Kitabı oku: «Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963», sayfa 20
212 See Phoebe Hesketh in the Biographical Appendix.
213 Phoebe Hesketh, No Time for Cowards: Poems, Preface by Herbert Palmer (London: Heinemann, 1952).
214 ibid., p. 8, ‘The Secret in the Stone’, 5.
215 ibid., 10.
216 ibid., p. 9, 49.
217 ibid., ‘Zebras’, p. 39, 10-11.
218 ibid., p. 81, ‘Retrospection’, 4-5: ‘Where half-hearts join while Time’s black finger races/Towards the evening train.’
219 ibid., p. 72, ‘I Am Not Resigned’, 18.
220 Richard Thomas Church (1893-1972), poet, critic and novelist, author of Over the Bridge (1955).
221 Greeves’s dog.
222 See the letter to Phoebe Hesketh of 4 October 1952.
223 i.e., No Time for Cowards.
224 The Rev. John Rowland, B. Sc, was writing from 115 Mackie Avenue, Brighton.
225 The Northern Whig was a Belfast newspaper which began in 1824, and continued as Northern Whig and Belfast Post from 1919 until 1963 when it ceased publication.
226 Vera Henry, Mrs Moore’s goddaughter, sometimes acted as housekeeper for the Lewis brothers.
227 Roger Lancelyn Green, A. E. W. Mason, 1865-1948 (London: M. Parrish, 1952).
228 ‘trust one who has experience’.
* who has a suspicious headache himself at the moment. Who knows!…
229 This letter was published in the Church Times, CXXXV (24 October 1952), p. 763, under the title ‘Canonization’.
230 See Eric Pitt, ‘Canonization, Church Times, CXXXV (17 October 1952), p. 743.
231 The Catholic Encyclopedia: An International Work of Reference on the Constitution, Doctrine, Discipline, and History of the Catholic Church, 15 vols, ed. Charles G. Herbermann, etc. (New York: Robert Appleton Co., 1907-12).
232 A theological term signifying the honour paid to the saints.
233 John Oliver Reed (1929-) was born on 16 December 1929 in London, the son of E O. Reed. In 1941 he was awarded, on the result of the Junior County Scholarship Examination, a Foundation Scholarship to Bancroft’s School, Woodford. In December 1946 he was elected on examination to a Demyship at Magdalen College, Oxford. Before going up to Oxford he did his National Service, arriving at Magdalen in 1949. There he read English under Lewis, taking his BA in 1952. Reed was briefly an assistant master at Winchester College, after which he held assistant lectureships at the University of Edinburgh and at Kings College, London. From 1957 until he retired in 1996 he taught at universities in Africa and the Far East. See the letter to Reed of 8 July 1947 in the Supplement.
234 This letter to Reed is written on a letter Lewis received from A. R. Woolley, Educational Secretary of the Oxford University Appointments Committee, dated 24 October 1952. Woolley said: ‘The Headmaster of Winchester tells me that he will need to appoint either in 1953 or 1954 a man with a good degree in English…If there is anyone among your pupils who you think might be interested in this opening I wonder if you would kindly suggest to him that he make an appointment to come and see me.’
235 At this time Reed was in Oxford beginning a B. Litt. degree. Following Lewis’s suggestion, he sought the advice of the President of Magdalen College, Thomas Sherrer Ross Boase (1898-1974). In the end Reed was advised to give up work on his B. Litt. and take the job at Winchester College which began in January 1953. By mid 1953 he had accepted an appointment at the University of Edinburgh.
236 See the letter to Hesketh of 4 October 1952.
237 Mrs Johnson was given the pseudonym ‘Mrs Ashtorï in L.
238 Mrs Johnson asked ‘What is your correct title?’ The following notes indicate the questions she asked (the original of her list is in the Wade Center).
239 ‘Do people get another chance after death? I refer to Charles Williams.’
240 ‘What would happen if I had died an atheist?’
241 ‘What happens to Jews who are still waiting for the Messiah?’
242 ‘Is the Bible infallible?’
