Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963. Walter Hooper

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СКАЧАТЬ Mrs Van Deusen may have suggested sending Lewis the autobiography of the American political writer Whittaker Chambers (1901-61), best known for his accusation and testimony against Alger Hiss (1904-96), the architect of the Yalta Conference and Secretary General of the San Francisco conference that created the United Nations. Chambers’ autobiography, Witness, was published in 1952.

272 Blamires had applied for a job in Edinburgh.

273 The US edition of Mere Christianity was published by Macmillan of New York on 11 November 1952.

274 The Voyage of the ‘Dawn Treader’.

275 During the autumn of 1952 the Church Times featured a number of pencil drawings of ‘Portraits of Personalities’; that of Lewis, by Stanley Parker, appeared in the Church Times, CXXXV (21 November 1952), p. 844.

276 This was possibly the working title for an intended collection of Lewis’s essays.

277 Serena is a young lady whose adventures are recounted in Spenser, The Faerie Queene, Book VI.

278 The Red Cross Knight.

279 Spenser, The Faerie Queene, I, x, 61, 8: ‘Thou Saint George shalt called bee.’

280 There is no evidence that this story was ever published.

281 H. G. Wells, Kipps (1905).

282 e.g. H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds (1898), ch. 6: ‘You may figure to yourself the hum of voices along the road in the gloaming.’

283 Christian Behaviour (New York: Macmillan, 1943).

284 ‘Luke 11:26: the last state of that man is worse than the first’ Matthew 12:45.

* There are v. important exceptions. Also, on further thought, I don’t believe much in ‘French, American, or English people.’ There are only individuals really.

285 i.e., Joy Gresham.

286 For a while Joy and Bill Gresham dabbled in Ron Hubbard’s philosophy of Dianetics or spiritual healing. See Lyle Dorsett, And God Came In: The Extraordinary Story of Joy Davidman, Her Life and Marriage to C. S. Lewis (New York: Macmillan, 1983), ch. 3, p. 71.

287 See the biography of the Honourable Phyllis Elinor Sandeman (1895-1986) in CL II, p. 788n. Mrs Sandeman was brought up in Lyme Park, one of the most magnificent houses in Cheshire. Home to the Legh family for 600 years, the original Tudor house was transformed by the Venetian architect, Giacomo Leoni, into an Italianate palace. In 1946 Mrs Sandeman’s brother, the 3rd Baron Newton, Richard Legh, gave Lyme Park to the National Trust.

296 Lewis had put his finger on ‘Mrs’ while the ink was still wet.

288 Phyllis Sandeman, Treasure on Earth: A Country House at Christmas, illustrated by the author (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1952), an account of a Christmas spent at Lyme Park during her childhood.

289 Percy Lubbock, Earlham (1922).

290 ‘we others’.

291 Alfred, Lord Tennyson, The Lady of Shalott, And Other Poems (1833), ‘The Lotus Eaters’, IV, 8-9: ‘All things are taken from us, and become/Portions and parcels of the dreadful Past.’

292 Sandeman, Treasure on Earth, p. 26: ‘It was a large lofty room with walls of darkly gloomy cedar-wood, Corinthian pilasters arranged in pairs dividing the long panels and each of these adorned down its centre with swags of elaborate wood-carvings. From looped garlands and palm leaves and cupids’ heads hung a host of diverse objects, bunches of fruit and flowers, musical instruments, trophies, fish and birds, all carved to the life in soft yellow pear-wood by the hand of the master—the one and only Grinling Gibbons.’ In Mrs Sandeman’s book the owners of the house–the Newtons–are given the pseudonym ‘Vayne’. Grinling Gibbons (1648-1721) was the most famous English woodcarver of all time.

293 ibid., p. 62: ‘They would begin with Grace said by the Canon and then the meal would proceed eaten off silver plates, not so pleasant as the china service because scratchy under the knife and fork.’

294 ibid., p. 83: ‘The Long Gallery…could be a little frightening at night, and generally Phyllis avoided going there alone after dark. One night after summer holidays, however, resentful and unhappy from what she considered an unjust rebuke by her parents, she had run there, and flinging herself on one of the deep window seats, burst into tears of self-pity But almost at once, breaking in upon her grief with a gentle but increasing pressure, she seemed to detect a sympathy in the surrounding atmosphere as if unseen presences thronging about her were offering their love and consolation.’

295 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1847), ch. 2.

297 Genesis 15:1; Luke 2:10.

298 The Ichneutai of Sophocles: The Searching Satyrs, the Fragment Freely Translated into English Rhyming Verse and Restored by Roger Lancelyn Green (Leicester: E. Ward, 1946).

299 Lewis had sent Evans a copy of Prince Caspian, and he was here referring to the first illustration in Chapter 3. Pauline Baynes wrote to Walter Hooper on 15 August 1967: ‘[Lewis] only once asked for an alteration–& then with many apologies—when I (with my little knowledge) had drawn one of the characters rowing a boat facing the wrong direction’ (CL II, p. 1020).

300 Having returned to New Zealand, Bodle sent Lewis a little book of prayers for deaf children that she had written.

301 John СКАЧАТЬ