The Notion Club Papers - an Inklings blog

The Once and Future Charles Williams

Bruce G Charlton

Journal of Inklings Studies. 2016; 6 (1): 151-6

Like most people, I came to Charles Williams via my interest in J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis; specifically, via Humphrey Carpenter's group biography The Inklings (1979).

The problem is that none of Williams's works is a real masterpiece, or at least not generally regarded as such; and all of the best work is difficult. The big question, then, is: what is the argument for a continuing engagement with Williams?

Grevel Lindop’s main reason is that he regards Williams’s last two collections, Taliessin through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars, as remarkable works, and Williams as a great poet. I myself think Taliessin over-edited and artificially-contrived (betraying its origins as a line-by-line collaboration with the poet Anne Ridler); and while I find Summer Stars to be more fluent and effective, I don't very much like it.

My own reason for a continued interest in Williams, rather, has been his status as a Christian. He was, indeed, one of the four main literary Christians of the mid-twentieth century Anglican revival, which was the most recent significant Christian revival in England. The others were C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, and Dorothy L. Sayers, who were all friends and strong admirers of Williams – to whom might be added W.H. Auden as a less direct and more ‘last minute’ Christian figure (he converted late in 1940 and never took a public apologetic and evangelical role).

Reading this biography, it becomes clear that whether one is interested in Williams primarily as a poet or primarily as a Christian turns out to make a very big difference, because Lindop reveals clearly and unambiguously, for the first time, the extent to which Christianity and poetry were at war in Williams's life - and in particular, the extent to which Christianity was sacrificed to poetry.

Before Lindop, it was generally known that Williams was adulterously in love with Phyllis Jones in his last two decades; that he also had warped sexualized interactions with Lois Lang-Sims during his wartime years in Oxford; and that there were other, rather imprecise, accounts of ritual magical-sadism with young female ‘disciples’. But the sheer extent and intensity of Williams's activities along these lines was never before explicit.

Before this new biography, I did not realize, for example, that CW had had intense love relationships with both his main early biographers, Anne Ridler and Alice Mary Hadfield. Furthermore, Lindop quotes extensively from the correspondence between CW and Phyllis Jones, and I never before realized how sexualized the relationship was.

Indeed, in my interpretation, it was primarily sexual, even though the sex was not consummated in the biological sense. The relationship strikes me as deeply maladaptive, in that it was apparently a case of mutual dependency. Both Williams and Jones were mostly unhappy, and frequently wretched, in the relationship; but neither could find the strength to break away. It was apparently addictive: Williams was addicted to the sexual frisson and seductive teasings of the young woman - she gave him energy; Phyllis was addicted to the attention and worship of the older, clever, creative man - he made her feel special.

To summarize the problem for those of us who primarily value Charles Williams the Christian, Lindop’s revelations make clear that Williams strategically used the role of confidante and spiritual adviser for young women to 'groom' them into gratifying his desire for ritualistic, petty sadism. He did this in order to become sexually excited, and then he channelled this excitement to write poetry. This was done, or attempted, time and again with multiple women.

In general, it seems the sadism was, as I said, petty – involving stuff like pinching and slapping palms, back, or buttocks with pencils and rulers. There was quite a bit of master-slave-type play-acting, including by letter and telephone; and an authoritarian / bullying element in his advising and teaching. In general, the record indicates that the young women did not much object to this, and most remained on good terms with him, often very good terms.

Of course there may well be others we don't know of - indeed I would expect that there would have been many young women who must have been appalled, frightened or disgusted at the turn of conversation from this previously kind and charming and spiritual man; women who immediately fled, and left no trace on the records. Nonetheless, whatever the young women felt personally about being sexually used as poetry-stimulants; there is no doubt that this kind of behaviour was dishonest, manipulative and categorically un-Christian.

The evidence presented by Lindop is consistent with Williams's assertion that he engaged in this ritual sadism with attractive young women mainly in order to write poetry. And for whatever reason, it apparently worked: it achieved its goal. Williams thought of it as a magical process, to do with the generation and transformation of sexual into creative energies.

So this was the Poetry versus Christianity trade-off to which I referred. In order to write poetry, or write better poetry, Williams deliberately, strategically, repeatedly behaved in an un-Christian manner. And this is, inevitably, potentially very significant for an evaluation of Charles Williams as both a public Christian teacher and a theologian.

At the same time, Williams had remarkable qualities as a man. Many regarded him as something like a saint - or if not, then someone of exceptional spiritual experiences and insights, and therefore capable of providing great help to many people, of whom Lewis, Eliot and Sayers are merely the best known. All this was what I first heard about Williams, and it remains true.

What of William’s role in the Inklings? Probably the mainstream understanding is of Williams as very much the third Inkling, far behind Lewis and Tolkien; or maybe the fourth, coming behind that oldest important collaborator of Lewis’s, but infrequent Inklings attender, Owen Barfield. Williams’s earlier biographers and memorialists have downplayed the significance of the Inklings for Williams himself, pointing out that he had completed most of his main work before 1939; and this is reinforced by Williams’ lack of attention to the meetings in his surviving wartime letters to his wife, and memories emanating from his older friends and disciples.

But on the other side of the coin there is considerable albeit indirect evidence that during the period between 1939 and William’s death in 1945, he was the spiritual and intellectual leader of the Inklings: the de facto ‘President’ of these informal meetings (with Jack Lewis as ‘Chairman’ and Warnie as ‘Secretary’).

In all regular groups of friends there is a dominant figure - one who is the main authority, the final court of appeal, who controls the discourse. And I think this is the role that Williams took over from Jack Lewis. In support of this idea, Warnie Lewis’s diary records Williams as the most regular attender at Inklings meetings (presumably after himself and Jack); Warnie says he knew Williams better than any other of the Inklings, and he was clearly central to the group.

After 1945, when the young John Wain attended Inklings meetings as an undergraduate, he said that the group had been permanently wounded by the death of Williams - which is further indirect evidence for Williams' key role.

But the first reason to believe this is that Williams was a dominant man: someone who (in his own distinctive way) dominated almost every human situation in which he found himself. On top of this, Williams was (1) the oldest of the regular Inklings; (2) by far the most published - the senior author among those present; (3) the best connected of the Inklings, with friends and colleagues among major and famous literary figures of the era; (4) a ‘metropolitan’ figure, prestigious in London intellectual circles - in this sense a wordly man, compared with the 'ivory towered' dons; (5) in effect, a ‘professional’ theologian, whose books were read, pondered, discussed, by academic theologians and eminent priests – Williams had for some time been invited to contribute essays, books, reviews and plays on theological matters.

And Williams was a successful poet, regarded at the time as one of the most important of that era. Tolkien and Lewis had both intended to be poets (first and foremost) in their early adulthood. Neither had succeeded; but Williams had.

Finally, when Jack Lewis and Tolkien first read William’s The Place of the Lion in 1936, it may have been the single most important catalyst for their later success as writers of ambitious, intellectually serious, adult fantasy; leading immediately to their embarking on what became Lewis’s Space Trilogy and Tolkien’s (unfinished and in his life unpublished) Lost Tales / Notion Club Papers (which was eventually absorbed into the Numenor aspects of The Lord of the Rings) – all of which works have clear Williams-esque influences.

Thus Williams’s membership of, and position in, the Inklings was something that had been pre-prepared for at least three years. So, if that was the past; then what is a probable and desirable future for Charles Williams’s reputation?

He could, of course, continue more or less as he has for the past half century – being invisible to the mainstream except as a minor Inkling; with a tiny, albeit prestigious and devoted, following as a poet and/or a Christian theologian. Indeed, if Williams continues to be remembered for his published books, I think this almost must be the case; since none of these have passed the test of posterity to become regarded as first rate of their kind.

But I can imagine a different and much more exciting future, which involves Charles Williams as a personality, a character; the lynch-pin around whom revolved the most significant intellectual figures of what was the last (and may be the final) significant Christian revival in Britain – a nation that was still ruler of the largest empire the world has yet seen.

This would regard Charles Williams as a phenomenon far bigger than his books; and in that respect of a similar nature as, although lesser stature than, Ben Jonson, Lord Byron, or Ezra Pound, all of whom (though their published work does not perhaps equal that of their greatest contemporaries) psychologically dominated their intellectual and literary circles.

Among people such as Eliot, Sayers and the Inklings, Williams was, I think, acknowledged as The Master: the final authority on the deepest matters: a living, breathing, inspiring, creative exponent of spiritual and mystical Christianity as it affected the modern world. And he achieved this, as I said, not mainly through his writing, but firstly by his teaching and secondly by his conversation: by personal interactions.

In other words, Charles Williams exerted his most important role by charisma: this is where the essence of Charles Williams’s influence resided. Consequently, the most hopeful future for Charles Williams – the future I would most like to see - is, I believe, in works of creative imagination.

I can imagine Williams as the semi-fictional protagonist of novels, ‘biopic’ movies, television series or some other narrative art. Done well, such media offer the best and only possibility of re-capturing the charisma, the full impact and fascination, of Charles Williams; and perhaps even restoring him to a central position in the intellectual and spiritual life of those wartime years of Christian revival.

