Lewis recounts another overheard “conversation” between a Ghost and a female Spirit named Hilda. The ghost begins by saying that she would not dream of staying in Heaven if she were expected to meet Robert, her husband and Hilda’s brother. She says that she forgives him “as a Christian…but there are some things one can never forget.” She even seems puzzled as to how he came to be in Heaven at all.
She then begins to retell the story of her life with Robert. Her chief complaint was “The ingratitude! It was I who made a man of him! Sacrificed my whole life to him! And what was my reward? Absolute, utter selfishness”. She explains that he was relatively poor man, completely lacking ambition, and that she was the one “who had to drive him every step of the way”. She nagged him to take on extra work, which is regarded as nothing in comparison to her own workload, since she “I had to keep him going all evening…draw him out of himself and brighten him up and make conversation”. He didn’t appreciate her flower arrangements, particularly when she spilled a vase on the manuscript of a book he was writing (something which she “cured him of…in the end”)
She complained about Robert’s attempts to “just slink off by himself every now and then to see what he called his old friends… and leave me to amuse myself!” Instead, she insisted that the friends come to the house instead. She both subtlety manipulated her husband and made his friends feel uncomfortable, managing to drive them away by the end of their first year of marriage.
Upon receiving a promotion, Robert hoped for peace, but his wife now wanted to get a bigger house and was irritated that he doesn’t seem thoroughly enthusiastic about the house-hunting process. She convinced him to buy a house they couldn’t really afford, but she was excited that she could now “entertain properly”. In contrast, she said that Robert “…just set himself to get old and silent and grumpy”, even though he “hadn’t always been like that”. Robert would just sit there, hating her and she grew to hate him too. There appears to have been some issue with the “younger men who came to the house” who liked her better than her “old bear of a husband” and “used to laugh at him”.
Towards the end of Robert’s life, she bought a great Dane and forced him to walk it for his health. She kept hosting parties, “took him for the most wonderful holidays…[and] saw that he didn’t drink too much”. She even allowed him to take up writing again (“It couldn’t do any harm by then”). But in the end, Robert had a nervous breakdown, but the ghost said her conscience is clear – she had done her duty.
Reconsidering, the ghost says that she will, in fact, meet Robert. If Heaven will give her “a free hand”, she’ll “take charge of him again…make something of him…. There’s lots, lots, lots of things I still want to do with him”. When Hilda tells her this is not possible, she becomes desperate: “Please, please! I’m so miserable. I must have someone to – to do things to…. No one minds about me at all [in Hell]. I can’t alter them”. The ghost snaps, saying “I hate you. How can I pay him out if you won’t let me have him?”. Lewis says that “The Ghost which had towered up like a dying candle flame snapped suddenly… and then there was no Ghost to be seen”.
Questions
Q1. How would you describe the ghost? How would you describe the husband?
Q2. Why is the ghost reticent about meeting her husband? What does she think about forgiveness?
Q3. How did she regard the relationship with her husband? What kind of relationship does Christianity imagine?
Q4. What do you think was the ghost’s motivation regarding her husband?
Q5. What did she think of his desire to write a book?
Q6. Why do you think Robert’s ability to be a good host declined?
Q7. Why does the ghost change her mind about seeing Robert? Under what condition? How does she respond?
“Even if we have thousands of acts of great virtue to our credit, our confidence in being heard must be based on God’s mercy and His love for men. Even if we stand at the very summit of virtue, it is by mercy that we shall be saved”
Lewis comes across another of the Bright Person, who turns out to be his hero, the Scottish writer and theologian, George MacDonald. He is invited to sit and talk a while.
Lewis asks him about the Ghosts: “Do any of them stay? Can they stay? Is any real choice offered to them? How do they come to be here?”. MacDonald reminds him of the Refrigerium, mentioned in Prudentius and by Jeremy Taylor. The damned have holidays, either to Heaven or back to Earth. If they go back to earth, they tend to play tricks on mediums, spy on their children or haunt a house they formerly owned. He says “literary Ghosts hang about public libraries to see if anyone’s still reading their books.” He reminds Lewis that the Emperor Trajan came to visit this land and remained.
Lewis expresses his surprise that there “really a way out of Hell into Heaven”. MacDonald tells him it depends on how he’s using the words: “If they leave that grey town behind it will not have been Hell. To any that leaves it, it is Purgatory. And perhaps ye had better not call this country Heaven. Not Deep Heaven, ye understand… Ye can call it the Valley of the Shadow of Life. And yet to those who stay here it will have been Heaven from the first. And ye can call those sad streets in the town yonder the Valley of the Shadow of Death: but to those who remain there they will have been Hell even from the beginning.”
