Letters of C. S. Lewis

by C. S. Lewis

  TO HIS BROTHER: from Schools (where he was invigilating)

  14 June 1932

  I have just read your letter of May 15th, but not as you supposed in College. ‘Schools’ has arrived and I am invigilating and although your letter arrived before lunch I deliberately brought it here unopened so that the reading it might occupy at least part of the arid waste of talk-less, smoke-less, exercise-less time between 2 P.M. and 5 P.M. Theoretically of course there ought to be no greater blessing than three hours absolutely safe from interruption and free from reading: but somehow or other—everyone has made the discovery—reading is quite impossible in the Schools. There is a sort of atmosphere at once restless and soporific which always ends in that stage which (for me) is a signal to stop reading:—the stage I mean at which you blink and ask yourself ‘Now what was the last page about’ . . .

  I have read, or rather re-read, one novel namely Pendennis. How pleased the Pdaitabird would have been—why hadn’t I the grace to read it a few years ago. Why I re-read it now I don’t quite know—I suppose some vague idea that it was time I gave Thackeray another trial. The experiment, on the whole, has been a failure. I can just see, mind you, why they use words like ‘great’ and ‘genius’ in talking of him which we don’t use of Trollope. There are indications, or breakings in, all the time of something beyond Trollope’s range. The scenery for one thing (tho’ to be sure there is only one scene in Thackeray—always summer evening—English garden—rooks cawing) has a sort of depth (I mean in the painting sense) wh. Trollope hasn’t got. Still more there are the sudden ‘depths’ in a very different sense in Thackeray. There is one v. subordinate scene in Pendennis where you meet the Marquis of Steyne and a few of his led captains and pimps in a box at a theatre. It only lasts a page or so—but the sort of rank, salt, urinous stench from the nether pit nearly knocks you down and clearly has a kind of power that is quite out of Trollope’s range. I don’t think these bits really improve Thackeray’s books: they do, I suppose, indicate whatever we mean by ‘genius’. And if you are the kind of reader who values genius you rate Thackeray highly.

  My own secret is—let rude ears be absent—that to tell you the truth, brother, I don’t like genius. I like enormously some things that only genius can do: such as Paradise Lost and the Divine Comedy. But it is the results I like. What I don’t care twopence about is the sense (apparently dear to so many) of being in the hands of ‘a great man’—you know: his dazzling personality, his lightening energy, the strange force of his mind—and all that. So that I quite definitely prefer Trollope—or rather this re-reading of Pen. confirms my long standing preference. No doubt Thackeray was the genius: but Trollope wrote the better books. All the old things I objected to in Thackeray I object to still.

  Do you remember saying of Thomas Browne in one of your letters ‘Was there anything he didn’t love?’ One can ask just the opposite of Thackeray. He is wrongly accused of making his virtuous women too virtuous: the truth is he does not make them virtuous enough. If he makes a character what he wd call ‘good’ he always gets his own back by making her (its always a female character) a bigot and a blockhead. Do you think Sir, pray, that there are many slum parishes which could not produce half a dozen old women quite as chaste and affectionate as Helen Pendennis and ten times more charitable and more sensible? Now Phippy is a much better woman than most of Thackeray’s ‘good’ women. Still—the Major deserves his place in ones memory. So does Foker—surely the most balanced picture of the kindly vulgar young fop that there is. I’m not sure about Costigan. There’s a good deal too much of Thackeray’s habit of laughing at things like poverty and mispronunciation in the Costigan parts. Then, of course theres ‘the style’—Who the deuce wd begin talking about the style in a novel till all else was given up.

  I have had another visit to Whipsnade [Zoo]—Foord Kelcie motored Arthur and me over on a fine Monday when Arthur was staying here. This was not the best company in the world with whom to revisit Whipsnade as F. K. combines extreme speed of tongue with a very slow walk, which is reduced to a stop when he has a good thing to say . . . Perhaps however it was just as well that A. drew me out of my course, for the place has been so increased and altered that I should have missed a good deal. The novelties include lions, tigers, polar bears, beavers etc. Bultitude [a bear] was still in his old place. Wallaby wood, owing to the different season, was improved by masses of bluebells: the graceful faun-like creatures hopping out of one pool of sunshine into another over English wildflowers—and so much tamer now than when you saw them that it is really no difficulty to stroke them—and English wildbirds singing deafeningly all round, came nearer to ones idea of the world before the Fall than anything I ever hoped to see . . .

