1957
TO MRS. D. JESSUP, whose divorce was now final: On Lewis’s need for prayer.
29 JANUARY 1957
But of course I remember your previous letters, for ‘John, Kim, and Mrs. Jessup’ have been in my prayers this long time. Your news is very good and I thank God for it. How little we know what the result of any event is going to be! A diseased limb of your family has been amputated and now that the pain of the operation is over, the whole body feels better.
I want your prayers now. I have lately married a very ill, probably a dying, woman. My world is not bleak or meaningless, but it is tragic.
If there is more pity and depth in [ Till We Have Faces] than in its predecessors, perhaps my own recent life has something to do with it. I am very glad you liked it: It has had a less favourable reception not only from critics but from most friends than any I ever wrote.
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On his experience of the transformation of philia into eros, aided by agape; on the ability to care about others even in one’s own difficulties; and on the first hint of approaching death.
17 FEBRUARY 1957
There is no great mystery about my marriage. I have known the lady a long time: no one can mark the exact moment at which friendship becomes love. You can well understand how illness—the fact that she was facing pain and death and anxiety about the future of her children—would be an extra reason for marrying her or a reason for marrying her sooner.
If I write very shortly it is not because I am reticent but because I am tired and busy. My brother is also ill and causes a good deal of anxiety, and of course I lose his secretarial help: so that I have not only much to bear but much to do. I can’t type: you could hardly conceive what hundreds of hours a year I spend coaxing a rheumatic wrist to drive this pen across paper.
What a divine mercy about the last moment money for the rent! Clearly He who feeds the sparrows has you in His care. Never suppose that the amount ‘on my own plate’ shuts up my sympathy for the great troubles you are undergoing. I pray for you every day. Ah well, we shall all be out of it in a comparatively few years.
TO MRS. D. JESSUP: On the blessings experienced in Joy’s last illness.
19 FEBRUARY 1957
Thank you for your most kind letter. For your prayers we shall be most grateful. There is nothing else you can do. The disease, as you have guessed, is cancer, diagnosed too late in its secondary stage. The little primary growth from which all started had been shown to several doctors on both sides of the Atlantic (my wife is an American) and pooh-poohed by them all.
Perhaps you have read my wife’s book on the Commandments, published under the name Joy Davidman, Smoke on the Mountain?
All you say, and more, is true. She is in no pain, her faith unimpaired, her mind at peace, and her spirits good. You could hardly believe what happiness, even gaiety, there is between us.
The cold reception of [Till We Have Faces], far from being the last straw, is hardly even a straw. You need waste no sympathy for me on that score.
TO SISTER PENELOPE: On the beauty, tragedy, happiness, and gaiety that had entered Lewis’s life.
6 MARCH 1957
Yes, it is true. I married (knowingly) a very sick, save by near-miracle a dying, woman. She is the Joy Davidman whose Smoke on the Mountain I think you read. She is in the Wingfield Morris Hospital at Headington. When I see her each week end she is, to a layman’s eyes (but not to a doctor’s knowledge) in full convalescence, better every week. The disease is of course cancer: by which I lost my mother, my father, and my favourite aunt. She knows her own state of course: I would allow no lies to be told to a grown-up and a Christian. As you can imagine new beauty and new tragedy have entered my life. You would be surprised (or perhaps you would not?) to know how much of a strange sort of happiness and even gaiety there is between us….
I don’t doubt that Joy and I (and David and Douglas, the two boys) will have your prayers. Douglas is an absolute charmer (11 1/2). David, at first sight less engaging, is at any rate a comically appropriate stepson for me (13), being almost exactly what I was—bookworm, pedant, and a bit of a prig.
TO LAURENCE KRIEG: On Lewis’s confidence in Jesus’ knowing best with respect to Joy’s health prospects; and on his sadness, shared with a boy Douglas’s age.
