The Eric Metaxas Show - Walter Hooper - Part 3 (Encore)

Episode Date: December 30, 2020

Eric's interview with Walter Hooper, the literary assistant to C.S. Lewis, continues in this special Socrates in the City broadcast recorded in London. (Encore Presentation)

This is the best of the Eric Metaxis show. It's the show everyone's talking about. But they really should be listening to it. Broadcasting from the Empire State Building because the Chrysler Building wasn't available. This is the Eric Mataxis show. Your host, Eric Mataxis. Hey, I'm Eric Mataxis. Maybe you already knew that, but what you might not have known is that this week I am actually not at all in the Empire State Building.

Not even in New York. I'm across the pond. No, not in New Jersey. In England. Yes, I'm in Oxford, England right now, doing a special series of Socrates in the city events. That's Socrates in the city. And I wanted to share them with you, my radio audience. So now let's listen in to the Socrates in the city event I did yesterday.

Or it may have been the day before I'm getting confused with the jet lag. But very recently, I hope you enjoy it. Pip, pip, cheerio, and so on and so forth. Thank you. Welcome to Socrates in the city, Oxford Edition. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.

I am, thank you. I cannot tell you how excited I am about this, not just because we're here in Oxford, but particularly because for me this is a dream come true. For years, I have wanted to interview Walter Hooper. And I never wanted to interview him just once. I want to interview him in a series, Nixon, David Frost's style, not quite, but to really get, you don't get that reference, you're all kids, to really get into some depth because he has such a wealth of information to share about his life and about C.S. Lewis and Lewis's works. There's no one who can compare. So please Socrates in the city, welcome for Walter Hooper.

think back 51 years to a day when you could not get the great works of C.S. Lewis. Now, when I say the great works, I think they're all great, but the idea that the abolition of man, a seminal prophetic work of Lewis's, that that would be out of print is a staggering thought. And so I say this to underscore the service that you provided, not just to Lewis lovers, but to humanity, because this is, I would say, one of the classic works of the 20th century, which was out of print.

And if you, 20-something hot-shot American upstart that you were, to dare say to this patrician figure, Lady Collins, that you must put out this back, this old book, it's an extraordinary thing. And what you did then, and I want to hear about subsequent demands, that you made to these poor old people who couldn't stand up to you. What a monumental service it is to the world of letters. I'm not trying to embarrass you,

but I think that it needs to be clear that this one little young man from North Carolina comes to England and does this, and if it had not been for you, and this is clear to me, this wouldn't have been done, and it is entirely possible that what we know of Lewis, we would not know of Lewis.

And it's one of those things that, you know, it's like trying to think of, what if the South had won the Civil War or something like that? I mean, I cannot imagine the world without the works of Lewis being well known by millions of people, many hundreds that I've discussed him with. So did you have any sense in 1960s? as a very young man in that office with the intimidating Lady Collins of the importance of what you were doing.

I think I did, because as I mentioned earlier, in my argument with C.S. Lewis, we didn't know who won at that time. But I'll remind you of the argument, which was essential for me. he was very worried about what would his older brother who was a retired army officer would live on when he himself died when C.S. Lewis died and I said he will live on your royalties but then he pointed out what was well known

not to me but I mean to people like him is that once an author dies then his books after three years is trail off to almost nothing and stop selling. And I said, well, yours won't. And he said, well,

sometime an author has a resurrection like Sir Walter Scott is having now, but that's very rare. I said, you didn't even worry about it. And then he said, I don't understand who is this American secretary who tells me I don't need

to worry? Why don't I need to worry? And I said, because your books are so good and your readers are not that stupid. Well, I believe that, and he believed what he said. But then right after he died, I saw Blackwell's bookshops. His books were already remained, they were getting ready to bury him, as it were. Anyway, someone, a publisher had said to me, a new book helps to sell old books. And at that time, I was trying to complete

Ful Lewis, the book that he was editing before he died, which was a volume of poems. But he didn't know very many of his poems. He didn't know where they were how to get to them, because he had so few of his own books and his house. You said much of this seven years ago this very day. And I find it typical of Lewis in the way that he was almost ridiculously humble. And, you know, part of it is his Christian

character and another part of it is sin, I would say. And I would say to his face if he were here, because I challenge people on that. You can be overly humble. And I think sometimes you can do great harm. And the idea that they had such little, he had such little respect for his own work, actually, you know, it's like somebody's saying, well, I can commit suicide because I can do what I like, but I can't kill you. It's like, well, no, you know, you have to treat yourself in the way you want to treat others, just as you should treat others the way you want to treat yourself. Now, I say this in part because this episode with the manuscripts, I think we touched upon it in the last session, but he had very little respect for his own manuscripts. They would throw them away.

