Please accept my sincere thanks for the great and unexpected honour offered me in your letter. I do not know whether in order to receive it, I must be present before the Special Convocation on September 22nd. If that is necessary then I am compelled, with great regret and undiminished gratitude, to refuse the Doctorate since my other engagements make it quite impossible for me to visit Quebec in September.

Even if it is possible for me to receive the degree in absence, the question remains whether that would be held to imply any disrespect for Convocation or any insensibility to the great favour you are showing me. Naturally I would rather lose it than receive it under conditions which the University might consider as ungracious on my part.

I await your kind advice on these points.

Whatever the decision may be, I shall retain a vivid sense of the University’s kindness.

Please convey to all concerned my most respectful and obliged greetings.

TO GENIA GOELZ (L/P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20 June 1952

Dear Genia

Thanks for yours of the 10th. I would prefer to combat the ‘I’m special’ feeling not by the thought ‘I’m no more special than anyone else’ but by the feeling ‘Everyone is as special as me.’ In one way there is no difference, I grant, for both remove the speciality. But there is a difference in another way. The first might lead you to think, ‘I’m only one of the crowd like anyone else’. But the second leads to the truth that there isn’t any crowd. No one is like anyone else. All are ‘members’ (organs) in the Body of Christ.¹²² All different and all necessary to the whole and to one another: each loved by God individually, as if it were the only creature in existence. Otherwise you might get the idea that God is like the government which can only deal with the people in the mass.

About confession, I take it that the view of our Church is that everyone may use it but none is obliged to. I don’t doubt that the Holy Spirit guides your decisions from within when you make them with the intention of pleasing God. The error wd. be to think that He speaks only within whereas, in reality, He speaks also through Scripture, the Church, Christian friends, books etc.

I haven’t written more than two nonsense poems¹²³ (I enclose the other) but I know my Just So stories.¹²⁴

God bless you.

C. S. Lewis

Travellers! In months without an R Beware the woods of Wongomar, For then the resident bumble-bear Booms all day through the thicket there. Its face is round, as is its rump, Its tail is a preposterous stump. Its eyes are shut, its whiskers dense, It lives on butterscotch and bats And lines its nest with bowler hats (Arranged in a volmonic¹²⁵ plan). It cannot talk, but thinks it can, And there it bumbles, there it hums, It knocks you down: it rubs its eyes Intending to apologise. But when it sees it’s laid you flat It takes offence and steals your hat.

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 22nd 1952

My dear Arthur

I shall be free to be with you from Sat. Aug. 23rd till Mon. Sept. 8th when I sail for L’pool. These dates cannot be changed but if you like to spend all or any of this time motoring me about Ireland, I shd. like it v. much and will fall in with any dates (between those two) or any itinerary you choose. Just us two, of course: I wouldn’t face any third.^* You and I know the worst about each other by now! I look forward to it immensely.

Yours

Jack

P.S. But I’d forgotten. My room at the C’burn Inn is already booked for that period. I’m afraid I couldn’t manage to pay it and other ones as well. Can you decide on your dates at once & then see if the Inn will cancel my room for the period of our tour without charging? If not, then I’d better stick to my original plan & you take your motor trip after I’ve gone. But I hope not. I shall be a little anxious till I hear from you again.

P.P.S. No sharing a room: but you’d hate it as much as I, so I’m safe!

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 22nd 1952

Dear Mr. Borst (or shall we stop mistering one another? Let’s)

Dear Borst,

Thanks for your most indulgent letter of the 17th which lifts a load from my mind. It occurs to me that the typist may understand perfectly easily the instructions that baffled me: if so, you shall get the MS. in the form you want. If she is as stupid as I (a pessimistic hypothesis) I shall avail myself of your concession.

I’ve finished the introduction wh. seemed to write itself, so that I could hardly keep up with it. If it is as good as it seems to me at the moment it’s a corker: but of course things never are. You will find one or two allusions in it that your students will not quite understand, but these have been left in on purpose. If they are too carefully shielded from the rumour of worlds they have not yet broken into, what will ever drive them on. Now I shall get on with the scissors and paste work. At the end of the first day everything in the room (except the bits of Spenser, perhaps) will be pasted to everything else. All will be in the most literal sense CO-HERENT. But no palm without paste.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

Interim Report¹²⁶

I merveill much that critiques doe complaine

Of bookes with scisers and with past compyld;

Certes who weenes this is a lesser payne

Then free invention is sore beguyld!

