Religion: Theological Thriller

When Lester Furnival saw her husband vanish into thin air before her eyes, she thought at first that he must be a ghost. Then she realized that she was one. For a while, Lester and her sniveling girl friend Evelyn (they had been killed by the same crashing plane) were lonely in the soundless, deserted London they haunted. But then they got involved with a gaunt, ascetic emissary of the Devil named Simon Leclerc (he was disguised as a popular religious leader and preached about Love) . . .

This supernatural hugger-mugger does not take place in a comic book or a pulp magazine, but in a novel by one of the most gifted and influential Christian writers England has produced this century. Now published in the U.S., the late Charles Williams’ All Hallows’ Eve (Pellegrini & Cudahy; $2.75) will soon be followed by other Williams books, and—if his effect on Britain is any indication—the almost certain growth of a small but fanatical group of Williams fans.

To readers who enjoy that peculiarly English grace of being lighthearted about the deadly serious, Charles Williams will be a discovery indeed. Novelist Dorothy L. Sayers, who regards him as more important than either of such Christian authors as T. S. Eliot or C. S. Lewis, has spoken of Williams as “the figure who reaffirmed for intellectuals the truth that all created things are vehicles for the glory and reality of God.”

Spare Time. Charles Walter Stansby Williams called himself a cockney, though he was born (1886) in northwest London, well out of earshot of Bow bells. His father was a poorly paid translator for an importing house, who spent his free hours reading, meditating on God, and turning out an occasional poem or play.

Charles spent two years at the University of London before his money ran out—and then got a job with a small publisher at $3 a week while studying nights at London’s Working Men’s College. Until his death in 1945, he worked as an editor of the Oxford University Press.

Though his regular job was exacting and he was dogged by money troubles that forced him to lecture and tutor on the side, in his spare time Williams managed to turn out 37 volumes in 27 years: ten books of drama and poetry, seven novels, five biographies, four books of theology and four of criticism, as well as editing, prefacing or translating seven other volumes. He left behind him two unfinished books.*

Angelic Monkey. Poet T. S. Eliot, invited to tea to meet him, remembered “a man in spectacles, who appeared to combine a frail physique with exceptional vitality . . . He . . . was modest and unassuming to the point of humility: that unconscious humility, one discovered later, was in him a natural quality . . . which made one, in time, feel very humble oneself in his presence.”

C. S. Lewis described him as “tall, slim, straight as a boy, though grey-haired. His face we thought ugly: I am not sure that the word ‘monkey’ has not been murmured in this context. But the moment he spoke it became, as was also said, like the face of an angel … a spirit burning with intelligence and charity.”

Williams v. Death. In his novels, Williams was fond of building a thriller plot around the intervention of the supernatural in a contemporary setting. War in Heaven involves a cops & robbers chase in modern England for possession of the Holy Grail. All Hallows’ Eve tells of the almost successful attempt of a Satanic emissary to capture the world. The basic conflict is always between Good & Evil, rather than between good men and bad.

By ordinary literary standards, Williams’ novels are weak in characterization: his actors are puppets on the strings of the Forces that possess and move them.

But Williams’ stories cannot be judged as mere entertainment. Beneath their Zoroastrian conflict of light and darkness lies layer upon layer of subtle theological argument and daring Christian speculation. He uses two major themes: 1) the Affirmative Way to God, which joyously accepts all life as bearing the divine image, and 2) the theology of Romantic Love, which sees in humans who are in love a visible sign of the redeeming love of God.

Charles Williams’ best epitaph was written by C. S. Lewis, who acknowledged him as the contemporary from whom he had learned most. Wrote Lewis: “No event has so corroborated my faith in the next world as Williams did simply by dying. When the idea of death and the idea of Williams thus met in my mind, it was the idea of death that was changed.”

*Part of one of them, a history of Arthurian, legend which was to have been titled The Figure of Arthur, was published in Britain last week as Arthurian Torso.