Letters of C. S. Lewis

by C. S. Lewis

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  9 October [1919]

  Once again, in the words of the immortals, we have resumed our round of steady work, relieved and sweetened by hearty play. I would have written earlier but I have been rather incapacitated by a bite from a playful cat—merely a scratch at the end of my forefinger, but enough for a while to prevent one laying it to a pen with any comfort. It is now alright.

  I was sorry to see the other day news of our friend Heineman’s sudden death. The papers have been so covering him with eulogy since he went that I begin to feel glad I met him, if only for once—Vergilium vidi tantum!57 In this case however I think the virtues are not wholly of the tombstone nature: a great publisher is really something more than a mere machine for making money: he has opportunities for doing things for the best of motives, and if one looks round most of our English houses, I think he avails himself of them as well as anyone can expect. I always put up a fight for the tribe of publishers here where so many young men with manuscripts have nothing too bad to say of them . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  Postmark: 20 October 1919

  I had already seen about the death of Cousin Quartus in the Times before I got your telegram.58 For this I suppose one should have been prepared, and indeed for himself, poor man, it was no tragedy. Yet I had come to think of his always being there: it will be a sad thing to go to Glenmachan now. As far back as I can remember he has always had a big place in our life—always the same kindly, courteous old gentleman. I am of course writing to Cousin Mary, although I think such letters are of little use. There is a great deal that we could all say, and say honestly, but it usually sounds conventional on paper . . .

  As regards the other matter of which you spoke in your letters, I must ask you to believe that it would have been much easier for me to have left those things unsaid. They were as painful to me as they were for you. Yet, though I have many things to blame myself for, I should blame myself still more if I had tried to establish the relations you refer to by any other means than that of saying frankly what I thought. I did not speak in anger; still less for the purpose of giving pain. But I am sure you will agree with me that the confidence and affection which we both desire are more likely to be restored by honest effort on both sides and toleration—such as is always necessary between imperfect human creatures—than by any answer of mine which was not perfectly sincere . . .

  1920–1929

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  Postmark: 4 February 1920

  I am preparing to wait upon my great aunt Warren this afternoon, with transports as moderate as those of the Colonel. I think this particular form of introducing strangers by letter, on the theory that blood is thicker than water (‘and a good deal nastier’ as someone added) is one of the most irritating of social amenities. It always reminds me of two hostile children being shoved into a room and told to ‘have a nice game’ together . . .

  I am inclined to agree with you—and Mrs Ward—about the lack of charm in Wells: but there are other qualities as important, if less delightful. I am now reading Lavengro59 at breakfast every morning and should like it very much if one could cut out the anti-Catholic propaganda . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from 22 Old Cleve, Washford, Somerset

  4 April 1920

  I am glad to be able to begin with a bit of good news. I did get a First [in Honour Mods] after all. Unfortunately that is almost all I can tell you, as the names in each class are given only in alphabetical order and I can see no possibility of finding out places or marks.

  Now as to our movements: as this is the shortest vac., and also as I felt in need of some ‘refresher’ I thought it a good opportunity of paying off an engagement with a man who has been asking me for some time to go and ‘walk’ with him. We are at present at this tiny little village in a perfectly ideal cottage (which is, so to speak, his people’s Teigh-na-mara) from which base we shall set out when the weather clears.60

  We are quite alone and live an idyllic life on eggs, bully beef and—divine treasure—an excellent ham which Aunt Lily very opportunely sent. The country is delightful, consisting of high moors with charming valleys full of orchards between them, and everything is a mass of white blossom. It is on the borders of Somerset and Devon. Our address will of course be moveable but letters sent here will reach me after some delay. I am sorry to desert you for the present, but it had to be polished off sooner or later.