Witness myself who with sic labour vyld

Am oft so dased that I half repent

This great emprise, my fingers all defyld

With slimie stickphast foule and feculent

And deeme Dan Spenser self an easier journie went.

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD):¹²⁷

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

June 22nd 1952

Dear Miss Bodle

It was a great joy to hear from you again. You have been daily in my prayers for a long time and, needless to say, will remain. I shall be grateful for a place in yours.

The work you are engaged in is a magnificent one (much in my mind because, as it falls out, I’ve just been reading Helen Keller’s book):¹²⁸ hard, no doubt, but you can never be attacked by the suspicion that it is not worth doing. There are jolly few professions of which we can say that. The translation of great stories into a limited vocabulary will, incidentally, be a wonderful discipline: you will learn a lot about thought and language in general before you are done. I hope you will sometimes let me know how you get on. God bless you.

Yours most sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER IANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

As from Magdalen

June 23rd 1952

My dear Roger

Shortly after you left me I took up From the World’s End¹²⁹ one night and re-read it: finding it so much better than I had remembered, or perhaps, perceived, that I think I ought to tell you so. The original reading must have caught me in an imperceptive mood. There are, as you yourself wd. now feel, one or two places where one can ‘see the works’, perceive you deliberately concocting an atmosphere—but they are few and once the main story (which hangs together v. well) takes hold they vanish.

The snatches of ‘modern’ poetry on p. 62 are exactly like it: you might have been reading Rostrevor Hamilton’s The Tell-Tale Article, but it was not published then.¹³⁰ The Voice is excellently managed. The most important thing is that (this time) I was really interested in the crisis it depicts throughout, wh. is significant because it never was my crisis.

Craigie’s Dark Atlantis¹³¹ has come and is an almost total disappointment. I don’t think he has much real imagination: and he certainly can’t write at all. The good reviews and the high praise from Grahame Greene (who certainly can write himself, whether one likes his books or not) alarm me. We here catch the critics on the sort of book we do understand, and that shows them to be without any standards at all. (Craigie thinks rights means rites and that the Atlanteans had a metal called ORICHALEUM!¹³² We are in the post-literate age

Yours

Jack

TO HARRY BIAMIRES (BOD):

Coll. Magd.

24/6/52

Dear Blamires

Yes, of course. I am sorry the book has not yet found a home. All the best.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford. 26/6/52

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen–

Incense and Hail Marys are in quite different categories. The one is merely a question of ritual: some find it helpful and others don’t, and each must put up with its absence or presence in the church they are attending with cheerful and charitably humility.

But Hail Marys raise a doctrinal question: whether it is lawful to address devotions to any creature, however holy. My own view would be that a salute to any saint (or angel) cannot in itself be wrong any more than taking off one’s hat to a friend: but that there is always some danger lest such practices start one on the road to a state (sometimes found in R.C.’s) where the B.V.M.¹³³ is treated really as a deity and even becomes the centre of the religion. I therefore think that such salutes are better avoided. And if the Blessed Virgin is as good as the best mothers I have known, she does not want any of the attention which might have gone to her Son diverted to herself.

It seems, nevertheless, quite clear that the Spirit of God is, or is more strongly with Kemper Hall than with P. A. Wolfe. In him you describe a type I know. I think we may except [accept] it as a rule that whenever a person’s religious conversation dwells chiefly, or even frequently, on the faults of other people’s religions, he is in a bad condition. The fact that he shakes your faith is significant. Pray for him but not, I shd. say, with him. If he insists on talking religion to you ask him for positive things: ask him to tell you what he knows of God.

All blessings. My ‘new trouble’ is still there: but I have much to be thankful for.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MISS REIDY (P): TS

REF.52/265.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th June 1952.

Dear Miss Reidy,

The point¹³⁴ was that as foolish people on a walk, when by their own errors they are off the course, think the map was wrong, so, when we do not find in ourselves the fruits of the Spirit which all our teachers promise, it is not that the promise was false, but that we have failed to use the Grace we have been given. The ‘map’ can be found in almost any Christian teaching.

C. S. Lewis

TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

Magdalen College.

