Читать книгу The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien - Christopher Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien - Страница 88

6 October 1944 (FS 54)

It has been rather an unusually interesting week. You know how, even if you are not hard up, the finding of a forgotten bob in an old pocket gives you a curious feeling of wealth. I am not referring to the fact that I netted about £51 from my vacation labours on Cadets, though that wasn’t too bad. But to the fact that I am a week up. Term does not begin today but next week! It has given me a wonderful (if fictitious and later to be paid for) sense of leisure. . . . . On Tuesday at noon I looked in at the Bird and B. with C. Williams. There to my surprise I found Jack and Warnie¹ already ensconced. (For the present the beer shortage is over, and the inns are almost habitable again). The conversation was pretty lively – though I cannot remember any of it now, except C.S.L.’s story of an elderly lady that he knows. (She was a student of English in the past days of Sir Walter Raleigh. At her viva she was asked: What period would you have liked to live in Miss B? In the 15th C. said she. Oh come, Miss B., wouldn’t you have liked to meet the Lake poets? No, sir, I prefer the society of gentlemen. Collapse of viva.) – & I noticed a strange tall gaunt man half in khaki half in mufti with a large wide-awake hat, bright eyes and a hooked nose sitting in the corner. The others had their backs to him, but I could see in his eye that he was taking an interest in the conversation quite unlike the ordinary pained astonishment of the British (and American) public at the presence of the Lewises (and myself) in a pub. It was rather like Trotter at the Prancing Pony,² in fact v. like. All of a sudden he butted in, in a strange unplaceable accent, taking up some point about Wordsworth. In a few seconds he was revealed as Roy Campbell (of Flowering Rifle and Flaming Terrapin). Tableau! Especially as C.S.L. had not long ago violently lampooned him in the Oxford Magazine, and his press-cutters miss nothing. There is a good deal of Ulster still left in C.S.L. if hidden from himself. After that things became fast and furious and I was late for lunch. It was (perhaps) gratifying to find that this powerful poet and soldier desired in Oxford chiefly to see Lewis (and myself). We made an appointment for Thursday (that is last) night. If I could remember all that I heard in C.S.L.’s room last night it would fill several airletters. C.S.L. had taken a fair deal of port and was a little belligerent (insisted on reading out his lampoon again while R.C. laughed at him), but we were mostly obliged to listen to the guest. A window on a wild world, yet the man is in himself gentle, modest, and compassionate. Mostly it interested me to learn that this old-looking war-scarred Trotter, limping from recent wounds, is 9 years younger than I am, and we prob. met when he was a lad, as he lived in O[xford] at the time when we lived in Pusey Street (rooming with Walton the composer,³ and going about with T. W. Earp, the original twerp, and with Wilfrid Childe⁴ your godfather – whose works he much prizes). What he has done since beggars description. Here is a scion of an Ulster prot. family resident in S. Africa, most of whom fought in both wars, who became a Catholic after sheltering the Carmelite fathers in Barcelona – in vain, they were caught & butchered, and R.C. nearly lost his life. But he got the Carmelite archives from the burning library and took them through the Red country. He speaks Spanish fluently (he has been a professional bullfighter). As you know he then fought through the war on Franco’s side, and among other things was in the van of the company that chased the Reds out of Malaga in such haste that their general (Villalba I believe) could not carry off his loot – and left on his table St. Teresa’s hand with all its jewels. He had most interesting things to say about the situation at Gib, since the war (in Spain). But he is a patriotic man, and has fought for the B. Army since. Well, well. Martin D’Arcy⁵ vouches for him, and told him to seek us out. But I wish I could remember half his picaresque stories, about poets and musicians etc. from Peter Warlock to Aldous Huxley. The one I most enjoyed was the tale of greasy Epstein (the sculptor) and how he fought him and put him in hospital for a week. However it is not possible to convey an impression of such a rare character, both a soldier and a poet, and a Christian convert. How unlike the Left – the ‘corduroy panzers’ who fled to America (Auden among them who with his friends got R.C.’s works ‘banned’ by the Birmingham T. Council!). I hope to see this man again next week. We did not leave Magdalen until midnight, and I walked up to Beaumont Street with him. C.S.L.’s reactions were odd. Nothing is a greater tribute to Red propaganda than the fact that he (who knows they are in all other subjects liars and traducers) believes all that is said against Franco, and nothing that is said for him. Even Churchill’s open speech in Parliament left him unshaken. But hatred of our church is after all the real only final foundation of the C of E – so deep laid that it remains even when all the superstructure seems removed (C.S.L. for instance reveres the Blessed Sacrament, and admires nuns!). Yet if a Lutheran is put in jail he is up in arms; but if Catholic priests are slaughtered – he disbelieves it (and I daresay really thinks they asked for it). But R.C. shook him a bit. . . . .

Do ‘ramble on’. Letters need not be only about exterior events (though all details are welcome). What you are thinking is just as important: Christmas, bee-noises, and all the rest. And why you should think the encounter with the chemist-botanist. . . . unworthy of record, I can’t say. I thought it most interesting It is not the not-man (e.g. weather) nor man (even at a bad level), but the man-made that is ultimately daunting and insupportable. If a ragnarök⁶ would burn all the slums and gas-works, and shabby garages, and long arc-lit suburbs, it cd. for me burn all the works of art – and I’d go back to trees.