I am afraid I couldn’t. The route by which I actually became a Theist (viâ subjectivism and as an escape from Solipsism, almost in Berkeley’s manner) could not be used for such a dialogue as you have in view. And also, like the old fangless snake in The Jungle Book,¹²³ I’ve largely lost my dialectical power. I am really very sorry. It sounds an excellent series and I wd. like to have been in it if I could.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

14/7/51

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Yes: GEORGE HERBERT, Seventeenth Century religious poet: his book is called The Temple and is available in many modern reprints.

Yes: by Reason I meant ‘the faculty whereby we recognise or attain necessary truths’ or ‘the faculty of grasping self-evident truths or logically deducing those which are not self-evident’. I wd. not call the truths Reason any more than I wd. call colours Sight, or food Eating.

Yes: Christ is the eternal, unique 2nd Person of the Trinity: sharing His Sonship we can become sons of God in a real, but derived, manner.

I am v. sorry your husband is going through a bad time. You are all in my prayers. Thanks for the charming photos.

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

17/7/51

Dear Miss Pitter

Very many thanks for reading the MS. The idea that you should also thank [me] is to me fantastic: I was ‘making use of you’, you were a thermometer. The thermometer reading (print the good ones because they’re good and the bad ones because they’re bad) is intriguing: a line more easy to take about other people’s work than one’s own. One sees Huck’s point of view: the Widow, getting the house ready for a visitor would not have shared it.

I am lately back from Cornwall where I have been sailing for the first time. I think it is a way in which people who can’t dance can get some of what dancing was made to give. There’s nothing like water after all. Do you know David Lindsay’s lines explaining why there was no wine before the Flood—

The wattir was sae strung and fine Thei wald nat labour to mak wyne.¹²⁴

That is why they lived so long. Well, thank you. My duty to you both.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD):

REF.310/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

17th July 1951.

Dear Mr. Kinter,

The sardines, and the enormous tin of ham which you so very kindly sent me, have arrived in good condition, and I am most grateful to you for such a welcome gift; it could hardly have arrived more apropos, for I saw yesterday in the paper that our microscopic ration of bacon is shortly to be reduced by one ounce. Your ham will be of great service in tiding us over a lean period. It shall be consigned to the refrigerator until the time comes—though I was a little surprised to find the instruction that it needed refrigeration on the label; over here we never put canned goods into the frig., but just store them in the coolest part of a larder.

There is a larger number of American visitors in Oxford this year than usual, and I’m glad to say that they are having what—by our standards—is a very good summer. They are doing the Colleges very thoroughly, and putting us natives to shame daily by asking questions about them which we can’t answer. You never realize how little you know about your home town until you meet an intelligent visitor in it.

We are all very thankful—and you are no doubt more so—to see that at last there is some prospect of an end to this ghastly Korean war. Our only fear now is that it may be replaced by a Persian one; but it will be time enough to cross that river when we come to it.

With many thanks and all good wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W): TS

RER328/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

27th July 1951.

Dear Mrs. Jessup,

Thank you for your letter of the 21st. Someone (and someone I don’t even know) had been selected by Charles Williams as his biographer some time before his death, and is in possession of all the materials. So that is that! But don’t imagine you are losing anything. Biography is not in my line.

I agree most strongly with all you say about him, and wish someone really good could do him: but I would’nt, even if there were not another claimant in possession.

With all best wishes,

yours sincerely,

WH Lewis

Secretary.

(Dictated by Mr. Lewis)

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHURCH TIMES (EC): ¹²⁵

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sir,—

Having read Mr. Bradbury’s letter on the Holy Name,¹²⁶ I have a few comments to make. I do not think we are entitled to assume that all who use this Name without reverential prefixes are making a ‘careless’ use of it; otherwise, we should have to say that the evangelists were often careless. I do not think we are entitled to assume that the use of the word Blessed when we speak of the Virgin Mary is ‘necessary’; otherwise, we should have to condemn both the Nicene and the Apostles’ Creed for omitting it.

