TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):
The Kilns
Easter Sunday
[28 March] 1937
My dear Arthur,
I have been meaning to write to you for some time, and had partly excused myself because I was waiting to send you a story of Tolkien’s which is to be published soon and which I think you may like:
(#ulink_4e0b5a8d-cb8e-521b-ad49-db6e7311f2cc) but Uncle Gussie
(#ulink_bbf9bf97-d0c5-5046-bf11-bec3a8c33f84) turned up on Thursday (the coolest and most characteristic visit—merely a wire to announce his arrival!) and jogged my conscience with a message from you.
Thanks for your letter. I suppose I shall hear more from you about America when we meet. Am I right in concluding from your mere list of towns that on the aesthetic side—as regards mountains, rivers and woods etc.—it made no impression?
(#ulink_5b4b1364-8be9-5fd9-98cb-8d5141726b28) I am glad to hear that you think of risking another visit to us and will do my best to make you less uncomfortable than you usually are. I suppose it must be in the summer term? I have often told you that this is an injudicious (lovely adjective!) time to choose, but I know you are not entirely free. By the bye, I should warn you that you will find the Kilns changed much for the worse—which you might have thought impossible—by a horrible rash of small houses which has sprung up all round us. All thanks to Lord Nuffield, I suppose: it would take a good deal more than a million pounds to undo the harm he has done to Oxford.
(#ulink_f9bece7f-a24b-53df-8fca-082c795f601d)
We have had rather an unfortunate spring. First of all a maid got flu’ just before she was leaving and had to be kept on as a patient for several weeks. Then I got flu’. Then as I was getting better Paxford (that is our indespensable fac-totum, like your Lea, you know) got flu’.
(#ulink_71ea50e1-6f3b-5e03-9689-d7a53278a077) Then I had a grand week end doing as much as I could of his work and the maid’s until I got flu’ again. Then Minto’s varicose ankles broke down. Then Warnie got flu’ and was rather bad. However, we have come through it all and seem pretty cheery now. The ‘dreadful weather’ I have been rather enjoying: I quite like seeing the primroses one day and the snow the next.
I have not read anything you would be likely to care for lately except a Vie de Jésus by a Frenchman called Mauriac,
(#ulink_e622dd7a-e24d-52e2-8196-2e23f07ccae8) which I strongly recommend: it is papist, of course, and contains what English and Protestant taste would call lapses, but it is very good in spite of them. I suppose you noticed about Christmas time that someone has republished the complete Adventures of Tim Pippin by Roland Quiz.
(#ulink_f68c8d9c-d7b1-5c3d-a41c-1ddad47e6377) I half thought of getting it, but have satisfied myself with assuming that you have done so. I hope you have not satisfied yourself with a similar assumption about me!
I have been progressing all this lent through the first volume of a v. nice edition of St Augustine’s City of God only to find that the other volume has been so wrongly bound that it begins and ends in the middle of sentences. What a tragedy this would once have been!
We have got (vice Mr. Papworth, now gathered to his fathers) a golden retriever puppy who is about the size of a calf and as strong as a horse: has the appetite of a lion, the manners of a hurricane, the morals of a gangster, and an over salivated mouth.
Please give my love to your mother, and remember me to Reid. I saw Bryson about a fortnight ago and I think he said he was going home this Vac. Will you be able to have me this summer? It is a very bright spot in the year, but don’t hesitate to say if it is inconvenient.
Yours
Jack
TO DANIEL NEYLAN (T):
(#ulink_80892826-85e5-5391-b2de-91c158484816)
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
May 5th 1937
Dear Neylan,
I am sorry your wife has been ill—give her my sympathy. Your offer is attractive to the hot-gospeller in me, but after a lot of thought I feel I must refuse. I have no notion how to handle such an audience nor what to say to them: but many thanks.
I am in the middle of a scholarship exam, or I shd. write more.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO JOAN BENNETT (WHL):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
May 7th 1937.
Dear Mrs Bennett
Will this do?
(#ulink_a79333cb-1017-50f3-8827-bdaa11561a3b) Don’t hesitate to let me know if there is an expression in it which you think unfortunate or obscure, or any emphasis in dangerous directions.
About the imaginary chronology (by which I mean the sorting out of the love poems into cynical and idealistic periods), I find it nearly so embedded in everyone’s mind that I am haunted by the fear that there may be some real evidence for it which I don’t know; my jibe was made in the hope of eliciting this.
All I meant about the book was that it is not nearly so exciting as a book by you ought to be. Of course I disagree with the phonetic criticism, but very respectable people agree with you…
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):
Magdalen College.
Oxford.
June 10th 1937
My dear Arthur,
In my diary I have down ‘cross to Arthur’ for July 12th not July 5th and as I have arranged everything on this basis I trust it will be alright.
Your suspicion that I was fuming with wrath during the lunch is a sad commentary on my previous character, and coming from one who knows me so well, it must (I fear) be correct. This time, however, tho’ of course I would have preferred to see you alone, I quite liked it. Stamps…I can’t understand the attraction: but I send all I have.* (#ulink_1051c121-52b7-5b27-8f4a-0f64738b499b)
Yours
Jack
TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):
