The Weight of Glory: A Collection of Lewis’ Most Moving Addresses

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But there remained for him the mystifying contradiction of a far from attractive house presided over by a “somebody”. We were taking our tea alone one day when he asked whether—he couldn’t think of the name Who’s Who—the “great mon was in that big boke …” Lewis was coming through the door and, overhearing this, said, “Ay, ay, Alec. I am in what you in Scotland would call Wha’s Wha.” That did it. Alec was thereafter devoted to Lewis for his humour and self-forgetfulness, it now making no difference whether Lewis was famous for anything Alec thought important.

In August Lewis dictated a letter announcing his retirement from Cambridge. Then, at the end of the month, with Alec left to keep an eye on Lewis, his stepson Douglas Gresham and I were sent to Cambridge to sort out his affairs and bring home many of the two thousand or so books from his Magdalene College rooms. This done, we hired a lorry to transport us and the books to Oxford. All the way home I wondered where the books could go in a house already filled to the bursting point. But Lewis had laid his plans.

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