The co-hosts begin reading Letters to an American Lady, Jack’s correspondence with Mary Willis Shelburne. In today’s episode they cover the letters from 1950-1953.
S7E3 – LAL 1 – “Dear Mrs. Shelburne…” (Download)
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Show Notes
Introduction
Quote-of-the-week
“Let us by all means pray for one another: it is perhaps the only from of “‘work for re-union’ which never does anything but good.”
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
Chit-Chat
- Matt is looking forward to changing gears this season
- Andrew is Back from Romania, SCCSLS, Patriotism
- David is having a boys weekend with his son, Alexander!
Toast
- Matt: Caffeine
- Andrew: Taste of San Antonio
- David: Tea
- Matt toasted Patreon supporter Alex Hale
Discussion
01. “Preface”
- Clyde Samuel Kilby (1902-1986) was an American writer and English professor, best known for his scholarship on the Inklings. Professor at Wheaton College (Illinois) for most of his life and Kilby founded the Marion E. Wade Center. Also edited Christian Reflections, Brothers and Friends, wrote Images of Salvation
- Don’t skip it! It gives us some context for the letters… Lewis was 51yo Published 20 books He’s written… The Problem of Pain Miracles The Screwtape Letters The Ransom Trilogy …and publishes The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe that year He says that these letters are going to cover the major events of his life after 1950, particularly… …his switch to Cambridge …his marriage to Joy …her death We also find out about his correspondent, Mary: She requested that her identity be withheld when the letters were donated to the Wade and the book printed Widow four years Lewis’ senior Convert to Catholicism Writer of articles, poems, and stories Described as: “very charming, gracious, a southern aristocratic lady who loves to talk and speaks well.”
- The character of Lewis
These letters accentuate rather than change the character of Lewis as it is generally known. In them are his antipathy to journalism, advertising, snobbery, psychoanalysis, to the false and the patent, to wheels and stir and “administration” and the multitude of petty or insidious practices that sap personal and national freedom.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
- Lewis’ willingness to write responses despite EVERYTHING else we know…
- Letter writing is a lost art!
These letters accentuate rather than change the character of Lewis as it is generally known. In them are his antipathy to journalism, advertising, snobbery, psychoanalysis, to the false and the patent, to wheels and stir and “administration” and the multitude of petty or insidious practices that sap personal and national freedom.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
“Lewis hews the sharpest of lines between the utter and continuous practice of Christianity and our feelings. We are to do and let our feelings be as they may.”
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
02. “Humour”
Thank you for your most kind and encouraging letter. I should need to be either of angelic humility or diabolic pride not to be pleased at all the things you say about my books
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
03. “Conversion”
…very near to one another, but not because I am at all on the Rome-ward frontier of my own communion. I believe that, in the present divided state of Christendom, those who are at the heart of each division are all closer to one another than those who are at the fringes.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
…how much more one has in common with a real Jew or Muslim than with a wretched liberalising, occidentalised specimen of the same categories.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
Let us by all means pray for one another: it is perhaps the only from of “‘work for re-union’ which never does anything but good.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
04. “First Editions”
I am afraid I have no idea what the first editions of Screwtape or the Divorce sell at: I haven’t even got a first of the former myself. But you would be foolish to spend a cent more on them than the published prices: both belong to the worst war-period and are scrubby little things on rotten paper – your American editions are far nicer
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
05. “Angels”
Those orders are engaged wholly in contemplation, not with ruling the lower creatures
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
06. “Making of a fairy godmother”
a v. blessed Easter. I expect Jeannie will grow up the most devoted grand-daughter ever. Your silly son-in-law doesn’t realise the charm of forbidden fruit: a grandmother one is forbidden to see rises almost into the status of a fairy godmother! Apropos of horrid
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
07. “Picture please!”
Ask me again at a more favourable hour!—if you still have the fancy for this very undecorative object.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
I’d sooner pray for God’s mercy than for His justice on my friends, my enemies, and myself.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
08. “Decline in the Church”
I am afraid it is certainly true in England that Christians are in the minority. But remember, the change from, say, thirty years ago, consists largely in the fact that nominal Christianity has died out, so that only those who really believe now profess. The old conventional church-going of semi-believers or almost total unbelievers is a thing of the past. Whether the real thing is rarer than it was would be hard to say.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
Yes, we are always told that the present widespread apostasy must be the fault of the clergy, not of the laity. If I were a parson I should always try to dwell on the faults of the clergy: being a layman, I think it more wholesome to concentrate on those of the laity. I am rather sick of the modern assumption that, for all events, “WE”, the people, are never responsible: it is always our rulers, or ancestors, or parents, or education, or anybody but precious “US”. WE are apparently perfect and blameless. Don’t you believe it.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
09. “Writes like a woman!”
