Magdalen College
Oxford
June 19th 1937
My dear Harwood
I had a quite unexpected windfall the other day as a result of which I am able to make Lawrence a present. My idea is that you should lodge it in a deposit account and let the trifle of interest accumulate, the whole to be used for or by him when he reaches the costly age (18–20). But you probably understand such matters better than I—at least a professional Bursar ought to—so dispose it for Godson’s future use as you think best. Is there any chance of seeing you this summer? Give my love to Daphne.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO DOM BEDE GRIFFITHS (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
[27] June 1937
Dear Griffiths
Your reply about the body leaves all my questions unanswered. I’d better tell you how it arose. I was talking the other day to an intelligent infidel who said that he pinned all his hopes for any significance in the universe on the chance that the human race by adapting itself to changed conditions and first planet jumping, then star jumping, finally nebula jumping, could really last forever and subject matter wholly to mind.
When I said that it was overwhelmingly improbable, he said Yes, but one had to believe even in the 1000th chance or life was mockery. I of course asked why, feeling like that, he did not prefer to believe in the other and traditional ‘chance’ of a spiritual immortality. To that he replied—obviously not for effect but producing something that had long been in his mind—‘Oh I never can believe that: for if that were true our having a physical existence wd. be so pointless.’ He’s a nice, honest chap, and I have no doubt at all that this is one of the things standing between him and Christianity.
Your remarks seem to me to leave the question much where they found it. Whatever you hold about the blessed in the state of separation, the resurrection either makes some change in it or none. If none, why does it occur? If change, then either for the worse or for the better. For the worse?—nefas credere.
(#ulink_55362631-c720-57f2-890b-507b36d9ede4) If for the better…well there the question stands.
As to the rest of your letter—the question of Divine Presence was introduced rather for example: but, of course, I have no wish to discuss with you anything you don’t want to discuss with me. I received your statement that you do not think I am acting ‘in bad faith’ with some puzzlement: as if, in a conversation that had no apparent connection with money, you suddenly remarked ‘I am not saying you are bribed’. One is of course glad to be acquitted: but quite in the dark as to how one came to be on trial.
I also am doing a lot of rustic work at present but more with a scythe than a spade.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO OWEN BARFIELD (W):
The Kilns,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford.
Sept 2nd 1937
Instrument approved with the exception of ‘were reduced to’ which hardly seems the right style
Malory—Morris—are you preparing a chapter on Quellen for a book about me.
‘Curiously comfortless stuff in the background’ is the criticism of a sensible man just emerging from the popular errors about Morris. Not so curiously, nor quite in the background—that particular discomfort is the main theme of all his best work, the thing he was born to say. The formula is ‘Returning to what seems an ideal world to find yourself all the more face to face with gravest reality without ever drawing a pessimistic conclusion but fully maintaining that heroic action in, or amelioration of, a temporal life is an absolute duty though the disease of temporality is incurable.’
(#ulink_e0d727f9-d3dc-5acd-9a67-76f9f36af849)
Not quite what you expected, but just what the essential Morris is. ‘Defeat and victory are the same in the sense that victory will open your eyes only to a deeper defeat: so fight on.’
(#ulink_1110328f-7fe4-501d-8485-c20510a8f781) In fact he is the final statement of good Paganism: a faithful account of what things are and always must be to the natural man. Cf. what are in comparison the ravings of Hardy on the one hand and optimistic Communists on t’other. But the Earthly Paradise after that first story is inferior work. Try Jason, House of the Wolfings, Roots of the Mts, Well at the World’s End.
(#ulink_4e231360-f1a2-5256-80d9-5c02bd03b94e)
The thriller is finished and called ‘Out of the Silent Planet.’
Yes, another next term, certainly.
Yrs
C.S.L.
If you want my sonnets, I’ve a very good one beginning ‘The Bible says Sennacherib’s campaign was spoiled.’
(#ulink_b6c147b2-f5d6-584a-a11f-0a2d6cb54e26)
TO CHARLES WILLIAMS (W):
[Magdalen College]
Sept. 23rd, 1937
[Dear Williams]
Many thanks for the book;
(#ulink_87178ea7-323f-59da-a0a1-a62241f5b0d3) fortunately I had seen it announced and ordered a copy before it arrived, so that both of us have it both ways. I think this is much the best book you have given us yet.
In the first place I find the form of evil that you are dealing with much more real than the Evil (with a big E) that appears in the other books and which, though I enjoy it, (like pantomime red fire) in a story, I do not believe in. But your Gomorrah is the real thing, and Wentworth a truly tragic study. Of course he can’t in the nature of things be as good fun as Sir Giles Tumulty,
(#ulink_b9ac4474-e725-57e5-93b8-3b114e5e6c58) but he’s more important. And Mrs Sammile is excellent too.
In the second place I’m glad to have got off the amulet or ‘sacred object’ theme.
Thirdly—I hope this doesn’t sound patronising—in sheer writing I think you have gone up, as we examiners say, a whole class. Chapter II is in my opinion your high water mark so far. Your have completely overcome a certain flamboyance which I always thought your chief danger: this is crisp as grape nuts, hard as a hammer, clear as glass. I am a little worried in the Wentworth part by the tendency to Gertrude Steinisms (eaves eves, guard card, etc.).
(#ulink_8476bb94-6f5f-57d3-892c-1bbe723588bd) I agree, of course, that if there is any place for this kind of writing, the descent into Hell is the place.
But I believe this representative style, this literary programme music in which the writer writes as if he were in the predicament he describes, to be a false trail. I would rather see you becoming or remaining rigidly sober and classic as you describe chaos, your limit emphasizing nearly all good, except in the conversations between Stanhope and Pauline.
