The Archangel Fragment: Identifying and Interpreting C. S. Lewis’s “Cryptic Note”

Abstract

According to Dickieson and Starr, “On a blank page at the end of Stephens book, where the open space was apparently tempting, Brown found this cryptic note written in Lewis’s hand.” That note, the key link to the Bodleian fragment, reads as follows: "I tried v. hard to get hold of the letters on the other side—from the archangel to the guardian angel. But the only bit that ever camethrough didn’t make much sense. It was 'The children continued instructing the bears in the bend of the great river.'" However, for reasons they could not have known at that time, Starr and Dickieson misidentified the source of the mysterious passage. This present essay will prove that the source of the “cryptic note” is not Here Are Ladies, explain how and why that misidentification occurred, identify the actual source of the passage, show that the corrected source identification more definitely links the cryptic passage to The Screwtape Letters, and suggest the significance of this identification for dating the Archangel Fragment itself.