It is this future which Lindop’s biography has made possible. The core written legacy of those vital Inklings years certainly belongs to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien; but we now have enough facts, hints, and clues to recreate a dynamic picture of the essential facilitator: Charles Walter Stansby Williams.

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I have argued that there are good grounds for believing that Charles Williams (rather than CS Lewis) assumed a dominant, 'presiding' role at Inklings meetings during the 1939-45 years he was in Oxford -

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/evidence-that-charles-williams-presided.html

If I am correct about this, why would it not have been mentioned specifically such that the fact was not suspected?

The main evidence would have needed to come from CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. Lewis does not say that Charles Williams 'took over' from him at Inklings meetings; however, Lewis was always keen to emphasize the convivial aspects of the Inklings and downplay the formal elements. And his almost unbounded admiration of and praise for Williams in letters after CW's death and the introduction to Essays Presented to Charles Williams certainly do not contradict the idea of CW presiding.

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But JRR Tolkien said nothing of this kind - indeed, Tolkien threw a large Red Herring into Inklings studies which has confused most scholars since; when from the late 1950s or early 60s Tolkien began to 'rewrite' his own relationship with Charles Williams, and present a distorted history of his own relationship with Williams - downplaying his own friendship, claiming not to like William's work, claiming Williams was really just a favourite of CSL, and that this happened because Lewis was too impressionable.

Tolkien is, indeed, so negative about Williams that many Inklings scholars state that Tolkien was jealous of Williams having displaced himself as Lewis's best friend.

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However, there is no trace of this in published contemporary evidence of letters, diaries etc, deriving from while Williams was still alive and in the period afterwards. This is unanimous that Tolkien and CW were good friends, and got on well together, there is no trace of 'jealousy' -

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/was-tolkien-jealous-of-charles-williams.html

Above, I argue that Tolkien retrospectively changed his mind against Williams, after some of the revelations concerning Williams life which were published in the late 1950s (perhaps related to Williams's participation in ritual magic and/or his un-Christian relationships with young women) - but this was all more than a decade after Williams's death.

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It also seems that Tolkien was strongly and decisively influenced by Williams's novel The Place of the Lion; but much of this clear influence is only evident in the unpublished novels The Lost Road and The Notion Club Papers  -

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/tolkien-and-lewiss-annus-divertium-of.html

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Since Tolkien only became famous, and oft-interviewed, after he had turned-against Charles Williams, and after CS Lewis had died, the best potential source of information on the nature of Inklings meetings and their conduct was already distorted; the well was poisoned, in effect.

Of course this is a negative explanation for an absence of evidence - and is clearly not a decisive argument! Still, perhaps it helps explain why it seems possible that CW may have 'led' the Inklings meetings, despite there being no specific evidence to confirm this assertion.

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It is an error, although very commonly repeated, that Tolkien was jealous of Williams' friendship with Lewis.

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There is not a scrap of contemporary evidence to support the idea, indeed everything written during Williams' life supports the idea that Tolkien was very fond of Williams (and of his participation in the Inklings), and that this fondness extended until after Williams death with the preparation of Essays Presented to Charles Williams (in which On Fairy Stories first appeared).

I have argued elsewhere that Tolkien's Notion Club Papers, the attempted-novel of 1945-6 (after Williams death), was heavily influenced by Williams 

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/notion-club-papers-are-tolkiens-charles.html

Yet later on, from around 1960, there were several retrospective comments from Tolkien (e.g. in letters now published) about him not having much liked Williams, and that Williams was Lewis's friend.

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The most plausible explanation for this sequence is that Tolkien read one or both of two books which contained biographical material on Williams and which were published at the end of the 1950s: Anne Ridler's Image of the City and other Essays (1958), or Alice Mary Hadfield's An Introduction to Charles Williams (1959) - both of which revealed aspects of Williams biography of which Tolkien had probably been unaware, and of which Tolkien strongly disapproved.

Thus, Tolkien retrospectively changed his opinion of Charles Williams, and 're-wrote' the history of their relationship in correspondence etc. published post-1960.

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What aspects of Williams' life, revealed by Ridler and Hadfield, might have provoked this change?

A couple of candidates are

1. Williams involvement with occult magic societies (related to the Golden Dawn); and/ or

2. Tolkien may have picked-up on the hints about Williams' adulterous 'Platonic' or 'Tantric' philanderings with various young women.

For example, if Tolkien asked around William's close friends in Oxford, he may have heard about the Lois Lang-Sims episode (documented in Letters to Lalage) which actually happened in Oxford during the era of Inklings meetings - yet was surely concealed from Tolkien (and Lewis).

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In sum, Tolkien was friendly with Williams for all of Williams life, and cherished his memory for more than a decade after Williams death; but Tolkien reacted to posthumous revelations concerning Williams biography (understandably - albeit somewhat dishonestly) by convincing himself that he had never much liked Williams, and suggesting that Williams had been forced into the Inklings by Lewis.

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The retrospective comments on Williams make Tolkien sound as if he was jealous of Williams friendship with Lewis, and this has led to the myth of jealously being an early factor in the breakdown of Lewis and Tolkien's friendship.

But going from contemporary evidence written during William's life, Tolkien was exceptionally friendly with Williams - meeting him frequently in Inklings, regularly with Lewis on Monday mornings to read the emerging Lord of the Rings in draft, lending Williams the precious manuscript of Lord of the Rings, and sometimes going out for a drink with Williams - just the two of them.

And also there is abundant evidence that Tolkien remained great friends with Lewis until around the time that the Narnia books were written.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/timing-and-causes-of-breakdown-of.html

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So, the evidence suggests that Tolkien was not jealous of Williams' friendship with Lewis, and Williams had nothing to do with the cooling of relationship between Tolkien and Lewis.

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I have been re-reading the biography of Charles Williams by Grevel Lindop, published in 2015, and which I reviewed at the time. I was surprised to notice that it was as much as three years since I read it; because since then I don't think I have seriously read (or re-read) any of Charles Williams's works - it seems that the biography all-but finished-off Charles Williams as a significant writer, for me...

Re-reading makes clear why. I find it an almost-literally painful experience to read this biography - except for the earliest chapters, concerning CW's childhood and youth. Once Williams has married, and had an unloved/ disliked son; and has engaged with the Rosy Cross ritual magic group, and especially when he begins his tedious and disgusting relationship with Phyllis Jones - he loses me.

The documentation of a recurrent, addictive, unresisted (indeed rationalised and celebrated) cycles of manipulative and exploitative, sadistic/ psychologically-vampiric relationships with young women - on the excuse that these energised the writing of poetry - is another seedy and sickening aspect. It is actively unpleasant to dwell in this 'world', I find.

And, in general, I find Williams to be a wholly dishonest person - in all the writings and all the reports of interactions, there is a person of total self consciousness; who never did a spontaneous action, never spoke or wrote an unguarded word...

Now, of course, this is a disease; it was (to some extent) a dispositional, inbuilt thing - but one can see that these vices were deliberately, effort-fully, developed and strengthened by Williams (especially by his use of magical rituals) - and always with the excuse of needing to do so, to write poetry...

In considering Charles Williams, everything hinges on the poetry... Yet I find the poetry, essentially, worthless - in the sense of not being poetry at all; and performing no essential function; doing nothing distinctive or indispensable...

I consider it to be contrived, pseudo-poetry; concocted from a talent for verse, and pretence. In this it is not unusual; because I consider very nearly all modern and modernist poetry to be of this kind - indeed almost everything that puts itself forward as highbrow poetry for the past century... real poetry is extremely rare (even among the output of real poets).

CW is an example of a very common post-romantic phenomenon - someone who wants to be a poet - but cannot discern poetry, therefore cannot know that they are not a poet (or else deny what they know: that they aren't) - there is a dependence on the evaluation of others.

Throughout his life, by the evidence or multiple letters, Williams never knows whether his work is any good; he cannot tell whether he has written well or not - he cannot discern poetry, which is the basis of being a poet (and a critic, for that matter).

(Astonishingly, CW seems never to have mentioned in print the best living Eng. Lang. poet of that era: Robert Frost. Since everybody knew all-about Frost at that time; this can only mean Williams was unable to discern Frost's poetic greatness.)

Most of CW's published poetry is off-the-cuff doggerel; some is deft rhyming; but his most prestigious poetry - in Taliessin Through Logres - was (Lindop reveals) an editorial collaboration with Ann Ridler... No real poetry can be an editorial collaboration, and this is not real poetry but a simulacrum in the modernist style (which is, itself, only very seldom and peripherally capable of real poetry).

As for CW's literary criticism - it is undermined by this same lack of discernment. More specifically, Williams is unable to detect the presence or absence of that special lyric quality that defines and distinguishes poetry. Probably this is linked with Williams being 'tone deaf', insensitive to and unable to hear music as music; or know when he was singing accurately - because, at root, poetry is song.

So, I am saying two things here; the first is that Charles Williams was overall not a good writer (not a poet at all); and secondly that this was related to an extremely deep and continuous pretentiousness, insincerity... dishonesty.