when Warnie was, his brother was worried about having to move or wanting to move, being afraid that he couldn't pay rent or afford the kilns, you said that he was getting rid of papers, or maybe when I was with you a year ago we spoke about this privately. But I'd love you to talk about this, that Warnie, his brother, who was his secretary for so many years, was simply burning Lewis's papers, not just manuscripts, and we can talk about that,

but all kinds of other papers that anyone, whether the Wade Center at Wheaton today or anybody, would love to have, papers, letters, even, you know, tax records of this literary giant, just to have a sense of who he was, something for his biographers to pour over. What happened? when you were there, when did you see this happening and what did you do about it?

You see, Lewis was giving away two-thirds of his income. So it didn't really represent what he made in royalties. So in one way, I was trying to be realistic, but he panicked. So he panicked, and then he thought, I won't be able to afford the pay the rates on this large house. so I'll move out to a small house. I think also he had the feeling that the old, the good life is over. Get ready for purgatory now. This is a special Oxford edition of the Eric Mataxis show.

There's more of this conversation with Professor Walter Hooper coming up next. The Best of the Eric Mataxis show. You're listening to a special version of the Eric Mataxis show. I'm doing a Socrates in the city event in Oxford, England. Let's continue my conversation with Professor Walter Hooper. The idea that this bonfire, first of all, was burning for three days. What does that mean? I can't quite – I'm from Manhattan in New York City.

We don't have bonfires. What was going on? In other words, what were they burning three days running? They were burning various papers of C.S. Lewis. There were various, say, lectures that he had. had given, he kept the manuscripts of them if they hadn't been published. So

and Joy Seyer, one of his friends who wrote a biography, was pretty sure that he'd written a sequel to Surprise by Joy. I don't know that. But we thought, well, if he did write it

is gone into the bonfire. I'm just stunned to hear this. I just have to ask you because The idea that Warnie was doing this, was Warnie, you know, in his right mind, do you think? I mean, it seems like he was a very

anxious person, but that's an extraordinary thing that he might be burning a great manuscript. Well, when this came up one time, he said, but I didn't burn any the diaries of the Lewis family. He cared really only about family papers as opposed to, say, professional papers. In fact, he wrote a letter to me

shortly after that, pointing out that he and Jack had brought over all the family papers their father and mother's letters, their grandfather's diaries, I mean, 11 volumes of papers. Anyway, he was at that time, he spent 1932 to 1933

simply going through those papers and copying on to the typewriter so that they make up 11 volumes of typewritten papers about 300 pages each and then he said he went away

and came back to find that Jack had burnt all the original family papers so you know Jack didn't care. He said, they're already copies of them. You know, you just...

So, Warnie wrote this to you in a letter. He did. Did you... Do you have the letter, or did you burn it? No, I... I think you should burn it. I never burn it. Let's burn it tomorrow.

Let's burn it right here. We'll get the last last on warning. But this is unfathomable, and I don't want to run past it too quickly. Let me ask you as well, and I don't know if you can answer this, but when I hear things like this,

very little is known about warning, certainly compared to C.S. Lewis. Was his faith anything like his brother's faith, or was his faith more of a nominal faith? Because when people are so anxious and so worried, I worry that he really didn't have any place to take his grief. He had a faith. He had, it was not nominal. He had come back. He had, he had, he had, he had, he had, come back to Christianity of the same time that C.S. Lewis had in 1931. And so when he came back

from China, you know, they each discovered they had both come back to the faith. Warner always insisted that Jack was not converted. He said he was always converted. He just returned. But Lewis, I think, knew

about what his own faith was like. He said, no, I had lost it. And then I gained it. through the conversion. But Warney said no. No, but he said no about his own brother, but I think his own faith was

never shaken, and since he never became a rabid atheist. But he was a very firm believer. And that, you know, there was no doubt at all.

But he did, but he really did insist that his brother, Jack had never fully left the faith. That's right, yes. And he always said that. Yeah, I think he in one way believed that, you know, this is sort of the army thing. You know, one doesn't behave irrationally if you are, you know, army people.

