This is awkward. I am struggling along at present with sinusitis and the kind of ‘walking’ ‘flu by dint of getting up late and going to bed early and doing as little as I possibly can.

A day in London, even tho’ soothed by your Apician**⁶⁹hospitality, would knock me up. How long can you afford to wait without serious inconvenience? Or would it be safe to send them by registered post. Sorry to be a nuisance, but I’m the ghost of a man at present. And thanks, and love to both,

yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO W. K. SCUDAMORE (W): ⁷⁰

Magdalen College

Oxford

lO/iii/53

Dear Mr. Gardamole⁷¹

Thank you for your most interesting letter. Your explanation produced–I was going to say ‘complete conviction’, but as you rightly say, one can never be certain that any interpretation of an image in C.W. is complete. But I shall be v. surprised if the Druidical sacrifice is not the master key. I now think I was rather stupid not to have seen it before. My copy of Taliessin is out of the house and I am in College to the end of the week, so I can’t look up any of the passages, and therefore can’t help about the worshipped Duke. Could it be Aeneas? With many thanks.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO W. K. SCUDAMORE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

13/iii/53

There are few names I wd. so regret having mangled!⁷² But when a man rides (or writes) with his beaver down-! C.S.L.

On 16 March Warnie wrote to Arthur Greeves: ⁷³

Magdalen College, Oxford. 16th March 1953.

My dear Arthur,

What between sinus and examinations, poor Jack is sunk fathoms deep this morning. However, we talked over your letter of the 11th last night, and he has asked me to ask you whether Saturday 29th August to Saturday 12th September would suit you for the jaunt: to which he is very eagerly looking forward. These dates are tentative, so if you don’t like them, please say so. But let us know as soon as possible, as it is part of a ‘master plan and we have all kinds of other things to make fit in with it.

Incidentally, if the dates suit, I hope to be with J. at Craw-fordsburn for a few days before you and he set out, and am looking forward to more than one meeting with you. I daresay amongst other things, we may be having a supper with our Jane,⁷⁴ and a drive home across the Holywood hills.

Love to Lily, Janie, and any others of my old friends you meet; and kindest regards to those good Samaritans, your neighbours and relations, who gave us drinks that Sunday morning.

Can you forsee any end to this winter?

Yours ever,

Warren

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

17/iii/53

My dear Bles

I don’t feel as you do about the alteration of it and he, but I will be guided by your advice.⁷⁵ That is, I will try to normalise on he throughout (tho’ a few it’s are sure to slip through by infirmity). Don’t blame me if this means heavier corrections than usual!

I see I must write a treatise on the aesthetics of gender!⁷⁶

I’m a bit better, thanks. At least, the smell is.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Mart, xvii MCMLIII

Dilectissime Pater

Gavisus sum, ut semper, de epistola tua. Res mira est et corrobora-tio fidei duas animas loco, natione, lingua, oboedentiâ, aetate diversas sic in dulcem familiaritatem adductas esse; adeo ordo spirituum ordinem materialem superat. Reddit faciliorem illam necessariam doctrinam, nos arctissime conjungi et cum peccatore Adamo et cum justo lesu quamquam (secundum carnem, tempus et locum) tam diversi ab ambobus viximus. Haec unitas totius humani generis extat: utinam extaret praestantior illa unio de quo scribis. Nullum diem sine oratione pro illo opiato fine praetereo. Quae dicis de praesenti statu hominum vera sunt: immo deterior est quam dicis. Non enim Christi modo legem sed etiam legem Naturae Paganis cognitam neglegunt. Nunc enim non erubescunt de adulterio, proditione, perjurio, furto, ceterisque flagitiis quae non dico Christianos doctores, sed ipsi pagani et barbari reprobav-erunt. Falluntur qui dicunt ‘Mundus iterum Paganus fit.’ Utinam fieret! Re vera in statum multo pejorem cadimus. Homo post-Christianus non similis homini prae-Christiano. Tantum distant ut vidua a virgine: nihil commune est nisi absentia sponsi: sed magna differentia intra absentiam sponsi venturi et sponsi amissi! Adhuc laboro in libro de oratione. De hac quaestione quam tibi subjeci, omnes theologos interrogo: adhuc frustra.

