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

The theme of this volume is Narnia, Cambridge and Joy, but up to the end of 1949, there was almost nothing to suggest that the last thirteen years of Lewis’s life would involve any of those things, that it would be the fullest of all, and that the period would yield so many letters. In short, there was no reason for Lewis to imagine a revolution taking place in his life. He was very tired from years of looking after his aged companion, Mrs Moore, and he would have been glad of an occasional day of freedom. Thus, when Don Giovanni Calabria wrote from Verona at the beginning of 1949, urging him to write more, Lewis replied on 14 January:

I would not wish to deceive you with vain hope. I am now in my fiftieth year. I feel my zeal for writing, and whatever talent Ioriginally possessed, to be decreasing; nor (I believe) do I please my readers as I used to…My aged mother, worn out by long infirmity, is my daily care…Perhaps it will be the most wholesome thing for my soul that I lose both fame and skill lest I were to fall into that evil disease, vainglory

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The clearest evidence that his ‘zeal for writing’ was decreasing was that he had written no stories since the last Ransom novel in 1945. For Lewis story-writing was never a matter of effort, but depended entirely, as he said, on ‘seeing pictures in my head’.

(#ulink_424cd59d-5553-505a-84d4-73a35ae918c7) But there were no ‘pictures’. And in any event, Lewis was poised, after years of preparation, to begin writing English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1954), the volume of the Oxford History of English Literature which he once complained ‘lies like a nightmare on my chest’.

(#ulink_d7dc3e9b-5c42-58c0-8fb2-e3bb6e0fd09f) The burden of that ‘nightmare’ would have been eased had he received more help from his brother, Warnie. The brothers were the greatest friends, but Warnie would periodically disappear to Ireland on drinking binges, often absenting himself at the times when Jack needed most help with Mrs Moore.

As I mentioned in the Preface to Volume II, it was shortly after Lewis thought his talents to be ‘decreasing’ that he began dreaming of lions.

(#ulink_80506a1d-e8cc-56d2-84d1-be66459bf766) ‘At first,’ he said about The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, ‘I had very little idea how the story would go. But then suddenly Asian came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams of lions about that time…Once He was there He pulled the whole story together, and soon He pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him.’

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The extraordinary burst of inspiration that led to the writing of the Narnian stories was beyond anything he had experienced since his interplanetary stories. How did it happen? As he explained,

In the Author’s mind there bubbles up every now and then the material for a story. For me it invariably begins with mental pictures. This ferment leads to nothing unless it is accompanied with the longing for a Form: verse or prose, short story, novel, play or what not. When these two things click you have the Author’s impulse complete. It is now a thing inside him pawing to get out. He longs to see this bubbling stuff pouring into that Form as the housewife longs to see the new jam pouring into the clean jam jar. This nags him all day long and gets in the way of his work and his sleep and his meals. It’s like being in love.

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The first two chapters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were probably composed soon after he wrote to Don Giovanni on 14 January 1949, and they were ready for Roger Lancelyn Green to read when he visited Lewis in March. This first ‘Chronicle of Narnia’ was completed by the end of May, and in June Lewis made a start on what became The Magician’s Nephew. He dropped this story when he ran into some difficulties with it, and in September 1949 he wrote Prince Caspian. In August 1949 Lewis signed a contract with publisher Geoffrey Bles for The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and by Christmas Pauline Baynes had illustrated it.

Volume III opens in January 1950, when Lewis was writing a third story, The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’. This was followed by The Horse and His Boy, which he was in the middle of when he found it impossible any longer to look after Mrs Moore. On 29 April 1950 she was moved to Restholme, a nursing home at 230 Woodstock Road. There Lewis visited her every day.

(#ulink_939db5d7-23ca-5f1c-8300-af1663eda971) ‘The old lady’s retirement to a Nursing Home,’ he wrote to Dr Warfield Firor on 6 December 1950, ‘has made me a good deal freer in a small way. I can plan my days and count on some domestic leisure as I have not been able to do these last fifteen years.’

