110 Lewis was reading Skinner’s The Return of Arthur: Merlin (London: Frederick Muller, 1951), the first part of a four-part work. The second part was entitled The Return of Arthur: Parti (London: Chapman and Hall, 1955); the third was entitled The Return of Arthur: Part II (London: Chapman and Hall, 1959). The complete edition, containing the three earlier volumes as well as The Return of Arthur, Part III, was published under the title The Return of Arthur: A Poem of the Future (London: Chapman and Hall, 1966). Because of the rarity of the individual parts, all references are to the 1966 edition.

111 ‘to think alike about political affairs’. From Henry St John Bolingbroke (1678-1751), Dissertation Upon Parties, Letter 1.

112 Skinner, The Return of Arthur: Merlin, II, ii, 5.

113 ibid., xxxvii.

114 Stanza.

115 ibid., Ill, ix. ‘Lasciate etc’ refers to Dante, Inferno, III, 9.

116 Sir Desmond MacCarthy (1877-1952), literary journalist, was known for his theatre criticism and for his reviews and other writing in the Sunday Times.

117 In C. S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics, ch. 20, p. 161, Walsh stated: ‘I mention what Lewis has not done, not as a reproach to him, but to suggest to his overardent admirers that an exclusive diet of his works is not wholesome.’

118 Genia Goelz—Mrs E. L. Goelz—was the daughter of Mrs Mary Van Deusen. She is referred to as ‘Mrs Sonia Graham’ in L. She was writing from 2756 Reese Avenue, Evanston, Illinois. Although abbreviated copies of the letters to Mrs Goelz appeared in L, complete copies were made by Walter Hooper in 1965.

119 Mary Elizabeth ‘Lily Ewart was Greeves’s sister. See her biography in CL I, p. 98n.

120 Dr Firor had a ranch in Wyoming, and he was constantly urging Lewis to join him there.

121 In The Great Divorce: A Dream (London: Bles, 1945 [1946]; Fount, 1997), ch. 11, one of the Ghosts has on his shoulder a Red Lizard who represents Lust.

122 Robert C. Walton, head of the BBC’s School Broadcasting Department, wrote to Lewis on 9 July 1951 announcing plans for six half-hour programmes on ‘the nature of evidence’: ‘We shall begin by stating as clearly as possible the Christian belief that God is to be understood in personal terms, and then two speakers will discuss with the “interrogator” how they have come to accept the Christian conception of God’s nature. Our main purpose is not to argue whether or not the Christian belief is true, but to explain the nature of the evidence which leads Christians to this conclusion. We should be very glad if you would take part in this programme.’

123 The old white cobra in ‘The King’s Ankus’ in Kipling’s Second Jungle Book (1895).

124 Sir David Lyndsay, The Monarchie (Ane Dialog Betwix Experience and ane Courteour) (1554), 1293-4.

125 This letter was first published in the Church Times, CXXXIV (10 August 1951), p. 541, under the title ‘The Holy Name’.

126 Leslie E. T. Bradbury, ‘The Holy Name’, Church Times, CXXXIV (3 August 1951), p. 525.

127 See the biography of Idrisyn Oliver Evans in CL II, p. 584n.

128 I. O. Evans, The Coming of a King: A Story of the Stone Age (1950).

129 Mrs Vulliamy was writing from Park College, Parksville, Missouri.

130 Lewis’s doctor, Robert Emlyn ‘Humphrey Havard.

131 Acts 9:4-5: ‘And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who are thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutes’

132 Colossians 1:23-4: ‘I Paul…now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church.’

133 Romans 12:5: ‘So we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.’

134 Lewis was referring to a problem that sometimes arises when, in a family of non-Christians, one of them becomes a Christian. It is one of the themes in Lewis’s novel, Till We Have Faces. See the letter to Clyde Kilby of 10 February 1957.

135 Lewis meant ‘The Coming of Galahad’ in Charles Williams’s Taliessin Through Logres (1938).

136 Luke 12:49-53: Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division: For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.’

* Yet oh! How I sympathise with him! God is such an Intruder! We must deal with them v. tenderly.

