1961
TO DON LUIGI PEDROLLO, who had asked for the letters of Giovanni Calabria, so that they could be conveyed to his biographer: On the reason why Lewis did not keep the letters he received from Saint John Calabria.
3 JANUARY 1961
I wish I could send you copies of the letters which the Venerable Father Don John Calabria wrote. But I have neither the letters themselves nor copies of them. It is my practice to consign to the flames all letters after two days—not, believe me, because I esteem them of no value, rather because I do not wish to relinquish things often worthy of sacred silence to subsequent reading by posterity.
For nowadays inquisitive researchers dig out all our affairs and besmirch them with the poison of ‘publicity’ (as a barbarous thing I am giving it a barbarous name).
This is the last thing I would wish to happen to the letters of Father John.
That admirable man, to others most lenient but to himself most severe, not to say savage, out of humility and with a certain holy imprudence wrote many things which I think should be kept quiet. If you would politely convey this explanation of mine to Father Mondrone, I would be grateful.
We greatly rejoice at the recent meeting between the Holy Father [Pope John XXIII] and our Archbishop [of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher]. May the Lord confirm this happy omen.
My wife died in the month of July. For her and for me redouble your prayers. You and your House are ever in mine.
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE, whose daughter and son-in-law have asked her to live with them: On how to make a choice between crosses; and on how to live in someone else’s home.
9 JANUARY 1961
I don’t feel at all ‘wise’ and the only bit of advice I can give you with perfect confidence is—don’t sit up writing long letters either to me or to anyone else when you are tired! It is very bad for you. Now as to the main issue.
Whatever you decide to do, get your own attitude right. They are behaving as if they were penitent and wished to make restitution. Their penitence may no doubt be very imperfect and their motives very mixed. But so are all our repentances and all our motives. Accept theirs as you hope God will accept yours. Remember that He has promised to forgive you as, and only as, you forgive them.
The decision, however, remains, I agree, a terrible one to make, and only someone who really knew you and Don and Lorraine—I have met none of the three—is really qualified to give you advice. Is it not possible to give their plan a trial run, with the understanding on both sides that after 6 months or a year it can be continued or discontinued and ‘no offence’? Of course this would involve giving up a great deal, including your cat. But I’m afraid as we grow older life consists more and more in either giving up things or waiting for them to be taken from us.
As you rightly see, to become a member of their household would involve a severe and continual self-suppression. You would have to be silent about many things when you longed to speak. But the alternative is also bad.
Is it not impossible to predict which way will give you less unhappiness? Isn’t one therefore thrown back on asking which will be best for the others? But how to decide that I don’t know.
The only certain thing is that your acceptance (if you accept) or your refusal (if you refuse) must be made with perfect charity and courtesy. May God’s grace give you the necessary humility. Try not to think—much less, speak—of their sins. One’s own are a much more profitable theme! And if, on consideration, one can find no faults on one’s own side, then cry for mercy: for this must be a most dangerous delusion. Incidentally, I can’t help feeling that you should take Lorraine’s account of Don with a grain of salt. On your own showing she can’t be an easy woman to live with and there is usually something to be said on both sides.
Well, I’m afraid all this comes to precious little. But I don’t, and can’t know enough. I can only pray that you may be guided to the right choice. It is (no disguising it) only a choice between Crosses. The more one can accept that fact, the less one can think about happiness on earth, the less, I believe, one suffers. Or at any rate the suffering becomes more purgatorial and less infernal.
TO HUGH KILMER, the oldest of the Kilmer children to whom Lewis had dedicated The Magician’s Nephew, at this time a student for the Roman Catholic priesthood, who had asked some questions about Miracles, perhaps Chapter 16: On the possible differences between the glorified body of Jesus and our own glorified bodies, including being in one place and not in another simultaneously and being in a kind of glorified time (aevum) rather than either in unredeemed time (tempus) or in the kind of eternity proper to bodiless spirits (aeternitas) or in God’s own ability to be everywhere all at once (totum simul). Lewis treats him as an equal by addressing him by his surname.
15 FEBRUARY 1961
Dear Kilmer,
If I had time to re-read my own book (by now a pretty old one) I’d be able to answer you better, meanwhile:
1. Can we assume that whatever is true of the glorified body of our Lord is equally true of the glorified body of each Christian? I doubt it. His natural body did not undergo dissolution.
