by C. S. Lewis
(3) God cd, had He pleased, have been incarnate in a man of iron nerves, the Stoic sort who lets no sigh escape him. Of His great humility He chose to be incarnate in a man of delicate sensibilities who wept at the grave of Lazarus and sweated blood in Gethsemane. Otherwise we should have missed the great lesson that it is by his will alone that a man is good or bad, and that feelings are not, in themselves, of any importance. We should also have missed the all important help of knowing that He has faced all that the weakest of us face, has shared not only the strength of our nature but every weakness of it except sin. If He had been incarnate in a man of immense natural courage, that wd have been for many of us almost the same as His not being incarnate at all.
(4) The prayer recorded in Matthew is much too short to be long enough for the disciples to go to sleep! They record the bit they heard before they fell asleep.
(5) It is probable that all the Gospels are based on acts and sayings wh. the disciples deliberately learned by heart: a much surer method even now than transmission by writing: still more so among people whose memories were uninfected by too many books and whose books were only MSS. But this is guess work. With all good wishes.
[P.S.] Keep clear of psychiatrists unless you know that they are also Christians. Otherwise they start with the assumption that your religion is an illusion and try to ‘cure’ it: and this assumption they make not as professional psychologists but as amateur philosophers. Often they have never given the question any serious thought.
TO MARTYN SKINNER: from Magdalen College
15 October 1947
I have just finished your admirable Letters [to Malaya] V wh. you kindly sent me more months ago than I care to remember. I think it is the best yet and full of plums . . . The smaller stabs of pleasure are too numerous to mention and on some pages almost continuous. I pick out for special loveliness the ‘open boat, the drifting grave’ and ‘each temple like a curl’. A beautiful book and terrible too for one, who shares (as I do) your apprehensions.
It wd be less terrifying if one cd really attribute the murder of beauty to any particular set of evil men; the trouble is that from man’s first and wholly legitimate attempt to win safety and ease from Nature it seems, step by step, to lead on quite logically to universal suburbia . . .
TO OWEN BARFIELD: from Magdalen College
16 December 1947
Yes, I did read your letter. You must bear with me. Things were never worse at The Kilns. W[arren] is away, so correspondence was never heavier in College. ‘Sleep hath forsook and giv’n me o’er.’ I hadn’t thought retirement at our age was quite like betrothal: nor how concrete the proposal was. It needs thinking of. In any case the professional job is in some degree a compulsory defence against, and alleviation of, the domestic. Take care. Where there is no office there may be no leisure at all . . .
Your essay is magnificent and I don’t know why you are disappointed with it.167 Tolkien thinks the same & has read it twice. His is v. good too. Mine thin. D. Sayers perhaps a trifle vulgar in places . . .
In haste—have wasted most of the morning (soon there will be no mornings) packing up a huge MS sent me unsolicited by a brutal stranger with a name like Van Tripe. Well, all’s one . . .
P.S. Of course the real trouble is within. All things wd be bearable if I were delivered from this internal storm (buffera infernal) of self-pity, rage, envy, terror, horror and general bilge!
TO OWEN BARFIELD: from The Kilns
22 December 1947
(This absurd notepaper is a present from an American.)
I already regret my last letter except in so far as it has produced such a valuable one from you. It was 2/3 temper and melodrama. Thus ‘Sleep has forsook and given me o’er’ meant ‘I have had one or two bad nights lately’ plus ‘Isn’t Samson Agonistes fine?’
There is no problem about vocation. Quite obviously one can’t leave an old semi-paralysed lady in a house alone for days or even hours: and the duty of looking after one’s people rests on us all and is common form.
The rage comes from impatientia in the strict theological sense: because one treats as an interruption of one’s (self-chosen) vocation the vocation actually imposed on one—regards the exam paper actually set as a distraction from the one you wd like to be doing. Anyway, Maureen is coming for Christmas and W. and I are going to Malvern . . .
Don’t imagine I didn’t pitch into C[harles] W[illiams] for all I was worth.
TO EDWARD A. ALLEN, OF WESTFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS: from Magdalen College (Mr Allen and his mother were two of the numerous Americans who sent Jack food and other gifts after the War.)
29 January 1948
I just don’t know what to say in answer to your letter of 23rd January. One, two, perhaps even three parcels can be inadequately, but not entirely unsuitably acknowledged, but what is one to say when bombarded with a non-stop stream of kindnesses? Nothing has in my time made such a profound impression in this country as the amazing outburst of individual American generosity, which has followed on the disclosure of our economic situation. (I say nothing of government action, because naturally this strikes the ‘man in the street’ much less obviously.) The length of time which a parcel takes to cross the Atlantic is a significant indication of the volume of food which must be pouring into England.
As regards the ‘Tuxedo’—‘dinner jacket’ here, ‘le smoking’ in Paris—if it doesn’t fit me, it will certainly fit one of my friends, and will save some grateful man a year’s clothing coupons: and at least £25 cash.168
As regards things to send—don’t send any of that sixty-six million tons of snow, thanks very much! We still shudder when we think of last winter. A packet or two of envelopes are almost always welcome; a small thing, but the constant shortage of them becomes very irritating to a busy man after a time. With heartiest thanks for all your great kindness, and best good wishes.