137 Francis of Assist: Early Documents, 3 vols., ed. Regis J. Armstrong OFM Cap., J. A. Wayne Hellmann OFM, Conv., William J. Short OFM (New York: New City Press, 2000), Vol. II: The Founder, ‘The Legends and Sermons about Saint Francis by Bonaventure of Bagnoregio (1255-1267)’, p. 564: ‘[Francis of Assisi] taught his brothers…that they should master their rebellious and lazy flesh by constant discipline and useful work. Therefore he used to call his body Brother Ass, for he felt it should be subjected to heavy labor, beaten frequently with whips, and fed with the poorest food.’

138 This was the Italian translation of Out of the Silent Planet, published as Lontano dal Pianeta Silenzioso, trans. Franca Degli Espinosa (Milan and Verona: Mandadori, 1951).

139 See the biography of Bernard Acworth in CL II, p. 632n. Acworth was founder and president emeritus of the Evolution Protest Movement.

140 Bernard Acworth, This Progress: The Tragedy of Evolution (London: Rich & Cowan, 1934).

141 The tomb of Boethius (AD 480-524) is in the Church of S. Pietro Ciel d’Oro at Pavia.

142 The edition Lewis used was The Consolation of Philosophy, with the English Translation of ‘I.T.’ (1609), rev. H. E Stewart (London: Heinemann, Loeb Classical Library, 1918).

143 Kinter had asked about a sentence in the preface of Lewis’s That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups (London: John Lane, 1945; HarperCollins, 2000), p. xii: ‘Those who would like to learn further about Numinor and the True West must (alas!) await the publication of much that still exists only in the MSS. of my friend, Professor J. R. R. Tolkien.’

144 Max M”uller, The Science of Language, 2 vols. (London: Longmans, 1891), Vol. II, p. 454.

145 George MacDonald, Sir Gibbie (1879), ch. 47: ‘the time for speaking comes rarely, the time for being never departs.’

146 Wendell W. Watters, MD, a Canadian psychiatrist, was Professor of Psychiatry at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He was the author of Deadly Doctrine: Health, Illness, and Christian God-talk (1992).

147 This letter first appeared in L as ‘To A CRITICAL BUT CHARITABLE READER’, and was incorrectly dated 12 September 1951.

148 Dr Watters’s objection to Christ’s ‘unfair advantage’ was occasioned by Lewis’s Broadcast Talks, Bk. II, ch. 4. When revising the talks for Mere Christianity (London: Bles, 1952; HarperCollins, 2002), Lewis added two paragraphs to the end of Book II, Chapter 4, in which he used the example given here: ‘I have heard some people complain that if lesus was God as well as man, then His sufferings and death lose all value in their eyes, “because it must have been so easy for him”…If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back (between my gasps) “No, it’s not fair! You have an advantage! You’re keeping one foot on the bank”? That advantage—call it “unfair” if you like—is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?’ (pp. 58-9)

149 Geoffrey Bles was pressing Blamires to persuade Lewis to write a preface for Blamires’s English in Education (London: Bles, 1951).

150 i.e., the preface he was writing for D. E. Harding’s The Hierarchy of Heaven and Earth.

151 See the biography of Herbert Palmer, poet and literary critic, in CL II, p. 678n.

152 John Milton, Prose Works, with preliminary remarks and notes by J. A. St John, 5 vols. (London: Bohn’s Standard Library, 1948-53).

153 Herbert Palmer, ‘English Poetry: 1938-1950–I’, The Fortnightly, CLXX (September 1951), pp. 624-8; ‘English Poetry: 1938-1950–II’, ibid. (October 1951), pp. 695-700; ‘English Poetry: 1938-1950–III’, ibid. (October 1951), pp. 768-74.

155 i.e., The Problem of Pain.

156 Ashley Sampson of Geoffrey Bles, The Centenary Press, had asked Lewis to contribute a book on pain to the Christian Challenge series. See CL II, p. 289n.

157 The Problem of Pain, ch. 1, p. 15: ‘The Christian faith…has the master touch–the rough, male taste of reality’

158 ‘C. S. Lewis: 1898-1963’, Bodleian Library, MS. Facs. d. 290.

159 Since the thirteenth century there have been many versions of the legend of the Wandering Jew. In essence the legend recounts how a Jew chided Christ as he bore the cross to Calvary and was thereafter condemned to wander about the world until Christ’s Second Coming.

160 Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Part I, pp. 55-6.

161 United Nations Organization.

162 25 April.

