The Eric Metaxas Show - Walter Hooper

Episode Date: September 19, 2022

The late Walter Hooper is interviewed by Eric in Oxford, England, for Socrates in the City. Hooper is an author, editor, and trustee of the literary estate of C.S. Lewis.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metaxe. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m. Investments.com. That's Legacy p.m. Investments.com. The Eric Metaxis show with your host, Eric Metaxis. Folks, is the Eric Mataxis show. Today we're doing a special edition of the show. We are airing a conversation I had with Walter Hooper. He was the secretary to C.S. Lewis during C.S. Lewis's last year of life. One of the most extraordinary figures I've ever met or had the privilege to interview. So today, you will listen to my first of three conversations with him that were done in Oxford, England.

It's in all dates church just a few years ago. Absolutely spectacular. For more in Socrates and City, go to Socrates in the City.com. Now, here is that conversation with Walter Hooper. Welcome to Socrates in the City, Oxford Edition. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. Because for me, this is a dream come true. For years, I have wanted to interview Walter Hooper. And it's taken me this long. I apologize, Walter, but we're finally here in Oxford to do this.

Walter Hooper, in case you don't know who he is, was in 1963 the secretary to C.S. Lewis, spent time living with Lewis, working with him, and soon thereafter, when Lewis died on the same day that, in the same hour that President Kennedy died, Walter Hooper took on the huge, immeasurable task of doing all that needed to be done to sort of secure his life. literary legacy to republish works that had fallen out of print, and really to edit his work for decades it's been now. It's just gigantic. It's a lifelong devotion. It seems to me a calling. And for me, it's a tremendous privilege to get this time with Walter Hooper. So please Socrates in the city, welcome for Walter Hooper. We were talking about so many things, and I thought it's been such a joy to talk to you for these long sessions. I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am and how much this is going to mean to so many people to get to hear you. Because you often speak, you probably will tonight or tomorrow, to small groups and you tell these stories. But there's

so many who don't get to come to Oxford, who don't get to hear you tell these things. So I said, this is a crime. You have so many fans in America, particularly, but around the world. So thanks for making yourself available for this. I know it's been a sacrifice. I wanted to ask you yesterday we were talking about how Warnie Major Lewis was burning things, many things, significant things. And I know that he'd written you some letters. And I was wondering, did you bring those letters to burn here today? I did, yeah. You did? Yeah, I wait. You did. We'll get them. We'll end things on a bang. We'll burn Warnie's letters. It's an amazing story, and I don't know that I'll ever get over it, to get the details of how it was that he was actually burning things that we now

think of as treasures. We spoke yesterday about the dark tower and all kinds of other things. Were there poems that would have been burned? I think so, yes. I think he was scooping up a great many things, but some things have I, because I had been, C.S. Lewis had sent me to Cambridge, this is before the burning, had sent me to Cambridge to clear

up his affairs, because he didn't go, he wasn't fit to go back. So this was in 63 when you were first in July, in August. In August, he sent me over there to deal with his, you know, to sell various books. And he said, whatever papers you find appropriate to your own use or else destroy.

And he wanted anything left in his handwriting, if I didn't want it to be torn into small pieces, he didn't want people finding manuscripts of his. Why do you suppose that is? I'm not sure, you know, but I think he had, I think I had mentioned earlier. when I first got to know him, I said, what do you do with your manuscripts? And he said, well, when I write, say, the line of the witch and the wardrobe on one side, then I turned it over, then I write another book on the other side, then I destroy it. So none of those survive? None of those survive.

