Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

Great Bookham and the present arrangement continue to give every satisfaction which is possible. But there is one comfort which must inevitably be wanting anywhere except at home–namely, the ability to write whenever one wishes. For, though of course there is no formal obstacle, you will readily see that it is impossible to take out one’s manuscript and start to work in another’s house. And, when ideas come flowing upon me, so great is the desire of framing them into words, words into sentences, and sentences into metre, that the inability to do so, is no light affliction. You, when you are cut off for a few weeks from a piano, must experience much the same sensations. But it would be ridiculous for me to pretend that, in spite of this unavoidable trouble, I was not comfortable. Work and liesure, each perfect and complete of its kind, form an agreeable supplent to the other, strikingly different to the dreary labour and compulsory pasttimes of Malvern life. The glorious pageant of the waning year, lavishing her autumn glories on a lovely countryside, fills me, whenever I take a solitary walk among the neighbouring hills, with a great sense of comfort & peace.

So great is the selfishness of human nature, that I can look out from my snug nest with the same equanimity on the horrid desolation of the war, and the well known sorrows of my old school. I feel that this ought not to be so: but I can no more alter my disposition than I can change the height of my stature or the colour of my hair. It would be mere affectation to pretend that sympathy with those whose lot is not so happy as mine, seriously disturbs the tenour of my complacence. Whether this is the egotism of youth, some blemish in my personal character, or the common inheritance of humanity, I do not know. What is your opinion?

I am reading at present, for the second time, the Celtic plays of Yeats.

(#ulink_0c09498d-db7a-5ff5-b3d5-57322ca3217e) I must try & get them next time I am at home. Write soon, and tell me all that you are doing, reading & thinking.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 240-1):

[Gastons

8? November 1914]

My dear Papy,

If bounty on the part of his weary audience could stop the sermon of the philosopher, I should be compelled to close our controversy of the paradise and inferno: but even the four, crisp, dainty postal orders (for which many thanks) cannot deter me from exposing the logical weakness of your position. The arguments, as you will recollect, upon which I based my theory, were briefly as follows: that when evils cannot be averted by him who suffers them, i.e. you and I, who cannot go into the army–he would do well to shut his eyes and pretend that they do not exist. For the evil, being in itself a fixed quantity, can neither be multiplied or diminished when it actually descends: but the agony of anticipation may be attenuated to nothing. Bearing these facts in mind, your imaginary dialogue, lively and picturesque tho’ it may be, is irrelevant: since your two friends are presumably in a position to volunteer, and their case therefore offers no parallel to our own. In short, you have shifted the ground of argument by substituting the description of a satanist for the demonstrations of a philosopher.

I carried out to the letter your directions about Warnie: or in other words, as he arranged nowhere I met him nowhere. A pity. But who are we to cavil at the arrangements of this great man. Seriously however, I know what your feelings must be when, to the annoyance arising from his shipshod methods at such a moment, is added the anxiety of his present position at the front.

(#ulink_abae01ea-25b6-58d7-8882-de863d3e9b90) Let me offer however such consolations as the case permits of. If, by the Grace of God, he returns unscathed from this hideous masque of death, it will be a sadder and wiser Warnie than he who went away: the indiscretions of a raw Malvern school boy. If, as we both hope and pray, this turns out to be the case, we may indeed feel, that in one home at least, this outburst of the primitive savagery of man will not have been without a compensation.

In the meantime, your worry about Palmes

(#ulink_711cad34-4fac-50b5-ad9c-8a5d3cf69921) need not be of much importance. I had the honour of meeting this gentleman on one of W’s visits to Malvern: he is a harmless, amiable idiot who will make no fuss, and the sum that he lent is, I believe, trifling. Surely too, it is rather hard to call a man a cad, just because he demands his own money back: even if he does so (I am convinced through sheer empty headedness) on a P.C.

Hoping that this will find you in good health and tolerable spirits, I remain,

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 239):

[Gastons

10 November 1914]

Dear Arthur,

It is the immemorial privilege of letter-writers to commit to paper things they would not say: to write in a more grandiose manner than that in which they speak: and to enlarge upon feelings which would be passed by unnoticed in conversation. For this reason I do not attach much importance to your yearnings for an early grave: not, indeed, because I think, as you suggest, that the wish for death is wrong or even foolish, but because I know that a cold in the head is quite an insufficient cause to provoke such feelings. I am glad Monday found you in a more reasonable frame of mind.