163 Hebrews 11:1: ‘Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’

164 Psalm 8:2; Matthew 21:16.

165 Numbers 22:24-31.

166 Philippians 4:4.

167 Colossians 2:14-5.

1952

TO EDNA GREEN WATSON (BOD): TS

REF.52/9

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

2nd January 1952.

Dear Mrs. Watson,

Very many thanks for your kind present of the cake, which has just arrived in good condition; good external condition that is, for it will not be opened until I get it out to my house this evening, where it will be received with enthusiasm. I often hear laments about the difficulty of getting cake making materials, so you can imagine how much pleasure it will give.

It will also help to distract attention from all the news in the papers about the shortages which are expected in 1952: news which is not rendered any the more palatable by Churchill’s assurance that when he gets back from your country,¹ and meets Parliament, he will have several proposals to make which ‘will be very unpleasant for all of us.’ But we are in hopes that his treatment will differ from Atlee’s in being like the pain after you have had a tooth out–getting less every day—whereas under the late government we were shirking going to the dentist and the pain was getting worse every day.²

With many thanks, and all good wishes for the New Year,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen etc

Jan 8th. 1952

Dear Miss Pitter

May Maleldil send you a good year.³ Of course use those Spenserian stanzas as you wish.⁴ I think your idea of the sheepdog-trial for readers is excellent.

The poem of yours which I didn’t like was the one about the enamoured earwig and the lady:⁵ and it all comes of mere idiosyncrasies of mine, (a.) My imagination goes easily to humanised mammals but stops dead at humanised insects, (b.) I can’t bear the least suggestion (however sportive) of love affairs between different species or even between children. That is one of the many things which for me sinks Tom Sawyer so immeasurably below the divine Huckleberry. But as I can’t give any reason for the second—I think I could for the first–this doesn’t help you v. much. I suspect it originates with the mingled embarrassment and nausea evoked in oneself as a child by grown-up jokes of an arch character at childrens’ parties.

Isn’t Herbert–?⁶ well: one can only say well. I am glad you are swimming in poetry and cannot help hoping great things.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

REF. 52/28

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

8th January 1951 [1952].

My dear Mr. Allen,

A very happy new year to you both, and many thanks for your amusing letter of the 2nd. As you will observe, you were very nearly in time to call up on the old wave length, but not quite; my brother makes a clear sweep of all the old numbers every 31st December. I don’t know why, and I dare’nt ask him, in case he should insist on explaining it to me. He by the way asks to send greetings to both of you, and asks me to tell you that your thin blue summer suit is still going strong: and adds, that in view of the amount of summer we get in this country, he reckons on it figuring amongst the assets of his estate when the Landlord terminates his lease.

I doubt if there is a man in America besides yourself who would have seriously contemplated sending a private gift of coal to this country: I believe if I said ‘thanks very much, and while you are about it, make me a present of the ship that brings it’, you would do your best to comply! But I’m glad to be able to report that your prayers for mild weather have been answered; I got up this morning to find the thermometer standing at 52 in my unheated bedroom, in which the window had been wide open all night. Your weather is the sort I hate—or at least like least, for we should’nt hate even the weather. But I confess I don’t enjoy wet snow.

Talking of ships, the epic of the ‘Flying Enterprise’ has played even the Truman-Winston conference off the front page of our diminished dailies: and rightly so.⁷ The American merchantile marine, and indeed the whole nation must be very proud of their Captain Carlsen. I wonder is a flair for journalism inborn in your people? You must have noticed how good are the reports from the commanders of the U.S.N. destroyers which have been standing by; no professional journalist could have done the thing better. A British naval officer in the same circumstances would be transmitting reports in what we call ‘Whitehall English’ which would make even the ‘Flying Enterprise’ story sound dull.

I like the name of your car; over here we are more aristocratic. My brother’s old Colonel has a car which has been raised to the Peerage under the title of Victor, Viscount Vauxhall, but he is called Vic for short; on the other hand he had an American friend in Shanghai whose car rejoiced in the name of ‘Puddlejumper’.

If you send a letter to Lieutenant-Colonel R. K. Wilson, Royal Artillery, c/o the War Office, Whitehall, London, S.W.I., it should reach him wherever he is, but of course if he is in Korea or some such place, it will take some time to reach him; it would be as well to endorse the envelope ‘Please Forward’ anyway. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but our army is very scattered these days; I saw in the Sunday paper that at any given moment, we have ninety thousand trained troops on board ship, going to or coming from somewhere. As you say, what a muddle. Is this ghastly Korean war never going to end: or are we to spend the rest of our lives running round the Iron Curtain stopping leaks in it?