Should we not rather recognise that the presence or absence of such prefixes constitute a difference, not in faith or morals, but simply in style? I know that their absence is irritating to others. Is not each party innocent in its temperamental preference but grossly culpable if it allows anything so subjective, contingent, and (with a little effort) conquerable as a temperamental preference to become a cause of division among brethren? If we cannot lay down our tastes, along with other carnal baggage, at the church door, surely we should at least bring them in to be humbled and, if necessary, modified, not to be indulged?

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W): ¹²⁷

As from Magdalen College,

Oxford

4/8/51

Dear Evans

The Coming of a King¹²⁸ arrived most opportunely when I was in almost solitary confinement recovering from mumps, and I read it at two sittings. I think it not only the best but incomparably the best book you have done. The others interested me but this really set wires jangling. I congratulate you. And I think it is a great thing to put that idea of the Stone Age—which is at least as likely to be the true one—into boys’ heads instead of Well’s or Naomi Mitchison’s. It’s all good. The marriage customs are amusing, the Ogres exciting, and the Dark Faces with their quest just add the something more. I hope it will be a great success.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS C. VULLIAMY (W):¹²⁹ TS

RER347/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

10th August 1951.

Dear Mrs. Vulliamy,

Many thanks for your most kind and encouraging letter of the 4th. With all best wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER(W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/8/51

You are treasures. Yes, I’d love to. The 15th Sept. week end (i.e. arrive 14th) if I may. Lovely.

I’ve just been having Mumps. Humphrey¹³⁰ kept on quoting me bits out of The Problem of Pain, which I call a bit thick. Love and deep thanks to both.

TO GENIA GOELZ (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

September 12, 1951

Dear Mrs Goelz

There is no doubt that laymen, and women, can baptise. The validity would, I suppose, depend on whether you regard the church into which the child is baptised as a part of the true church. I am very impressed that an Episcopalian will not accept Presbyterian baptism (and at the rudeness of his method) but I dare say he knows the rule. I fear I don’t. If I were you I would ask another (quieter and more amiable) Episcopalian parson. Personal animosities or friendships ought to have nothing to do with the question. In great haste.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen etc

Sept 12/1951

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

It is v. remarkable (or wd. be if we did not know that God arranges things) that you shd. write about our vicarious sufferings when another correspondent has recently written on the same matter.

I have not a word to say against the doctrine that Our Lord suffers in all the sufferings of His people (see Acts IX.6)¹³¹ or that when we willingly accept what we suffer for others and offer it to God on their behalf, then it may be united with His sufferings and, in Him, may help to their redemption or even that of others whom we do not dream of. So that it is not in vain: tho’ of course we must not count on seeing it work out exactly as we, in our present ignorance, might think best. The key text for this view is Colossians I.24.¹³² Is it not, after all, one more application of the truth that we are all ‘members of one another’?¹³³ I wish I had known more when I wrote the Problem of Pain.

God bless you all. Be sure that Grace flows into you and out of you and through you in all sorts of ways, and no faithful submission to pain in yourself or in another will be wasted.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept 12/51

Dear Mrs. Jessup

Yes, I shd. jolly well think I have met that problem of the division between loving hearts when one comes to believe and have known something of it in my own life.¹³⁴ The poem on Galahad at Caerleon¹³⁵ touches it, doesn’t it? Our Lord foresaw it: see Luke XII 49-53.¹³⁶

I have not the ghost of anything that cd. be called a ‘solution’. Perhaps this pain cannot be avoided: is it not the tension between the Church and the World breaking out in each household. Sometimes the unconverted party, hitherto quite kind, becomes almost diabolical:^* but the other often wins him (or her) over in the end. (I don’t think you are conceited at all!)

