Thus you may well feel that God understands our temptations—understands them a great deal more than we do. But don’t forget Macdonald again—‘Only God understands evil and hates it.’56 Only the dog’s master knows how useless it is to try to get on with the lead knotted round the lamp-post. This is why we must be prepared to find God implacably and immovably forbidding what may seem to us very small and trivial things. But He knows whether they are really small and trivial. How small some of the things that doctors forbid would seem to an ignoramus.
I expect I have said all these things before: if so, I hope they have not wasted a letter. Alas! they are so (comparatively) easy to say: so hard, so all but impossible to go on feeling when the strain comes.
I have not time left for the rest of your letter. It was bad luck getting ill at the cottage: an illness at home has its pleasures, but on a holiday it is—well ‘disconsolate’ is the word that best fits my feeling about it. We have had a spate of unwanted and mostly uninvited visitors all summer and have (all four of us) come down here to give Minto a rest. It is opposite the Isle of Wight, and quite pleasant. We went to Beaulieu Abbey this afternoon—which would well deserve a letter in itself. I have since I came down read Voltaire’s Candide,57 and Gore’s Jesus of Nazareth (Home University Library)58 which I most strongly advise you to get at once. It is perhaps the best book about religion I have yet read—I mean of the theological kind—not counting books like Lilith. I am particularly pleased at having at last found out what Sadducees and Pharisees really were: tho’ it is an alarming bit of knowledge because most of the religious people I know are either one or the other. (Warnie is a bit of a Sadducee, and I am a good bit of a Pharisee.) I am now going to tackle a John Buchan.
When I suggested that you had changed, I didn’t mean that you had changed towards me. I meant that I thought the centre of your interests might have shifted more than mine. This leads on to what you say about being a mere mirror for other people on which each friend can cast his reflection in turn. That certainly is what you might become, just as a hardened bigot shouting every one down till he had no friends left is what I am in danger of becoming. In other words sympathy is your strong point, as stability is mine—if I have a strong point at all, which is doubtful: or weakness is your danger, as Pride is mine. (You have no idea how much of my time I spend just hating people whom I disagree with—tho’ I know them only from their books—and inventing conversations in which I score off them.) In other words, we all have our own burdens, and must do the best we can. I do not know which is the worse, nor do we need to: if each of us could imitate the other.
The woods are just beginning to turn here—the drive was exquisite this afternoon. Love from all.
Yours,
Jack
TO GUY POCOCK (W):
The Kilns,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford
Sept. 18th 1933.
Dear Pocock
Would you kindly tell the right department to send a copy of the Regress to A. Griffiths, Prinknash Priory, Gloucester, and debit me accordingly,
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO J. M. DENT PUBLISHERS (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Oct. 16th 1933
Dear Sir
Please forward a copy of my Pilgrim’s Regress to Miss Whitty, 7 Cherlsey Rd, Bristol 6. I enclose cheque for 8/2 to cover this and previous copies.
Yours faithfully
C. S. Lewis
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):
[The Kilns]
Nov 5th 1933
My dear Arthur,
I was glad to see your hand again. In spite of the remarks at the beginning of your letter, which tempt me to further discussion I must try to prevent this also from becoming an essay in amateur Theology.
I am glad to hear that Tchainie59 is once more sufficiently my friend to ask about my mediaeval book.60 You can tell her that it is not finished yet, though it might have been if I had not been made English Examiner which has devoured a good deal of my last two long Vacs. As one holds the job only for two years I am now free again and hope to get on with it. By the way has she read the Regress— I don’t mean ‘Ask her if she has read the Regress’!
To answer the next point in your letter, MacFarlane is back at work again and seems alright: but that perhaps does not count for much as he seemed alright to me up to the moment when he went sick. I have no eye for health. ‘How much better he is looking’—‘How ill he is looking’ people say to me as a visitor leaves the room, and I have never noticed any difference. I hope mere selfishness is not the cause.
The news of your learning to ride was surprising, amusing (as you foresaw!) and on the whole good. Perhaps you will be a ‘huntin’ man’ when I next meet you, slapping your leggings with a crop, and drinking whiskies with the county families’ fast daughters and hard-riding sons. What a fine sight it would be to see Bob, Janie, and you, altogether and all in full hunting kit (Janie wd. look fine in a tall hat and breeches) taking a fence together. What would attract me most about riding, viz. the unity of man and beast, is, I suppose, largely spoiled by having to use hired horses. But if you find you like it I suppose you could easily afford a horse of your own, if Lea knows anything about the care of a horse. Certainly I should enjoy very much strolling round with you to visit it in its stable.
I haven’t read the new De La Mare,61 but probably shall. Galsworthy, though I fully acknowledge his merits, I somehow never feel any desire to return to. Warnie feels quite differently and the original Saga62 is one of his old favourites which he can always read again. I forget whether I mentioned to you Collier’s Poor Tom’s A-cold63 as the new book I have enjoyed most for a long time.
Did I (also) tell you that Warnie has complete sets of all the Beethoven symphonies, and that we have a whole symphony each Sunday evening? This is one of the best hours of the week. Maureen who is (to be frank) the difficult one of the household has by then returned to Monmouth from her week end at home: the rush and crowd of visitors and continual flurry of the week end subsides and after a quiet supper Minto, Warnie, Mr Papworth and myself sit down in the study and have our music. In this way we have worked through the first Seven, and it was my recollections of the Seventh (last Sunday) which made me mention the matter—just to let you know that I had once more been enjoying what I still think the best slow movement there is, and, of course, enjoying it all the more because of the associations. I don’t however think the Seventh quite satisfactory as a whole: the final movement is by no means one of the best, and still less is it fit to follow the other. So far I think the Fifth quite easily the best, thus agreeing with the orthodox view: tho’ I differ from it in finding the Eroica the poorest of the lot.64 The Eroica (the connection is Napoleon) leads me to what you say about Germany.
I