Links between Warnie's writing and Jack's

[a_hnau]

I've just finished Warnie's Levantine Adventurer, and spotted what I think is another common snippet with something his brother wrote. Warnie is describing an interview in two parts between Louise XIV's Foreign Secretary and an important Oriental official. In the first part of the interview, the Frenchman is arrogant and demanding, but in the second part, a few days later, his attitude had changed. The interesting part is that Warnie says, "The Foreign Secretary plainly had 'had his head washed' as the French say, by Louis XIV." This immediately puts me in mind of the (vastly amusing) scene in Out of the Silent Planet where Weston and Devine are being interviewed by the Oyarsa of Malacandra, who - to try and get some sense out of the overbearing Weston - has the hrossa take Weston away and literally wash his head. I really wonder if C.S. Lewis had this French idiom in mind when he wrote this passage. Chronologically, OOTSP was published in 1938, while Levantine Adventurer wasn't published till 1962, so I can't think there is a direct textual connection...

[Leslie]

The expression also appears in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (specifically, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe), when Marvin the depressed robot offers to stick his head in a bucket of water, and then Zaphod Beeblebrox says "he just phoned up to wash his head at us."

I assumed it was a quaint Britishism.

[a_hnau]

Well spotted - this one had not occurred to me. I'm not aware of it as British idiom, so - unless Douglas Adams knows it in French, which is quite possible - I just took it as another bit of random Hitchhiker's slapstick.

[Ian]

They Both Wotte storys when thay were boys, And then Later they put there story's togetter to make one hole story wich if i'm right it made Boxen.?

[a_hnau]

I'd have to check into that to be sure. From memory, I had thought that Boxen was Jack's creation, and that Warnie did make up stories too when they were together as children but with rather different characters. I'll see if I can find the reference I'm thinking of.

[Mornamoice]

According to the forward of my book, Boxen, the world was a combination of Warnie's beloved India and Jack's Animal-Land. If you'll forgive a longish quote, Lewis wrote:

The Animal-Land which came into action in the holidays when my brother was at home was a modern Animal-Land; it had to have trains and steamships if it was to be a country shared with him. It followed, of course, that the medieval Animal-Land about which I wrote my stories must be the same country at an earlier period; and of course the two periods must be properly connected. This led me from romancing to historiography; I set about writing a full history of Animal-Land.... There was soon a map of Animal-Land--several maps, all tolerably consistent. Then Animal-Land had to be geographically related to my brother's India, and India consequently lifted out of its place in the real world. We made it an island, with its north coast running along the back of the Himalayas; between it and Animal-Land my brother rapidly invented the principal steamship routes. Soon there was a whole world and a map of that world which used every colour in my paint box. And those parts of that world which we regarded as our own--Animal-Land and India--were increasingly peopled with consistent characters.

Anyway, that's what I have on Boxen. I received the book many years ago as a gift from a favourite high school English teacher, but it had been awhile since I looked at it. The question on it led me to pull it off the shelf again and I think now I'll settle in and read for awhile.

kellidra