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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, always the most popular of the stories, was published on 16 October 1950. The Magician’s Nephew was not completed until the spring of 1954, but all the other five were finished by March 1953. This meant that, with the exception of The Magician’s Nephew, Lewis wrote six Narnian stories in about four years. It was his publisher, Geoffrey Bles, who decided they should appear one per year.

The Narnian stories were favourably reviewed from the start, but it took several years before they captured the imagination of children. What became in the end a flood of letters from children was only a trickle when Lewis said in a letter to Dr Firor of 20 December 1951: ‘I am going to be (if I live long enough) one of those men who was a famous writer in his forties and dies unknown.’

(#ulink_e860b577-304c-5437-943f-0ac30d5180d0) A few years later he was inundated with letters from children, and he enjoyed these more than any others he received. This volume contains all those previously published in Letters to Children (1985) as well as others, and they provide one of our most important sources of information about Narnia. Even today, Lewis continues to receive letters of gratitude from children, and I imagine he would be amused that I have answered more letters from children after his death than he did before it.

(#ulink_264a21da-597d-57a9-93c0-c25137ca28dc) Before the creation of Narnia The Screwtape Letters was his most popular book, but today Lewis is, of course, best known and best loved as the author of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Magdalen College gave Lewis a year off, from Michaelmas Term 1951 to Michaelmas Term 1952, to complete English Literature in the Sixteenth Century. Despite the fact that Asian was still ‘pulling in’ the remaining Narnian stories, Lewis managed to complete the book by May 1952. He celebrated by motoring around his native Ulster with Arthur Greeves. Those who have read both the Narnian stories and English Literature in the Sixteenth Century will probably agree that the two tasks were highly complementary. Lewis’s pupil, John Wain, spoke for many when he said in his review of the Oxford History: ‘Most dons have moved a long way from any recognition that literature is something that people read for fun. Mr Lewis, now as always, writes as if inviting us to a feast.’

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Turning to the second theme of these letters–Cambridge–many readers wonder why Oxford did not honour Lewis with a professorship. There is nothing to suggest that Lewis was hurt, much less angry, about this, but his friends were hurt for him. J. R. R. Tolkien felt that he and Lewis would be ideally suited for the two Chairs at Merton College, the Chair of English and the Chair of English Literature. But while Tolkien was elected Merton Professor of English in 1945, the Chair of English Literature, when it became vacant in 1947, went instead to Lewis’s former tutor, R P. Wilson. Lewis was passed over again in 1948 when the Goldsmith’s Professorship of English at New College went to Lord David Cecil, who often said, ‘This chair should have gone to Lewis.’ While Lewis’s reputation as a literary scholar will probably always be overshadowed by Narnia and his apologetics, he was the author of a number of works of literary criticism that have taken their place with the classics, notably The Allegory of Love (1936) and A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942).

Why was it that Lewis had to leave Oxford and go to Cambridge in order to find a professorial position? It is possible that Dame Helen Gardner supplied the answer in the obituary of Lewis she wrote for the British Academy. She suggested that a suspicion had arisen that he was ‘so committed to what he himself called “hot-gospelling”‘

(#ulink_2e6bb4dc-898b-5e35-b76a-4f2b694a548a) that he would not have time for the demands of a Chair. ‘In addition,’ she said, ‘a good many people thought that shoemakers should stick to their lasts and disliked the thought of a professor of English Literature winning fame as an amateur theologian.’

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I met Professor Tolkien in 1964, having not long come from the United States. When he saw how perplexed I was by Oxford’s attitude to Lewis he explained it to me:

In Oxford you are forgiven for writing only two kinds of hooks. You may write hooks on your own subject whatever that is, literature or science, or history. And you may write detective stories because all dons at some time get the flu, and they have to have something to read in bed. But what you are not forgiven is writing popular works, such as Jack did on theology, and especially if they win international success as his did.

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One of the most pleasant parts of the ‘revolution’ that occurred in the last thirteen years of Lewis’s life was the offer of the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University, created with him in mind. We are fortunate in having not only Lewis’s side of the correspondence about the Chair, but that of the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge University, Sir Henry Willink, who offered him the position. That correspondence, which begins on page 470, is as full of unexpected twists as an Agatha Christie novel, and I will say no more than that I hope the reader enjoys it.

