Yrs. sincerely
C. S. Lewis
TO DAPHNE HARWOOD (BOD): 38
Magdalen College
Oxford 20/2/50
Dear Daphne
You must have been bad if you thought last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday—or else you hold some Columban and pre-Augustinian view on the date of Easter. (Your Gudeman39 will at a moment’s notice point out to you the passages in Bede which clear the whole thing up.)40 I hope you’re well now? Bronchitis is nasty enough.
Fry is shattering. I’ve seen none and only read The Lady’s not for Burning.41 The funny parts were funny enough to make me laugh; as for the poetry–the wealth of real genius in the imagery is beyond hope. Almost too much, and sometimes rather splashed about than used. But, by gum, it’s a good fault and one we’d almost despaired of ever seeing again. Can it be—dare we hope—that the ghastly mumbling and whining period in which you and I have lived nearly all our lives, is really coming to an end? Shall we see gold and scarlet and flutes and trumpets come back?
John is doing more this term.42 How is Sylvia?43 Give my love to Lawrence and all, including dear Woff.44 And take care of yourself: let the young people work!
Yours sincerely
Jack L.
TO ROGER LANCELYN GREEN (BOD): 45
Magdalen College
Oxford 21/2/50
Dear Green
Cd. you dine with me (7 p.m. smoking room) on Wed March 8th? I have several books to return and the typed MS of the Horn story46 & MS of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
Ever since June 1947 when Warnie, suffering from acute alcoholic poisoning, was hospitalized in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, Drogheda, County Louth (see CL II, p. 787), his binges had become more frequent. When the brothers were younger Warnie was gregarious and Jack something of a recluse. As time went on Jack’s fame as a Christian apologist drove him to mingle with all kinds of people; Warnie, on the other hand, withdrew more and more into the company of books and a few friends. Alcohol gave him back, temporarily, the old gregariousness that was draining away. He was a binge-drinker, and if Jack could get him into either the Acland Nursing Home, Banbury Road, or Restholme, a private nursing home at 230 Woodstock Road run by Dorothy Watson, the bout was fairly short-lived. If, however, he slipped past his brother and reached Ireland, he usually ended up in the hospital at Drogheda, and he might be away for as long as six months. Despite Warnie’s efforts to overcome the problem, 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,