[“I am so glad you saw your daughter. I can’t understand that whole business. One is always told over here that America is a country where Women are on top: but the real evidence I have (and I’ve had a good deal by now) suggests a degree of male tyranny that is quite unknown here.”]
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
…did the reviewers mean “writes like a woman” to be dispraise? Are the poems of Sappho or, if it comes to that, the Magnificat, to be belittled on the same ground?
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
I approve of all that sort of thing immensely and I was deeply moved by all I heard of it; but I’m not a man for crowds and Best Clothes. The weather was frightful.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
You and I who still enjoy fairytales, have less reason to wish actual childhood back. We have kept its pleasures and added some grown-up ones as well.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
10. “Wanna hear my poem?”
You know, over here people did not get that fairytale feeling about the coronation. What impressed most who saw it was the fact that the Queen herself appeared to be quite overwhelmed by the sacramental side of it. Hence, in the spectators, a feeling of (one hardly knows how to describe it)—awe—pity—pathos—mystery. The pressing of that huge, heavy crown on that small, young head becomes a sort of symbol of the situation of humanity itself: humanity called by God to be His vice-regent and high priest on earth, yet feeling so inadequate. As if He said “In my inexorable love I shall lay upon the dust that you are glories and dangers and responsibilities beyond your understanding”. Do you see what I mean? One has missed the whole point unless one feels that we have all been crowned and that coronation is somehow, if splendid, a tragic splendour. . . .
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
11. “Finding Saints”
I am so glad you gave me an account of the lovely priest. How little people know who think that holiness is dull. When one meets the real thing (and perhaps, like you, I have met it only once) it is irresistible. If even 10% of the world’s population had it, would not the whole world be converted and happy before a year’s end?
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
Yes, I too think there is lots to be said for being no longer young; and I do most heartily agree that it is just as well to be past the age when one expects or desires to attract the other sex.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
…the trouble in the modern world is that there’s a tendency to rush… on to that age as soon as possible and then keep them there as late as possible, thus losing all the real value of the other parts of life in a senseless, pitiful attempt to prolong what, after all, is neither its wisest, its happiest, or most innocent period. I suspect merely commercial motives are behind it all: for it is at the showing-off age that birds of both sexes have least sales-resistance!
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
12. “Voluntary Sufferings”
Oh I do so sympathise with you: job-hunting, even in youth, is a heartbreaking affair and to have to go back to it now must be simply—I was going to say “simply Hell”, but no one who is engaged in prayer and humility, as you are, can be there, so I’d better say “Purgatory”
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
We are told that even those tribulations which fall upon us by necessity, if embraced for Christ’s sake, become as meritorious as voluntary sufferings and every missed meal can be converted into a fast if taken in the right way
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
…poverty frightens me more than anything else except large spiders and the tops of cliffs… I am a panic-y person about money
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
Every missed meal can be converted into a fast if taken in the right way.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
13. “An answer to prayer”
And then, as if by magic (indeed it is the whitest magic in the world) the letter comes to-day. Not (lest I should indulge in folly) that your relief had not in fact occurred before my prayer, but as if, in tenderness for my puny faith God moved me to pray with especial earnestness just before He was going to give me the thing. How true that our prayers are really His prayers; He speaks to Himself through us.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
“Our prayers are God talking to Himself” is only Romans, VIII, 26–27
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
Romans, VIII, 26–27
“that anxiety is not only a pain which we must ask God to assuage but also a weakness we must ask Him to pardon—for He’s told us take no care for the morrow. The news that you had been almost miraculously guarded from that sin and spared that pain and hence the good hope that we shall all find the like mercy when our bad times come, has strengthened me much.”
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
14. “Christmas Anxiety”
do you find that the great secret (if one can do it) is not to care whether you sleep? Sleep is a jade who scorns her suitors but woos her scorners.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
I feel exactly as you do about the horrid commercial racket they have made out of Christmas. I send no cards and give no presents except to children.
C. S. Lewis, Letters to an American Lady
Wrap-Up
Concluding Thoughts
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