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

Yours very sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR C. CLARKE (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Jan 26/54

Dear Clarke,

Human interest, yes. But that is inevitably present if the fears and hopes and wonders of the astronauts are vividly realised–e.g. as in Bedford & Cavor on the Moon

(#litres_trial_promo) or even Crusoe on the island.

(#litres_trial_promo) And an author who can’t do that won’t mend matters by dragging in Crooks, Crutches, or Conspiracies: for the sort of story he drags in will be just as lacking in Human interest as his space story.

About ‘escapism’, never let that flea stick in your ear. I was liberated from it once & for all when a friend said ‘These critics are v. sensitive to the least hint of Escape. Now what class of men wd. one expect to be thus worked-up about Escape?–Jailers! Turn-key critics: people who want to keep the world in some ideological prison because a glimpse at any remote prospect wd. make their stuff seem less exclusively important.

Fantasy & S-F. is by miles the best.

(#litres_trial_promo) Some of the most serious satire of our age appears in it. What is called ‘serious’ literature now–Dylan Thomas & Pound and all that–is really the most frivolous. All the best.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26/i/54

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

Thanks for your letter of Jan 20 and also (v. much) for the most useful stationary: the thing I needed most.

I quite agree that God ‘takes a text’ much more forcibly in the general behaviour of a bad priest than in a bad sermon, wh. is, in comparison, a trifle. You seem, if I may say so, to be taking the treatment well! Finding (as Shakespeare ought to have said) ‘sermons in prigs, books in the cross-grained toughs’ etc.

(#litres_trial_promo)

I suppose I thought the B type of prayer

(#litres_trial_promo) higher because of the portentous promises attached to it and because it seems the type used by Elijah when he calls down fire on the altar

(#litres_trial_promo) or the Apostles when they heal the sick and raise the dead. But I think we are both coming to the right practical conclusion: not struggling, but always saying, as the disciples did, ‘Lord, teach us how to pray.’

(#litres_trial_promo)

That’s all modern pseudo-democratic nonsense, isn’t it, about obedience being ‘weak’. One doesn’t think nurses, sailors, & soldiers weak: and when we believe spiritual things to be as important as operations, storms at sea, and ‘last stands’ we shall see obedience as a strong thing there too. Surely one of the marks of the disobedient child is that it is feebler than the obedient, and can’t do dozens of things that the other can?

I’m not qualified to comment on the Goelz move to California. Unless a doctor ordered it I shd. never, myself, think of choosing my home primarily for the sake of the climate. I wd. if I were a vegetable: being a human I think the first thing about a place to live in is the people one meets, and the second thing is the beauty of the landscape. But of course others think differently. They are so lucky to be able to make the choice at all (999 out of a 1000 have no choice about where they’ll live) that I don’t expect it will matter much which they do–bless ‘em! I hope for your sake they’ll stay put.

Bitter cold here to-night. But we need it: it will kill the slugs in my garden which, thanks to the unusually mild autumn, have now pretty nearly qualified for the Old Age Pension. Five years, is it? Well, God bless you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

26/i/54

Dear Mrs. Shelburne

Thanks for yours of the 23rd and for copy of my verses, which I had almost totally forgotten. ‘Pon my word, they’re not so bad as I feared. I’m very sorry about your cold. We mustn’t let these modern doctors get us down by calling a cold a virus and a sore throat a streptococcus, you know! (Do you ever read Montaigne? He says ‘The peasants make everything easier by the names they use. To them a consumption is only a cough and a cancer only a stomach ache’).

(#litres_trial_promo) You shd. have stayed tucked up in a warm bed all that day instead of trying to write and walking up and down the room.

We wouldn’t call Alfred and Egbert and all those the ‘British’ line. They are the ‘English’ line, the Angles, who come from Angel in South Denmark. By the British line, we’d mean the Celtic line that goes back through the Tudors to Cadwallader and thence to Arthur, Uther, Cassibelan, Lear, Lud, Brut, Aeneas, Jupiter. The present royal family can claim descent from both the British and the English lines. So, I suppose, can most of us: for since one has 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 16 great grandparents, and so on, one is presumably descended from nearly everyone who was alive in this island in the year 600 A.D. In the long run one is related to everyone on the planet: in that quite literal sense we are all ‘one flesh’.

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Of course I don’t mean to ignore (in fact I find it nice) the distinction between a peasant’s grandson like myself and those of noble blood. I only observe that the nobility lies not in the ancient descent (wh. is common to us all) but in having been for so many generations illustrious that more of the steps are recorded. I do hope you’ll be better by the time this reaches you.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO PAUL PIEHLER(W):

(#litres_trial_promo)

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28/i/54

Dear Piehler