28th June 52

My dear Arthur

Splendid. The manageress is right: Aug 21st is my first night at Crawfordsburn. Setting off with you on Mon. 25th will do fine. And of course I don’t want all day & every day in the car: we think just the same on that subject. I look forward to the trip immensely: the first time you and I have been away together since Portsalon in about 1916!¹³⁵ This time we shall at least not quarrel about Hair-Oil!

Yours

Jack

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD): ¹³⁶

Coll. Magd.

28/6/52

My dear Bles,

Mycroft has been ill,¹³⁷ but is now better. I don’t foresee many occasions for copies of Le Lion,¹³⁸ but if you will kindly send me 2, they might come in useful. The translator deserves to be congratulated of course—French is a v. powerful language—the children become perfect little Frenchmen, but that is all to the good. What pleased and surprised me is the passage at the end where I made them talk like characters in Malory, and he has really got some of the quality of the French 13th century prose romances: grande honte en aurions¹³⁹– is exactly right.

May I have 10 copies of M.C.?¹⁴⁰ I had my first bathe at Parsons’ Pleasure yesterday: 68°.¹⁴¹

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO WAYLAND HILTON YOUNG (W):

[Magdalen College]

1/7/52

Dear Hilton Young,

(Shall we drop the honorifics on both sides?) Thanks very much for two copies of the C.J.¹⁴² As I said before, it is almost impossible to make an objective judgement on criticism of oneself, especially when it does one so very proud. But I suspect that your essay is a good one. Certainly the alterations have been made with great skill–invisible mending.

I’m glad Driver played up. I suppose he told you, as he told me, that Judith is already a novel.¹⁴³ I still hope that as you poke about among the realien they will blaze up and a new story will arise relegating Judith to the background.

What do you think of Hesse’s Glasperlenspiel, which I’ve just read in a v. bad translation?¹⁴⁴ Heavy, humourless. But has one merit wh. sets it apart from all other stories about the future. Unobtrusively, without any new machines or new forms of government, it really does give you the illusion of a society in which the general quality of thought is different from ours. I don’t think Wells or Aldous Huxley did that: nor Orwell, except in the epilogue on Newspeak.¹⁴⁵

All the best, and many thanks.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

REF.52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

3rd July 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

We both enjoyed your very interesting letters, and are glad to know that you are so happy. Pity about the antelopes, but inevitable. And we look forward greedily to the promised food parcel. Sun Valley Lodge looks a lovely place, and I hope that I may have the good fortune to see it some day. Here is the translation of the Latin:–Many things will be re-born which have now fallen (into disfavour), and many will fall (into disfavour) which are now fashionable.¹⁴⁶

With all best wishes to you both,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

Mere Christianity: A Revised and Amplified Edition, with a New Introduction of the Three Books, ‘Broadcast Talks’, ‘Christian Behaviour’ and ‘Beyond Personality’ was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 7 July 1952.

TO MARG-RIETTE MONTGOMERY (W): TS

REF.52/248.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

8th July 1952.

Dear Miss Montgomery,

Of course they¹⁴⁷ are right in making the Resurrection a cosmic event: what I am not so sure is whether they really regard Christ as the only-begotten Son of the only God.

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V):

e Coll. Stae Mariae Magdalenae

Jul. XIV. MCMLII

Gratias ago, dilectissime pater, et pro opusculis Congregationis vestrae et pro hac epistolâ Jul vii datâ. Hora nostra, ut dicis, gravis est: utrum gravis ‘prae omnibus humanae historiae’ nescio. Sed semper malum quod proximum et gravissimum videtur esse; est enim, ut oculis, sic cordibus, sua ‘perspettiva’. Si tamen nostra tempestas rê verá pessima est, si rê vera Dies Illa nunc imminet, quid restât nisi ut gaudeamus quia redemptio nostra iam proprior est et dicamus cum Sancto Joanne ‘Amen; cito venias, domine Iesu.’ Interim sola securitas est ut Dies nos inveniat laborantes quemque in suo officio et praecipue (dissensionibus relictis) illud supremum mandatum ut invicem diligamus implentes. Oremus semper pro invicem. Vale: et sit tecum et mecum pax illa quam nemo potest auferre.

C. S. Lewis

from the College of St Mary Magdalen

July 14th 1952

Thank you, dearest Father, both for the tracts of your Congregation and for your letter dated July 7th.