243 Lewis originally wrote ‘not read with attention’, but altered this to ‘without’, presumably overlooking that he had written ‘not read’. But his meaning is ‘isolated from their context and read without attention…’
244 фονχεύσετς as in Matthew 19:18.
245 άποχτεíναι as in John 8:37.
246 ‘If a thief killed Eileen would I be wrong to want him to die?’
247 ‘Is killing in self defense all right?’
248 Romans 13:4.
249 Luke 3:14.
250 Matthew 8:10.
251 ‘Will we recognize our loved ones in Heaven?’
252 Matthew 22:4.
253 Matthew 22:2-12; Luke 12:36.
254 Hebrews 11:16; 12:22.
255 Revelation 5:8-14.
256 ‘If Wayne didn’t go to Heaven I wouldn’t want to either. Would his name be erased from my brain?’
257 ‘Do you like sweets?’
258 ‘Are you handsome?’
259 ‘Tell me the story about the barber.’
260 Edward T. Dell Jr had written to Bles on 30 October 1952 that those essays by Lewis ‘chiefly found in pamphlet form or as articles in the “Spectator” might, with an appropriate preface, make an interesting book of essays…There is also a sermon that might be included as well. It was delivered in a church in the midlands on Apr. 7, 1946…I imagine Dr Lewis would scoff at the idea of a reprinting of his first book Spirits in Bondage but to me the book seems to merit it just as much as did Dymer’ (Bodleian Library, Dep. c. 771, fol. 9).
261 On 7 April 1946 Lewis preached a sermon entitled ‘Miserable Offenders’ in St Matthew’s Church, Northampton. It was included in a booklet, Five Sermons by Laymen (April-May 1946), and is reprinted in EC.
262 Mrs Shelburne, formerly an Anglican or Episcopalian, in 1951 converted to the Catholic Church.
263 See J. R. R. Tolkien in the Biographical Appendix to CL I, pp. 1022-4.
264 Lewis had read the typescript of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in October 1949, and he wrote to his friend about it on 27 October 1949 (CL II, pp. 990-1). Since then Tolkien had been trying to get it published, hoping whoever published it would also publish the unfinished Silmarillion. Rayner Unwin, the son of the publisher Sir Stanley Unwin (1884-1968) of Allen & Unwin publishers, believed it to be a very great work and his father left it to him to decide whether the firm should accept it. After calculations and discussions with others in Allen & Unwin, Rayner wrote to Tolkien on 10 November 1952 saying the firm would like to publish the book under a profit-sharing agreement, under which Tolkien would receive nothing until the sales of the book had covered its publishing costs, but would afterwards share equally with the publishers any profits that might accrue. Tolkien was delighted The Lord of the Rings had been accepted, and he wrote at once to tell Lewis what had happened. Lewis replied with this letter.
265 ‘without trace’.
266 Priscilla was Tolkien’s daughter.
267 Katharine Farrer had been corresponding with Tolkien about The Lord of the Rings.
268 MacDonald, Diary of an Old Soul, November 3: ‘Have pity on us for the look of things,/Where blank denial stares us in the face./Although the serpent mask have lied before/It fascinates the bird.’
269 Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34.
270 Romans 12:5.
271 Mrs Van Deusen may have suggested sending Lewis the autobiography of the American political writer Whittaker Chambers (1901-61), best known for his accusation and testimony against Alger Hiss (1904-96), the architect of the Yalta Conference and Secretary General of the San Francisco conference that created the United Nations. Chambers’ autobiography, Witness, was published in 1952.
272 Blamires had applied for a job in Edinburgh.
273 The US edition of Mere Christianity was published by Macmillan of New York on 11 November 1952.
274 The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’.
275 During the autumn of 1952 the Church Times featured a number of pencil drawings of ‘Portraits of Personalities’; that of Lewis, by Stanley Parker, appeared in the Church Times, CXXXV (21 November 1952), p. 844.
276 This was possibly the working title for an intended collection of Lewis’s essays.
277 Serena is a young lady whose adventures are recounted in Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book VI.
