Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963. Walter Hooper

Lutherans) have really retained it.⁷⁶ Nor do I in the least want to see it again swollen and inflamed (as it was by the original Protestants) into a hypertrophy wh. destroys all the other truths of Christianity. But it must be got in. I never meet anyone, of whatever communion or school, who shows that Pauline sense of liberation from the Law: but I have an idea, from things you once said, that you have some qualifications for helping us all on this point. Perhaps it is not the main need at the moment—I don’t know.

As I may have said before, I don’t know much about the Existentialists.⁷⁷ I have read Sartre’s L’Existentialisme est un Humanisme:⁷⁸ that seemed, if pressed, to be the Berkleyan metaphysic⁷⁹ in the mind of an atheist with a bad liver!⁸⁰ I’ve both heard of and met Marcel.⁸¹ To see him is to love him: but it appeared to me that his thesis⁸² if taken seriously, shd. reduce him and us to perfect silence—as the philosophy of Heraclitus did his disciples. The same holds of Buber. What they mean by calling Aquinas and Augustine Existentialists I can’t understand: nor do I much like such labels. I’m sorry about my handwriting wh. seems to have completely collapsed in the last few years. God bless you, my old friend. Pray for me,

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford 11/4/50

      Dear Miss Bodle

      God bless you and send you many happy Easters. As for my part in it, remember that anybody (or any thing) may be used by the Holy Spirit as a conductor. I say this not so much from modesty as to guard against any danger of your feeling, when the shine goes out of my books (as it will) that the real thing is in any way involved. It mustn’t fade when I do.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford 12/4/50

      Dear Miss Bodle

I will indeed pray for you.⁸³ So often after a period of exaltation and comfort (such as, I think, you were having at Easter) round the very next corner something horrid lies in wait for us, either in ourselves or outside. I suppose the preceding comfort was sent, partly, to prepare us for the other: like (to use a crude simile) the rum-issue before the battle. Courage!

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO WARHELD M. FIROR(BOD):

      Magdalen etc

      14/4/50

      My dear Firor

What a vision!⁸⁴ Not that my attempts to ride and fish wd. give pleasure to anyone except the spectators (I don’t know, though. Perhaps the horse and the fish wd. find them mildly amusing) but I’d love walking in the sort of places where better men do ride and fish.

But it’s all visionary. I’ve told you what chains bind me to England.⁸⁵ If I can succeed in getting just over a fortnight away this summer (as I was prevented from doing last year)⁸⁶ I shall have realised more freedom than I have had since 1929. But I do get a real and strange pleasure out of the invitation. You are a fairy-tale character: your bounty (as Cleopatra says) is an autumn that grows the more by reaping.⁸⁷ (Autumn here, rather oddly, means harvest not the fall of the leaf). And I can’t understand why I should be selected for it all. However, this verges on a subject you have forbidden me.

Romanes has hitherto been to me more the name of a lecture than a man, by which I see I have done him a grave injustice.⁸⁸ (Odd that things left as the memorial of a man often in fact obliterate him like this). Have I confessed to you that an inability to read biography is one of my defects? Except Boswell, of course.

      I’ve a pile of letters this afternoon, and this is just a note of thanks and regrets. We’re all well, and frequently asking when that next visit of yours is to be looked for.

      All blessings.

      Yours,

      C. S. Lewis

      

TO MARY MARGARET MCCASLIN (W):⁸⁹ TS

      REF.50/188.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 20th April 1950.

      Dear Mrs. McCaslin,

      Many thanks for your most kind and encouraging letter of the 17th. It gives me great pleasure to know that my books have been of some service to you.

      With all best wishes for the success of your work,

      yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

      REF.50/81

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 22nd April 1950.

      My dear Miss Mathews,

      Your delightful parcel and the English spring arrived together this morning to supply badly needed cheer on the first day of Term: always a somewhat gloomy moment. From what I know of my native climate, the contents of the parcel will last longer than the fine weather.

      Our latest food news is that fish has been ‘decontrolled’ as official English has it: which means that one’s fishmonger can select what he wants instead of having to take what our rulers think is good for his customers. The immediate result was a huge increase in the price of the better kinds of fish, but things have since settled down, and now the prices are in many cases below pre-war.

      With many thanks for the huge parcel and all best wishes,

      yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford 29/4/50

      Dear Roger–

I like it very much indeed: less haunting than the Wood that Time Forgot⁹⁰ but richer. There are about four alterations I will try to persuade you to make, three of them quite easy.

      Can you come & dine Thurs. May 11th to talk of that & other things?

      Yours

      Jack Lewis

Lewis’s

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