Oremus semper pro invicem, mi pater. Vale,

C. S. Lewis

Magdalen College

Oxford

17 March 1953

My dearest Father

I was delighted, as always, by your letter.

It is a wonderful thing and a strengthening of faith that two souls differing from each other in place, nationality, language, obedience and age should have been thus led into a delightful friendship; so far does the order of spiritual beings transcend the material order.

It makes easier that necessary doctrine that we are most closely joined together alike with the sinner Adam and with the lust One, Jesus, even though as to body, time and place we have lived so differently from both. This unity of the whole human race exists: would that there existed that nobler union of which you write. No day do I let pass without my praying for that longed-for consummation.

What you say about the present state of mankind is true: indeed, it is even worse than you say.

For they neglect not only the law of Christ but even the Law of Nature as known by the Pagans.⁷⁷ For now they do not blush at adultery, treachery, perjury, theft and the other crimes which I will not say Christian Doctors, but the Pagans and the Barbarians have themselves denounced.

They err who say ‘the world is turning pagan again’. Would that it were! The truth is that we are falling into a much worse state.

‘Post-Christian man’ is not the same as ‘pre-Christian man’. He is as far removed as virgin is from widow: there is nothing in common except want of a spouse: but there is a great difference between a spouse-to-come and a spouse lost.⁷⁸

I am still working on my book on Prayer.

About this question which I submitted to you, I am asking all theologians: so far in vain.

Let us ever pray for each other, my Father.

Farewell,

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20/3/53

My dear Bles

Here is the next tale.⁷⁹

My view about He and It was that the semi-humanity cd. be kept before the imagination by an unobtrusive mixture of the two. Your re-action, however, shows that either such a mixture cd. not be unobtrusive or else that I, at any rate, could not make it so. Of course I cherish a secret hope that you are merely playing the ‘normalising scribe’, well known to textual critics: see the Preface to the Oxford Virgil (Hirtzel) on those who corrígere studentes, floríbus Musarum delicatis-simis saepius insultaverint.,⁸⁰ That is my hope: but my sober fear is that you are right.

Your friend thinks I am ‘smelling things’ in the same sense in which the D.T.⁸¹ patient ‘sees things’. But it’s not quite as bad as that. My smell (ambiguous phrase) is subjective only in the sense that it does not come from the outer world. There is a real physical stimulus within the body–a sinus discharging its corrupt humours just under the olfactory nerves. So don’t be alarmed lest in my next letter I tell you that a marsh-wiggle called on me or something of that sort. ‘My pulse with yours doth temperately keep time.’⁸²

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

20/3/53

Dear Nell

I am indeed sorry to hear about your Mother. In a way you were most fortunate to have had her so long (mine died when I was a little boy), yet in another way it probably makes it worse, for you have lived into the period when the relationship is really reversed and you were mothering her: and of course, the more we have had to do for people the more we miss them–loving goes deeper than being loved. But it must be nice for her. Getting out of an old body into the new life–like stripping off tiresome old clothes and getting into a bath–must be a most wonderful experience.

I return Mrs. Hooker’s letter. I think ‘both sincere and insincere’ is about right. She certainly sounds more sensible in the letter than she did when I saw her.

Ugh! Holloway does give one the creeps, doesn’t it? But I see it doesn’t give them to you. It does me. If ever I go to jail (which may happen to anyone now-a-days) I do hope my cell will be white-washed and not that ghastly green!

I’ve been having a rather thin time with Sinusitis for about 4 weeks. In case you don’t know this complaint, it feels like toothache but since it is not a tooth you can’t have it out.

It’s nice to think of you and Alan working away in that delightful garden. I expect you are further on down there than we are in the midlands. Our daffodils are out and the catkins are all pussy and strokable, but the weather remains wretchedly cold.

I trust the nasty-taste of the Hooker crisis has now all gone away. The far more serious sorrow about your Mother will presumably have put paid to that. Remember me to Alan & God bless you all.

Yours ever

lack Lewis

By the way, Mrs. H’s letter is curiously uneducated. All that about her learning must have been imaginary too. Poor creature–there’s not much of her when one takes away the fantasies.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

21/3/53

My dear Arthur

I hope you weren’t shocked at getting an answer from W. instead of me the other day. On Monday I was both rather ill and also engaged in viva-voce examinations from 9.15 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., so I couldn’t well write, and I thought you wd. like to have all those dates at the earliest moment.