278 The Red Cross Knight.
279 Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I, x, 61, 8: ‘Thou Saint George shalt called bee.’
280 There is no evidence that this story was ever published.
281 H. G. Wells, Kipps (1905).
282 e.g. H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898), ch. 6: ‘You may figure to yourself the hum of voices along the road in the gloaming.’
283 Christian Behaviour (New York: Macmillan, 1943).
284 ‘Luke 11:26: the last state of that man is worse than the first’ Matthew 12:45.
* There are v. important exceptions. Also, on further thought, I don’t believe much in ‘French, American, or English people.’ There are only individuals really.
285 i.e., Joy Gresham.
286 For a while Joy and Bill Gresham dabbled in Ron Hubbard’s philosophy of Dianetics or spiritual healing. See Lyle Dorsett, And God Came In: The Extraordinary Story of Joy Davidman, Her Life and Marriage to C. S. Lewis (New York: Macmillan, 1983), ch. 3, p. 71.
287 See the biography of the Honourable Phyllis Elinor Sandeman (1895-1986) in CL II, p. 788n. Mrs Sandeman was brought up in Lyme Park, one of the most magnificent houses in Cheshire. Home to the Legh family for 600 years, the original Tudor house was transformed by the Venetian architect, Giacomo Leoni, into an Italianate palace. In 1946 Mrs Sandeman’s brother, the 3rd Baron Newton, Richard Legh, gave Lyme Park to the National Trust.
296 Lewis had put his finger on ‘Mrs’ while the ink was still wet.
288 Phyllis Sandeman, Treasure on Earth: A Country House at Christmas, illustrated by the author (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1952), an account of a Christmas spent at Lyme Park during her childhood.
289 Percy Lubbock, Earlham (1922).
290 ‘we others’.
291 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott, And Other Poems (1833), ‘The Lotus Eaters’, IV, 8-9: ‘All things are taken from us, and become/Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.’
292 Sandeman, Treasure on Earth, p. 26: ‘It was a large lofty room with walls of darkly gloomy cedar-wood, Corinthian pilasters arranged in pairs dividing the long panels and each of these adorned down its centre with swags of elaborate wood-carvings. From looped garlands and palm leaves and cupids’ heads hung a host of diverse objects, bunches of fruit and flowers, musical instruments, trophies, fish and birds, all carved to the life in soft yellow pear-wood by the hand of the master—the one and only Grinling Gibbons.’ In Mrs Sandeman’s book the owners of the house–the Newtons–are given the pseudonym ‘Vayne’. Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721) was the most famous English woodcarver of all time.
293 ibid., p. 62: ‘They would begin with Grace said by the Canon and then the meal would proceed eaten off silver plates, not so pleasant as the china service because scratchy under the knife and fork.’
294 ibid., p. 83: ‘The Long Gallery…could be a little frightening at night, and generally Phyllis avoided going there alone after dark. One night after summer holidays, however, resentful and unhappy from what she considered an unjust rebuke by her parents, she had run there, and flinging herself on one of the deep window seats, burst into tears of self-pity But almost at once, breaking in upon her grief with a gentle but increasing pressure, she seemed to detect a sympathy in the surrounding atmosphere as if unseen presences thronging about her were offering their love and consolation.’
295 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847), ch. 2.
297 Genesis 15:1; Luke 2:10.
298 The Ichneutai of Sophocles: The Searching Satyrs, the Fragment Freely Translated into English Rhyming Verse and Restored by Roger Lancelyn Green (Leicester: E. Ward, 1946).
299 Lewis had sent Evans a copy of Prince Caspian, and he was here referring to the first illustration in Chapter 3. Pauline Baynes wrote to Walter Hooper on 15 August 1967: ‘[Lewis] only once asked for an alteration–& then with many apologies—when I (with my little knowledge) had drawn one of the characters rowing a boat facing the wrong direction’ (CL II, p. 1020).
