CSL anecdotes (again) - cool ones
I went to the CSL Society the other night to hear Walter Hooper speak about Lewis. This is the third time I’ve heard Hooper give variations of this speech, but there are always new bits. A lovely anecdote from only last week; as the literary advisor to the estate, Hooper gets all the fan mail. Thousands and thousands of letters to Lewis every year, most from children about Narnia.
“I got one letter last week from a six- or seven-year-old boy,” Hooper said. “He told his teacher that he wanted to write to Lewis, and she very gently explained to him that Lewis had passed away. But I still got a letter, which said ‘Dear Mr Lewis, I am sorry that you’ve died, but I just want you to know how much I love Aslan.’!”
We all laughed, and he said, quite rightly, “So much for death!”
One great practical joke that Lewis played was towards the end of his life, when he needed a nurse. The nurse’s name was Alex, and he hated The Kilns - thought it was filthy and unhygienic and if you’d only get rid of all these books it might be all right. One day Hooper was dispatched to Cambridge to bring Lewis’s library - about 2000 books - back to Oxford. When he got to The Kilns with the van, Lewis was waiting outside and shushed them all. Alex was taking a nap, and Lewis directed Hooper and the moving men to tiptoe in and out of Alex’s room with the books, and they built a solid wall of books several feet thick, right to the ceiling, right around Alex’s bed. Then they sat quietly in the living room waiting till they heard the roar of shock and saw the figure charge through the book wall, scattering books left and right. I love stuff like that! I especially love that he wasn't so precious about his library that he wasn't willing to incur a few dents and loose leaves for a good joke.
Here’s a cool clip of Hooper talking about Lewis’s life and opinion on his purpose as an author.
Oh, one more great anecdote I hadn't heard before - Hooper was so obsessed with CSL's books that, as he says, the phrase most often on his tongue was "As CS Lewis has said..."
One day he was in the throes of argument and said "As C.S. Lewis has said... oh, but you are C.S. Lewis!"
So from then on, Lewis would say things like, "As C.S. Lewis has said, I would like a pot of tea. As C.S. Lewis has said, you will make it. As C.S. Lewis has said, I will drink it."
And now I must go to my poor sick husband, who crawled home from work and into bed, weakly requesting orange juice, and tea, and panadol, and a Harry Potter movie, and salt-and-vinegar chippies, and his dinner, and some caramel slice, in that order. He’s lying there hacking up (actually, let’s not talk about it) and looking so rumpled and adorable that I just might puke.
(Just struck by the coolness of the fact that the room CSL is sitting in in my userpic is the room I sit in to read sometimes...)
“I got one letter last week from a six- or seven-year-old boy,” Hooper said. “He told his teacher that he wanted to write to Lewis, and she very gently explained to him that Lewis had passed away. But I still got a letter, which said ‘Dear Mr Lewis, I am sorry that you’ve died, but I just want you to know how much I love Aslan.’!”
We all laughed, and he said, quite rightly, “So much for death!”
One great practical joke that Lewis played was towards the end of his life, when he needed a nurse. The nurse’s name was Alex, and he hated The Kilns - thought it was filthy and unhygienic and if you’d only get rid of all these books it might be all right. One day Hooper was dispatched to Cambridge to bring Lewis’s library - about 2000 books - back to Oxford. When he got to The Kilns with the van, Lewis was waiting outside and shushed them all. Alex was taking a nap, and Lewis directed Hooper and the moving men to tiptoe in and out of Alex’s room with the books, and they built a solid wall of books several feet thick, right to the ceiling, right around Alex’s bed. Then they sat quietly in the living room waiting till they heard the roar of shock and saw the figure charge through the book wall, scattering books left and right. I love stuff like that! I especially love that he wasn't so precious about his library that he wasn't willing to incur a few dents and loose leaves for a good joke.
Here’s a cool clip of Hooper talking about Lewis’s life and opinion on his purpose as an author.
Oh, one more great anecdote I hadn't heard before - Hooper was so obsessed with CSL's books that, as he says, the phrase most often on his tongue was "As CS Lewis has said..."
One day he was in the throes of argument and said "As C.S. Lewis has said... oh, but you are C.S. Lewis!"
So from then on, Lewis would say things like, "As C.S. Lewis has said, I would like a pot of tea. As C.S. Lewis has said, you will make it. As C.S. Lewis has said, I will drink it."
And now I must go to my poor sick husband, who crawled home from work and into bed, weakly requesting orange juice, and tea, and panadol, and a Harry Potter movie, and salt-and-vinegar chippies, and his dinner, and some caramel slice, in that order. He’s lying there hacking up (actually, let’s not talk about it) and looking so rumpled and adorable that I just might puke.
(Just struck by the coolness of the fact that the room CSL is sitting in in my userpic is the room I sit in to read sometimes...)