TO MISS VERA MATHEWS: from Magdalen College (another American benefactor)
7 February 1948
How lovely! Bacon, tea, shortening, what not—and again. A thousand thanks. Typing expert is away, as you see, and me hardly able to write legibly. But (if you can make it out) believe me our hearts are very warm and we enjoy the kindness and friendship as well as its tangible (and chew-able) results. I really hardly know how to say what I feel; thank you again and again.
TO EDWARD A. ALLEN: from Magdalen College
29 May 1948
So once more I have to send you my inadequate, but very sincere thanks, not only for the ‘tuxedo’, but for the impending food parcel . . . The extent to which your folk have come to our rescue is amazing, and moving; I knew in a general way of course that very large quantities of gift food, clothing etc. were coming into Britain, but I was none the less surprised to read in a recent debate in the House of Lords that every household in the kingdom benefits by American aid to the tune of £1–0–0 a week, and has done so for the past two years. You may well be proud of yourselves . . .
‘Just what a Don does?’ Like a woman, his work is never done. Taking ‘tutorials’ occupies the best part of his day, i.e. pupils come in pairs, read essays to him, then follows criticism, discussion etc: then he gives public lectures in his own subject; takes his share in the business of managing the College; prepares his lectures and writes books; and in his spare time stands in queues.
I trust our meeting will not be postponed until the hereafter; why not take a trip over here and distribute some dollars among our hard working and deserving innkeepers? . . .
TO JOHN WAIN: from Magdalen College
6 November 1948
I am wondering whether you have thought of applying for the tutorial fellowship in English at New College? I understand (this is of course strictly confidential) that they have a strong candidate who is an old New College man but they are not settled to elect him, i.e. if a definitely stronger candidate puts in they will elect that candidate. I know you are well thought of by D. C.,169 it is therefore possible that you migh
t be the stronger candidate if you applied. If you were out of a job of course it wd be obvious that you shd try for this. As things are, I don’t know if you will wish to or not. I shall never be satisfied myself until you are at Oxford: and this job wd no doubt be better paid than your present one. On the other hand it wd probably mean more work and of course, house-hunting. I don’t know that I cd add anything by writing at greater length. Think it over for twenty-four hours and let me know.170
TO OWEN BARFIELD: from Magdalen College
10 November 1948
I wonder whether what you say about depressions does not really mark an advance in self criticism and objectivity—i.e. that the very same experiences wh. wd once have led you to say ‘How nasty everyone (or the weather, or the political situation) is at present’ now leads you to say ‘I am depressed’—a Copernican revolution revealing as motion in the self what in ones more naif period was mistaken for motion in the Cosmos. (True, your last letter shows some decline in your critical powers: but we have all been warned that an inability to appreciate new poetry comes with years!) But I’m serious about the other suggestion.
I also will soon be fifty. Just the twenty years more now! A happy birthday to you. If the knowledge that for some twenty-five years you have been always food (and often physic as well) to my mind and heart can contribute to it, well it is so.
TO DR WARFIELD M. FIROR, OF BALTIMORE, MARYLAND: from Magdalen College (Dr Firor was particularly generous in sending Jack hams.)
22 January 1949
Your bounty (see Anthony and Cleopatra) ‘an autumn is that grows the more by reaping’. Only yesterday I said to myself, How I should like to see America if only one could see the quiet parts of it, and not the cities—things which in every country interest me only if I want to hear an opera or buy a book! And you anticipated me.171
But it’s all impossible. An old invalid ties me to home. Absence in the afternoon, even for one day, has to be carefully planned ahead. So a visit to another continent is as impossible to me as one to the Moon. Oh what a pity! To think that I might as your guest have seen bears, beavers, Indians, and mountains! How did you know what I wanted?
Meanwhile, the only chance of meeting is that you should visit this island prison. To all my set you are by now an almost mythical person—Firor-of-the-Hams, a sort of Fertility god.
TO I. O. EVANS: from Magdalen College
28 February 1949
I’m with you on the main issue—that art can teach (and much great art deliberately set out to do so) without at all ceasing to be art. On the particular case of Wells I wd agree with Burke, because in Wells it seems to me that one had first class pure fantasy (Time Machine, First Men in the Moon) and third class didacticism: i.e. I object to his novels with a purpose not because they have a purpose but because I think them bad. Just as I object to the preaching passages in Thackeray not because I dislike sermons but because I dislike bad sermons. To me, therefore, Wells & Thackeray are instances that obscure the issue. It must be fought on books where the doctrine is as good on its own merits as the art—e.g. Bunyan, Chesterton (as you agree), Tolstoi, Charles Williams, Virgil.
TO SARAH (a goddaughter): from The Kilns
3 April 1949
I am sorry to say that I don’t think I shall be able to be at your confirmation on Saturday. For most men Saturday afternoon is a free time, but I have an invalid lady to look after and the weekend is the time when I have no freedom at all, and have to try to be Nurse, Kennel-Maid, Wood-cutter, Butler, House-maid and Secretary all in one. I had hoped that if the old lady were a little better than usual and if all the other people in the house were in good tempers I might be able to get away next Saturday. But the old lady is a good deal worse than usual and most of the people in the house are in bad tempers. So I must ‘stick to the ship’.