300 Having returned to New Zealand, Bodle sent Lewis a little book of prayers for deaf children that she had written.
301 John 14:9.
302 John 14:28.
303 Acts 17:27.
304 See Clyde S. Kilby in the Biographical Appendix.
305 Laurence was the second son of Cecil Harwood and Lewis’s godson. See Laurence Harwood in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1051-2.
306 At this time Vera Henry was back in her native Ireland. She never recovered from her illness and died in April 1953. The only person at The Kilns who could help with the cooking was the gardener, Fred Paxford (see his biography in CL II, p. 213n). When it was clear that Vera would not be returning, Lewis hired as his housekeeper Mrs Molly Miller, who lived close by in Kiln Lane. There are photographs of Fred Paxford and Molly Miller in Douglas Gilbert and Clyde S. Kilby, C. S. Lewis: Images of His World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), pp. 67, 69.
307 ‘Not to us.’ Psalm 115 (Vulgate): ‘Non nobis, Domine, non nobis; Sed nomini tuo da gloriam’: ‘Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your Name give glory.’
308 It is known Joy Gresham left for the United States on 3 January 1953.
309 Bonamy Dobrée (1891-1974) was born in London on 2 February 1891 and educated at Haileybury College and the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. He served with the Royal Horse Artillery and Royal Field Artillery during the First World War. After the war he went to Christ’s College, Cambridge (1920-1). In the following years he published many scholarly books. In 1936 he was appointed to the Chair of English Literature at the University of Leeds, where he remained until his retirement in 1955. Dobrée was one of the General Editors of the Oxford History of English Literature, and his contribution to the series was English Literature in the Eighteenth Century, 1700-1740 (1959). He died on 3 September 1974.
310 The Wanderer is an Anglo-Saxon poem of 115 lines. This is Lewis’s translation of lines 9-14.
311 Lewis probably meant by this ‘A Normal Male Person’.
* Please forgive. The smudge has a long and complicated history, if you but knew. First I always was a clumsy brute: ten thumbs and not a finger among them.296
1953
TO J. KEITH KYLE (BBC):1 TS
REF.3/53.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
1st January 1953.
Dear Mr. Kyle,
I wish the series every success, but am snowed under with work at present, and cannot assist: anyway, if the public does’nt by now know what I believe I should’nt enlighten them much in 3 1/2 minutes more!
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
Jan 2nd 1953
Dear Miss Pitter–
The year, which I had not thought much of so far, begins to mend with a letter and a prime article from you. And then, as you say, the skies.
It was beautiful, on two or three successive nights about the Holy Time, to see Venus and Jove blazing at one another, once with the Moon right between them: Majesty and Love linked by Virginity—what could be more appropriate?
The Return to Poetic Law is a noble piece and would do good if any of those who most need it were at all likely to take any notice.2 But they are all in Groups and Parties. What matters to them is not what is said but who says it: one of the Party or an outsider. ‘A minor specialist’s subject’, as you say. Yet some one or two may heed you: you are right to testify.
I do most heartily agree with you about having had too much shame. (Do you, by the way, remember the character-study of Shame in the Pilgrims Progress, all in a conversation between Christian and Hopeful?3 It is superb fun). It is v. sinister that ‘embarrassing’ or ‘embarrassingly bad’ has become an ordinary term of criticism: this, you see, is a direct appeal away from the reader’s consciousness of the poem to his social self-consciousness. While he reads he must be aware that the set are watching him reading.
That is a bad business, losing your country home. I have lost mine while remaining in it, i.e. it has ceased to be country. Not that I’d quite say ‘All things are taken from us and become Parcels and portions of the dreadful past’. Dreadful isn’t the word at all. But it’s thrilling to hear of your ‘closing in on’ Oxford.4 It wd. be lovely if you became a neighbour.
My brother joins me in best wishes for the year. How many—and how few—of these here years there seem to be!