MacDonald tries to explain this further, saying, “both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all this earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been Hell”
Lewis asks if, therefore, it is correct to say “that Heaven and Hell are only states of mind”. MacDonald sternly rejects it. Hell is indeed a state of mind, “every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind-is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind”. However, “Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly”.
Lewis asks if there is a real choice after death, since this doesn’t accord with either Catholic or Protestant theology. MacDonald dismisses this question, telling Lewis that he was not brought here “to study such curiosities. What concerns you is the nature of the choice itself: and that ye can watch them making.”
Lewis asks instead, “What do they choose, these souls who go back”? He is told that “There is always something they insist on keeping, even at the price of misery… Ye see it easily enough in a spoiled child that would sooner miss its play and its supper than say it was sorry and be friends. Ye call it the Sulks. But in adult life it has a hundred fine names…Self-Respect… and Proper Pride.”
Lewis then asks if people are lost through “the undignified vices…mere sensuality”. MacDonald agrees that there are. He says that such people being “by pursuing a real pleasure…But the time comes on when, though the pleasure becomes less and less and the craving fiercer and fiercer, and though he knows that joy can never come that way, yet he prefers to joy the mere fondling of unappeasable lust and would not have it taken from him”
MacDonald tells the story of “Sir Archibald” who visited Heaven and then returned to the Grey Town. On earth he’d been interested in nothing but survival, beginning “by being philosophical, but in the end he took up Psychical Research”. He dies and comes to the plains of Heaven “and there was no power in the universe would have prevented him staying and going on to the mountains… [But] this country was no use to him at all. Everyone here had ‘survived’ already… His occupation was clean gone”. MacDonald points out that “if he would only have admitted that he’d mistaken the means for the end and had a good laugh at himself he could have begun all over again like a little child and entered into joy. But he would not do that”.
Lewis expresses amazement at this, but his teacher responds that “It is nearer to such as you than ye think”. He reminds him of men “who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself… [or] a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor?”
Lewis now asks why, if the Solid People were full of love, they did not go down into Hell to rescue the Ghosts. He is told that he will understand this better before he leaves, but that for the time-being, he must understand that they “have come further for the sake of the Ghosts than ye can understand… Every one of us has interrupted that journey [into the mountains] and retraced immeasurable distances to come down today on the mere chance of saving some Ghosts”. He says that it would do not good to go further, even if it were possible, since “The sane would do no good if they made themselves mad to help madmen.”
Jack asks about those who never even get into the bus, but is told that “everyone who wishes it does. Never fear”. MacDonald says that there are only two kinds of people in the end, those who say to God “Thy will be done” and those to whom God says “Thy will be done”. He says that “All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.”
At this point, they hear a Ghost complaining at enormous speed to one of the Solid People. The Solid Spirit tried to speak, but never got in a word. Lewis tells MacDonald that such a women “doesn’t seem to me to be the sort of soul that ought to be even in danger of damnation. She isn’t wicked: she’s only a silly, garrulous old woman who has got into a habit of grumbling”. MacDonald says the issue is “whether she is a grumbler, or only a grumble. If there is a real woman-even the least trace of one-still there inside the grumbling, it can be brought to life again. If there’s one wee spark under all those ashes, we’ll blow it till the whole pile is red and clear. But if there’s nothing but ashes we’ll not go on blowing them in our own eyes forever”. Leaning on MacDonald’s arm, they walk away.
They see many more ghosts. The most pitiful one they saw was a female Ghost who “supposed herself still capable of attracting the Solid People… If a corpse already liquid with decay had arisen from the coffin, smeared its gums with lipstick, and attempted a flirtation, the result could not have been more appalling”
Lewis asks MacDonald about the earlier incident with the Unicorns and he says that “Ye will have divined that he meant to frighten her; not that fear itself could make her less a Ghost, but if it took her mind a moment off herself, there might, in that moment, be a chance. I have seen them saved so.”
We are told that they meet several Ghosts who come to Heaven “only in order to tell the Celestials about Hell… as if to tinge Heaven with infernal images and colours had been the only purpose for which they came”. Some were even more extreme, wanting “to extend Hell, to bring it bodily, if they could, into Heaven… [some] urged the blessed spirits…to seize Heaven ‘for their own’… planning Ghosts who implored them to… smooth out the horrible grass and moss and heather with asphalt. There were materialistic Ghosts who informed the immortals that they were deluded: there was no life after death, and this whole country was a hallucination. There were Ghosts, plain and simple: mere bogies”. Finally, there were “grotesque phantoms in which hardly a trace of the human form remained; monsters who had faced the journey…only to spit and gibber out in one ecstasy of hatred their envy and (what is harder to understand) their contempt, of joy”.
