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

123 (#ulink_a5442538-0cc6-5d81-b954-cceb13fd7f58) This was Pitter’s first book after becoming a Christian.

124 (#ulink_a5442538-0cc6-5d81-b954-cceb13fd7f58) Pitter, The Ermine, p. 19, ‘The World is Hollow’, III, 1.

125 (#ulink_a5442538-0cc6-5d81-b954-cceb13fd7f58) ibid., p. 18, ‘The Captive Bird of Paradise’, II, 4.

126 (#ulink_a5442538-0cc6-5d81-b954-cceb13fd7f58) ibid., p. 15, ‘The Other’, X, 3-4.

127 (#ulink_66ceb55d-886f-5002-bbe9-8648728c3c5e) ibid., p. 9, ‘Great Winter’, III, 3.

128 (#ulink_66ceb55d-886f-5002-bbe9-8648728c3c5e) ibid., ‘Herding Lambs’, p. 16, I, 3-4.

129 (#ulink_66ceb55d-886f-5002-bbe9-8648728c3c5e) ibid., p. 38, ‘Aged Man to Young Mother’.

130 (#ulink_66ceb55d-886f-5002-bbe9-8648728c3c5e) See Lewis’s letter to George Rostrevor Hamilton of 14 August 1949 on The Tell-Tale Article (CL II, pp. 966-7).

131 (#ulink_8c361ad8-4ba4-5144-8553-9ff20f4b198d) John H. McCallum, head of the trade department at Harcourt, Brace & World, was Lewis’s American editor at the time.

132 (#ulink_99639a00-5886-541a-8679-77c730be1c4c) Bodle had sent her own simplified version of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress to the deaf daughter of a friend.

133 (#ulink_03c922bc-c669-5161-8a6f-3c82520bd7f5) Bodle said of this letter: ‘I had explained that in N.Z. government schools religious instruction cannot be given by teachers. I was feeling frustrated. The principal did, however, allow me to take classes after school for any children who wanted to come’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/4, fol. 249).

134 (#ulink_6bd00acb-cb74-5810-a6f1-ffc0cf804a48) Roger Lancelyn Green, The Secret of Rusticoker (1953).

135 (#ulink_4e8321f3-7196-55b8-9d6b-a362e635cd0d) Martin Kilmer was a member of the ‘Kilmer family’ to whom The Magicians Nephew was dedicated.

136 (#ulink_3951bd34-81f8-5217-b6f4-7c3e78b2cff4) Stephen Vincent Benêt (1898-1943), Western Star (1943).

137 (#ulink_599edb8f-0225-520c-a105-7682215d488c) Calkins wrote on this letter; ‘Reply to my cable at the time Elizabeth II was crowned.’

138 (#ulink_d1c01f52-3bff-593d-b3c1-0299d73fb39a) News reached the British public on the eve of the Coronation that Edmund Hillary and the Nepalese Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, had set foot on the summit of the world’s highest mountain, Mount Everest, on 29 May.

139 (#ulink_681bf0e8-1a60-5729-8eb2-6651196bf247) Hila Newman was an eleven-year-old girl from New York who sent Lewis some drawings of the characters in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

140 (#ulink_d6644c8c-8add-5d96-ae10-2015e75c9a74) Romans 14:13-17: ‘Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way. I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. But if thy brother be grieved with thy meat, now walkest thou not charitably. Destroy not him with thy meat, for whom Christ died. Let not then your good be evil spoken of. For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink: but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’

* (#ulink_fa20ca3f-c296-59e8-b5f7-154eaaec859b) Later: not, I hope, concurrently. We may then discuss further plans

141 (#ulink_a7eb1130-4948-5587-af40-765b5d88d75f) Mildred Boxill was an editor in the Harcourt Brace college department in New York.

142 (#ulink_ae6d2b33-60ac-550b-8424-4eac32fec6cb) John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667).

143 (#ulink_ae6d2b33-60ac-550b-8424-4eac32fec6cb) Douglas Bush was the editor of the section on John Milton in Major British Writers. See his biography in CL II, p. 22 In.

144 (#ulink_fd4181d9-87cc-54c7-a41a-937471de091c) Blamires had found a publisher for his book, The Devil’s Hunting-grounds: A Fantasy (London: Longmans, 1954).

145 (#ulink_fd4181d9-87cc-54c7-a41a-937471de091c) The Rev. Canon Roger Bradshaigh Lloyd (1901-66) was educated at St John’s College, Cambridge and ordained in 1924. He served as residentiary canon of Winchester Cathedral, 1937-66. During the 1950s he was a reader for Longmans Green. He recommended The Devil’s Hunting-grounds to Longmans and was in contact with Blamires about the book. His own works include The Mastery of Evil (1941) and The Borderland: An Exploration of Theology in English Literature (1960). Lloyd was also a keen railway enthusiast, and his books on that subject include Farewell to Steam (1956).

146 (#ulink_2e9b8257-b046-556b-b409-9a508e39ed44) Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901); The Tale of Benjamin Bunny (1904).

