yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO NELL BERNERS-PRICE (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford Dec 26. 53
Dear Nell
What a lovely card! Please give Penelope my very great thanks. Indeed ‘card’ is the wrong word. You, or she, also included a piece of blotting paper: is this a subtle way of suggesting that some previous letter of mine looked as if I were rather short of that commodity-? Well, anyway, I usually am, and welcome a new piece. I am delighted to hear that Peter is doing so well at school: how proud you must be of him.
My brother and I have just had the experience (a v. rum one for two hardened old bachelors) of an American lady to stay with us accompanied by her two sons, aged 91/2 and 8. Whew! Lovely creatures-couldn’t meet nicer children–but the pace! I realise I have never respected you married people enough and never dreamed of the Sabbath calm wh. descends on the house when the little cyclones have gone to bed and all the grown-ups fling themselves into chairs and the silence of exhaustion.
Christmas is now catching me up too: so far as I can see I have several thousands of letters to answer. Please give my love to all, and best wishes for a good 1954.
Yours
Jack Lewis
TO RHONA BODLE (BOD): 260
Magdalen College
Oxford Dec 26/53
Dear Miss Bodle
Thanks for yr. most interesting letter. I am delighted to hear of your success in getting some Christian knowledge across to these children. It is wicked that they shd. be so deprived. Even an agnostic who does not believe the stories to be true ought to see that they are, at the very least, part of our common heritage, like Homer and the Arthurian stories.
About re-reading books: I find like you that those read in my earlier ‘teens often have no appeal, but this is not nearly so often true of those read in earlier childhood. Girls may develop differently, but for me, looking back, it seems that the glories of childhood and the glories of adolescence are separated by a howling desert during which one was simply a greedy, cruel, spiteful little animal and imagination, in all but the lowest form, was asleep.
I hope your new house will be very blessed. It was Charles Williams from whom I got the words ‘holy luck’. And now for piles of Christmas letters: many of them, unlike yours, from people I don’t want to write to at all. Every blessing.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (W): PC, TS
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 26th December 1953.
Dear Starr,
Yes, Hori did call: an interesting man. Glad you’re home again, and no doubt so are you.
All good wishes from us both for a happy and prosperous New Year.
Yours,
C. S. Lewis
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford Dec 28th 53
Dear Mrs. Van Deusen
Thanks for yr. letter of the 20th: my congratulations to yr. husband on his interesting work. About Paul, I believe (having been a sickly child myself) that there are compensations. I think that from many minor illnesses in the first 12 years one develops sometimes a certain amount of immunity later on: ones system has had so much practice in dealing with bacilli. It also probably helps to make one a reader: not that there isn’t a danger of falling or sinking too far into the life of the imagination, but a habit of reading is a great source of happiness.
I think someone ought to write a book on ‘Christian life for Laymen under a bad Parish Priest’ for the problem is bound to occur in the best churches. The motto wd. be of course Herbert’s lines about the sermon ‘If all Jack sense, God takes a text and preaches patience’.261
Like you, we suffer (but under a v. good priest) from the virtual extinction of Morning Prayer in favour of an 11 o’clock Celebration.262 But I suppose there is something to be said for it. This is the only ritual act Our Lord commanded Himself. It is the one we can have only thro’ a priest, whereas we can all read Matins to ourselves or our families at home whenever we please. So here I have no difficulty in submission.
Is there not something especially good (and even, in the end, joyful) about mere obedience (in lawful things) to him who bears our Master’s authority, however unworthy he be–perhaps all the more, if he is unworthy? Perhaps we are put under tiresome priests chiefly to give us the opportunity of learning this beautiful & happy virtue: so that if we use the situation well we can profit more, perhaps, than we shd. have done under a better man. I have seen lovely children under not v. nice parents, & good troops under bad officers: and a good dog with a bad master is a lesson to us all. I mean, of course, as long as the bad orders are not in themselves wrong: and attendance at Holy Communion can’t be that!
Yes, we must both go on thinking about the two kinds of prayer. I think the one in Mark xi is for very advanced people: and you point out it was said to the disciples, not to the crowds. All blessings.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO PHYLLIS ELINOR SANDEMAN (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford Dec 31/53
Dear Mrs Sandeman–
You have of course been much in my prayers since your first letter and today’s seems like an answer to them. I was afraid of some real crack in the structure! Now it is clear that you have to deal only with what we may call a ‘clean pain’.
I can well understand how in addition to, and mingling with, the void and loneliness, there is a great feeling of unprotectedness and a horror of coping with all the things–the harsh, outer world–from which you have hitherto been shielded. I first met this ‘cold blast on the naked heath’263 at about 9, when my Mother died, and there has never really been any sense of security and snugness since. That is, I’ve not quite succeeded in growing up on that point: there is still too much of ‘Mammy’s little lost boy’ about me. Your position is of course v. different, both because dependence on a husband is more legitimate than dependence (after a certain age) on one’s Mother, and also because, at your age, tho’ it will feel just as bad, it is not so likely to go down into the unconscious and produce a trauma. And one sees too (tho’ it sounds brutal to say it) how this miserable necessity of fending for oneself might be an essential part of your spiritual education. I suppose God wants a bit of Imogen and Portia in you, having worked in the Miranda and Perdita part enough264 (it is sometimes helpful to think of oneself as a picture wh. He is painting).
By the way, I share to the full–no words can say how strongly I share–that distaste for everything communal and collective wh. you describe in your husband. I really believe I wd. have come to Christianity much less reluctantly if it had not involved the Church. And I don’t wonder you failed to convince him