A Severe Mercy
Page 26
In January (1976) I read them again and then continued to sit there, remembering. Whatever happened was sudden. One moment nothing was further from my mind; thirty seconds later I was going to write a book named A Severe Mercy. So much I know. Beyond knowing, I believe (and did then) that, having been recalled to the Obedience by the nudges and, finally, by irresistible (or, at least, not-resisted) grace, I was now commanded to write: vocatio. At all events, there was a terrible urgency to do so.
But not until the long vacation could I get down to the actual writing, which for me requires long hours of total concentration. Now, though, I could think. And pray, including despite good health the prayer to live to write it. I foresaw huge problems. One was that of reconciling my sense that a book of Davy and me should not begin before we met with my desire to set the Glenmerle scene in advance to avoid disgressions in the Shining-Barrier chapter. Thinking about it one night for the manyeth time, I saw no way. Next morning the solution was clear before my eyes were open. I would begin with the night walk into Glenmerle, in actuality late in the story, making it like an overture in music, stating all the themes that would later be developed, distanced a bit by the third person.
When I began to type on June 1st, the shape of the book was set. I wrote each chapter thrice before going on to the next; and it was, like that long-ago Illumination of the Past, a reliving with tears and laughter and deeper understanding. It was total absorption: seven days a week up and writing by 3:00 A.M., continuing without pause for meals until about 3:00 in the afternoon. Lots of coffee. Evenings correcting and reading the diaries. Nights dreaming and, somehow, thinking. Often I awoke knowing that some un-foreseen thing must be touched upon. I prayed a lot, almost hourly, that Christ would be in me, speak through me. Perhaps because of the prayer, one anticipated problem — where to draw the line between candour and reticence — seemed, along with other problems, to solve itself. Two days past mid-August I stopped; the third draft was done. Another, later.
Now I gave copies to friends, noting their suggestions in my copy. Now, too, I wrote to some publishers, sending friends’ comments, saying the MS was unfinished, typed single-spaced on both sides: would they like to have a look? Several said yes; and in sending it I did not conceal that others were seeing it, too.
I was, somehow, confident, feeling God to be behind it. Like a dog that wags his tail when he has pleased his master, I was wagging mine in hopes. On another level, some lines from Mase-field were haunting me:
For all men praise some beauty, tell some tale,
Vent a high mood that makes the rest seem pale,
Pour their heart’s blood to flourish one green leaf,
Follow some Helen for her gift of grief. . .
On November 30th, final exams near, a letter from Mr Edward England of Hodder & Stoughton, London: they would publish if the final draft came in the first week of the new year. General Quarters! Up at 3:00, &c. A vastly encouraging letter from his colleague Anthony Collins. All December, except for the Holy Eve and Christmas afternoon, fourteen-hour days and, at night, final checks plus the tiny celebratory pictures at each completed chapter end (no thought of publication). On December 30th, a twelve-month after conception, it was done. Later three U.S. firms wished to publish for English-America from the U.K. masters: then a handshake along a telephone wire with Roy Carlisle of Harper & Row.
Months passed and then I held, finally, the published book in my hand: unexpectedly a quite remarkable sense of something discharged. A completion. A few days later it occurred to me to burn the old diaries —I should not come this way again —and I watched the loved pages curl and blacken among the coals. I haven’t regretted the act.
Almost at once the letters began to come —over a thousand now, two years later —all of them moving and real. Remarkably, almost exactly balanced between men and women; and, more remarkably, between under-thirty readers and older ones. But divided among three main groups: those primarily interested in how we came to belief; those fascinated by the Shining-Barrier marriage and the closeness that can exist between spouses; and those who had known loss and found my experience meaningful.