  TO HIS BROTHER: from The Kilns

  12 December 1932

  A thousand welcomes to Harve (of hated memory.) We have had so many alarms about you that I shall hardly believe it till I see you with my own eyes. But on that score, and on all your last six months’ adventures there is so much to be said that it is absurd to begin. You would be amused to hear the various hypotheses that were entertained during your long summer silence—that you had been captured by bandits—were in jail—had gone mad—had married—had married a Chinese woman. My own view of course was ‘Indeed he’s such a fellow etc’, but I found it hard to maintain this against the riot of rival theories . . .

  It all seems too good to be true. I can hardly believe that when you take your shoes off a week or so hence, please God, you will be able to say ‘This will do me—for life’ . . .

  [In July 1932 Warren applied to be placed on retired pay. He left Shanghai by cargo ship on 22 October and reached Liverpool on 14 December. Upon reaching The Kilns he was delighted to find that the new wing of the house, containing a study and bedroom, had been built specially for him. His retirement from the Royal Army Service Corps after eighteen years became official on 21 December 1932.

  The letter which follows reveals something of the interests which led Jack to write The Allegory of Love and to begin his ‘Prolegomena’ lectures which led ultimately to his book The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1964). These twice-weekly lectures began on 18 January 1932 and were entitled ‘Prolegomena to Medieval Poetry’. They were continued during Trinity Term of 1932 and the final two lectures, devoted to Chaucer, were given in Trinity Term of 1933—24 and 26 April. These lectures were repeated a number of times. In Trinity Term of 1937 he began his other well-known series entitled ‘Prolegomena to Renaissance Poetry’.]

  TO SISTER MADELEVA C. S. C. of Notre Dame, Indiana: from Magdalen College (Sister Madeleva was living in Oxford at the time and attending the ‘Prolegomena’ lectures.)

  7 June 1934

  In answer to your first question, there are probably such printed bibliographies as you mention, but I have no knowledge of them. The history of my lecture is this. After having worked for some years on my own subject (which is the medieval allegory) I found that I had accumulated a certain amount of general information which, tho’ far from being very recondite, was more than the ordinary student in the school could gather for himself. I then conceived the idea of my ‘prolegomena’. There were however several gaps in the general knowledge which I had accidentally got. To fill these up I adopted the simple method of going through Skeats notes on Chaucer and Langland, and other similar things, and following these up to their sources when they touched on matters that seemed to me important. This led me sometimes to books I already knew, often to new ones. This process explains why I inevitably appear more learned than I am. E.g. my quotations from Vincent of Beauvais don’t mean that I turned from a long reading of Vincent to illustrate Chaucer, but that I turned from Chaucer to find explanations in Vincent. In fine, the process is inductive for the most part of my lecture: tho’ on allegory, courtly love, and (sometimes) on philosophy, it is deductive—i.e. I start from the authors I quote. I elaborate this point because, if you are thinking of doing the sam
e kind of thing (i.e. telling people what they ought to know as the prius of a study of medieval vernacular poetry) I think you would be wise to work in the same way—starting from the texts you want to explain. You will soon find of course that you are working the other way at the same time, that you can correct current explanations, or see things to explain where the ordinary editors see nothing. I suppose I need not remind you to cultivate the wisdom of the serpent: there will be misquotations, and misunderstood quotations in the best books, and you must always hunt up all quotations for yourself and find what they are really like in situ.

