Charles Williams and his Imagery

Extract

Based on a talk given in London in 1986 to mark the centenary of the birth of Charles Williams, the theological writer and poet.

I knew Charles Williams off and on from 1938 (when we met at a party for contributors to a number of books in a series called I Believe, edited by Ellis Roberts) until he died—during the war, in 1945—in Oxford, where he had gone with the London branch of the Oxford University Press, for which he worked.

It is very odd that, in the case of someone for whom image and reality were so essentially related, I cannot accurately recall his physical presence. The curious quivering of his hands—also recorded by C.S. Lewis—yes. This reinforced the impression of a self like a bright candle flame flickering in still air. His Londoner’s voice, yes—and the vivid current of what it said, whether speaking in public, engaged in ordinary talk, or reciting large chunks of Paradise Lost over lunch in a Bloomsbury cafe. But the impact of someone moving about, standing, sitting, no—and hardly a visual memory except for one occasion when, after a metaphysical discussion over a meal, he rushed to help a woman get her baby in its pushcart down the stone steps of an Underground station.

What remains—and that most clearly—is recollection of his skilled, startling, and unpremeditated use of words, not only on paper, but in living speech. I cannot hope to emulate him but I hope to do justice to his memory.