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

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СКАЧАТЬ MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 26/6/52

      Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

      Incense and Hail Marys are in quite different categories. The one is merely a question of ritual: some find it helpful and others don’t, and each must put up with its absence or presence in the church they are attending with cheerful and charitably humility.

But Hail Marys raise a doctrinal question: whether it is lawful to address devotions to any creature, however holy. My own view would be that a salute to any saint (or angel) cannot in itself be wrong any more than taking off one’s hat to a friend: but that there is always some danger lest such practices start one on the road to a state (sometimes found in R.C.’s) where the B.V.M.¹³³ is treated really as a deity and even becomes the centre of the religion. I therefore think that such salutes are better avoided. And if the Blessed Virgin is as good as the best mothers I have known, she does not want any of the attention which might have gone to her Son diverted to herself.

      It seems, nevertheless, quite clear that the Spirit of God is, or is more strongly with Kemper Hall than with P. A. Wolfe. In him you describe a type I know. I think we may except [accept] it as a rule that whenever a person’s religious conversation dwells chiefly, or even frequently, on the faults of other people’s religions, he is in a bad condition. The fact that he shakes your faith is significant. Pray for him but not, I shd. say, with him. If he insists on talking religion to you ask him for positive things: ask him to tell you what he knows of God.

      All blessings. My ‘new trouble’ is still there: but I have much to be thankful for.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MISS REIDY (P): TS

      REF.52/265.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 28th June 1952.

      Dear Miss Reidy,

The point¹³⁴ was that as foolish people on a walk, when by their own errors they are off the course, think the map was wrong, so, when we do not find in ourselves the fruits of the Spirit which all our teachers promise, it is not that the promise was false, but that we have failed to use the Grace we have been given. The ‘map’ can be found in almost any Christian teaching.

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

      Magdalen College.

      28th June 52

      My dear Arthur

Splendid. The manageress is right: Aug 21st is my first night at Crawfordsburn. Setting off with you on Mon. 25th will do fine. And of course I don’t want all day & every day in the car: we think just the same on that subject. I look forward to the trip immensely: the first time you and I have been away together since Portsalon in about 1916!¹³⁵ This time we shall at least not quarrel about Hair-Oil!

      Yours

      Jack

      

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): ¹³⁶

      Coll. Magd.

      28/6/52

      My dear Bles,

Mycroft has been ill,¹³⁷ but is now better. I don’t foresee many occasions for copies of Le Lion,¹³⁸ but if you will kindly send me 2, they might come in useful. The translator deserves to be congratulated of course—French is a v. powerful language—the children become perfect little Frenchmen, but that is all to the good. What pleased and surprised me is the passage at the end where I made them talk like characters in Malory, and he has really got some of the quality of the French 13th century prose romances: grande honte en aurions¹³⁹– is exactly right.

May I have 10 copies of M.C.?¹⁴⁰ I had my first bathe at Parsons’ Pleasure yesterday: 68°.¹⁴¹

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (W):

      [Magdalen College]

      1/7/52

      Dear Hilton Young,

(Shall we drop the honorifics on both sides?) Thanks very much for two copies of the C.J.¹⁴² As I said before, it is almost impossible to make an objective judgement on criticism of oneself, especially when it does one so very proud. But I suspect that your essay is a good one. Certainly the alterations have been made with great skill–invisible mending.

I’m glad Driver played up. I suppose he told you, as he told me, that Judith is already a novel.¹⁴³ I still hope that as you poke about among the realien they will blaze up and a new story will arise relegating Judith to the background.

What do you think of Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel, which I’ve just read in a v. bad translation?¹⁴⁴ Heavy, humourless. But has one merit wh. sets it apart from all other stories about the future. Unobtrusively, without any new machines or new forms of government, it really does give you the illusion of a society in which the general quality of thought is different from ours. I don’t think Wells or Aldous Huxley did that: nor Orwell, except in the epilogue on Newspeak.¹⁴⁵

      All the best, and many thanks.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

      REF.52/103.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 3rd July 1952.

      Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

We both enjoyed your very interesting letters, and are glad to know that you are so happy. Pity about the antelopes, but inevitable. And СКАЧАТЬ