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

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СКАЧАТЬ makes it worse, for you have lived into the period when the relationship is really reversed and you were mothering her: and of course, the more we have had to do for people the more we miss them–loving goes deeper than being loved. But it must be nice for her. Getting out of an old body into the new life–like stripping off tiresome old clothes and getting into a bath–must be a most wonderful experience.

      I return Mrs. Hooker’s letter. I think ‘both sincere and insincere’ is about right. She certainly sounds more sensible in the letter than she did when I saw her.

      Ugh! Holloway does give one the creeps, doesn’t it? But I see it doesn’t give them to you. It does me. If ever I go to jail (which may happen to anyone now-a-days) I do hope my cell will be white-washed and not that ghastly green!

      I’ve been having a rather thin time with Sinusitis for about 4 weeks. In case you don’t know this complaint, it feels like toothache but since it is not a tooth you can’t have it out.

      It’s nice to think of you and Alan working away in that delightful garden. I expect you are further on down there than we are in the midlands. Our daffodils are out and the catkins are all pussy and strokable, but the weather remains wretchedly cold.

      I trust the nasty-taste of the Hooker crisis has now all gone away. The far more serious sorrow about your Mother will presumably have put paid to that. Remember me to Alan & God bless you all.

      Yours ever

      lack Lewis

      

      By the way, Mrs. H’s letter is curiously uneducated. All that about her learning must have been imaginary too. Poor creature–there’s not much of her when one takes away the fantasies.

      

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (BOD):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford 21/3/53

      My dear Arthur

      I hope you weren’t shocked at getting an answer from W. instead of me the other day. On Monday I was both rather ill and also engaged in viva-voce examinations from 9.15 a.m. to 5.30 p.m., so I couldn’t well write, and I thought you wd. like to have all those dates at the earliest moment.

      Yours

      Jack

      

TO MICHAEL (W): ⁸³

      Magdalen College

      Oxford 21/3/53

      Dear Michael

      I see I have thanked your Father for a kind present which really came from you. Let me now say Thank you, very much indeed. I think it was wonderful of you. At least I know that when I was a boy, though I liked lots of authors, I never sent them anything. The reason there is so much boiled food here is, of course, that we have so little cooking-fat for roasting or frying.

      The new book is The Silver CHAIR, not CHAIN. Don’t look forward to it too much or you are sure to be disappointed. With 100,000 thanks and lots of love.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO VERA GEBBERT (W):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford 23/iii/53

      Dear Mrs. Gebbert

Your first story (about mistaking it for sea-sickness) is one of the funniest I ever heard.⁸⁴ In our country there are usually alterations of shape wh. wd. throw grave doubts on the sea-sick hypothesis!…but no doubt you manage things better in America. Any way, congratulations and encouragements. As to wishing it had not happened, one can’t help momentary wishes: guilt begins only when one embraces them. You can’t help their knocking at the door, but one mustn’t ask them in to lunch. And no doubt you have many feelings on the other side. I am sure you felt as I did when I heard my first bullet, ‘This is War: this is what Homer wrote about.’⁸⁵ For, all said and done, a woman who has never had a baby and a man who has never been either in a battle or a storm at sea, are, in a sense, rather outside-haven’t really ‘seen life’-haven’t served. We will indeed have you in our prayers.

Now as to your other story, about Isaiah 66?⁸⁶ It doesn’t really matter whether the Bible was open at that page thru’ a miracle or through some (unobserved) natural cause. We think it matters because we tend to call the second alternative ‘chance.’ But when you come to think of [it] there can be no such thing as chance from God’s point of view. Since He is omniscient His acts have no consequences which He has not foreseen and taken into account and intended. Suppose it was the draught from the window that blew your Bible open at Isaiah 66. Well, that current of air was linked up with the whole history of weather from the beginning of the world and you may be quite sure that the result it had for you at that moment (like all its other results) was intended and allowed for in the act of creation. ‘Not one sparrow,’⁸⁷ you know the rest. So of course the message was addressed to you. To suggest that your eye fell on it without this intention, is to suggest that you could take Him by surprise. Fiddle-de-dee! This is not Predestination: your will is perfectly free: but all physical events are adapted to fit in as God sees best with the free actions He knows we are going to do. There’s something about this in Screwtape.⁸⁸

      Meanwhile, courage! Your moments of nervousness are not your real self, only medical phenomena. All blessings.

      Yours ever,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO HSIN’CHANG CHANG (BOD):

      Magdalen College

      Oxford March 24th 53

      Dear Mr. Chang

The humble one, having burned the appropriate charms, has emerged from the Tenacious Mud Formation (Delay) and read the chapters, and the introduction, with very great interest.⁸⁹ It would be no mere ceremonial modesty to describe my opinion on it as ‘foolish’. I have not enough cultural background to know whether the effects produced on me are at all like those intended by the author. Thus I do not know which parts are comic and which are not. The giant who smashed a hole in the mountain with his head, I can take as (rather grotesquely) serious: the angry man whose beard knocked the table over is to me funny. What would be their effect on the Chinese reader? Some images are quite baffling to a foreigner. I cannot imagine a ‘fairy nun’ whether Taoist or otherwise! But this may be due to the fact that neither fairy nor nun is a really exact translation: though no doubt (for your English is not only correct but sensitive and elegant) both СКАЧАТЬ