Yours

Jack

TO MICHAEL (W): ⁸³

Magdalen College

Oxford

21/3/53

Dear Michael

I see I have thanked your Father for a kind present which really came from you. Let me now say Thank you, very much indeed. I think it was wonderful of you. At least I know that when I was a boy, though I liked lots of authors, I never sent them anything. The reason there is so much boiled food here is, of course, that we have so little cooking-fat for roasting or frying.

The new book is The Silver CHAIR, not CHAIN. Don’t look forward to it too much or you are sure to be disappointed. With 100,000 thanks and lots of love.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

23/iii/53

Dear Mrs. Gebbert

Your first story (about mistaking it for sea-sickness) is one of the funniest I ever heard.⁸⁴ In our country there are usually alterations of shape wh. wd. throw grave doubts on the sea-sick hypothesis!…but no doubt you manage things better in America. Any way, congratulations and encouragements. As to wishing it had not happened, one can’t help momentary wishes: guilt begins only when one embraces them. You can’t help their knocking at the door, but one mustn’t ask them in to lunch. And no doubt you have many feelings on the other side. I am sure you felt as I did when I heard my first bullet, ‘This is War: this is what Homer wrote about.’⁸⁵ For, all said and done, a woman who has never had a baby and a man who has never been either in a battle or a storm at sea, are, in a sense, rather outside-haven’t really ‘seen life’-haven’t served. We will indeed have you in our prayers.

Now as to your other story, about Isaiah 66?⁸⁶ It doesn’t really matter whether the Bible was open at that page thru’ a miracle or through some (unobserved) natural cause. We think it matters because we tend to call the second alternative ‘chance.’ But when you come to think of [it] there can be no such thing as chance from God’s point of view. Since He is omniscient His acts have no consequences which He has not foreseen and taken into account and intended. Suppose it was the draught from the window that blew your Bible open at Isaiah 66. Well, that current of air was linked up with the whole history of weather from the beginning of the world and you may be quite sure that the result it had for you at that moment (like all its other results) was intended and allowed for in the act of creation. ‘Not one sparrow,’⁸⁷ you know the rest. So of course the message was addressed to you. To suggest that your eye fell on it without this intention, is to suggest that you could take Him by surprise. Fiddle-de-dee! This is not Predestination: your will is perfectly free: but all physical events are adapted to fit in as God sees best with the free actions He knows we are going to do. There’s something about this in Screwtape.⁸⁸

Meanwhile, courage! Your moments of nervousness are not your real self, only medical phenomena. All blessings.

Yours ever,

C. S. Lewis

TO HSIN’CHANG CHANG (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

March 24th 53

Dear Mr. Chang

The humble one, having burned the appropriate charms, has emerged from the Tenacious Mud Formation (Delay) and read the chapters, and the introduction, with very great interest.⁸⁹ It would be no mere ceremonial modesty to describe my opinion on it as ‘foolish’. I have not enough cultural background to know whether the effects produced on me are at all like those intended by the author. Thus I do not know which parts are comic and which are not. The giant who smashed a hole in the mountain with his head, I can take as (rather grotesquely) serious: the angry man whose beard knocked the table over is to me funny. What would be their effect on the Chinese reader? Some images are quite baffling to a foreigner. I cannot imagine a ‘fairy nun’ whether Taoist or otherwise! But this may be due to the fact that neither fairy nor nun is a really exact translation: though no doubt (for your English is not only correct but sensitive and elegant) both are the best a European language affords. Perhaps ‘goddess priestess’ (which I can just imagine) would be an alternative. But I found it all interesting, except the long scene about the slaves’ names in the Copper Formation: this inevitably loses its force in any language except the original. What moved and affected me most–a real, poetic experience–was the stripping-away of the man’s whole life in riches. I am wondering if a larger selection (but with frequent omissions) from the whole romance wd. possibly be published in England.

My brother, who is interested in everything Chinese because he spent some v. happy years in Shanghai, wd. like to read the MS. May I keep it for this purpose a week or two longer?

