Letters of C. S. Lewis

by C. S. Lewis

  Joy had cancer, and on 21 March 1957 they were married, not in church but at the bride’s bedside in the Wingfield Hospital, a civil ceremony having taken place in April of 1956. Both knew she was a dying woman. Yet she did not then die: she made a temporary recovery and Jack brought her home to The Kilns. There were now for him three years of complete fulfilment. To his friends who saw them together it was clear that they not only loved but were in love with each other. It was a delight to watch them, and all the waste of Jack’s years which had gone before was more than recompensed. Nevill Coghill has told how Jack at this time said to him, looking at his wife across a grassy quad-rangle, ‘I never expected to have, in my sixties, the happiness that passed me by in my twenties’.

  Then on 13 July, 1960, after a return to hospital, she died.

  A short episode, of glory and tragedy: for Jack, the total (though heartbreaking) fulfilment of a whole dimension to his nature that had previously been starved and thwarted. Joy’s death was entirely expected. Even though her temporary recovery had made possible certain travels, including holidays to Ireland and Greece, none the less, the parting when it came was a shattering blow to him. His notes on the experience of those black days were later published, pseudonymously, as A Grief Observed: to this harrowing book, anyone can be referred who feels curiosity about the character and flavour of this love, this marriage.

  It may not be amiss if I place on record here my own reaction to this side of Jack’s life. For almost twenty years I had shared (to some degree) in his submission to matriarchal rule: the attitude that I have already expressed towards this rule, and towards Mrs Moore in person, may predispose some readers towards a suspicion that I may have been a possessive brother, jealous and resentful if any other person had importance in Jack’s eyes. If this had been the case, I would have resented this marriage of his intensely: and in fact, my earlier experience did lead me to the preparation of plans for withdrawal and for the establishment of a home of my own in Eire.

  But Jack and Joy would not hear of this; and so I decided to give the new régime a trial. All my fears were dispelled. For me, Jack’s marriage meant that our home was enriched and enlivened by the presence of a witty, broad-minded, well-read and tolerant Christian, whom I had rarely heard equalled as a conversationalist and whose company was a never-ending source of enjoyment: indeed, at the peak of her apparent recovery she was at work on a life of Mme de Maintenon, which unfortunately never got further than several books of notes and an explanatory preface.

  It would be an impertinence for me to compare my own sorrow at her death with his: nevertheless, I still continue to miss her sadly.

  To speak temperately of the greater loss that overtook me three years later is difficult indeed. Jack was already in poor health by the time of his marriage: afterwards it became apparent that he needed an operation but was too weak to undergo it. In this situation, his health was bound to deteriorate steadily: no success attended the attempts to ‘fatten him up’ as he put it, ‘for the sacrifice’, and in July 1963 he very nearly died. He made some beginning of a recovery; but by early October it became apparent to both of us that he was facing death.

  In their way, these last weeks were not unhappy. Joy had left us, and once again—as in the earliest days—we could turn for comfort only to each other. The wheel had come full circle: once again we were together in the little end room at home, shutting out from our talk the ever-present knowledge that the holidays were ending, that a new term fraught with unknown possibilities awaited us both.

  Jack faced the prospect bravely and calmly. ‘I have done all I wanted to do, and I’m ready to go’, he said to me one evening. Only once did he show any regret or reluctance: this was when I told him that the morning’s mail included an invitation to deliver the Romanes lecture. An expression of sadness passed over his face, and there was a moment’s silence: then ‘Send them a very polite refusal’.

  Our talk tended to be cheerfully reminiscent during these last days: long-forgotten incidents in our shared past would be remembered, and the old Jack would return for a moment, whimsical and witty. We were recapturing the old schoolboy technique of extracting the last drop of juice from our holidays.