Lindop makes clear what was scattered throughout the previous biographical information - Charles Williams was a man who played roles all the time, with everybody, including himself - and if there was a real CW - a CW who was communicating-directly and spontaneously, a CW who dropped the pretence - then nobody ever seems to have seen it; nor does it ever appear in his writings.

It is also clear that Charles Williams was a man who suffered - all the time, hour by hour and day by day (you can see this in the photographs, back to childhood); and for that I feel very sorry. But how did he deal with it? It seems to me that in his twenties, Williams chose a path of play-acting, power-seeking, pleasure-seeking, and palliation; he tried to distract himself from himself,and from the human condition, by pathological busyness, pathological socialisation, strategies of self-indulgence... and this negated any possibility of genuine achievement as a writer, and indeed genuine friendship...

There were plenty of people who regarded themselves as good friends of CW, but nobody who CW regarded as a good friend. Everybody seems to have been hoodwinked by him, in one way or another - because he hoodwinked himself; how life was an endless process of hoodwinkings, 24/7.

Thus I return to my conclusion of the original review: the main interest of Charles Williams is the effect he had on others; and ultimately this reduces to the many ways that other people projected-onto him - saw in CW and his play-actings and writings what they wanted or needed.

Thus Charles Williams's best work is something of an ink-blot - there are potentially fertile ideas outlined, hinted-at; but never actually-actualised in the text. His characteristic ideas such as Romantic Theology, Exchange, Substituion...are interesting ideas, which he fails to develop interestingly. For example, he made romatic theology into a far-fetched system of symbolism; he made exchange and substitution into a quasi-bureaucratic system which he dictatorially imposed on his followers.

My favourite of his works, the novel The Place of the Lion is like this. It is a great idea for a novel - I've read it several times; but the reader has to make the novel out of the ideas... it isn't achieved. The novel is technically inept (at the level we find it hard to know who is speaking, and what is happening), and the climactic and key passages don't come-off. Yet, for Lewis and Tolkien this book was exactly what was needed when they came across it, and they were able to complete the novel in their own minds, in line with its aspirations, in a way that stimulated their own imaginations.

But it is no accident that Charles William's reputation essentially died with the man.

In her Introduction to The Image of the City, a collection of essays by Charles Williams, Anne Ridler states that 'At the centre of Williams's teaching lies this dogma, that the whole universe is to be known as good.'

She then goes on to describe how Williams lived in a state of underlying misery - that he said he would have declined the gift of life, if offered; that he had a death-wish, that he did not hope for eternal life but would prefer everlasting unconsciousness, that the world lived in a web of distress, that the life of young people was hell... and so on,

The question is how Charles Williams went from a core conviction that everything is good, to a life of such total distress.

I think the answer is quite simple, which is that Charles Williams really believed, really lived by, the idea that reality was outside time, that all times were simultaneous - that what applied now applied forevermore. He was a profound Platonist - in believing that time, change, decay and corruption were superficial - the reality was time-less, unchanging.

Many, many Christians have said such things throughout history - but few have really believed them: Charles Williams was one of the few - and he was intelligent enough to find the implications inescapable and deeply contradictory.

If Life is good - and this is Life - and real Life is eternally itself... then this must also be good - and it seems terrible.

In my understanding, Charles Williams was a victim of the poison of what might be termed Classical Metaphysics in Christianity: the kind which says that life IS good - always has been and always will be. Most people are too emotionally shallow or too lacking in philosophical rigour to feel what Charles Williams felt as the implications of mainstream, standard, Christian theology.

Williams could never find reassurance, or relief from this state; because he was correct - the implications flowed from the assumptions; and the implications were tragic. The life and resurrection of Christ was, by this account, tragic - as revealed in Williams's most heart-felt essay The Cross where he concludes that the thing, the only thing, which makes the underlying reality of a good universe to be bearable, is that God also and voluntarily submitted to its justice and suffered its agonies when he became Christ.

If that is not despair - it is a mere - unconvincing - whisker away.

And how often, how usual, has been this tragic interpretation of Christianity the prevailing emotion among the deepest thinkers?

And what a contrast this has been to the un-philosophical and optimistic 'Christianity' of Christ himself, of countless 'simple' Christians, and the 'good news' of the gospels.

The difference is, I think, quite simple - and it is related to time. the simple, commonsense Christian - the non-Platonist, the non-philosopher - naturally regards Christianity as being about a future state of good - not an eternal good, in which all times are and will be equal.

So 'simple' Christianity is about God as an aim, not about good as an actuality; and Christian hope has been based on faith that the state of good will happen, not that good has already happened.

Sophisticated Christian theology superficially seems to be positive and optimistic in its claims of Heaven being here-and-now-and-always because of the un-reality of time - but its philosophical implications are dark, miserable and pessimistic (and difficult/ impossible to square with the good news of Christ) - in that ultimately things can never be better than now. And if, as is the case, we cannot see this now, then there is no reason to assume things can ever become better.

This is a false distortion of the plain Christian message of hope based on the optimistic conviction that time is real. Because time is real - that is linear, sequential; things that seem bad now may really be bad (we don't need to assume that bad-seeming is 'in reality' good), but bad things really can get better than they are now, and the Christian faith is that we know by revelation  that things really will get better.

In sum, Charles Williams is a better, a more rigorous, a more honest philosopher than most Christian theologians - and he lived and experienced the consequences of his theology. Since these consequences were so dark and despairing, the life of Charles Williams in relation to his theology makes a reductio ad absurdum of Classical Theology: i.e. the consequences of Classical Theology demonstrate its erroneous assumptions.

When Charles Williams died in May 1945, The Inklings seemed to be a thriving creative force - since the war years had seen CS Lewis produce some of his very best, and most impactful, work; Tolkien was working on Lord of the Rings; Warnie Lewis had begun to publish his histories of 17th century France - and Charles Williams had written and published some of his very best (and forward-looking) work in poetry and fiction.

All this was brought to an end by the sudden death of Charles Williams following surgery, aged only 58. This knocked the heart out of The Inklings - as they all immediately acknowledged. The gathering afterwards became a looser and more casual, less purposive, less valuable gathering of friends - instead of a focused and productive collaboration of writers, critics and thinkers.

Yet, in a sense, the end was coming anyway; since CW had already decided to return to London, to serve-out his years at the Oxford University Press. Furthermore, Williams felt himself to be already in a decline of health, energy and motivation.


By 1944, by my judgment; Williams had proved that prevarication and dissipation of effort was a part of his nature. CW was continually profligate with his money, which led to him wasting time and effort on hack work (pot-boiler books and reviews, done purely for money). Consequently he seldom gave the fullest time or energy to his significant books and poems; or didn't get around to writing them at all (e.g. critical monographs on Shakespeare, Milton and Wordsworth; which he was so well-equipped to write). My point is that Williams needed explicit encouragement and pressure (from those he respected) if he was to retain courage and a sense of high purpose - left to his own devices, he would be likely to waste his abilities and remaining strength.


At this point; I wish to take a transcendental view - a 'God's Eye' view - of CW's mortal life, and the question: Why did Charles Williams die when he did?

Of course, this kind of alternative history is completely subjective and speculative; but here it is...


As the war came to its end, the situation for Charles Williams was that his status at the Oxford University Press had declined, he was tolerated rather than being the centre of things - as he once had been. He was overlooked for 'in house' commissions - he reported that when an OUP meeting was gathered to consider who should be invited to author a new book on Shakespeare, it seemed that it did not even cross anybody's mind that CW might be well-suited to the job.

The Press declined to publish the new collection of poems The Region of the Summer Stars - despite that this proved to be the best-selling, and (I would say) best-quality poetry of Williams's career (both aspects of which were perhaps bolstered by the intense interest in Williams's poetry by Oxford's wartime undergraduates).

Apparently, CW was now a has-been from the perspective of the OUP. All that he could expect from the return to the London offices, was to work-out his final years in quiet seclusion, qualify for his pension, and then retire.


And the reason for this coolness at the Press was probably Oxford University itself. CW had, throughout the war years, devoted a great deal of his work time - i.e. the hours for which was paid by the OUP - teaching for Oxford University as a tutor and lecturer; even to the point of supervising pupils in his office on the premises of OUP!

More significantly, Oxford University valued CW far more than the Press. He attracted respect beyond his friends Lewis and Tolkien (the major Oxford 'fixer' and administrator Maurice Bowra - head (Warden) of Wadham college, was an admirer); was awarded an honorary degree (MA) qualifying him for full academic privileges; and he had become something of a cult figure among the students. His lectures were well attended, impactful and influential; and student societies (and other clubs in the area) called upon him frequently to give talks.

There was nothing definite to keep Williams in Oxford; but there were distinct and plausible possibilities for Williams if he was to stay - especially given his powerful and high-level support. There was talk of making him a University Reader (a faculty level, not college, sub-professorial appointment); and putting him in for the Professor of Poetry election (this was a prestigious public platform, but time-limited and essentially unpaid). Plus there were possibilities of college Fellowships, in the usual Oxford way.


Therefore in late 1944 to early 1945; Charles Williams was faced with two possibilities.

