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lack Lewis

       TO SARAH NEYIAN (T): PC

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. Ian 26/53

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO MARY VAN DEUSEN (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. Jan. 26th 1953

      Dear Mrs. Van Deusen

      Confession, of course, you can have without joining anything. I think it is a good thing for most of us and use it myself.

      That is v. good news about really good people beginning to go into government jobs, and at a sacrifice. I have always thought of how that the greatest of all dangers to your country is the fear that politics were not in the hands of your best types and that this, in the long run, might prove ruinous. A change in that, the beginning of what might be called a volunteer aristocracy, might have incalculable effects. More power to your myriad elbows!

      With love to all.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

      REF.53/53.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 26th January 1953.

      My dear Edward,

      Many thanks for your letter of the 21st: and for the welcome news that a ‘guided missile’ is even now winging its way from Highland Avenue to Magdalen College. Yes, anticipation v. realization is a very old problem, is’nt it? Certainly there is a time when realization always falls flat, as compared with anticipation; but one of the advantages of old age–naturally a stripling of 45 like you won’t appreciate this–is that anticipation comes to be pitched so low that realization generally exceeds it.

      We will certainly take you at your word and let you have a critical review of the contents of package 204; but as I cannot at the moment remember ever having had a useless article in an Allen parcel, I don’t think there will be much to say except ‘very many thanks’. Yes, things seem to be looking up a bit in the ration world here; there is even talk of de-rationing meat in 1954-a pretty safe thing though to say, for by that time the politicians will have found some excellent excuse for not doing so. Meat, butter, and sugar are still on rations over here: meat and sugar because we can’t afford to buy them, and butter because there is a world shortage–or so our papers say. Though how this can be so, I don’t quite see. Are you short of it in U.S.A.?

      It is heartening and rebuking to think of your father rising superior to his sufferings and producing champion dahlias; and is, as you say, a sermon on the value of work as an alternative to worry. May he long be spared to continue at his gardening.

      With anticipatory thanks for the parcel, and with all best wishes to you and your mother from both of us.

      Yours

      Jack Lewis

      

       TO NATHAN COMFORT STARR (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford Feb 3rd 1953

      Dear Starr

      When do you revisit Europe? Don’t stay out yonder till you grow yellow. And try to correct your young friend’s idea of what it wd. be like meeting someone who’d been to Heaven!

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