From quiet homes and first beginning,
out to the undiscovered ends,
there’s nothing worth the wear of winning,
but laughter and the love of friends.
 
Although I’m not at all sure that these famous lines by the indomitable Hilaire Belloc are entirely orthodox, I can’t help liking them, nor could I help thinking of them over the past couple of days as a number of delightful visitors brought laughter and friendship to Ladydale, the Pearce family hobbit hole.
 
On New Year’s Day we had a visit from our old friend, Al Benthall, assistant professor of literature at Belmont Abbey College, whom we first knew when he and I were colleagues in the literature department of Ave Maria College in Michigan, shortly after my arrival in the United States. Al wrote the preface to my book, C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church and we had a fruitful discussion about the planned new edition of this particular book. During the hours that he was with us we discussed just about everything except cabbages and kings, and even found time to play the “ogre game”, an exciting Christmas present, with Evangeline, my four-year-old daughter. As the night waxed merry and the wine waned in the bottle, we had a throstling good time discussing the symbolic appearance of the humble thrush in great literature, from Chaucer to Keats, and from Hardy and Eliot to Tolkien. Who would have thought that such a small bird could have played such a significant role in English letters? At some stage in the ornithological course of the evening the thrush made way for swimming swans, colly birds, French hens, turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree, as we sang Christmas carols with unabashed abandon to my children’s delight.
 
Yesterday through till lunchtime today we were visited by two other great friends, Shaun and Ann-Marie Blanchard. Shaun, whom I first met during a C. S. Lewis conference at the University of San Diego back in 2002 (I think), when he was still at high school, is now teaching at a good Catholic school in North Carolina, having received his Master’s degree from Blackfriars in Oxford a few years ago. He will be known to readers of the St. Austin Review for his excellent article in the last issue, “Freedom and Kingship: Reflections on Christ the King”. Ann-Marie, meanwhile, is in the midst of writing a novel. Shaun is a native of North Carolina but is something of an anglophile, having immersed himself in the Oxonian experience, whereas Ann-Marie is an Aussie, with a Scottish mother. My wife, Susannah, is a Californian whose mother is from Northern Ireland and I am a true son of Albion whose grandmother hailed from Galway. This potentially volatile mix exploded with convivial laughter as the follies and foibles of Englishmen, Irishmen, Scotsmen, Australians and Americans were grist to our collective mill.
 
As I recall with a warm Christmas glow the visit of such wonderful friends, I am reminded again of Belloc’s lines. There may be many things worth the wear of winning other than laughter and the love of friends but there are few things more joyous this side of heaven. They are a veritable blessing for which gratitude is demanded. Thanks be to God for the goodness of friends and the laughter it brings!