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
During her weeks at The Kilns Joy Gresham received a letter from her husband, Bill, saying that while he knew Joy would never be anything but a writer, ‘Renée has a different orientation: her only interest is in taking care of her husband and children and making a home for them.’ The ‘optimum solution, as he saw it, ‘would be for you to be married to some swell guy, Rene and I to be married, both families to live in easy calling distance so that the Gresham kids could have Mommy and Daddy on hand.’5
Joy showed this letter to Lewis and she told Chad Walsh that she asked him for advice. ‘He strongly advised me to divorce Bill,’ she said.6 After a fortnight at The Kilns, Joy returned to the United States on 3 January
TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V): 7
Collegium Stae Mariae Magdalenae
apud Oxonienses
Vig. fest. Trium Regum
MCMLIII [5 January 1953]
Dilectissime Pater
Grato animo, ut semper, paternas tuas benedictiones accepi. Sit tibi, precor, suavissima gustatio omnium hujus temporis gaudiorum et inter curas et Dolores consolatio. Tractatum Responsabilità apud Amicum (Dec.) invenire nequeo. Latet aliquis error. Orationes tuas peto de opera quod nunc in manibus est dum conor componere libellum de precibus privatis in usum laicorum praesertim eorum qui nuper in fidem Christianam conversi sunt et longo stabilitoque habitu orandi adhuc carent. Laborem aggressus sum quia videbam multos quidem pulcherrimosque libros de hac re scriptos esse in usum religiosorum, paucos tamen qui tirones et adhuc (ut ita dicam) infantes in fide instruunt. Multas difficultates invenio nee certe scio utrum Dominus velit me hoc opus perficere an non. Ora, mi pater, ne aut nimia audacitate in re mihi non concessâ persistam aut nimia timiditate a labore debito recedam: aeque enim damnati et ille qui Arcam sine mandato tetigit et ille qui manum semel aratro impositam abstrahit.
Et tu et congregatio tua in diurnis orationibus meis. Haec sola, dum in via sumus, conversatio: liceat nobis, precor, olim in Patria facie ad faciem congredi. Vale.
C. S. Lewis
Adhuc spero tractatum Responsabilità accipere.
*
The College of St Mary Magdalen, Oxford
n Vigil of the Feast of the Three Kings, 1953
[5 January 1953]
Dearest Father
Thank you, as always, for your fatherly blessings.
May you, I pray, have the sweetest relish of all the joys of this life and consolation amid cares and griefs.
I am unable to find the article ‘Responsibility’ in the December issue of Friend. There is some unexplained mistake here.8
I invite your prayers about a work which I now have in hand. I am trying to write a book about private prayers for the use of the laity, especially for those who have been recently converted to the Christian faith and so far are without any sustained and regular habit of prayer. I tackled the job because I saw many no doubt very beautiful books written on this subject of prayer for the religious but few which instruct tiros and those still babes (so to say) in the Faith. I find many difficulties nor do I definitely know whether God wishes me to complete this task or not.9
Pray for me, my Father, that I neither persist, through over-boldness, in what is not permitted to me nor withdraw, through too great timidity, from due effort: for he who touches the Ark without authorization10 and he who, having once put his hand to the plough, draws it back are both lost.11
Both you and your Congregation are in my daily prayers. While we are in the Way, this is our only intercourse: be it granted to us, I pray, hereafter, to meet in our True Country face to face.
C. S. Lewis
I still hope to receive the article ‘Responsibility’.
TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):
e Coll. Stae Mariae Magdalenae
apud Oxonienses
Jan. vii. MCMLIII
Tandem, pater dilectissime, venit in manus exemplar Amid (Oct.) quod continent tractatum tuum de clade illa Serica. De illa natione quum ibi per multos annos evangelistae haud infeliciter laboravissent, equidem multa sperabam: nunc omnia retro fluere, ut scribis, manifestum est. Et mihi multa atrocia multi de illa re epistolis renuntiaverunt ñeque aberat ista miseria a cogitationibus et precibus nostris. Neque tamen sine peccatis nostris evenit: nos enim justitiam illam, curam illam pauperum quas (mendacissime) communistae praeferunt debueramus jam ante multa saecula rê verâ effecisse. Sed longe hoc aberat: nos occidentales Christum ore praedicavimus, factis Mammoni servitium tulimus. Magis culpabiles nos quam infideles: scientibus enim volunta-tem Dei et non facientibus major poena. Nunc unicum refugium in contritione et oratione. Diu erravimus. In legendo Europae historiam, seriem exitiabilem bellorum, avaritiae, fratricidarum Christianorum a Christianis persecutionum, luxuriae, gulae, superbiae, quis discerneret rarissima Sancti Spiritus vestigia? Oremus semper. Vale.
