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

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

1st December 1953.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

Many thanks for your kind letter of the 20th. November, which should have been answered sooner, but I am very behindhand, owing to the illness of my brother (nothing serious, and now happily over); but of course his absence always delays matters. He sends you all good wishes, and promises you a letter as soon as he has got himself ‘sorted out’. We both look forward with that schoolboy greediness which distinguishes the post-war Englishman, to the arrival of the little parcel, which we are sure will be of the standard which we have learnt to associate with the House of Gebbert. You shall indeed have a copy of the CHAIR, suitably autographed,

(#ulink_51f45e7a-0f01-5a8a-a5b8-661863028189) and I only wish I could make you some better return for all your kindness to us.

I look forward to seeing the snapshot of the son and heir. So ignorant am I of all these matters, that I had always understood that all children were born with hair on their heads; apparently this is not the case? And that CM. beat fourteen other arrivals?

Life here flows on much as usual, with one important exception; we are having the most extraordinary ‘fall’ within living memory; believe it or not, last Sunday, 29th. November, down at Brighton, they had to dig the deck chairs out of winter storage to meet the demands of the crowds which wanted to sit and bask on the beach. Tell that to your millionaires who go to Florida at this time of the year! Your (I mean American) stock is high here at the moment, over your behaviour about the Bermuda conference; some journalist of genius sent over an excerpt from the American Press which said, that whilst entirely disbelieving in the utility of the performance, it must be held ‘because we must’nt run out on old Winnie’.

(#ulink_7a522dd6-03c7-543d-943c-ceaecd5699de) We don’t think, any more than you, that the circus will accomplish anything, but this is the sort of small touch that counts in international relations.

Apropos of which, it seems a pity that our Queen could’nt have dropped in on America in the course of her tour; but I suppose international etiquette demands that, if she went there at all, it must be a full-dress state visit to Washington. Anyway I suppose a visit to the Republic of Panama is to all intents and purposes a visit to U.S.A.

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I am in the final agonies of producing a learned work for the Oxford Press, and very, very busy: so I hope you will excuse such a scanty letter.

With all best wishes to all three of you from us two,

yours ever,

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TO SIR STANLEY UNWIN (BOD):

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Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 4th 1953

Dear Mr. Unwin

I would willingly do all in my power to secure for Tolkien’s great book the recognition it deserves. Wd. the enclosed be any use? If not, tell me, and I will try again. I can’t tell you how much we think of your House for publishing it.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

It would be almost safe to say that no book like this has ever been written. If Ariosto rivalled it in invention (in fact he does not) he would still Jack its heroic seriousness. No imaginary world has been projected which is at once so multifarious and so true to its own inner laws; none so seemingly objective, so disinfected from the taint of an author’s merely individual psychology; none so relevant to the actual human situation yet so free from allegory. And what fine shading there is in the variations of style to meet the almost endless diversity of scenes and characters–comic, homely, epic, monstrous, or diabolic!

TO KATHARINE FARRER(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec. 4th 1953

Dear Mrs. Farrer

Yes, I know. That issue about the leonine form divides people sharply and you and I are on opposite sides of a fence.

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I too have got The Fellowship of the Ring and have gluttonously read two chapters instead of saving it all for the week-end. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it really succeeded (in selling, I mean)? It would inaugurate a new age. Dare we hope?

Yours sincerely

Jack Lewis

TO J. R R TOLKIEN (P):

[The Kilns]

Dec 7th 1953

Dear Tollers

I have been trying–like a boy with a bit of toffee–to take Vol. I slowly, to make it last, but appetite overmastered me and it’s now finished: far too short for me. The spell does not break. The love of Gimli

(#ulink_51ce0bb9-12e7-5106-820f-b0843d6560e9) and the departure from Lothlórien is still almost unbearable.

(#ulink_945c4bee-7654-5d8f-9b87-87eea14fd913) What came out stronger at this reading than on any previous one was the gradual coming of the shadow–step by step–over Boromir.

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I wrote what I could to Unwin.

(#ulink_9d36f6d9-5efa-5733-bf26-535ce853f9aa) Even if he and you approve my words, think twice before using them: I am certainly a much, and perhaps an increasingly, hated man whose name might do you more harm than good. In festina lente.

(#ulink_40318b6f-886f-5be6-81e0-0d7b29e88aff) All the best.

Yours

Jack

TO EDNA GREENE WATSON (BOD): TS 504/53.

Magdalen College,