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TO DAPHNE HARWOOD (BOD):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

Jan. 6th 1939.

Dear Daphne

Thanks very much for your nice long letter—I hope I have not thereby stolen time which ought to have been employed in the best of all occupations, and by you, perforce, the most neglected-doing nothing.

As a bachelor who has seldom even talked to children I should be very foolish if I gave any advice as to books for Lawrence: if I felt qualified to choose books I should send books—not tokens.

But John is right about rum. It has a romantic interest. It is one of those things which give us a sensuous and an imaginative pleasure at once. And the only reason why I am going to refuse your very tempting offer of a bottle (or was it a keg? do say it was a keg—or a noggin) of rum is that it is your positive wifely duty to see that Cecil drinks it all. If he turns coy and altruistic and says (as men will say anything) that he doesn’t care for rum, you may reply lightly in the Latin tongue Hoc est omnis meus oculus, or Nonne narrabis ista marinis equestribus?¹ He has not forgotten dancing through the streets of Caerleon with the bottle of white rum in one hand and his cutlass in the other. Of course for domestic purposes the question shd. not be put in a nakedly convivial form: some proper pretext about wet feet, overwork, or the like will do gentle violence to his coyness. But ye maun ablains give it to the guideman, ma’am.²

I don’t remember anything you said that day which could possibly offend anyone.

All here sent their loves, and best wishes for the New Year. I hope it will be less exciting than the last but not with much confidence: one is reduced to the last form of hope now (I mean as regards this world) which consists in remembering that creaking gates hang long and things expected never happen. However, the prospect of leaving * this planet gets daily less terrible. Tell Cecil to write to me some time.

Yours

Jack Lewis

TOA. K. HAMILTON JENKIN (BOD): ³

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

Jan 11th 1939

My dear Jenkin—

I had hoped to be dining somewhere in London to-night with you and Barfield and Harwood (who had, by the way, announced that he was bringing a bottle of Jamaica rum), but I heard yesterday that the arrangement was breaking down as far as they were concerned and to day the much worse news that you were smitten with a fell disease. Very bad luck!-and I suppose you have, in addition, hated every minute of this fine old English winter: unless, at least, your tastes in weather have changed very much since the old days.

I who profess the predilections of a polar bear tried to make believe that I was enjoying it, but the week before Christmas wore the pretence pretty thin: it wasn’t so much the snow underfoot that depressed me as the vast clot of lentil soup which had replaced the sky.

The second fall in the first week of the New Year spoiled my annual January walking tour with my brother. We had one glorious day crossing Wenlock Edge (our course was from Church Stretton to Ludlow)⁴ with new snow on the ground and cloudless sunshine from end to end of the skies—beautiful shadows. And out in the country snow is a great betrayer. Rabbits and squirrels became as easy to see as bushes. The tracks are rather exciting, too, aren’t they? To climb up some unearthly lane to a hill crest far from any house, still early in the morning, and find from the innumerable paw-prints how long ago the animals’ day has begun. But on the second day we had to give it up before noon and make the rest of the way by train.

Which, by the way, on those remote railways took us nearly as long as it would have done on foot and was rather fun. We had pleasant hours sitting by roaring fires with the combined station-master, porter, and ticket clerk of tiny stations: and one specially good talk with a little Welsh porter about four feet tall (probably a leprechaun disguised as a porter) who praised Balfour’s Foundations of Belief.⁵ What things any twenty square miles of country contains if a man can only find them. Still, I confess that even I am tired of this winter.

The truth is I am tired of so many things—of weather, of work, of reading, of writing, above all of News. In other words I have a cold: to complain of which to you in your present state is rather carrying colds to Newcastle. As to News and ‘the state of the nation’ what worries me sometimes more than the dangers is our reaction to them, beginning, of course, with my own reaction. To be faced with wars and ruins is I suppose the normal state of humanity: did any people before He shivering under it as we do? Just after the September crisis I sat next to old Powick⁶ the professor of history and asked him how it had compared with what people felt in 1914: he said at once ‘The difference is that this time one missed the note of exaltation that one felt then.’ Exaltation begad! Yes: I know they were ignorant of some things we have learned, but I can’t believe that is the only difference. Something has slipped.

