by C. S. Lewis
I humbly submit that in my Riddell Lectures entitled The Abolition of Man you will find another work not all unworthy of consideration for admission to the canon.
Yours regressively . . .
[Ever since Jack began making any money from his religious writings, beginning with the serialisation of The Screwtape Letters in the now defunct Church newspaper The Guardian, he had it sent to destitute widows and others in need. He directed the BBC to send the fees paid for his broadcasts to a list of widows which he provided. Jack had no idea that he would have to pay tax on all this income until the Inland Revenue demanded it. At this time Owen Barfield was running his own legal firm in London and Jack turned to him for help. Mr Barfield set up a Charitable Trust, the ‘Agape Fund’ or ‘Agapany’, into which Jack hereafter paid two-thirds of his income from royalties for helping the poor.
During the summer of 1944 Jack had a piece of shell, received in the last war, removed from his chest. He thought it would be rather nice if the Inland Revenue paid for the operation.]
TO OWEN BARFIELD: from The Kilns
20 August [1944]
(1) Have you read Esmond lately? What a detestable woman is Lady Castlewood: and yet I believe Thackeray means us to like her on the ground that all her actions spring from ‘love’. This love is, in his language ‘pure’ i.e. it is not promiscuous or sensual. It is none the less a wholly uncorrected natural passion, idolatrous and insatiable. Was that the great 19th century heresy—that ‘pure’ or ‘noble’ passions didn’t need to be crucified & re-born but wd of themselves lead to happiness? Yet one sees it makes Lady C. disastrous both as a wife & a mother and is a source of misery to herself and all whom she meets. This is all irrelevant, but I’ve been reading Esmond all day and it rose to the surface.
(2) Yes: do come, you and Harwood, on Sept 1st. If we think College has had enough of the two we can dine at the Eastgate: less well, but perhaps more at our ease. (3) Thanks for dealing with Mrs Boshell and Mrs Askins [widows]. (4) Congratulations on recovering £237 for the Agapany. This is stupendous . . . (5) While Government is reeling under this blow, is it worth while trying to get them to pay for my operation on the ground that it was due to a wound?
(6) When you ask me to remember you in my prayers, it is like the Punch joke where the Doctor says to the patient (a colonel) ‘And I think I should recommend a glass of good nourishing wine once a day.’ Patient ‘Oh well—I’ve taken a bottle of port every night for twenty years, but I don’t mind trying to manage an extra glass if you like.’
I am v. sorry you are blue as a whortle-berry within. I feel what people feel when they say ‘I’d do anything to amend it’: which on closer introspection means, alas, ‘I dare to hope that, if the situation really arose, even my cowardice and selfishness wd not prevent me doing something.’ Blessings on you.
TO CHARLES A. BRADY: from Magdalen College (Professor Brady of Canisius College, Buffalo, New York, had sent Jack two articles entitled ‘Introduction to Lewis’ and ‘C. S. Lewis: II’ published in America, vol. 71 (27 May and 10 June 1944.)
29 October 1944
Obviously one ought never to thank a critic for praise: but perhaps one can congratulate a fellow scholar on the thoroughness of his work even if the subject of his work happens to be oneself. You are the first of my critics so far who has really read and understood all my books and ‘made up’ the subject in a way that makes you an authority. The results interest me of course because they flatter my vanity as an author. But there’s also an interest of another kind. Here is a man trying to do what all of our profession do, and by the same methods, in the one case where I happen to know already the answers to most of the questions: surely an ideal opportunity for learning something about the efficiency of the methods themselves! The result is encouraging. I have always been haunted by the fear that all our studies of the dead authors (who can’t up and protest when we go wrong) may, in spite of careful documentation etc, be quite wide of the mark: on the whole you set that at rest. The Quellenforschung is good.
Morris and Macdonald were more or less given you (Morris is more important than you suggest, I think) I admit, but you are the first to stress them properly. On the Tir-na’n-Og element, you hit the bull and might even have deduced much reading of the early Yates (worth twenty of the reconditioned 1920 model) and of James Stephens.