Finally, what began as the quietest part of the ‘revolution’ in the end transformed Lewis’s entire life—Joy. Readers will not find in the many letters about Joy Davidman and her marriage to Lewis anything resembling the ‘love at first sight’ affair which some imagine befell these two people. Bearing in mind how it all turned out, readers will probably be as amused as I am about how Lewis viewed Joy’s stay at The Kilns during Christmas 1952. Writing to Laurence Harwood on 19 December 1952 he said: ‘I am completely “circumvented” by a guest, asked for one week but staying for three, who talks from morning till night.’

(#ulink_b3efaed7-3c50-51a8-bb72-923c6feeed2a) The bitter-sweet story that followed that Christmas visit is treated so fully and touchingly in these letters there is no reason for me to say any more.

One of the first things I noticed when I moved into Lewis’s house in the summer of 1963 was the immensely heavy burden of ‘loathsome letter-writing’

(#ulink_ae9c04cc-2c49-5631-8736-c3b2aaa30fe5) he shouldered almost every morning. After breakfast we spent about two hours replying to every letter he received. He had rheumatism in his right hand, and it had become painful to write very much. At that time he was receiving as many as three letters a week from Mrs Mary Willis Shelburne. She was the anonymous recipient of the Letters to an American Lady, edited by Clyde S. Kilby and published in 1967. Dr Kilby was not allowed to reveal the lady’s identity, and the ‘American Lady’ also insisted that all references to her daughter, Lorraine, and son-in-law, Don Nostadt, be omitted. The letters to Mrs Shelburne are published here for the first time in their entirety.

By the time I moved into The Kilns Mrs Shelburne was writing more letters than Lewis could possibly answer, and Lewis decided to end it. He had me take out my notebook and write down the names of the two people I would be totally responsible for—Mary Willis Shelburne and Margaret Radcliffe, a one-legged nurse who was always threatening to move into The Kilns and ‘Iook after him’. Lewis felt he had written enough to them, that he had said all there was to say, and he chose to reserve a little time for the things he wanted to write.

Lewis missed Warnie, and he said in the letter to Mrs Shelburne of 10 June 1963: ‘My brother is away in Ireland…This throws a lot of extra work on me, besides condemning me to—what I hate—solitude.’

(#ulink_b3e8dc72-e220-5437-bc81-b9c7bdebd71d) I soon realised he did not always like to be alone, and as long as I was busy with my own work he asked me to remain in the room while he wrote. If he had a decent chair, a bottle of ink and an endless supply of nibs for his pen, Lewis might have been in a private world. The exception was the period between after-lunch coffee and about three o’clock. I suspected he had a sleep when I left him alone in the common room after lunch; one day, as I was leaving, I said, ‘lack, do you ever take a nap?’ ‘Oh, no!’ he said. ‘But, mind you, sometimes a nap takes me!’

I once asked how he managed to write with such ease, and I think his answer tells us more about his writing than anything he said. He told me that the thing he most loved about writing was that it did two things at once. This he illustrated by saying: ‘I don’t know what I mean till I see what I’ve said.’ In other words, writing and thinking were a single process.

Lewis retired from Cambridge in the summer of 1963, and besides helping with letters, he had plans about how I would help with the books he planned to write. I never wanted anything more. What would Lewis have written had he lived longer? But that is enough speculation: Asian has made it clear that he will ‘tell no one any story but his own’.

(#ulink_e90737a6-c8bb-5d4a-96ab-47cb3797e0ae) On the other hand, I expect the great Lion is responsible for the comfort I get from knowing that the many hours Lewis spent ‘coaxing a rheumatic wrist to drive this pen across paper’

(#ulink_27aaef8a-072d-5b88-8089-347caf260653) were not wasted. We have three large volumes of his letters.