MacDonald says that he’d even seen that kind converted, while those less obviously damned have gone back.
While standing by some bushes, they see one of the Solid People talking with a Ghost who had been a famous artist on earth. The Artist Ghost is intent on painting the view, but the Solid Spirit, himself a former artist that “Looking comes first.” He explains that his in his early days of painting, his friend’s success in painting was that he could convey glimpses of Heaven, but here he has the thing itself. He goes on to tell the ghost that after spending longer in this country, “there’ll be some things which you’ll see better than anyone else. One of the things you’ll want to do will be to tell us about them. But not yet”
As the ghost continues to ask about painting, the Solid Spirit speaks about how “Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him. For it doesn’t stop at being interested in paint, you know. They sink lower-become interested in their own personalities and then in nothing but their own reputations”. The ghost assures him that this will not be a problem for him. The Spirit says that any traces of this “will be cured when you come to the fountain… up there in the mountains…. Very cold and clear… When you have drunk of it you forget forever all proprietorship in your own works. You enjoy them just as if they were someone else’s: without pride and without modesty.”
As they start moving towards the mountain, the ghost reassures himself with the fact that in Heaven “there’ll always be interesting people to meet…“. He is disappointed to find out that his friend doesn’t know whether Claude or Cezanne will be at the mountain. There are no “famous” people in Heaven, at least in earthly terms. The ghost comforts himself, saying “One must be content with one’s reputation among posterity…” but then is horrified to discover that they are both completely forgotten on Earth. This is too much for the ghost, who returns to the Grey Town, determined to maintain his legacy.
Questions
Q1. How does MacDonald explain the presence of the ghosts in Heaven?
Q2. In what way is evil retrospective?
Q3. Are Heaven and Hell states of mind?
Q4. According to MacDonald, what’s the same basic reason why ghosts return to the Grey Town?
Q5. Why did Sir Archibald return to the Grey Town?
Q6. Lewis asks why Heaven doesn’t invade Hell. What is George’s response?
Q7. Why does Lewis think the Complaining Ghost unworthy of Hell? How does MacDonald respond? What does he say about those who go to Hell?
Q8. What do you make of the female ghost who tries to attract the Solid People?
Q9. They meet a number of ghosts who come to Heaven with the express purpose of bringing Hell there. What is their motivation?
Q10. Why does the Solid Spirit urge the Artistic Ghost to refrain from painting for the time-being?
Q11. Why is the Artistic Ghost disappointed with Heaven?
Q12. Why does the Artistic ultimately leave Heaven?
After his interaction with the Hard-Bitten Ghost, Lewis is left sitting on a stone by the river feeling utterly miserable at the thought that the Solid People may, in fact, be malevolent, and he wrestled with the question as to why the Solid People did not do more to help those in the Grey Town. Could it be that they just came down to the plain to mock the ghosts?
He thinks of the punishment of Tantalus in deepest Hades, who is made to stand in a pool of water underneath a fruit tree’s branches, with the fruit always just out of reach and the water receding before he could drink it. He thinks of Revelation 14:11. He thinks of William Cowper who, upon realizing that he is dreaming and is, in fact, doomed to perdition says “These are the sharpest arrows in His quiver”.
The sense of danger he felt upon coming to this land returns with full force. “Terror whispered, ‘This is no place for you'”. He walks away from the river towards a thicket of trees in the hope of some kind of safety.
Thirty minutes later, he comes into “a little clearing with some bushes in the centre”. A Ghost enters, “a well-dressed woman…but its shadows of finery looked ghastly in the morning light”. She tries to hide by pressing herself against the bushes.
One of the Bright People enters and the Ghost squeals at him to go away. The ghost points out that she’s heading in the wrong direction, away from the mountains. He suggests that she could lean on him in the journey to ease the hurt of her feet.
The ghost responds that she can’t go “out there among all those people, like this” and says she’d “never have come at all if I’d known you were all going to be dressed like that”. When asked to explain herself she says “How can I go out like this among a lot of people with real solid bodies? It’s far worse than going out with nothing on would have been on earth. Have everyone staring through me.”