  I am just getting over a rather tiresome cough and cold and am beginning to feel much better than I have done for a long time. I have brought Waverley61 to clean out my mind—there is great comfort in these solid old books . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from Washford

  11 April 1920

  I had quite forgotten about Aunt Warren. She must be pretty old, and dresses (with cap and white collar) in a style which makes her look rather more so. At the same time there is nothing senile in her conversation or manner. We talked chiefly about Glenmachan and Irish politics. The only one of ‘the girls’ present was Daisy, who is, I suppose, over forty. She struck me as being ecclesiastical in a high degree: for instance from her point of view the chief argument in favour of expelling the Turks from Europe was ‘that it would reestablish the Patriarch at Constantinople and thus create a balance to the Papacy’. After the Armenian massacres, not to mention the war, THAT would hardly have appeared to me—nor to you I presume—the most important reason. There was a very attractive child whose parents are in India: but I like the old lady the best of the three.

  As you see, we have not yet moved: indeed the weather has not encouraged us to set out, though it has not prevented us from a great deal of walking. It is more beautiful here almost than any place I have ever seen—whether in the valleys full of orchards or up on the big heathery hills from which one looks down on the sea and the Welsh coast away on the horizon.

  You need not have any fears about our cuisine here. Remember we are almost in Devon and the clotted cream of the country is a host in itself: also—shades of Oldie—the real ‘Deevonshire’ cider in every thatched and sanded pub.62

  A few miles away is a little fishing town called Watchet, which saw at least one interesting scene in its obscure history: it was here that Coleridge and the Wordsworths slept (or ‘lay’ as they would have said) on the first night of their walking tour. During that afternoon the germ of the Ancient Mariner occurred in conversation and in the inn at Watchet the first lines were jotted down . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  1 May 1920

  I have two tutors now that I am doing ‘Greats’, one for history and one for philosophy. Of course I am sorry to have parted brass rags with old Poynton: the other two are much younger men, but seem quite nice.63 We go to the philosophy one in pairs: then one of us reads an essay and all three discuss it. I wish you could hear the ‘crack’, it is very amusing. Luckily I find that my previous dabbling in the subject stands me in good stead and for some time I shall have only to go over more carefully ground through which I have already meandered on my own.

  I expect that what you feel about travel would be endorsed by a great many other people of your own age, who, as you say, have never really wanted a shilling in their lives. As far as I can see it is only the few who can do it without the least sacrifice who bother to see the world at all: the majority will not give up anything for it and would sooner afford a car to go round Stangford on, than see Greece or Cathay—if there really is a Cathay. One is amazed at the resolution of a real traveller like Herodotus, whom I am reading at present: knowing apparently no language but his own and relying on merchant caravans and dragomans with a smattering of Greek, he had yet penetrated to Babylon and seen the hanging gardens and the temple of Bel-Baal I suppose—and up the Nile as far as Elephantine where there were rumours of the land of dwarfs beyond—the Pygmies of course. Or Marco Polo—whom you should read: books of travel are a great resource.


  I can’t understand the Irish news at all. One of the most curious things is the rapprochement which seems probable between English Trades Unionism and Sinn Fein. I was always confident that the religious differences, the odium theologicum would prevent a junction between the two. If they really do work together I think it is all up for England and Ireland . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  6 June 1920

  I thought I had said something about the Anthology. It is being got up as a kind of counterblast to the ruling literary fashion here, which consists in the tendencies called ‘Vorticist’. Vorticist poems are usually in vers libre (which means they are printed like verse, but neither rhyme nor scan, a line ending wherever you like). Some of them are clever, the majority merely affected, and a good few—especially among the French ones—indecent: not a sensuous indecency, but one meant to nauseate, the whole genus arising from the ‘sick of everything’ mood. So some of us others who are not yet sick of everything have decided to bring out a yearly collection of our own things in the hope of persuading the gilded youth that the possibilities of metrical poetry on sane subjects are not yet quite exhausted because the Vorticists are suffering from satiety. Of course we may end by proving just the opposite, but we must risk that: there will be a polemical preface and the first number is to appear in the autumn. We call it The way’s the way which is a quotation from Bunyan (a writer of books you know)!64 . . .

