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

Warnie’s first tour of duty in China in 1927–9 he thought of retiring from the army. In a letter to Jack of 5 December 1929 he said: ‘I have had just about enough of the army, which becomes more tedious with every year that passes’ (LP X: 208). He calculated that by December 1932 he would be entitled to a pension of £200, and so he set his retirement for the end of 1932. In July 1932 he applied for retirement from the Royal Army Service Corps, and it was soon decided that he would sail for home on 22 October.

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

      The Kilns,

      Headington Quarry,

      Oxford

      July 29th 1932

      My dear Arthur,

      Thank heavens—at last I have finished examining. I am much too tired to write a letter: and also hungry to get to a morning’s reading—my first since the beginning of last term 18 weeks ago. This is merely to ask whether it will suit you if I come from Aug. 15th to 29th? I am looking forward to it immensely. Thanks for your letter of June 12th.

      Yrs

      Jack

       TO ARTHUR GRIEVES (W):

      The Kilns,

      Headington Quarry,

      Oxford.

      Aug 11th 1932

      My dear Arthur,

I have written to book a berth⁸⁰ for the night of Monday the 15th (which, by the bye, they have not yet acknowledged) and am at present in a fever of pleasing anticipation. I am so tired that our old rôles will be reversed: you will be the one who wants to walk further and sit up later and talk more. The latter probably sounds too good to be true!

      Yours

      Jack

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

      2 Princess Villas,

      Bayview Park,

      Kilkeel.

      [Co. Down

30 August 1932]⁸¹

      My dear Arthur,

      I am very sorry you did not come down but I quite see your point of view. I don’t think the idea of a meeting half way would be much good. I can’t drive: it would have to be a party of three at least—perhaps a mass meeting—and what should we all do when we had met? There would certainly be no opportunity for walk or talk on our own. Dotty sends profuse thanks for your exertions about her luggage, which has since turned up. I hope your cold will soon be better. I am alright now and have done some good mountain climbs.

      I quite understand about the cheque—it was quite absurd suggesting such a roundabout method. We shall be crossing (D.V.) on Thursday Sept. 1st. and I shall tell you my train later.

      I don’t think the meeting halfway would be any good: do you?

      Yours

      Jack

       TO OWEN BARFIELD (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford.

      Oct 29th 1932

      My dear Barfield

      Thanks. I was in some anxiety for your letter;—the whole thing (thanks to the long preparation by failure in the prose ‘It’ and the autobiographical poem) spurted out so suddenly that I have still very little objective judgement of it.

      Friday is my best day as I have no afternoon pupil. Say next Friday (Nov 4th), and try to arrive in College about 5 p.m.

      Yrs

      C. S. Lewis

       TO OWEN BARFIELD (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford.

      Nov 2nd 1932

      My dear Barfield

      I was already a good deal bothered as to whether the crossing of the Main Road ought not to have been recorded: and it says much for your sagacity that you have guessed it quite right. The map is [Lewis here drew that part of the Mappa Mundi which appears on the end leaves of almost all copies of The Pilgrim’s Regress: to the north of the Grand Canyon is Eschropolis and Claptrap and in the south is Wisdom.]

      Nov 18th it is—I wish it were sooner.

      Yours

      C.S.L.

       TO OWEN BARFIELD (W):

      Magdalen College,

      Oxford.

      Nov 7th 1932

      My dear B.

      (1.) You are the pilgrims, rot you, as you go always a little further. Let it be Friday the 25th if ’t suits you so—but please don’t make it 1933.

      (2.) No—you must keep your dental affair till Saturday morning, since that morning I spend piddling in Pinkery pond.

      (3.) Show the MS. to any one you please provided you bring it with you when you do at last come

      Yours

      C.S.L.

       TO ARTHUR GREEVES (W):

      [The Kilns]

      Dec 4th 1932

      My dear Arthur,

Thank you very much for your list of suggestions. I am really grateful for the trouble and interest you have taken. As for the future, I think I cannot ask you to sweat through the rest of the book⁸² in quite such detail. What I had in mind was not so much criticisms on style (in the narrower sense) as on things like confusion, bad taste, unsuccessful jokes, contradictions etc., and for a few of these I should be very much obliged. These would be less trouble to you than minute verbal points: and also, if anything, more useful to me. I have not had a free day yet to work through your notes, but from a cursory glance I anticipate that on the purely language side of writing our aims and ideals are very far apart—too far apart for either of us to be of very much help to the other. I think I see, from your criticisms, that you like a much more correct, classical, and elaborate manner than I. I aim chiefly at being idiomatic and racy, basing myself on Malory, Bunyan, and Morris, tho’ without archaisms: and would usually prefer to use ten words, provided they are honest native words and idiomatically ordered, than one ‘literary word’. To put the thing in a nutshell you want ‘The man of whom I told you’ and I want ‘The man I told you of’. But, no doubt, there are many sentences in the P.R.⁸³ which are bad by any theory of style.

I have just finished the 2nd volume of Lockhart and it fully justifies all the recommendations both of you and of Warnie. After Boswell it is much the best biography I have read: and the subject is in some ways, or at least in some moods, more attractive. Didn’t you enjoy the account of his ballad-hunting journey in Liddesdale?⁸⁴ It will send me back to the Dandie Dinmont parts of Guy Mannering⁸⁵ with renewed appetite.

It is a very consoling fact that so many books about real lives—biographies, autobiographies, letters etc.—give one such an impression of happiness, in spite of the tragedies they all contain. What could be more tragic than the main outlines of Lamb’s or Cowper’s lives?⁸⁶