The Solid Person explains that “we were all a bit ghostly when we first arrived, you know. That’ll wear off. Just come out and try.” The ghost says she’d “rather die”. She says she wish she’d never been born and asks “What are we born for?”, to which the ghost responds “For infinite happiness… You can step out into it at any moment”
The ghost continues to protest, but the Solid Person compares shame to liquids too hot to touch, but not too hot to drink: “Shame is like that. If you will accept it-if you will drink the cup to the bottom-you will find it very nourishing: but try to do anything else with it and it scalds.”
Although momentarily tempted to trust the Solid Person, but returns to her complaining. The Spirit asks “Could you, only for a moment, fix your mind on something not
yourself?” but to no avail. He therefore blows a horn which results in “A herd of unicorns came thundering through the glades: twenty-seven hands high the smallest of them and white as swans but for the red gleam in eyes and nostrils and the flashing indigo of their horns” The Ghost screams and Lewis says he thinks she makes a bolt towards the Spirit, but he himself fled from the scene.
Questions
Q1. Why is Lewis feeling dejected at the beginning of this chapter? What questions does he have?
Q2. What is the problem with the ghost he sees in this chapter? What is her primary concern?
Q3. What does the Solid Person offer to the ghost? What does he say will happen in time?
(Explanation: While crossing your arms over your chest signals that you cannot receive Communion in the Latin Church, it is, in fact, the normal way for Byzantines to walk up to receive the Eucharist)
Made uncomfortable by the Water-Giant, Lewis leaves and continues to make his way downstream again. He meets a “tall…a lean hard-bitten [ghost] with grev hair and a gruff, but not uneducated voice” leaning against a tree.
The ghost asks Lewis if he’s going back and Lewis says he’s unsure. The ghost explains that he is since he’s “seen about all there is to see.” He just came up to “have a look around”. He did the same on earth: “Pekin… Niagara Falls, the Pyramids, Salt Lake City, the Taj Mahal” and didn’t think much of any of them, claiming that they were “All run by the same people…a World Combine”.
He’s exceptionally disappointed with Hell, saying “They lead you to expect red fire and devils and all sorts of interesting people sizzling on grids… but when you get there its’s just like any other town”.
The Hard-Bitten Ghost claims that there’s no possibility of staying in Heaven since “You can’t eat the fruit and you can’t drink the water and it takes you all your time to walk on the grass… All that idea of staying is only an advertisement stunt.”
After complaining about how uncomfortable Heaven is, Lewis said that “There seems to be some idea that if one stays here one would get…acclimatised.” The ghost rejects this, saying he’d been told that lie his entire life. In the nursery he was told that if he were good, he’d be happy, at school they said Latin would get easier, he was told marriage would would “settle down”, during the World Wars that peace would eventually come.
Our ghost is a conspiracy theorist. He goes on to claim that, just in the same way “[Mummie] and Father were the same firm”, that Heaven and Hell are run by the same people and it’s an elaborate joke. He argues that Heaven and Hell can’t be at war, otherwise Heaven “would attack and sweep the Town out of existence”.
After complaining that there’s nothing to do, either in Heaven or Hell, Lewis asks the ghost would he would like to do if he had a choice. The ghost rejects the entire idea, saying “It’s up to the Management to find something that doesn’t bore us, isn’t it? It’s their job. Why should we do it for them?” He goes on to say that the same thing was wrong with “the parsons and moralists” who “keep on asking us to alter ourselves. But if the people who run the show are so clever and so powerful, why don’t they find something to suit their public?” Regarding the idea of becoming “solider”, the Hard-Bitten Ghost cynically asks Lewis what he would think of a hotel which told you that you’d grow to enjoy eating bad eggs eventually!
The ghost prepares to leave and asks Lewis if he’ll join him. Lewis cheekily responds that
“There doesn’t seem to be much point in going anywhere on your showing”. When he comments that at least it’s not raining here, the Hard-Bitten Ghost points out at that it’s bound to soon and, when it does rain, the raindrops “will make a hole in you, like a machine-gun bullet”. Convinced that “they” won’t catch him that way, our ghost leaves.
Questions
Q1. What do you make of the Hard-Bitten Ghost?
Q2. Why do you think the ghost was so unimpressed with everything on earth?
Q3. Why is the ghost so unimpressed with Hell?
Q4. Why is the ghost so unimpressed with Heaven?
Q5. Why does he reject the idea that the ghosts will become solider over time?
Q6. Why does the ghost not think Heaven and Hell are at war? Why does he think they are colluding?
Q7. Why does the ghost not suggest anything he’d like to do?
Happy Memorial Day! Today’s song is “Unredeemed” by Selah…
