To all that side of my own work I attach less and less importance: yet I become each year more contented in the actual teaching and lecturing. I have very little doubt now that the work is worth doing. It is true that neither the terms of my appointment nor my own stature allow me to teach the most important things: but on the lower level there is honest work to be done in eradicating false habits of mind and teaching the elements of reason herself, and English Literature is as good a subject as any other. I should be in a bad way by now if I had been allowed to follow my own desire and be a research fellow with no pupils. As it is, nearly every generation leaves me one permanent friend.
Please accept my thanks, and convey them to the Prior, for your offered hospitality. Some week end in the long Vacation would suit me best, and I should like to come.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
P.S. This has some relevance both to the questions of Prayer and Idealism. I wrote it over a year ago.
They tell me, Lord, that when I seem To be in speech with You, Since You make no replies, it’s all a dream —One talker aping two.
And so it is, but not as they Falsely believe. For I Seek in myself the things I meant to say, And lo!, the wells are dry.
Then, seeing me empty, You forsake The listener’s part, and through My dumb lips breathe and into utterance wake The thoughts I never knew.
Therefore You neither need reply Nor can: for while we seem Two talking, Thou art one forever; and I No dreamer, but Thy dream. 11
For months Jack, Warnie, Tolkien, Barfield and Harwood had been planning to attend a festival of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung at Covent Garden in London. Cecil Harwood was appointed to book tickets for the party, and in preparation jack and Warnie were meeting regularly with Tolkien to read the operas in German. The opportunity of seeing the whole Ring cycle meant so much to Lewis that he reminded Harwood of the important commission placed upon him:
TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford
[April 1934]
Dear Harwood
It is vain to conceal from you the solicitude we feel for our seats at Co. Garden. Pray, pray, Sir, exert yourself. Reflect that no small part of the satisfaction of five persons depends upon your conduct: that the object of their desires is rational and innocent: and that their desires are fervent and of long standing. Omit no manly degree of importunity and complaisance that may achieve our object, and thus, my dear Sir, give me one more reason to subscribe myself
your most obliged most obedient servant
C. S. Lewis
For some reason Harwood failed to book seats for the Ring of the Nibelung. On learning of this Lewis sent him the following letter:
TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):
Magdalen College
Oxford
May 7th 1934
Sir,
I have read your pathetical letter with such sentiments as it naturally suggests and write to assure you that you need expect from me no ungenerous reproach. It would be cruel, if it were possible, and impossible, if it were attempted, to add to the mortification which you must now be supposed to suffer. Where I cannot console, it is far from my purpose to aggravate: for it is part of the complicated misery of your state that while I pity your sufferings, I cannot innocently wish them lighter. He would be no friend to your reason or your virtue who would wish you to pass over so great a miscarriage in heartless frivolity or brutal insensibility. As the loss is irretrievable, so your remorse will be lasting. As those whom you have betrayed are your friends, so your conduct admits of no exculpation. As you were once virtuous, so now you must be forever miserable. Far be it from me that ferocious virtue which would remind you that the trust was originally transferred from Barfield to you in the hope of better things, and that thus both our honours were engaged. I will not paint to you the consequences of your conduct which are doubtless daily and nightly before your eyes. Believe, my dear Sir, that I forgive you.
As soon as you can, pray let me know through some respectable acquaintance what plans you have formed for the future. In what quarter of the globe do you intend to sustain that irrevocable exile, hopeless penury, and perpetual disgrace to which you have condemned yourself? Do not give in to the sin of Despair: learn from this example the fatal consequences of error and hope, in some humbler station and some distant land, that you may yet become useful to your species.
Yours etc
C. S. Lewis
TO CECIL HARWOOD (BOD):
[Magdalen College]
May 16th 1934
Sir
Your resolution of seeing me and receiving my forgiveness face to face before you forever quit these shores does not displease me. As you have rightly judged, to admit you to my house would now be an offence against the grand Principle of Subordination, but you will be welcome to the grounds—flumina ames silvasque inglorius.12
You will please to observe the strictest propriety of behaviour while you remain there, and to be guided in everything by the directions of Mr. Barfield.
Under his protection I doubt not that you will be able to achieve the journey without any great disaster or indecency. Do not hold any communication with your fellow travellers in the steam-train without his approval: where you bait,13 you had best abstain from all use of fermented liquours. Many things lawful in themselves are to be denied to one who dare not risk a further miscarriage. Above all, do not attempt to save your guinea by travelling under the seat, nor to shorten your journey by any approaches to familiarity with your female fellow passages. Do not bring with you any musical instrument.
Your obedient servant
C. S. Lewis
TO SISTER MADELEVA (W):14
Magdalen College,
Oxford.
June 6th [1934]
Dear Madam,
This is just to let you know that I have your letter and will answer it in the course of the next few days. But I should warn you that what you apparently expect to lie behind the lecture is both more and other than is really there. In lecturing to students who know nothing about the middle ages I have had to be clear and brief, therefore dogmatic: and I have probably—tho’ I hope this was not my intention—appeared much more learned than I am.
Yours sincerely,
C. S. Lewis
TO SISTER MADELEVA (W):
Magdalen College,
Oxford,
June 7th 1934
Dear Madam,
In answer to your first question, there are probably such printed bibliographies as you mention but I have no knowledge of them. The history of my lecture is this. After having worked for some years on my own subject (which is the medieval allegory), I found that I had accumulated a certain amount of general information which, tho far from being very recondite, was more than the ordinary student in the school could gather for himself. I then conceived