147 (#ulink_c755ab52-47db-5782-a33c-77becccf927a) ‘mother-sickness’. The pun consists in substituting ‘mal de mere for the familiar ‘mal de mer’ (sea-sickness). See the letter to Gebbert of 16 July 1953.

148 (#ulink_249c2a36-d998-54f3-8cf7-bc1dfdfb59ca) A poet born at Mitylene, Lesbos, about the middle of the seventh century BC.

149 (#ulink_249c2a36-d998-54f3-8cf7-bc1dfdfb59ca) The song of praise (Luke 1:46-55) sung by the Blessed Virgin Mary when her cousin Elizabeth greeted her as Mother of the Lord.

150 (#ulink_d42fd87a-2046-59c7-9be3-d035f780ffaa) See Kilby’s account of this meeting, ‘Visit with C. S. Lewis’, in the Wheaton College literary magazine, Kodon, 8 (December 1953), pp. 11, 28, 30.

151 (#ulink_f978de6f-7ce4-5c5e-98da-e4aee39268c3) Stephen Vincent Benét, John Brown’s Body (1928), a narrative poem of the Civil War.

152 (#ulink_deee8083-8bb0-5c08-9d50-c40c9d0bbaa4) Warnie was correcting the proofs of his first book, The Splendid Century: Some Aspects of Life in the Reign of Louis XLV (1953), and his brother was correcting those of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century.

153 (#ulink_1d54c677-f769-5d70-94c7-33e5d3e7d001) H. Rider Haggard, The Mahatma and the Hare (1911).

154 (#ulink_09d61a6d-08c1-5d7e-8748-a091be2cf9d3) Roger Lancelyn Green, King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1953).

155 (#ulink_59a74874-599d-5fb4-85e1-4553f4ece412) See the reference to ‘brasting and fighting’ in the letter to Greeves of 20 June 1916 (CL I, pp. 196-7).

156 (#ulink_7c1047b6-a0e1-5c14-a090-92a60501794f) See the letter to Gebbert of 20 June 1953.

157 (#ulink_e307e1bf-c114-58ba-a40f-7b630ec25759) Richard Lancelyn Green (1953-2004) was born at Poulton Hall on 10 July 1953, the second son, and third child, of Roger and June Lancelyn Green.

158 (#ulink_4e591bd6-4339-5bf7-9a0e-8eea2c3f40b0) According to the Roman law of Jus Trium Liberorum, every man who had been a father of three children had particular honours and privileges.

159 (#ulink_a22ea8aa-3b26-57e1-89eb-75118c61d3b8) A story Sayer was writing, which has never been published.

160 (#ulink_035f151b-2c13-506b-8b96-c053367a4139) Matthew 6:11; Luke 11:3.

161 (#ulink_0d0ef157-be95-51af-97d7-9c4b0c47e2ec) Joel 2:28: ‘Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions.’ Acts 2:17: ‘And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’

162 (#ulink_0d0ef157-be95-51af-97d7-9c4b0c47e2ec) Lewis may have had in mind the two great Carmelite doctors of the Church, St Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross. St Teresa felt visions were unimportant because of their ‘sensual nature’. St John of the Cross, in the Ascent of Mount Carmel, is blunt and states that visions should be ignored.

163 (#ulink_e808606a-2dfa-5e88-886f-296dee556157) In That Hideous Strength.

164 (#ulink_24ee3eaf-79f9-5b5e-9f14-ad14b63add49) Cecil John Rhodes (1853-1902), British financier and colonizer, left the greater part of his fortune for the establishing of a scholarship fund. The Rhodes Scholarships to Oxford University were intended to reward applicants who exhibited qualities of character and physical ability, with the aim of promoting cross-cultural understanding and peace between nations. The scholarships have been awarded annually since 1903 by the Rhodes Trust in Oxford, where centenary celebrations were held in June 1953.

165 (#ulink_8595e8f6-1c8f-55a9-9603-24c6d988a17a) p.p.

166 (#ulink_69f820ce-3e83-506c-a8e5-1b16e4d2df75) 1 Peter 4:12: ‘Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you.’

167 (#ulink_150aa072-d4e0-5648-bc63-ddec534ddbfe) See the description of his confessor, Fr Walter Adams SSJE, in the letter to Mary Neylan of 30 April 1941 (CL II, p. 482): ‘If I have ever met a holy man, he is one.’

168 (#ulink_a786b54b-1f5e-562d-aeb1-976ce8ba95d4) Laurence Harwood matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford in 1952 and began reading modern history. Unfortunately, in June 1953 he failed the preliminary examination which is designed to ensure that students are sufficiently prepared to proceed to the honours degree in the second or third year. As a result he had to leave Oxford.

169 (#ulink_047ee717-9e9f-594f-aaaa-2714cb80be03) ‘mishap’.

170 (#ulink_e155984e-f6ed-5627-9876-2d96621f0832) Mrs Emily McLay was writing from 4 Denham Avenue, Fulwell, Sunderland, County Durham.

171 (#ulink_6b80cfa2-a611-5e3b-82b0-e39a4ef9858b) 2 Peter 3:16-17: ‘As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction. Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness.’