Letters of C. S. Lewis

by C. S. Lewis

  He is an ugly man with rather a cockney voice. But no one ever thinks of this for five minutes after he has begun speaking. His face becomes almost angelic. Both in public and private he is of nearly all the men I have met the one whose address most overflows with love. It is simply irresistible. Those young men and women were lapping up what he said about Chastity before the end of the hour. It’s a big thing to have done. I have seen his impress on the work in the Milton papers when I examined. Fancy an Oxford student, and a girl, writing about Mammon’s speech in Book II ‘Mammon proposes an ordered state of sin with such majesty of pride that but for the words live to ourselves which startle our conscience, we should hardly recognise it as sin, so natural is it to man.’ (Compare that with the sort of bilge you and I were proud to write in Schools!)

  Williams, Dyson of Reading, & my brother (Anglicans) and Tolkien and my doctor, Havard (your church) are the ‘Inklings’ to whom my Problem of Pain was dedicated. We meet on Friday evenings in my rooms: theoretically to talk about literature, but in fact nearly always to talk about something better. What I owe to them all is incalculable. Dyson and Tolkien were the immediate human causes of my own conversion. Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire? His stories (I mean Williams) are his best work—Descent into Hell and The Place of the Lion are the best. I quite agree about what you call his ‘affectations’—not that they are affectations, but honest defects of taste. He is largely a self-educated man, labouring under an almost oriental richness of imagination (‘clotted glory from Charles’ as Dyson called it) which could be saved from turning silly and even vulgar in print only by a severe early discipline which he has never had. But he is a lovely creature. I’m proud of being among his friends.

  (2) Now about the scripts. (a) The claim to forgive sins is in S. Mark and all the Synoptics. (b) Yes—I think I gave the impression of going further than I intended, in saying that all theories of the Atonement were ‘to be rejected if we don’t find them helpful’. What I meant was ‘need not be used’—a v. different thing. Is there, on your view, a real difference here: that the Divinity of Our Lord has to be believed whether you find it a help or a ‘scandal’ (otherwise you’re not a Xtian at all) but the Anselmic theory of Atonement is not in that position. Wd you admit that a man was a Xtian (and could be a member of your Church) who said ‘I believe that Christ’s death redeemed man from sin, but I can make nothing of any of the theories as to how’?

  You see, what I wanted to do in these talks was to give simply what is still common to us all, and I’ve been trying to get a nihil obstat from friends in various communions. (The other dissentient besides you is a Methodist who says I’ve said nothing about justification by faith.) It therefore doesn’t much matter what you think of my own theory because that is advanced only as my own. But I’d like to be able to meet you on the other point—how far any theory is de fide. The Council of Trent ‘made satisfaction’ seems to be the real hitch. What was the context? What error was it directed against? Still—don’t bother, for I fear I shall have to give up my original hope. I think I could get something you and your friends wd pass, but not without making the talk either longer or shorter: but I’m on the Procrustes’ bed of neither more nor less than fifteen minutes—you can imagine the difficulty.

  What did you think of In Memorian on re-reading it? I re-read it (with Barfield) some months ago and thought (1) That the last quarter is a falling off—and can hardly help being since the poem represents a sorrow neither being transmuted, nor ending in tragedy, but just petering out (2) That the mere difficulty of construing some stanzas is v. great. (3) That a great deal of the poetry is simply overwhelmingly good.

  About the Son being subject to the Father (as God—of course, obviously subject as Man in the Incarnation)—yes, that’s what I think: but was recently contradicted by a theologian. Can you back me up? What is the correct interpretation of ‘equal to His Father as touching His Godhead’ in the Athanasian Creed?

  The Talks will be at 4.40 P.M. on Jan. 11th, 4.45 Jan. 18th, Feb. 1st., 4.40 Feb. 8th, 4.45 Feb. 15th.

  You look positively fat in the photo—you abbey-lubber!