21 APRIL 1957
Well, I can’t say I have had a happy Easter, for I have lately got married and my wife is very, very ill. I am sure Aslan knows best and whether He leaves her with me or takes her to His own country, He will do what is right. But of course it makes me very sad. I am sure you and your mother will pray for us.
TO MRS. JOHNSON: On the real meaning of heaven—enjoying God forever.
25 MAY 1957
It was nice to hear from you again. I can’t remember how up to date you are with my news. Did I tell you that a new element of both beauty and tragedy had entered my life? I am newly married, and to a dying woman (She was the Joy Davidman whose Smoke on the Mountain, a lively modern treatment of the Ten Commandments, you may have read. An American). She is, and I try to be, very brave. I acquired two schoolboy stepsons. I myself am, not dangerously, but painfully and disablingly, ill with a slipped disc. So life is rather full….
…Of course Heaven is leisure (‘there remaineth a rest for the people of God’): but I picture it pretty vigorous too as our best leisure really is. Man was created ‘to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.’ Whether that is best pictured as being in love, or like being one of an orchestra who are playing a great work with perfect success, or like surf bathing, or like endlessly exploring a wonderful country or endlessly reading a glorious story—who knows? Dante says Heaven ‘grew drunken with its universal laughter.’
Pray for us both.
TO DOROTHY L. SAYERS: On the deep lessons in love that Lewis was learning.
25 JUNE 1957
I ought to tell you my own news. On examination it turned out that Joy’s previous marriage, made in her pre-Christian days, was no marriage: the man had a wife still living. The Bishop of Oxford said it was not the present policy to approve re-marriage in such cases, but that his view did not bind the conscience of any individual priest. Then dear Father Bide (do you know him?) who had come to lay his hands on Joy—for he has on his record what looks very like one miracle—without being asked and merely on being told the situation at once said he would marry us. So we had a bedside marriage with a nuptial Mass.
When I last wrote to you I would not have wished this; you will gather (and may say ‘guessed as much’) that my feelings had changed. They say a rival often turns a friend into a lover. Thanatos [the Greek god of death], certainly (they say) approaching but at an uncertain speed, is a most efficient rival for this purpose. We soon learn to love what we know we must lose.
I hope you give us your blessing: I know you’ll give us your prayers. She is home now, not because she is better (though in fact she seems amazingly better) but because they can do no more for her at the Wingfield: totally bed-ridden but—you’d be surprised—we have much gaiety and even some happiness. Indeed, the situation is not easy to describe. My heart is breaking and I was never so happy before: at any rate there is more in life than I knew about. My own physical pains lately (which were among the severest I’ve known) had an odd element of relief in them.
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On living in the present moment.
20 OCTOBER 1957
We are shocked and distressed at the news in your letter of the 15th. I think I see from what you say that God is already giving you new spiritual strength with which to meet this terrible affliction—just as He did to us in Joy’s worst times. But pain is pain. I wish I could relieve any of it for you—one is so ineffective. The great thing, as you have obviously seen, (both as regards pain and financial worries) is to live from day to day and hour to hour not adding the past or future to the present. As one lived in the Front Line: ‘They’re not shelling us at the moment, and it’s not raining, and the rations have come up, so let’s enjoy ourselves.’ In fact, as Our Lord said, ‘Sufficient unto the day’.
You may be sure you will be very much in our prayers. All my news is good, very good up-to-date, though of course we live always under the sword of Damocles. God bless and keep you, dear friend. It’ll be nice when we all wake up from this life which has indeed something like nightmare about it.
TO LAURENCE KRIEG: Helping a young friend understand what an adult is going through—“Aslan has done great things for us.”
23 DECEMBER 1957
It is lovely to hear that you still enjoy the Narnian stories. I hope you are well. I forget how much of my news you and your mother know. It is wonderful. Last year I married, at her bedside in hospital, a woman who seemed to be dying: so you can imagine it was a sad wedding. But Aslan has done great things for us and she is now walking about again, showing the doctors how wrong they were, and making me very happy. I was also ill myself but am now better. Good wishes to you all.