C. S. Lewis
*
from The College of St. Mary Magdalen
Oxford
Jan 7th 1953
At last, dearest Father, there has come to hand that copy of Friend (Oct.) which contains your article on that Chinese disaster. I used myself to entertain many hopes for that nation, since the missionaries have served there for many years not unsuccessfully: now it is clear, as you write, that all is on the ebb. Many have reported to me too, in letters on this subject, many atrocities, nor was this misery absent from our thoughts and prayers.12
But it did not happen, however, without sins on our part: for that justice and that care for the poor which (most mendaciously) the Communists advertise, we in reality ought to have brought about ages ago. But far from it: we Westerners preached Christ with our lips, with our actions we brought the slavery of Mammon. We are more guilty than the infidels: for to those that know the will of God and do it not, the greater the punishment.
Now the only refuge lies in contrition and prayer. Long have we erred. In reading the history of Europe, its destructive succession of wars, of avarice, of fratricidal persecutions of Christians by Christians, of luxury, of gluttony, of pride, who could detect any but the rarest traces of the Holy Spirit?
Let us pray always. Farewell,
C. S. Lewis
TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD):
Coll Magd.
Jan 9th 1953
Dear Sister Penelope
As usual, your letter is full of interest, and I shall chew it over very thoroughly. That is, I shall go on wondering whether ooa can mean quite the same as 
13 and whether it is or is not an objection that your interpretation involves the assumption that what is being prayed for is something internal. One couldn’t (or could one?) believe that a dead man had risen before you saw him rise. I don’t know. You might believe the prayer had been answered before he did. By the way, what are Aramaic tenses like? Does it have futures and preterits?
The poor old soul in Holloway is a famous confidence trickster, Mrs. Hooker, against whom I had to appear as a witness because she had borrowed money by pretending to be my wife! I am sure you will pray for her. It was nice to meet the other day.
Yours sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO J. O. REED (P): TS
REF.34/53.
Magdalen College,
9th January 1953.
Dear Reed,
Can you meet me for a pot of beer in the Eastgate at 12.30 tomorrow, Saturday 10th?
Yours,
C. S. Lewis
TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):
E Coll. Stae Mariae Magdalenae
apud Oxonienses
Jan. xiv LIII
Pater dilectissime
Multo gaudio accepi epistolam tuam die ix Jan. datam: credo jampridem te meam accepisse quam de tractatu Responsabilità scripsi. Et vides me per errorem putavisse te auctorem esse et Sac. P. Mannam esse id quod Galli vocant nomen plumae. At minime refert quum liber De Imitatione nos doceat ‘Attende quid dicatur, non quis dixerit’. Multas ex corde gratias refero, quia tanta caritate ob libellum meum propositum meditare et orare voluisti. Sententiam tuam pro signo accipio. Et nunc, carissime, audi de quâ difficultate máximo haesito. Duo paradigmata orationis videntur nobis in Novo Testamento expósita esse quae inter se concillare haud facile est. Alterum est ipsa Domini oratio in horto Gethsemane (‘si possibile est…nihilominus non quod ego volo sed quod tu vis’). Alterum vero apud Marc XI, v. 24 ‘Quidquid petieritis credentes quod accipietis, habebitis’. (Et nota, loco quo versio latina accipietis habet et nostra vernacula similiter futurum tempus shall receive, graecus textus tempus praeteritum έλάβετε, accepistis, id quod difficillimum est). Nunc quaestio: quomodo potest homo uno eod-emque momento temporis et credere plenissime se accepturum et voluntati Dei fortasse negantis se submittere? Quomodo potest dicere simul ‘Credo firmiter te hoc daturum esse’ et ‘si hoc negaveris, fiat voluntas tua’. Quomodo potest unus actus mentis et possibilem negationem excludere et tractare? Rem a nullo doctorum tractatam invenio.
