Collected Letters Volume Three: Narnia, Cambridge and Joy 1950–1963. Walter Hooper. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Walter Hooper
Издательство: HarperCollins
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Жанр произведения: Биографии и Мемуары
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9780007332670
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shirking going to the dentist and the pain was getting worse every day.2

      With many thanks, and all good wishes for the New Year,

      yours sincerely,

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO RUTH PITTER(BOD):

      Magdalen etc

      Jan 8th. 1952

      Dear Miss Pitter

      Yours most sincerely

      C. S. Lewis

      

       TO EDWARD A. ALLEN (W): TS

      REF. 52/28

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford. 8th January 1951 [1952].

      My dear Mr. Allen,

      A very happy new year to you both, and many thanks for your amusing letter of the 2nd. As you will observe, you were very nearly in time to call up on the old wave length, but not quite; my brother makes a clear sweep of all the old numbers every 31st December. I don’t know why, and I dare’nt ask him, in case he should insist on explaining it to me. He by the way asks to send greetings to both of you, and asks me to tell you that your thin blue summer suit is still going strong: and adds, that in view of the amount of summer we get in this country, he reckons on it figuring amongst the assets of his estate when the Landlord terminates his lease.

      I doubt if there is a man in America besides yourself who would have seriously contemplated sending a private gift of coal to this country: I believe if I said ‘thanks very much, and while you are about it, make me a present of the ship that brings it’, you would do your best to comply! But I’m glad to be able to report that your prayers for mild weather have been answered; I got up this morning to find the thermometer standing at 52 in my unheated bedroom, in which the window had been wide open all night. Your weather is the sort I hate—or at least like least, for we should’nt hate even the weather. But I confess I don’t enjoy wet snow.

      I like the name of your car; over here we are more aristocratic. My brother’s old Colonel has a car which has been raised to the Peerage under the title of Victor, Viscount Vauxhall, but he is called Vic for short; on the other hand he had an American friend in Shanghai whose car rejoiced in the name of ‘Puddlejumper’.

      If you send a letter to Lieutenant-Colonel R. K. Wilson, Royal Artillery, c/o the War Office, Whitehall, London, S.W.I., it should reach him wherever he is, but of course if he is in Korea or some such place, it will take some time to reach him; it would be as well to endorse the envelope ‘Please Forward’ anyway. I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful, but our army is very scattered these days; I saw in the Sunday paper that at any given moment, we have ninety thousand trained troops on board ship, going to or coming from somewhere. As you say, what a muddle. Is this ghastly Korean war never going to end: or are we to spend the rest of our lives running round the Iron Curtain stopping leaks in it?

      Yours ever.

       TO SISTER PENELOPE CSMV(BOD):

      Magdalen etc.

      10/1/52

      Dear Sister Penelope

      It was, as always, a great pleasure to hear from you. Hearty good wishes and prayers for the new year.