Space-and-time fiction, yes: but oddly enough not Rice-Burroughs. But this is probably a mere chance and the guess was a sound one. The real father of my planet book is David Lindsay’s Voyage to Arcturus, which you also will revel in if you don’t yet know it. I had grown up on Wells’s stories of that kind: it was Lindsay who first gave me the idea that the ‘scientifiction’ appeal could be combined with the ‘supernatural’ appeal—suggested the ‘cross’ (in biological sense). His own spiritual outlook is detestable, almost diabolist I think, and his style is crude: but he showed me what a bang you cd get from mixing these two elements.
R. H. Benson is wrong: at least I think the Dawn of All (the only one I can remember having read) never meant much to me. Chesterton, of course: but more, I think, on thought than on imagination. Rackham, yes: but having mentioned him you just missed tapping my whole Norse complex—Old Icelandic, Wagner’s Ring and (again) Morris. The Wagner is important: you will also see, if you look, how operatic the whole building up of the climax is in Perelandra. Milton I think you possibly over-rate: it is difficult to distinguish him from Dante & St Augustine. (Tinidril at her second appearance owes something to Matilda at the end of Purgatorio.)
When you talk about meetings of human races in connexion with Ransom and the Hrossa you say something that was not in my mind at all. So much the better: a book’s not worth writing unless it suggests more than the author intended.
The only place where, as it seems to me, your work contains a warning for us all is the bit based on the portrait. The whole thing depends upon the portrait’s being a good one. In fact it was drawn from a photo by a man who never saw me and, I’m told, is only just recognizable. Memo: let us both remember this the next time we’re writing about a 17th century or Elizabethan author and feel inclined to base anything on his portrait! It may not have been at all like him. (Why do we continue to assume that all portrait painters in the past were faithful tho’ experience in the present tells us that it is the rarest thing for even a good painter to produce a real likeness?)
Tolkien (and Charles Williams, whom I wish you’d do, specially his novels) is most important. The Hobbit is merely the adaptation to children of part of a huge private mythology of a most serious kind: the whole cosmic struggle as he sees it but mediated through an imaginary world. The Hobbit’s successor, which will soon be finished, will reveal this more clearly. Private worlds have hitherto been mainly the work of decadents or, at least, mere aesthetes. This is the private world of a Christian. He is a very great man. His published works (both imaginative & scholarly) ought to fill a shelf by now: but he’s one of those people who is never satisfied with a MS. The mere suggestion of publication provokes the reply ‘Yes. I’ll just look through it and give it a few finishing touches’—wh. means that he really begins the whole thing over again.
I have now had an orgy of talking about myself. But let me congratulate you again on your very thorough and perceptive piece of work. I need not, perhaps, add that if you ever come here our own little circle will make a red letter day of it. (By the way, port is usually drunk in common room, whereas oaks are sported in one’s own private rooms! But we’ll arrange port behind a sported oak for you if you like—though indeed beer and/or tea is our usual fare.) Tell me about yourself if you reply: I’m quite ignorant of modern American letters.
TO OWEN BARFIELD: from Magdalen College (about the death of Charles Williams on the 15th May 1945)
18 May 1945
Thanks for writing. It has been a very odd experience. This, the first really severe loss I have suffered, has (a) Given a corroboration to my belief in immortality such as I never d
reamed of. It is almost tangible now. (b) Swept away all my old feelings of mere horror and disgust at funerals, coffins, graves etc. If need had been I think I cd have handled that corpse with hardly any unpleasant sensations. (c) Greatly reduced my feelings about ghosts. I think (but who knows?) that I shd be, tho afraid, more pleased than afraid, if his turned up. In fact, all v. curious. Great pain but no mere depression.
Dyson said to me yesterday that he thought what was true of Christ was, in its lower degree, true of all Christians—i.e. they go away to return in a closer form and it is expedient for us that they shd go away in order that they may do so. How foolish it is to imagine one can imaginatively foresee what any event will be like! ‘Local unique sting’ alright of course for I love him (I cannot say more) as much as you: and yet—a sort of brightness and tingling . . .
To put it in a nutshell—what the idea of death has done to him is nothing to what he has done to the idea of death. Hit it for six. Yet it used to rank as a fast bowler!