  TO A FORMER PUPIL: from Magdalen College

  20 January 1942

  Sorry you’re in a trough. I’m just emerging (at least I hope I am) from a long one myself. As for the difficulty of believing it is a trough, one wants to be careful about the word ‘believing’. We too often mean by it ‘having confidence or assurance as a psychological state’—as we have about the existence of furniture. But that comes and goes and by no means always accompanies intellectual assent, e.g. in learning to swim you believe, and even know intellectually, that water will support you, long before you feel any real confidence in the fact. I suppose a perfection of faith would make this confidence invariably proportionate to the assent. In the meantime, as one has learnt to swim only by acting on the assent in the teeth of all instinctive conviction, so we shall proceed to faith only by acting as if we had it. Adapting a passage in the Imitation one can say ‘What would I do now if I had a full assurance that this was only a temporary trough’, and having got the answer, go and do it. I am a man, therefore lazy; you a woman, therefore probably a fidget. So it may be good advice to you (though it wd be bad to me) not even to try to do in the trough all you can do on the peak.

  I know all about the despair of overcoming chronic temptations. It is not serious, provided self-offended petulance, annoyance at breaking records, impatience etc., don’t get the upper hand. No amount of falls will really undo us if we keep on picking ourselves up each time. We shall of course be v. muddy and tattered children by the time we reach home. But the bathrooms are all ready, the towels put out, and the clean clothes in the airing cupboard. The only fatal thing is to lose one’s temper and give it up. It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us: it is the v. sign of His presence . . .

  TO MARTYN SKINNER: from Magdalen College

  23 April [1942]

  I hope you got through Sanders some time ago my great enjoyment of your Letters to Malaya. A really good poem. Not in the least a pastiche as the silly people will say but a real proof that the Popian manner is a real lingua franca wh. anyone who has anything to say can use for original work. In fact, it is already less ‘archaic’ than the manner of ‘Georgian poetry’. The pother about ‘originality’ all comes from the people who have nothing to say: if they had they’d be original without noticing it . . .

  TO SISTER PENELOPE, C.S.M.V.: from Magdalen College (Upon leaving the Mother House of the Community of St Mary the Virgin in Wantage on 22 April Jack went to London to read a paper entitled ‘Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?’ to the British Academy.)

  11 May 1942

  The Venus book is just finished, except that I now find the two first chapters need re-writing. I will send you a typed MS as soon as it is typed and you can report on it to Reverend Mother for her consent to the dedication.163

  The British Academy made a v. stupid audience compared with your young ladies! They were all the sort of people whom one often sees getting out of taxis and going into some big doorway and wonders who on earth they are—all those beards and double chins and fur collars and lorgnettes. Now I know . . .

  TO SISTER PENELOPE, C.S.M.V.: from Magdalen College (Sister Penelope was engaged upon a translation of St Athanasius’ De Incarnatione.)

  29 July 1942

  (1) The Rabbit [in Magdalen’s deer park] and I have quarrelled. I don’t know why, unless I gave him something that disagreed with him. At any rate, he has cut me dead several times lately—so fair and so fickle! Life is full of disappointments. ‘The strong hearts of the conies’ is prob. the true reading in that Psalm. (2) I’m glad to hear you are a little better, but wish you were better still.

  (3) After having to abandon S. Athanasius for examining, I have now returned to the De Incarnatione and have just finished the long section on Jewish prophecies. If that is the bit you
are omitting, I expect you are right. Though it crosses my mind that modern apologetics may have given up too completely the old ‘proof of prophecy’. Each individual passage can be explained away as really meaning something else, or accidental: but could it still be argued that to apply this to the whole lot involves stretching the arm of coincidence rather far?

  (4) Have you read Martin Buber’s I and Thou. Tell me what I am to think of it? From Heaven, or (very subtly) from Hell? I’m by no means sure. And why does he limit all true ‘meeting’ to a Thou-situation? Is there no ye-situation? What happens when three friends are together or when a man meets his wife and child? (5) On Witches. I didn’t really mean to deny them, tho’ I see I have given that impression.164 I was interested in them at the moment only as an illustration. I think my considered view wd be much the same as yours. But if a truth, it is not a truth I am at all anxious to spread.

