Collected Letters Volume One: Family Letters 1905–1931

And it was to Arthur that Jack confided his teenage sexual fantasies beginning with the letter of 28 January 1917. Years later, when he re-read the letters in which this subject is mentioned, he told Arthur (1 October 1931): ‘I am now inclined to agree with you in not regretting that we confided in each other even on this subject, because it has done no harm in the long run–and how could young adolescents really be friends without it?’ Before his death, Arthur, as an old man, sought to make his friend’s letters more respectable by scribbling over those passages in which this particular excess of youth had appeared. In deciding what to do about this, I came to the conclusion that if I omitted these passages, but retained the letter of 30 January 1930 in which Lewis accuses himself of the deadly sin of Pride, I would be treating the teenage lusts of the flesh with a seriousness they don’t deserve. My solution in this volume is the same one I used when the letters were first published in 1979. The passages which Arthur, for whatever reason, scribbled through are found in brackets shaped like this–< >.

I should include an Editorial Note at this point. We have none of the letters Arthur wrote to Jack during the years covered in this book, but it is clear Arthur was always pleading with Jack to put dates on his letters. Jack rarely complied, and as a result the letters to Arthur were harder to date than the ones to his father. As I explained in the Editor’s Note I wrote for They Stand Together, I used various methods of dating, including comparing the various nibs Jack used in composing the letters. Lewis almost always wrote with an old-fashioned nib pen that is dipped into an inkwell as one writes. Each nib writes slightly differently and it is possible to see which letters were written with which nib. It is not a method to condemn. When Lewis dictated letters to me, he always had me read them aloud afterwards. He told me that in writing letters, as well as books, he always ‘whispered the words aloud’. Pausing to dip the pen in an inkwell provided exactly the rhythm needed. ‘It’s as important to please the ear’ he said, ‘as it is the eye.’

What Lewis was not concerned with was how the page looked. He preferred to save paper, and most of his letters were not divided into paragraphs. I have taken the liberty of introducing paragraphs, with the result, I hope, that Lewis’s clearly ordered ideas stand out and are more enjoyable to read. I have tried throughout to preserve Lewis’s spelling. This was easy when transcribing from the original letters to Arthur, but I suspect that Warnie silently corrected some of his brother’s frequent misspellings.

Following the name of every person to whom a letter is addressed I have indicated where the reader might consult the original letter, if there is one, or where in the Lewis Papers he will find the copy used in this book. Thus ‘To his Father (LP III: 82)’ means ‘Lewis Papers, Volume III, page 82’. In the case of the letters to Arthur Greeves the reader will notice that sometimes I refer to letters being in both Wheaton and the Lewis Papers (e.g. W/LP). This means that the original, from which the Lewis Papers version was copied, is now in Wheaton. Jack borrowed many of his letters from Arthur so Warnie could include them in the Lewis Papers. I am not sure what happened, but those dated 1 and 8 February 1916 and those which run from 7 March 1916 to 27 September 1916 seem to have got lost because these only exist as copies in the Lewis Papers. The initial ‘B’ means the original is in the Bodleian, and ‘P’ means it is in a private collection. It should not be difficult to consult the letters on either side of the Atlantic because the Bodleian and the Wade Center have a reciprocal arrangement which means each has copies of what the other has. Thus, those letters cited as in ‘W’ (Wade Center), such as the Barfield letters, may also be consulted in ‘B’ (Bodleian).

Nearly all the letters in this volume were written to people so important in Lewis’s life that I did not feel it would be enough to identify them with a mere footnote. The solution was to include short biographies in a Biographical Appendix.

I hope my friends will be as satisfied as I am by the appearance of this volume for I have been tireless in seeking their knowledge and advice. I wish to thank in particular Dr A. T. Reyes, Professor James Como, Father Seán Finnegan, Professor Emrys Jones, Dr Barbara Everett, Madame Eliane Tixier, Professor G. B. Tennyson, Dr Stephen Logan, Miss Priscilla Tolkien, The Rt Hon. David Bleakley MP, Michael Ward, Andrew Cuneo, Edward Nelson, Jonathan Brewer, Paul Tankard, Edward De Rivera, Fr Jerome Bertram, Brother Alexander Master and the Fathers and Brothers of the Oxford Oratory.

No editor could have been served so well by his publishers as I have been. I am very grateful to Kathy Dyke, managing editor of HarperCollinsReligious, for guiding the book through to press, and to many others. My thanks to all concerned.

Walter Hooper

27 March 1999

Oxford

ABBREVIATIONS (#uc2941ee1-0da4-5daf-8557-41f4d35aa1b1)

AMR = All My Road Before Me: The Diary of C. S. Lewis 1922-1927, edited by Walter Hooper (1991).

BF = Brothers and Friends: The Diaries of Major Warren Hamilton Lewis, edited by Clyde S. Kilby and Marjorie Lamp Mead (1982).

