Lewis on Tolkien

"He is a very great man, His published works (both imaginative & scholarly) ought to fill a shelf by now; but he's one of those people who is never satisfied with a MS. The mere suggestion of publication provokes the reply 'Yes, I'll just look through it and give it a few finishing touches' -- wh. means that he really begins the whole thing over again.

Letters - Oct 29th 1944. 

Bag End

This ancient trackway leads to Bag End Farm. This farm was owned by the Tolkien's Aunt, Jane Neave. In 1923 the young Tolkien, recovering from pneumonia, spent some protracted time here.

Never underestimate the power of the Midlands countryside over an impressionable young mind... a couple of decades later, Bag End resurfaced in The Hobbit.
 

Charles Williams to his wife

Shall I fall in love with you all over again?
Twice – with you then as with you now,
Either co-inherent in either, that brow
In this and this in that, but both now
Known in the one, and a double glory so.

Charles Williams to his wife after looking at her photograph
Letter of 29 November 1944.

Williams on 'Exchange'

Charles talked and wrote a great deal about the practice of "exchange". It was one of the root rules of the Company. One made a pact and picked up the other person's fear or grief or pain and carried it oneself. This was the theory at any rate. The trouble was that, while the theory was irrefutable, the practice was apt to be dubious.... but how, I asked myself, was I to "present myself shyly to Almighty God in exchange for..."?

Letters to Lelange (Kent State UP), Page 54