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

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СКАЧАТЬ your travels, can be arranged almost whenever you like. Of course you will be thrice welcome.

      Yours ever

      Jack

      

TO DON GIOVANNI CALABRIA (V): ¹³⁹

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. xxv. Aug. 1950

      Dilectissime Pater,

      venerunt mihi nuper in manus exemplaria quaedam libri mei De Aenigmate Doloris francogallice versi. Illam linguam, puto, bene intellegis. Quocirca, si tibi placuerit, mittam ad te exemplaria tria, primum tibi, alterum Dom. Lodettio, tertium Dom. Arnaboldio. Fac me certiorem si hoc tibi cordi fuerit. Isagogem satis doctam et elegantem addidit quidam Mauritius Nédoncelle.

      Omnia omina nunc infausta; placeat Deo haec in melius verti, spectanti haud nostra sed Christi merita. Vale, mi Pater, et semper habe in orationibus tuis

      C. S. Lewis

      

      *

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford 25th August 1950

      Dearest Father,

Some copies of my book The Problem of Pain translated into French have lately reached me.¹⁴⁰ I think you know that language well. Therefore, if you so wish, I will send you three copies, one for you, another for Mr. Lodetti, and the third for Mr. Arnaboldi.¹⁴¹ Just let me know if it is of interest to you. A rather learned and elegant introduction has been added to it by one Maurice Nédoncelle.¹⁴²

All the omens are, at present, unfavourable;¹⁴³ may it please God to change these for the better, looking not at our, but at Christ’s merits. Farewell, my father, and keep me always in your prayers.

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

      REF.50/81

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 28th August 1950.

      Dear Miss Mathews,

      Many thanks for your letter of the 16th. August, and for the parcel of 17th. July, which ‘dead heated’ as the racing people say: and both are very welcome. No indeed, I can’t think of any item which I would like altered; I was going to say that we don’t want fruit, having plenty, but of course our fruit season will soon be over, and there is the winter to consider.

      Eggs are off the ration, but the egg situation leaves us unmoved, as we, thank goodness, have our own fowls. According to what I read in the papers, their being off the ration does’nt help things much; by the time the innumerable hordes of inspectors have weighed and graded and stamped and sorted and packed them, they seem to be always stale and often bad by the time they reach the consumer.

I am glad you like the memoir on Charles Williams.¹⁴⁴ Most certainly you shall have a signed copy of the book as soon as it appears.¹⁴⁵ Are there any other of my books you have’nt got, and would care to have? If so, I might be able to get them for you.

      I have been away for a few days in the Welsh mountains, and my brother—lucky man–is just back from a fortnight in Ireland, or Eire as they prefer to be called. He tells me that over there they are still living in a fool’s paradise; whilst the English—and no doubt American–papers were full of anxious discussion of the Korean war, the leading Irish paper carried banner headlines, WHAT IS WRONG WITH IRISH LUMPING? (It was Horse Show week). What is wrong with Irish THINKING would be more to the point.

      With all best wishes,

      yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

Jill Flewett and Clement Freud were married in St James Church, Spanish Place, on 4 September 1950. Jack was unable to attend the wedding, but Warnie was there. ¹⁴⁶

       TO BELLE ALLEN (W): TS

      REF.50/19.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 5th September 1950.

      Dear Mrs. Allen,

      How nice to hear from you again! No wonder you feel disinclined for letter writing, with so many more attractive occupations out of doors. Your river sounds delicious, and I would much like to see it. I wonder is your King bird what we call over here a Kingfisher? Ours is a smallish bird of a very beautiful vivid blue, which flies low over the water, and at a great speed. Our bitterns are I think extinct, but I have often read of the ‘booming’ of the bittern. Do yours boom, and what sort of noise is meant?

      I envy you your visit to Madison beach. No, I did’nt get away to the sea this year, alas, but I did manage a few days down in the Welsh mountains, which are very lovely, and where I got some fine walking: came across an inn, miles from anywhere where the guests are fed in the kitchen, as was common practice a hundred and fifty years ago. This was not a show piece for tourists, but is still the way they live in the heart of Wales.

      My brother, more lucky than I, took Edward’s suit for a treat to an Irish beach for a fortnight in August; when he came back he informed me that he had had thirteen wet days, ‘and on the fourteenth we had a shower’. He was astonished at the unreality of life in Ireland today. Current events are never referred to, and Ireland is quite happy about the future: she is to be neutral, and her defence is to be a first charge on American and English resources: and that’s that, and now lets talk about horses. (On one of the most critical days in the Korean fighting, the leading Irish newspaper carried banner headlines on the front page, WHAT IS WRONG WITH IRISH JUMPING?). They are certainly an odd people.

      All that you have to say about those little churches is very interesting and charming, and I am amused at your both being the same colour as the negro congregation; it’s a great testimony to Madison Beach. Though it is possible, by devoting all your time to it, to do the same thing even in England. There has been a man at the Oxford bathing place this summer, who would have passed, if not for a negro, at least for a Malay: though how he acquired this tan in such a wet summer, I don’t know. They tell me you can now buy sunburn in a bottle, which is perhaps the answer. By the way, yes, the Thames is bathed in, and I use it regularly in good weather; but its not the same thing as the sea, though very pleasant.

      Many thanks for all the too kind things you say about my books–and the hardship of authors.

      My mother died in 1908, when I was nine and СКАЧАТЬ