Yours ever.

C. S. Lewis⁸

TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD):

Magdalen etc.

10/1/52

Dear Sister Penelope

It was, as always, a great pleasure to hear from you. Hearty good wishes and prayers for the new year.

I was very intrigued by the Snow Men last time the story came up (about 15 years ago, was it?) but had hardly noticed its re-occurrence: certainly I am not well enough equipped to write to the Times.⁹

I have, if not thought, yet imagined, a good deal about the other kinds of Men. My own idea was based on the old problem ‘Who was Cain’s wife?’ If we follow Scripture it wd. seem that she must have been no daughter of Adam’s. I pictured the True Men descending from Seth, then meeting Cain’s not perfectly human descendants (in Genesis vi. 1-4, where I agree with you), interbreeding and thus producing the wicked Antediluvians.¹⁰

Oddly enough I, like you, had pictured Adam as being, physically, the son of two anthropoids, on whom, after birth, God worked the miracle which made him Man: said, in fact, ‘Come out—and forget thine own people and thy father’s house’¹¹–the Call of Abraham wd. be a far smaller instance of the same sort of thing, and regeneration in each one of us wd. be an instance too, tho’ not a smaller one. That all seems to me to fit in both historically and spiritually.

I don’t quite feel we shd. gain anything by the doctrine that Adam was a hermaphrodite. As for the (rudimentary) presence in each sex of organs proper to the other, does that not occur in other mammals as well as in humans? Surely pseudo-organs of lactation are externally visible in the male dog? If so there wd. be no more ground for making men (I mean, humans) hermaphroditic than any other mammal. (By the way, what an inconvenience it is in English to have the same word for Homo and Vir).¹² No doubt these rudimentary organs have a spiritual significance: there ought spiritually to be a man in every woman and a woman in every man. And how horrid the ones who haven’t got it are: I can’t bear a ‘man’s man’ or a ‘woman’s woman’.

I haven’t read any of the books you mention except Farrer’s Glass of Vision (if that is the Bamptons)¹³ which I found v. good.¹⁴ Have you read Simone Weil’s Waiting on God?¹⁵ Erroneous in many ways, but I have rather fallen in love with it. The fragment at the end, about the sons of Noah, wd. interest you especially.

I will order They Shall be My People¹⁶ and look forward to it. Congratulations. For my own part, I have been given a year’s leave from all teaching duties to enable me to finish my book on XVIth century literature, so I am plugging away at that as hard as I can. My hope is to kill some popular mythology about that fabulous monster called ‘the Renaissance’. There are five fairy tales already written, of which the second has now appeared.

‘lane’ died almost a year ago, after a long but, thank God, painless illness. I beg you will often pray for her. She was an unbeliever and, in later years, very jealous, exacting, and irascible, but always tender to the poor and to animals.

Your hand is better than mine (to read, I mean—it may hurt more).

Yes, oremus, oremus.

Yours very sincerely.

C. S. Lewis

TO I. O. EVANS (W):

Magdalen etc

10/1/52

Dear Evans–

Thanks for the play,¹⁷ and for the other chap’s stories.¹⁸ I liked the play very much. You made the astrology of the Magi v. convincing and Simeon was quite a character. I hope the performance pleased you?

As for the stories—the author writes a great deal better than most of the ‘science fiction’ lot, and is pretty learned. But oh, if only he didn’t try to be comic! The Norse story¹⁹ was far the best, for in its atmosphere rough horse-play did no harm. But the attempts at humour in the other two ruined them for me. I can’t bear Britomart getting drunk and maudlin. In Ariosto’s world there is, of course, plenty of comedy: but not of the kind this author puts in! Perhaps I expected too much. With all good wishes for the new year.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO HARRY BIAMIRES (BOD):

Magdalen.