There was the high risk but potentially high reward path of staying at Oxford, continuing with The Inklings, and continuing to grow in fame and influence from that base.

And there was the 'safe' path of going back to London, and time-serving towards his pension at the Press.


Here comes my speculative explanation of Williams's premature death... My feeling is that by choosing the safe but mediocre path of London, Williams was signalling that his creative life was over, and that there was no compelling reason for him to keep living: therefore, he died.

And the counter-factual speculation is that if Williams had chosen the Oxford path - he would Not have died.

Instead, CW would have continued to develop creatively as a poet, novelist, critic and teacher. And, as a side-effect, the Inklings would have continued as a generative and significant gathering of co-workers - since they had come to depend-upon his presence for their distinctive cultural role.


In brief; I am saying that Charles Williams made the wrong decision in opting for London over Oxford; therefore there was no reason for him to continue living: so he did not.

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To Michal from Serge: Letters from Charles Williams to his wife Florence 1939-1945

Edited by Roma A King. Kent State University Press: Ohio, USA. 2002. pp 315

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I have spent a leisurely couple of weeks reading these letters - selected from almost-daily missives over nearly six years - having at last found a not-wildly-overpriced secondhand copy after a few years of waiting.

These letters are very well worth reading for the scholar of Charles Williams life and works - somebody such as myself; but would be almost totally without interest for anybody else.

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(Note: Michal and Serge were pet names: Michal for Florence and Serge for Charles.)

The reason for their limited appeal is that there is very little in these pages of letters except:

1. Microscopic discussions of money - down to the level of shillings earned and spent.

2. Repeated and prolonged (and un-convincing) praise of Michal by Serge.

3.  Complaints of misery, discomfort, loneliness etc.

*

There is almost nothing about The Inklings, or even CS Lewis - who Williams was in real life often meeting (with Tolkien, Warnie, Havard and others) for a few hours on Monday mornings (in various places, to read and be read to by Lewis and Tolkien) rooms, Tuesday lunchtimes (at the Bird and Baby pub) and Thursday evenings (for Inklings meetings in Lewis's rooms at Magdalen College).

There is almost nothing about Williams' incessant socialising and conversing with his wide circles of 'disciples', admirers, acolytes - such as his future biographer Alice Mary Hadfield; and almost nothing of his actual work at his employers: the Oxford University Press.

If indeed he was doing any significant work at the OUP. CW did so much of his own book and essay writing (for money), reviewing other people's books (for money), tutorial work and lecturing in Oxford (for money) and around the country (usually free) - not to mention the socialising - it seems that the OUP position by this time was simply a sinecure!

*

So what about the focus on money? This goes way beyond anything reasonable or sensible - indeed, it is an act of self-justification. Williams is telling his wife, over and over again, that he is working to get her money - which he sends in dribs and drabs enclosed with most of the letters - ten shilling notes (that is half a pound), mostly pounds, the occasional two pounds... meticulously documented in terms of their provenance.

My interpretation is partly that these were a bribe for the continued affection and attention of Michal, and partly a displacement activity - by writing about money all the time and everyday, CW was able NOT to write about a lot of other things.

*

What about the over-the-top praise of Michal?

One might initially suppose that for a husband to write wild overpraise of his wife day after day for six years - he would have to mean what he said... but on reflection I think almost the opposite was the case.

What kind of wife demands to be called a genius, compared with a goddess, credited with superhuman powers of goodness, intuition, inspiration and so on; day after day, year after year?... what reasonable wife could endure it?

My firm conclusion (consistent with other sources of information I have found in memoirs) is that Charles Williams wife was a Psycho Hose Beast^, a High Maintenance Woman, an hysteric, an extremely unstable neurotic.

Therefore Michal apparently demanded incessant, ludicrous over-praise, and was so jealous that Williams could not write positively about anybody - not even his best men friends such as CS Lewis and TS Eliot - without immediately denying his affection for them, denigrating them, stating that he would always rather be with his wife instead.

Indeed, I infer that CW was completely sincere in his wish to live with Michal (if in almost nothing else); he stated, and I believe, that it was the only way he could find rest in this life; lacking which his life was always a matter of being 'on show', and with a mask in place, and unsettled, and not-at-home.

Williams really, really wanted to live with Michal - as husband and wife (and also, he very powerfully missed the physical side of marriage - especially sleeping next to each other and entwined, as well as sex).

Yet Michal would not be with him. What kind of wife lives apart from her husband for six years - living here and there, in London and out of it, sometimes with people she loathes - because she doesn't like Oxford? Answer: the kind of woman who does not want to live with her husband, and who will seize upon any excuse NOT to live with her husband.

*

Why this terribly sad situation?

Obviously there were faults on both sides, and especially Charles' previous infatuation with the secretary Phyllis Jones, which he never completely broke free from; plus presumably his weirdly ritualistic 'use' of young women as a source of energy to sublimate into his writing...

I infer that Michal was already, by nature, extremely unstable and neurotic; and the Phyllis Jones business unleashed this with extraordinary and permanent force - one observer said that it made the main topic of her conversation for many years after Charles died.

So there was probably a considerable element of Michal punishing Charles, and punishing him day after day for year after year; but also this behaviour probably came naturally to her as a mixture of her dependence on him with her anger and revulsion at his betrayal.

*

The modern reaction to CW's situation - is why did he put up with it? Why did he not just 'dump' Michal? Perhaps to take-up with one/ several/ many of his young female admirers - who would have been only too willing to oblige.

There are many reasons (including morality) but at root Williams did not want to - he wanted Michal back, and that was the only thing he wanted because it was an absolute necessity to his psychological survival.

Thus the tedious harping on the money he brings in and sends to her, the wild overpraise, the pandering to her jealousy by including many spiteful (and dishonest) remarks about the people he lives among; and the massive act of self-censorship going on in these letters - which represent a real but tiny minority chunk of CW's Oxford life, such that the reality of 90 percent of his waking life as seen by everybody around him including those very close to him; is utterly excluded from these letters.

*

Another factor is CW's son Michael (note the 'e' in the name). It is one of the most disappointing aspects of this not-very-well-edited volume that there is almost no information about Michael Williams (1922-2000) who is a major focus of CWs concern, indeed his desperate worry over the whole period of these letters - but especially the early years.

In fact, CW's evident and active concern for his son is one of his most likeable and 'human' qualities; any father can empathize with this, and it is greatly to CW's credit.

It is clear that Michael had some undefined psychological problems, and also that he had suffered some kind of illness in his teens which threatened his eyesight - and perhaps caused or threatened some kind of permanent problem either of mental handicap or psychotic or neurological type.

But although this is my own area of medical expertise, there just isn't enough information provided here to give more than the vaguest idea about what the problem was. Charles and Michal obviously knew what the problem was, so it never gets spelled-out in correspondence - but the editor should have found-out and told us!

The fact that in the last couple of years of this book, Michael was reviewing books for the prestigious (and paying) magazine Time and Tide, shows that he must have been intelligent and had considerable ability as a writer - yet he is always talked-of as being unstable, irritable, prone to outbursts of bad manners, lacking in application, prone to unreasonably strong dislikes (of Oxford, for example), and so on.

The editor needed to tell us about this - but he didn't; and I can't discover anything anywhere else. Yet Michael seems like he was probably some kind of missing 'key' to Charles Williams personality and behaviour.

*

So these letters provide vital information for the Charles Williams scholar - albeit mostly indirectly and by omission.

For me, the letters demonstrate that Charles Williams is not to be trusted in his evaluations of his life, since his behaviour is not consistent with his statements.

Indeed, there is very little in these letters which can be trusted because the content has been so selected, slanted and distorted for the consumption of Michal/ Florence: they are fundamentally evasive, and they 'ring false' at many or most points throughout.

*

Also these letters are of near-zero literary value; and this is related to their falseness, and their extreme degree of self-censorship.

They reveal a fundamental problem with Charles Williams as a person, which spills over into Williams as a writer; which is that Williams' personality was compartmentalised, un-integrated.

So that while Lewis and Tolkien are the same person in their fiction, non-fiction and letters - and both were among the greatest of letter writers, from a literary perspective - Williams was by contrast a collection of hermetically-sealed masks (!), and his work is therefore extremely uneven in quality - according to which mask he is wearing; often lacks depth (because of the partiality of perspective); and almost-never attains the heights of either Lewis or Tolkien.

*

Yet it is hard to blame Williams for this; indeed after reading these letters I do not really blame him. He had great gifts - as were apparent to men of genius such as Eliot, Auden, Lewis and others; and he helped many people greatly; but he found life terribly difficult; almost a minute-by-minute struggle to find the energy and motivation to keep going.

I don't know whether many people would have done much better than CW did, given his inner trials.

All in all, I feel very sorry for Charles Williams. 

*

But Williams' fundamental flaw (for which I do blame him) was dishonesty - not by making up lies, but in the more insidious form of incomplete and misleading factuality.

At some point (and perhaps under intense and sustained pressure from Michal?) he took a step into a life of deception, and compartmentalisation; and this infected his work, and severely-limited his achievement so that Charles Williams will never be popular, nor indeed readable outside of a small 'cult'.

