War in Heaven
It is not surprising that Charles Williams, the most unusual of the Inklings, produced the most unusual novels of the group. While he has not attained the level of fame found by his friends, C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, he is worth a read for any fantasy writer not only because of his connection with them, but in his own right as an extraordinary thinker.
I’m spending the summer reading his novels - and a strange journey it is too. Beginning with War in Heaven, his 1930 novel, published by Victor Gollancz in 1930 (before the other Inklings ventured into print as novelists), a voyage through his novels takes in many genres, all the time haunted by an awareness of a man who is not quite of this world, deep in the esoteric wisdom of a follower of secret societies and an idiosyncratic version of Christianity. This book though in many ways is his most straightforward so is a good place for a reader to start.
War in Heaven was written in London and the capital is one of the two centres for the novel, the other a rural parish in which the grail has come to rest, the spare chalice in the local church. This premise becomes the launch pad for a murder mystery that soon forgets the murder to concentrate on the fate of the relic. As a publisher himself, Williams had a shrewd idea of the market for popular speculative fiction, and this is the closest he was to come to writing a hit in a recognisable genre. Grevel Lindop, Williams’ biographer, characterises it as ‘a good tale, gripping at once with an unforgettable opening sentence’. Now of course you’ll want to know what that sentence is so here it is!
The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no one in the room but the corpse.
You could teach a seminar on that sentence alone - the contrast between the urgent noise and the stillness, the impact of the punch in the sentence as you reach the final word. It is a showy opening - shock and awe - but it suits this action-packed metaphysical thriller which speeds on from there like a steam train passing through the local stations to reach its terminus. It is with reason that I’ve seen him compared to Dan Brown, though I found myself thinking of Indiana Jones and John Buchan.
And what about the storyline? The grail (or Graal for Williams) has been located in a country parish by the monstrous antiquarian Sir Giles Tumulty, a villain splendid in his unpleasantness. The bad guys are after it, the good are trying to protect it. So far so simple. What makes this an extraordinary read is the metaphysical debates that go alongside this dichotomy of good and evil (the Miltonic title is no accident). Each character responds to the grail in a way that reveals their spiritual status. The Archdeacon, unknowingly the custodian of this cup, is less enamoured of the artefact than anyone else in the book. For him, it is the meaning, the worship, the truth behind it that is important, not the grail itself. He sums it up in the saying that you can find scattered across Williams’ work: ‘Neither is this Thou….Yet this also is Thou.’ He maintains this attitude despite the power wielded by those who believe in the grail as a vessel that can be put to evil. This is no sham but as in Indiana Jones a religious artefact has true power. Hollywood made the consequences fall on the bad but in this novel one of our heroes is turned to dust as a result of evil spells - though I will not spoil the plot by revealing who that is!
Williams’ stance that it is what you put into the vessel that matters is also found in C.S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew and The Last Battle - his creation and revelation stories. Narnia for Uncle Andrew is a nightmare, for the children and the good hearted cabby, a paradise. Jadis, present at the song of creation, adds her discordant note and will rule temporarily to turn it into the land of perpetual winter. Narnia is what each makes of it. Once through the stable door in The Last Battle, the Dwarfs can’t see the feast before them, and believe themselves to still be in the stable. We make our own heaven and hell, just as in Williams’ novel we make our own grail, an instrument for good or evil. And isn’t this kind of evil much more fascinating because it is inside us all?
The parallels to Tolkien are also there, with the grail acting like the Ring, consuming some, warping others, resisted by the few. In fact, the Archdeacon does what even Frodo can’t quite manage at the end: he is content to let the grail go. It is not an icon he has to worship or hold onto as his ally the Duke of North Ridings would like to do; he sees himself as a temporary holder who should give it up when a greater cause, such as saving a life, comes along. It is a daring choice for a writer to have one of your questers saying that actually the thing they are after is no so very special. The Archdeacon has a whiff of Tom Bombadil about him in this respect!
What did I carry away from this fantasy? My conclusion was that temptation is a rich theme to explore as the character’s relationship to power lifts the lid on what lies at the core of their being. Tolkien does this well with the Gondorian trio Boromir, Denethor, and Faramir: the good man tempted, the cynical man crumbling, the true heart able to refuse the temptation. The grail has this role in the Arthurian cycle. Faramir in this reading is the Galahad, Boromir the Lancelot, and Denethor the failing older generation of knights who don’t hold true to the principles of the Round Table. Likewise in War in Heaven the knights protecting the grail - a churchman, a lord, and a publisher - each show their mettle in different ways.
Another valuable insight was the nature of battle. The biggest fight here happens not in a punch-up but in a prayer battle as the Archdeacon and his allies hold into the grail as the evil ones try to enchant it out of their hands. I was reminded of the scene Tolkien was to write a decade or so later of Aragorn wresting the palantir to his will and away from Sauron. As in The Lord of the Rings, the biggest struggles are in the mind and the battlefields are in some ways sideshows to the real fight as good and evil confront each other in the long war of attrition.
The book has many weaknesses. For example, Williams has little space for women in this novel, the role of the chief female character (Barbara) is to run mad. His later novels have a wider range of female characters (though not without problems) which we’ll come to later. But this masculine adventure of Catholic dukes, Anglican priests, bookish publishers is of its time where the male and female worlds were more rigidly conceived. There is also an oddness in the way people talk and interact, and an unevenness in the writing where he spins off into ideas, usually through debates between his heroes, without taking this audience with him. However, it will remain with me long after many other novels fade into each other as it is just so different. I read to meet other minds in their books; Charles Williams is certainly one of the most fascinating I’ve met yet.
