At the Kilns: Letters to a Friend

Arthur Greeves

I recently borrowed from the library a collection of letters by C.S. Lewis called They Stand Together: The Letters of C.S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914-1963). Arthur Greeves was one of C.S. Lewis oldest and most cherished of friends. Next to his brother W.H. Lewis or his wife Joy Davidman, I do not think C.S. Lewis had a closer friend in his life. The book contains the nearly all Lewis’s correspondence with Greeves during the course of his lifetime. The book, which is currently out-of-print, runs over 500 pages.

I am sporadically reading through the weighty tome, and I am utterly amazed at Lewis’s intimacy, candidacy, and his fluidity of writing. His gift for communication is clearly evident in even his earliest letters to Greeves.

One of the biographical aspects that struck me was the impression I get that Lewis liked the “look of books” almost as much as the content of the books he read. It seems that he and Arthur purchased and repurchased books in various editions based on their aesthetically pleasing binding (I must admit that I have done the same thing myself...). Most people who are familiar with Lewis are aware that he read copiously. However, it is still astonishing how much Lewis read. He frequently comments to Greeves about his reading such-and-such a book or re-reading such-and-such an author. He read classical literature, he read widely in English literature and European literature, and he read a considerable amount of contemporary literature.

In one letter to Arthur, Lewis describes his present enjoyment while reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He recommends that Arthur read the book himself. He writes,

I strongly advise you to try it. Its length, which deters some people, will not frighten you: you will only rejoice, when the right time comes, —say after tea some day next autumn when fires are still a novelty—at that old, delicious feeling of embarkation on a long voyage, which one seldom gets now.

After reading these words, I was struck with a longing for a cool autumn night in order to begin my own “embarkation” into the world of Tolstoy's War and Peace.

All of the letters I have read are compelling reading. It is particularly striking to read about his thoughts on Christianity as they develop from atheism to unshakable faith in Jesus Christ. In one particularly famous letter, we learn about Lewis’s late night “memorable talk” about Christianity while strolling Addison’s walk with Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. In the letter, dated October 1st, 1931, Lewis writes to Greeves,

How deep I am just now beginning to see: for I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ—in Christianity. I will try to explain another time. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it.

Hopefully this most fascinating and incredibly valuable collection of letters will find its way back into print. For my present copy of the book, well, it is due back to the library today.