You know, and also good Irish people from Northern Ireland. But, I mean, Lewis's diary, I mean, his own a biography, surprised by joy, tells a different story. But in the sequel, he refutes it. We wondered if that was the sequel, but if so, we won't find it. My goodness.

Well, so you come upon this scene. Now, is it Paxford? Paxford, the gardener. The gardener. He said that of all these notebooks there, and he said to the major, I'm pretty sure Mr. Hooper would like those. And the major said,

well, if he comes today, he can take him away. So I went up to the kills, and he said, yes, yes, Paxford said you wanted these notebooks. And I found so many papers that they filled two huge suitcases. And I said, but I don't think I can carry both of those. today, could I come back tomorrow and get the rest of them? No, whatever you leave today goes on the bonfire. Excuse me.

Why do you suppose he was hankering to burn these papers? Oh, I think because he needed to move into smaller house, so he needed to downsize, as you'd say today. Well, okay, now that we know that you did, well, what happened? How did you get them out of there? Well, I didn't know, and I wasn't, I wasn't a rich man at all. I had almost nothing to live on.

So I dragged them the mile down to the bus stop, and then I got the bus into town and dragged them into. But I'm young then. I was only 32. And that made all the difference. You dragged these heavy suitcases filled with. Now, was there, in fact, anything in there of considerable value? That was. There were not only, the 52 notebooks, many of which had essays and things, which I published over the years.

Can you give us an example of an essay that would have burned? Well, they were, yes, a number of the essays like on prayer. and on Addison are mainly literary essays. And where have they been published? They've been published in selected literary essays published by Cambridge University Press. So there were quite a lot.

Lewis didn't save the letters that were sent to him, but he did save a few letters from really important people like E.R. Edison who wrote The Worm of Robberus. Lewis had corresponded with him for years. He always cites that book as a tremendous influence on him. I've tried to get a copy, and I haven't, but I'd like to read what Lewis read. He cites a few other things, obscure books, but that's one of them.

And so you're saying that he did correspond with Edison? Yeah, he did. this. Edison, fortune preserved all of Lewis's letters, and Edison's daughter and I, this is some years later, we got together, I said, I have your

father's letters to C.S. Lewis. And she said, well, I have Lewis's letters to my father. So we agree to both put both collections into the Bodleian Library. So it's a wonderful conclusion to our story.

And have those, are there still letters and notebooks, diaries, things of that nature, that have not been published? No, most things have been published. But those letters to Edison are all in volumes two and three of the collective letters of Lewis. And then there were a good many letters from Dorothy Alsayers. He saved those two. she began corresponding with him in 1942 and thus it led to a long correspondence and many of his letters

of his letters to her have been published in collected letters and then some of all of her letters have been published most of them by Barbara Riddles and the four volumes of collected letters this is a special Oxford edition of the Eric Mataxis show.

There is more of this conversation with Professor Walter Hooper coming up next. Welcome back. You're listening to a special British version of the Eric Metaxus show. Yes, I'm in Oxford, England,

taping a series of Socrates in the city events. I hope you're enjoying it. Here's more of my conversation with Professor Walter Hooper. Did Lewis keep in his notebooks or did he have diaries? Because I cannot remember,

I feel like I should be aware of everything published under his name, but were there diaries or journals or things like that that he wrote that have been published? Yes, yes. I edited a volume of diary. It's called All My Road Before Me. Oh, yeah, okay. It came back in 1992. Okay.

And this covers the years just 1920, 1928. It didn't keep it very long. but that was partly those diaries were recovered from the bonfire those you drag them down the hill

a mile down the hill but I was strong then I was a bigger man than I am now I think even in this state you wouldn't have left them to burn I can't imagine you would have left them to burn you might have tackled warning or something

but I'm just it's unfathed to me that these treasures were poised for the fire and that you happened to be there to rescue them. I mean, it's a very fitting picture. You know, if I were to invent the film version of this, I would invent this story to sum up what you have done with your life. But it's very nice to have this picture of it and to know this is actually true. But I don't want anybody to suppose that Warnie didn't love his brother. that this had anything to do with it. He loved him very, very much.

And in one way, getting rid of all of these things is part of the love. Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's clear, I mean, that they loved each other and that they were best friends their whole lives. That's why it's just so... Only somebody who's that close to someone else would maybe have the freedom to do something like that. You wouldn't have a hands-off attitude

because you'd feel like what's his is mine and what's mine is his, and they probably shared clothes for all we know. but it is extraordinary. So this is 1964. You have saved treasures from literal fire. You take the collected poems to Lady Collins in London, I guess. Well, no, the collected poems were published by Bless. She came later.

