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