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

SLE = C. S. Lewis, Selected Literary Essays, edited by Walter Hooper (1969)

T = Taylor University, Upland, Indiana

TEX = University of Texas at Austin

TS = typescript

UCL = University College London

UNC = Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

V = Congregation of the Poor Servants of Divine Providence, Verona, Italy

W = Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois

WHL = W. H. Lewis’s unpublished biography of his brother, ‘C. S. Lewis: 1898-1963’. The greater part of the narrative was brought together as a ‘Memoir’ and it was published with most of the letters as Letters to C. S. Lewis, edited with a Memoir by W. H. Lewis (1966). There are two typescripts of ‘C. S. Lewis: 1898-1963’, one in the Bodleian Library and one in the Wade Center

1950 (#uab6a892d-65f5-5b6b-a50d-b1b354fd0ecb)

During the spring of 1949 Lewis began dreaming of lions and by May 1949 he had written the first of the Chronicles of Narnia–The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This was hardly finished when he had the idea for the next story, Prince Caspian–or ‘A Horn in Narnia’ as it was first called. By the time this volume of letters opens Lewis was at work on yet another Narnian story, The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’, the manuscript of which would be ready for Roger Lancelyn Green

(#ulink_8eb60627-5c57-59b2-9fb4-e29a415baf40) to read when he visited Lewis at the end of February 1950.

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TO JONATHAN FRANCIS ‘FRANK’ GOODRIDGE (P):

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Magdalen College

Oxford

[1 January 1950]

There have been very few pupils in my 26 years’ experience as a tutor for whom I can speak so confidently as I can for Mr. Frank Goodrich.

(#ulink_77a01c7c-101a-5d91-abcb-88aeedf6fe62) As a scholar he has quality which his actual degree did not at all represent. The year in which he sat for his Final was one of strange surprises for many tutors about many pupils: but apart from that, his failure to do himself justice can be explained by two factors.

(1.) He is really too conscientious a student, too determined to get to the bottom of every question, to make an ideal examinee: good at probing and not at all good at advertising: incapable of ‘bluff’.

(2.) He gave rather more time than he could afford to his duties as secretary of a philosophical club.

(#ulink_8a214dcf-fdca-5701-b4e3-a7b7f6620274) I saw a good deal of him in that capacity and it was his Minutes which first convinced me that he had attributes quite out of the ordinary. He could condense, and slightly popularise, the arguments of speakers (often very erudite) with less loss than any man I have ever known.

This satisfies me that he will be a good teacher: he might very well turn out to be one of the great teachers. His personal character won my respect from the beginning and this respect steadily increased during the time he was with me. He is one of the most disinterested—I think I could say one of the most selfless—men I have ever met: and, in spite of his good humour and patience, which are unfailing, I should not like to be the boy who tried to ‘rag’ him. If I had a son of my own there is no one to whom I would entrust him so gladly as to Mr. Goodrich.

C. S. Lewis

Fellow & Tutor of Magdalen

TO GEORGE ROSTREVOR HAMILTON (BOD):

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Magdalen College

Oxford

Jan 3./50

Dear Hamilton

O nodes cenaeque deum!,

(#ulink_5fa91d0c-2882-5d86-8c4c-c056bd134840) it was a glorious evening, and the underworld of that Hotel can claim as well as Pluto sunt altera nobis sideral.

(#ulink_7ff7e4f3-6d5c-5312-9387-25f27cdd982c) And now, to sweeten memory, firstly I find that Virgil does use planta

(#ulink_4693c155-6361-5966-8b8b-a618ab9225c4) and Owen

(#ulink_2649240f-7401-5a5f-b002-b7803c0cf447) accordingly owes me 2/6, and secondly the Masque.

They really were asses not to play it, for it is a lovely thing in a genre now infinitely difficult. For we have mostly lost the power (taken for granted by our ancestors) of fitting works of art into ceremonial occasions. In this you have succeeded and what I admire more than any particular moments, tho’ I admire many of those too, is the combination throughout of what is extremely local and English and fresh with what is classical or timeless. One loses a lot (as one should) by not seeing it actually performed, for then it would be a real

,

(#ulink_ce2925b6-41ac-5700-872b-4d47615815aa) a death & resurrection rite with a most powerful effect. It is full of niceties: the three feminine endings that give the droning effect after ‘What does he say?’ on p. 5.–the ‘small change’ in your paraphrase of Aeschylus—the rhyme scheme on p. 7–the use of the ‘Voices’. But I think you were wrong to use lines (tho’ good) from Masefield

(#ulink_a842d7e3-a602-5645-ae6e-df11fb1fbeb8) where you might have made as good of your own.

I’m not liking the new year much so far, but wish you very well in it. With many thanks.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (W):

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REF.50/23.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

7th January 1950.