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but then there’s my own. But thank your society very much for the invitation and convey my good wishes to them as regards everything but interplanetary travel.

      Yours very sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

      Probably the whole thing is only a plan for kidnapping me and marooning me on an asteroid! I know the sort of thing.

      

TO ROBIN OAKLEY-HILL (M): ⁴³

      Magdalen College

      Oxford Feb 16th 1953

      Dear Oakley-Hill

It came over me like a thunderclap about 30 seconds after I had left you in the Lodge this afternoon that I must seem to you to have committed, in one very short conversation, all the most unprovoked and indeed inexplicable kinds of rudeness there are.⁴⁴ I implore you to try to understand–and believe–how it came about with no such intention.

      The starting point was the fact that I have never noticed the slightest inequality in your gait. Seeing it for the first time when I was waiting behind you to cross the street I therefore immediately assumed some temporary mishap to be the cause: no alternative explanation entered my head. My evil genius then led me to ask you about it-largely because two people who see each other once a week can’t very well meet on an ‘island’ and say just nothing. After your answer I ought of course to have apologised and dropped the subject at once: but by that time I had completely lost my head.

You are not the first to suffer this kind of thing from me: I am subject to a kind of black-out in conversation which every now and then leads me to ask and say the utterly wrong thing–the Brobdingnagianly tactless thing.⁴⁵ I have (quite against my will) made many enemies this way. I hope very much you will not become one of them: give me a fool’s pardon.

      If I raised a subject which may be painful to you, I am now punished by having to deal with one that is equally painful for me. It is an old sore: it began in my almost nursery days: and if we could find a suitable magician I think I’d gladly swop my Tendency to the Faux Pas for your leg. Please accept my sincere, and greatly embarrassed, apology.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W):

      REF.53/53.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 21st February 1953.

      My dear Ed,

      Just a note whilst overwhelmed with one thing and another, to let you know that nineteen pounds twelve ounces of comfort, posted on the 20th of January, arrived in the usual excellent condition this morning. And very many thanks indeed for it. Much needed, though I really do begin to believe that this government intends to deal with the question seriously; tea is now ‘off the ration’, so are sweets, and they’re beginning to put pork in the sausages. This I should think will probably turn the younger generation into lifelong dispeptics, for it has grown up to think of a sausage as an ounce of soya bean flour fried in a skin! But anyway, we have got rid of the suspicion of rationing for rationing’s sake which one felt under the late administration, whose slogan was supposed to be ‘jobs for the boys’.

      I am somehow or other in the middle of a very heavy term–examining, seeing a big book through the press and other odd jobs, besides of course the regular grind. But I hope to get away for a day or two over Easter, which will freshen me up until the summer vacation looms up on the horizon.

      I’m sorry to cut you so short, but ‘it’s one of those mornings’ as we say. Do you know the expression? It means that everything that can go wrong has gone wrong, and I’m in need of two brains and four hands, to say nothing of a day of forty eight hours.

      With all best wishes to you both,

      Yours,

      Jack Lewis

      

       TO CHAD WALSH (W): TS

      REF.73/53.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 21st February 1953.

      Dear Chad,

It’s disappointing to hear that your English visit is postponed, but nice to hear from you at all: and thrilling to find that you also are doing a (odious word) ‘juvenile’.⁴⁶ I’m an examiner for three years now, so I certainly shan’t be able to embark on any American lectures: exciting and attractive tho’ the idea may be.

      The book on Prayer comes on very slowly. The simplest questions about it seem to be the ones no one has ever dealt with.

      Sorry I cut you so short: infinite other letters to answer, if possible, before my first pupil comes.

      My brother joins me in cordial greetings.

      Yours,

      lack Lewis

      

       TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. Feb 21st 1953

      Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

No, I don’t think the motives you describe are too emotional: I think they are good ones. Obviously, where one is ‘more sure that God wants one to be’ is the place one must go: and even if the surety shd. in fact be mistaken I expect we may rely on God to bring it about that good will come of it. I presume, anyway, that you have to take no irrevocable vows! It looks to me as if you should go on and enter.⁴⁷ I hope it will be a great blessing to you.

      I traced in Genia’s letter a growing concern for you, and was v. pleased. She is obviously fighting against the temptation to self-centredness wh. comes with ill health. It is all most cheering.

      Your question about Communists-in-government really raises the whole problem of Democracy. If one accepts the basic principle of Govt. by majorities, how can one consistently try to suppress those problems of public propaganda and getting-into-govt, by which majorities are formed. If the Communists in this country can persuade the majority to sell in to Russia, or even to set up devil-worship and human sacrifice, what is the democratic reply? When we said ‘Govt. by the people’ did we only mean ‘as long as we don’t disagree with the people too much’? And is it much good talking about ‘loyalty’? For on strictly democratic principles I suppose loyalty is obligatory (or even lawful) only so long as the majority want it. I don’t know the answer.

      Of course there is no question of its being our duty (the minority’s duty) to obey an anti-God govt. if the majority sets it up. We shall have to disobey and be martyred. Perhaps pure democracy is really a false ideal.

      God bless you all. In great haste.

      Yours ever

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

      [Magdalen College]

      [25] Feb. 1953

      My dear Roger

My brother and I have now both finished Armadale⁴⁸ and we enjoyed it very much. One can see, no doubt, why it is so much less popular than the famous two.⁴⁹

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