TO A FORMER PUPIL: from The Kilns
20 May 1945
I also have become much acquainted with grief now through the death of my great friend Charles Williams, my friend of friends, the comforter of all our little set, the most angelic man. The odd thing is that his death has made my faith stronger than it was a week ago. And I find that all that talk about ‘feeling that he is closer to us than before’ isn’t just talk. It’s just what it does feel like—I can’t put it into words. One seems at moments to be living in a new world. Lots, lots of pain, but not a particle of depression or resentment . . .
TO SISTER PENELOPE, C.S.M.V.: from The Kilns
28 May 1945
I was intensely interested in the story of your healing of the little dog. I don’t see why one shouldn’t. Perhaps indeed those to whom God allows a gift in this way should confirm their own faith in it by practising on beasts for in one way they may be easier to heal than men. Although they cannot have faith in Him (I suppose) they certainly have faith in us, wh. is faith in Him at one remove: and there is no sin in them to impede or resist. I am glad it happened.
You will have heard of the death of my dearest friend, Charles Williams, and, no doubt, prayed for him. For me too, it has been, and is, a great loss. But not at all a dejecting one . . .
The title Who Goes Home? has had to be dropped because someone has used it already. The little book will be called The Great Divorce and will appear about August. That Hideous Strength is due in July. The Miracle book is finished but will not come out till next year.
Jane is up and down: very liable, I’m afraid, to fits of really bad jealousy—she can’t bear to see other people doing the work. Pray for her, dear Sister . . .
TO CECIL AND DAPHNE HARWOOD: from The Kilns (Cecil and his wife had each written to him about That Hideous Strength.)
11 September 1945
About Merlin, I don’t think it wd have made any difference if I did hold your views of the after-world. I mean, of course he wouldn’t be naif if he returned from my world any more than if he returned from yours. Whatever the normal status animarum post mortem may be, it is feigned that this one man was exempted from it and returned just as he was. (I know they don’t really: I was writing a story).
Re Jane, she wasn’t meant to illustrate the problem of the married woman and her own career in general: rather the problem of everyone who follows an imagined vocation at the expense of the real one. Perhaps I shd have emphasized more the fact that her thesis on Donne was all derivative bilge. If I’d been tackling the problem wh. Cecil thinks I had in mind, of course I’d have taken a woman capable of making a real contribution to literature.
I’m uncomfortably afraid Cecil is right (with MacPhee) about St Anne’s being rather like the House of Lords in Iolanthe. All reviewers so far (except Punch) have damned the book: comfortingly for different reasons—I mean it can hardly be bad in so many different ways as all that . . .
TO I. O. EVANS: from Magdalen College (about That Hideous Strength)
26 September 1945
I’m glad you recognized the N.I.C.E. as not being quite the fantastic absurdity some readers think. I hadn’t myself thought that any of the people in contemporary rackets were really dabbling in Magic: I had supposed that to be a romantic addition of my own. But there you are. The trouble about writing satire is that the real world always anticipates you, and what were meant for exaggerations turn out to be nothing of the sort.
About Merlin: I don’t know much more than you do. Apart from Malory (the Everyman edition and the Temple Classics are both complete) you will get something more in Geoffrey of Monmouth (Temple Classics), and Layamon (to be found in the Everyman volume entitled ‘Arthurian Chronicles from Wace to Layamon’). For Arthur in general see ‘Arthur of Britain’ by E. K. Chambers, Collingwood in Vol. 1 of Oxford History of England, and Vinaver’s ‘Malory’. But the blessing about Merlin (for you and me) is that ‘very little is known’—so we have a free hand!
TO MISS DOROTHY L. SAYERS: from Magdalen College
10 December 1945
Although you have so little time to write letters you are one of the great English letter writers. (Awful vision for you—‘It is often forgotten that Miss Sayers was known in her own day as an Author. We who have been familiar from childhood with the Letters can hardly realise! . . .) But I’m not.
No, Hopkins is not contributing to the volume [Essays Presented to Charles Williams]. A dear creature, though.