To Michal from Serge documents the end stage of this process - but although it was the end, with Charles dying suddenly, during a 'routine' abdominal operation to treat 'adhesions' from a previous operation, I did not detect any sense that his life's work was complete, or that he was 'ready to die'.

Quite the opposite - Williams' life was opening-out, with a delayed flowering and general success - many opportunities ranging from a Readership or Tutorship at Oxford, or a Professorship at Birmingham University (offered him, but turned-down)...

Had he lived, who knows what he might have gone-on to do?

But in the event, he didn't; and we must make what we can, of what we have: which is a lot.

*

^Note: the term 'psycho hose beast' comes from the brilliant 1992 movie Wayne's World, and is self-defining in that context.

*
From Warren Hamilton Lewis's diary for Tuesday 15 May 1945 (In "Brothers and Friends", edited by CS Kilby and ML Mead, 1982):

At 12.50 this morning I had just stopped work... when the telephone rang, and a woman's voice asked if I would take a message for J [=Jack = CS Lewis] -

"Mr Charles Williams died in the Acland [hospital] this morning".

One often reads of people being 'stunned' by bad news, and reflects idly on the absurdity of the expression; but there is more than a little truth in it. I felt just as if I had slipped and come down on my head on the pavement...

I felt dazed and restless, and went out to get a drink: choosing unfortunately the King's Arms, where during the winter Charles and I more than once drank a pint after leaving Tollers [Tolkien] at the Mitre, with much glee at 'clearing ones throats of varnish with good honest beer', as Charles used to say.

There will be no more pints with Charles: no more 'Bird and Baby': the blackout has fallen, and the Inklings can never be the same again. 

I knew him better than any of the others, by virtue of his being the most constant attendant...

And so vanishes one of he best and nicest men it has ever been my good fortune to meet. May God receive him into His everlasting happiness. 

*

Comments:

1. Despite that I don't think Charles Williams mentions Warnie Lewis in any of his writings; nor do his biographers mention Warnie - it is clear that they were good friends. (This also emphasizes that C.W's own recorded written accounts of himself and his own doings are extremely partial, hence biased.)

2. As of 1945, Warnie knew Williams better than the others - which means better than Tolkien, or Havard, or Barfield. His evaluation of Charles as "one of he best and nicest men it has ever been my good fortune to meet" should be given considerable weight, because Warnie was among the kindest and most empathic of men.

3. Warnie regarded Williams as absolutely central to The Inklings and indeed the most constant attender at the meetings (presumably aside from Jack and Warnie Lewis themselves). Therefore, an evaluation of whatever The Inklings was 'about' must be focused on what C.W brought to the group. 

My current feeling is that Charles Williams was both the trigger of The Inklings, and functioned in its heyday as as the senior figure and arbiter of the Inklings - when considered in its function as a serious intellectual group:

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/was-charles-willimas-grey-eminence.html

(Note: this present view of CW as leader supersedes my previous idea of Williams as a 'grey eminence' - or power behind the throne.)

This entails that it is NOT CS Lewis, nor JRR Tolkien, who was the primary person or spiritual leader among the Inklings - but instead Charles Williams.

There is very little direct evidence for this claim, but I hope to explore it in future postings.

Therefore, although they continued to meet for a few years after his death, once Williams was gone, so was the core reason for the Inklings Thursday evening meetings at Lewis's rooms - and the group dwindled to become essentially a convivial and casual gathering for drink and conversation at the Bird and Baby (Eagle and Child pub).

*
Continued at:
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/evidence-that-charles-williams-presided.html

*

The idea that Charles Williams was 'self-educated' (or uneducated) seems to be one that has penetrated the criticism of the man at the highest levels - yet it is just plain wrong!

Here is an example of the red herring, from one of Charles Williams foremost critics:

The mystery ingredient that stops Williams just short of the Greatness category may be revealed in a comment Lewis made about him. Williams was self-educated.

His mind had never had that experience of sustained, given discourse that comes in the lecture room and the seminar. He had had to drop out of school and go to work, since his father never was able quite to bring in enough money to keep the family going.

In the light of this, Williams’s sheer knowledge, and the sweep of his imagination, are breathtaking. He may have been self-educated, but he was self- educated.

http://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=17-10-033-f

*

I think I understand how this error was made by US scholars, but it is a falsehood!

English upper middle class (professional) people sometimes used 'self-educated' as a euphemism for those with a lower middle class background.

This boundary within the middle class was important because it was the division between the lowest rank of 'gentlemen' and the highest rank of the artisan class. (C.W. had begun life as the son of a lower middle class tradesman - a clockmaker ^).

So by suggesting that Williams (or anyone else) was 'self-educated', the English meant that he was 'not a gentleman' and the most obvious evidence for this was his 'Cockney' accent - but the phrase has next-to nothing to do with Williams scholarly attainment.

*

American critics, presumably, take self-educated at face value - misled by their misunderstanding of the English educational system.

At any rate Charles Williams was very highly educated - by the standards of his place and time (and indeed by almost any standards).

*

As son of a skilled craftsman, Charles Williams began life at the top of the lower middle class; but since he was privately educated at the school now called St Alban's Grammar School, he became a member of the upper middle class - albeit at the very bottom.

The fact that C.W. went through St Alban's school is also evidence that he could not remotely be described as un-educated.

Americans often do not realize the selectivity and advanced education which went on at schools like St Albans - the leaver reached an academic level pretty much equivalent to that of a college graduate in the USA.

*

Take a look at the alumni of St Albans:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Albans_School_%28Hertfordshire%29

There are only few schools (some, but not many) who could boast such a roster of famous ex-pupils: including the most famous living scientist: Stephen Hawking.

To have completed one's education at a major English grammar school like St Alban's was to be among the intellectual elite.

*

From St Alban's, C.W. went to University College, London - which has always been highly ranked among English universities - in the rank below Oxford and Cambridge.

Williams left UCL after two years (due to financial problems) without taking a degree - but to complete two-thirds of a degree at an English university in the early twentieth century was, again, to reach a very advanced level of education - just a few percent of the population would ever get that far.

And the level would be considerably beyond that of a US college graduate - perhaps about equivalent to a US Masters degree of that era?

*

It is also worth noting that the English did not have PhDs until 1917, and they did not become normal until several decades later - especially in the Arts and especially at Oxford.

At Oxford, the elite would have a brilliant first class MA and nothing more - further degrees were evidence of a second-rate mind.

(I am old enough to have talked with many people from Oxford who used 'Doctor' as an insult - for example in referring to the literary critic FR Leavis as Doctor Leavis.)

*

So it is nonsense to imply that Charles Williams had an inadequate or deficient education.

Of course Williams was at a lower level than CS Lewis (Oxford triple first class degree in Classics - both parts - and English) or Tolkien (first class degree in English, one of the youngest Oxford Professors of recent times).

But the main difference was in Williams's class origin - Tolkien's father was a bank manager and Lewis's was a solicitor - both upper (not lower) middle class, although at a lowish level within that class.

As lasting evidence of this origin on the 'wrong' side of the great class divide, Williams retained a South East English regional accent throughout his life (which some people refer to as 'cockney').

*

So Williams was someone who was highly-educated, but of a lower class origin - although having been to a great grammar school and studied at university, before becoming a clerk then editor in the immensely respectable firm of the Oxford University Press.

By middle age, Williams was very firmly a member of the upper middle class; and part of the same social circle as the other Inklings.

Nonetheless, it was his relatively lowly class origins (and not his level of education) that account for the unmistakable tone of condescension observable when Lewis and others talked or wrote about Williams.

However, Thomas Howard is quite wrong to suggest that self-education is the 'mystery ingredient' that explains the peculiarities and difficulties of Charles Williams writings. +

*

^ I think I may be wrong here when I say that CW's father was a clockmaker - from the later Hadfiled biography it seems he may have been a junior clerk, which would place CW at the very bottom of the upper class, rather than the top of the working class.
+I will need to write in more detail on this - but I think the basic reason for C.Ws obscurity is that his experience of life was so strange that he could not be any clearer than he was. I used to believe he was being wilfully obscure and pretentious, now I do not think so. The pressure and intensity of Williams mind was such that - for all its weird and disconnected qualities - the prose represents a major toning-down and radical simplification of what was going-on in his head. He simply could not make himself any more comprehensible than he is - which is 'not very'. In a culture where Christian public discourse was at a higher level, Williams would not have had this problem - in such an environment he would surely have been a Saint: and like all Saints unique, not like anyone else.

*

The Detective Fiction Reviews of Charles Williams 1930-1935, edited by Jared Lobdell.McFarland & Company: Jefferson NC, USA & London. 2003. pp 213

As its editor candidly admits, this volume is a strange hybrid, or sandwich - nonetheless it made a significant addition to my understanding one of the most enigmatic of writers and men that I have encountered.  In an important respect, because of this book, I have had to revise my opinion on a very important aspect of Williams.

The meat of the sandwich runs from pages 23-117 and is a complete run of Charles Williams's reviews of detective novels as published in various newspapers - these tend to be about 3-400 words in length and cover 3-5 different books.

