Then I put a running headline at the top of each page: finally I index at the end all the passages I have for any reason underlined. I often wonder-considering how people enjoy themselves developing photos or making scrap-books—why so few people make a hobby of their reading in this way. Many an otherwise dull book which I had to read have I enjoyed in this way, with a fine-nibbed pen in my hand: one is making something all the time and a book so read acquires the charm of a toy without losing that of a book.
By the way, when you ask me to ‘pray for you’ (in connection with Froissart) I don’t know if you are serious, but, the answer is, I do. It may not do you any good, but it does me a lot, for I cannot ask for any change to be made in you without finding that the very same needs to be made in me; which pulls me up and also by putting us all in the same boat checks any tendency to priggishness.
While I have been in bed I have had an orgy of Scott -The Monastery, The Abbot, The Antiquary and the Heart of Midlothian33 which I am at present in the middle of. The Monastery and Abbot I have read only once before—long, long ago, long before you and I were friends—so that they were the same as new ground to me. Neither of them is Scott at his best—the Monastery indeed is about the worst I have yet read—but both are worth reading. The Antiquary I have read over and over again, and old Oldbuck is almost as familiar to me as Johnson. What a relish there is about him and his folios and his tapestry room and his paper on Castrametation and his ‘never taking supper: but trusting that a mouthful of ale with a toast and haddock, to close the orifice of the stomach, does not come under that denomination’34 (How like my father and his ‘little drop of the whiskey’).
I think re-reading old favourites is one of the things we differ on, isn’t it, and you do it very rarely. I probably do it too much. It is one of my greatest pleasures: indeed I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once. Do try one of the old Scotts again. It will do admirably as a rest in the intervals of something that needs working at, like Froissart.
There has been a good deal of snow during my illness. Where I lay in bed I could see it through two windows, and a bit of the wooded hill gradually whitening in the distance. What could be snugger or nicer? Indeed my flu’ this year would have been delightful if I hadn’t been worried about Warnie, who is in Shanghai. When there is something like this wh. forces one to read the papers, how one loathes their flippancy and their sensational exploitation of things that mean life and death. I wish to goodness he had never gone out there.
Do try and let me know when you are coming to London and when there is a chance of your coming here. Otherwise you know what it will be: you will turn up unexpectedly on some day when I have 15 hours’ work to do, and I shall be angry with you and you will be angry with me, and we shall meet for a comfortless half hour in a teashop and snap and sulk at each other and part both feeling miserable. Surely it is worth while trying to avoid this. Give my love to your mother and to the dog. I hope we shall have some famous walks with him
Yours
Jack
TO OWEN BARFIELD (W):
The Kilns,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford.
March 16th/32
My dear Barfield
Death and damnation! This will never do. Look here—when you walk I walk. If you are finally forced to take your holiday earlier, make that the walk and Griffiths and I will come with you. A walk with the new Anthroposophical35 member and without you is not good enough. But I trust you will be able to stick to the original arrangement.
Somehow prurient doesn’t seem to be the right word for Spenser. Delicatus- relaxed in will—of course he is.
You must have been having a horrible time alternating between bed and exams.36 Condolences! I have written about 100 lines of a long poem in my type of Alexandrine. It is going to make the Prelude (let alone the Tower)37 look silly.
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO OWEN BARFIELD (W):
The Kilns,
Headington Quarry,
Oxford.
March 19th 1932
My dear Barfield–
Rê Walk: (1) I could certainly come earlier, but very strongly deprecate a date too near Easter on account of crowded hotels etc. (2) I would reluctantly agree to changing the terrain to Sussex: but if the date is put near Easter, this reluctance increased to just not being absolute recalcitrance. That country at that time will be a stream of hikers talking about yaffles. Is it, by the way, to any one’s interest besides yours to walk in Sussex.
(3) I enclose Griffiths’ letter, to which I have replied telling him all I know (it isn’t much) about dates. It is an alarming and disappointing letter. I am afraid Anthroposophy is his only chance now. He seems to be heading for unmitigated egoism. I wrote him rather a breezy letter trying to give him the feeling, without saying it, that the idea of his being a ‘burden’ on our walk (damn his impudence) was unutterably ridiculous. I’d like to see anyone try? This walk is his last chance. Either we’ll cure him or make an enemy of him for life!
Thanks for the Note on Pain. ‘I kan not bult it to the bran’38 at all. When you say that the redeemed self can feel no pain, does this mean that the actual sense-data would be different, or only that the self’s attitude to them would be i.e. it would feel what we call pain but would not ‘mind it’—have
I am still pleased with my new poem. What Wordsworth didn’t see was that the subjective epic can learn a lot from the structure of the old epic. There need be no flats if you use the equivalent of inlet narrative and hastening in media res.
Have you passed your exam?
Yours
C. S. Lewis
TO HIS BROTHER (W):
[The Kilns]
March 20th 1932
My dear Warnie–
We had a few days ago your letter of Jan. 28th and the first written by you during the troubles. The papers had of course relieved our minds some time before we got it: and I have now passed from anxiety to that sulky state in which I feel that you have given us all a great deal of unnecessary trouble. I feel as the P’daitabird did when he replied to a Cherbourg letter of mine, telling him how I had had a nasty fall in a puddle, ‘Please try for my sake to avoid such drenchings in the future.’ I hope you will be equally considerate. By the way, as regards one point in your letter,—there is no question of building a fence instead of building the two rooms. Indeed, considering the comparative cost of the two works, this would be rather like buying