2. I don’t accept the implication of your phrase ‘restricted by external quantity’, for restriction suggests imperfection. But to be in one place (or therefore not in another) seems to me possibly part of the perfection of a finite creature—as it belongs to the perfection of a statue to end where it does or of a musical note to be just so loud (neither more or less) or of a metrical verse.
3. I am not at all sure that blessed souls have a strictly timeless being (a totum simul) like God. Don’t some theologians interpose aevum as a half-way house between tempus and aeternitas?
In general, I incline to think that though the blessed will participate in the Divine Nature, they will do so always in a mode which does not simply annihilate their humanity. Otherwise it is difficult to see why the species was created at all.
Of course I’m only guessing.
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE, who had decided to live with her daughter and son-in-law: On the need for patience and self-sacrifice; on being content to pray for those with whom one lives and refraining from meddling and instructing; and on therapy for pets.
24 FEBRUARY 1961
I am very glad you have made the decision and I believe it is the right one. I realise that you are taking on a very different life, which will involve much frustration, self-effacement, and patience. There will be every opportunity and necessity of mortifying the ‘highly developed pride’ diagnosed by the grapho-analyst! There will have to be plenty of ‘turning back’ and ‘change of purpose’—except, to be sure, the constant and prayerful purpose of continual sacrifice. The great thing is that you realise all that; and as the comic beatitude says, ‘Blessed are they that expect little for they shall not be disappointed.’ I hope and pray you will be able to do them some good, but probably if you do, it will not be by any voluntary and conscious actions. Your prayers for them will be more use. Probably the safe rule will be ‘When in doubt what to do or say, do or say nothing.’ I feel this very much with my stepsons. I so easily meddle and gas: when all the time what will really influence them, for good or ill, is not anything I do or say but what I am. And this unfortunately one can’t know and can’t much alter, though God can. Two rules from William Law [A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, XVI] must be always in our minds.
1. ‘There can be no surer proof of a confirmed pride than a belief that one is sufficiently humble.’
2. ‘I earnestly beseech all who conceive they have suffered an affront to believe that it is very much less than they suppose.’
I hope your vet is not a charlatan? Psychological diagnoses even about human patients seem to me pretty phoney. They must be even phonier when applied to animals. You can’t put a cat on a couch and make it tell you its dreams or produce words by ‘free association’. Also—I have a great respect for cats—they are very shrewd people and would probably see through the analyst a good deal better than he’d see through them.
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: More on how to live with difficult human beings.
28 MARCH 1961
The unexpected crisis which hurried you into that house has all the air of an act of God: It looks as if He meant you to be there. While you were still debating whether the move was to your interest, He suddenly made it your duty. A pretty clear call, I take it. As to the ‘sincerity’ of Don’s behaviour, remember (let us look in our own hearts for the truth!) humans are very seldom either totally sincere or totally hypocritical. Their moods change, their motives are mixed, and they are often themselves quite mistaken as to what their motives are. There is probably some real repentance and desire for amendment on Don’s part: it won’t necessarily be permanent any more than our own countless repentances and good resolutions are. There is also probably a desire, whether conscious or unconscious, to make a party with you against Lorraine. There is also perhaps a desire to make Lorraine feel, ‘If he is so nice to Mother, perhaps it may be my fault that he is not nice to me.’ Also, a desire to make you feel, ‘Since he really behaves like this, perhaps most of Lorraine’s complaints about his treatment are untrue or exaggerated.’ But all these mixed up together: the good motives partly poisoned by the bad ones and the bad ones partly modified by the good ones. At any rate, ‘ charity hopeth all things, believeth all things.’ The rule is to give every one ‘the benefit of the doubt’ about sincerity yet at the same time to be on one’s guard. Above all, be guarded when either complains to you about the other. They may, at that moment, be quite sincere. But when they are next reunited to each other (and of course sex probably insures reconciliation from time to time) they will infallibly repeat to each other all you have said. Here, as usual, the Imitation is a good guide: ‘I have often repented of speech but hardly ever of silence.’ And don’t believe ¼ of what they say. Without any intention of lying, people so arrogant as Don and so obviously unstable as Lorraine can hardly tell anything without misrepresentation. Notice this even when they are talking on quite neutral matters.