  Friday, 22 November 1963, began much as other days: there was breakfast, then letters and the crossword puzzle. After lunch he fell asleep in his chair: I suggested that he would be more comfortable in bed, and he went there. At four I took his tea and found him drowsy but comfortable. Our few words then were the last: at five-thirty I heard a crash and ran in, to find him lying unconscious at the foot of his bed. He ceased to breathe some three or four minutes later.

  The following Friday would have been his sixty-fifth birthday. Even in that terrible moment, the thought flashed across my mind that whatever fate had in store for me, nothing worse than this could ever happen to me in the future.

  ‘MEN MUST ENDURE THEIR GOING HENCE.’

  *

  In making this selection from my brother’s correspondence, I have kept in mind not only those interested in the literary and religious aspects of his mind, but also—and perhaps more urgently—those who want to know what manner of man he was, and who may derive from these letters some idea of the liveliness, the colour and wit displayed throughout his life by this best of brothers and friends.

  I should perhaps stress that this book is a selection. Not all the letters that Jack wrote were of permanent and public interest; he sometimes repeated himself; and a few letters, or parts of letters, must be held back on grounds of charity or discretion. In certain cases, the name of his correspondents have been altered or suppressed, for sufficient reason. In general, omissions have only been indicated where the reader might otherwise be misled or bewildered: I have considered the general reader’s convenience, not aiming at any scholarly punctiliousness.

  I am deeply grateful to those who passed Jack’s letters to me, with permission to reprint; and also to Walter Hooper and Christopher Derrick for help in preparing the typescript for publication.

  Warren H. Lewis

  THE LETTERS

  It seems appropriate to begin this selection from my brother’s correspondence with his own first account of a major turning-point in his life, a major influence upon his thought and work. —W.H.L.

  1916–1919

  TO ARTHUR GREEVES: from Great Bookham, Surrey*

  [7 March 1916]

  I have had a great literary experience this week . . . The book, to get to the point, is George Macdonald’s ‘Faerie Romance’, Phantastes, which I picked up by hazard . . . Have you read it? . . . At any rate, whatever the book you are reading now, you simply MUST get this at once . . . Of course it is hopeless for me to try and describe it, but when you have followed the hero Anodos along the little stream of the faery wood, have heard about the terrible ash tree . . . and heard the episode of Cosmo, I know you will quite agree with me. You must not be disappointed at the first chapter, which is rather conventional faery tale style, and after it you won’t be able to stop until you finish. There are one or two poems in the tale . . . which, with one or two exceptions are shockingly bad, so don’t TRY to appreciate them . . .

  I quite agree with what you say about buying books, and love the planning and scheming beforehand, and if they come by post, finding the neat little parcel waiting for you on the hall table and rushing upstairs to open it in the privacy of your own room . . . I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say ‘at last’, I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he hoped to do—so much have I enjoyed it. The two cantos of ‘Mutabilitie’ with which it ends are perhaps the finest thing in it . . . I well remember the glorious walk of which you speak, how we lay drenched with sunshine on the ‘moss’ and were for a short time perfectly happy—which is a rare enough condition, God knows . . .

  TO ARTHUR GREEVES: from Great Bookham (The ‘Mrs K.’ referred to here is Mrs Kirkpatrick.)

  [14 March 1916]

  I am afraid our Gal
ahad [Arthur] will be growing a very stodgy mind if he reads nothing but Trollope and Goldsmith and Austen. Of course they are all very good, but I don’t think myself I could stand such a dose of solidity. I suppose you will reply that I am too much the other way, and will grow an unbalanced mind if I read nothing but lyrics and faery tales. I believe you are right, but I find it so hard to start a fresh novel: I have a lazy desire to dally with the old favourites again . . . I have found my musical soul again—you will be pleased to hear—this time in the preludes of Chopin. I suppose you must have played them to me, but I never noticed them before. Aren’t they wonderful? Although Mrs K. doesn’t play them well, they are so passionate, so hopeless, I could almost cry over them: they are unbearable . . .

