points
1. Greek quotations pp 101–107. Make quite sure of the correction in several places: i.e. read Δ (= ‘Delta,’ 4th letter of the Gk. alphabet) for ó.
2. On p. 228 my note may not be perfectly clear. I want the poem to be spaced like this: [series of eight lines close together, the final one separated by a line or two]
3. Quotations on pp 11, 31 etc. Ought these to have stops after them? And if so, ought the dashes to be removed? I have put in the stops and not removed the dashes, but am ready to be guided by the printer’s decision as to what is usual in such cases.
Yours faithfully
C. S. Lewis
Address after Monday next,
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
TO GUY POCOCK (W):
Magdalen College.
Oxford.
May 4th 1933
Dear Pocock
Yes—I heartily approve Derrick’s jacket: but should prefer to see the legend ‘Reason set…up’ omitted, Photo will be sent as soon as taken.
In haste,
Yours
C. S. Lewis
It really is good: quite beyond my hopes. The legend under it however must be omitted, because nothing less like a spurring rider could well be imagined. Anyway it is not needed.
The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romanticism was published by J. M. Dent on 25 May 1933.
TO GUY POCOCK (W):
MAGDALEN COLLEGE.
Oxford.
June 9th 1933
Dear Pocock
Could you let me have 4 more copies of P. R. and tell me what I owe you for them?
I recommend the underlined passage in the enclosed for advertisement use as soon as we get anything on the other side to set beside it,
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
June 13th. 1933
My dear Arthur,
You ought to have had a copy of Pilgrim’s Regress from me before now and a letter long before. My six complementary copies turned out to have so many unexpected claimants that I had exhausted them before I knew where I was: some new ones are now on order and I will send you one as soon as they arrive.
As for letters, they have been rather out of the question. I have never had a busier term—9 to 1 and 5 to 7 every week day and two Sundays completely filled with extra work in the middle of the term: not to mention exams which have now set in and which will keep my nose to the grindstone till the end of July. However I have kept very well and have therefore nothing to complain of—except that I am rather hungry for reading and don’t know when I shall get a few uninterrupted hours again.
‘Invigilating’ in exams last week I did manage to read one novel (I find that anything harder than novels is too much for me in the Schools) which I can recommend—Tom’s a-cold by John Collier.33 The theme is one not uncommon now-a-days: that of a barbaric ‘heroic’ society growing up on the ruins of the present civilisation. But it has two great advantages over most such books. 1. It doesn’t waste time telling you how civilisation collapsed but starts a 100 years on. 2. It lays the scene in the South of England and is very topographical, so that you can actually see the Berkshire downs and Savernake Forest turning into the fortresses, the greenwoods, and the valley communities of a world at about the same stage of development as that in The Roots of the Mountains.34 One gets v. well the idea of how much larger England would seem under those conditions.
I must announce with regret that I shall not be paying you a visit this summer (Perhaps this is premature as I have not yet been asked!) I have come to the decision with considerable doubt, but I think on the whole I am right. Warnie and I want to go and see the Scotch uncles35 and as they are getting on it ought to be done this year. This will sound an odd programme to you. It is not all ‘duty’—curiosity, desire to revive childish memories, and the anticipation of an amused yet affectionate pleasure in seeing our father in them, all come in to it. We shall then go back from Glasgow by the Clyde Shipping Company boat—and I admit I shall be such a rag by the time exams are over that I rather look forward to some lazy days at sea as the best, if not the only, holiday I shall be capable of. I am sorry to disappoint you (if I may flatter myself that it is a disappointment). At any rate don’t think that this is a precedent or that it means the end of my appearances at Belfast!
I was up to London for the Rheingold, which I enjoyed less than Siegfried—chiefly I think because we had very bad seats (We is Barfield and I).36 MacFarlane—who has had a nervous breakdown since, poor chap—says he saw you* at one of the other operas: what a pity we hadn’t known and gone together.
I had an extremely kind letter from Reid about the book. I think it is going to be at least as big a failure as Dymer, and am consequently trying to take to heart all the things I wrote you when you were bowled over by Reid’s decision on your first novel—not entirely without success. How goes the detective story?
I hardly deserve a letter, but hope you will treat me better than my deserts
Yours
Jack
TO T. R. HENN (P): 37
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
July 2nd 1933.
Dear Henn
If you like this,38 accept it as a peace offering. If you think it worth disliking heartily, then have at me in print or private—dismount your tuck, be yare in your preparing.39 If it is simply a bore, then pass it on to your second hand bookseller.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO MARY SHELLEY (T): 40
Magdalen
July 21st [1933]
Dear Miss Shelley,
If you are not, at the moment, too sick of me and all my kind to read further, it may be worth saying that you must not run away with the idea that you are a Fourth Class mind. What really ruined you was an NS and a Δ on language, which would of course have spoiled even very good work elsewhere.41 In the Lit. your highest mark was Β+ (XIXth century).
Why your literature papers were not better I do not understand. I blame myself for not having exhorted more essays from you—but I doubt if that was the whole cause. You were very short and general. But