Around this filling there is a valuable and necessary introductory essay on Williams in relation to detective fiction, and a closing essay (which I could not really engage with, due to my ignorance and indifference) on the 'Golden Age' of detective fiction (this being the name given to the era when Williams was reviewing) - followed by an appendix giving background on the authors and books which Williams reviewed (and an index!).

So the book's ideal reader would be someone who is very interested both by Charles Williams and also by detective fiction. Unfortunately, I am only half of this ideal reader, having very little interest in or knowledge of detective fiction - although I am not averse to it, and enjoyed finding out a bit more.  

For me this books' importance is simply that these detective fiction reviews are very well written. Well written, I mean, from a purely technical point of view. Williams had very little space to write, and an enormous amount to say - and there is, of course, a limit on how 'good' such journalism can be.

Clearly, reviewing a book - itself typically light entertainment - in the space of a few sentences, and trying not to give away any 'spoilers' about the plots ... well, we cannot expect Williams to plumb the depths of the human condition. And he doesn't - but Williams does maintain a high standard of interest, a light and witty tone; and as a bonus Williams sometimes insinuates  a pregnant aphoristic morsel or two, hinting at vistas beyond, for those who are alert and interested.

But the main point about these pieces is that Williams task was very difficult and he did it very well: the writing is clear, accessible, entertaining.

So now - thanks to this volume - the question is answered that so many of us who have struggled and struggled with trying to piece together an understanding of Williams's obscure and often constipated novels, essays, plays, theology and his late poetry ... could Charles Williams write, or not? 

I had previously said No. That Williams was obscure because he could not write clearly. But.. I WAS WRONG.

Williams could write clearly, he was technically adept: therefore his obscurity is wilful, deliberate, intended - presumably part of what he was trying to do.

This pleases me! Because it would be awful to struggle with the sometimes-extreme obscurity only discover that nothing lay behind it but technical ineptitude.

Because of this book, now we know for sure that Williams was able to write in a 'normal', highly professional, fashion. We can therefore struggle with his obscurities, confident that (however irritating) it is part of his style; there is some reason for it - he has hidden some-thing, and we are meant to work hard to find it... presumably because hard work is necessary for us really to understand what it is that he wants us to understand.   

*

I think it is possible to construct a scenario by which Charles Williams is seen as the moving force behind the Inklings.

I am not at all sure whether this is true - but it is perhaps possible, and there is some evidence in its support.

*

If it is agreed that 1936 was the key year in which Lewis and Tolkien became serious and ambitious about their writings, and began to work together on some kind of 'project' (to reconnect modern man with mythology)

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/lord-of-rings-mostly-equals-hobbit-plus.html


then it is possible that this increase in seriousness and ambition was triggered by Williams' novel The Place of the Lion

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/tolkien-and-lewiss-annus-divertium-of.html

*

Indeed, another route for Williams influence may have existed via Fr Gervase Matthew - who met Charles Williams in London in early 1936 (according to AM Hadfield's biography of 1959), and may by this time have been attending Thursday evening Inklings meetings - as he certainly did later - although precise chronological evidence seems to be lacking.

*

Having, as I think likely, provided a crucial stimulus to Lewis and Tolkien's writing by the example of Place of the Lion - Williams then reinforced this during the wartime period of late 1939 to early 1945 (when CW died) as a lynch-pin of the Inklings meetings - and also meeting with Lewis and Tolkien as a trio and individually.

What must be remembered is that, although Williams was socially of lower status than Lewis and Tolkien; he was older, and as an author was of much greater status and experience and volume of production; also, both professionally and by personal friendship, Williams was a part of the mainstream prestigious Metropolitan literary world of England.

*

Add to this Williams' extraordinary charisma and fascination, and it seems probable that (as implied by Diana Pavlac Glyer, in The company they kept) Williams was the dominant figure in those Inklings meeting he attended; not in terms of organizing and controlling the meetings and dictating the subject matter of the conversation (that was surely Jack Lewis), but as the person who was most deferred-to, whose words carried greatest authority.

*

The fact that Lewis and Tolkien were preparing a Festschrift for Williams, even before he died, seems evidence of this kind of role. Inklings activities in the period after Williams death were at least partly focused on preparing this posthumous volume of Essays presented to Charles Williams.

After 1945, when the young scholar and author John Wain attended Inklings meetings, he said (in the memoir Sprightly Running) that the group had been permanently wounded by the death of Williams - which is indirect evidence for Williams' key role.

*

Although the Thursday evening Inklings meetings continued another four years (until late 1949) this period was marked by a larger and more variable number of personnel at the meetings, and what seems a less close and intense atmosphere than the war years when the inklings was built around the solid core of the Lewis brothers, Tolkien and Havard - with Williams perhaps providing a crucial binding and inspiring focus.

*

As I said, I am not sure about this. Certainly, (according to comments in his letters, and the understanding of those who knew him from London) the Inklings seems to have been less important to Williams than it was to Lewis and Tolkien - which could be interpreted as evidence against him having any kind of 'leadership' role.

But on the other hand, Williams need not have been consciously adopting any leadership role, nor need he have subscribed to the Lewis-Tolkien 'project', in order for him to have been a kind of father figure and originator of the Inklings most serious and ambitious aspect.

*

*

In commenting on Charles Williams at another blog -

(http://theoddestinkling.mymiddleearth.com/)

- I suddenly had the idea that Charles Williams accent, which struck some of his Oxford friends as 'Cockney' was instead an affectation - or what we term 'Mockney' - a mock-Cockney accent, designed to give an impression that the speaker is 'a man of the people'.

*

The possibility arises because Charles Williams was actually a University-educated Public Schoolboy whose father had been a clerk - yet CW struck others of that educated class (such as CS Lewis) as if he were of lower class origins and education.

Why should this be? - essentially, I think it was mostly Williams accent, plus perhaps some strange manners and mannerisms.

*

But why would Williams have a superficially-Cockney accent and strange manners?

My answer: because he deliberately adopted them at some point in his youth or young adult life - for whatever reason CW wanted to appear as something other than he was, he wanted people to assume he was an outsider, of lower class origins.

By the time Williams met the Inklings, this affectation of accent had long since become an ingrained, spontaneous habit. 

*

Plenty of English people have done and do the same - indeed English public life has been since the mid 1960s largely populated by people of upper middle class origin who try to appear to be of lower class or regional origin - ex Prime Minister Tony Blair (Fettes, Oxford, Mockney) being an example.

Why not Charles Williams? It is known he was extremely self-conscious, he struck most people as extremely affected (yet carried this off by his charisma and magnetism), he was very pro-Middle Class in his social views (and thereby implicitly unimpressed by the Upper Class), he seems to have habitually behaved in an odd and stand-out kind of fashion - wanted to be regarded as one of a kind.

He loved ritual and formalisms of his own devising - indeed, Charles Williams was exactly the kind of person deliberately to change his own accent in order to stand out and emphasize his outsider status and to identify with the lower class audiences of his London evening lectures, and the disciples who came from them.

*

The more I think about it, the more plausible it becomes!

Charles Williams was a Mockney! - and one of the earliest examples of the type.

*

Grevel Lindop. Charles Williams: the third Inkling. Oxford University Press, 2015. pp xx, 493.

I should say upfront that this is an excellent biography, taking its place as the premier resource on Williams and providing a great deal of new material - including everything I personally most wanted to know about Williams but had previously been unable to discover.

It is well-written, clear, memorable and consistently gripping - such that I read the whole thing, cover to cover, in about thirty hours of nearly solid attention (of course I needed to eat and sleep!)


I have been reading Charles Williams (known as CW), off and on, since 1987 - including everything of a biographical nature that I could lay my hands on. He is one of the most difficult personalities I have ever encountered - and I am still not sure what I think about him.

But this new biography has, at last, answered all my significant questions - I feel that now, for the first time, I have been given everything I need to form a judgement both on the man and his work. But this will probably take a while - because there is a great deal to absorb, assimilate and evaluate. 


One of the first problems about Williams is - why should we be interested in him at all?

I, like most people, came to him via my interest in JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis- specifically Humphrey Carpenter's group biography The Inklings (1979). The problem is that none of CW's work is really a masterpiece - or, at least, not generally regarded as such; and all of the best work is difficult (for modern readers).

Lindop states that his reason for being interested in CW is that he regards Williams as a great poet on the basis of his last two collections Taliessin through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars. But I do not: I find TtL to be over-edited and artificially-contrived, and while I find TRotSS to be more fluent and effective, I don't much like it.

My reason for interest in CW is his status as a Christian - he was, indeed, one of the four main Christians of the mid-twentieth century Anglican revival; which was the most recent significant Christian revival in England (the others were CS Lewis, TS Eliot and Dorothy L Sayers, who were all friends and very strong admirers of Williams). So, specifically I have the highest regard for some of the novels and his theology.

Williams was also quite a successful playwright on Christian themes - however, he is never performed nowadays (What never? Well... hardly ever), and I personally cannot get much from reading his plays.  He was a critic of good repute - did a great mass of hack work as a biographer, anthologist, writer of introductions and journalistic reviews... Much of this is very good, but not enough to make him stand-out. 

