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

thrill (an ‘uncovenanted’ thrill for your metre and manner don’t, so to speak, contract to provide such, they are not on the menu) is the passage beginning at the bottom of p. 35 on the worlds in the skull. Which retrospectively enriches the close of the first ‘drink to the Utopia within’.¹⁶⁷ Congratulations.

I expect this comes like last night’s joint appearing at breakfast, for of course you’re now writing something else and don’t particularly want to learn about the Colloquies. Can you forgive me? I assure you there are days when I could say with honest King George ‘I hate Bainting and Boetry’,¹⁶⁸ and I wouldn’t like to have gulped you down in one of those. Last time you wrote to me didn’t you say you were contemplating a narrative poem? Has anything come of it?

      I must go to bed. Once more thanks v. much for this very distinguished little book, and add to the kindness by forgetting my incivility.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

      REF.50/81

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 16th October 1950.

      Dear Miss Mathews,

      Your parcels arrive at such frequent intervals that I am quite perplexed how to acknowledge them! Here is yet another, full of good things, which has just reached me, and for which I can, as usual, do no more than offer a simple thank you: and you know it is no empty form of words.

      The international sky seems a trifle better than when I wrote last, and you must all be very proud of McArthur and your army: for, though called a UNO army, I fear the rest of us played a very small part in the victory. Let us hope that the whole sad affair will cause Stalin to change his policy, even at the eleventh hour: tho’ the boiling up of the trouble in French Indo-China does not look as if he was very repentant.

      I am beginning the second week of a new term, and the harness still galls a little: but ‘the old horse for the hard road’ as we say. I expect I shall soon be trotting contentedly enough.

      With many thanks and good wishes to yourself and your father,

      Yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

      The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: A Story for Children was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 16 October 1950.

TO HARRY BLAMIRES (BOD):¹⁶⁹ TS

      REF.50/362.

      Magdalen College

      Oxford. 18th October 1950.

      Dear Blamires,

I wanted nothing altered except the things I noted: certainly I did not want what I should call a ‘re-writing’.¹⁷⁰ But that is such a vague word, and we can only guess what it covers in Bles’s mind. I should advise you (if you are going to pursue the Bles avenue instead of trying another publisher) to make exactly the corrections you think proper–no more and no less—and then re-submit it. He will probably (entr nous)¹⁷¹ not remember the original text well enough to know how drastic the changes are! I can’t advise about other publishers: you’d know better than I. I hope it will find a home: I thought it a useful book.

      In haste, with all good wishes,

      yours,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO CHAD WALSH (W):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford 20/10/50

      Dear Walsh

      Of course they feel passion about politics but no passion enough for poetry: especially passions that have no commerce with the senses. Sexual passion, you see, has a concrete object before it, and is linked with fundamental impulses.

      The real parallel to much modern political poetry is not religious poetry concerned with God or the Passion or Heaven but merely pious poetry concerned with (ugh!) ‘religion’. The religion of politics is a religion without sacraments: for the human sacrifices wh. it practices are mere murder, not even ritual murder. Wordsworth compensated for the (poetically) ghost-like nature of politics by using a strict form, the sonnet. But that matter, with vers libre as the form, is to me quite unpardonable: a noisy vacuity.

My brother is now quite well, thanks. I’ll note the B.P.J.¹⁷² If you get some verse from me you’ve brought it on yourself: wéan ahsode¹⁷³ All the best.

Yours¹⁷⁴

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W): ¹⁷⁵

      Magdalen College

      Oxford 26/10/50

      Dear Mrs. Shelburne–

      Thank you for your most kind and encouraging letter. I should need to be either of angelic humility or diabolical pride not to be pleased at all the things you say about my books. (I think, by the way, you have all the ones that wd. matter to you). May I assure you of my deep sympathy in all the very grievous troubles that you have had. May God continue to support you: that He has done so till now, is apparent from the fact that you are not warped or embittered. I will have you in my prayers. With all good wishes.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W): TS

      REF.50/250.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 2nd November 1950.

      Dear Mrs. Van Deusen,

      Many thanks for the post card. What a perfectly lovely place, and how I envy you the enjoyment of it! You may be sure that when (and if) it is ever my good fortune to visit the United States, I shall include the Smoky Mountains in my itinerary: preferably at a time when you are in residence.

      With all good wishes,

      yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO BELLE ALLEN (WHL):

      Magdalen etc.

      2nd November 1950.

      Dear Mrs. Allen,

…I was deeply interested in your sketch of your life, which certainly did not begin easily. Ours was very different; for there was always plenty of money, on the modest scale of provincial comfort in those far-off days; but we really hadn’t anyone to raise us, and ran wild; like Topsy, we just growed¹⁷⁶…

       TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

      REF.50/81

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 8th November 1950.

      Dear Miss Mathews,

      I think ‘gracious’ is the word I want. There is a graciousness