‘My own life as a person seems definitely at an end.’ I know it’s easy for me to give good advice to others in situations which I probably could not face myself. But that can’t be helped: I must say what I think true. Surely the main purpose of our life is to reach the point at which ‘one’s own life as a person’ is at an end. One must in this sense ‘die’, become ‘naught’, relinquish one’s freedom and independence. ‘Not I, but Christ that dwelleth in me’—‘He must grow greater and I must grow less’—‘He that loseth his life shall find it.’ But you know all this quite as well as I do. It may well involve eating white bread instead of brown! How many millions at this moment have no bread at all?
P. S. Of course the little addition to your income can continue.
TO HUGH KILMER: On rejoicing over being good at being what one is, an angel, a human being, or an apple tree.
5 APRIL 1961
Your definition of gaiety is very much to the point. Perhaps one can carry it further. A creature can never be a perfect being, but may be a perfect creature—e.g., a good angel or a good apple-tree. Gaiety at its highest may be an (intellectual) creature’s delighted recognition that its imperfection as a being may constitute part of its perfection as an element in the whole hierarchical order of creation. I mean, while it is a pity there should be bad men or bad dogs, part of the excellence of a good man is that he is not an angel, and of a good dog that it is not a man. This is an extension of what St. Paul says about the body and the members. A good toe-nail is not an unsuccessful attempt at a brain: and if it were conscious it would delight in being simply a good toe-nail.
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On how grating one’s voice, looks, and mannerisms can be on others. Jeanne is the daughter of Lorraine and Don.
21 APRIL 1961
I have your letter of the 16th. You were (very naturally) distraught when you wrote it, and you don’t even make clear to me exactly what Jeanne did! Did she get, as they say, ‘into trouble’ those two nights? If nothing worse happened than being out and alone in wet weather, I should have thought a girl in reasonable health would get over it alright, and so, I hope, will you all. Don seems to be doing his best now, whatever he did in the past; and with such a wife and such a daughter his home life can’t be a bed of roses. It is a pity he ‘gets on your nerves’ but you are, rightly, controlling your reactions. I know well how a person’s very voice, looks, and mannerisms may grate on one! I always try to remember that mine probably do the same to him—and of course I never hear or see myself.
TO MARGARET GRAY, who had asked Lewis for a reading list and who had mentioned that she had been consoled by a very real experience of her late husband: On the books Lewis most often recommended.
9 MAY 1961
How right you are when you say ‘ Christianity is a terrible thing for a lifelong atheist to have to face’! In people like us—adult converts in the 20th century—I take this feeling to be a good symptom. By the way, you have had in most respects a tougher life than I, but there’s one thing I envy you. I lost my wife last summer after a very late, very short, and intensely happy married life, but I have not been vouchsafed (and why the deuce should I be?) a visit like yours—or certainly not except for one split second. Now about reading.
For a good (‘popular’) defence of our position against modern waffle, to fall back on, I know nothing better than G. K. Chesterton’s The Everlasting Man. Harder reading, but very protective, is Edwyn Bevan’s Symbolism and Belief. Charles Williams’s He Came Down from Heaven doesn’t suit everyone, but try it.
For meditative and devotional reading (a little bit at a time, more like sucking a lozenge than eating a slice of bread) I suggest the Imitation of Christ (astringent) and Traherne’s Centuries of Meditations (joyous). Also my selection from MacDonald, George MacDonald: An Anthology. I can’t read Kierkegaard myself, but some people find him helpful.
For Christian morals I suggest my wife’s (Joy Davidman) Smoke on the Mountain, Gore’s The Sermon on the Mount and (perhaps) his Philosophy of the Good Life. And possibly (but with a grain of salt, for he is too puritanical) William Law’s Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life. I know the very title makes me shudder, but we have both got a lot of shuddering to get through before we’re done!
