Letters from CSL

From 1950 to 1963 (the year of his death) C.S. Lewis kept up a correspondence with an American lady named Mary. The letters from Lewis were edited by Wheaton College professor Clyde Kilby and published as Letters to an American Lady in 1967. My mom has a hardcover first edition (very hard to find) and I've been enjoying it!

Kilby didn't reveal Mary's last name and he excised certain personal, family details to protect her exact identity. Kilby wrote in the preface:

At her own request, the identity of Lewis's correspondent is withheld. A widow four years older than Lewis, she was described by one friend as "very charming, gracious, a southern aristocratic lady who loves to talk and speaks well." Once financially independent, she had fallen upon privation and, what was worse, serious family problems. In due course Lewis arranged through his American publishers a small stipend for her, and this continues to the present. About the time the correspondence began she turned from the Episcopal Church to the Roman Catholic. Twice she had been so near death that the last rites of the church were administered. Though I have occasionally felt the necessity of a footnote, I believe her interests (except the family problems, which are excised) explain themselves. She is a writer of reviews, articles, poems and stories.

A Christlike patience and kindness shines through in Lewis's letters to Mary, even when he gently admonishes or corrects her. Lewis probably wouldn't have made a good member of the clergy, but he understood that every member of the church is called to be a minister, thus, he's always concerned with edifying his reader and commending Christ. He received literally hundreds of letters a year -- and even though it took away from his other pursuits -- he always found time to answer them.

Lewis's forthrightness about the dark side of life shines through as well. In one letter he closes by saying, "It'll be nice when we all wake up from this life which has indeed something like nightmare about it." And Lewis's sarcastic wit is on display when he writes of the reviewers at Time magazine, "To call them liars would be as undeserved a compliment as to say that a dog was bad at arithmetic." Most of the time though they write about more mundane topics like the weather or travel plans or the National Health Service, but when Jack writes to Mary (the letters get less formal after several years) about spiritual matters, one is reminded that here is one of the wisest writers on the sacred that ever lived. As in the little gem below. I'll be sharing more of these in the future. Enjoy!

The Kilns,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford
19/3/56

Dear Mary

A line in haste about the bits underlined in your
letter (which I enclose for reference). Don't be too easily
convinced that God really wants you to do all sorts of work
you needn't do. Each must do his duty "in that state of life
to which God has called him". Remember that a belief in
the virtues of doing for doing's sake is characteristically
feminine, characteristically American, and characteristically
modern: so that three veils may divide you from the correct
view! There can be intemperance in work just as in drink.
What feels like zeal may be only fidgets or even the flattering
of one's self-importance. As MacDonald says, "In holy things
may be unholy greed". And by doing what "one's station and its
duties" does not demand, one can make oneself less fit for the
duties it does demand and so commit some injustice.
Just you give Mary a little chance as well as Martha!

Yours
Jack