  (6) About ‘became Man’ versus ‘a man’. There is you will admit, a v. obvious sense in which He became ‘a man’—a man of a particular height and weight, the Son of a particular Mother, who was in one place and time and not (in that mode) elsewhere. The Fathers, writing in a language with no indefinite article didn’t have to plump for one or the other. Are you correct in saying ‘the Person, the Ego, of the incarnated Lord is God’? I had thought there was a human soul involved (when we speak of His humanity we don’t mean simply His body) and that the human and divine natures together made one Person. Your way of putting it suggests that there was simply a human body with God substituted for the human soul one wd ordinarily have expected. Is this right? I thought not, but I don’t know . . .

  TO A FORMER PUPIL: from Magdalen College (answering a question about the reference to G. B. Shaw in ch. IV of Broadcast Talks)

  [August? 1942]

  Of course Shaw is not a scientist and the attack is not on science as such. But there is a sort of creed which might be called ‘scientific humanism’, tho’ many of its votaries know very little science (just as some people go to Church who know very little theology), and which is shared by people so different as Haldane, Shaw, Wells, and Olaf Stapleton . . . cf. Shaw’s Lilith’s ‘Beyond’ with Haldane p. 309: ‘It is possible that under the conditions of life on the outer planets the human brain may alter in such a way as to open up possibilities inconceivable to our own minds.’ (on p. 303 one of these alterations, the elimination of pity, had already occurred.)165 All tarred with the same brush in fact . . .

  TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS, O.S.B.: from Magdalen College (in reply to questions about parts of Broadcast Talks.)

  13 October 1942

  I shouldn’t have written quite as I did if I had thought that there was a consensus of theologians in favour of the Anselmic theory. I believed that it was not to be found either in N. T. or most of the Fathers. If I’m wrong in this, it is a matter of plain historical ignorance.

  War & Peace is in my opinion the best novel—the only one wh. makes a novel really comparable to epic. I have read it about three times. What we lose (I’m told) in our translations is the humour wh. is an important merit of the real book.

  You wouldn’t be surprised at the space I give to Dualism if you knew how attractive it is to some simple minds. As for retiring into ‘private life’, while feeling very strongly the evil of publicity, I don’t see how one can. God is my witness I don’t look for engagements . . .

  TO SISTER PENELOPE, C.S.M.V.: from The Kilns

  22 December 1942

  Perelandra will reach you, I hope, early in January: I have deterred the artist from putting his idea of Tinidril (you can imagine!) on the cover. I have been very busy with one thing and another: there aren’t the days and the hours there used to be, are there? The minute hand used to go as the hour hand goes now!

  How does one feel thankful? I am thinking of the improvement in the war news, and I don’t mean (rhetorically) ‘How can one be thankful enough?’ but just what I say. It seems to be something which disappears or becomes a mere word the moment one recognises one ought to be feeling it. I always tell people not to bother about ‘feelings’ in their prayers, and above all, never to try to feel, but I’m a bit puzzled about Gratitude: for if it is not a feeling, what is it? A funny thing how merely formulating a question awakes the conscience! I hadn’t a notion of the answer at the bottom of the last sheet, but now I know exactly what you are going to say: ‘Act your gratitude and let feelings look after themselves.’ Thank you. (Do all theoretical problems conceal shirkings by the will?) . . .

  I have ‘sinitis’ (it feels like toothache but isn’t) but not very badly and it is, I think, going away. I have to sit for twenty min. every evening with my face in a jug of Friars Balsam, like a horse with a nose-bag, and the family say all sorts of things and I can’t answer, tho’ it is ‘pain and grief to me’! God bless you all for Christmas: you are in my daily prayers as I know I am in yours.

  TO A FORMER PUPIL: from The Kilns

  31 January 1943

  I’m the worst person in the world to write to someone who is feeling weak and listless . . . because I don’t myself dislike it nearly as much as most people. To lie in bed—to find one’s eyes filling with facile tears at the least hint of pathos in one’s book—to let the book drop from one’s hand as one sinks deeper and deeper into reverie—to forget what you were thinking about a moment ago and not to mind—and then be roused by the unexpected discovery that it is already tea-time—all this I do not find disagreeable.