Anyway, he saw my consternation. And that same morning, Epikills, He picked up a piece of paper, which he'd been scribbling on, and he said, would you like to have that? I said, yes, indeed. So he realized that what he said, you know, caused me pain, and because there were those of us who liked anything in his hand. And so when he had finished writing, Lettuce to Malcolm, his last book,

He let me the copy of that and said, Would you like to read it? And so I read it in front of him. In his handwriting? In his handwriting. And then he said, would you like to keep it? And I thought this was a trick question because he said, one time he told me,

the reason I wouldn't want to leave manuscripts around is that I wouldn't like the day. to come for somebody to say, I have a first edition of, say, Perilandro, and somebody else to say, ah, but I have the unique manuscript. I said, do you remember that conversation? Aren't you afraid I'll do that? He said, no. But can't you just answer a straight question? Would you like to have it? And I said, I remember how Boromere coveted the ring at the end of the first volume of the Tolkien

and I remember I had destroyed him he said I expect I know that better than you do but that's not the question why can't you just answer a straight question would you like to have it or not and I said yes I would he said it takes you a long time

make up your mind doesn't it anyway then when he sent me to Cambridge he talked me he said there's a good deal of manuscripts and things of, but appropriate to your own use, you can have them. But if you don't warn them, then destroy them. Do you have any sense that, do you think it's possible that this being,

uh, in the middle of 1963, that he had a sense of his own impending death and that he was putting his affairs in order? Well, I think so, yes, yes. He knew that. This is why he had, written a short note to warn him when he was in the hospital. When he, C.S. Lewis was in the hospital. Thinking about, you know, he may not last very long.

And so he suggested to warn him, one of the things you might do to try to keep the wolf from the door is to collect my letters spiritual well because he was really worried about what man would live on. Why do you think he used that French term, letters spiritual. Because warning was an authority on France. Oh. And I think he occasionally used things that he would have used, because that would have been a phrase used often if Warner's own works, I think.

Where are most of these handwritten documents, the Lewis documents? I'm assuming that some of them are at the Bodleon here, and that some of them are at the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton, Illinois. Well, the Wade Center has mainly letters which they've collected, and then they have a number of things given them by warning, such as his diary. But these papers that were given to me by CSG, they're all in the Bunyan Library. This is a special Oxford edition of the Eric Mataxis show. There is more of this conversation with Professor Walter, Cooper coming up next.

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We're back on the best of the Eric Mataxis show. Welcome back to a special version of the Eric Mataxis show. It's a Socrates in the city event in Oxford, England. Right now, we're talking to Professor Walter Hooper about all things C.S. Lewis. Let's rejoin the conversation. I know that there are many original letters that Lewis wrote to people scattered all around the world because I've seen some of them. I don't know if you know Tim Keller's Pastor Tim

Keller of New York's Redeemer Presbyterian Church, whom I know, his wife, Kathy Keller, corresponded with Lewis when she was about 12 years old. And she has these delightful letters from Lewis in his hand that she carries around and shows people. And I'm, I'm frightened every time she does that. Well, I hope you'll get her to send me copies so they can go in the next collection of letters. Is it possible that they are in the collection? I mean, there's so many letters in there that you don't... I assume that they were, if it's even possible they're not. I will certainly

bother her. I can look at it this evening. Yeah, yeah, well that's... But I mean, just to think of how many letters he wrote to how many people and that they're all around the world in boxes, and you know that there are many of them hidden away in drawers or

in boxes and addicts, and it's completely unknown that they're there, that the children haven't heard of Lewis or the grandchildren haven't heard of Lewis or maybe even would throw them away. That's one of the wonderful things in a way to think that who knows what it is that's out there, what we'll discover.

We were talking yesterday about Lewis's sense of language. I want to get back to that, but before that, when you first came to here to Oxford, I remember a story that

you went to, maybe it was the the Bodlein, I'm guessing, and you asked for anything by Lewis, but the term you used was Lewis, you know, Lewisiana. Yes. Can you, do you remember that story? I don't think it's exactly as I told it. I may have asked for Luisauna, but I think they, together we worked it out. I worked so long in the Bodle Inn over 50 years, and I was always working on Lewis,

so people who work there call the readers not by their name, but by the name of the person they were searching. So I call Mr. C.S. Lewis when I'm there. And I know a man who is civil war, and Robert E. Lee and Hitler. Mr. Adolf Hitler. You're kidding. Well, actually, one of the things about Hitler's Earth is that the people that I worked with, had worked with for years.

these are Curtis Brown agents, literary agents, they're London and New York. They're Hitler's publishers? Well, they were Hitler's literary agents, and they have... You're not kidding. No, I'm not. Curtis Brown were Hitler's literary agents. Some have they inherited. They have the rights to...