Upon publication the theological faculty of the college graciously laid on a reception in the book’s honour. In the midst of the gaiety, first one person and then another would draw me apart to tell me, sometimes with misty eyes, how much the book had meant. I was touched, but there was something faintly odd that I couldn’t quite place. Suddenly it came to me: they were speaking, each of them, as though they — and they alone — had been stabbed to the heart. So I thanked them as though they were indeed the only one. Later the letters and telephonings flooded in from everywhere, and these folk, too, spoke as though they felt that only they could have been penetrated to the depths of their being, thus making us kindred. So we were, but in a broader kinship than they knew. It is, I think, that we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so unable to find the words and perhaps the courage to speak with unlocked hearts, that we do not know at all that it is the same with others. And since I had been compelled, some-what reluctantly, to go beyond reticence, readers were moved to kinship with one they felt to be the only other being who also knew. Robert Louis Stevenson said that every book was intimately a letter to friends. How much more so mine than most, and to friends both known and unknown: but friends in truth.
I spoke earlier of my prayer that Christ would speak through my mind and my (two) typing fingers. These infinitely moving letters persuade me that the prayer was granted, leading me to feel deep gratitude, not untouched by humility.
Only long afterwards did it occur to me that what I had written, although Christian and true, had some of the elements, including the hint of inexorable moral law and catharsis, of Greek tragedy.
This, then, is how I came to write A Severe Mercy when I did, and what followed from the decision.
Sheldon Vanauken
DATES OF THE C. S. LEWIS LETTERS
INDEX OF POEMS BY TITLE AND FIRST LINE
(Poems by the author)
The Shining Barrier: poems of pagan love
Maytime (The aged winter fled away)
Spring (blue) (We two shall wear the blue of spring, through all)
If This Be All (Rondeau) (If this be all to glorify)
The Shining Barrier (This present glory, love, once-given grace)
The Oxford Sonnets: poems of God
The Gap (Did Jesus live? And did he really say)
The Sands (The Soul for comfort holds herself to be)
The Sword (Yes, Mark was posted to the Tenth that year)
The Heart of Mary (Dear sister, I was human not divine)
Our Lady of the Night (When this world hides the constant heart of light)
Advent (Two thousand years go by while on the Cross)
The Deathly Snows: poems of death and love
All Hallows Eve (Tonight, while weighing wild winged hope with fears)
Dying (Bright with God’s spirit)
Song of Two Lovers (In England over the endless sea)
Deaths (My dearest died at dawn: to some far strand)
Summer (O love! do you remember? country bus)
Doorway (Now from my chains I flee)
Dead Collie (I’ll not catch such of flurry of living and grace)
(Poems by Davy)
Couplet (All the world fell away last night)
Dear dying Julian
(Poems by Julian)
Ah Studio! We’ll meet again
(Dedication page)
Cry to the night
Evening (Sometimes I light my pipe and the fall evenings are long)
If everything is lost, thanks be to God
About the Author
Winner of the National Book Award and the Gold Medallion Award, this poignant memoir traces the incredible love story of Sheldon and Jean (Davy) Vanauken. While studying at Oxford, the two converted to Christianity after a transformative friendship with C. S. Lewis. This change shook t
he foundation of their relationship, leading Sheldon to realize that he was no longer Davy’s primary love—God was. All they thought they knew was again thrown into question with the illness and untimely death of Davy. Lewis’s wife was also terminally ill, and the two men exchanged letters as they struggled to reconcile their faith with the loss of the loves of their lives. A Severe Mercy is a beautiful meditation on the power of love, the existence of God, and how to have hope in the midst of tragedy.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Also by Sheldon Vanauken
GATEWAY TO HEAVEN UNDER THE MERCY THE GLITTERING ILLUSION
Copyright
A SEVERE MERCY. Copyright © 1977, 1980 by Sheldon Vanauken. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Vanauken, Sheldon. A severe mercy.
Includes index.
1. Vanauken, Sheldon. 2. Anglicans—United States—Biography. 3. Anglicans—England—Biography. 4. Lewis, Clive Staples, 1898-1963— Correspondence. I. Title.
BX5995.V33A35 1977
248'.2'0924 [B] 77-6161
ISBN: 978-0-06-068824-0
EPub Edition © July 2011 ISBN: 9780062116703
09 10 11 12 RRD(H) 60 59 58 57 56 55 54 53
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (P.O. Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
www.harpercollins.com.au/ebooks
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollins.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollins Publishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollins.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollins.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollins.com