This is a grand cheery letter to write to a sick man, isn’t it? The mention of snow, I now realise, was a fatal blunder, for you once told me that when you woke up cold and ill in the middle of the night one of your main troubles was that you couldn’t even imagine warm and pleasant places—that nothing would arise before your inner eye except cold rocks with rain falling on them and ice-fringed ponds. Something of the same kind occasionally happens to me.

But talking of places, has Barfield yet suggested to you that you should try to join us on our Easter walk this year? I know he wanted you to be asked. You needn’t be afraid of the distances. There is often a car in attendance and, failing that, by judicious bus-hopping you can always manage to have all the fun and little of the fatigue. We will make you billeting officer and send you on ahead by wheels to book rooms. So you will be sitting with a pipe and a pint in some cheery bar, with a stuffed pike in a glass case on one wall and a tradesman’s calendar on the other, and a loud-ticking clock, and a board for shove-halfpenny, and through the window you’ll see us wearily limping up to the door—and you’ll come out fresh as a new pin and say ‘Wherever have you been? I expected you two hours ago.’ At least that is what you’ll feel like saying but after a glance at our faces you will change it to ‘What will you have?’

We’ll make it a southern walk, Dorset perhaps. Somewhere, at any rate, where the spring will be surprisingly far on, the woods almost green, and great cushiony clumps of primroses, and a view of the sea: and we’ll have glorious mid-morning halts lying in barns or on the sunny side of hills. Make a note of it. (You’ll probably be the only atheist present, by the way, but we will respect your susceptibilities—‘Leave thou thy sister when she fails to pray/Her simple unbelief, for that’s her way.’* (Give the context of and add any explanatory note that seems necessary)).⁷

What did you think of Snowwhite and the vii Dwarfs?⁸ I saw it at Malvern last week on that holiday. And talking of Malvern, what an exquisite, unchanging place that is. Hardly a sound in the streets after eight o’clock: such nice, warm, quiet, carpeted immemorial hotels: such comfort, such bright, quiet cheerfulness with no silly luxury or novelty. ‘I design to end my days’ in Malvern. Let me especially recommend the Tudor Hotel for a bottle of really excellent burgundy. They also have a splendid idea that ‘gentlemen’, being noisy, tobacco-smelling animals, should be segregated, which means that as soon as you arrive a fire is lit in a little, dark, warm, cushioned smoking-room miles away from anywhere, and it’s as good as a private sitting room.

But about Snow-White. Leaving out the tiresome question of whether it is suitable for children (which I don’t know and don’t care) I thought it almost inconceivably good and bad—I mean, I didn’t know one human being could be so good and bad. The worst thing of all was the vulgarity of the winking dove at the beginning, and the next worst the faces of the dwarfs. Dwarfs ought to be ugly of course, but not in that way. And the dwarfs’ jazz party was pretty bad. I suppose it never occurred to the poor boob that you could give them any other kind of music. But all the terrifying bits were good, and the animals really most moving: and the use of shadows (of dwarfs and vultures) was real genius. What might not have come of it if this man had been educated—or even brought up in a decent society?

If you’d care for a copy of my story (a journey to Mars) let me know and I’ll send you one. But I rather think it is not a genre you care for: and I know that if people don’t like stories of that kind they usually dislike them very much indeed. These sharp frontiers of taste are a very interesting literary fact which I’ve never seen discussed by any critic, and which are far more important in dividing readers than any of the formal divisions, even that of verse and prose. ‘Do you like stories about other planets—or hunting stories—or stories of the supernatural—or historical novels?’—surely these are questions which elicit an unalterable Yes or No from the very depth of a reader’s heart: but Aristotle, Johnson, and Coleridge have nothing to say about them.⁹

(By the way, why is North’s Plutarch¹⁰ such very dull reading?)

