The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings (92 page)

“that beautiful carved room”: Lewis,
Collected Letters,
vol. 2, 346.

“Am I … you will be attended”: Williams,
To Michal from Serge
, 50–51.

“it was Anne”: Ibid., 56

“held his audiences”: T. S. Eliot, introduction to Williams,
All Hallows’ Eve
, xii.

“I begin to believe”: Williams,
To Michal from Serge
, 52.

“loftily lunching,” Ibid., 150.

“It’s obvious”: Quoted in Carpenter,
Inklings
, 188.

celebrated together with drinks: See Duriez,
Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship
, 121.

“We work between”: Hadfield,
Charles Williams
, 176–77.

“a kind of
parody
”: Ibid., 197.

“full of courtesies”: Charles Williams,
The Figure of Beatrice: A Study in Dante
(London: Faber & Faber, 1943)
,
105.

“Wherever any love is … there is”: Ibid., 252.

“the highest point”: T. S. Eliot,
Dante
(London: Faber & Faber, 1929, 1965), 27.

“elders … in the ditches”: Williams,
The Figure of Beatrice
, 21.

“if you substitute”: Williams,
To Michal from Serge
, 165.

“second image … I do not know”: Williams,
The Figure of Beatrice
, 49–50.

“has slid from being”: Hadfield,
Charles Williams
, 211.

“delicate sensitiveness … continually evok[ing]”: Dermot Michael Macgregor Morrah, “Dante’s Beatrice: Knower, Known, and Knowing,”
The Times Literary Supplement
2164 (July 24, 1943): 358.

“part of the furniture”: Quoted in Carpenter,
Inklings
, 188.

“I found myself panting”: Dorothy L. Sayers,
The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, 1944–1950: A Noble Daring
, ed. Barbara Reynolds (Cambridge, UK: Dorothy L. Sayers Society, 1998), 45–47.

“I become more”: Hadfield,
Charles Williams
, 218.

“a pattern”: Williams,
To Michal from Serge
, 222.

“I dislike people … There are wells of hate”: Williams,
To Michal from Serge
, 7.

“amor intellectualis”
: Williams,
To Michal from Serge
, 125.

“You go on”: Ashenden,
Charles Williams: Alchemy and Integration
, 221.

“O, I wish”: Hadfield,
Charles Williams
, 180.

“deferential and authoritarian … the constant jerky movements”: Williams,
Letters to Lalage
,
31.

“incapable of … Love—obey”: Ibid., 33.

“Sir, I am”: Ibid., 44.

“torrent of words … next year”: Ibid., 48–49.

“in a painfully divided state … I will play”: Ibid., 67–70.

“Go with God”: Ibid., 80.

“nothing was”: Ibid., 86.

“power through sexual transcendence”: Ibid., 69.

his only victim: See Candice Fredrick and Sam McBride,
Women Among the Inklings
(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001), 40.

“I am sadistic … I wouldn’t hurt”: Hadfield,
Charles
Williams
, 104–105.

“a man … an extended”: T. S. Eliot, “The Significance of Charles Williams,”
The Listener
936 (December 19, 1946): 894.

“in his [Williams’s]”: W. H. Auden, “Charles Williams: A Review Article,”
The Christian Century,
May 2, 1956, 552–54.

“I have never known … a gay”: Eliot, introduction to Williams,
All Hallows’
Eve, xv–xviii.

“for the first time”: Hadfield,
Charles Williams
, 141.

“was extremely attractive … always found Williams”: Lewis, preface,
Essays Presented to Charles Williams
, x.

“I am certain”: Williams,
Letters to Lalage
, 19.

“Well, you never know”: Quoted in Walter Hooper,
Past Watchful Dragons: The Narnian Chronicles of C. S. Lewis
(New York: Collier Books, 1979), 82.

“Bugger Paxford”: W. H. Lewis,
Brothers and Friends
, 122.