19/1/52

Dear Blamires (I wish you’d call me Lewis instead of Dr. Lewis)

I have read through the revised passages.²⁰ They all seem to me v. sound now. A few minor points remain: p. 1. animal kind. Just a slight danger of anbiguity between kind = sort (i.e. are animalic) and kind = species (animal-kind or mankind). P. 24. para 3 especially brutal. I’d prefer cruel. Brutal is unfortunate because the use of brutal to mean cruel is itself an instance of the same figure that leads to inhuman meaning cruel. P. 72 End of footnote. Wd. common dependence be better than communal. The latter might mean that we don’t have in common a personal dependence but only a corporate dependence. P. 73 para 2. I’m not quite happy about ‘authority of service’. P. 74. Isn’t the quotation ‘come full circle’ not gone. (I haven’t looked this up).

About your kind compliment to me in the Preface, I like it of course. The real question is whether it will do you good or harm. I am much hated as well as much loved and the connection with me will damn you with certain reviewers. I’d advise you to omit it, but you must do exactly as you please.

They were wrong in saying I was away that Friday and I’m sorry they did, because I had staying with me a man whom I wd. like you to have met. He has read your previous books & likes them, and has in common with you the qualities of being (a.) A Christian—R. C. (b.) A schoolmaster (c.) An old pupil of mine. Not that you are exactly a schoolmaster. His name is G. Sayer (The College, Malvern)

Of course you were right to send me the MS. All best wishes: you are doing a most valuable work.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO CAROL JENKINS (W): ²¹

REF.52/60

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

22nd January 1952.

Dear Miss Jenkins,

It is a pleasure to answer your question. I found the name²² in the notes to Lane’s Arabian Nights:²³ it is the Turkish for Lion. I pronounce it Ass-Ian myself. And of course I meant the Lion of ludah. I am so glad you liked the book.²⁴ I hope you will like the sequel (Prince Caspian) which came out in November.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD): TS

REF.52/64.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

22nd January 1952.

Dear Mr. Kinter,

By an odd coincidence your very handsome and acceptable gift arrived by the same post as the enclosed letter: which I send to you as a proof that I was not so rude as to ignore your very interesting and welcome letter of last year. Wise after the event, I now see that you were merely on a visit to New York, and had not changed your permanent address.

You cannot imagine what the arrival of a ham means to the average British household these days: it would be untrue to say that we are short of food, but our sufficiency is a very monotonous one, and such luxuries as you have sent me have a very cheering effect.

With very many thanks, and all best wishes for 1952,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (P): ²⁵

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Jan 31st 1952

Dear Mr. Hilton Young

Lanes²⁶ have sent me a copy of your paper on my novels, and suggested that we shd. meet. If you could run down and lunch with me in college on any day next month except the 7th and 12th (Sundays are bad, but possible) I’d be delighted to have a talk afterwards. But—would it be a risk? I have an idea that a critic and a book are company, but that the author is de trop.²⁷ Wd. my Milton book have been improved or ruined by a meeting with Milton? Because, you see, there is hardly any limit to our disagreements about my trilogy.

But ought you to take any notice of the fact? When I’ve said that there is no allegory in it, and that there’s nothing at all about the Second Coming in T.H.S.,²⁸ you may reply ‘Well, that is what the books mean to an intelligent reader and what does it matter what you meant them to mean?’–a point of view I wholly agree with. Still, I hope you’ll come: we shd. probably have several other authors to discuss.

You could hardly conceive how different my approach was from yours. The germ of Perelandra was simply the picture of the floating islands themselves, with no location, no story, and no [?]²⁹ The way you allegorise the 3 species on Mars is masterly: and those three, because—well, however one does invent things: presumably because I’m human and therefore can’t invent things except by splicing up human nature. Query—is it possible for any man to write a fantastic story which another man can’t read as an allegory? (The history of medieval criticism makes it clear that the answer is No).

Do come, and name your day: 1 o’ clock at the college lodge, and ask to be shown to the Smoking Room.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen

31/1/52

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

How singular! In the last year my life also became much ‘better’ and, just like you, I often feel a little frightened. We must both distinguish (a.) The bad Pagan feeling that the gods don’t like us to be happy and that it excites Nemesis: see Browning’s Caliban upon Setebos³⁰ (b.) The good Christian caution lest we become soft and self indulgent and cease to recognise one’s dependence on God.

