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

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СКАЧАТЬ thanks for the loan of the magazines; which my brother and I however found rather above our heads. It seems to me that we are reaching a stage at which scientifiction has far too much science and too little fiction to make an agreeable brew.

      Yours,

      C. S. Lewis

      

TO ANNE SCOTT (BOD): ¹⁵⁷

      Magdalen

      July 28th 1952

      Dear Mrs. Scott–

Thanks very much for your most rich and interesting letter which has brought Charles back to me v. vividly so that I shall feel for an hour or so as if I had met him again. It will also be a valuable permanent addition to my Caroline documents.¹⁵⁸

About your (1.), I think my view of ‘canonical Gawaine’ had some basis in something C.W. said,¹⁵⁹ but yours sounds likely too—in view of the parallel from the Meditation.¹⁶⁰ (2.) (‘Women in the world’s base’),¹⁶¹ I think you must be right. I can’t imagine why I didn’t see this.¹⁶² (3.) Clearly I was wrong about the date of composition of Prayers of the Pope.¹⁶³ But your words ‘points in the poem had coincided with points in the war’ implies I take it, that the images existed in some shape prior to the events: wh. was my main point.¹⁶⁴ (4.) I find your interpretation of Proofs, Roofs etc. v. hard. Even Mercury—Language–Proofs is to me v. strained, & after that I love the planets altogether. At least if that is what he meant it must be the worst passage in the whole cycle!¹⁶⁵

      By the way ‘The time on my hands has gone to my head’ is a phrase you must make something of: it cries out for literary use.

      Thanks v. much again. I’ve enjoyed this bit of the morning.

      Yours sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO VERA GEBBERT (W): TS

      REF.52/103.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 28th July 1952.

      Dear Mrs. Gebbert,

      (My brother remarks that ‘the new name is’nt properly run in yet, and does’nt slip easily off the typewriter’). Many thanks indeed for the grand parcel, which arrived this morning, and which we are putting aside as a consolation for the end of our holidays. If at the beginning I had known for how long and how generously you were going to provision us, I would have kept a record of what you have sent; it must run into the hundredweights by this time! To say nothing of the imponderable benefit of having made a good friend.

      We both leave here on Wednesday morning, and if all goes well, slip through the Iron Curtain about noon on Thursday; it is quite a dramatic performance. You go chugging along in the Dublin express through rocks and heather (‘The Gate of the North’), and presently pass an enormous Union lack on the side of the track. As soon as you are past the flag, prices for drinks in the dining car drop about fifty per cent: you are through and out of the clutches of the Welfare State (now known by the way as ‘The Farewell State’). By tea time we shall be sitting on a bungalow verandah, three miles from anywhere, looking across Dundalk Bay at a range of blue mountains.

      The weather has of course played its usual practical joke; we had a blistering month until Saturday night: during which the temperature dropped about twenty degrees without the slightest warning, and now the question is not how many white linen suits to take away with one, but how to pack a winter overcoat for the ‘summer’ evenings.

Does anyone in America understand American politics? Certainly no one over here can make out what is happening, in spite of numerous inspired articles by so called experts; people who pretend to know all about it—on the strength of a lecturing tour in the States–assure me that a Taft victory would have been a disaster and an Eisenhower one would be grand. Which, as they belong to the same party, seems odd to me; others tell me that as the Democrats are sure to get in anyhow, the Taft-Eisenhower battle was of no importance.¹⁶⁶ I thought I was going to learn something from an old lady in Connecticut the other day,¹⁶⁷ but at the end of eight pages so hot that they nearly burnt my fingers, all I could gather was that the ‘Dumbocrats’ as she called them, are a sort of mixture of Hitler, the Russian secret police, and the inmates of the village lunatic asylum: but no doubt this view is a little prejudiced.

      I suppose by this time you have got Mr. Gebbert broken in, and trotting nicely in harness? Please give him my kind regards. I hope to hear from you soon again, as we are both eager to know how you are settling down amongst the elks, auks, reindeer, silver miners and so forth.

      With all good wishes.

      yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

      Derryherk House Hotel,

      Lough Melvin, Ballyshannon, Co. Donegal, Ireland Aug 31/52

      My dear Roger

Good. I shall, D.V., breakfast in Woodside Hotel on the 9th and expect you there at about 10.¹⁶⁸

South Donegal is a terrifying country: I have much to tell, but you see what the pen is like. Have read Virgin of the Sun¹⁶⁹ & think it one of the 3 or 4 best books Haggard ever wrote. My duty to June.

      Yours

      Jack

      

       TO JUNE LANCELYN GREEN (BOD):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. Sept 11th 1952

      Dear June

‘Roofers’¹⁷⁰ traditionally begin, I think, with the assurance that the writer arrived safely home—though it is not very easy to see why one’s hostess should be supposed to doubt this once she has got the letter. At any rate, I am not now writing from the other world. (Perhaps the idea is to assure the hostess that the guest has really gone: arrival at one place being the strongest evidence of departure from another.)

Well, СКАЧАТЬ