I hope you’ll be mending by the time you get this. If you are unable to write, then,** as soon as you conveniently can, let me have word through someone else, how you are getting on and whether there is anything of any kind I can do for you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ALEC VIDLER (BOD):¹¹

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Ian 17th 1939

Dear Mr. Vidler

I fear I am a very bad salesman, but I enclose the names of those people who might be induced to take Theology)¹²

On the question of reviewing—would it be a good thing sometimes to review books which had not been sent for review? I am thinking chiefly of infamous and ill informed books. Review copies of what you specially want to refute are not likely to be sent you, and that is one of the ways in which nonsense circulates uncontradicted. The reviewer wd. presumably, in such cases, pay for his own copy. (I have no particular book in view at the moment).

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TOA. K. HAMILTON JENKIN (BOD):

[The Kilns]

Ian 22nd 1939.

My dear Jenkin–

I was delighted to hear from Barfield that you are quite markedly better though not yet well enough for writing. I have, thank God, no experience of your ailment so I don’t know what the recovery is like-whether as after fever you suddenly wake up after the first good night feeling ravenous with hunger (oh those first slices of bread and butter: angel’s food!)—or itch as after chickenpox—or (I hope not) whether you pass into a state of melancholy as after flu.

On the assumption of melancholy, let me cheer you up. I don’t think it is likely we shall enjoy that walk much as we shall be so hard up after the capital levy in February (you heard about that I suppose): even if we do go you will have seen in the papers that a spring of unprecedented rains and sleet is prophesied. Still we must make a push for it. I shouldn’t get maps and plan out a tour: those ordinance survey maps are so unreliable that its not much use. I’m told Prohibition will probably be brought in as soon as Parliament meets. Never mind: we must drink the pure element, Adam’s wine (tho’ by the bye you will have noticed warnings lately against drinking any water south and west of a line drawn from London to Carlisle). Milk, of course, there will be none. And whatever happens don’t worry about your feet on a first walk-newcomers are nearly always quite alright again by Xmas. So you see, dear friend, how our little troubles melt away if only they are faced in the right spirit. Ripeness is all.¹³

You would (seriously) like it here to day. The Cherwell is up almost to a level of Addison’s walk and running (so Salters¹⁴ told my brother yesterday) 10 miles an hour, the speed being very visible by the endless procession of big mats or flakes of froth that go shooting by. The meadow enclosed within Addison’s walk (you remember?) is flooded and under a greyish, fine, morning sky gives pleasant reflections of trees and upward lights in unexpected places. Several birds are singing. There is always a specially fresh and poignant quality about them at this time of the year—like voices in a big empty ball-room the day before the ball—perhaps because they are few, or perhaps only because ones ears have grown unused to them in the winter.

Which reminds me, I heard an explanation the other day of why the stars look so unnaturally bright if one wakes up at night from really deep sleep and looks out: viz. because one’s eyes are rested and completely on top of their job.

Talking of jobs, did you see that D. L. Keir of Univ. has been made Principal of Queen’s University Belfast. A little galling to me because he will now become such a great man in my home town that whenever I go there I shall find people regarding it as the very peak of my career to have known him.

I have just been writing a review of Charles Williams’ new poem Taliessin through Logres, ¹⁵ and wonder if you have read his novels. The two I recommend most strongly are The Place of the Lion and Descent into Hell¹⁶ They are ‘shockers’ in a sense, but of a peculiar sort. The first is of special interest to chaps like you (a B. Litt.!) and me (a don) because it is about a perfect bitch of a female researcher called Damaris who is writing a doctorate thesis on the relation between ‘ideas’ in Plato and Angels in Abelard, without the slightest idea that it ever really meant anything, and all the time treating Plato and Aristotle and Dionysius and Abelard like ‘the top form of a school in which she was an inspector.’ Then, suddenly, owing to a piece of supernatural machinery which needn’t be described, she wakes up to find that the things she is studying are really there-one such primal energy looking in at her study window in the form of a gigantic pterodactyl. The novels are also interesting as the only modern ones I know which contain convincing ‘good’ characters.