The times we live in are, as you say, grave: whether ‘graver than all others in history’ I do not know. But the evil that is closest always seems to be the most serious: for as with the eye so with the heart, it is a matter of one’s own perspective. However, if our times are indeed the worst, if That Day¹⁴⁸ is indeed now approaching, what remains but that we should rejoice because our redemption is now nearer and say with St John: ‘Amen; come quickly, Lord Jesus.’¹⁴⁹

Meanwhile our only security is that The Day may find us working each one in his own station and especially (giving up dissensions) fulfilling that supreme command that we love one another.¹⁵⁰

Let us ever pray for each other.

Farewell: and may there abide with you and me that peace which no one can take from us.¹⁵¹

C. S. Lewis

TO RHONA BODLE (BOD): TS

REF.52/294.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

16th July 1952.

Dear Miss Bodle,

Thanks for what you tell me.¹⁵² I will indeed. All good wishes to yourself. In great haste,

Yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

July 21st 52

Dear Borst

I return the copy (signed) of your official letter. I am flattered that Mr. Dunn¹⁵³ should suppose me capable of making any useful comment. But he probably knows much more about Chaucer than I do and certainly knows more about the audience we are addressing.

Also, I must have a holiday from English poetry!¹⁵⁴ (I’m doing an orgy of the classics at present: feeling that, all said and done, the really delightful thing about any bit of ancient poetry is that it’s not English and doesn’t rhyme).^* So I shall probably be able to do v. little about the Chaucer Reader. But give Mr. Dunn my compliments and don’t let him misunderstand my motives.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GEORGE SAYER(W):

Coll. Magd.

July 22nd 1952

My dear George

Hurrah! We look forward v. much to seeing you at the Kilns for such time as you choose from Sept 15 to 22nd. I hope you will choose the whole.

Tolkien does usually answer letters in the end. At present I can only plead for him that he is in the middle of Vivas.¹⁵⁵ I know he appreciated Moira’s letter v. much: he said he meant to run down to Malvern if you wd. have him for a night, and deliver you the next chunk of The Lord. I will jog him if I see him but I shan’t till Vivas are over. V. glad to hear you have better news. Love to Moira. I’d ask you to bring Sir Henry¹⁵⁶ with you only neither he or Pushkin like that sort of thing.

Yours

Jack

TO I. O. EVANS (W): TS

Magdalen Coll.

23/7/52.

Dear Evans,

Many thanks for the loan of the magazines; which my brother and I however found rather above our heads. It seems to me that we are reaching a stage at which scientifiction has far too much science and too little fiction to make an agreeable brew.

Yours,

C. S. Lewis

TO ANNE SCOTT (BOD): ¹⁵⁷

Magdalen

July 28th 1952

Dear Mrs. Scott–

Thanks very much for your most rich and interesting letter which has brought Charles back to me v. vividly so that I shall feel for an hour or so as if I had met him again. It will also be a valuable permanent addition to my Caroline documents.¹⁵⁸

About your (1.), I think my view of ‘canonical Gawaine’ had some basis in something C.W. said,¹⁵⁹ but yours sounds likely too—in view of the parallel from the Meditation.¹⁶⁰ (2.) (‘Women in the world’s base’),¹⁶¹ I think you must be right. I can’t imagine why I didn’t see this.¹⁶² (3.) Clearly I was wrong about the date of composition of Prayers of the Pope.¹⁶³ But your words ‘points in the poem had coincided with points in the war’ implies I take it, that the images existed in some shape prior to the events: wh. was my main point.¹⁶⁴ (4.) I find your interpretation of Proofs, Roofs etc. v. hard. Even Mercury—Language–Proofs is to me v. strained, & after that I love the planets altogether. At least if that is what he meant it must be the worst passage in the whole cycle!¹⁶⁵

By the way ‘The time on my hands has gone to my head’ is a phrase you must make something of: it cries out for literary use.

Thanks v. much again. I’ve enjoyed this bit of the morning.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

REF.52/103.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th July 1952.

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

(My brother remarks that ‘the new name is’nt properly run in yet, and does’nt slip easily off the typewriter’). Many thanks indeed for the grand parcel, which arrived this morning, and which we are putting aside as a consolation for the end of our holidays. If at the beginning I had known for how long and how generously you were going to provision us, I would have kept a record of what you have sent; it must run into the hundredweights by this time! To say nothing of the imponderable benefit of having made a good friend.