  We have had a bus strike here. The President of the Liberal Club and the President of the Labour Club, with followers, very foolishly addressed the world at large from chairs the other evening: and a warm scene between mixed workers and undergraduates on each side was only interrupted by the appearance of the Proctors: whereupon the undergraduates fled from the Proctors and the Proctors, with less success, fled from the mob. This, you see, is true democracy . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  25 July 1920

  I should have answered you before but I have been engaged in entertaining the colonel [Warren]. He, despite the efforts of a tyrannical and slave driving general staff, is still managing to keep body and soul together and to sustain his labours with that equanimity for which he is justly famed. Contrary to your fears he, as yet, [has] only one car: which he proposes to sell and buy another. As soon as his leave begins he is going to motor me to Liverpool, via Malvern, and so home. I am still debating whether I can sufficiently brace my nerves to such an ordeal . . .

  I had nearly forgotten to tell you that Uncle and Aunt Hamilton were here for a night on their tour.65 If any man has ever been successful in screwing the honey out of life it is he. One cannot help admiring the skill with which he knows exactly how far selfishness can go without rebounding on himself: he has learned to a nicety how much every plank will bear. At the same time this worldly wisdom which has an appetite for everything and yet can be content with little, which knows what can be got out of life and does not expect more, would be almost a virtue, so pleasant is it and so sensible, if it were not centred completely on self. He made one good mot here—that ‘England would be an excellent country to tour in were it not for the Cathedrals.’66 . . .

  TO HIS FATHER: from University College

  Postmark: 8 December 1920

  My journey to Cambridge was on this wise. You will remember that a society of Martlets at Pembroke, Cambridge sent representatives to our society of that name: on this occasion four of us were sent to play a return match. The trip was rendered both cheaper and pleasanter by the fact that one of the four lives there, and very kindly put us all up. I read them a paper on narrative poetry. Of course I don’t know what they thought of it, but at any rate nothing was thrown at me.67 We dined with them first. It was a wretched night, which having attempted to freeze, had finally decided instead on a sleety rain. The old library of their college, where we had dinner, was very badly heated, and what between that and going about their quadrangle in the chilliness of evening dress and the rain, I got rather a nasty chill—whereof I am just now recovered.

  It was very interesting next day to see Cambridge. In many ways it is a contrast: there is something, I can hardly say whether of colour or of atmosphere, which at once strikes a more northern, a bleaker and a harder note. Perhaps the flatness of the country, suggesting places seen from the railway beyond Crewe, has something to do with it. The streets are very narrow and crowded: the non-university parts depressing enough. Some things—such as King’s College Chapel, in which I was prepared to be disappointed—are indeed beautiful beyond hope or belief: several little quadrangles I remember, with tiled gables, sun dials and tall chimnies like Tudor houses, were charming. One felt everywhere the touch of Puritanism, of something Whiggish, a little defiant perhaps. It has not so much Church and State in its veins as we. The stained windows in the Halls show figures like Erasmus and Cranmer. Oxford is more magnificent, Cambridge perhaps more intriguing. Our characteristic colour is the pale grey, almost the yellow of old stone: their’s the warm brown of old brick. A great many Cambridge buildings remind one of the Tower of London. Most of the undergraduates whom I met I liked very much. Their dons, as judged by those who were at the ‘do’, are certainly inferior to ours in charm of manners and geniality. One I thought hardly a gentleman.

