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

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СКАЧАТЬ is disgraced if this book doesn’t get published: yet ordinary publishers will be so likely to send it to someone like Ryle to vet, and that will be fatal. Gollancz, Sheed, Faber, are possibles.

      May I pass on my copy to Owen Barfield?–I must have someone to talk to about it.

      When can we meet? Can you come over sometime next May or June and dine? (I can provide bed & breakfast)

      I now feel that my illnesses etc are no excuse for my not having read it before. That this celestial bomb shd. have lain undetonated on my table all these months is a kind of allegory. Thanks to the Nth.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

P.S. On p. 97 (30b) Further, it was until recently often held…By whom? I thought the doctrine always was that of my eldila⁵⁴–‘He has no need at all for anything that is made⁵⁵…He has infinite use for all that is made.’

       TO RUTH PITTER(BOD): TS

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 26th March 1951.

      Dear Miss Pitter,

May I book May 10th: 1.15? The ferly in the engraving is not at all like a concrete mixer.⁵⁶

I did’nt know arm chairs were ever cleaned: should they be?⁵⁷

      Yours ignorantly,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO GEORGE SAYER(W): TS

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 26th March 1951.

      My dear George,

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of many things⁵⁸–but chiefly of when you next propose to take a bed in College. Any time you like after the 23rd of next month, Mondays excepted, and also excepting 8th and 15th May.

Pray, Sir, how does Moira do? And Cardinal Schwanda?⁵⁹ All well here except myself, who have a bad cold; but I’m off to Ireland I hope on Friday for a fortnight, which may shift it. (Warnie in his usual way of encouragement, reads me paragraphs from the paper at breakfast about liners wind bound in the Mersey and waves 61/2 feet high off the Irish coast.)

      Yours

      Jack

      

       TO CHRISTIAN HARDIE (P):

      [Magdalen]

      27/3/51

      Dear Christian

The difference isn’t exactly that I read a novel for the characters. It’s more that for me a novel, or any work of art, is primarily a Thing, an Object, enjoyed for its colour, proportions, atmosphere, its flavour—the Odyssey-ishness of the Odyssey⁶⁰ or the Learishness of K Lear: but never, never (here is the real difference) as a personal acquaintance with the author.

      Of course it is not a question of where I like the characters in the sense of wishing to meet them in real life. In that sense I like Sebastian better than lulia (or dislike him less): but I ‘like’ lulia better as a character in the sense that I find her live & worth reading about, while I find him dull. What matters more than absolute liking or disliking is some degree of sympathy with the author’s revealed preferences. I didn’t think the mother & Brideshead ‘priggish & imperious’ & I didn’t think Ryder ‘a sane & ordinary chap!’ As to liking & disliking the ‘idea’ of twitch-on-the-thread, I’m not absolutely certain that I often have any experience I wd. call liking or disliking an idea.

My trouble is quite different: a twitch-on-the-thread conversion doesn’t seem to me to be capable of artistic presentation. When the old man crosses himself we are shown (and can only be shown) only the physical gesture. The difference between (a.) Grace (b.) Momentary sentiment (c.) Semi-conscious revival of a gesture learned in childhood, can’t appear. It can be in real life. But in art de non existentibus et non apparentibus eadem lex.⁶¹ In fact, we’re left to put in all the important part for ourselves. I know about the veil over Agamemnon’s face:⁶² but the success must have depended on the rest of the picture

As to whether ‘religious people should be good’ Nicholas⁶³ seemed to have sounder views than Waugh!

      I await your next prescription with interest. We might even make it Advent instead of Lent!

      I liked yr. friend extremely.

      Yours

      Jack

      

       TO VERA MATHEWS (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 27/3/51

      Dear Miss Mathews

      I have just got your letter of the 22nd. containing the sad news of your father’s death. But, dear lady, I hope you and your mother are not really ‘trying to pretend it didn’t happen’. It does happen, happens to all of us, and I have no patience with the high minded people who make out that it ‘doesn’t matter’. It matters a great deal, and very solemnly. And for those who are left, the pain is not the whole thing. I feel v. strongly (and I am not alone in this) that some good comes from the dead to the living in the months or weeks after the death. I think I was much helped by my own father after his death: as if our Lord welcomed the newly dead with the gift of some power to bless those they have left behind; His birthday present. Certainly, they often seem just at that time, to be very near us. God bless you all and give you grace to receive all the good in this, as in every other event, is intended you.

My brother joins me in great thanks for all your kindnesses, and especially on behalf of dear little comical Victor Drewe—our barber, as you know.⁶⁴ When he cut my hair last week he spoke in the most charming way of his wife who has just been ill and (he said) ‘She looks so pretty, Sir, so pretty, but terribly frail.’ It made one want to laugh & cry at the same time—the lover’s speech, and the queer little pot-bellied, grey-headed, unfathomably respectable figure. You don’t misunderstand my wanting to laugh, do you? We shall, I hope, all enjoy one another’s funniness openly in a better world.

      I have had flu’ three times but am better now and am going for a holiday on Friday. As to beef—it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good: СКАЧАТЬ