If I had come and we had met, I am afraid you might have found me very shy and dull. (By the way, always remember that old people can be quite as shy with young people as young people can be with old. This explains what must seem to you the idiotic way in which so many grown-ups talk to you.) But I will try to do what I can by a letter.
I think of myself as having to be two people for you. (1) The real, serious, Christian godfather (2) The fairy godfather. As regards (2) I enclose a bit of the only magic (a very dull kind) which I can work. Your mother will know how to deal with the spell. I think it will mean one or two, or even five, pounds for you now, to get things you want, and the rest in the Bank for future use. As I say, it is a dull kind of magic and a really good godfather (of type 2) would do something much more interesting: but it is the best an old bachelor can think of, and it is with my love.
As for No 1, the serious Christian godfather, I feel very unfit for the work—just as you, I dare say, may feel very unfit for being confirmed and for receiving the Holy Communion. But then an angel would not be really fit and we must all do the best we can. So I suppose I must try to give you advice. And the bit of advice that comes into my head is this: don’t expect (I mean, don’t count on and don’t demand) that when you are confirmed, or when you make your first Communion, you will have all the feelings you would like to have. You may, of course: but also you may not. But don’t worry if you don’t get them. They aren’t what matter. The things that are happening to you are quite real things whether you feel as you wd wish or not, just as a meal will do a hungry person good even if he has a cold in the head which will rather spoil the taste. Our Lord will give us right feelings if He wishes—and then we must say Thank you. If He doesn’t, then we must say to ourselves (and Him) that He knows best. This, by the way, is one of the very few subjects on which I feel I do know something. For years after I had become a regular communicant I can’t tell you how dull my feelings were and how my attention wandered at the most important moments. It is only in the last year or two that things have begun to come right—which just shows how important it is to keep on doing what you are told.
Oh—I’d nearly forgotten—I have one other piece of advice. Remember that there are only three kinds of things anyone need ever do. (1) Things we ought to do (2) Things we’ve got to do (3) Things we like doing. I say this because some people seem to spend so much of their time doing things for none of the three reasons, things like reading books they don’t like because other people read them. Things you ought to do are things like doing one’s school work or being nice to people. Things one has got to do are things like dressing and undressing, or household shopping. Things one likes doing—but of course I don’t know what you like. Perhaps you’ll write and tell me one day.
Of course I always mention you in my prayers and will most especially on Saturday. Do the same for me.
TO OWEN BARFIELD: from The Kilns (with allusion to some very unpleasant characters in his science fiction trilogy)
4 April 1949
Did I ever mention that Weston, Devine, Frost, Wither, Curry, and Miss Hardcastle were all portraits of you? (If I didn’t, that may have been because it isn’t true. By gum, though, wait until I write another story.)
Plus aux bois? We will, Oscar, we will.
Henry 7th had some mastiffs hanged for fighting a Lion: said, they were rebelling against their natural sovereigne. That’s the stuff. Also, had his own hawk decapitated for fighting an eagle.
Talking of beasts and birds, have you ever noticed this contrast: that when you read a scientific account of any animal’s life you get an impression of laborious, incessant, almost rational economic activity (as if all animals were Germans), but when you study any animal you know, what at once strikes you is their cheerful fatuity, the pointlessness of nearly all they do. Say what you like, Barfield, the world is sillier and better fun than they make out . . .
TO MISS BRECKENRIDGE: from Magdalen College
1 August 1949
Don’t bother about the idea that God ‘has known for millions of years exactly what you are about to pray’. That isn’t what it’s like. God is hearing you now, just as simply a
s a mother hears a child. The difference His timelessness makes is that this now (which slips away from you even as you say the word now) is for Him infinite. If you must think of His timelessness at all, don’t think of Him having looked forward to this moment for millions of years: think that to Him you are always praying this prayer. But there’s really no need to bring it in. You have gone into the Temple (‘one day in Thy court is better than a thousand’) and found Him, as always, there. That is all you need to bother about.
There is no relation of any importance between the Fall and Evolution. The doctrine of Evolution is that organisms have changed, sometimes for what we call (biologically) the better . . . quite often for what we call (biologically) the worse . . . The doctrine of the Fall is that at one particular point one species, Man, tumbled down a moral cliff. There is neither opposition nor support between the two doctrines . . . Evolution is not only not a doctrine of moral improvements, but of biological changes, some improvements, some deteriorations . . .
TO MRS EDWARD A. ALLEN: from Magdalen College
16 August 1949
I shd think I do like salt water and in all its forms; from a walk on the beach in winter when there is not a soul in sight, or seen washing past (rather like beaten copper) from the deck of a ship, or knocking one head over heels in great green, ginger-beer-coloured waves. I grew up close to it, but there’s no chance of getting there now. On the other hand I have discovered the joys of shallow river bathing . . . It is like bathing in light rather than in water; and having walked for miles, you can drink it at the same time . . . We also are in a drought and heat wave . . .