They control the rights to Mind Conf. and all the children's stories that he wrote well I understand that the royalties on mine comp have been around for 50 years and they've built up quite a lot it has been published as sold a lot

but they can't find anybody to give the royalties too because even the state of Israel turned them down and all of the people who are related to him that they're not. That's ridiculous.

They can give them to a Holocaust fund or something. But the Jews don't want that money. Well, I'll take it and give it to them. Hitler's agent. Hitler's Oove, we've not heard that in a long time. Thank you for refreshing us.

Well, they're all his speeches too, you see? No, in all seriousness. Handwritten speeches by Adolf Hitler are at the Bodleon. No, no, no. I don't think they have anything. It's just unfathomable. You didn't mean to get off on this topic.

No, what they have in the Bodleam, they have a very large collection of Lewis's papers. Many of those papers came from the bonfire, and many came from his rooms in Cambridge. And because of you? That's right, yeah. Well, I just happen to be the right man or the right time. Yes, just a coincidence.

Any of us could have done it. Well, but as I heard the story that you went in there, you marched in there and you asked for Louisiana, and I thought that the woman said, yes, cross the Atlantic and make a left. That's the joke that I heard, so I don't know. Maybe that's apocryphal. Who cares? Someone actually snorted in the front road.

Did you hear that? That's not appropriate. So, okay, so you had your work cut out for you in, in the 60s. When did you have a sense that this was going to be a long-term thing and that you might stay here for many years? Was that something that you knew fairly soon?

I think I did. After about a year, I knew it was for keeps. That it was not, I was not really here just as a tourist and no longer. I was here on a mission. and in one way

when I remembered that my own father was already old of than CSTS. And I remembered my family, I became very homesick at times, very very homesick. And I made a fool to myself to the first doctor I went to. I think I was just

imagining a lot of imaginary eels. I still do a bit. But I went to the doctor because I was so sad and this had made me ill, I thought. And I didn't know that he was such a, what they call a heart prod. A way? Heart propp, hot Protestant. He went to a church with even more heart prop than this one, St. Ebbs.

And anyway, he said, he put me on the spot. He said, would you like to tell me what you think is wrong with you? you. And I said, I'd be happy to do that. I've got either mononucleosis or M.E. And I said, you'll need to take a blood test for that. And you'll need to send it to the Rackcliffe infirmary to have it analyzed. He said, thank you very much for that information. He said, now, would you like for me to tell you what I think is wrong with you? I said, why not? Yes. And he said, all right. I will. You are what every English medical student's dreams a meeting in the American hypercontract. There's nothing wrong with you. Now, get out of here. Wow.

Wow. I felt better than I felt actually wonderful. And I went and had steak and chips. Wow. I agree. But he became used to me after that. And when I ever said, I know I'm a hypochondri— No, correction, you were.

You were. I've cleared you. Oh, God. Well, I hate doctors like that. You—okay, but so you—you fell into so many different kinds of things. There's so much to do. I know that in the latter part of the 70s, you were involved in making a documentary that most people, I don't think, have seen involved.

Peter Eustinov. Tell us about that. How did that come to be? Well, as gradually as the, as time went on and Lewis became fortunately better known and was being read by a new audience, but I think the American evangelicals

stayed absolutely true to Lewis and they liked the new books coming out about him. They like, because I still, felt, and it did work, if I bring out a new book, I force the publishers to bring out two of the old ones that they let go out of print. But anyway, his works found great success with American evangelicals. And it was some of those evangelicals who wanted to make a documentary film, Bob O'Donnell in West Chicago. and it was supported by and paid for by somebody else, you know. Anyway, I was hired to be the presenter and to write the script as well.