  But, of course, I do not know what it is you propose to do. I have therefore mentioned all the more important ‘sources’ in my note-book without any attempt at selection. You will see at once that this is the bibliography of a man who was following a particular subject (the love-allegory), and this doubtless renders the list much less useful to you, who are hardly likely to be after the same quarry. In the second part, texts, I have been more selective, and have omitted a certain amount of low or low-ish Latin love poetry which is useful only for my own special purpose. You will observe that I begin with classical authors. This is a point I would press on anyone dealing with the middle ages, that the first essential is to read the relevant classics over and over: the key to everything—allegory, courtly love etc—is there. After that the two things to know really well are the Divine Comedy and the Romance of the Rose. The student who has really digested these (I don’t claim to be such a person myself!), with good commentaries, and who also knows the Classics and the Bible (including the apocryphal New Testament) has the game in his hands, and can defeat over and over again those who have simply burrowed in obscure parts of the actual middle ages.

  Of scholastic philosophy and theology you probably know much more than I do. If by any chance you don’t, stick to Gilson as a guide and beware of the people (Maritain in your Church, and T. S. Eliot in mine) who are at present running what they call ‘neo-scholasticism’ as a fad.

  Of periodicals you will find Romania, Speculum, and Medium Aevum useful.

  Remember (this has been all important to me) that what you want to know about the Middle Ages will often not be in a book on the Middle Ages, but in the early chapters of some history of general philosophy or science. The accounts of your period in such books will, of course, usually be patronising and ill-informed, but it will mention dates and authors whom you can follow up and thus put you in the way of writing a true account for yourself.

  If there is any way in which I can assist you, or if you would care to call and discuss anything with me, do not hesitate to let me know . . .

  P. S. I shd warn you that I am very bad at German and this has doubtless influenced my choice of reading.

  I suppose you will have access to a complete Aristotle wherever you are working? He is often useful.

  TO OWEN BARFIELD: from Magdalen College (while reading the proofs of The Allegory of Love which was published on 21 May 1936)

  [December 1935]

  The Diary of an Old Soul is magnificent. You placed the moment of giving it to me admirably. I remember with horror the absurdity of my last criticism on it, and with shame the vulgarity of the form in which I expressed it. He knows all about the interplay between the religious and metaphysical aspects of the One. I see now (since I began this letter) that these two are opposite only with the fruitful opposition of male & female (how deep the old erotic metaphor of the proelia Veneris is) and what they beget is the solution.

  Incidentally, since I have begun to pray, I find my extreme view of personality changing. My own empirical self is becoming more important and this is exactly the opposite of self love. You don’t teach a seed how to die into treehood by throwing it into the fire: and it has to become a good seed before its worth burying.

  As to my own book—the question whether notes shd come at the end of the chapter or the bottom of the page is partly for publisher & printer. Personally I loathe a book where they come at the end—and I am writing mainly for people who will want to know where they must look to verify my facts . . .

  TO MRS JOAN BENNETT (of Cambridge): from Magdalen College

  13 January 1937

  A foul copy of an essay (which now that I re-read it doesn’t seem as good as I had hoped) is a poor return for the delightful, the champagne holiday you gave me. But you asked for it and here it is.

  What splendid talk goes on in your house!—and what a wonderful thing . . . your English Faculty is. If only we and you could combine into a single teaching body (leaving out your freaks and our nonentities) we could make ‘English’ into an education that would not have to fear any rivalries. In the meantime we have lots to exchange. I am sure you practise more ‘judgement’; I suspect we have more ‘blood’. What we want is to be well commingled.

  The Lucas book proves disappointing as you go on. His attack on [I. A.] Richards for splitting up poetic effects which we receive as a unity, is silly; that is what analysis means and R. never suggested that the products of analysis were the same as the living unity. Again, he doesn’t seem to see that Richards is on his side in bringing poetry to an ethical test in the long run; and his own ethical standard is so half-hearted—he’s so afraid of being thought a moralist that he tries to blunt it by gas about ‘health’ and ‘survival’. As if survival can have any value apart from the prior value of what survives. To me especially it is an annoying book; he attacks my enemies in the wrong way . . . and a good deal of mere ‘superiority’ too . . .