There are only two places where I think your English cd. be criticised. On p. 10 you use immune as a verb. It should be ‘to make immune’: or perhaps even ‘to protect’ would do. On p. 22 ‘them five’ should be either ‘those five’ or ‘these five’-unless you intend to represent the speaker as uneducated.

With very many thanks. Be sure to come and see me if you are in Oxford again.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD): TS

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

25th March 1953.

My dear Arthur

On looking into the matter further, it would suit me better to prolong our jaunt for another 48 hours, i.e. for me to cross on Monday 14th September instead of Saturday 12th. The Sunday train service on the English side is practically useless–one train, and no restaurant car. Will 14th suit you?

Yours,

Jack

TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

28/3/53

Dear Mr Kinter

I think Ransom is a figura Christi⁹⁰ only in the same sense (‘only’-my hat!) in wh. every Christian is or should be. But the bus-driver in the Divorce is certainly, and consciously, modelled on the angel at the gates of Dis,⁹¹ just as the meeting of the ‘Tragedian’ with his wife is consciously modelled on that of Dante & Beatrice at the end of the Purgatorio:⁹² i.e. it is the same predicament, only going wrong. I intended readers to spot these resemblances: so you may go to the top of the class!

‘By the Furioso⁹³ out of the Commedia’ is not far wrong. My real model was David Lyndsay’s Voyage to Arcturus wh. first suggested to me that the form of ‘science fiction’ cd. be filled by spiritual experiences.⁹⁴ And as the Furioso was in some ways the science-fiction of its age, your analogy works. But mind you, there is already a science-fiction element in the Commedia: e.g. Inferno xxxiv 85-114.

It’s fun laying out all my books as a cathedral. Personally I’d make Miracles and the other ‘treatises’ the cathedral school: my children’s stories are the real side-chapels, each with its own little altar.

No, I never read Perceforest.⁹⁵ The only O.R⁹⁶ prose romance I’ve read is Balain.⁹⁷ How lovely, how like water–or Grace–that limpid O.E prose is. Damn the Renaissance.

I return cordially your wishes for a blessed Easter.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO JOHN GILFEDDER(W): ⁹⁸

Magdalen College

Oxford

30/iii/53

Dear Gilfedder

(I wish you’d call me Lewis not Sir) Thanks both for card of Florence and for your letter of the 15th.

I think a glossarial Index (I call it that because your specimens are partly index as well as glossary) wd. be a most useful addition to C.W.’s cycle.⁹⁹ But the chances of the O.U.P. ever re-printing Taliessin, let alone adding any matter to the volume, are infinitesimal. They wd. only do that if it showed signs of becoming a popular success: which of course it doesn’t.

I am glad you are settled down and hope you are enjoying your work. Please remember me to your wife; all good wishes to both for a happy Easter.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

31/3/53

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

I’ve no time for a proper letter today but this is just a scrape of the pen to thank you for yours of the 27th and to wish you a v. blessed Easter. I expect Jeannie will grow up the most devoted grand-daughter ever. Your silly son-in-law doesn’t realise the charm of forbidden fruit: a grandmother one is forbidden to see rises almost into the status of a fairy godmother!

Apropos of horrid little fat baby ‘cherubs’, did I mention that Heb. Kherub is from the same root as Gryphon? That shows what they’re really like!

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD):

Magdalen

1/4/53

Dear Sister Penelope

I am simply delighted with The Coming of the Lord;¹⁰⁰ delighted, excited, and most grateful. I think it is the best book you have yet done, and the best theological book by anyone I have read for a long time. (You are, among other things, the only person I ever meet who gives me real light on the Old Testament). Chap VIII now convinces me completely.

I was talking nonsense when we last discussed this matter: I hadn’t really grasped the point that Man is the true Temple. That is a splendid bit on p. 76¹⁰¹ about the true sense of ‘it is finished’-the sword ‘finished’ when its life as a sword can begin)¹⁰² How did you think of it? Why did all the rest of us non And the explanation on p. 26 of why the Bride is never mentioned, is brilliant.¹⁰³ Indeed, I’ll say it is clever-why should we acquiesce in that word’s sliding into a contemptuous meaning. And many, many thanks for St. Bernard’s conception of the Palm Sunday procession.¹⁰⁴ And the daring use of larval at the bottom of p. 45 is a complete success: I wanted to clap my hands when I came to it.¹⁰⁵

Now for a few tiny flaws, or what I think to be such.