We both leave here on Wednesday morning, and if all goes well, slip through the Iron Curtain about noon on Thursday; it is quite a dramatic performance. You go chugging along in the Dublin express through rocks and heather (‘The Gate of the North’), and presently pass an enormous Union lack on the side of the track. As soon as you are past the flag, prices for drinks in the dining car drop about fifty per cent: you are through and out of the clutches of the Welfare State (now known by the way as ‘The Farewell State’). By tea time we shall be sitting on a bungalow verandah, three miles from anywhere, looking across Dundalk Bay at a range of blue mountains.

The weather has of course played its usual practical joke; we had a blistering month until Saturday night: during which the temperature dropped about twenty degrees without the slightest warning, and now the question is not how many white linen suits to take away with one, but how to pack a winter overcoat for the ‘summer’ evenings.

Does anyone in America understand American politics? Certainly no one over here can make out what is happening, in spite of numerous inspired articles by so called experts; people who pretend to know all about it—on the strength of a lecturing tour in the States–assure me that a Taft victory would have been a disaster and an Eisenhower one would be grand. Which, as they belong to the same party, seems odd to me; others tell me that as the Democrats are sure to get in anyhow, the Taft-Eisenhower battle was of no importance.¹⁶⁶ I thought I was going to learn something from an old lady in Connecticut the other day,¹⁶⁷ but at the end of eight pages so hot that they nearly burnt my fingers, all I could gather was that the ‘Dumbocrats’ as she called them, are a sort of mixture of Hitler, the Russian secret police, and the inmates of the village lunatic asylum: but no doubt this view is a little prejudiced.

I suppose by this time you have got Mr. Gebbert broken in, and trotting nicely in harness? Please give him my kind regards. I hope to hear from you soon again, as we are both eager to know how you are settling down amongst the elks, auks, reindeer, silver miners and so forth.

With all good wishes.

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Derryherk House Hotel,

Lough Melvin,

Ballyshannon,

Co. Donegal,

Ireland

Aug 31/52

My dear Roger

Good. I shall, D.V., breakfast in Woodside Hotel on the 9th and expect you there at about 10.¹⁶⁸

South Donegal is a terrifying country: I have much to tell, but you see what the pen is like. Have read Virgin of the Sun¹⁶⁹ & think it one of the 3 or 4 best books Haggard ever wrote. My duty to June.

Yours

Jack

TO JUNE LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept 11th 1952

Dear June

‘Roofers’¹⁷⁰ traditionally begin, I think, with the assurance that the writer arrived safely home—though it is not very easy to see why one’s hostess should be supposed to doubt this once she has got the letter. At any rate, I am not now writing from the other world. (Perhaps the idea is to assure the hostess that the guest has really gone: arrival at one place being the strongest evidence of departure from another.)

Well, thank you both very much. Last night was among the great nights (‘devilish’ or ‘famously snug’ as the last century said) and led through a flawless tunnel of sleep to a typically beautiful morning. I see one can’t blame Roger for always writing about his own house. By the way, tell him I finished his Lewis Carol¹⁷¹ (a word I don’t know how to spell) all but two pages in the train. It cd. hardly be better. If he ever has a chance he shd. take out 9 of every 10 exclamation marks, though. I feel about them as the Red Queen felt when she said ‘You needn’t say exactually, I can believe you without that.’¹⁷²

If this letter contains anything insane, take it all for the best and remember I have been writing for hours: mostly dull ones. But I really did love my sojourn, and am v. grateful. Blessings on you all.

Yours ever

Jack Lewis

TO FLORENCE (MICHAL) WILLIAMS (W):¹⁷³

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

Sept 12/52

Dear Michal

What day are you coming? Wd. you and Michael¹⁷⁴ care to lunch? or (if you want more tête-à-tête, as well you may) can you meet me for a drink anywhere? Joy Gresham is an old & valued pen-friend of mine: I’m so glad you like her.¹⁷⁵ Prod her to say when she is coming to us.¹⁷⁶

Yours ever

Jack

TO MARG-RIETTE MONTGOMERY (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

Sept 12th 1952

Dear Miss Montgomery

Thanks for your letter of July 24th. That’s right: keep on holding the life-line, like someone going down broken stairs into a dark cellar, anxious not to miss any treasure it may contain but even more determined not to make any step wh. can’t be retraced.