What did you take to Lady Collins? They stand together, the letters. to Arthur Greaves. Okay, so that was what you were presenting here with. Did you, did Bless do any other work? You said that they went out of business, I think.

Yes, they did. They were, Bless had already died. Jocelyn Gibb took over the firm, but he wanted to retire. So they just gave up the business. And so the Lewis estate,

By this time, I had become one of the three trustees, and we had to decide who we would give all this Lewis's works, too. I mean, who's going to take them over? Well, Collins were already publishing the Narnian stories in paperback. So they had the best claim to them, and Lady Collins had already brought out a number of paperbacks, because Bless didn't bring out any paperbacks. So she was the natural person to do it. It turned out to be she was ideal. But because we also have the benefit of a literary agent's Curtis Brown.

And the ladies in Curtis Brown knew what Lady Collins was. They knew how glamorous she was. And so they said to me after that first meeting with Lady Collins, Now look, we know you are under the spell of Lady Collins, but we are not. We are immune to her spell. So if she says, you know, what about a 10% royalty, 5%? You probably would say, oh, why bother with royalties? But we are not, we are immune to her charms.

So that's when we come then and settle into royalties. But don't say the thing about money because you'll give it all away. Well, so this was, was this 1964 that you were with Lady Collins in London? Yes. Okay. So at what point did you realize that this might go on beyond this juncture? I mean, did you have a sense that there were years of this kind of service ahead at that point? Well, the things were changing at that time.

One of the important works, it was not important work in itself, but its publication was important at that time was God in the Dark by the Bishop of Woolwich. and this had unsettled the faith of many, many Christians at that time. He argued, and Lewis had seen a chapter of that, and had been asked to comment on it, which he did in an essay. Anyway, in honest to God, what the bishop said at that time is roughly that you can't trust metaphors or images because they're always, they're not literally true.

True. More of the best of the Eric Metaxus show after this. 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. What the bishop said at that time was roughly that you can't trust metaphors or images because they're always, they're not literally.

true. So he said when we say that Christ came down from heaven, that's not literally true, because sounds like a man in a parachute coming down. So in fact, we just don't know. We can only say something like he entered the universe. Well, when Lewis was asked to comment on that, He says the bishop has told us something that we already believe for many centuries. All language is metaphorical. The language of the scientists, as much as those of literary scholars. And he said, when you exchange, say, he came down from heaven, for we ended the universe, it sounds like you said the man didn't come down in a parachute.

He went from the garden shed out and opened the door, end of the tree. drawing room, but you can't be absolutely literal, but at least what we have in the Bible is inspired metaphors. So therefore, we should give more credence to those that anything we make up. Brilliant. Well, you're just exchanging metaphor for metaphor. That's right. You can't escape the idea of the metaphor. But you're saying that there was a book published by this bishop called God in the Dark? Yeah, God in the Dark. So, no, no. His book was called, I've just said it.

Honest to God. Honest to God. Honest to God. And so God in the Dark was the response. Yeah. And then in America, the man came, what was his name? Some of you may remember who said, God is dead. This school of thought was present in America about the same time, same years, about 65 or 60s. And so there was a lot of falling away of people at that time.

And many of even the clergy who had admired CISO, they were beginning on the bandwagon of the new garden, you know, all these unbelievers, the new unbelievers. But one of the things that had happened was the meeting of the Vatican Council between 1962 and 1965 in Rome and I thought how does this benefit the C.S. Lewis

estate? Well I saw one particular benefit. John the 23rd who opened the Council, Pope John the 23rd, had made a statement which I thought sums up exactly what

Lewis himself believed. He said in that opening statement of the council, the deposit of faith and the vulnerable truths of our tradition are one thing, what you call the revelation. But presentation of that truth is another thing. But the presentation must always buy the same sense and meaning. So there's the ever-lost in gospel. their ways of making that gospel known.

But if you make them known, like Scrutic letters, the Marnian Chronicles, it must also bear the same sense and meaning. You must have the gospel. If you keep the gospel out, then, you know, it doesn't make any difference what the presentation is. If it's no longer Christian, it's no longer Christian.