P. 3. ‘Expectation, therefore, is a specifically human exercise.’¹⁰⁶ Yes, in the peculiar sense you give it of ex-spectation. But you haven’t explained that yet, have you? Won’t the reader take it in the current sense of ¹⁰⁷ and say that ‘expectation’, far from being specifically human, is seen at its v. maximum in a dog waiting to be taken for a walk or to have a ball thrown for it?

P. 5. at top. Basis or foundation wd. for many reasons be a better word than fundament.¹⁰⁸

P 5 later. Oh, oh why should an attitude almost impossible to a Pagan be called ‘neo-Paganism’?¹⁰⁹ You know that no Pagan, bless him, wd. ever have dreamed of thinking the sky belonged to Man. They had their faults, but that is just the sort of sin they never committed. They had too much αίδώσ,¹¹⁰ and δειδαιμονα,¹¹¹ and all that. You are falling into the common error of equating the post-Christian with the pre-Christian. They are as different as an unmarried girl is from a woman who has deserted her husband.

P. 44. Here I’m not sure, but, as the barristers say, I ‘put it to you.’ Can we take χóσμον¹¹² to mean Universe (as dist. from Earth) in view of other Johannine uses of it? But you are so often right that I dare say you will convince me on this point too.

Anyway, it is a lovely little book. I am very much in your debt. All blessings.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO CORBIN SCOTT CARNELL (W):¹¹³

Magdalen College

Oxford

5/4/53

Dear Mr. Carnell

I am myself a little uneasy about the question you raise:¹¹⁴ there seems to be almost equal objection to the position taken up in my footnote and to the alternative of attributing the same kind and degree of historicity to all the books of the Bible. You see, the question about Jonah and the great fish does not turn simply on intrinsic probability. The point is that the whole Book of Jonah has to me the air of being a moral romance, a quite different kind of thing from, say, the account of K. David or the N.T. narratives, not pegged, like them, into any historical situation.

In what sense does the Bible ‘present’ this story ‘as historical’? Of course it doesn’t say ‘This is fiction’: but then neither does Our Lord say that His Unjust Judge, Good Samaritan, or Prodigal Son are fiction. (I wd. put Esther in the same category as Jonah for the same reason). How does a denial, or doubt, of their historicity lead logically to a similar denial of N.T. miracles?

Supposing (as I think is the case) that sound critical reading reveals different kinds of narrative in the Bible, surely it wd. be illogical to conclude that these different kinds shd. all be read in the same way? This is not a ‘rationalistic approach’ to miracles. Where I doubt the historicity of an O.T narrative I never do so on the ground that the miraculous as such is incredible. Nor does it deny ‘a unique sort of inspiration’: allegory, parable, romance, and lyric might be inspired as well as chronicle. I wish I could direct you to a good book on the subject, but I don’t know one. With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

6/4/53

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

I think our official view of confession can be seen in the form for the Visitation of the Sick where it says ‘Then shall the sick person be moved (i.e. advised, prompted) to make a…Confession…if he feel his conscience troubled with any weighty matter.’ That is, where Rome makes Confession compulsory for all, we make it permissible for any: not ‘generally necessary’ but profitable. We do not doubt that there can be forgiveness without it. But, as your own experience shows, many people do not feel forgiven, i.e. do not effectively ‘believe in the forgiveness of sins’, without it. The quite enormous advantage of coming really to believe in forgiveness is well worth the horrors (I agree, they are horrors) of a first confession.¹¹⁵

Also, there is the gain in self-knowledge: most of [us] have never really faced the facts about ourselves until we uttered them aloud in plain words, calling a spade a spade. I certainly feel I have profited enormously by the practice. At the same time I think we are quite right not to make it generally obligatory, which wd. force it on some who are not ready for it and might do harm.

As for conduct of services, surely a wide latitude is reasonable. Has not each kind–the v. ‘low’ & the v. ‘high’-its own value?

I don’t think I owe Genia a letter, and I think advice is best kept till it is asked for. Of course she, and you, are always in my prayers. I think she is of the impulsive type, but one must beware of meddling.

