For this reason I am rather sorry that you have taken Psychology as a subject for your academic course. A continued interest in it on the part of those who have had psychotherapeutic treatment is usually, I think, not a good thing. At least, not until a long interval has elapsed and their personal interest in it, the interest connected with their own case, has quite died away. At least that is how it seems to me. All blessings.
Yours most sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W): TS
REF.67/53.
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 20th May 1953.
Dear Nell,
By all means rope me in as a reference to ‘the integrity of the family’: a subject on which I feel I can speak with conviction. I return the form. Court Stairs must be looking lovely now. Love to Alan and yourself. I’d write more, but there is the devil of a mail this morning.
Yours ever,
C. S. Lewis
TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):
Magdalen College,
Oxford. May 20th 1953
Dear Miss Bodle
Your letter written on Good Friday reached me today. I was a little shocked at first to hear of a child who found The Pilgrims Progress boring:132 but then I remembered that the dialogue, of which there is a good deal, does interrupt the story with matter no child cd. be expected to enjoy.
The restraints imposed on you by ‘secular education’ are, no doubt, very galling.133 But I wonder whether secular education will do us all the harm the secularists hope. Secular teachers will. But Christian teachers in secular schools may, I sometimes think, do more good precisely because they are not allowed to give religious instruction in class. At least I think that, as a child, I shd. have been very allured and impressed by the discovery–which must be made when questions are asked–that the teacher believed firmly in a whole mass of things he wasn’t allowed to teach! Let them give us the charm of mystery if they please.
It was v. nice to hear from you again. All blessings on you and your work.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):
Magdalen College,
Oxford. May 21st 1953
Dear Roger
A good many disturbances made me postpone reading the new story134 and then (for much longer) writing about it. I enjoyed it thoroughly. It is best after they have left the Castle–the night in the cave is the high light of the whole story–but all enjoyable. My brother read it with such gusto that he was moved to go back & read The Luck of the Lynns and then the Lewis Carroll, all with great satisfaction.
It is a very odd fact that I enjoy a story no more, and perhaps even a little less, for having been at the scene of operations. It certainly isn’t your fault, for I have had the same experience with other authors: but certainly the memory of the real Beaumaris did not help me. I thought the way in which the malapropisms were slightly toned down in this book–appropriately, as the malapropist gets older–was v. skilful.
I’m not in the best of health at present but perhaps better than I was. The last Narnian story is complete & shall go to you when typed: my present leisure, such as it is, goes mainly on proofs and bibliography for the OHEL volume.
Love to all of you and many thanks for the book.
Yours
Jack
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford May 30th 1953
Dear Mrs. Shelburne
Thank you for your letter of the 26th. I am particularly glad to hear that you had a ‘fairly pleasant’ talk with your daughter
Yes, we are always told that the present wide-spread apostasy must be the fault of the clergy, not of the laity. If I were a parson I shd. always try to dwell on the faults of the clergy: being a layman, I think it more wholesome to concentrate on those of the laity. I am rather sick of the modern assumption that, for all events, ‘WE’, the people, are never responsible: it is always our rulers, or ancestors, or parents, or education, or anybody but precious ‘US’, WE are apparently perfect & blameless. Don’t you believe it. Nor do I think the Ch. of England holds out many attractions to the worldly. There is more real poverty, even actual want, in English vicarages than there is in the homes of casual labourers.
I look forward to Martin’s135 ‘appreciations’. Yes, we have the word ‘dither’-and the thing too. And our offices are in a dither too. This is so common that I suspect there must be something in the very structure of a modern office which creates Dither. Otherwise why does our ‘College Office’ find full time work for a crowd of people in doing what the President of the College, 100 years ago, did in his spare time without a secretary and without a typewriter? (The more noise, heat, & smell a machine produces the more power is being wasted!)
I’d rather like to see one of your hail storms: our climate is in comparison, v. tame. Have you read S. V. Benét’s Western Stan136 Excellent, I think.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II took place in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953.
TO HELEN D. CALKINS (W):137
Magdalen College,
Oxford. June 3rd 1953
Dear Miss Calkins
Your yesterday’s cable was a gracious and cheering surprise. I can only reply, God bless Miss Calkin: God bless California! The weather was not what one wd. have wished for a Coronation, but it was lovely getting the news about Everest on the same day.138 With heartiest good wishes.
Yours most sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO HILA NEWMAN (W): 139
Magdalen College,
Oxford. June 3rd 1953
Dear Hida (is that right) Newman
Thank you so much for your lovely letter and pictures. I realised at once that the coloured one was not a particular scene but a sort of line-up like what you would have at the very end if it was a play instead of stories. The Dawn Treader is not to be the last: There are to be 4 more, 7 in all. Didn’t you notice that Asian said nothing about Eustace not going back? I thought the best of your pictures was the one of Mr. Tumnus at the bottom of the