanged have already revealed the pitfalls of argument by letter. With all good wishes.

TO NICOLAS ZERNOV(BOD): ³¹

[Magdalen College]

3/2/50

Dear Zernov

Your news is a great shock to me. I will write to Spalding.³² It was a great pleasure to meet your wife the other night and altogether a splendid evening, as yours always are. Cd. you come & dine with me on Thurs. March 9? Do.

Yours

C.S.L.

TO MRS FRANK L. JONES (W):³³ TS

REE 50/18.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

7th February 1950.

My dear Mrs. Jones,

Many thanks for your long and interesting letter of the 24th of January. (‘And’ says my secretary-brother, ‘don’t forget to give her my grateful thanks for being one of the few people who quotes the number on your letter when she writes’).

Your husband may well be proud of his school chapel, a beautiful building, which–to pay a typically English compliment—would rank high amongst school chapels over here!

No indeed, there is no question of my not wanting you to send anything, though there are times when I am more than a little ashamed at the amount you do send. And I note with great pleasure what you say about the tea: also about specially marked parcels.

I stand appalled at the list of your activities. I thought myself a busy man, but…

Now for an attempt at answering some of your questions:–

(1) Why was Christ always talking over people’s heads?

Since all we know of his teachings is derived from the disciples and St. Paul, we are not in a position to say that they did finally misunderstand Him. With what other account of His teaching can we check theirs? That He was often temporarily over their heads, I agree. That is the way to get a class on, as every teacher knows.

(2) About God being Truth and Justice, and nevertheless creating this world.

I’m afraid I can’t add to what I said about this in the Problem of Pain.³⁴

(3) Why did God make most people stupid?

Have you any evidence that He did? Some people are stupid through their own choice–laziness, and even fear of the truth—so have made themselves stupid. Others, through bad education etc., which is the fault of other humans, not of God.

(4) Neurotic.

My dictionary defines neurotic as one ‘having disordered nerves’. This would often mean in effect that the patient, with little or no moral guilt, does as the result of his disease the same things which would imply great guilt if a person in health did them—e.g. acts of cowardice, ill temper etc. (We all make the distinction in ordinary life when we excuse someone for being peevish because he is very tired, and therefore temporarily in bad nervous health). But no doubt f[r]iends and even doctors often flatter healthy but wicked people by attributing to neurosis what is really just wickedness. There is a great temptation to excuse oneself on the same grounds!

(5) What is a soul?

I am. (This is the only possible answer: or expanded, ‘A soul is that which can say I am’).

With best wishes.

Yours sincerely.

C. S. Lewis

TO MR LAKE (T):

Magdalen College

Oxford

8/2/50

Dear Mr Lake

I think the process is: Planets are gods in ancient poetry—and Intelligences in Aristotle—angels are ‘gods’ in O.T.³⁵ and Milton–Cambridge Platonists (and Florentine Platonists) identify both Platonic daemons & ancient gods with Christian angels—why not accept the identification?³⁶–and incidentally try to rescue the Angels from the feminine & sentimental associations that have grown round them. See the learned note from the (non existent) Natvilcius in Cap I of Perelandra.³⁷

Yrs. sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO DAPHNE HARWOOD (BOD): ³⁸

Magdalen College

Oxford

20/2/50

Dear Daphne

You must have been bad if you thought last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday—or else you hold some Columban and pre-Augustinian view on the date of Easter. (Your Gudeman³⁹ will at a moment’s notice point out to you the passages in Bede which clear the whole thing up.)⁴⁰ I hope you’re well now? Bronchitis is nasty enough.

Fry is shattering. I’ve seen none and only read The Lady’s not for Burning.⁴¹ The funny parts were funny enough to make me laugh; as for the poetry–the wealth of real genius in the imagery is beyond hope. Almost too much, and sometimes rather splashed about than used. But, by gum, it’s a good fault and one we’d almost despaired of ever seeing again. Can it be—dare we hope—that the ghastly mumbling and whining period in which you and I have lived nearly all our lives, is really coming to an end? Shall we see gold and scarlet and flutes and trumpets come back?

John is doing more this term.⁴² How is Sylvia?⁴³ Give my love to Lawrence and all, including dear Woff.⁴⁴ And take care of yourself: let the young people work!

Yours sincerely

Jack L.

