122 Ruth Pitter, The Ermine: Poems 1942-1952 (1953).
123 This was Pitter’s first book after becoming a Christian.
124 Pitter, The Ermine, p. 19, ‘The World is Hollow’, III, 1.
125 ibid., p. 18, ‘The Captive Bird of Paradise’, II, 4.
126 ibid., p. 15, ‘The Other’, X, 3-4.
127 ibid., p. 9, ‘Great Winter’, III, 3.
128 ibid., ‘Herding Lambs’, p. 16, I, 3-4.
129 ibid., p. 38, ‘Aged Man to Young Mother’.
130 See Lewis’s letter to George Rostrevor Hamilton of 14 August 1949 on The Tell-Tale Article (CL II, pp. 966-7).
131 John H. McCallum, head of the trade department at Harcourt, Brace & World, was Lewis’s American editor at the time.
132 Bodle had sent her own simplified version of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress to the deaf daughter of a friend.
133 Bodle said of this letter: ‘I had explained that in N.Z. government schools religious instruction cannot be given by teachers. I was feeling frustrated. The principal did, however, allow me to take classes after school for any children who wanted to come’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/4, fol. 249).
134 Roger Lancelyn Green, The Secret of Rusticoker (1953).
135 Martin Kilmer was a member of the ‘Kilmer family’ to whom The Magicians Nephew was dedicated.
136 Stephen Vincent Benêt (1898-1943), Western Star (1943).
137 Calkins wrote on this letter; ‘Reply to my cable at the time Elizabeth II was crowned.’
138 News reached the British public on the eve of the Coronation that Edmund Hillary and the Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, had set foot on the summit of the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, on 29 May.
139 Hila Newman was an eleven-year-old girl from New York who sent Lewis some drawings of the characters in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
140 Romans 14:13-17: ‘Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way. I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died. Let not then your good be evil spoken of. For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink: but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’
* Later: not, I hope, concurrently. We may then discuss further plans
141 Mildred Boxill was an editor in the Harcourt Brace college department in New York.
142 John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667).
143 Douglas Bush was the editor of the section on John Milton in Major British Writers. See his biography in CL II, p. 22 In.
144 Blamires had found a publisher for his book, The Devil’s Hunting-grounds: A Fantasy (London: Longmans, 1954).
145 The Rev. Canon Roger Bradshaigh Lloyd (1901-66) was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge and ordained in 1924. He served as residentiary canon of Winchester Cathedral, 1937-66. During the 1950s he was a reader for Longmans Green. He recommended The Devil’s Hunting-grounds to Longmans and was in contact with Blamires about the book. His own works include The Mastery of Evil (1941) and The Borderland: An Exploration of Theology in English Literature (1960). Lloyd was also a keen railway enthusiast, and his books on that subject include Farewell to Steam (1956).
146 Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901); The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904).
147 ‘mother-sickness’. The pun consists in substituting ‘mal de mere for the familiar ‘mal de mer’ (sea-sickness). See the letter to Gebbert of 16 July 1953.
148 A poet born at Mitylene, Lesbos, about the middle of the seventh century BC.
149 The song of praise (Luke 1:46-55) sung by the Blessed Virgin Mary when her cousin Elizabeth greeted her as Mother of the Lord.
150 See Kilby’s account of this meeting, ‘Visit with C. S. Lewis’, in the Wheaton College literary magazine, Kodon, 8 (December 1953), pp. 11, 28, 30.
151 Stephen Vincent Benét, John Brown’s Body (1928), a narrative poem of the Civil War.
152 Warnie was correcting the proofs of his first book, The Splendid Century: Some Aspects of Life in the Reign of Louis XLV (1953), and his brother was correcting those of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century.
153 H. Rider Haggard, The Mahatma and the Hare (1911).
154 Roger Lancelyn Green, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1953).