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

142 (#ulink_d3f1141c-c233-5733-95b5-75262cf63010) Maurice Nédoncelle (1905-1976), philosopher and lecturer in Theology at the Faculty of Theology in Strasburg.

143 (#ulink_a7204f55-0bff-5b15-b970-25f38bcda7fd) Probably a reference to Mrs Moore’s continued decline.

144 (#ulink_44b8dc17-8898-5466-bb23-59b872eec2a8) He was referring to his Preface in Essays Presented to Charles Williams (1947).

145 (#ulink_44b8dc17-8898-5466-bb23-59b872eec2a8) i.e., of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

146 (#ulink_9b4408c2-7879-50a1-bbfd-53b7ff77d31d) For an account of the wedding see Clement Freud, Freud Ego (2001), pp. 99-100.

147 (#ulink_ef24c45e-2424-59d4-a528-9f0ae63a908d) In her note to this letter, written on 4 October 1972, Bodle explained that she was wondering whether to take a German boy, Franzel, to New Zealand. ‘He didn’t go,’ she said. ‘He now has a doctorate & is on the staff of a German university’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Eng. lett. c. 220/4, fol, 247).

148 (#ulink_c244e3e3-6608-5186-9d7c-65c910e3cae8) See Don Luigi Pedrollo in the Biographical Appendix. Fr Pedrollo, a member of the Congregation of Poor Servants of Divine Providence in Verona, was answering on behalf of Don Giovanni Calabria. This letter first appeared in Una Gtota Insolita and was translated by Dr C. M. Bajetta.

149 (#ulink_4f1190f9-6388-5ae6-b311-e99a7e74aecc) Towards the end of his life (after 1949) St Giovanni Calabria was affected by a mysterious illness, which underwent a particularly acute phase in 1950. After a period of relief, following the Pentecost of 1951, his infirmity worsened and he died in 1954.

150 (#ulink_4f1190f9-6388-5ae6-b311-e99a7e74aecc) Horace, Carmina, I, 24, 1-2: ‘Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus/tam cari capitis?’: ‘Why blush to let our tears unmeasured fall/For one so dear?’.

151 (#ulink_a159bc05-c18d-5641-8217-63d98760ca43) i.e., Geoffrey Bles.

152 (#ulink_08a3a22e-029c-506e-ad72-7e53c265a074) See the biography of Anne Ridler, friend of Charles Williams, in CL II, p. 658n, and Anne Ridler’s Memoirs (2004).

153 (#ulink_b8254531-02e2-5e30-ac17-38269dccc3c8) Ruth Pitter.

154 (#ulink_215cfd10-fc60-545a-93ec-2bef6c035e78) Charles Williams. Ridler criticised Williams’s use of ‘shend’ in a Taliessin poem.

155 (#ulink_0d04cb36-8dc0-5680-ab3d-dd13703eb127) See Martyn Skinner in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1072-3.

156 (#ulink_0bb29284-715c-5f19-af02-79b54fe79840) Martyn Skinner, Two Colloquies (1949).

157 (#ulink_0bb29284-715c-5f19-af02-79b54fe79840) ‘Collections’ are examination papers set by college tutors for their pupils. They take place either at the end of term (in which case students are tested on their work during the term) or at the beginning of term (on work set for the preceding vacation). In Magdalen, in Lewis’s day, Collections usually took place in Hall.

158 (#ulink_0bb29284-715c-5f19-af02-79b54fe79840) School Certificate examinations; for a definition see CL I, p. 612.

159 (#ulink_6ee62c38-7803-5d56-9c5b-196c504ce5cf) Skinner, Two Colloquies, ‘The Lobster and the Thatch’, 49.

160 (#ulink_6ee62c38-7803-5d56-9c5b-196c504ce5cf) ibid., 332.

161 (#ulink_6ee62c38-7803-5d56-9c5b-196c504ce5cf) ibid., ‘The Recluse, Part I, 13.

162 (#ulink_6ee62c38-7803-5d56-9c5b-196c504ce5cf) Alfred, Lord Tennyson, ‘Milton’, 9.

163 (#ulink_6ee62c38-7803-5d56-9c5b-196c504ce5cf) Skinner, Two Colloquies, ‘The Lobster and the Thatch’, 220.

164 (#ulink_6ee62c38-7803-5d56-9c5b-196c504ce5cf) ibid., 239-43: ‘The sudden clatter of cutlery and crockery/As sliding through the ham the knife’s thin edge/Turns half to rose its honey-coloured wedge;/Or where the bronze pork sizzles still with heat/Clicks through the crackling to white mines of meat.’

165 (#ulink_6ee62c38-7803-5d56-9c5b-196c504ce5cf) John Milton, Works, vol. IV (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), Of Education, p. 286.

166 (#ulink_6ee62c38-7803-5d56-9c5b-196c504ce5cf) Skinner, Two Colloquies, ‘The Recluse’, Part II, 28.

167 (#ulink_6ee62c38-7803-5d56-9c5b-196c504ce5cf) ibid., ‘The Lobster and the Thatch’, 433.

168 (#ulink_8d3d86a4-04b1-564d-8aa0-7fbcac2d12ac) King George I’s comment, ‘I hate all Boets and Bainters’ is found in John Campbell, Lives of the Chief Justices (1949), ‘Lord Mansfield’.