So, I think Williams will survive either as a Christian writer, or as a poet. This biography is essentially of Williams the poet - since Lindop is neither a Christian nor especially interested by Christian theology.


And whether Williams is regarded as primarily a poet or a Christian turns-out to make a very big difference - because Lindop reveals clearly and unambiguously, for the first time, the extent to which Christianity and poetry were at war in Williams's life - and in particular, the extent to which Christianity was sacrificed to poetry.

I may as well get to the point straight away. While I knew that Williams was in love with Phyllis Jones, and that he had a warped kind of interaction with Lois Lang-Sims, and that there were other rather vague rumours about ritual magical-sadism with others - the sheer extent of Williams's activities along these lines was never before clear to me. I did not realize - for example - that CW had had intense love relationships with both his main biographers Anne Ridler and Alice Mary Hadfield.

Lindop quotes extensively from the correspondence between CW and Phyllis Jones, and I never before realized how sexual was the relationship. Indeed, in my interpretation, it was primarily sexual - albeit the sex was not consummated. The relationship indeed seems deeply maladaptive - in that it was a case of mutual dependency of a very common sort: both were mostly unhappy and frequently wretched in the relationship, but neither could find the willpower to break away.

It was essentially addictive - Williams was addicted to the sexual frisson and seductive teasings of the young women - she gave him energy; Phyllis was addicted to the attention and worship of the older, clever, creative man - he made her feel special.

In other words, despite the hundreds of thousands of words of soaring rhetoric, philosophy and theology which Williams associated-with and attributed-to his relationship with Phyllis - the relationship seems to be fundamentally pathological, a delusion, a self-deception, a fake.


(Phyllis comes across as very much the histrionic kind of woman; who is easily bored, has rapid and wide moods swings from ecstasy to abject misery and back, craves attention from men, and uses flirtation and display to get it; who enjoys psychodrama, and especially being competed-for and 'fought over' by multiple men, whom she takes-up and drops, but never lets-go-of - she strings them along for years with promises and hopes.)


To summarize the problem for those of us who most value Charles Williams the Christian: it seems that he strategically used the role of confidante and spiritual adviser for young women to 'groom' them into gratifying his desire for ritualistic petty sadism - he did this in order to become sexually excited, and then he used this excitement to write poetry. This was done, or attempted, time and again with multiple women.


In general, it seems the sadism was, as I said, petty - involving stuff like slapping with pencils and rulers on the palms, back, or buttocks; or some pinching. There was quite a bit of master-slave type play acting, including by letter and telephone; and an authoritarian/ bullying element in his advising and teaching.

In general, it seems that the young women did not much object, and most remained on good terms with him, often very good terms. Of course they may be others we don't know of - indeed I would expect that there would have been many young women who must have been appalled, frightened or disgusted at the turn of conversation from this previously kind and charming and spiritual man; who immediately fled, and left no trace on the records.

Nonetheless, whatever the young women felt personally about being sexually used as poetry-stimulants; there is no doubt that this kind of behaviour was dishonest, manipulative and categorically un-Christian.


The evidence presented by Lindop is consistent with Williams's assertion that he engaged in this ritual sadism with attractive young women mainly in order to write poetry.

And for whatever reason, it worked - it achieved its goal. (Williams thought of it as a magical process, to do with the generation and transformation of sexual into creative energies).

So this was the poetry-Christianity trade-off to which I referred. In order to write poetry, or better poetry; Williams deliberately, strategically, repeatedly behaved in an un-Christian manner.


Lindop also provides new evidence about Williams's Christianity - and I see links between Williams theology and his long-term affair with Phyllis Jones and also the felt-need for ritual sadism.

For the fact is that Williams did not repent these activities - indeed he specifically states at one point that he did not repent the extra-marital affair with Phyllis - that he indeed regarded repentance of this sin as a temptation; one that he had been strong enough to resist.


I had not noticed before, but Williams's theology is one which really has little or no role for repentance, because he is always trying to discern the unity of all experience; and the ways in which apparent evil is actually good.

He did not find this a consoling doctrine, however, because he had very little sense of the reality of an afterlife or Heaven. He often said that all times were simultaneous - but this seemed to mean that suffering (as well as joy) was permanent and inescapable, and there was no realistic hope of things ever being better than they are now.

In sum - there is very little 'good news' about Williams's Christianity - it is bleak, it is a whisker away from utter despair. This, I think, is because he had painted himself into a corner with some of his theological axioms and assumptions which were not necessary.

In a sense, I am surprised that Williams did not suspect that this might mean he had misunderstood Christianity, in some fundamental way - but then, there have been innumerable Christians who have lost sight of the fact that it was a joyful message.


Aside, I tend to think that repentance is almost the essence of Christianity, and this means that there really are things that need to be repented - in other words, sins. For any traditional Christian there was a great deal about Williams's sexual life that was very obviously sinful and needed to be repented - and his refusal to repent it amounts to a denial of its sinfulness, and an implicit assertion of its virtuousness - which amounts to a far worse sin than the original transgression.

I now need to go back and re-read the theology in light of this possibility; the possibility, I mean, that Williams may have been denying the necessity, and perhaps even the value, of repentance. 

So, the revelations of this biography are, I think, potentially very significant for an evaluation of Charles Williams as both a public Christian teacher and as a theologian.


I had not previously properly noticed that Christianity only came to prominence late in Williams's work - from 1936 and the highly successful production of his play Cranmer at the Canterbury festival.

However, back in 1924, Williams had written but not published a book called Romantic Theology in which he first put forward an idea he had been discussing for years - that in some way marriage, or sexual relationships, might be a path to God - a Christian 'way'.

This eventually reached a mature expression in his later work as the Via Affirmativa, Positive theology, or the way of affirmation of images. I regard this as an important and valuable insight - but not as original as Williams thought (or as Lindop believes), since it was a major doctrine of Joseph Smith and had already been put into practice in the Mormon nation-then-state of Deseret/ Utah for many decades.

Also, the working-out of this idea in the draft of Romantic Theology (posthumously published) - in terms of the supposed analogy between the stages of marriage and the events of Christ's life - is (at least to me) massively un-convincing!

But - whatever its imperfections, this has certainly been, for many people - myself included, one of Williams's valuable contributions to Christian theory.


Williams's other distinctive theories included the doctrines of exchange and substitution - and these were formalized in the organization he founded called the Order (or Company) of the Co-Inherence.

Lindop provides us with rich new detail about this, including that Williams was not reluctant to found this group (as had been previously stated), but on the contrary very keen; and he took an active role in organizing the network of substitutions by which one person would take on the burdens of another.

Indeed, this is another rather disillusioning story. The original idea of substitution was one of voluntary and mutual decision - in which person A would offer to take on a worry or fear from person B, and person B would need to agree.

But after a while Williams was telling, or indeed literally ordering, people to take on burdens of others whom they had not met, and knew nothing about; and often the person getting the assistance would not even know about it.

Williams became like a puppet master arranging an intricate web of (claimed) supernatural assistance, with the participants often unaware of what was going-on.


In sum, I found that this biography challenged my view of Williams in multiple ways.

Williams had remarkable qualities as a man. Many regarded him as something like a saint - or if not, then someone of exceptional spiritual insight, and capable of providing great help to many people. All this was what I first heard about Williams, and it remains true.

But most of what I have learned in this detailed biography was negative about Williams. So the more I know about him, the worse Williams seems! How to put this all together, and come to some coherent and also comprehensive overview is not going to be easy - and I am far from accomplishing it!

So, although it was somewhat dismaying to hear of so many horrible new things about CW in such a concentrated burst; I am very grateful to Grevel Lindop for providing the materials which I will need in my task of discernment and synthesis.

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I have commented before on how 1936 seems to have been the annus divertium (watershed year) for both CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien - although the effect on Tolkien was less obvious at the time.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/lord-of-rings-mostly-equals-hobbit-plus.html

That 1936 was a watershed seems valid - but the question is why?

What happened in 1936?

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It now strikes me as plausible that a major factor in the importance of 1936 - for both Lewis and Tolkien - was Lewis's encounter with Charles Williams's novel The Place of the Lion which he had borrowed from Nevill Coghill.

Some time after reading PotL, Lewis wrote a 'fan letter' to Charles Williams on 11 March 1936.

He indicated that he had brought PotL to the attention of both Tolkien and his brother Warnie who admired it, and Lewis indicated two important ways in which the Williams novel had impressed him.

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The first was as a warning against the typical scholar's hazard and sin (exemplified in PotL by Damaris Tighe) of researching and writing about spiritual and religious matters, while not really believing in them as realities.

From his letter, Lewis was clearly impressed by Damaris's come-uppance when she is attacked by a disgusting-smelling and gigantic 'pterodactyl' - symbolic of her enthralment to deadly spiritual pride; and before whose onslaught she is helpless, and from whom she is rescued only by the love of her boyfriend Anthony.

Lewis stated to Williams that PotL had come just-in-time to rescue him from some such fate.

