Magdalen College,
Oxford. 10th November 1952.
My dear Bles
I return Mr. Dell’s letter.260 I don’t think there’d be any point in republishing Spirits in Bondage. I don’t remember the ‘sermon in the midlands’,261 but it was probably made from notes, and is now irrecoverable. There are, of course, several short pieces in prose and verse (from Spectator, Punch, Time and Tide etc.) which might be used some day.
I’m glad to hear the Dawn Treader goes on well.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford Nov. 10th 1952
Dear Mrs. Shelburne
It is a little difficult to explain how I feel that tho’ you have taken a way which is not for me262 I nevertheless can congratulate you—I suppose because your faith and joy are so obviously increased. Naturally, I do not draw from that the same conclusions as you—but there is no need for us to start a controversial correspondence!
I believe we are very near to one another, but not because I am at all on the Rome-ward frontier of my own communion. I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes. I wd. even carry this beyond the borders of Christianity: how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories.
Let us by all means pray for one another: it is perhaps the only form of ‘work for re-union’ which never does anything but good. God bless you.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO J. R. R. TOLKIEN (P): 263
[Magdalen College]
Nov 13/52
My dear Tollers
Just a note to tell you with what agreeable warmth and weight your yesterday’s good news lies on my mind—with an inward chuckle of deep content.264 Foremost of course is the sheer pleasure of looking forward to having the book to read and re-read. But a lot of other things come in. So much of your whole life, so much of our joint life, so much of the war, so much that seemed to be slipping away quite spurlos265 into the past, is now, in a sort made permanent.
And I am of course very glad on your account too. I think the very prolonged pregnancy has drained a little vitality from you: there’ll be a new ripeness and freedom when the book’s out. And how pleased Priscilla266 and Mrs. Farrer will be.267 God bless you.
J.
TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford Nov. 13th 1952
Dear Mrs. Jessup
Yes, of course I will—for all six of you. I am very sorry to hear that your (temporal) news is so grim. Your spiritual news is perhaps better than you think. You seem to have been dealing with the dryness (or ‘the wall’ as you well name it) in the right way. Everyone has experienced it or will.
It is clearly what G.M. meant when he said ‘Have pity on us for the look of things, When desolation stares us in the face. Although the serpent-mask have lied before, It fascinates the bird.’268
It is v. important to remember that Our Lord experienced it to the full, twice—in Gethsemane when He sweated blood, and next day when he said ‘Why hast thou forsaken me?’269 We are not asked to go anywhere where he has not gone before us. The shining quality may come back when we least expect it, and in circumstances which wd. seem to an outside observer (or to ourselves) to make it most impossible. (We must not reject it, as there is an impulse to do, on the ground that we ought, in the conditions, to be miserable).
What is most re-assuring to me, and most moving, is your sane and charitable recognition that others have as great, or worse, trials: one of those things wh. no one else can decently say to the sufferer but wh. are invaluable when he says them to himself. And of course there was no ‘conceit’ or ‘selfishness’ in your writing to me: are we not all ‘members of one another’.270 (I can’t reply about Eisenhower. I am no politician. I shd. suppose that the diverse views of his election taken in England depend entirely on the different ways in which our own political parties think they can make capital out of it. As you know public affairs seem to me much less important than private—in fact important only in so far as they affect private affairs.)
You are quite right (tho’ not in the way you meant) when you say I needn’t ‘work up’ sympathy with you! No, I needn’t. I have had enough experiences of the crises of family life, the terrors, despondencies, hopes deferred, and wearinesses. The trouble is that things go on 50 long, isn’t it? and one gets so tired of trying! No doubt it will all seem short when looked at from eternity. But I needn’t preach to you. You’re doing well: scoring pretty good marks! Keep on. Take it hour by hour, don’t add the past & the future to the present load more than you can help. God bless you all.
Yours ever
C. S. Lewis
TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford. Nov. 17th 1952
Dear Mrs. Jessup
Thanks be to God for your good news. There is a comic, but also charming, contrast between the temperance with which you bore a great fear and the wild excess of your apologies for a wholly imaginary offence in writing that letter. You did perfectly right and there is nothing whatever for me to forgive. And I shd. be v. sorry if you carried out your threat (made, I know, from the best motives) of never writing to me again. You are not the kind of correspondent who is a ‘nuisance’: if you were you wd. not be now thinking you are one—That kind never does.
But don’t send me any newspaper cuttings. I never believe a word said in the papers. The real history of a period (as we always discover a few years later) has v. little to do with all that, and private people like you and me are never allowed to know it while it is going on. Of course you will all remain in my prayers. I think it v. wrong to pray for people while they are in distress and then not to continue praying, now with thanksgiving, when they are relieved.
Many people think their prayers are never answered because it is the answered ones that they forget. Like the others who find proof for a superstition by recording all the cases in wh. bad luck has followed a dinner with 13 at table and forget all the others where it hasn’t. God bless you. Write freely whenever