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

Magdalen College,

Oxford,

England

Sept. 13th 1951

Dilectissime Pater—

Insolito gaudio affectus sum tuâ espistolâ et eo magis quod audivi te aegritudine laborare; interdum timui ne forte mortem obisses. Minime tamen cessavi ab orationibus pro te: ñeque enim debet illud Flumen Mortis duke commercium caritatis et cogitationum abolere. Nunc gaudeo quia credo (quamquam taces de valetudine–noli contemnere corpus, Fratrem Asinum, ut dixit Sanctus Franciscus!) tibi iam bene aut saltern melius esse. Mitto ad te fabulam meam nuper Italice versam; in qua sane magis lusi quam laboravi. Fantasiae meae liberas remisi habenas haud tamen (spero) sine respectu ad aedificationem et meam et proximi. Nescio utrum hujusmodi nugis dilecteris; at si non tu, fortasse quidam juvenis aut puella ex bonis tuis líberís amabit. Equidem post longam successionem modicorum morborum (quorum nomina Itálica nescio) iam valeo. Quinquagesimum diem natalem sacerdotii tui gratu-lationibus, precibus, benedictionibus saluto. Vale. Oremus pro invicem semper in hoc mundo et in futuro.

C. S. Lewis

Magdalen College,

Oxford,

England

Sept 13th 1951

Dearest Father—

I was moved with unaccustomed joy by your letter and all the more because I had heard you were ill; sometimes I feared lest you had perhaps died.

But never in the least did I cease from my prayers for you; for not even the River of Death ought to abolish the sweet intercourse of love and meditations.

Now I rejoice because I believe (although you keep silent about your health—do not condemn the body: Brother Ass, as St Francis said!)¹³⁷I believe you are well or at least better.

I am sending you my tale recently translated into Italian in which, frankly, I have rather played than worked.¹³⁸I have given my imagination free rein yet not, I hope, without regard for edification—for building up both my neighbour and myself. I do not know whether you will like this kind of trifle. But if you do not, perhaps some boy or girl will like it from among your ‘good children’.

For myself, after a long succession of minor illnesses (I do not know their Italian names) I am now better.

I salute the fiftieth anniversary of your priesthood with congratulations, prayers and blessings. Farewell. May we always pray for one another both in this world and in the world to come.

C. S. Lewis

TO BERNARD ACWORTH (W): ¹³⁹

Magdalen College,

Oxford

13th Sept. 1951

Dear Acworth–

I have read nearly the whole of Evolution¹⁴⁰ and am glad you sent it. I must confess it has shaken me: not in my belief in evolution, which was of the vaguest and most intermittent kind, but in my belief that the question was wholly unimportant. I wish I was younger. What inclines me now to think that you may be right in regarding it as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives, is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders. The section on Anthropology was especially good.

I am just back from Ireland where I have had the great pleasure of meeting an old friend of yours—Conway Ross. He told me you were one of the only two men who ever ‘talked him down’ and he hoped I wd. be the third. This hope was disappointed: ‘faith he gave me little chance to fulfil it. But he’s a grand chap and a man of my totem.’

The point that the whole economy of nature demands simultaneity of at least a v. great many species is a v. strong one. Thanks: and blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept 15th. 1951

Dear Miss Mathews

I will convey your kind message to my brother. St. Ives (it was my friends’ choice, not mine) isn’t the tucked-away and time-forgotten nook you picture, but a good deal spoiled by holiday-makers.

Since then, I have been really in quiet and almost unearthly spots in my native Ireland. I stayed for a fortnight in a bungalow which none of the peasants will approach at night because the desolate coast on which it stands is haunted by ‘the Good People’. There is also a ghost but (and this is interesting) they don’t seem to mind him: the faerie are a more serious danger.

I am told that fewer Americans than usual visited England this year so the Festival, from that point of view, was a failure: it was, in any case, a silly business. With all sympathy, blessings, and, as always, thanks.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

24/9/51

Dear Mr Kinter

I have been in Ireland, revisiting the haunts and some of the friends of my boyhood, and that is why your letter of Aug 22nd. has been so long unanswered. A ham is not a ‘small thing’, but a glorious creature. If the shortages within our English ‘Tin Curtain’ did not affect others so much more grievously than me, I could almost give thanks for a state of affairs which restores to men in their fifties a healthy schoolboyish interest in eating. It gives us a chance (which I fear I often forget to take) of making grace before meals a reality.

