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

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СКАЧАТЬ TO MRS FRANK JONES (W): TS

      REF.18/53.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 17th July 1953.

      My dear Mrs. Jones,

      Many thanks for your interesting letter. To us, the high light naturally is the news that you plan to visit this benighted country; and you shall indeed have two words with my brother and myself–and a lot more than two I hope; indeed we are optimistic enough to imagine that you might come and stay with us for a day or two in our suburban residence, and see how bachelors live. It would make a little break from the routine of hotels, and especially of English hotels. We shall be interested to hear your plans when the time draws nearer.

Oddly enough, we too have been seeing a college reunion, and mainly American at that, here in Oxford. The University had the bright idea of celebrating the Cecil Rhodes centenary by inviting all old Rhodes Scholars to visit Oxford, live in their old College rooms, and attend sundry dinner parties and so forth; there was a large gathering, and they all seemed to enjoy it.¹⁶⁴

      I am glad the film interested you; my brother saw the actual coronation on the television, and was very much impressed with it: especially with the real devout piety shown by the Queen, who obviously took her vows very seriously. Like you, we have’nt got a set, and don’t propose to get one; it is I think a very bad habit to develop. People who have sets seem to do nothing but go into a huddle over them every evening of their lives, instead of being out walking, or in their gardens. And of course, like all things which begin as luxuries, they end up by being necessities; an unofficial cost of living survey was recently held in our midland manufacturing districts, and quite a large percentage of the working class interviewed complained that if prices did’nt come down, or wages go up, they would not be able to maintain their payments on their television sets–which have now become part of the worker’s basic standard of living. Just think of men drawing perhaps $40 a week, considering an article costing–cash down–perhaps $250, a necessity!

      I wish next time you send me a parcel, you would fill it with some of your summer weather; here for the past week and more, it has been just like April–patches of sunshine between heavy showers, and the morning temperature 54-58. No sign of any improvement today, and I have to go up to town this afternoon for a garden party. You would think I would have more sense at my time of life, would’nt you?

      With all best wishes to you both, and to Freiherr von und zu Brock von Grabenbruch,

      yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis¹⁶⁵

       TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. July 23rd 53

      Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

      I think your decision ‘a rule of life, without membership’ is a good one. It is a great joy to be able to ‘feel’ God’s love as a reality, and one must give thanks for it and use it. But you must be prepared for the feeling dying away again, for feelings are by nature impermanent. The great thing is to continue to believe when the feeling is absent: & these periods do quite as much for one as those when the feeling is present.

It sounds to me as if Genia had a pretty good husband on the whole. So much matrimonial misery comes to me in my mail that I feel those whose partner has no worse fault than being stupider than themselves may be said to have drawn a prize! It hardly amounts to a Problem. I take it that in every marriage natural love sooner or later, in a high or a low degree, comes up against difficulties (if only the difficulty that the original state of ‘being in love’ dies a natural death) which force it either to turn into dislike or else to turn into Christian charity. For all our natural feelings are, not resting places, but points d’appui, springboards. One has to go on from there, or fall back from there. The merely human pleasure in being loved must either go bad or become the divine joy of loving. But no doubt Genia knows all this. It’s all quite in the ordinary run of Christian life. See I Peter iv, 12 ‘Think it not strange etc.’¹⁶⁶

      I don’t remember any question of Genia’s to wh. the answer wd. have been ‘Read my children’s books’! I have to guard against making my letters into advertisements, you know!

      The sinusitis is much better, if not quite gone. You are all in my prayers: and now I must go to my work.

      Yours ever

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

      Magdalen etc.

      Aug. 1st [1953]

      Dear Mrs. Shelburne–

      Thanks for yours of the 16th. Our climatic troubles are just the opposite of yours; one of the coldest and wettest summers I remember. But I’d dislike your heat v. much more than our cold.

I am so glad you gave me an account of the lovely priest. How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing (and perhaps, like you, I have met it only once) it is irresistible.¹⁶⁷

      If even 10% of the world’s population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before a year’s end?

      Yes, I too think there is lots to be said for being no longer young: and I do most heartily agree that it is just as well to be past the age when one expects or desires to attract the other sex. It’s natural enough in our species, as in others, that the young birds shd. show off their plumage–in the mating season. But the trouble in the modern world is that there’s a tendency to rush all the birds on to that age as soon as possible and then keep them there as late as possible, thus losing all the real value of the other parts of life in a senseless, pitiful attempt to prolong what, after all, is neither its wisest, its happiest, or most innocent period. I suspect merely commercial motives are behind it all: for it is at the showing-off age that birds of both sexes have least sales-resistance!

      Naturally I can have no views on a choice between Richmond and Washington any more than on one between Omsk and Teheran! But of course you shall have my prayers.

      Sorry to hear about the fall: they’re nasty things. I must stop now, for I’m dead tired from standing at catalogue-shelves in a library all morning verifying titles of books & editions. I think, like the Irishman in the story ‘I’d sooner walk 10 miles than stand one’. I go to Ireland on the 11th so don’t be surprised if you don’t hear from me again till the end of September. All blessings.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO LAURENCE HARWOOD (BOD):

      Magdalen

      Aug 2nd 53

      My dear Lawrence–

I was sorry to hear from Owen Barfield that you have taken a nasty knock over History Prelim.СКАЧАТЬ