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

Dear Mrs Allen,

I too am an admirer of Bernard Shaw’s work, and could love him for his attack on the vivisectionists. That in the preface to the Doctor’s Dilemma is just devastating.

(#ulink_6c2473be-d808-52d3-b3ed-48ea66376125) Many before and since have attacked them for their cruelty, but Shaw was, I think, the first man to attack them for their stupidity; which I’m sure gets them on the raw whilst an attack on their cruelty would most likely leave their withers unwrung. No one who has ever read Shaw is able afterwards to think of vivisectionists without remembering the imbecile who spent his time cutting the tails off generations of mice to see if presently one would be born without a tail…

TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

(#ulink_1d731c6a-c9f5-5b70-8ed5-bbdaafe8d59b)

REF.50/4.

Magdalen College,

Oxford.

28th November 1950.

Dear Miss Pitter,

What a delightful surprise! You cheer me up no end, and provide a makeweight to letters from a headmistress which tell me the book will cause confusion and terror, and that many people are much ‘distressed’ at my having written it. But I get nice letters from actual children and parents.

(#ulink_35836d22-3b9a-51dc-af50-dedf53289dff) I noted, of course, the lion image in your previous letter and rejoiced darkly.

But next time you write, don’t write all about me: what are you doing, and how are you? Well, I hope. With very many thanks,

yours sincerely,

C. S. Lewis

TO MRS HALMBACHER (L):

Magdalen College

Oxford

28 November 1950

I avoided the word ‘Grace’ because I thought it didn’t carry much clear meaning to the uninstructed readers I had in view. I think the thing is dealt with in a rough and ready way in Case for Christianity

(#ulink_347a79e0-6526-53a1-84d6-2b31d4faa95f) and Beyond Personality.

(#ulink_c7e6a21e-5181-50e1-b798-91008292651e) Any advanced or technical theology of Grace was quite beyond my scope. Naturally that does not mean that I thought the subject unimportant.

The other question, about the limits of faith and superstition, is also important. But my own mind is v. far from clear on it. I think you must seek counsel (if it is a practical problem for you) from a real theologian, not from an amateur like me. I am sorry to disappoint you: but it is better to refuse than to mislead.

TO WARFIELD M. FIROR(BOD):

Magdalen College

Oxford

Dec 6/50

My dear Firor

It is always a pleasure to hear from you: doubled in this case by finding that you owed (or think you owed) me a letter when I feared the shoe was on the other foot.

The old lady’s retirement to a Nursing Home 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. But it has hardly made me free on such a large scale as you suppose. I visit her pretty nearly every day, and I shd. certainly like to be at hand when the end comes. Also, I naturally have to be a good deal more frugal than before, since the Nursing Home makes a pretty big hole in my income.

The patient is nearly always perfectly placid now and does not seem to suffer at all. Very interested, for the first time in her life, in food. These bedside experiences have much allayed my fear of paralysis. I had not realised that it could be such a quiet return to infancy, or even animality. I suppose one need not be surprised that the evening twilight sometimes is exactly like the morning twilight. But, I fear, no chance of your ranches yet. ‘Ever more thanks.’

I am sometimes much worried about the News, sometimes ashamed that I am not worried more. I suppose it comes from one’s total power-lessness. Our emotions all have a strongly practical side and don’t work much when it is obvious that one can’t do anything. Hence a small noise at night in one’s house, which one can stop, keeps one awake till one has got up and done so: the most notable exception (for me) is when one is being driven in a car by a driver one doesn’t trust along a dangerous road. I do find it v. hard to surrender myself to my fate then. I suppose because one can’t get rid of the idiotic illusion that one could do something.

My great hope is that whenever in the past people have feared a German outbreak, their fears have proved right: but when they have feared a Russian outbreak, they have often, perhaps usually, been pleasantly disappointed. The Russian is not, like the German, a congenital invader. But this is slender. The thought of such a war as that wd. be bad enough in itself: but the thought of entering it with such a government as England now has, is sheer nightmare. Have you any parallel to their imbecility? All rulers lie: but did you ever meet such bad liars?

While you have been reading Letters to Young Churches (a good book, I thought)

(#ulink_f11f2995-dbc7-5b2a-b2af-a6ffa43ad043)1 have been regaling myself on Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

(#ulink_cd102105-798c-5c43-85ca-8f9e5196d7f5)1 wonder why that man never wrote anything else on the same level? The scene in which Huck decides to be ‘good’ by betraying Jim, and then finds he can’t and concludes that he is a reprobate, is really unparalleled in humour, pathos, & tenderness. And it goes down to the very depth of all moral problems.

We still eat hams (or give ‘em to the hard up) with much joy and gratitude, and your name is ‘in our flowing cups freshly remembered’.

(#ulink_9910d59d-dfbb-561e-9311-cb5732f14cf8) I thought you were running over to this side some time soon again? I wd. dearly like another pow-wow. With all thanks & blessings.

Yours

C. S. Lewis

TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

Magdalen College

Oxford

7/12/50

Dear Mrs. Van Deusen,

(1.) To the best of my knowledge the Episcopalian Church in America is exactly the same as the Anglican Church.

(2.) The only rite which we know to have been instituted by Our Lord Himself is the Holy Communion (‘Do this in remembrance of me’

(#ulink_3d2f1bc8-a342-5fe0-9461-28acb5402fcc)–‘If you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you’

(#ulink_4c4cd7e3-910f-5abe-a420-114b7124ca9e)). This is an order and must be obeyed. The other services

(#ulink_40dfc8a1-9f68-5bed-8aa8-53bf504be341) are, I take it, traditional and might lawfully be altered. But the New Testament does not envisage solitary religion: some kind of regular assembly for worship and instruction is everywhere taken for granted in the Epistles. So we must be regular practising members of the Church.