“like a mother”: Fred W. Paxford, “He Should Have Been a Parson,” in
We Remember C. S. Lewis
, ed. David Graham (Nashville, Tenn.: Broadman & Holman, 2001), 123.

“our schoolgirls”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 270.

“kind, solicitous”: Patricia Heidelberger, “Part A: With Girls at Home,” in Schofield,
In Search of C. S. Lewis
, 53.

“comfy to be with … what Jack Lewis imposed”: Jill Freud, “Part B: With Girls at Home,” in Schofield,
In Search of C. S. Lewis
, 57.

“our dear, delightful June Flewett”: W. H. Lewis,
Brothers and Friends
, 180–81.

“Beauty and brains”: Quoted in Jill Freud, “Part B: With Girls at Home,” in Schofield,
In Search of C. S. Lewis
, 59.

“most complicated Arthur Rackham”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 273.

“I think a great deal of nonsense”: Ibid., 487.

“How can I ask thee … eternal will”: Green and Hooper,
C. S. Lewis: A Biography
, 217.

“if its got to be”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 258.

“ghostly feeling”: Ibid., 274.

“safely dead”: Ibid., 278.

“for me, personally”: Ibid., 274.

“What is the use”: C. S. Lewis, “Learning in War-Time,” in C. S. Lewis,
The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses
, ed. Walter Hooper, rev. and exp. ed. (New York: Collier Books / Macmillan, 1980), 20.

“If we had”: Ibid., 32.

“one night in nine”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 3, 153.

“I can never forget”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 368.

morbidly self-concerned: See his letter to Sister Penelope of October 24, 1940, in ibid., 450–52.

“told too many … much too close”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 481–82.

“bits … more lovely”: Ibid., 1057.

“Do I become”: Ibid., 261.

“the avoidance of”: Ibid., 479.

“it has grown”: Ibid., 495.

“merely indulging … Well—we have come”: Ibid., 452–53.

“things are so bad”: Ibid., 586.

“time and again … prayers that the prejudices”: Guy Brinkworth, S.J., “C. S. Lewis,” letter to
The Tablet
(December 7, 1963): 1317.

“intended to be … When Catholicism goes bad”: Lewis,
Allegory of Love
, 322–23.

a formula: See letter to Sister Penelope, October 24, 1940, in Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 449.

“the vast mass … as much a provincial”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 646–47.

“the difficulty”: David Wesley Soper,
Exploring the Christian World Mind
(New York: Philosophical Library, 1963; London: Vision Press, 1964), 69.

“There is no mystery”: Lewis,
Mere Christianity
(New York: HarperCollins, 2001), viii.

imaginatively Catholic: Allegory is similar to Catholic sacramentalism, Lewis notes, in that “it consists in giving an imagined body to the immaterial.” Thus, in
The Faerie Queene
, the exiled Una (personifying the true church) is dressed like a nun, the House of Holinesse resembles a convent, and Penaunce wields a whip—all in the service of allegory; but Lewis makes a point of saying that Spenser was no unconscious Catholic. Lewis,
Allegory of Love
, 321–23.

“only a bungler”: Lewis,
Allegory of Love
, 323.

“Jack, most of your friends seem to be Catholic”: Sayer,
Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis
, 421. For two staunchly Catholic perspectives on Lewis’s attitude toward Roman Catholicism, see Christopher Derrick,
C. S. Lewis and the Church of Rome: A Study in Proto-Ecumenism
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1981), and Joseph Pearce,
C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003). For a more broad-based view of Lewis’s ecclesial thinking, see the essays in
C. S. Lewis and the Church: Essays in Honour of Walter Hooper,
ed. Judith Wolfe and Brendan N. Wolfe (London: T & T Clark, 2012).

13. MERE CHRISTIANS

the “Christian Challenge” series: Williams published
The Forgiveness of Sins
(also dedicated to the Inklings) in the same series in 1942. Charles Williams,
The Forgiveness of Sins
, Christian Challenge Series (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1942).

