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

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СКАЧАТЬ Jack was not successful in persuading him to join Alcoholics Anonymous. As time went on Warnie’s binges were of longer duration, and Jack was left to cope as best he could.

TO JILL FLEWETT (T): ⁴⁷

      Magdalen College

      Oxford 29/2/50

      My dear June

W. is in a nursing home⁴⁸ at present—nothing serious, indeed he ought to be out now only the nurses have made such a domestic pet of him he can’t tear himself away—so I’ve been pretty busy letter writing. So sorry about yr. mother: please give her my duty.

Minto has at last allowed Bruce⁴⁹ to be euthanised. Don’t mention it if writing to her. She seems to miss him surprisingly little so there’s no good stirring the matter up. This has made an enormous difference to our lives–we feel like a balloon that has dropped half its ballast—the music room is clean! R.I.P. We’d both like to see you again. All the best.

      Yours (in haste)

      Jack

      

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT?⁵⁰

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford.

      Sir,—

It cannot often happen that a scholar, writing to expose the corruption of a text, should himself at that very moment suffer inadvertently a corruption of the same sort; but it really looks as if something like this had happened to Professor Dover Wilson in his edition of Two Gentlemen (Cambridge, 1921).⁵¹ Here on page 103 (note on V iv 89-90) he rightly points out that which out of my neglect was never done⁵² is a ‘line of verse’, and adds: ‘The adapter is caught—in the act.’⁵³

      But surely, on this principle, the evidence for an adapter in Professor Wilson’s own Notes is even stronger? Without turning a page we find:—

      (1) On page 102.—‘Not free from “cuts”, is in the simple end-stopped verse which we associate with the youthful Shakespeare.’

      (2) ibid.–‘This section is in quite another style.’

      (3) ibid.–‘Strong medial pauses and—strange combinations!’ (The exclamation so obviously added for the metre, makes this example especially flagrant.)

      (4) ibid.–‘In one of which we find a fossil line.’

      (5) ibid.–‘Silence of Silvia, while events so vital’

      (6) ibid.–‘Is virtually his own composition.’

      (7) ibid.–‘The entry of the Duke and Thurio.’

      (8) ibid.–‘May have been taken from a later portion.’

      (9) ibid.–‘It may have been located in Verona.’ ‘We cannot tell. One of the minor problems.’

      (10) ibid.–Page 103. ‘Clearly corrupt. Daniel proposed “discandied.”‘

      (11) ibid.–‘The repetition in 1. 59.’

      (12) ibid.–‘Through careless copying of the adapter.’

      (13) ibid.–‘To mend the metre of these lines. The sense needs mending also.’ ‘73. short line.’ (Note here the omission of the article before short, clearly for the metre.)

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO VERA MATHEWS (W): TS

      RER50/81.

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 9th March 1950.

      My dear Miss Mathews,

      You will no doubt be wondering—not angrily I’m sure, but sympathetically—why your two excellent parcels have gone unacknowledged.

      The fact is that my secretary-brother chose the most inconvenient time of the term to retire to his bed and has only just ‘come to the surface’ again. While he was away I found my self very rushed, and my correspondence suffered accordingly.

      I have so often tried to tell you how grateful I am for all your kindness that I find myself reduced to a simple ‘thank you’: but if the words are stale, the sentiment which prompts them is as fresh as ever.

      Here we are enjoying the dubious delights of early English spring, and I often wonder what visiting Americans make of it: for they are already arriving in surprisingly large numbers considering the time of year. I can only suppose that they all come from Northern Alaska, and find our climate a nice change! If you have any friends who think of coming over, tell them that the English summer generally falls in the third week in June.

      With many thanks and all my best wishes,

      yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

TO WARHELD M. FIROR(BOD): ⁵⁴

      Magdalen etc.

      12/3/50

      Dear Firor–

Well, term is over. And the election is over too, but you don’t want to hear about that:⁵⁵ except (which is the really remarkable thing) that despite the heavy poll I never knew an election pass with less apparent excitement. Perhaps this is because it was felt to be so important: it is not in the front line that War forms the incessant subject of conversation!

      As for term, the last bit of it has been heavy for me with Scholarship Examinations. One answer is so puzzling that I wd. like to hand it on. Commenting on Hamlet’s words

Sure he that made us with such large discourse, Looking before and after, gave us not That capability and god-like reason To fust in us unus’d,⁵⁶

one boy explained the first line as meaning ‘He who made the creation of man seem important by talking about it.’ Since this youth, needless to say, has no chance of a scholarship and therefore will not be summoned for an interview, we shall all go to our graves without knowing what he meant. What, do you think, is the Theology implied? My own СКАЧАТЬ