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C. S. Lewis. Autograph letter signed ("C. S. Lewis") to "Mr. Scudamore." The Kilns, Headington Quarry, Oxford, August 23, 19...
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Description
An exasperated letter from C. S. Lewis to a correspondent he has apparently offended: "...I'm blind as a bat in regards to the merits of Byron, Thackeray, Dumas, Evelyn Waugh, and all picaresque novels. I've met people who can't read Alice - or Huckleberry Finn - or Ovid. Live and let live."
C. S. Lewis. Autograph letter signed ("C. S. Lewis") to "Mr.
Scudamore." The Kilns, Headington Quarry, Oxford, August 23,
1957.2 pages, 8vo (7 x 4 1/2 inches). Written in blue ink on one stationary sheet; quarter morocco folding case.
UNPUBLISHED AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED BY LEWIS, responding to a correspondent that Lewis has apparently offended.
The letter reads, in part: "Dear Mr. Scudamore, I wonder why it is so difficult to indicate that one is not v. interested in something without giving the impression that one is somehow disparaging those who are?... Are there only two possible attitudes - to share an interest or condemn it? Of course I never said or implied or thought you were a fool. (I would think you a critical fool if you did not prefer Dante to Spenser!) Obviously something in my letter has nettled you. I assure you nothing but courtesy was intended. But I am very possibly not at the top of my epistolary form just now. I am newly married and my wife is dreadfully ill; and I have discovered, in my own inhabitation, a harmful disease of the bones. So give me a fool's pardon (or a sick and doped man's pardon) if I have offended... why bother about Spenser? No one can relish everything. I'm blind as a bat in regards to the merits of Byron, Thackeray, Dumas, Evelyn Waugh, and all picaresque novels. I've met people who can't read Alice - or Huckleberry Finn - or Ovid. Live and let live. Yours sincerely, C.S. Lewis."
"Mr. Scudamore" is presumably a W. K. Scudamore, with whom Lewis is known to have corresponded. At least one letter from Lewis to Scudamore has been published [see Collected Letters, volume III, pp. 876-877) regarding the identification of characters in Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene with contemporary (sixteenth-century) figures. While the contents of the letter from Scudamore to Lewis in response to the published letter from Lewis (of Aug. 19th 1957) are unknown, it may be inferred that the offense Scudamore has taken - and to which Lewis responds in the present letter - stem from the two lines in Lewis's letter of Aug. 19th: "In general, however, as one who loves F.Q. [The Faerie Queene], I regard the historical allegory as a regrettable error of Spenser's and take not interest I the attempts to unravel it. I fancy they are chiefly made by those who find the poem itself a bore - we begin thinking about the private life of the actors when the play ceases to grip us."
Condition: Lightly creased along old folds, small pinpricks in top margin, though not affecting text, a few spots.
References: Not in Letters of C. S. Lewis (edited by W. H. Lewis, 1966) or Collected Letters (edited by Walter Hooper), and apparently unpublished.
Provenance: Mr. Scudamore (recipient); acquired from Maurice F. Neville Rare Books, Santa Barbara, in 1984. From the William A. Strutz Library.
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Auction Info
2024 June 27 Important English and American Literature: The William A. Strutz Library, Part I, Rare Books Signature® Auction #6295 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
June, 2024
27th
Thursday
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