  I am afraid you took my remark about ‘a small book’ rather too literally—I meant only an essay for my tutor: I am hardly up to writing historical monographs (for publication) just yet. I have however been recommended to try for the Vice Chancellor’s Essay Prize next April. The subject is ‘Optimism’ under which heading one could include almost anything one wanted to write about. My point of view will be mainly metaphysical and rather dry. It would be a splendid advertisement if I could pull it off, but of course competition is very keen . . . 68

  TO HIS FATHER: from the Oxford Union Society

  21 January [1921]

  My history tutor has handed me over to a gentleman at Magdalen whom he recommended by telling me that he was a grandson of Mendelsohn’s: a trifle irrelevant I thought.69 The exchange was presented to me in the form of a compliment and I am quite satisfied with it. The reason I mention it is because the new man deserves to be known to fame. I had not been many minutes in his room until I had an uneasy sense of strange yet familiar neighbours. When he went out for a moment I discovered what it was—pigs! Do not mistake me: not live pigs: but pigs of china, of bronze, of clay, of wood, of stuff and of stone: pigs jovial and pigs quizzical, kindly pigs and severe pigs, Falstaffian pigs and pigs philosophical. I counted twenty-eight in a few seconds and had still not got beyond the mantelpiece. The porcine seraglio of a lonely old batchelor is one of the little comedies I would not have missed for a good deal. And yet how wise! Here are companions for every mood, who need practically no upkeep and are never untrue or unkind. I think I must give him a new one: perhaps one of those balloon pigs filled with gas, so that it could hover against the ceiling—and be drawn down by a windlass at nights to rest, like a Zeppelin in some little ‘hangar’.

  I am very sorry to hear that you were laid up so long, and hope that you now have quite shaken it off. I have had a bit of a cold, but it is now gone, and beyond the perennial need of having my hair cut, I think you would pass me as ‘all present and correct’. I am still smoothing and varnishing the work on Optimism.

  Here is a story that will please the Colonel. The other night at the ‘Martlets’ old Carlyle read a paper.70 He is a foxy old gentleman with a cleanshaven face as red as a berry and straight hair the colour of snuff—a very comical face and a high croaking voice. He began by saying that he ought to apologize for his paper ‘because—h’m—to tell you the truth—I had meant to publish it—but h’m—h’m—it was so unsatisfactory that—I—I just sent it to an American magazine.’ That’s the proper spirit! . . .

  TO HIS BROTHER: from University College (a serial letter, written on various dates)

  I am waiting to hear your address from M. L’Oiseau Pomme de Terre,71 and in t
he meantime have begun—tho’ with what promise of continuance I don’t know—my journal letter. As nothing ever happens to me it will be filled, if at all, with trivialities and things that have interested me from day to day. As we talk a good deal of odd fragments out of books when we are together, there’s no reason why we should not reproduce the same sort of tittle-tattle. Perhaps one of the reasons why letters are so hard to write and so much harder to read is that people confine themselves to news—or in other words think nothing worth writing except that which would not be worth saying. All that should be said by way of preamble has already been better said by Lamb in his letter to a friend at the Antipodes. I feel the same difficulty: I cannot imagine in what kind of melodramatic setting you will be reading this. I hear that your ‘preposterous box’ on the ‘East Indiaman’ was not to your liking. Well, you would be a soldier: you must keep a stiff upper lip about it and button up your coat. Here we have sleet and that sort of wind that freezes you when you go out drest for summer: if you do otherwise, ‘the wild winds whist’ and the sun comes out a good 80. But I will be on with my journal: the dates are only approximate.

  1 March 1921

  Going into College today I met Hamilton-Jenkin in the porch, who carried me to his rooms in Merton Street.72 Jenkin is a little, pale person with a smooth green face, not unlike a lizard’s. He was too young for the war and I always look on him as rather a child, though some people think I am wrong in this. I mention him for the amusing passages he showed me from two books. One was A Tour of the County of Cornwall written in the 17th Century: an admirable codology. Under the heading of Beastes we find (after those of Venerie and Draught) Rats. These are described as ‘not only mischievious by day for their devouring of clothes, writings and meats, but cumbersome by night for their rattling and jaunting as they gallup their galliards in the roof’. This sentence I at once learnt by heart. ‘The slow six legged crawler’ which in Cornwall infest all but the ‘cleanly home bred’ are also worth recording.73