I rather envy your visit to Boethius’ tomb:¹⁴¹ but perhaps his shade wd. be more pleased if I re-read the Consolatio.¹⁴²

My Numznor was a mispelling: it ought to be Numenor.¹⁴³ The private mythology to which it belongs grew out of the private language which Tolkien had invented: a real language with roots and sound-laws such as only a great philologist cd. invent. He says he found that it was impossible to invent a language without at the same time inventing a mythology: he adds that Muller was wrong in calling mythology a ‘disease of language’¹⁴⁴ and that it wd. be truer to say that language was a disease of mythology. I don’t quite understand that.

The private mythology ‘clicked’ with this world at the moment when the participle atlan (fallen or shattered) which had been produced by sound laws with no anticipation of what it wd. lead to, when applied to the vanished land of Numenor, turned out to be so obviously connected with our vanished land of Atlantis. A letter to him direct (J. R. R. Tolkien, Merton College, Oxford) wd., I am sure, give pleasure and elicit a full and most interesting reply.

I am so glad you liked the Lion: there will be another children’s story in November. With v. many thanks & good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

27/9/51

Excellent. Will Tu. Oct. 30th do? RSVP.

TO BERNARD ACWORTH (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

4/10/51

Dear Acworth–

No, I’m afraid. I shd. lose much and you wd. gain almost nothing by my writing you a preface. No one who is in doubt about your views on Darwin wd. be impressed by testimony from me, who am known to be no scientist. Many who have been or are being moved towards Christianity by my books wd. be deterred by finding that I was connected with anti-Darwinism.

I hope (but who knows himself!) that I wd. not allow myself to be influenced by this consideration if it were only my personal success as an author that was endangered. But the cause I stand for wd. be endangered too. When a man has become a popular Apologist he must watch his step. Everyone is on the look out for things that might discredit him. Sorry.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

Lewis had been working on Volume III of the Oxford History of English Literature, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, since 1936. Beginning with the Michaelmas Term of 1951, Magdalen College gave him a year off to complete the hook. He did no teaching during that time.

Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 15 October.

TO MRS JESSUP(W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

15/10/51

Dear Mrs. Jessup–

I agree with everything you say (except that I shd. publish anything on the subject: a bachelor is not the man to do it—there is such an obvious answer to anything he says!).

Our regeneration is a slow process. As Charles Williams says there are three stages: (1.) The Old Self on the Old Way. (2.) The Old Self on the new Way. (3.) The New Self on the New Way.

After conversion the Old Self can of course be just as arrogant, importunate, and imperialistic about the Faith as it previously was about any other interest. I had almost said ‘Any other Fad’–for just as the loveliest complexion turns green in a green light, so the Faith itself may have at first all the characteristics of a Fad and we may be as ill to live with as if we had taken up Nudism or Psychoanalysis or Pure Wool Clothing. You and I, clearly, both know all about that: one makes blunders.

About obedience, the principle is clear. Obedience to man is limited by obedience to God and, when they really conflict, must go. But of course that gives one v. little guidance about particulars. The converted party must pray: I suppose it is not often necessary to pray in the presence of the other! Especially if the converted party is the woman, who usually has the house to herself all day. Of course there must be no concealment, in the sense that if the question comes up one must say frankly that one does pray. But there is a difference between not concealing and flaunting. For the rest (did I quote this before?) MacDonald says ‘the time for speaking seldom arrives, the time for being never departs.’¹⁴⁵ Let you and me pray for each other.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

RER64/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

18th October 1951.

Dear Miss Mathews,

Your nice parcel of the 6th September has just arrived, and has I see been opened by our Customs people—which rarely happens. What they saw suspicious about it I can’t imagine. I suppose what happens is that they open one parcel in every hundred or so as a routine check.