You’ll want a mouth-wash for the imagination. I’m told that Mauriac’s novels (all excellently translated, if your French is rusty) are good, though very severe. Dorothy Sayers’ Man Born to Be King (those broadcast plays) certainly is. So, to me, but not to everyone, are Charles Williams’s fantastic novels. Pilgrim’s Progress, if you ignore some straw-splitting dialogues in Calvinist theology and concentrate on the story, is first class.
St. Augustine’s Confessions will give you the record of an earlier adult convert, with many very great devotional passages intermixed.
Do you read poetry? George Herbert at his best is extremely nutritious.
I don’t mention the Bible because I take that for granted. A modern translation is for most purposes far more useful than Authorised Version.
As regards my own books, you might (or might not) care for Transposition, The Great Divorce, or The Four Loves.
Yes—‘being done good to’—grrr! I never asked ever to be.
TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On being overconcerned about the past of others and of our own.
5 JUNE 1961
We must beware of the Past, mustn’t we? I mean that any fixing of the mind on old evils beyond what is absolutely necessary for repenting our own sins and forgiving those of others is certainly useless and usually bad for us. Notice in Dante that the lost souls are entirely concerned with their past. Not so the saved. This is one of the dangers of being, like you and me, old. There’s so much past, now, isn’t there? And so little else. But we must try very hard not to keep on endlessly chewing the cud. We must look forward more eagerly to sloughing that old skin off forever—metaphors getting a bit mixed here, but you know what I mean.
TO HARVEY KARLSEN, who seems to have written Lewis about a habit of masturbation: On the remedies for sexual temptation—frequent and regular prayer and communions, monthly confession, avoiding discouragement, not exaggerating nor minimizing one’s sins, avoiding either trains of thought or social situations that lead to temptation, and applying the brakes, gently and quietly, while the danger is still a good way off.
13 OCTOBER 1961
Your letter did not reach me till to-day. Of course I have had and still have plenty of temptations. Frequent and regular prayer, and frequent and regular Communions, are a great help, whether they feel at the time as if they were doing you good or whether they don’t. I also found great help in monthly confession to a wise old clergyman.
Perhaps, however, the most important thing is to keep on: not to be discouraged however often one yields to the temptation, but always to pick yourself up again and ask forgiveness. In reviewing your sins don’t either exaggerate them or minimise them. Call them by their ordinary names and try to see them as you would see the same faults in somebody else—no special blackening or whitewashing. Remember the condition on which we are promised forgiveness: we shall always be forgiven provided that we forgive all who sin against us. If we do that we have nothing to fear: if we don’t, all else will be in vain. Of course there are other helps which are more commonsense. We must learn by experience to avoid either trains of thought or social situations which for us (not necessarily for everyone) lead to temptations. Like motoring—don’t wait till the last moment before you put on the brakes but put them on, gently and quietly, while the danger is still a good way off. I would write at more length, but I am ill. God bless you.
TO ARTHUR GREEVES: On great books for spiritual reading.
12 NOVEMBER 1961
Yes. The Imitation is very severe; useful at times when one is tempted to be too easily satisfied with one’s progress, but certainly not at times of discouragement. And of course it is written for monks, not for people living in the world like us.
A good book to balance it is Traherne’s Centuries of Meditations, which I expect you know. (Not to be confused with his poems, which I don’t recommend.) There is all the gold and fragrance!
Midway between the two I’d put the anonymous Theologia Germanica…. This is curiously like the sort of letters we used to write 45 years ago!
P. S. I never read St. John of the Cross.
TO ARTHUR GREEVES: On a limitation of The Imitation of Christ.
24 NOVEMBER 1961
I don’t think the author of the Imitation was ever aware of the beauty of nature as we understand it.
TO MARY VAN DEUSEN: On prayers for the dead; and on the authority of the Bible over the Church.
28 DECEMBER 1961
I’ve found the passage—I Cor. XV, 29. Also I Pet. III 19–20 bears indirectly on the subject. It implies that something can be done for the dead. If so, why should we not pray for them?
Beware of the argument ‘the Church gave the Bible (and therefore the Bible can never give us grounds for criticising the Church)’. It is perfectly possible to accept B on the authority of A and yet regard B as a higher authority than A. It happens when I recommend a book to a pupil. I first sent him to the book, but, having gone to it, he knows (for I’ve told him) that the author knows more about that subject than I.