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quality, and it is not always easy to get hold of. (To say nothing of the fact that one so often runs out at some inconvenient moment, and has to sally out to the shops).

      Apropos of shops, one could hardly have a worse time to run out of essentials than this; we—like you no doubt—are in the climax of the ‘Christmas rush’, a time which I always regard with horror. I hope I am not a Scrooge, but with every year that passes I find myself more and more in revolt against the commercialized racket of ‘Xmas’. With us, it now begins about the third week in November, and by now, one is urged—with holly leaves—to buy anything from boots to bathing trunks because they are the perfect expression of the Christmas spirit. If I seem a little peevish about the whole spiritual atmosphere, it is perhaps because the material one is so disagreeable; we have been having snow, ice, sleet, hurricanes and all the kind of treats in fact which we do not expect until well on into the new year. A freak season in fact. But I should be chastened by the fact that a visiting American friend tells me that unless we have seen winter in New England, we don’t know what winter is: and that what we are grumbling about is just nice mild seasonable weather. (But this expression of opinion doesn’t make it seem any warmer)!

      With many thanks, and all best wishes for a happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year,

      yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MRS D. JESSUP (W):

      Magdalen etc.

      Dec. 20th 52

      Dear Mrs. Jessup

      Yes: you are very blessed: and I take the communication as a high compliment—though there are a good many words I can’t read, for your hand is almost as illegible as mine tho’ a great deal neater!

      You won’t expect me to reply at length when I tell you that we have a visitor, that our usual domestic help is ill, and there are mountains of mail. How wretchedly the Christian festival of Christmas has got snowed under by all the fuss and racket of commercialised ‘Xmas’. Blessings to all.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO EDNA GREEN WATSON (BOD): TS

      REE52/9

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford, [p] 22nd December 1952.

      Dear Mrs. Watson,

How very kind indeed of you to sweeten my Christmas with the cake, which arrived this morning: externally in good condition, and before the day is out I shall be examining the internal condition of the parcel. It arrives very apropos, as my brother and I are without our housekeeper, who is convalescing after an illness, and in consequence we two batchelors are having to maintain a ‘skeleton service’ out at the house—one which does not provide for such luxuries as cakes, and in which the can opener is very much in evidence!³⁰⁶

      This is the season when I envy you, living in what is I am told called ‘The Deep South’; I suppose you are hardly aware that it is winter? Here we are having a most unpleasant freak season—ice, snow, blizzard, all the joys which we don’t generally get until well after Christmas. However, though we have been pitying ourselves an American visitor from New York told me recently that we don’t know what winter is: and that this is mild weather! So whatever else is in short supply on this unhappy planet, at least it is’nt weather.

      I returned to work in the autumn from a year’s academic leave: which was not as attractive as it sounds, for it was granted me for the express purpose of finishing a considerable literary task, and my nose was kept pretty close to the grindstone. But my brother and I managed to get the best part of a month’s real holiday in Eire, ‘on the other side of the iron curtain’ as we call it, and came back much the better for it.

      It is I’m afraid too late to wish you a happy Christmas but I do send you my very best wishes for a happy and prosperous 1953.

      With many thanks,

      yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO WILLIAM L. KINTER(BOD): TS

      REF.52/519.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 23rd December 1952.

      Dear Mr. Kinter,

Thanks for your kind card. I am so glad you liked The Dawn Treader. Who am I to say whether Grace works in my own stories? One can only be sure on a much humbler level, that if anything is well done, we must say Non nobís.³⁰⁷

      All good wishes.

      Yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO GEORGE SAYER(W):

      Coll. Magd.

      Dec 23rd 1952

      Dear George and Moira

Happy Christmas! I hope what I have to say will not make it happier, though. I’m booked to visit your enchanted house on Jan 1st. But it’s all No Go. We have a visitor (U.S.A.) who will last till then³⁰⁸ and beyond her looms a fellowship examination.

      The whole Vac. is in fact a shambles. Perpetual conversation is a most exhausting thing. I begin to wonder if I have a vocation for La Trappe. I am sick at these numbers. But I love you both: it is one of my most frequent and tonic activities. Blessings upon you.

      Yours

      (what is left of) Jack

      

      TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS 52/103.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 26th December 1952.

      My dear Mrs. Gebbert,

      Many thanks. Doubtless a reproduction of a fresco of the early Middle Ages from a Narnian catacomb?

      With all blessings to you both for the New Year,

      yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

TO BONAMY DOBRÉE (W):³⁰⁹ PC

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. Dec. 30/52

No, no. The context and, a literal translation, will put Wanderer 12 in a different light: ‘There is now no one alive to whom I dare clearly declare my mind: I know for a truth that it is an excellent quality in a man that he should firmly bind in what his heart contains—let him think what he pleases.’³¹⁰

      The poet is not talking about tears at all but about keeping one’s own counsel, holding one’s tongue among strangers. Also I think ‘the high brow’ a mistranslation. Earl means that in prose, but in verse is the heroic word for Man (ANMP).³¹¹ All good wishes.

      C.S.L.

1 Winston Churchill was re-elected Prime Minister in 1951, and on 5 January 1952 he went to Washington, DC, to renew Britain’s ‘special relationship’ with the United States.

2

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