  TO ARTHUR GREEVES: from Great Bookham

  [30 May 1916]

  I cannot urge you too strongly to go on and write something, anything, but at any rate WRITE. Of course everyone knows his own strength best, but if I may give any advice, I would say as I did before, that humour is a dangerous thing to try: as well, there are so many funny books in the world that it seems a shame to make any more, while the army of weird and beautiful or homely and passionate works could well do with recruits . . . And by the way, while I’m on this subject, there’s one thing I want to say: I do hope that in things like this you’ll always tell me the absolute truth about my work, just as if it were by someone we didn’t know: I will promise to do the same for you. Because otherwise there is no point in sending them, and I have sometimes thought that you are inclined not to. (Not to be candid I mean) . . .

  TO ARTHUR GREEVES: from Great Bookham

  [6 June 1916]

  I was rather surprised to see the note paper of your last letter and certainly wish I could have been with you: I have some vague memories of the cliffs round there and of Dunluce Castle, and some memories which are not vague at all of the same coast a little further on at Castlerock, where we used to go in the old days. Don’t you love a windy day at a place like that? Waves make one kind of music on rocks and another on sand, and I don’t know which of the two I would rather have . . . I don’t like the way you say ‘don’t tell anyone’ that you thought ‘Frankenstein’ badly written, and at once draw in your critical horns with the ‘of course I’m no judge’ theory. Rot! You are a very good judge for me because our tastes run in the same direction. And you ought to rely more on yourself than on anyone else in matters of books—that is if you are out for enjoyment and not for improvement or any nonsense of that sort . . .

  TO ARTHUR GREEVES: from Great Bookham

  [14 June 1916]

  I have now read all the tales of Chaucer which I ever expected to read, and feel that I may consider the book as finished: some of them are quite impossible. On the whole with one or two splendid exceptions such as the Knight’s and the Franklin’s tales, he is disappointing when you get to know him. He has most of the faults of the Middle Ages—garrulity and coarseness—without their romantic charm . . .

  I hope that you are either going on with ‘Alice’ or starting something else: you have plenty of imagination, and what you want is practice, practice, practice. It doesn’t matter what we write (at least in my view) at our age so long as we write continually as well as we can. I feel that every time I write a page either of prose or of verse, with real effort, even if it’s thrown into the fire next minute, I am so much further on . . .

  TO ARTHUR GREEVES: from Great Bookham

  [20 June 1916]

  What is nicer than to get a book—doubtful both about reading matter and edition, and then to find both are topping? By the way of balancing my disappointment in ‘Tristan’ I have just had this pleasure in Sidney’s ‘Arcadia’. Oh Arthur, you simply must get it . . . I don’t know how to explain its peculiar charm, because it is not at all like anything I ever read before: and yet in places like all of them. Sometimes it is like Malory, often like Spenser, and yet different from either . . . The story is much more connected than Malory: there is a great deal of love making, and just enough ‘brasting and fighting’ to give a sort of impression of all the old doings of chivalry in the background without becoming tedious . . .

  TO ARTHUR GREEVES: from Great Bookham (after a holiday spent together at Portsalon in County Donegal)

  27 September 1916

  As you say, it seems years and years since I left: I have quite dropped back into the not unpleasant, though monotonous routine of Bookham, and could believe I never left it. Portsalon is like a dream . . . One part of my journey I enjoyed very much was the first few miles out of Liverpool: because it was one of the most wonderful mornings I have ever seen—one of those lovely white misty ones when you can’t see ten yards. You could just see the nearest trees and houses, a little ghostly in appearance, and beyond that everything was a clean white blank. It felt as if the train was alone in space, if you know what I mean . . .

  Have you reached home yet? . . . The country at home was beginning to look nice and autumn-y, with dead leaves in the lanes and a nice nutty smell . . . Here it is horrible bright summer, which I hate. Love to all our friends such as the hedgepig etc.