That suffering is not always sent as a punishment is clearly established for believers by the book of Job and by John IX. 1-4. That it sometimes is, is suggested by parts of the Old Testament and Revelation. It wd. certainly be most dangerous to assume that any given pain was penal. I believe that all pain is contrary to God’s will, absolutely but not relatively. When I am taking a thorn out of my finger (or a child’s finger) the pain is ‘absolutely’ contrary to my will: i.e. if I could have chosen a situation without pain I would have done so. But I do will what caused pain, relatively to the given situation: i.e. granted the thorn I prefer the pain to leaving the thorn where it is. A mother smacking a child wd. be in the same position: she wd. rather cause it this pain than let it go on pulling the cat’s tail, but she wd. like it better if no situation which demands a smack had arisen.

On the heathen, see I Tim. IV. 10.³¹ Also in Matt. XXV. 31-46 the people don’t sound as if they were believers. Also the doctrine of Christ’s descending into Hell^* and preaching to the dead: wd. that would be outside time, and include those who died long after Him as well as those who died before He was born as Man. I don’t think we know the details: we must just stick to the view that (a.) All justice & mercy will be done, (b) But that nevertheless it is our duty to do all we can to convert unbelievers. All blessings.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHURCH TIMES (EC)?³²

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sir,–

I welcome the letter from the Rural Dean of Gravesend,³³ though I am sorry that anyone should have regarded it necessary to describe the Bishop of Birmingham as an Evangelical. To a layman, it seems obvious that what unites the Evangelical and the Anglo-Catholic against the ‘Liberal’ or ‘Modernist’ is something very clear and momentous, namely, the fact that both are thoroughgoing supernaturalists, who believe in the Creation, the Fall, the Incarnation, the Resurrection, the Second Coming, and the Four Last Things. This unites them not only with one another, but with the Christian religion as understood ubique et ab omnibus.³⁴

The point of view from which this agreement seems less important than their divisions, or than the gulf which separates both from any non-miraculous version of Christianity, is to me unintelligible. Perhaps the trouble is that as supernaturalists, whether ‘Low’ or ‘High’ Church, thus taken together, they lack a name. May I suggest ‘Deep Church’; or, if that fails in humility, Baxter’s ‘mere Christians’?³⁵

C. S. Lewis

TO JILL FREUD (T):

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/2/52

It lies on my mind that I talked some nonsense about a ‘tread mill’ in my note yesterday. Pretty good rot for a man who is being given full pay for doing what most people do in their spare time. Wash it out. I only meant the engine is happily doing N revs, per second!

TO VERA MATHEWS (W):

Magdalen College,

Magdalen

17/2/52

Dear Miss Mathews

You will think I have taken a terribly long time over the Nabob,³⁶ but the only time I have for such things is the week ends and the last two have been fully occupied by going through proofs of a new translation (someone else’s) of the gospels.³⁷ And now, before I say anything, remember that—as I think I said, the short story is not my Form at all, so that my criticism will be amateurish.

I think the general narrative manner is good, and, with certain reservations, the character of the wife. I don’t find Cobham so good: but my reasons will best come out as we go along. These are my notes;

P. 2. Having worked…everything seemed. Am I pedantic to object to the syntax? If everything is the subject of the sentence then it ought to be everything, not Hermione, who had ‘once worked’ etc

P. 3. just that. I don’t understand what these words mean. But perhaps it’s an American idiom that I don’t know. If so, O.K.

righteously felt sincerely? genuinely? I don’t know what ‘righteously feeling’ wd. mean

P. 4. his bent was military etc. This is the first of many passages in wh. you refer to C. as a soldier. But wouldn’t the governor of a province in India be in the I.C.S. (Indian Civil Service) not in the Army?

enlisted. Do you mean went in as a private soldier? (wh. is what enlist means to us). If so this is infinitely improbable for a young man of C’s social position at that time. You mean, don’t you, that he ‘went into the army’ i.e. got a commission?

P 5. to never yield, ‘never to yield’?

P. 6. What are the drafts?.

P. 9. para 3. v. good P. 20. How those vicars. But they wouldn’t, you know. They might have v. likely 100 or so years earlier. In Cs time they’d all have been talking about a God of love. I don’t mean that our Englishman in India, bitten with Oriental wisdom, might not say what C. does, but then he wd. be a fool, which you don’t mean C. to be.

savant. Doesn’t this suggest something academic and even scientific? Perhaps ‘sage’ wd. do.

P. 24. What are physical virtues? It ought to mean good muscles, good digestion, sound teeth etc, but I don’t think that’s what you do mean.

P. 25. better stayed. No English speaker wd. omit the have.

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