I have a theory why the ‘good’ characters in literature are so often dull. To make an interesting character you have to see him from the inside, all agree. Now to imagine from within a person morally inferior to yourself you don’t need to do anything, you only need to stop doing something-to take the brake off and give all your usually suppressed vanity, or greed, or cruelty, or envy a delightful holiday. But how to make one better than yourself? Well, you can make him a little better by making him actually do what you only try to do, or do often what you only do seldom. That is, you can give him the sort of virtue in full which you have in some degree yourself. But for anything beyond that you simply haven’t got the material. Not only do you not actually behave as a hero would, you don’t even know what he feels like. Hence in most literature ideally good characters have to be made ‘from outside’ and accordingly look like puppets.¹⁷

From which silly readers draw the conclusion that good people are dull in real life—as if there were anything particularly delectable in the society of bullies, cheats, egoists and drug-addicts, or as if the same qualities which made a man an egoist did not normally make him a bore. Moral—beware of putting ‘good’ characters into a book for that’s where you give yourself away, as Richardson (to my mind) is given away by Pamela.¹⁸ I said ‘to my mind’ not only because of my habitual modesty and temperance (you will remember that of old) but because Dr. Johnson thought differently.¹⁹

I go to Cambridge to lecture once a week this term, so if you have any commissions in Bletchley now is your time. Did I tell you I have discovered the Renaissance never occurred—that is what I’m lecturing on.²⁰ Do you think it is reasonable to call the lecture ‘The Renaissance’ under the circumstances? ‘Absence of the Renaissance’ sounds so odd, and ‘What was happening while the Renaissance was not taking place’ is inaccurate because, of course, if the Renaissance never occurred, then all times were times at which it did not occur, and therefore everything that ever happened happened ‘while the Renaissance was not taking place’. Alas, as Wordsworth said, ‘I fear/That I am trifling.’²¹

So, I hope, are you by now. Don’t bother writing for ages yet: I look to hear good news of you from Owen Barfield from time to time. I forget whether I told you last time that all of us here were very concerned to hear of your illness and Mrs. Moore particularly. But you’d have guessed that.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO ALEC VIDLER (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Feb 1st 1939

Dear Mr Vidler

I enclose MS.²² It has in the end worked out to less than 4000 words but I dare say you will be glad of the extra room. If not Williams or Mr. Eliot might give you a poem of the right length. In the unlikely event of your being stuck, I cd. let you have about 1500 words on Christianity and War in continuation of the discussion begun in the last number. I thought it all good—except perhaps Mr. Roberts on poetry.²³

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO OWEN BARFIELD (W):

[The Kilns]

Feb 8th [1939]

My dear Barfield–

I am recovering (at least they tell me I am recovering) from an unusually bad attack of flu’. Two weekends of Feb. fall in term: the 5th-8th and the 12–15th. If you choose the former you will be able to hear Tillyard and me finishing our controversy viva voce, ²⁴ but as I have to give him a bed perhaps the 12th wd. be better. No doubt I shall be defeated in the controversy.²⁵

I don’t know if Plato did write the Phaedo: the canon of those ancient writers, under the surface, is still quite chaotic. It is also a very corrupt text. Bring it along by all means, but don’t pitch your hopes too high. We are both getting so rusty that we shall make very little of it—and my distrust of all lexicons and translations is increasing. Also of Plato—and of the human mind. I suppose for the sake of the others we must do something about arranging a walk. Those maps are so unreliable by now that it is rather a farce—but still ‘Try lad, try! No harm in trying.’²⁶ Of course hardly any districts in England are unspoiled enough to make walking worth while: and with two new members—I have very little doubt it will be a ghastly failure. I haven’t seen C.W.’s play: it is not likely to be at all good.²⁷ As for Orpheus—again it’s no harm trying. If you can’t write it console yourself by reflecting that if you did you wd. have been v. unlikely to get a publisher.²⁸ I am more and more convinced that there is no future for poetry. Nearly everyone has been ill here: I try to prevent them all croaking and grumbling but it is hard being the only optimist. Let me know which week end: whichever you choose something will doubtless prevent it. I hear the income-tax is going up again. The weather is bad and looks like getting worse. I suppose war is certain now. I don’t believe language is a perpetual Orphic song. The Cheedle reader is dead, I suppose you saw.²⁹

Yours

C.S.L.