By the way, I hear nothing about music or illustrations now! Eh? I hope that this can be accounted for by the fact that both are finished. I suppose the former has been performed in the Ulster Hall, by this time, and the latter exhibited–where? Here the sentence comes to a stop: for I have suddenly realized that there is no picture gallery in Belfast. It never occurred to me before what a disgrace that was. I notice, too, that you answer my questions about ‘doing’ and ‘reading’ but keep a modest silence about ‘thinking’. It is often difficult to tell, is not it? And seldom advisable: which makes me think about the hard question of truth. Is it always advisable to tell the truth? Certainly not, say I: sometimes actually criminal. And yet, useful as it is for everyday life, that doctrine will land one in sad sophistries if carried to its conclusion. What is your view?

The other day I was in Guildford (it is a glorious old English town with those houses that [get] bigger towards the top; a Norman castle; a street built up a preposterous hill; and beautiful environments) where I picked up a volume of Wm. Morris’s lyric poems in that same edition in which you have ‘The Wood at the Worlds end’.

(#ulink_f1e5ed47-ec0b-5dc2-bd15-18ed3cede7d0) So delighted was I with my purchase, that I have written up to the publisher for the same author’s ‘Sigurd the Volsung’:

(#ulink_72f8206b-39de-550e-8758-bc36325dfa2c) which, as I need hardly tell you, is a narrative poem, dealing with Siegfried (=Sigurd) & Brünhilde, as described in the legends of Iceland, earlier than those of Germany. What is your opinion of Ainsworth? I see you are reading his ‘Old St. Pauls’.

(#ulink_c58a3cf5-b854-5a44-8535-5a6d882bfa3c) I must confess I find him dreary–a faint echo of Scott, with all the latter’s faults of lengthiness and verbosity and not of his merits of lively narrative & carefully-welded plots.

When you talk about the difficulty of getting the necessary materials for one’s pursuits, I am thankful that, in my case, when the opportunity is at hand, the means–paper & pen–is easily found. Whereas you, unfortunately, need a piano or a box of paints and a block of drawing paper.

I hope there will be some relics of us left when we have settled that question of souteraines.

Yrs sincerely,

Jack Lewis

TO HIS FATHER (LP IV: 244-5):

[Gastons

13? November 1914]

My dear Papy,

I was glad to receive your letter this evening (Friday) as I was beginning to get anxious: and thought that I would write my reply at once while your words were still in my head. I must admit that my defence of Palmes was founded on a misconception of his plans–which is excusable, in as much as, if you saw the gentleman in the flesh, you would never imagine that he had the intelligence for such an idea.

After this magnanimous confession of my defeat, I cannot refrain from observing that there is no reply to my last step in the ‘Paradise-Inferno’ controversy. But as no further disputation is possible after my crushing and exhaustive demonstration, that is not much to be wondered at.

Although perhaps the occasion demands a graver view, I cannot restrain a smile when I think of the colonel staying at a first class hotel in ‘Haver’ and strutting about in his uniform like a musical comedy hero.

It seems a great pity this confirmation should occur when it does, thus cutting out at least a week of valuable time. Although fully sensible that it is of course of more importance than the work, yet if it could possibly be managed at some more convenient date in the near future, I should think it an advantage. I believe there is one held at Easter, which I might attend with less derangement of our plans. I would ask you to consider this point before mentioning the matter to Kirk. I am not quite clear from your letter as to what you propose to do. As I read it, three interpretations are admissable.

1 That you bring me home for the necessary time and send me back for the odd weeks.

2 That you add from Dec. 6th–Xmas on to the ordinary holidays.

3 That you have ordinary length holidays, only beginning on the 6th and ending earlier.

Of these alternatives, (a) is practicable enough, but necessitates a tiresome and expensive amount of extra travelling: (b) is agreeable, but wasteful of time and quite unthinkable. (c) is not only extremely alien from all our usual plans, but would also put Kirk to a great deal of trouble and annoyance. So that none of the three is really satisfactory. However, you will discuss the point in your next letter. If this Kodotta about cross channel boats goes on much longer, the matter will not rest in our hands.

Hoping for a continuance of health on your part, as well as an improvement in spirits, I am

your loving son,

Jack

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W/LP IV: 282):

[Gastons

17 November 1914]