  Yes, it is funny what horrid young men one meets in Dickens and Thackeray. Of course the descent of David Copperfield is partly due to the fact that no later chapters could come up to the early ones. Have you noticed that nearly all writers describe childhood (when it is in the first person) well? Jane Eyre is also best at the beginning: and almost every biography. But it is also due to the convention whereby Victorian novelists are not allowed to attribute their hero’s peccadilloes in respect of chastity? Hence the ‘scrapes’ of youth all have to be represented by other less probable and (to me) more repellent sins. You notice that Tom Jones does not similarly lose our regard as he grows up . . .

  No. Bears seem to be very modest. No one seems to know anything about their love passages. Perhaps they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but gather their young from the flowers as Virgil thought the bees did. It would explain why the bear’s whelp has to be ‘licked into shape’.

  I’ve re-read The Ring and the Book in trains lately with great enjoyment: but don’t recommend it to you in your present state . . . Jane Austen, Scott, and Trollope are my favourite authors when ill . . .

  TO SISTER PENELOPE, C.S.M.V.: from The Kilns

  20 February [1943]

  I have been putting off my answer to your first letter from day to day in the hope that I shd be able to send Perelandra with it: but tho’ the publishers said it wd be out in Jan. there is no sign of it yet. No doubt there is some hitch with the binders for it has been printed some months ago . . .

  ‘Creation’ as applied to human authorship (I’m on your first letter now, you see) seems to me an entirely misleading term. We make . i.e. we re-arrange elements He has provided. There is not a vestige of real creativity de novo in us. Try to imagine a new primary colour, a third sex, a fourth dimension, or even a monster wh. does not consist of bits of existing animals stuck together. Nothing happens. And that surely is why our works (as you said) never mean to others quite what we intended: because we are re-combining elements made by Him and already containing His meanings. Because of those divine meanings in our materials it is impossible we shd ever know the whole meaning of our own works, and the meaning we never intended may be the best and truest one.

  Writing a book is much less like creation than it is like planting a garden or begetting a child: in all three cases we are only entering as one cause into a causal stream which works, so to speak, in its own way. I wd not wish it to be otherwise. If one cd really create in the strict sense wd one not find we had created a sort of Hell? . . .<
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  How dull all ones books are except the one you are waiting for at the moment!—wh. again has an analogical bearing on the parable of the lost sheep. I shd have more joy of Perelandra at the moment than of 99 books that have had no hitch about them . . .

  TO SISTER PENELOPE, C.S.M.V.: from Magdalen College

  10 August 1943

  I should like a few days at Wantage, but things are so bad at home that I’m cancelling several of my R.A.F. engagements. Pray for me, Sister, and for poor Jane (very bad with her varicose ulcer) and for ‘Muriel’ (a kind of lady gardener & ‘help’ who is putting off an operation she ought to have, out of funk, and getting hysterical and going into rages, and losing her faith) and for poor dear Margaret (certified ‘mental deficient’ maid, at times the humblest, most affectionate, quaintest little person you can imagine, but subject to fits of inexplicable anger and misery).

  There is never any time when all these three women are in a good temper. When A is in B is out: and when C has just got over her resentment at B’s last rage and is ready to forgive, B is just ripe for the next, and so on!

  But out of evil comes good. From praying anxiously for a little of God’s peace to communicate to them, I have been given more of it myself than I think I ever had before. Which is interesting. You don’t get it when you ask for yourself: want it for the sake of the others, you do . . .

  TO THE SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF PROGRESS, OF WALNUT CREEK, CALIFORNIA: from Magdalen College (in reply to an offer of membership)

  [May 1944]

  While feeling that I was born a member of your Society, I am nevertheless honoured to receive the outward seal of membership. I shall hope by continued orthodoxy and the unremitting practice of Reaction, Obstruction, and Stagnation to give you no reason for repenting your favour.