I feel sure that you won’t be offended if I tell you that I have—with great reluctance—sent your gift straight on to some one else, whose need is much greater than mine. It has gone to a particularly hard hit member of the most unfortunate class in this country: an elderly lady (65), who has always had a struggle to make ends meet, and who, owing to a failure of dividends, is now on the verge of actual want. No doubt you have seen in the papers that we are caught in what the economists call ‘an inflationary spiral’; so far this has not apparently touched the working classes, but amongst the elderly, living on dwindling investment income in a world of rising prices, there is already discomfort, hardship, and I fear in many cases, real suffering. And to the lady in question, your parcel will be a real Godsend.

Our elections take place this day week, and I shall not be sorry when they are over. Already everything possible seems to have been said by every possible candidate, and the reiteration becomes wearisome. There seem to be good prospects of putting Labour out, in spite of the fact that they are promising the earth, whereas Churchill, with his usual good sense, is promising nothing but hard times.

I hope you are keeping well; we both are. With many thanks (should I also say apologies?), and all good wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WENDELL W. WAITERS (P):¹⁴⁶ TS¹⁴⁷

REF.413/51

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

25th October 1951.

Dear Mr. Watters,

Yes. I am not surprised that a man who agreed with me in Screwtape (ethics served with an imaginative seasoning) might disagree with me when I wrote about religion. We can hardly discuss the whole matter by post, can we?

I’ll only make one shot. When people object, as you do, that if lesus was God as well as Man, then He had an unfair advantage which deprives Him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water shd refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying ‘Oh, but you have an unfair advantage’; it is because of that advantage that He can help.¹⁴⁸

But all good wishes: we must just differ: in charity I hope. You must not be angry with me for believing you know: I’m not angry with you!

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD): TS

RER401//51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

29th October 1951.

Dear Blamires,

I hope my refusal will rank as a very ‘flat’ one.¹⁴⁹I am struggling with a preface for another book at the moment and wishing I’d never undertaken it!¹⁵⁰ I don’t believe I would really do you any good, for [I] think the Educational world is rather anti-me. I could write a paragraph– the sort of thing that comes out in the catalogue or on the dust jacket. I’m sorry. But I must get out of these ‘little jobs one after another’ that, in the aggregate, really cripple one.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD): PC

Magdalen College

Oxford

5/11/51

How is the Back? And if it is better, cd. you come and dine with me on Wed. next 7 (not dressed: call in my rooms at 7. sharp) or, if that is not convenient, cd. you lunch at 1 o’clock the same day? My duty to your wife

C. S. Lewis

TO HERBERT PALMER (TEX): ¹⁵¹

20/11/51

‘To which’ [i.e. to Rhetoric] ‘poetry would be made subsequent, or indeed rather precedent, as being less subtle and fine, but more simple, sensuous, and passionate’–Tractate on Education (Prose Wks, Bohn’s Edtn. Vol. Ill, p. 473.)¹⁵²

Bad luck on ‘impassioned’ wh. he certainly did NOT say, whatever E.S. may think. I imagine, tho’, that passionate and impassioned meant v. nearly the same.

I’m afraid I never see the Fortnightly, but will look out for yr. article if I do.¹⁵³ I am v. sorry you have been so ill and hope there is a better time coming. I’m alright. Blessings–

C.S.L.

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen etc.

27/11/51

Dear Evans

(I wish you wouldn’t doctor or mister me!) I was a pig not to send you a Caspian, but you know how, at the moment of making out one’s list one has first 3 names wh. some recent event makes obvious, and after those one can only think either of 100 people or no one. I now rectify the omission. I am delighted that it pleased you. I look forward v. much to the ‘booklets’. The conception sounds excellent and, I hope they will be a great success.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD): TS

REF.310/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

27th November 1951.

Dear Mr. Kinter,

Thank you for your kind letter of the 19th. What it is to have a real reader! No one else sees that the first book is Ransom’s enfances:¹⁵⁴if they notice a change at all, they complain that in the later ones he ‘loses the warm humanity of the first’ etc.