“If you are writing”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 302.

“Not many years ago … The creatures cause pain”: C. S. Lewis,
The Problem of Pain
(San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 1–3.

“nonsense remains nonsense”: Ibid., 18.

“whether we like it or not”: Ibid., 46–47.

“gives the only opportunity”: Ibid., 93.

“cannot cease”: Ibid., 107.

“is the thing I was made for”: Ibid., 151.

“standing above the sensations”: Ibid., 136.

“how confessedly speculative”: “The Pains of Animals: A Problem in Theology,” Lewis, “The Reply,”
God in the Dock
, 170.

“is so shocking”: Lewis,
Problem of Pain
, 13.

“Mr. Lewis’s … style”: Charles Williams, review of
The Problem of Pain
,
Theology
42 (January 1941): 62–63.

“the sort of people”: Lewis, preface,
Essays Presented to Charles Williams
, xiii.

“Finest Hour” speech:

… the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

Winston Churchill speech before the House of Commons, June 18, 1940, in Randolph S. Churchill and Martin Gilbert,
Winston S. Churchill
, vol. 6:
Finest Hour, 1939–1941
(London: Heinemann, 1983), 571.

“Well: we are on the very brink”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 423.

frayed nerves: In a letter to Warnie, Lewis assessed the damage: “Dyson is in very poor form these days. On the whole I should say that Fox and he are the two among my acquaintance who are bearing up least well. Dyson I should have expected it of, for he’s obviously all on wires at any time, but I’m surprised at Fox. The truth is he was
too
tranquil before, with a tranquillity born of inexperience…” Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 425.

“I don’t know”: Ibid. Among Hitler’s concluding remarks in this very long speech are the following:

Mr. Churchill should … place trust in me when as a prophet I now proclaim:

A great world empire will be destroyed. A world empire which I never had the ambition to destroy or as much as harm. Alas, I am fully aware that the continuation of this war will end only in the complete shattering of one of the two warring parties. Mr. Churchill may believe this to be Germany. I know it to be England.

In this hour I feel compelled, standing before my conscience, to direct yet another appeal to reason in England. I believe I can do this as I am not asking for something as the vanquished, but rather, as the victor. I am speaking in the name of reason. I see no compelling reason which could force the continuation of this war.

Max Domarus,
Hitler: Speeches and Proclamations, 1932–1945: The Chronicle of a Dictatorship
, vol. 3:
The Years 1939 to 1940
(Wauconda, Ill.: Bolchazy-Carducci, 1997), 2062.

“useful and entertaining … It wd. be called”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 426.

“though it was easy”: C. S. Lewis, “Screwtape Proposes a Toast,”
The Screwtape Letters: With Screwtape Proposes a Toast
(New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 183.

“men are not angered”: Lewis,
Screwtape Letters
, 111.

“once you have made”: Ibid., 34.

“should become a classic … time alone can show”: Quoted in Hooper,
C. S. Lewis: A Complete Guide
, 275–76.

“It’s like the end”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 485.

“had had an extraordinary effect” … “promising to soar”: Charles Gilmore, “To the RAF,” in Como,
C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table
, 186–87.

“complete failure”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 485. A reference to the biblical story of Balaam and the ass, Numbers 22:28.

“a sterling and direct purpose”: Gilmore, “To the RAF,” 188.

“I had never realized … the chance in many places”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 504.

“as a reparation”: Tolkien, unpublished letter in the possession of Christopher Tolkien, quoted in A. N. Wilson,
C. S. Lewis
, 179.

“feeling for words … Jack had done his job”: Gilmore, “To the RAF,” 186–89.

“a fairly intelligent audience”: Quoted in Justin Phillips,
C. S. Lewis in a Time of War: The World War II Broadcasts That Riveted a Nation and Became the Classic
Mere Christianity (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 2002), 80.

“most apologetic begins”: Lewis,
Collected Letters
, vol. 2, 470.