169 (#ulink_6a8b6b4f-7310-5a9b-9664-5a17cf6f9450) See Harry Blamires in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, p. 1024. Blamires had been head of the English Department at King Alfred’s College, Winchester, since 1948.

170 (#ulink_05f394c4-a1f6-5a5e-9010-a1cbb04c662d) Blamires had asked Lewis, his old tutor, to read and criticize his book English in Education (London: Bles, 1951).

171 (#ulink_05f394c4-a1f6-5a5e-9010-a1cbb04c662d) ‘between ourselves’.

172 (#ulink_8140ef38-c7cc-5408-b598-65e057f30b64) ‘Best professional judgement’.

173 (#ulink_8140ef38-c7cc-5408-b598-65e057f30b64)Beowulf, I, xviii, 1206: ‘He was asking for trouble’.

174 (#ulink_ec610b2a-1454-5af3-9764-36754776ad5d) The letter was unsigned.

175 (#ulink_19960b22-5d68-59e2-a957-eae124923f78) See Mary Willis Shelburne in the Biographical Appendix. She is the author of Broken Pattern: Poems (Richmond: Dietz Press, 1951).

176 (#ulink_071f44e4-4c4d-52ea-9b2b-c62ae5537f33) Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851-2), ch. 21: ‘“Do you know who made you?” “Nobody, as I knows on,” said the child, with a short laugh. The idea appeared to amuse her considerably, for her eyes twinkled, and she added–“I ‘sped I growed. Don’t think nobody never made me.” ‘

177 (#ulink_c87299dd-1c9d-5e4d-96d6-8748a2a9a840)The Imitation of Christ is a manual of spiritual devotion first circulated in 1418 and traditionally ascribed to Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380-1471). Lewis nearly always read this work in Latin, and when quoting it in English, he used his own translation.

178 (#ulink_c87299dd-1c9d-5e4d-96d6-8748a2a9a840) The edition of this work used by Lewis was The Scale of Perfection by Walter Hilton, Augustinian canon of Thurgarton Priory, Nottinghamshire, modernized from the first printed edition of Wynkyn de Worde, London, 1494, by an oblate of Solesmes; with an introduction from the French of Dom M. Noetinger (London: Burns, Oates and Washbourne Ltd [1927]).

179 (#ulink_6599e197-f738-505b-a6aa-84cef6457ee6) In her letter of 20 November 1950 Mathews wrote: ‘I came upon such a beautiful message today by Era Giovanni (an extract from a letter, Anno Domini 1513) that I simply must pass it on to you’ (Bodleian Library, MS. Facs. c. 47, fol. 199). She went on to quote from Era Giovanni Giocondo (c. 1435-1515), A Letter to the Most Illustrious the Contesstna Allagta Delà Aldobrandeschi, Written Christmas Eve Anno Domini 1513 (193?). In 1970 the British Museum stated that it was impossible to identify Era Giovanni. The letter was published, probably in the 1930s, ‘with Christmas greetings’ from Greville MacDonald, son of George MacDonald, and his wife Mary. It is reprinted in various dictionaries of quotations.

180 (#ulink_0e9fa76d-2c30-5bb7-a62f-1df26f033b24) Hermann Wilhelm Goering (1893-1946), German Nazi military leader, creator of the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, directed the German wartime economy. In 1939 he was named Hitler’s successor, but he later lost favour and in 1943 he was stripped of his command. ‘Guns will make us powerful,’ Goering said in a radio broadcast in 1936, ‘butter will only make us fat.’

181 (#ulink_0a023743-318e-53e7-aac4-04cff1962f67) George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor’s Dilemma (1906).

182 (#ulink_fd606df8-9484-5e27-aa3d-e0e350ed6baf) See Ruth Pitter in the Biographical Appendix to CL II, pp. 1060-4.

* (#ulink_a6625637-79d7-542f-b80b-c82801b78eca) But fan mail from children is delightful. They don’t gas. They want to know whether Asian repaired Tumnus’s furniture for him. They take no interest in oneself and all in the story. Lovely

183 (#ulink_bc99a4b1-4b71-5e02-ac16-c4aa1f495248)The Case for Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1943) was the American edition of Broadcast Talks.

184 (#ulink_bc99a4b1-4b71-5e02-ac16-c4aa1f495248)Beyond Personality (London: Bles, 1944; New York: Macmillan, 1945).

185 (#ulink_484d50f9-b568-5366-80eb-2cbe8e7b3823) J. B. Phillips, Letters to Young Churches: A Translation of the New Testament Epistles (1947). See Lewis’s letter to Phillips of 3 August 1943 (CL II, pp. 585-6).

186 (#ulink_484d50f9-b568-5366-80eb-2cbe8e7b3823) Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876); The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884).

187 (#ulink_9f51a05f-6083-5d8f-a79a-7b43e8382677) William Shakespeare, King Henry V (1600), IV, iii, 55.

188 (#ulink_36335bed-41fe-5d47-b478-5906f066f222) Luke 22:19; 1 Corinthians 11:24.

189 (#ulink_36335bed-41fe-5d47-b478-5906f066f222) John 6:53.

190 (#ulink_36335bed-41fe-5d47-b478-5906f066f222) i.e., in the Book of Common Prayer.