  TO MRS JOAN BENNETT: from Magdalen College

  [February? 1937]

  I also have been having ’flu or you should have heard from me sooner. I enclose the article; pray make whatever use you please of it148 . . . It is a question (for your sake and that of the Festschrift, not mine) whether a general pro-Donne paper called Donne and his critics—a glance at Dryden and Johnson and then some contemporaries including me—wouldn’t be better than a direct answer. C.S.L. as professional controversialist and itinerant prize-fighter is, I suspect, becoming already rather a bore to our small public, and might in that way infect you.149 Also, if you really refute me, you raise for the editor the awkward question, ‘Then why print the other article?’ However, do just as you like . . . and good luck with it whatever you do.

  I’ve had a grand week in bed—Northanger Abbey, The Moonstone, The Vision of Judgement, Modern Painters (Vol. 3), Our Mutual Friend, and The Egoist. Of the latter I decided this time that it’s a rare instance of the conception being so good that even the fantastic faults can’t kill it. There’s a good deal of the ass about Meredith—that dreadful first chapter—Carlyle in icing sugar. And isn’t the supposedly witty conversation much poorer than much we have heard in real life? Mrs Mountstuart is a greater bore than Miss Bates—only he didn’t mean her to be. The Byron was not so good as I remembered; the Ruskin, despite much nonsense, glorious.

  TO A FORMER PUPIL: from Magdalen College

  8 March 1937

  I haven’t yet got Grierson’s new book Milton and Wordsworth, but I’m going to: it ought to kill two of your birds with one stone. Have you read F. L. Lucas’ Decline and Fall of the Romantic Ideal? Hideously over-written in parts, but well worth reading: he has grasped what seems to be a hard idea to modern minds, that a certain degree of a thing might be good and a further degree of the same thing bad. Elementary, you will say—yet a realisation of it would have forbidden the writing of many books.

  These are new. A few years old—but you may not have read it—is E. K. Chambers’ Sir Thomas Wyatt and Other Studies. Some of the essays are medieval, but most of it is 16th century. I can’t think of anything much on ‘general tendencies of the 17th century’ since one you almost certainly read when you were up, Grierson’s Cross Currents of XVIIth c. Lit, very good indeed. By the bye a festschrift to Grierson shortly appearing (Tillyard, Nichol Smith, Joan Bennett and myself are among the contributors) might contain something of what you want. The book on the 17th c. b
y Willey (I have forgotten the title) is more on the thought background than the poets, rather doing for that century, what my Prolegomena tried to do for the middle ages. I don’t know of anything general on the 18th century. Sherburn’s Early Life of Pope tho’ good is hardly what you want . . .

  TO OWEN BARFIELD: from The Kilns

  2 September 1937

  ‘Curiously comfortless stuff in the background’ is the criticism of a sensible man just emerging from the popular errors about Morris. Not so curiously, not quite in the background—that particular discomfort is the main theme of all his best work, the thing he was born to say. The formula is ‘Returning to what seems an ideal world to find yourself all the more face to face with gravest reality without ever drawing a pessimistic conclusion but fully maintaining that heroic action in, or amelioration of, a temporal life is an absolute duty though the disease of temporality is incurable.’

  Not quite what you expected, but just what the essential Morris is. ‘Defeat and victory are the same in the sense that victory will open your eyes only to a deeper defeat: so fight on.’ In fact he is the final statement of good Paganism: a faithful account of what things are and always must be to the natural man. Cf. what are in comparison the ravings of Hardy on the one hand and optimistic Communists on t’other.

  But the Earthly Paradise after that first story is inferior work. Try Jason, House of the Wolfings, Roots of the Mts, Well at the World’s End.

  The thriller is finished and called Out of the Silent Planet150 . . .

  TO OWEN BARFIELD: from Magdalen College

  10 June 1938

  Think not the doom of man reversed for thee. Apropos of Johnson, isn’t this good, from the Rambler, from a man who decided not to marry a blue-stocking on finding her an atheist and a determinist: ‘It was not difficult to discover the danger of committing myself forever to one who might at any time mistake the dictates of passion, or the calls of appetite, for the decree of fate; or consider cuckoldom as necessary to the general system, as a link in the everlasting chain of successive causes.’