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The second aspect of PotL, and linked to this, was Lewis's excitement about the way Williams depicted the real but unseen realm of 'spiritual warfare' - above or behind mundane life - which in the story break-through to invade mundane life.

(At least, I assume from later comments that Lewis was impressed by this aspect of PotL from the beginning - since he mentions it much in later accounts - as of 11 March 1936 he refers to 'layers and layers' of enjoyment and meaning, including 'the pleasure of a real philosophical and theological stimulus' - and again to 'levels' in a letter of June 24 to Baker; however, at this time Lewis is more explicit about his delight in C.W's depiction of 'good' characters.)

In this contest of super-natural powers, humans are weak players - yet human free will is always operative: there is always a point (or more than one point) in which a human is given a choice; and only if they choose evil can they wholly be overwhelmed by it.

By contrast, a refusal to invite evil into one's heart is depicted (for example in Anthony) as having (by indirect routes, hardly understood) potentially decisive power against vastly superior forces of evil.

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At any rate, Lewis immediately recognized a 'fellow spirit' in C.W - and took steps to invite Williams (who worked in London) 'down' to an Inklings evening in Oxford (the first of many).

(In England, the slang was always that one went 'up'-to or 'down'-from London - even when 'down' involved travelling north!...)

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This plot of the 'super-natural' invading the natural was the mode of fiction immediately adopted by CS Lewis in writing his science fiction trilogy starting in 1936 with Out of the Silent Planet and ending with Lewis's most Williams-esque novel That Hideous Strength (1945) and written during Williams' wartime sojourn in Oxford.

It was also the mode of fiction adopted by JRR Tolkien in his only-begun novel The Lost Road which he started in 1936 - and brought further in 1945-6 with The Notion Club Papers.

Furthermore, I have suggested that The Notion Club Papers represent Tolkien's 'Charles Williams Novel in the same sense as That Hideous Strength was Lewis's C.W novel.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/notion-club-papers-are-tolkiens-charles.html

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As I have previously argued

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/lord-of-rings-mostly-equals-hobbit-plus.html

- I feel that the Lost Road and NCPs together constituted a major step in the development of Tolkien as a writer, and that the 'therapeutic' process of writing the NCPs was probably vital in making decisive the transformation of Lord of the Rings from being a (mere) sequel to The Hobbit into a book of a very different sort.

Therefore it seems plausible that it was Charles Williams's The Place of the Lion which provided both a moral seriousness (i.e. treating the unseen Platonic realm as real and important) to deepen Lewis and Tolkien's fiction and expand its ambition, and also a plot device by which both Lewis's and Tolkien could structure their attempts at fiction.

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In sum, Charles Williams major influence on the work of Tolkien and Lewis may have come right at the very beginning of their association, before they had met, and before C.W had ever joined The Inklings - a literary influence, due to their reading of Place of the Lion.

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The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams. Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski. Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York. 2015. pp 644 (512 pages of text - 132 pages notes, references, index etc).

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This new book fills a niche for those of us who regard the Inklings as being much more than merely a collection of CS Lewis's friends - and who see them as a group of thinkers and writers who have something of vital importance to say to us now.

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There is a large amount of published material concerning the Inklings, scattered across works focused on the specific members - especially Lewis, Tolkien and Williams - but only two previous full-dress group biographies: The Inklings by Humphrey Carpenter (1978) and The Company They Keep by Diana Pavlac Glyer (2007).

Both are excellent - Carpenter's a masterpiece of deft orchestration, and Pavlac Glyer's an intense and thorough exploration. But Carpenter is insistent that the Inklings are nothing more than a social group, while Pavlac Glyer regards them as primarily a mutual-help writers group.

The Zaleskis get the focus right for the first time, because they regard the Inklings primarily in a context which might be termed 'socio-spiritual'. In other words, the Inklings are seen as important primarily because they are perhaps the major and most influential representatives of a counter-cultural movement which aims to heal the alienation, meaninglessness, purposelessness, ugliness and nihilism of modernity.



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So, The Fellowship is the best-yet book on the Inklings in terms of its primary focus; also its balance and detail. Indeed, The Fellowship is very well-written and constructed - following Tolkien, Lewis and Barfield in a three stranded chronology - then introducing Williams at the point when Coghill, Lewis and Tolkien encountered The Place of the Lion.

(In my opinion, this was the exact point when the Inklings 'gelled' and their implicit purpose began to emerge - http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/tolkien-and-lewiss-annus-divertium-of.html).

The decision to include Barfield to make a core quartet is well justified. Indeed, this was the first time that Barfield has 'come alive' for me, as a real person; and at last I appreciate his prolonged sufferings and disappointments.

Until recently, I have found Barfield's writing the most difficult to engage-with - perhaps because his prose style is relatively plain and his ideas are both deep and unfamiliar. But I am now looking forward to re-engaging with the work with this most subtle and elusive of the Inklings.

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The pen-portraits of Tolkien and Lewis strike me as almost wholly accurate and empathic. However, I disagree when the authors are critical of Tolkien - repeatedly! - for what is termed his 'heigh stile'; that is to say his use of archaic forms of language in a context of modern speech.

Of course, archaic pastiche is not to everybody's taste - on the other hand, too much should not be made of it, since clearly it did not prevent Lord of the Rings becoming probably the best loved of all very popular fictions of the twentieth century.

But, personal preferences aside, it is surely unwise to bracket Tolkien's use of archaisms with those of other authors; because Tolkien was the most gifted philologist of his generation, and (according to Tom Shippey) no-one alive can match him in knowledge and understanding.

Tolkien knew exactly what he was doing with the English language, and he did it.

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Unlike the other three main Inklings in this study; Charles Williams, as seems almost inevitable, is described 'from the outside' and we don't get a feel for what he was 'really like'.

However, this is not really a failure on the part of the Zaleskis; because I don't know whether there ever has been, or ever will be, anyone who can identify with Charles Williams to the extent of understanding his core being and motivation!

Despite thirty years of intermittent effort in reading dozens of accounts of the man and plumbing his works, I myself regard Williams inner self as a mystery; and this seems to have been the case for everyone who wrote about him. Indeed, all we can say is that those who thought they did understand Williams (such as CS Lewis or TS Eliot) can now be seen to have been mistaken.

I was impressed with the evaluation of Williams ouvre, and I agree with the negative judgement on his poetry. Williams reputations stands or falls on his novels (especially The Place of the Lion) and his main critical and theological work - although I personally have a blind spot about The Figure of Beatrice, which most people regard as one of Williams very best things.

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The Zaleskis also have a blind spot, about Lewis's The Screwtape Letters! This book strikes them as sophomoric and an over-extended joke; and as probably destined for long-term oblivion. My opinion is the opposite, and that Screwtape will survive and be cherished when Mere Christianity, Miracles and the other apologetics have come to seem dated. Time will tell.

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The Fellowship wears its scholarship lightly, but it is very accurate - and I only spotted a handful of trivial errors among the tens of thousands of facts. In only one respect would I regard the book as significantly mistaken - and that is a matter of interpretation.

The Fellowship repeats near-universal belief that Tolkien did not much like Charles Williams, and that he was jealous of Lewis's devotion. This leads the Zaleskis to doubt Tolkien's sincerity in his letter of condolence to William's widow in 1945 when Tolkien says 'I had grown to admire and love your husband deeply'.

But I have argued that in reality, according to all contemporary evidence, Tolkien did 'love' Charles Williams until more than a decade after Williams death.

Indeed, it was only after the revelations concerning CW's infidelities and involvement with ritual magic became public knowledge in the late 1950s that Tolkien had anything negative to say about him. Only then did Tolkien apparently revise his attitudes - and it is these retrospective re-interpretations that have misled biographers.

http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/was-tolkien-jealous-of-charles-williams.html

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That Tolkien was indeed prone to negative retrospective re-evaluations during the early 1960s is confirmed on page 484 of this study, which documents Tolkien's contemporary 'sniping' posthumous comments about CS Lewis (including Letters to Malcolm), and explains them as probably due to his 'drear' state of mind during this period:

'mired in the bottomless bog... trapped fast by illness, overwork, and anxiety over his wife's health, his children's faith, and his own failing powers. Exhaustion and depression lowered his inhibitions and loosened his tongue.'

This is an important thing to get right, since it concerns the core dynamic of The Inklings in their most intense and important phase - during the 1939-45 war, when Williams was living in Oxford. So, my hope is that this might be corrected in a future edition of this study - assuming, that is, that the authors are convinced by my arguments!

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Despite The Fellowship's relative comprehensiveness, there still remains much to be done in Inklings studies; not least because the fascination and influence of this group continues to deepen and spread.

Jack Lewis's life has been thoroughly documented - but the same cannot yet be said of Tolkien's. A detailed new biography of Charles Williams is imminent from Grevel Lindop. The fifth most important Inkling - especially as a listener and audience - was Warnie Lewis, and his life and work is still somewhat hazy; and this is even more the case for 'Humphrey' Havard. Plenty of work ahead...

In the meantime, here at last we have the definitive book, the go-to volume, on the Inklings. It is the first book to read if you want to find out about this group

For this much thanks!


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