Nota bene: nullam difficultatem mihi facit quod Deus interdum non vult faceré ea quae fidèles petunt. Necesse est quippe ille sapiens et nos stulti sed cur apud Marc. XI 24 pollicetur se omnia (quidquid) facere quas plena fide petimus? Ambo loci Dominici, ambo inter credenda. Quid faciam? Vale. Et pro te et pro congregatione tua oro et semper orabo.
C. S. Lewis
*
from The College of St Mary Magdalen
Oxford
14th January 1953
Dearest Father
I received your letter dated 9th Jan. with much joy. I trust that long since you have received my letter on the tract Responsabilità. And you see that I mistakenly thought that you yourself were the author and that ‘Sac. P. Mannam’14 was what the French call a nom de plume.
But it is of no consequence since the De Imitatione teaches us to ‘Mark what is said, not who said it.’15
I send you many heartfelt thanks for your charity in being willing to meditate on my proposed little book16 and pray for it. I take your opinion as a good sign.
And now, my dearest friend, hear what difficulty leaves me in most doubt. Two models of prayer seem to be put before us in the New Testament which are not easy to reconcile with each other.
One is the actual prayer of the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane (‘if it be possible17…nevertheless, not as I will but as Thou wilt’).18
The other, though, is in Mark XI v. 24. ‘Whatsoever you ask believing that you shall receive you shall obtain’ (and observe that in the place where the version has, in Latin, accipietis-and our vernacular translation, similarly, has the future tense, ‘shall receive’-the Greek text has the past tense έλάετε = accepistis-which is very difficult).
Now the question: How is it possible for a man, at one and the same moment of time, both to believe most fully that he will receive and to submit himself to the Will of God–Who perhaps is refusing him?
How is it possible to say, simultaneously, ‘I firmly believe that Thou wilt give me this’, and, ‘If Thou shalt deny me it, Thy will be done’? How can one mental act both exclude possible refusal and consider it? I find this discussed by none of the Doctors.
Please note: it creates no difficulty for me that God sometimes does not will to do what the faithful request. This is necessary because He is wise and we are foolish: but why in Mark XI 24, does He promise to do everything (whatsoever) we ask in full faith? Both statements are the Lord’s; both are among what we are required to believe. What should I do?19
Farewell. And for you and for your Congregation I pray and shall ever pray.
C. S. Lewis
TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD): TS
REF.51/53.
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
17th January 1953.
Dear Mr. Kinter,
Yes. Eustace, Edmund, Jane, and Mark20 are all meant to be recipients of Grace.
All good wishes.
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):
Magdalen College
Oxford
Jan. 19th 1953
Dear Mrs. Shelburne
Thank you for your kind letter of Dec. 29th which arrived today. I am afraid I have no idea what the first editions of Screwtape or the Divorce sell at: I haven’t even got a first of the former myself. But you would be foolish to spend a cent more on them than the published price: both belong to the worst war-period and are scrubby little things on rotten paper–your American editions are far nicer.
Your letter was most cheering and I am full of agreements. Of course we’ll help each other in our prayers. God bless you.
Yours most sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO BELLE ALLEN (L, WHL):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
19 January 1953
I don’t wonder that you got fogged in Pilgrim’s Regress. It was my first religious book and I didn’t then know how to make things easy. I was not even trying to very much, because in those days I never dreamed I would become a ‘popular’ author and hoped for no readers outside a small ‘highbrow’ circle. Don’t waste your time over it any more. The poetry is my own…We all feel ashamed of receiving so much from you and are not even sure-now-whether our scarcities are any worse than your high prices. Don’t you think you ought to stop?…
