Potesne, mi pater, quaestionem resolvere? Quis sanctorum scriptorum scripsit ‘Amor est ignis jugiter ardens’? Credidi haec verba esse in libro De Imitatione Christi sed non possum ibi invenire.
‘Ut omnes unum sint’ est petitio numquam in meis precibus praetermissa. Dum optabilis unitas doctrinae et ordinis abest, eo acrius conemur caritatis unionem tenere: quod, eheu, et vestri in Hispania et nostri in Hibernia Septentrionali non faciunt. Vale, mi pater,
C. S. Lewis
*
[Magdalen College,
Oxford.] April 14th 1952
Dearest Father,
You were and are much in my prayers and thank you for your letters. And do you pray for me, especially at present when I feel very much an orphan because my aged confessor and most loving father in Christ has just died. While he was celebrating at the altar, suddenly, after a most sharp but (thanks be to God) very brief attack of pain, he expired; and his last words were, ‘I come, Lord Jesus.’ He was a man of ripe spiritual wisdom—noble minded but of an almost childlike simplicity and innocence: ‘buono fandullo’ if I may put it so.70
Can you, my Father, resolve a question? Which of the holy writers wrote ‘Amor est ignis jugiter ardens’? I thought these words were in The Imitation of Christ but I cannot find them there.71
‘That they all may be one’72 is a petition which in my prayers I never omit. While the wished-for unity of doctrine and order is missing, all the more eagerly let us try to keep the bond of charity: which, alas, your people in Spain and ours in Northern Ireland do not.
Farewell, my Father.
C. S. Lewis
TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):
Magdalen College,
Oxford. April 16th 1952
Dear Miss Pitter
It always seems a bit of cheek to send anyone (especially the likes of you) a ticket for one’s lecture, unless one could do it in the Chinese style ‘In the inconceivably unlikely event of honourable poetess wishing to attend this person’s illiterate and erroneous lecture…’73 Oh dear, to think of that immemorial urbanity, that remote, fantastic world being in the hands of the Bolshevists!
Hero & Leander74 has no Original in the strict sense. The Greek poem on the subject is late, rather charmingly precious, and was falsely attributed to the primeval and mythical Musaeus: the real author is unknown—some Alexandrian, I think. But neither the Marlovian nor the Chapmanic part is anything like a translation—not so close to pseudo-Musaeus as Tennyson is to Malory.
Have you read Andrew Young’s Into Hades,75 and what do you think of it. I found the content absorbing and the images like all his, simply enchanting (There’s a bit about reflected water-drops from a raised oar rushing up to meet the real water drops—lovely!) but my ear was a bit unsatisfied. I believe ‘Blank Verse’, unrhymed five footers, is not a metre to be written loosely. I think the unrhymed Alexandrine, written without a break at the 6th syllable wd. be far better: e.g.
I know far less of spiders than that poetess Who (like the lady in Comus in the perilous wood) Can study nature’s infamies with secure heart…
The third line is here the best: one wants plenty of trisyllables to leap across the threatened medial pause. Try a few. Commending me to you in the lowliest wise that I can or may.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS
REF.52/28.
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 19th April 1952.
My dear Allen,
I got back today from a delightful three days break in the country, just a little dissatisfied to be at my desk again, and therefore just in the mood for the welcome fillip which your admirable parcel administered. You must by this time be as tired of hearing C.S.L. on the English food situation as I am tired of enduring it: so I will say no more than that all these good things will be a wonderful help at the house, and thank you once again for your kindness.
I have been stopping with an ex-pupil, now a master at my old school, Malvern:76 a pleasant little town, about sixty miles from here, lying under the foot of a four miles range of hills, two thousand feet high, in the Severn valley. Of course this is nothing much in the way of height, but they rise so abruptly from the level that one gets the effect of miniature mountains; and there is splendid air and exercise to be had in tramping them. To add to the joy, our curious climate has suddenly decided to give us an advance instalment of summer—at least one hopes it is only an instalment and not the summer. It was 75 degrees yesterday, and as hot today; all the women in summer frocks and so forth. Malvern town is a perfect and melancholy example of the change which has come over this country since my schooldays; then, it was a town of large ugly, comfortable Victorian houses, designed to be run by four or five servants apiece. The same houses are still there, but at least seven out of every ten are now either schools, offices, or boarding houses.
I occasionally glance at the news of your Presidential elections with that respectful bewilderment with which one regards another nation’s domestic affairs. To us, the question naturally presents itself from the viewpoint of which candidate will be most sympathetic to our troubles. Most people here seem to hope for Eisenhower, and are most afraid of Taft: who, rightly or wrongly, seems to have the reputation of being the old style Isolationist.77 It is being said that if he is returned, his foreign policy will be that America should be defended in America, and not in Europe. But I suspect that this must be a crude exaggeration.
I hope Mrs. Allen keeps well: please remember me very kindly to her. Do you both propose to go to the seaside this year? If all goes well, I shall be in Eire for a fortnight in August, with daily bathing: not the best sort of bathing, but a sight better than none at all. For, being on a bay, there are practically no waves; and where the sea is perpetually calm, I would just as soon, indeed sooner, bathe in a river.
With all best wishes and many thanks to you both, from us both,
yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO DELMAR BANNER (W):78 TS
REF.52/196
Magdalen College,
Oxford. 29th April 1952.
My dear Banner,
Thanks for yours of yesterday. But in the words of the immortal Jeeves to Bertie Wooster, ‘I fear, Sir, I am unable to recede from my position.’79
Yes indeed, I hope to visit your country before I die;80