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

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      Yrs. Sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO WARHELD M. FIROR(BOD):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford 27/3/51

      My dear Firor

      Your letter came to cheer a rather grim day. I have never known a spring like this: the sun has hardly appeared since last October and this morning a thin mixture of rain & snow is falling. My own household is lucky because we have a wood, and therefore wood (what a valuable idiom) for fires: there is hardly any coal in England. The worst of a wood fire—delightful to eye and nose—is that it demands continual attention. But this is a trifle: many people have to spend most of their leisure at the cinema because it is the only warm place. (I hardly ever go myself. Do you? It seems to me an astonishingly ugly art. I don’t mean ‘ugly’ in any high flying moral or spiritual sense, but just disagreeable to the eye–crowded, unrestful, inharmonious)

      There has been a great change in my life owing to the death of the old lady I called my mother. She died without apparent pain after many months of semi conscious existence, and it wd. be hypocritical to pretend that it was a grief to us.

Of your three rules I heartily agree with the first and the third. The second (‘keep rested’) sounds at first as if our obedience to it must v. often depend on many factors outside our control. I can think of some in whose ears it would sound like a cruel mockery. But I suspect that you have a reply. Do you mean that there is a kind of rest which ‘no man taketh from us’⁶⁵ and which can be preserved even in the life of a soldier on active service or of a woman who works behind a counter all day and then goes home to work and mend and wash? And no doubt there is: but it doesn’t always include rest for the legs.

      ‘His plan for the day’–yes, that is all important. And I keep losing sight of it: in days of leisure and happiness perhaps even more than in what we call ‘bad’ days.

      The whole difficulty with me is to keep control of the mind and I wish one’s earliest education had given one more training in that. There seems to be a disproportion between the vastness of the soul in one respect (i.e. as a mass of ideas and emotions) and its smallness in another (i.e. as central, controlling ego). The whole inner weather changes so completely in less than a minute. Do you read George Herbert—

If what soul doth feel sometimes My soul might always feel—⁶⁶

      He’s a good poet and one who helped to bring me back to the Faith.

      My brother and all other ham-eating beneficiaries (shd. I call us Hamsters?) join me in good wishes. All blessings.

      Yours ever

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MRS HALMBACHER(L):

      [Magdalen College

      March 1951]

      The question for me (naturally) is not ‘Why should I not be a Roman Catholic?’ but ‘Why should I?’ But I don’t like discussing such matters, because it emphasises differences and endangers charity. By the time I had really explained my objection to certain doctrines which differentiate you from us (and also in my opinion from the Apostolic and even the Medieval Church), you would like me less.

      

       TO SHELDON VANAUKEN (BOD):

      17/4/51

      Dear Van Auken

      My prayers are answered. No: a glimpse is not a vision. But to a man on a mountain road by night, a glimpse of the next three feet of road may matter more than a vision of the horizon. And there must perhaps always be just enough lack of demonstrative certainty to make free choice possible: for what could we do but accept if the faith were like the multiplication table?

      There will be a counter attack on you, you know, so don’t be too alarmed when it comes. The enemy will not see you vanish into God’s company without an effort to reclaim you. Be busy learning to pray and (if you have made up yr. mind on the denominational question) get confirmed.

      Blessings on you and a hundred thousand welcomes. Make use of me in any way you please: and let us pray for each other always.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

TO R. W. CHAPMAN (BOD): ⁶⁷

      Magdalen

      17/4/51

      Dear Chapman

Did I ever denigrate Horace? If so, I deserve to be struck blind like Stesichorus (was it?) for insulting Helen.⁶⁸ But I dare say I did: I wouldn’t now. The truth is I am just returning to him after a period of idolatrous admiration for him in boyhood and a long intervening alienation. The risus ab angulo stanza⁶⁹ alone is proof enough.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford 18/4/51

      Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

      Thanks for your letter of the 7th. I have just returned from a holiday and the time since has been spent in writing about 40 letters with my own hand: so much for Ivory Towers.

      I also find your question v. difficult in my own life. What is right we usually know, or it is our own fault if we don’t: but what is prudent or sensible we often do not. Is it part of the scheme that we shd. ordinarily be left to make the best we can of our own v. limited and merely probable reasonings? I don’t know. Or wd. guidance even on these points be more largely given if we had early enough acquired the regular habit of seeking it?

      How terrible your anxiety about your daughter must have been. She shall have her place in my prayers, such as they are.

Walsh didn’t know much about my private life.⁷⁰ Strictly between ourselves, I have lived most of it (that is now over) in a house wh. was hardly ever at peace for 24 hours, amidst senseless wranglings, lyings, backbitings, follies, and scares. I never went home without a feeling of terror as to what appalling situation might have developed in my absence. Only now that it is over (tho’ a different trouble has taken its place)⁷¹ do I begin to realise quite how bad it was.

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