And they really did work extremely hard. For instance, when we went to Lewis's home in Belfast, the people who owned it allowed us to film inside. This is a special Oxford edition of the Eric Mataxis show. There is more of this conversation with Professor Walter Hooper coming up next. With the overturn of Roe v. Wade, lots of companies are coming out saying they'll pay for employee abortion travel and expenses. Most of you've heard about some of these companies. You've decided to stop shopping or doing business there, but did you know that you most likely own stock in those companies through your 401Ks, IRAs, and other investment accounts?

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So we filmed inside all the places that we talked about, like the Bodleian Library, and Mourin College. You know, they have the choir singing somehow. So they had spent a lot of money and a lot of time. It was hard for me to both write something to say and memorize it for the next day. So all I was doing was just memorizing what I had written. But I remember when we came to the end, they wanted to, it really was the beginning, you know, these things off and backwards. They were beginning to film me just on the stage. I was on a place just outside Belfast, and I say, behind me you can see all these ships and things.

behind me you could see nothing because it was a cloudy day. So they took me out there three four times in one day, three or four times the next day, and I kept saying, behind me you can see. And behind me they could see nothing. So finally they said, we've worked you to death. So we're going to send you home. But we've got your words, and we're going to wait for a clear day. If we ever got a clear day, we'll film it.

And we'll say it would be as though you sit behind the end. You do see that. But it was wonderful to be sent home after that. But I... I wonder if they can put a seascape behind us. I could. If they wanted to. Post-editing suite.

Can you do that? Some tall ships? Make that happen. Well, that documentary is... doesn't seem to me to be well known. I've not seen it. I was looking for it on YouTube. I think that there's a trailer for it, short trailer.

But Peter Usenov, what a great choice. Did he know of Lewis? No, I don't think he did. I didn't meet him. They hired him for the voice. He doesn't appear in person. Right, right. Well, I hope that we can find a copy of that and get it reissued

because it's just, Well, it was not just that. They did a second film, too, with me interviewing the inklings. Now, which inklings were alive at that point? Well, the Tolkien had, he had dying, but I then talked to two of his children. One of them is still living? That's right, yes. Here in Oxford. That's right, yes.

And I've talked to Pauline Baines, who's very, very interesting. Her illustrations have become, it's an interesting thing how that can happen, because I realized when we were talking seven years ago about the giants in the silver chair, I immediately thought of the Pauline Baines illustrations, and they are really so good. They're apt, which is better than good. They serve the text beautifully. and the way she illustrated Puddlegum, it's a funny thing to think that if she hadn't illustrated Puddlegum,

I'm not sure that I would know what Puddlegum looked like. Well, Lewis said this himself. He said oftentimes I had no description of various things. She is responsible for having given form to these people like Puddleglam. That's a big deal. But she herself, was very young when she did this. She had already done some work for talking,

and that's how Lewis knew about her. Anyway, he hired her to do the first book, The Line of the Witch of the Wardroom. And she told me something very interesting about this book and what could happen to people. She didn't know anything more. She hadn't talked with Lewis about it anymore. Just illustrate the book.

and she told me that when she was drawing all those pictures of Aslan being tormented by the White Witch and others, she had to rip up her paper because she kept weeping on all of that over the fate of Aslan. It just broke her heart. And so finally she finished the illustrations and then sent them to Jeffrey Blass, the publishers. And she said about a week.

after that, still bothered by what had happened, Aslan, it suddenly broke on her. Oh, I know who he is. It's Jesus Christ. And this is the way

you get past the watchful dragons that you mentioned yesterday. You don't want a person to be told, this is Jesus Christ, I want you to see that before you begin this book. No, let it happen to you as it did to her.

