by richarddorset » January 7th, 2006, 8:51 pm
I have two letters from C.S Lewis. He wrote them to Dr Margaret 'Peggy' Pollard in 1954. I intend to sell them soon, but this seems to be an appropriate place to share the contents for the first time.
Unfortunately C.S Lewis's handwriting is not the easiest to read, so there will be gaps. I haven't the foggiest what it all means, but maybe some scholars out there might.
Here is the first letter's contents:
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C.S. Lewis
Magdalen College
Oxford, England
May 22nd 54
Dear Mrs P______
Thank you very much for the cream; I ought to have thanked you before, but we have been having a political crisis in our Faculty and life has been a whirl. I should jolly well hope there were uncovenanted monies - after all Dante put R__? and Trajan in heaven - and I daresay Greene is getting it all right. Non-existent saints are a problem (for you if not for hum-drum little Profs like me) which I never thought of. But after all non-existent gods, if affected to --? good heart, probably have done quite a lot to : I mean, the real God, in His infinite courtesy, re-addresses the letters to Himself as they are dealt with like the ?-? of the mail. Balaam's ass, along with the ass of the flight into Egypt and the ass of the entry into Jerusalem all have a paddock and stables (prob. the Stable of the Nativity 'assumed' for that purpose) just outside the walls of the celestial city and hee-haw ad majorum. St Francis often looks in with some glorified thistles. They are famously snug. Only up there their braying is more melodious than the song of a nightingale. I hope we may meet there. Perhaps you will know me, though. Perhaps people like me, who hardly make the grade for ?-? heaven are turned into celestial deities. This would fit your definition of limbo, you see; a state of perfect narural happiness. I'll give you a ride willingly if all this comes off.
Yours
C.S Lewis
<picture of head of an ass> [/img]