Collected Letters Volume Two: Books, Broadcasts and War, 1931–1949. Walter Hooper

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СКАЧАТЬ Forest turning into the fortresses, the greenwoods, and the valley communities of a world at about the same stage of development as that in The Roots of the Mountains.³⁴ One gets v. well the idea of how much larger England would seem under those conditions.

I must announce with regret that I shall not be paying you a visit this summer (Perhaps this is premature as I have not yet been asked!) I have come to the decision with considerable doubt, but I think on the whole I am right. Warnie and I want to go and see the Scotch uncles³⁵ and as they are getting on it ought to be done this year. This will sound an odd programme to you. It is not all ‘duty’—curiosity, desire to revive childish memories, and the anticipation of an amused yet affectionate pleasure in seeing our father in them, all come in to it. We shall then go back from Glasgow by the Clyde Shipping Company boat—and I admit I shall be such a rag by the time exams are over that I rather look forward to some lazy days at sea as the best, if not the only, holiday I shall be capable of. I am sorry to disappoint you (if I may flatter myself that it is a disappointment). At any rate don’t think that this is a precedent or that it means the end of my appearances at Belfast!

I was up to London for the Rheingold, which I enjoyed less than Siegfried—chiefly I think because we had very bad seats (We is Barfield and I).³⁶ MacFarlane—who has had a nervous breakdown since, poor chap—says he saw you* at one of the other operas: what a pity we hadn’t known and gone together.

      I had an extremely kind letter from Reid about the book. I think it is going to be at least as big a failure as Dymer, and am consequently trying to take to heart all the things I wrote you when you were bowled over by Reid’s decision on your first novel—not entirely without success. How goes the detective story?

      I hardly deserve a letter, but hope you will treat me better than my deserts

      Yours

      Jack

TO T. R. HENN (P): ³⁷

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford.

      July 2nd 1933.

      Dear Henn

If you like this,³⁸ accept it as a peace offering. If you think it worth disliking heartily, then have at me in print or private—dismount your tuck, be yare in your preparing.³⁹ If it is simply a bore, then pass it on to your second hand bookseller.

      Yours

      C. S. Lewis

TO MARY SHELLEY (T): ⁴⁰

       Magdalen

      July 21st [1933]

      Dear Miss Shelley,

If you are not, at the moment, too sick of me and all my kind to read further, it may be worth saying that you must not run away with the idea that you are a Fourth Class mind. What really ruined you was an NS and a Δ on language, which would of course have spoiled even very good work elsewhere.⁴¹ In the Lit. your highest mark was Β+ (XIXth century).

      Why your literature papers were not better I do not understand. I blame myself for not having exhorted more essays from you—but I doubt if that was the whole cause. You were very short and general. But I am quite clear in my own mind that you have not done yourself justice and that your real quality is far beyond the work you did in Schools.

      This is cold comfort to you with the world to face!—but at least it is said quite sincerely and not merely for the sake of consoling you.

      Try to forgive me both as an examiner and as a tutor. If there should at any time be any way in which I can be of use to you, let me know at once. Till then, good-bye and good luck.

      Yours very sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

      The Kilns,

      Headington Quarry,

      Oxford.

      Aug. 17th. 1933.

      My dear Arthur,

      I have been silent for a terribly long time, I know, but it has not really been my fault. I had a solid month’s examining after term ended, and then I went away for my sea holiday. I had pictured myself writing to you on the boat, but this turned out to be practically impossible: so that I am really writing if not on the first possible day, at any rate on the second or third. Before I go on to anything else I must answer one point in your last letter:—you comment on my saying nothing about your having come so near me without visiting me. The fact is I deliberately said nothing about it because I feared that, if I did, it might seem that my intention of not visiting you this year was a kind of tit-for-tat—that I was offended and was thus taking my revenge, or, at least, was excusing my intention by your action. I would have liked you to come and see me, of course: but I never thought that England ought to be forbidden ground to you if you were not seeing me for any reason. I have no wish to reduce you to stealing past Oxford with a false beard on—like you and me stealing past Leeborough from Bernagh in the old days.

I did not enjoy the Rheingold this year nearly as much as I enjoyed Siegfried last year—neither at the time nor in memory. Oddly enough the hammer passage which you mention I actually disliked. I had enjoyed it on your gramophone, but at Covent Garden it seemed to me so much cruder and, before it ended (and I thought it would never end) nearly ridiculous. You must not think that my loyalty to the Ring is wavering. The main causes of my disliking the Rheingold were (a) Our having very bad seats (b) My not liking the man who sang Alberich.⁴² I admit that Alberich must sometimes shout instead of singing—but that man seemed to shout unnecessarily. Next year I hope to go to the Valkyrie.

While I am on these things, I might add that I have actually been to the films today!—to see Cavalcade!!⁴³ This is one of the most disgraceful confessions I have ever made to you. I thought it would be interesting historically, and so I suppose it was: and certainly very clever. But there is not an idea in the whole thing from beginning to end: it is a mere brutal assault on one’s emotions, using material which one can’t help feeling intensely. It appeals entirely to that part of you which lives in the throat and chest, leaving the spirit untouched. I have come away feeling as if I had been at a debauch.

The sea holiday was a success. We went first by train to Arrochar where we slept a night⁴⁴ and had one glorious day’s walking on the shores of Loch Long and Loch Lomond and across the mountains between them. I forget if you have been in those parts. They СКАЧАТЬ