P.S. Even my braces are in a frightful condition. ‘Damn braces’ said Blake.³⁰

TO CHARLES WILLIAMS (W):

(as from) Magdalen

Feb 22nd 1939.

Dear Williams,

I don’t press my criticisms. I thought we’d done with dummies and when they turned up (I was in bed with flu’) and I found I’d got to send one back and one to Tillyard, I took the line ‘If they insist on having opinions, opinions by gum (blessed be he) they shall have!’ I still think that

Re

habilitations³¹

wd. be tolerable, but I’m not making a stand: so whatever happens don’t send me any more dummies but fire ahead and get the book out. (You see, in this house one is never allowed to buy large envelopes because ‘There are lots in that drawer’: so that returning a dummy means a domestic crisis and the dinner is spoiled and the cats’ tails are trodden and charity is imperilled).

I’ve finished the review.³² My opinion of the poem, except for The Coming of Galahad wh. I think mannered, went up and up. A great work, full of glory. I also re-read the Place of the Lion and Many D. while I was ill, with undiminished enjoyment. But hurry up and write another for I shall soon know them all too well. I also tried to read Don Quixote³³ and failed: it seems to me a wretched affair. I suppose I must be wrong.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO THE EDITOR OF THEOLOGY(EC): ³⁴

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

February 27, 1939.

Sir,

In your January number Mr Mascall mentions six conditions for a just war which have been laid down by ‘theologians.’ I have one question to ask, and a number of problems to raise, about those rules.

The question is merely historical. Who are these theologians, and what kind or degree of authority can they claim over members of the Church of England?

The problems are more difficult. Condition 4 lays down that ‘it must be morally certain that the losses, to the belligerents, the world, and religion, will not outweigh the advantages of winning’; and 6, that ‘there must be a considerable probability of winning.’ It is plain that equally sincere people can differ to any extent and argue for ever as to whether a proposed war fulfils these conditions or not. The practical question, therefore, which faces us is one of authority. Who has the duty of deciding when the conditions are fulfilled, and the right of enforcing his decision? Modern discussions tend to assume without argument that the answer is ‘The private conscience of the individual,’ and that any other answer is immoral and totalitarian.

Now it is certain, in some sense, that ‘no duty of obedience can justify a sin,’ as Mr Mascall says. Granted that capital punishment is compatible with Christianity, a Christian may lawfully be a hangman; but he must not hang a man whom he knows to be innocent. But will anyone interpret this to mean that the hangman has the same duty of investigating the prisoner’s guilt which the judge has? If so, no executive can work and no Christian state is possible; which is absurd. I conclude that the hangman has done his duty if he has done his share of the general duty, resting upon ail citizens alike, to ensure, so far as in him lies, that we have an honest judicial system; if, in spite of this, and unknowingly, he hangs an innocent man, then a sin has been committed, but not by him.

This analogy suggests to me that it must be absurd to give to the private citizen the same right and duty of deciding the justice of a given war which rests on governments; and I submit that the rules for determining what wars are just³⁵ were originally rules for the guidance of princes, not subjects. This does not mean that private persons must obey governments commanding them to do what they know is sin; but perhaps it does mean (I write it with some reluctance) that the ultimate decision as to what the situation at a given moment is in the highly complex field of international affairs is one which must be delegated.

No doubt we must make every effort which the constitution allows to ensure a good government and to influence public opinion; but in the long run, the nation, as a nation, must act, and it can act only through its government. (It must be remembered that there are risks in both directions: if war is ever lawful, then peace is sometimes sinful.) What is the alternative? That individuals ignorant of history and strategy should decide for themselves whether condition 6 (‘a considerable probability of winning’) is, or is not, fulfilled?—or that every citizen, neglecting his own vocation and not weighing his capacity, is to become an expert on all the relevant, and often technical, problems?