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD): ⁴⁵

Magdalen College

Oxford

21/2/50

Dear Green

Cd. you dine with me (7 p.m. smoking room) on Wed March 8th? I have several books to return and the typed MS of the Horn story⁴⁶ & MS of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

Ever since June 1947 when Warnie, suffering from acute alcoholic poisoning, was hospitalized in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, County Louth (see CL II, p. 787), his binges had become more frequent. When the brothers were younger Warnie was gregarious and Jack something of a recluse. As time went on Jack’s fame as a Christian apologist drove him to mingle with all kinds of people; Warnie, on the other hand, withdrew more and more into the company of books and a few friends. Alcohol gave him back, temporarily, the old gregariousness that was draining away. He was a binge-drinker, and if Jack could get him into either the Acland Nursing Home, Banbury Road, or Restholme, a private nursing home at 230 Woodstock Road run by Dorothy Watson, the bout was fairly short-lived. If, however, he slipped past his brother and reached Ireland, he usually ended up in the hospital at Drogheda, and he might be away for as long as six months. Despite Warnie’s efforts to overcome the problem, Jack was not successful in persuading him to join Alcoholics Anonymous. As time went on Warnie’s binges were of longer duration, and Jack was left to cope as best he could.

TO JILL FLEWETT (T): ⁴⁷

Magdalen College

Oxford

29/2/50

My dear June

W. is in a nursing home⁴⁸ at present—nothing serious, indeed he ought to be out now only the nurses have made such a domestic pet of him he can’t tear himself away—so I’ve been pretty busy letter writing. So sorry about yr. mother: please give her my duty.

Minto has at last allowed Bruce⁴⁹ to be euthanised. Don’t mention it if writing to her. She seems to miss him surprisingly little so there’s no good stirring the matter up. This has made an enormous difference to our lives–we feel like a balloon that has dropped half its ballast—the music room is clean! R.I.P. We’d both like to see you again. All the best.

Yours (in haste)

Jack

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT?⁵⁰

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sir,—

It cannot often happen that a scholar, writing to expose the corruption of a text, should himself at that very moment suffer inadvertently a corruption of the same sort; but it really looks as if something like this had happened to Professor Dover Wilson in his edition of Two Gentlemen (Cambridge, 1921).⁵¹ Here on page 103 (note on V iv 89-90) he rightly points out that which out of my neglect was never done⁵² is a ‘line of verse’, and adds: ‘The adapter is caught—in the act.’⁵³

But surely, on this principle, the evidence for an adapter in Professor Wilson’s own Notes is even stronger? Without turning a page we find:—

(1) On page 102.—‘Not free from “cuts”, is in the simple end-stopped verse which we associate with the youthful Shakespeare.’

(2) ibid.–‘This section is in quite another style.’

(3) ibid.–‘Strong medial pauses and—strange combinations!’ (The exclamation so obviously added for the metre, makes this example especially flagrant.)

(4) ibid.–‘In one of which we find a fossil line.’

(5) ibid.–‘Silence of Silvia, while events so vital’

(6) ibid.–‘Is virtually his own composition.’

(7) ibid.–‘The entry of the Duke and Thurio.’

(8) ibid.–‘May have been taken from a later portion.’

(9) ibid.–‘It may have been located in Verona.’ ‘We cannot tell. One of the minor problems.’

(10) ibid.–Page 103. ‘Clearly corrupt. Daniel proposed “discandied.”‘

(11) ibid.–‘The repetition in 1. 59.’

(12) ibid.–‘Through careless copying of the adapter.’

(13) ibid.–‘To mend the metre of these lines. The sense needs mending also.’ ‘73. short line.’ (Note here the omission of the article before short, clearly for the metre.)

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

RER50/81.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

9th March 1950.

My dear Miss Mathews,

You will no doubt be wondering—not angrily I’m sure, but sympathetically—why your two excellent parcels have gone unacknowledged.

The fact is that my secretary-brother chose the most inconvenient time of the term to retire to his bed and has only just ‘come to the surface’ again. While he was away I found my self very rushed, and my correspondence suffered accordingly.

I have so often tried to tell you how grateful I am for all your kindness that I find myself reduced to a simple ‘thank you’: but if the words are stale, the sentiment which prompts them is as fresh as ever.

Here we are enjoying the dubious delights of early English spring, and I often wonder what visiting Americans make of it: for they are already arriving in surprisingly large numbers considering the time of year. I can only suppose that they all come from Northern Alaska, and find our climate a nice change! If you have any friends who think of coming over, tell them that the English summer generally falls in the third week in June.

With many thanks and all my best wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WARHELD M. FIROR(BOD): ⁵⁴

Magdalen etc.

12/3/50

Dear Firor–

Well, term is over. And the election is over too, but you don’t want to hear about that:⁵⁵ except (which is the really remarkable thing) that despite the heavy poll I never knew an election pass with less apparent excitement. Perhaps this is because it was felt to be so important: it is not in the front line that War forms the incessant subject of conversation!