All the best.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MISS TUNNICLIFF (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Dec 1st 1951

Dear Miss Tunnicliff

(1.) Oddly enough I have more than once thought of writing on the Problem of Pleasure. As for the title and subject of my actual book¹⁵⁵ [they] were not of my own independent choice: I had been asked to deal with that subject for a series.¹⁵⁶

(2.) ‘Rough male taste’¹⁵⁷ is, of course, a metaphor. It still seems to me the right one—but of course all metaphors are touch-and-go and don’t appeal equally to all imaginations.

(3.) I did try so to write as to make people less angry. To say that they might be angry was part of the attempt.

(4.) You think I don’t go far enough about animals: others think I go too far. If I had gone as far as you wd. like I shd. have raised more incredulity. Yes—my treatment of freedom was crude & hasty.

(5.) No, I don’t think I can frame every sentence for reading aloud in mixed company. I think books on such subjects are best read in solitude.

With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

In his unpublished biography of his brother, most of which became Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966), Warnie Lewis wrote: ‘On 3rd December 1951 Jack received a letter from the Prime Minister [Winston Churchill] offering to recommend him for a C.B.E. in the New Year Honour’s List. Here is his reply:’¹⁵⁸

TO THE PRIME MINISTER’S SECRETARY (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

[4 December] 1951

I feel greatly obliged to the Prime Minister, and so far as my personal feelings are concerned this honour would be highly agreeable. There are always however knaves who say, and fools who believe, that my religious writings are all covert anti-Leftist propaganda, and my appearance in the Honours List would of course strengthen their hands. It is therefore better that I should not appear there. I am sure the Prime Minister will understand my reason, and that my gratitude is and will be none the less cordial.

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF.25/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

6th December 1951.

My dear Mr. Allen,

As I entered my rooms this morning I was cheered by the sight of a parcel, so admirably packed, that I did’nt have to look at the label to see who was the kind friend who had sent it. How do you do it? I’ve been trying for years to learn how to make up a package, and still have’nt progressed sufficiently in the art to produce one that I would trust to cross the street. I need hardly say how grateful I am to you for it, coming as it does at a moment when the new government—very rightly by the way—has refused to woo the electors by playing Father Christmas with a food bonus.

It appears from information given in Parliament that Labour’s food gifts to the country in December were really only available by cutting the rations in other months, and this Churchill does’nt propose to do. But what a mess the world is in, is’nt it? In some respects you must feel it even worse than we do; you are of course better off materially, but we at least have’nt a full-scale war on our hands. And one to which I can’t see any end, for I take it that if peace is made in Korea—which does’nt look very likely—it will merely be the prelude to an attack on France in Indo-China or ourselves in Malaya. But we can’t do anything about it except pray, so there is no use in grumbling.

After the wettest November on record, with floods all down the Thames valley, we have settled down into a crisp December, and are enjoying it. There is of course the usual coal shortage, but that does’nt worry us much, for we have a good deal of timber about the place, and my brother and I do our own coal mining with axe and saw. So do the neighbours, drat ‘em, but its impossible to patrol the place day and night; but as King Louis XV used to say, ‘things as they are will last out my time’.

With all best wishes to you and your mother for a happy Christmas from both of us, and with very many thanks,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

RER64/51.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

12th December 1951.

Dear Miss Mathews,

Many thanks for your letter of the 8th:–

Texas certainly does’nt sound attractive, but you seem to have got some enjoyment out of it; my brother says he has an idea that this is the one which calls itself the Lone Star State, and that its inhabitants–like the Scots and the Jews—are always making up good stories against themselves, e.g. that when America entered the war, Texas wired the President ‘Texas joins with U.S.A. in fight for freedom’.

Yes, we have been exceedingly lucky (in more senses than one) over your parcels, and the customs took no notice of the things you mention; I think with all articles they take the view that as long as you are not making a business of it, a little of this that or the other thing may now be passed. But this is only a guess, I really don’t know.

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