Decisions by the private conscience of each Christian in the light of Mr Mascall’s six rules would divide Christians from each other and result in no clear Christian witness to the pagan world around us. But a clear Christian witness might be attained in a different way. If all Christians consented to bear arms at the command of the magistrate, and if all, after that, refused to obey anti-Christian orders, should we not get a clear issue? A man is much more certain that he ought not to murder prisoners or bomb civilians than he ever can be about the justice of a war. It is perhaps here that ‘conscientious objection’ ought to begin. I feel certain that one Christian airman shot for refusing to bomb enemy civilians would be a more effective martyr (in the etymological sense of the word) than a hundred Christians in jail for refusing to join the army.

Christendom has made two efforts to deal with the evil of war-chivalry and pacifism. Neither succeeded. But I doubt whether chivalry has such an unbroken record of failure as pacifism.

The question is a very dark one. I should welcome about equally refutation, or development, of what I have said.

I am, sir,

Your obedient servant,

C. S. Lewis

For some years Lewis had been concerned about what he regarded as the ‘inordinate esteem of culture’³⁶ by such unbelieving literary critics as Matthew Arnold, Benedetto Croce, I. A. Richards and F. R. Leavis. The latter wanted to see culture made the basis of a humane society, and to this end he founded Scrutiny. The editors of this periodical, which ran from 1932 to 1953, expressed a belief in ‘a necessary relationship between the quality of the individual’s response to art and his general fitness for a humane existence’.³⁷

Lewis was appalled to find this ‘inordinate esteem’ expressed in the pages o/Theology. In an essay entitled ‘The Necessity of Scrutiny’, published in the issue of March, 1939, the Anglican monk Brother George Every SSM,³⁸ after paying tribute to the literary beliefs of Leavis, D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot, asked: ‘What are Mr Eliot’s admirers to think of a church where those who seem to be theologically equipped prefer the late Professor Housman, Mr Charles Morgan, and Miss Dorothy Sayers, to Lawrence, Joyce and Mr E. M. Forster?’ This essay would eventually lead Lewis to write one of his most valuable works of literary criticism, ‘Christianity and Culture’.

TO ALEC VIDLER (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

March 11th 1939

Dear Mr. Vidler

I enclose (1) Corrected proof of article on Taliessin. (2) A letter about Christianity and war for your consideration.³⁹ If you think it worth printing (and I am not sure that it is) I believe the MS. will be clear enough for the printer: but if not, get it typed and tell me how much I owe you for the job.

I have been ill or I would before now have answered your letter suggesting an early meeting of the ‘literary collaborators’. I should have great pleasure in attending this if it takes place. At the same time I ought to warn you that each number makes it clear to me that my only use to you in literary matters can be that of permanent opposition, for I find myself in sharp disagreement with Mr Roberts and Brother Every. It will be for you to decide when the limits of useful disagreement have been passed—if you eject me I shall not feel in the least ill used. The hint in Brother Every’s paper that good taste is essential to salvation seemed to me precisely one of our greatest enemies in this age of intellectual converts-there is a danger of making Christianity itself appear as one more highbrow fad.

Don’t bother answering this at present. I write it only because I don’t want you to buy a pig in a poke.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

Dr Vidler nevertheless replied to Lewis on 14 March:

I am grateful for your warning…There seems a danger that Theology may be falling into the hands of a certain literary clique, but I am determined to avoid that, if possible. It so happens that George Every was one of the first to urge upon me the importance of giving attention in Theology to literary matters, and he made many suggestions…While I wish Every and his friends to have an opportunity of saying what they want to say, I do not intend that Theology shall be an exclusive organ for their views, and I shall welcome any opportunity of making this clear. The best way no doubt will be to publish articles from other points of view.

TO ALEC VIDLER (BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

March 16th 1939

Dear Mr Vidler

Sorry to have imposed such a long letter on you: this one will need no answer. As long as I can occasionally contribute an article on the opposite side, I am quite content.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY NEYLAN (T):

The Kilns,

Headington Quarry,

Oxford.

March 21st 1939.

Dear Mrs Neylan

Miss Moore and I are both very much obliged to you: she looks forward with great pleasure to seeing the school under such privileged conditions.⁴⁰