CG = Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide (1996).

LP = unpublished ‘Lewis Papers’ or ‘Memoirs of the Lewis Family: 1850-1930’ in 11 volumes.

‘Memoir’ = Memoir by W. H. Lewis contained in Letters of C. S. Lewis, edited with a Memoir by W. H. Lewis (1966), and reprinted in Letters of C. S. Lewis, edited with a Memoir by W. H. Lewis, revised and enlarged edition, edited by Walter Hooper (1988).

SBJ = C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life (1955).

1905-1910 (#uc2941ee1-0da4-5daf-8557-41f4d35aa1b1)

The Lewises were a happy family. Albert Lewis

(#ulink_4fcc7d13-4e49-5bc0-b0c7-a1c65b675bc6) had prospered as a police court solicitor, and on 18 April 1905 the family moved from the semi-detached Dundela Villas, where Warnie and Jack were born, into a house Albert had specially built for his wife, Flora.

(#ulink_c63cebd0-580e-55b5-ad04-f19302fb9acf) This was ‘Little Lea’, one of the new ‘big houses’ of Strandtown, a lovely area of Belfast. Outside, the family looked over wide fields to Belfast Lough, and across the Lough to the mountains of the Antrim shore.

Albert and Flora, like most Anglo-Irish parents, wanted their children to be educated in English public schools, and on 10 May 1905 Flora took Warnie,

(#ulink_5e495d1f-9209-534b-938c-67de47a7847a) who was eight, across the water to Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire. In complete innocence she was delivering her son into the hands of a madman. The headmaster, Robert Capron or ‘Oldie’ as the boys called him,

(#ulink_39448636-3c45-5f89-9958-b25e73cbfc76) ‘lived in a solitude of power,’ Jack was later to write, ‘like a sea-captain in the days of sail’ (SBJ II). In two years’ time he would have a High Court action taken against him for cruelty. For the time being Warnie joined the dwindling band of some dozen boys who lived in the pair of semi-detached houses which made up Wynyard School.

Meanwhile, Jack was tutored at home, his mother teaching him French and Latin and his governess, Annie Harper,

(#ulink_7853b888-3674-587e-b985-369bdd07df6e) teaching him everything else. He was almost eight when he wrote this first letter to Warnie:

TO HIS BROTHER (LP III: 63):

Little Lea.

Strandtown.

[c. November 1905]

My dear Warnie

Peter

(#ulink_5be8e12b-cbe7-5542-93cc-4f52556e8a2e) has had two un-fortunate aventures since I last wrote, however they came out all right in the end. No. 1, Maude

(#ulink_515ec8df-915f-5de6-81a3-7a3228864f34) was in her room (up there remember) heard Peter howling. When she came down, what do you think? sitting on the floor ready to spring on Peter was a big black cat. Maude chased it for a long way. I was not able to help matters because I was out on my bych.

The next adventure was not so starling, never the-less it is worth while relating that a mouse got into his cage.

Tim

(#ulink_046fe7eb-533c-5b9d-9a41-e87edda0d1b2) got the head staggers the other day while running on the lawn, he suddenly lay down and began to kick and foam at the mouth and shudder.

On Halow-een we had great [fun?] and had fireworks; rockets, and catterine wheels, squbes, and a kind of thing that you lit and twirled and then they made stars. We hung up an apple and bit at it we got Grandfather

(#ulink_4de8fdea-3508-5616-b5d6-8fddb55be502) down to watch and he tried to bite. Maud got the ring out of the barn-brach and we had apple dumpling with in it a button a ring and a 3 penny bit. Martha got the button, Maude got nothing, and I got the ring and the 3 pence all in one bite. We got some leaves off the road the other day, that is to say the roadmen gave us some that they had got off the road, in fact they wanted them because they make good manure. I am doing french as well as latin now, and I think I like the latin better. Tomorrow I decline that old ‘Bonus,’ ‘Bona,’ ‘Bonum’ thing, but I think it is very hard (not now of course but it was).

Diabolos are all the go here, evrrey body has one except us, I don’t think the Lewis temper would hold out do you? Jackie Calwell has one and can do it beautifully (wish I could)

your loving

brother Jacks

TO HIS BROTHER (LP III: 75-6):

Little Lea.

Strandtown.

[c. 1906]

My dear Warnie

I am sorrey that I did not write to you before. At present Boxen is slightly convulsed.

(#ulink_6755d38e-8a69-536f-b872-46f01c9bc1ef) The news has just reached her that King Bunny is a prisoner. The colonists (who are of course the war party) are in a bad way: they dare scarcely leave their houses because of the mobs. In Tararo the Prussians and Boxonians are at fearful odds against each other and the natives.

Such were the states of affairs recently: but the able general Quick-steppe is taking steps for the rescue of King Bunny. (the news somewhat pacified the rioters.)