And so I thought, what Lewis writes, you know, He is writing the scutate letters to enforce the truth so you can see things from a different angle. But he's not actually saying things are changed, just say, let's look at it from this angle, from then from another. In the Chronicles of Narnia, he said to a number of people who thought they were allegories,

he said, no, they're not allegories. It's a suppos. He said, let us suppose that Christ, the second person of the Trinity, not Jesus, but the son of God in heaven, came down not to earth, but to a land of talking beast and became a lion there. What happened? Well, that's the quanticles of Narnia. So we see Christ living out his life as a talking beast as a lion. And many people of which I am certainly one, in one way, I cannot now separate my love of Jesus from my love of Haslam,

because they have the same. Well, I mean, this gets to the other point, or to another point, regarding Lewis is the power of his imagination. to dare to begin to think about this supposal. I don't know that there's anyone who ever lived capable of doing it. It's such a powerful work of imagination, especially for someone who values theological orthodoxy. It's an extraordinary thing.

Bonhofer said that every sermon should have, have a shot of heresy in it, which means that to really speak the deepest truth, we have to almost flirt with heresy. We have to be willing to go out on a limb. Some people won't be able to follow us out on that limb, but if we really know what we're about, we can get away with it. Lewis could get away with it. And there were people, and there still are people, who couldn't follow him out on these limbs. They're mortified that he would do this. They think of it as blasphemous, but the rest of us are able to see more deeply into these truths because he's enabled us to do that. But there have been very few people in history in the world of letters

who've been able to pull this kind of thing off. Well, I think one of the reasons I know that he's succeeded with children is that children still write to him and I reply to those letters. I'm still letting his secretary or 50 years later. a special Oxford edition of the Eric Metaxus show. There is more of this conversation with Professor Walter Hooper coming up next. You're listening to a special Socrates in the City edition of the Eric Metaxus show from Oxford, England. Let's continue my conversation with Professor Walter Hooper. One of the reasons I know that he's succeeded with children is that children still write to him, and I reply to those letters.

I'm still letting his secretary, or 50 years later. And I put most of those letters go into the Bodden Library. But one of the sweetest, I think, I've ever had was from a little boy called Josh. And the teacher said that she had these, I think there were five or six-year-old boys in her class. She told them that Lewis had died, but they wrote to him anyway. and little Josh said in his letter, Dear Mr. Lewis, I'm sorry you've died. I just want you to know how much I love Aslan.

But I mean, his love of Aslan was much more on his mind than the death of the author. He didn't quite understand what happened to him. They're just sorry he died. Amazing. But that's in the Bodleian Library. But so one of the things, I go back to that period of the Vatican Council, one of the things that interested me very much with the decree on ecumenism, when it points out in the decree on ecumenism,

that there's truth in other Christian beliefs other than Catholicism. And this made it possible for Catholic readers and admirers of Lewis to like his works, because it was now possible for Catholics to realize that there was truth in other works of Christian works as well as being Catholic. And, you know, I think it's probably a good thing that Lewis was an Anglican at that time because no Catholic writer would have been encouraged to take such liberties as Lewis did. Yeah. Well, also, he didn't come across.

as a particularly staunch Anglican. I mean, he came up with the term mere Christianity. Yep, yes. And I, you know, if I'm pushed, I would describe myself as a mere Christian. You know, that's my denomination. And I think Lewis helped people in some ways avoid, you know, the straight jacket of a particular denomination. And just to say that I'm with Lewis, I'm with historical Christian.

Christianity and with traditional Christianity, I think that that's something he may have intended to some extent. Do you think that that was intentional because he is so appreciated across the spectrum? Well, he told me one time, we were talking about near Christianity, but he said, suppose, you know, the main street is the corn market. suppose a group of Martians suddenly appeared in the Corn Market Street, right in the heart of Oxford, and they said to the people who stopped out to talk to these Martians, we've only just got a minute. Can you tell us what Christianity is? We've heard about it from Mars, but we want to know what it is. He said, I'm afraid that one would say, well, about that they'd

too many candles on the altar and down here, they don't really do anything like that. And so it would be one, you know, denomination talking about how awful the others are. And he said, I fear that the Martians would have to go back without discovering what the faith is. Folks, you've been listening to a special Socrates in the city event from Oxford, England, and it's my privilege to share these events, these conversations with you, my radio audience. I hope you've been enjoying them. We've got more coming up in the next hour.

This is a special English version of the Eric Metaxus show. Stay tuned.