One Fine Afternoon

One of my favorite writers is a man who was named Charles Williams. He wrote a series of books which are sometimes called 'mystical thrillers.' I suppose that is as good a description as any. The first one I happened upon I found down in the underground tunnels of an old hospital on one of the islands of Boston Harbor called Long Island, and the hospital Long Island Chronic Disease Hospital. It has since been closed by the city after a long and fascinating existence. But this blog post is about Charles Williams. People donated books to the hospital for the patients, and they were kept on shelves down in the tunnels. One night on my break, around three in the morning, I picked up a book with the cover torn off and read about two pages. I was hooked. The writing was incredible in its complexity and instant fascination. The title was 'The Greater Trumps' and it was about a deck of cards which happened to be the original tarot cards, imbued with great powers but incomplete without a magical table upon which danced tiny golden figurines. The gypsies had concealed the secret of the table, and carried it about with them in search of the original tarots for centuries. I won't go more deeply into the plot in case you should like to read it.
Charles Williams wrote several of these novels. Many of them, in fact most, were more closely concerned with the theology of the Anglican Church of England, but none of them are in the least 'preachy'. You would think that as an atheist I would be put off by this, but I am not. The spiritual side of mankind is often abused by charlatans, but I do not deny it exists. I just deny that the gods do. Don't worry about it, I'll go over it in other posts. Anyway, back to the afternoon I am about to describe. One book which Charles Williams wrote, but which he did not manage to finish due to his early death, was to be called the Figure of Arthur. Anyone who has read the works of C.S.Lewis titled Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet, and That Hideous Strength would feel at home reading this work. In fact C.S.Lewis was a close friend of Charles Williams. One Fine Afternoon Charles Williams read this chapter, or fragment, to two close friends as they sat with him in his rooms at Oxford College in England. Picture the scene from this quote from the introduction written to the book 'Arthurian Torso' by C.S.Lewis which he wrote at the request of Charles Williams' publisher, There was a third figure present in the scene to follow, whose name you will surely recognize, and who was also a close friend of Charles Williams...
-------'The first two chapters had been read aloud by the author(Charles Williams) to Professor Tolkien and myself. It may help the reader to imagine the scene; or at least it is to me both great pleasure and great pain to recall. Picture to yourself, then, an upstairs sitting-room with windows looking north into the 'grove' of Magdalen College on a sunshiny Monday Morning in vacation at about ten o'clock. The Professor and I, both on the chesterfield,lit our pipes and stretched out our legs. Williams in the arm-chair opposite to us threw his cigarette into the grate, took up a pile of the extremely small, loose sheets on which he habitually wrote--they came, I think, from a twopenny pad for memoranda-and began as follows:---the book follows, and I recommend it and all of Charles Williams' works.

I found this book just recently, and just thought I would share this otherwise forgotten moment with you. Two of the people in that room are well known today from the movies, something they could scarcely have imagined. Lewis for the Chronicles of Narnia, and Tolkien for the Lord of the Rings. I hope you are moved to look for the works of Charles Williams. Search for him(put eerdmans in the search box for publisher to get the correct charles williams) on http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchEntry?the most amazing used book source on earth. By the way, a chesterfield is a kind of couch for those americans who might be confused by the term.