King, Roma, ed. To Michal from Serge: Letters from Charles Williams to His Wife Florence, 1939-1945.

Kent: Kent State UP, 2002. ix, 315pp. $65.00. ISBN: 0873387120

In this book King brings together an extremely important collection of letters written by Charles Williams during his years in Oxford: in total, it is a selection of 680 letters to his wife Florence Conway composed between 1939 and Williams's death in 1945. King insists in the preface that he selected them without bias, nor was he aiming at the creation of an image of Williams that he or others might find more or less palatable. In the absence of an examination of the archival materials themselves, this claim strikes me as credible and honest. In the face of powerful internal evidence to the contrary, however, King also insists that the letters are primarily "love letters" and that Williams's "depth of emotion and sincerity" cannot be doubted (4-5). The texts of the letters themselves (almost every one of which expresses worry over money), the fact that they exist only because Michal refused to accompany her husband (and eventually her son) to Oxford, along with the intimate relationships Williams continued to form with young women like Lois Lang-Sims during this time, together make this general thesis less than convincing. Indeed, weaving its way throughout the letters one even finds a continual effort on Williams's part to dismiss firm suspicions of marital infidelity. He attempts to deflect accusations not only about his old flame Phyllis Jones (11 Dec 1939) but others as well (see, for example, 29 April 1940).

What emerges in these letters, therefore, is not an example of uxorious constancy, but something closer to the image of a deeply conflicted man. Although he never ceases in his attempts to placate Michal with protestations of love, both parties acknowledge that this love exists primarily on an abstracted level. Williams writes:

[...] I do not know that you can very well complain if you are the cause of poems on marriage and the Good Life instead of on yourself directly: no, I do not. Everyone else observes the relation. Another poet might have done it another way; he would have been the lesser. So that if you become a Doctrine, well, it cannot be helped. (25 Sept 1940)

The picture of Michal that emerges, on the other hand, is of an ill-tempered woman capable of, at times, strikingly cruel behavior. Mere indifference certainly, but even active dislike for Williams's work stands out in countless small and several large ways. For example, throughout the first half of 1940, Williams completed and saw his play Terror of Light staged. Knowing Williams had taken much trouble over the play and had also insisted that it be dedicated to their son Michael from both parents, Michal wrote to a friend on 16 May 1940 that, "The Play--Terror of Light--as I saw it on Saturday was a very bad play. Too many long cumbersome sentences, too much that was facetious, & too much Charles Williams being more than a little willful & intellectually superior" (see 17 November 39 note 81). It is difficult to imagine a more devastating criticism of a writer's work than to be told that it contains too much of the playwright himself" being willful & intellectually superior." We know that Isabel Douglas, a friend of the Williamses who settled in Oxford during the war, took strong exception to Michal's unkind remarks. Williams, in what can only be described as a moment of embarrassing weakness, defends his wife's remarks and even commiserates with her about Isabel's rebuke. He first thanks her for her remarks (9 May 1940) and then takes her side against Isabel, saying, "Well, as a play it's pretty bad, but it has its moments!" (15 May 1940). That Williams really was hurt by Michal's criticism of his play is more than suggested in his letter of 6 July 1940 where he promises that his World's Classics introduction to Milton will not be "wilful or facetious or intellectually proud"--he does not promise, however, to cease being Charles Williams. Nor does he let it go at that. In the last paragraph he writes "I shall think of you & pray for you; and I have always been proud of you & am almost wilful with pride & arrogance about you [...]" throwing these attributes not only in a positive light juxtaposed to prayer, but directing them wholly at her--almost as though he wishes to shame her, somehow, for her earlier criticism but not quite having the courage to be wholly direct. Williams's growing acceptance of his wife's dislike for his work is reflected by his eventual reluctance to mention any of his work except to say that it might bring in money. He passes along to Michal news of the tremendously favourable reception of his Oxford lectures on Milton, though she can only laugh at them (9 Feb 1940); and he even admits that his work, which he claims finds its source in her, is ironically "scorned" by her (18 April 1940).

Apart from King's introduction which steers the reader in much the wrong direction, the book is an indispensable help to understanding Williams's other work and his own reasons for writing. The critical apparatus, too, is crucial and very helpful. Instead of endnotes, however, footnotes would have been much more welcome since the reader must flip back and forth incessantly. I noticed two typographical errors. Note 63 for the group of letters from 1939 exists twice in the text and only once in the endnotes themselves. Clearly something is missing. And, strangely, G. K. Chesterton's first name is given as "George" in the glossary of persons at the end of the book.

In sum, these letters provide a unique window into the quality of Williams's marriage in these last few years of his life. They are written carefully, delicately, and always cordially. Reading them one feels a sense of empathy for the writer and the difficult balance he strove to maintain in his life between work and scholarship, marriage and kin. This book will doubtless become a standard reference work for scholars and anyone else wishing to understand this writer more fully.

Scott McLaren is the Humanities Librarian at York University in Toronto where he also teaches in the Faculty of Arts's Professional Writing Program. He is currently serving a three year term as the Secretary of the Mythopoeic Press.