And then, so when she actually takes in what Jesus has done for humanity, then it will break up on her. This really happened in the real world, and I am one of the beneficiaries of it. Wow, I certainly not heard that. Now, is she still among us? I don't think so. No, she's not. She died a few years ago.

she was a simply wonderful friend. She put a lot into these drawings. And Lewis said, really, you know, when he won a prize for the last one, he said it's really a prize, you know. He was very generous about that. This is a special Oxford edition of the Eric Mataxis show. There is more of this conversation

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This is the Eric Mataxis show. Today you're hearing a special Socrates in the city version of the show drawn from a number of events that I hosted in Oxford, England. Here's more of my conversation with Professor Walter Hooper. It's our prize, yours as much as mine. And was that for the last battle? The last battle. What did that win?

I think the Newbinger, I think that then they'd be not right name. The Newberry? The Newberry. Did it? Did it? I think it did. Oh, wow. I hadn't been aware of that.

That's amazing. My goodness. Well, you mentioned, I guess we're going chronologically, in 1984, having had a private audience with Pope John Paul II. And you said that that affected you greatly and that four years later, as I mentioned earlier, you became a Roman Catholic. Tell us a little bit about that, if you could. Well, it wasn't really just simply meeting the Pope, but I'm sure that played a part in it. But I had felt for a long time that the church, which Lewis was a member of, and which he supported so well. The Anglican Church.

May Christianity, the core beliefs of it, I think we're passing away from the Anglican Church. church. And they were, it seemed to me, settled once and for all finally in the Catholic Church. And I particularly wanted a more doctrinal church. I wanted to hear just sin and redemption express more often than the ordination of women. And so I became a Catholic. And so I became a Catholic, and I have no backward glance. I'm usually such a sentimental old man. I look back and think,

you know, oh, to be that way again. But this didn't happen with me in that case. I was so happy. I wish I had been young enough to jump up and click my heels together. I couldn't. You have to do it for me. You've said at certain points that you believe that Lewis, had he lived, would have similarly crossed the

tiber to use that term for similar reasons, that he wouldn't have been able to abide the doctrinal mushyness of the Anglican church? Yes, I would say that, and I think he would. I think what he believed about the Christianity is really found totally in the Catholic Church, much more as well, but at least that. See, I think he would have become a Pentecostal. And I'm sure of it. Because in 1988 I did. So, no, it's, I'm teasing you.

But it's just interesting to speculate because Lewis is so beloved by Catholics. I mean, obviously by evangelicals, by so many. But it is interesting that he really has found a huge audience among Catholics, Peter Craft, whom I'm sure you know, and I know Lewis's biggest fan, so to speak, and promoter and Tom Howard, our mutual friend Tom Howard, who says hello. But it is interesting to think of that, that there are so many, and of course Michael Ward,

who is with us talking about Lewis. So there's something there. I'm not sure quite what, but there's something there about Lewis and Catholicism, his ability to speak to people who are serious about these doctrines, these old-fashioned things like redemption and sin. Although I would argue, I think,

that it's converts to Catholicism, Because Congress to Catholicism tend to be serious about these things. I think that cradle Catholics tend not to be. So, except perhaps for Alice von Hildebrandt. Another mutual friend. She says hello as well, but she told me to rebuke you for this relationship you have with this cat. Can you tell us about that? You do have a cat that plays a central role in things.