I think the Anthros¹⁷⁷ suffer not so much from heresies about the Son as from heresies—or total vagueness—about the Father. God keep you.

Yours sincerely

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen etc.

Sept 12/52

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

I’ve just got back from Ireland & found your 2 letters among the mountain of mail. I’ve written to Genia. No time for a proper letter to you—I’ve had 9 hours’ letter-writing already! Blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’ was published by Geoffrey Bles of London on 15 September 1952.

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Magdalen

15/9/52

My dear Bles

Achtung! Here’s an imperfect copy omitting the Preface but (comble de malheurl)¹⁷⁸ wearing the jacket wh. advertises the Preface. This is the only imperfect copy among those you sent me: but how many more are there? What on earth can be done?

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO FLORENCE (MICFLAL) WILLIAMS (W): PC

Magdalen College

Oxford

15/9/52

Good. Mitre Hotel. 12. noon. Wed. Sept 24th. Shall assume this unless I hear to the contrary.

C.S.L.

TO WILLIAM BORST (P):

Magdalen College,

Oxford

15/9/52

Dear Borst

I enclose

Introduction (2 copies)

Footnotes (2 copies)

Text of Selections (1 copy)

If the Introduction is too long I cd. excise some bits. As I shall be working from the MS. (where the pagination is of course different) if you want to refer to a particular paragraph in writing to me, I am afraid you must quote the opening words—as if it were a Papal Bull!

If the Selections are too long, my first choice wd. be to omit in toto No. XXI (Britomart in the House of Isis): my second, much more reluctant, to omit in toto No XIX (Scudamour in the House of Care). I have also noted some individual stanzas for possible omission, but they matter only if I’ve been very slightly too long.

I’ve only just come back from the West of Ireland. I hope you get on well with Horace. There are easier authors!

All the best.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO GEOFFREY BLES (BOD):

Coll. Magd.

17/9/52

My dear Bles

The fact that I happened to get an imperfect copy didn’t matter two hoots. What worried me (for I never knew that a percentage of such things was normal) was the fear that half the edition might be like that! You have set my mind at ease.

I often smile when I compare my ignorance with the knowingness of some people who, on the strength of having published one book, seem to have the whole mystery of publishing, printing, & binding by heart. I’ll write to Miss Baynes.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

P. S. I suppose there’ll be no difficulty about changing the title of the new one in galley. I want to call it Night Under Narnia

TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

20/9/52

Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

This is indeed most joyous news and as unexpected as if a favourite character out of history or fiction came to England in the flesh! Now look. Shall we book for you at a hotel or will you come and stay with us? It is only fair to tell you that (tho’ we have an excellent hot water system) we have so little coal that there are no hot baths in our house, only hot water in jugs (This doesn’t mean that we never have baths: but then we bath in College, where ladies can’t). Otherwise, we hope the hardships wd. not be too great.

Now don’t start asking yourselves the Question which (I confess) this letter invites: viz ‘Does this mean that they’ll be hurt if we go to a hotel or that they’ll be bothered if we go to them? Which do they want?’. Because in fact it doesn’t mean either. We do really want you to do whichever you’ll like but: and we have enough imagination to understand either point of view–(A.) Oh, for the Lord’s sake, let’s be free and on our own in a hotel, or (B.) We shall have enough of hotels before we’re done, do let’s get a chance of an ordinary house.

The usual oriental formula ‘Everything in our house is yours’ acquires a new sense: so many things in our house in these last (how many years?) have been literally yours! It is outrageous generosity about the liquor and the mufflers. What can I say, except murmur ‘whiskey’! If we fight about the mufflers you shall look on and be the ‘store of ladies whose bright eyes rain influence and (once more literally) award the prize.’¹⁷⁹ Send us a wire with your decision. We are so excited.

TO ARTHUR G REEVE S (W):

Magdalen

20/9/52

My dear Arthur

No, please don’t send H.J.’s Letters.¹⁸⁰ The idea of your returning a present was applicable only on the assumption that it was useless to you. And anyway, if they’re not much about the books, they wd. be useless to me.

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