As for term, the last bit of it has been heavy for me with Scholarship Examinations. One answer is so puzzling that I wd. like to hand it on. Commenting on Hamlet’s words

Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unus’d,⁵⁶

one boy explained the first line as meaning ‘He who made the creation of man seem important by talking about it.’ Since this youth, needless to say, has no chance of a scholarship and therefore will not be summoned for an interview, we shall all go to our graves without knowing what he meant. What, do you think, is the Theology implied? My own vein of Irreverence (still, I fear, inexhausted) cannot help building up a picture: the Almighty feeling (and is one surprised?–) that Homo Sapiens could hardly be reckoned among His chefs d’oeuvre,⁵⁷ and wondering if a publicity campaign could mend matters.

Not, of course, that all the young men we have to examine are like this. At the other end of the scale comes the candidate for a mathematical Fellowship who said–and was understood by the other mathematician who was examining him, but by no one else in the room—‘I assume that All Stars are Trivially Embedded.’ Can you do that one? (Stars does not mean the things in the night sky, I’m told: nor even, which wd. make sense of another sort, film-stars).

But there is something about this endless examining, quite apart from the labour, which bothers me. It sets me wondering about the whole system under which you, as well as we, now live. Behind all these closely written sheets which I have to read every year, even behind the worst of them, lie hours of hard, long work. Even the bad candidates are doing their best and have been trained up to this ever since they went to school. And naturally enough: for in the Democracies now, as formerly in China under the mandarin system, success in competitive examinations is the only moyen de parvenir,⁵⁸ the road from elementary school to the better schools, and thence to college, and thence to the professions. (You still have a flourishing alternative route to desirable jobs through business which is largely disappearing with us: but it is at least equally competitive).

This of course is what Democratic education means—give them all an equal start and let the winners show their form. Hence Equality of Opportunity in practice means ruthless Competition during those very years which, I can’t help feeling, nature meant to be free and frolicsome. Can it be good, from the age of 10 to the age of 23, to be always preparing for an exam, and always knowing that your whole worldly future depends on it: and not only knowing it, but perpetually reminded of it by your parents and masters? Is this the way to breed a nation of people in psychological, moral, and spiritual health? (N.B. Boys are now taught to regard Ambition as a virtue. I think we shall find that up to the XVIIIth Century, and back into Pagan times, all moralists regarded it as a vice and dealt with it accordingly).

The old Inegalitarian societies had at least this in their favour, that at least some of their members (the eldest sons of gentlemen living on inherited land, and the agricultural labourers with no chance to rise and therefore no thought of rising) were often really outside the competitive struggle. I have an uneasy feeling that much of the manliness and toughness of the community depended on them. I’m not idealising such societies. The gentry were often bad, the peasantry often (perhaps nearly always) ill treated. I mean only that we haven’t solved the problem. Or, generalising this, I find the social problem insoluble. It is ‘How to extend to all the good life which unequal societies have (sometimes) produced for the few.’

For the good life as (I suppose) you and I conceive it—independence, calling one’s house one’s castle, saying ‘Mind your own business’ to impertinent people, resisting bribes and threats as a matter of course, culture, honour, courtesy, un-assertiveness, the ease and elbow-room of the mind—all this is no natural endowment of the animal Man, but the fine flower of a privileged class. And because it is so fine a flower it breeds, within the privileged class itself, a desire to equalise, a guilty conscience about their privileges. (At least I don’t think the revolt from below has often succeeded, or even got going, without this help from above).

But then, the moment you try to spread this good life you find yourself removing the very conditions of it both from the few and from the many, in other words for all. (The simplest case of all is when you say ‘Here is a beautiful solitude—let us bring charabanc-loads of the poor townsmen to enjoy it’: i.e. let it cease to be a beautiful solitude). The many, merely by being the many, annihilate the goals as soon as they reach them: as in this case of education that I started with.

Don’t imagine that I am constructing a concealed argument in favour of a return to the old order. I know that is not the solution. But what is? Or are we assuming that there must be a solution? Perhaps in a fallen world the social problem can in fact never be solved and we must take more seriously—what all Christians admit in theory–that our home is elsewhere.

Writing to you, as I do, quite irregularly and dealing with whatever happens to be uppermost in my mind at the moment, I feel I am in great danger of repeating myself. Does the same thing always ‘happen to be uppermost’? In other words, have I written this identical letter before? I hope not.

Crocus, primrose, daffodil have all appeared now: almond blossom and catkins too: but no leaves on trees yet. And there’s a Firor Ham in the refrigerator—I’ve never spelled that word before and have my doubts. God bless you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

4/4/50

My dear Roger

Thanks v. much for the blurb:⁵⁹ I shall send it to Bles⁶⁰ today. It seems excellent to me, but like you I don’t really understand Blurbology.