Yours, with all blessings,

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

7/4/53

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

I don’t think gratitude is a relevant motive for joining an Order. Gratitude might create a state of mind in which one became aware of a vocation: but the vocation would be the proper reason for joining. They themselves wd. surely not wish you to join without it? You can show your gratitude in lots of other ways.

Is there in this Order, even for lay members such as you wd. be, not something like a noviciate or experimental period? If so, that wd. be the thing, wouldn’t it? If not, I think I can only repeat my previous suggestion of undergoing a sort of unofficial noviciate by living according to the Rule for 6 months or so and seeing how it works. Most of it is the things you probably do anyway and are things we ought to do. (The only one I’m doubtful about is the ‘special intention’ clause in No. 3. I’m not quite sure what the theological implications are.) The question is whether the fact of being compelled to it by a vow wd. act as a useful support or be a snare and a source of scruples: I don’t think I can tell you the answer to that. Is the vow irrevocable or can you contract out again?

About putting one’s Christian point of view to doctors and other unpromising subjects I’m in great doubt myself. All I’m clear about is that one sins if one’s real reason for silence is simply the fear of looking a fool. I suppose one is right if one’s reason is the probability that the other party will be repelled still further & only confirmed in his belief that Christians are troublesome & embarrassing people to be avoided whenever possible. But I find it a dreadfully worrying problem. (I am quite sure that an importunate bit of evangelisation from a comparative stranger would not have done me any good when I was an unbeliever.)

I hope it’s all true about the President.¹¹⁶ But let us hope he will not pursue the line of ‘Godliness for the sake of national strength’. We can’t use God as a means to any end.

About Democracy and all that. Surely we stand by equality before the Law? If no law disqualifies a man from office, and if he has broken no law, are we entitled to exclude him because we dislike his views? But I don’t really know the facts of your situation well enough to apply this.

Thanks for the charming photos of Genia. Yes, I do hope & pray she’ll be in smooth water now. Blessings on you all.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

13/4/53

My dear Bles

Thanks for your letter of the 8th.

I’m glad you like the new story. The title needs a little thinking of as this tale is sung or recited after dinner in Chap III of the Silver Chair and we must harmonise. What are your reactions to any of the following? The Horse and the Boy (wh. might allure the ‘pony-book’ public)-The Desert Road to Narnia–Cor of Archenland–The Horse stole the Boy–Over the Border–The Horse Bree. Suggestions will be welcomed.

Please dedicate The Silver Chair to Nicholas Hardie. Thanks for reminding me.

As to realism in the new one, Miss Baynes may base her ideas of Calormene culture either on the picture of the Arabian Nights world, or on her picture of Babylon and Persepolis (all the Herodotus and Old Testament orient) or any mixture of the two. But their swords must be curved because it says so in the text. And we want her to try v. hard to make Bree look like a war-horse–big fetlocks etc.

I’ve had a nice time walking in the Malvern area & feel much better. I hope you are both in good form.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

17/4/53

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

I’m not quite so shocked as you by the story of Charles and Mary. If even adult and educated Christians in trying to think of the Blessed Trinity have to guard constantly against falling into the heresy of Tri-theism, what can we expect of children. And ‘another of whom he was not quite sure’ is perhaps no bad beginning for a knowledge about the Holy Ghost.

About my fairy-tales, there are three published by Macmillan, New York (The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader). Local bookshops are often very unhelpful. If your friend wants these books she shd., of course, write to the publisher at New York.

I expect there is a photo of me somewhere, but my brother, who knows where things are, is away and I couldn’t find it today. Ask me again at a more favourable hour!-if you still have the fancy for this v. undecorative object.

I’d sooner pray for God’s mercy than for His justice on my friends, my enemies, and myself. With all good wishes.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARGARET DENEKE (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

18/4/53

Dear Miss Deneke

I do not see what I could put in a preface except a dilution of what I have already sent you: and that wd. be no good.¹¹⁷

The next step is to try the old device of publishing by subscription. We’ll all subscribe of course and it will go hard but we’ll raise over £48. A List of subscribers gives a fine 18th. century air to a book, too. What wd. Mr. Johnson (whose advice is much more valuable than mine) say to this.

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