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

I hope you have got rid of that cold. There seems no way of guarding against them, does there? One part of me almost envies you that deep snow: real snow. This is v. late at night and my writing is dreadful, so I must stop. All blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO THE KILMER CHILDREN (W):

(#litres_trial_promo)

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Jan 24th 1954

Dear Hugh, Anne, Noelie (there’s a name I never heard before: what language is it, and does it rhyme with oily or mealy or Kelly or early or truly?,) Nicholas, Martin, Rosamund, Matthew, and Miriam–

Thank you very much for all the lovely letters and pictures. You don’t say who did the coloured one of Ransom being paddled by the Hross.

(#litres_trial_promo) Hugh? I liked it. That’s very much what a Hross is like but a bit too fat. And I don’t know who did the one of the Prince fighting the Serpent: but it’s a fine snaky snake. (I was born in Holy Ireland where there are no snakes because, as you know, St. Patrick sent them all away.) And I think Nicholas’s picture of the Prince and Jill and the Chair very good–especially the Prince’s legs, for legs aren’t too easy to draw, are they? Noelie’s White Witch is superb!–just as proud and wicked as I meant her to be. And Nicholas’s other one of the L., the W, and the W (I can’t write it all out!) is a nice deep picture, going away into the distance. Thank you all.

I have done lots of dish-washing in my time and I have often been read to, but I never thought of your very sensible idea of doing both together. How many plates do you smash in a month?

There is no snow here yet and it is so warm that the foolish snowdrops and celandines (little yellow flowers; I don’t know if you have them or not) are coming up as if it was spring. And squirrels (we have hundreds and thousands about this college) have never gone to bed for their winter sleep at all. I keep on warning them that they really ought to and that they’ll be dreadfully sleepy (yawning their heads off) by June if they don’t, but they take no notice.

You are a fine big family! I shd. think your mother sometimes feels like the Old-Woman-who-lived-in-a-shoe (you know that rhyme?). I’m so glad you like the books. The next one, The Horse and His Boy will be out quite soon. There are to be 7 altogether. Lots of love.

Yours ever

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W): TS 54/70.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

25th January 1954.

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen,

All presents–or nearly all presents–are welcome, but how rarely does it happen that just exactly the right one arrives at the right moment. Stationary is an article of which there is a constant and acute shortage in these rooms, and you have plugged the gap which would have occurred tomorrow morning. Thank you very much.

Winter has at last come to these islands, and an encouraging observation from the weather people that conditions now are identical with those in late January 1947, when we began the new year with fifty five days of continuous frost, burst pipes, fuel famine, and all the rest of it. It’s a queer thing that nothing will convince us English that we have extremes of weather, like other people; our whole set-up is based on the assumption that the weather will be mild and wet for most of the year, and either a hot or a cold spell always takes us by surprise.

I hope all goes well with you. With best wishes,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO HERBERT PALMER (TEX): PC

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

25/i/54

Your presence was one of my reasons for coming to the Do on March 2nd.

(#litres_trial_promo) Yes, do spend the night here. But I can’t ask you to dine for I’m committed to dining with Thwaite.

(#litres_trial_promo) Surely they have asked you to dinner too?

The poetical situation seems to me still without one spark of hope. And the cunning devils are now translating Virgil & Sophocles into the modern style so as [to] make people believe that poetry always was the same sort of muck it is now.

(#litres_trial_promo) And some of the worst are schoolmasters & boys [who] are being brought up on the muck: so that it won’t be ‘all the same 100 years hence’.

C.S.L.

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

26/i/54

Bravissima! Unless I hear to the contrary I shall assume that you will meet me in the lounge of the Eastgate Hotel (nearly opposite College) at 1 o’clock on Monday Feb 1st.

J.

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TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS (W):

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Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Jan 26/54

Dear Miss Sayers

But how good! Will you come and lunch at 1.15 on Thurs Feb 18th?