I’m all for little books on other subjects with the Christianity latent. I propounded this in the S.C.R. at Campion Hall and was told that it was ‘Jesuitical’. The Hall Porter at the ‘Bull’, Fairford, likes ‘The Man Born to be King’ (and of such is the kingdom). I’ve got to have a long talk with you about Socratic Clubs soon.166 In great haste.
TO A FRIEND (who was troubled about a younger woman’s unsuitable devotion): from Magdalen College
[1945?]
‘Frown not!’ . . .? We frown when we see a child too near a puddle: do we frown when we see it on the edge of a precipice (skeletons white on the rocks a thousand feet below)? . . .
I suppose it is all right, is it? I wish Charles Williams were alive: this was just his pigeon. His solution was, in a peculiar way, to teach ’em the ars amandi and then bestow them on other (younger) men. Sic vos non vobis. He was not only a lover himself but the cause that love was in other men.
But it’s a ticklish game. Perhaps I’m taking it all too seriously—but the world is growing chilly and I just couldn’t stand any serious miscarriage in your life. (‘Save yourself for my sake, Pickwick!’ said Mr Tupman.) I burn to explain to this young woman that a good many people have a concern in your happiness and Gad! she’d better mind what she’s about . . .
TO SISTER PENELOPE, C.S.M.V.: from Magdalen College
31 January 1946
I had meant to write to you before now, but life is very crowded. The rush of pupils returning from the forces makes Terms quite different from what they were in war time. By the way, the returning men are nice: far nicer than my generation were when we came out of the army—and a much higher percentage of Christians . . .
That Hideous Strength has been unanimously damned by all reviewers.
About Holst’s Planets, I heard Mars and Jupiter long ago and greatly admired them but have heard the complete work only within the last six weeks. But his characters are rather different from mine, I think. Wasn’t his Mars brutal and ferocious?—in mine I tried to get the good element in the martial spirit, the discipline and freedom from anxiety. On Jupiter I am closer to him: but I think his is more ‘jovial’ in the modern sense of the word. The folk tune on which he bases it is not regal enough for my conception. But of course there is a general similarity because we’re both following the medieval astrologers. His is, anyway, a rich and marvellous work.
Jane is up and down: some days miserable and jealous, at other times gentle and even jolly. We have two nice maids at present. My writing gets
worse and worse, partly from rheumatism and partly from haste . . .
TO MISS DOROTHY L. SAYERS: from The Kilns
2 August 1946
I don’t think the difference between us comes where you think. Of course one mustn’t do dishonest work. But you seem to take as the criterion of honest work the sensible desire to write, the ‘itch’. That seems to me precious like making ‘being in love’ the only reason for going on with a marriage. In my experience the desire has no constant ratio to the value of the work done. My own frequent uneasiness comes from another source—the fact that apologetic work is so dangerous to one’s own faith. A doctrine never seems dimmer to me than when I have just successfully defended it. Anyway, thanks for an intensely interesting letter.
TO SISTER PENELOPE, C.S.M.V.: from Magdalen College (in reference to early rumours of actual travel in space)
21 October 1946
Yes, it is only too true. I begin to be afraid that the villains will really contaminate the moon.
TO MRS FRANK L. JONES: from Magdalen College
23 February 1947
(1) The doctrine that Our Lord was God and man does not mean that He was a human body which had God instead of the normal human soul. It means that a real man (human body and human soul) was in Him so united with the 2nd Person of the Trinity as to make one Person: just as in you and me a complete anthropoid animal (animal body and animal ‘soul’ i.e. instincts, sensations etc.) is so united with an immortal rational soul as to be one person. In other words, if the Divine Son had been removed from Jesus what wd have been left wd have been not a corpse but a living man.
(2) This human soul in Him was unswervingly united to the God in Him in that which makes a personality one, namely Will. But it had the feelings of any normal man: hence could be tempted, cd fear etc. Because of these feelings it could pray ‘If it be possible, let this cup pass from me’: because of its perfect union with His Divine Nature it unwaveringly answered ‘Nevertheless, not as I will but as thou wilt’. The Matthew passage and the John passage both make clear this unity of will. The Matthew one gives in addition the human feelings.