  TO ARTHUR GREEVES: from Great Bookham

  4 October 1916

  The beastly summer is at last over here, and good old Autumn colours & smells and temperatures have come back. Thanks to this we had a most glorious walk on Saturday: it was a fine cool, windy day & we set out after lunch to go to a place called ‘Friday Street’ which is a very long walk from here through beautiful woods and vallies that I don’t know well. After several hours wandering over fields & woods etc. with the aid of a map we began to get lost and suddenly at about 4 o’clock—we had expected to reach the place by that time—we found ourselves in a place where we had been an hour before! . . . We had a lot of difficulty in at last reaching the place, but it was glorious when we got there. You are walking in the middle of a wood when all of a sudden you go downwards and come to a little open hollow just big enough for a little lake and some old, old red-tiled houses: all round it the trees tower up on rising ground and every road from it is at once swallowed up in them. You might walk within a few feet of it & suspect nothing unless you saw the smoke rising up from some cottage chimney. Can you imagine what it was like? Best of all, we came down to the little inn of the village and had tea there with—glory of glories—an old tame jackdaw hopping about our feet and asking for crumbs. He is called Jack and will answer to his name. The inn has three tiny but spotlessly clean bedrooms, so some day, if the gods will, you & I are going to stay there . . .

  TO ARTHUR GREEVES: from Great Bookham

  12 October [1916]

  You ask me my religious views: you know, I think, that I believe in no religion. There is absolutely no proof for any of them, and from a philosophical standpoint Christianity is not even the best. All religions, that is, all mythologies to give them their proper name, are merely man’s own invention—Christ as much as Loki. Primitive man found himself surrounded by all sorts of terrible things he didn’t understand—thunder, pestilence, snakes etc: what more natural than to suppose that these were animated by evil spirits trying to torture him. These he kept off by cringing to them, singing songs and making sacrifices etc. Gradually from being mere nature-spirits these supposed being[s] were elevated into more elaborate ideas, such as the old gods: and when man became more refined he pretended that these spirits were good as well as powerful.

  Thus religion, that is to say mythology, grew up. Often, too, great men were regarded as gods after their death—such as Heracles or Odin: thus after the death of a Hebrew philosopher Yeshua (whose name we have corrupted into Jesus) he became regarded as a god, a cult sprang up, which was afterwards connected with the ancient Hebrew Jahweh-worship, and so Christianity came into being—one mythology among many, but the one that we happened to have been brought up in . . .

  TO ARTHUR GREEVES: from Great Bookham

  25 October 1916

  I don’t know when I shall buy some new books, as I
am at present suffering from a flash of poverty—poverty comes in flashes like dullness or pleasure. When I do it will be either Our Village, or Cranford or Chaucer’s Troilus and Cressida, if I can get a decent edition of it. By all accounts it is much more in my line than the Canterbury Tales, and anyway I can take no more interest in them since I have discovered that my Everyman is abridged & otherwise mutilated. I wish they wouldn’t do that (Lockhart, you say, is another case) without telling you. I can’t bear to have anything but what a man really wrote.

  I have been reading the quaintest book this week, The Letters of Dorothy Osbourne to Sir William Temple in Everyman. I suppose, as a historian you will know all about those two, but in case you don’t they lived in Cromwell’s time. It is very interesting to read the ordinary everyday life of a girl in those days, and, tho’ of course they are often dull there is a lot in them you would like: especially a description of how she spends the day and another of a summer evening in the garden . . . I have read today—there’s absolutely no head or tale in this letter but you ought to be used to that by now—some ten pages of Tristram Shandy and am wondering whether I like it. It is certainly the maddest book ever written or ‘ever wrote’ as dear Dorothy Osbourne would say. It gives you the impression of an escaped lunatic’s conversation while chasing his hat on a windy May morning. Yet there are beautiful serious parts in it though of a sentimental kind, as I know from my father . . .