In the period covered by Volume I Lewis was writing primarily to family members and close friends, in that covered by Volume II to a greatly enlarged circle of correspondents. The letters in Volume III were written to an even larger circle of people. As in Volume II, I have included substantial biographies of close friends, such as Nan Dunbar, Peter Bide and Katharine Farrer, and shorter biographies of associates and other people whose details were too substantial to be included merely as footnotes. It was fairly easy to gather facts when I was writing about people like Nan Dunbar and others whom I knew. Sometimes I was fortunate enough to track down those to whom Lewis wrote a single letter, such as Father George Restropo SJ (p. 1387). In some instances the recipient of a letter tracked me down. Unfortunately, many letters in this volume were bought by libraries from dealers who could supply no information about the recipients. Despite my efforts, many of these correspondents remain unidentified beyond their names.

Readers should note that the abbreviation ‘TS’ means the letter was typed by Lewis’s brother Warnie; ‘PC’ means it was written on a postcard. As Lewis grew older, and had more letters to answer, he often restricted his replies to postcards. Readers will also notice the abbreviation ‘p.p.’–per procurationem–meaning ‘through another’. If Lewis was not present when Warnie had typed a letter for him Warnie would sometimes sign his brother’s name, and I have indicated this by ‘p.p.’ Although most of the typed letters were composed by Lewis himself, I suspect that Warnie had a hand in the writing of a few of those marked ‘p.p.’

The eight years I have spent editing the letters would not have been as fruitful nor as pleasant were it not for the help of many others. My debts are numerous, and nothing I can say can adequately reflect my gratitude.

I begin by thanking the Classical scholar, Dr A. T. Reyes, who is responsible for most of the Latin and Greek references in the three volumes of letters. I would be embarrassed if readers knew the extent of that obligation. Others to whom my debts are very great are Dr Francis Warner, Dr Barbara Everett, Professor Emrys Iones, Dr lames Como, Dr John Walsh, Dr Tobias Reinhardt and Tyler Fisher. I could not have persevered without their encouragement. If I could say how much I owe Dr Michael Ward, Richard leffrey, Andrew Cuneo, Madame Eliane Tixier, Dr René Tixier, Raphaela Schmid, Patrick Nold and William Griffin, readers might wonder what part, if any, I had in editing these letters. I can never be grateful enough to Dr loel Heck, who spent an entire term in Oxford with his wife Cheryl typing many of the letters in this volume. My grateful thanks to Lewis’s pupils, Professor Derek Brewer and Professor Alastair Fowler, who gave me much help. I owe many good words to Dr Robin Darwall-Smith, Archivist of Magdalen College, Oxford, and Dr Ronald Hyam, Archivist of Magdalene College, Cambridge, who provided me with letters from their college libraries.

I could not have done without the vital help given me by various people at the Wade Center, notably Dr Christopher Mitchell, Marjorie Lamp Mead, Heidi Truty and Laura Schmidt. I gladly acknowledge a huge debt to Judy Winfree, who provided me with nearly everything I know about the history of Mary Willis Shelburne. I owe special thanks to Dr C. M. Bajetta, who translated some of the letters to members of the Poor Servants of Divine Providence in Verona, and who wrote the biography of Fr Luigi Pedrollo. Others who gave important help include Father Jerome Bertram Cong Orat, Father David Meconi SJ, Penelope Avery, Anthony Hardie, Ronald Bresland, John Coppack, Ron Humphrey, Martin Hesketh, Helena Scott, Mark Bide, Penelope Starr, Dr Alston McCaslin V, Dr Silas McCaslin, Philip G. Ryken, K. Scott Oliphint, Dabney Hart, Richard Furze, Nancy Macky, Keith Call, Isaac Gerwitz, Christian Rendel, Robert Trexler, Anthony Bott, Richard Haney, Don W King and George Musacchio.

There would not be many letters to include in this volume were it not for the Bodleian Library, and I am greatly indebted to Dr Judith Priestman and Colin Harris, who helped me use the resources of that wonderful institution. I thank David Brawn and Chris Smith of HarperCollins for their encouragement and for their immense labour in seeing this book through the press. Finally, while the faults of the book are entirely my own, I would have been afraid to embark on it at all without the help of my copy-editor, Steve Gove.

Walter Hooper

13 September 2006

Oxford