I lay in bed all night long, peddling my cat. This is my wife. What is the cat's name? She's named after the saint in Narnia. She's blessed Lucy of Narnia. And she means the world for me. But she is one of my three cats. The first cat was Urban the Eighth,

and then after one of the popes. And then when he died, I adopted his mother, Clarit the Meek. Clarence, I mean, cats are not generally meek, but she really was. And I think Clarit de Meek, if the Pope

was going to canonize cats, he should begin with her. Anyway, then comes Blessed Lucia Narnia. And when I went to Narnia a few years ago to receive a relic... You have to

explain... Yeah, that is a place called Narnia, it's an umbria, it's 50 miles north of Rome. And this is where C.S. Lewis got the name Narnia, was from this classical atlas. And I've been to Narnia a number of times, and they know a lot about Louis Thar. And one of that most popular saints is Blessed Lucy of Narnia, like Lucy Pevency. She was, she's one of the saints of the Catholic Church, which is incorrupt. Her body is in a glass case.

It's there. But it is still there. But her clothes, they said, are not incorrupt. And so the Vatican had to come up and change her Dominican habit. And so they gave a fragment of that, a relic of that, to me and my godson to bring to Oxford to put in the Oxford Oratory. Really? That's what it is.

Before I put it in, I touched the head of my blessed and lucid monia. But I've been told the priest, because I thought it might be wrong. He said, no, that just makes her third-cloth relic. So there I was last night sleeping the same bed with third-cloth relic. Wow. This is a special Oxford edition of the Eric Metaxus show. There is more of this conversation with Professor Walter Hooper coming up next. The best of the Eric Mataxis show.

Welcome back to the Eric Mataxis show from Oxford, England, where I'm hosting, several Socrates in the city events. Right now, we're talking to Professor Walter Hooper about all things C.S. Lewis. Let's rejoin the conversation. Well, by mentioning how Lewis came up with the name Narnia, you remind me of something we touched upon last time the importance of names and words and how they're not...

Let's see, how can we put this, that there's something more to words than just content. The connotation is as important and sometimes more important than the denotation. Words sounds summon things other than just facts in our brains. We know that Lewis came up with Aslan. Aslan is the Turkish word for lion. Many people don't know that. But it's also, it's not just that.

That's a nice idea, but the idea that it sounds right. What does that mean that it sounds right? I mean, if he had named Aslan George or he had named Aslan Bucky, it's just another name. But names have power. What do you think it is about Aslan or Narnia? Well, Aslan is a beautiful sound. It's short, it's easy to remember, but it doesn't have the familiar sounds like of Earth. names like George and Bert.

You don't want the king of the beast to be called Bert or Georgie or Billy Bob. Billy Bob, yeah. What kind of a Messiah would that be?

But it's easy to remember Aslan and it's easy to remember, I think, the other names. Well, this touches on something that our mutual friend, the C.S. Lewis scholar, Tom Howard, has written about in his really extraordinary, I think, classic book, Chance or the Dance, or, as they say it here, chance or the dons. But in that book, he talks about something which is really being challenged,

particularly now, especially in America, but around the world. And what he talks about is God's order and how when you make a statement like, well, Billy Bob wouldn't be right, but Aslan would be right. The assumptions that we bring to that judgment are interesting. Where do we get them from? And it's, Tom Howard would say, and I would say, that they're baked in, that we have an instinct for what might seem holy, what might seem noble, what might seem bass, vulgar, comedic. And in his book, Tom Howard's book, Chance of the Dance, he talks about the borzoi as a dog, that when you see it, it looks like nobility.

A lion evokes nobility. A hyena or a vulture evoke death the way they skulk. It's interesting to think that Lewis is on to that idea that there's something that God has put meaning into all things and that not everything is malleable. Lewis doesn't write about it so much, or maybe he does, he'll remember where, but it's in all of his fiction, this idea of embodying nobility, embodying vulgarity and baseness, that these things are not what we say they are. They're innate qualities that God has created a universe with these innate qualities. Of course, the idea of maleness and femalness is being challenged today as though anyone can be anything,

as though there isn't even such a thing as maleness. But the way Lewis portrays kings and queens, they're very different in his world. Folks, you've been listening to a special Socrates in the city event from Oxford, England, and it is my privilege to share these events with you, my radio audience. I hope you've been enjoying it. This has been a special English version of the Eric Metaxus show. Go right