I wish you had enjoyed our holiday as much as I did! But I expect you’re enjoying yourself all the more now. All blessings.
Yours
Jack
TO JOHN RICHARDS (BOD):202 TS
449/53.
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 13th October 1953.
Dear Mr. Richards,
Thank you for your kind and encouraging letter of the 11th. Tolkien’s great romance, The Lord of the Rings, of which the first volume will soon be published, just skirts the theme of the True West. You’ll find it immensely worth reading on other accounts as well.
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford. Oct 15/1953
Dear Mrs. Jessup
It is a very long time since any letters passed between us. I am in fact in your debt, counting it strict ‘turn-about’, but I regarded your last letter as an answer–certainly not a question, for I think it contained none!
But you have not all this time been absent from my daily prayers. I have been very heavily worked, except for a holiday in Ireland, and I have not been very well: nothing serious, only the harmless complaint which is called sinusitis, which gives pain and rather ‘gets you down’, but nothing worse. I hope you are well and happy (as happiness goes with mortals like us–I know you are on earth, not in heaven!). Some time, where you have nothing urgent to do, write me a line to say how you go on. This of mine of course calls for no answer: it is only a little wave of the flag to show you I’m still here and never unmindful even when I’m silent.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford Oct 17/53
My dear Arthur
I wonder are you allowing for the fact that in the Heir203 one of the main characters is, and is meant to be, a horrible prig, and the other a man who believes himself to be under (almost) a hereditary curse? This justifies dramatically in both a degree of introspection which may not at all be C. M. Yonge’s idea of normal Christian life. Mrs Edmonstone (clearly a good woman) does not show the same trait, nor does Amy.
I shall of course be perfectly happy to spend our joint holiday in the Inn at C’burn this year, if it so falls out. If you are in England I think you might find a few nights in the College guest room not unendurable and I’d try to give you breakfast as late as the servants cd. be expected to bear. (There are, however, clocks that chime the quarters all over Oxford; perhaps that wd. be fatal.)
I’ll send you W’s book204 as soon as it is out. I think you’ll like it. V. difficult to write to Gundred about J.F.’s death, wasn’t it.205
This has been the most exquisitely beautiful autumn I can remember.
Yours
Jack
TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford Oct 20th 53
My dear Bles
How stupid of me not to see that our old friend ‘out of the frying pan into the fire’ becomes nonsense when converted into ‘better the frying pan than the fire’. I’m glad you pointed it out. And I can’t think of any good substitute wh. cd. be fitted into the same number of spaces. So dele.206
The Phillips one is v. curious, because surely the argument at that point in Hebrews does precisely identify ‘man’ in the psalms with ‘the Man’, Our Lord.207
I am of course delighted at all you tell me about M.C. Very over-driven at present. We’re both well: kindest regards to both of you.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO I. O. EVANS (W):
Magdalen
Oct 25th 53
Dear Evans
I return the cuttings. I enjoyed them all, but the phrase-book items were the cream. And not only because you had good raw material: the showmanship was just right. I quite agree that when it comes to absurdity nature beats art: there’s nothing in the lists of imaginary ‘howlers’ as funny as things I have really seen when examining. You will hardly believe the following but we had it offered in the college entrance exam: ‘In any controversy half the people generally side with the majority and half with the minority’
I have no brief against co-education. I am, in principle, inclined (having no school-mastering experience I wd. not go further than an inclination either way) to approve it. But just as fine printing (in itself a delightful thing) has in fact got itself mixed up with pornography, so co-education has in fact got itself mixed up with crank schools, take Dartington Hall.208 I didn’t make Experiment House209 cranky because it was co-ed: I made it co-ed because it was cranky.
I must look up A. G. Pym:210 can’t remember if I’ve read it or not. With all good wishes.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO MARY NEYLAN (T):
Magdalen College
Oxford Nov 5/53
Alas, it couldn’t come at a worse time. I’m at it all day trying to finish the Bibliography (odious job) of my big OHEL book against time, in between tutorials: usually my day allows no leisure between 8.30 a.m. & 9.45 p.m. So I must hope to meet Sarah another time. Thanks pro orationibus.211 The sinus is not yet anything like so bad as it was last winter. Blessings on all—
C.S.L.
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford Nov 5/53
Dear Mrs. Van Deusen
This must be a hasty scrawl as I’m working against time at present & usually have no free moment between 8.30 a.m. & 9.45 p.m.