Tuesday
15th May, 1945
At 12.50 this morning I had just stopped work on the
details of the Boisleve family, when the
telephone rang, and a woman's voice asked if I would take a message for
Jack —"Mr. Charles Williams died in the Acland this morning". One often reads
of people being "stunned"
by bad news, and reflects idly on the absurdity of the expression; but there is more than a little truth
in it. I felt just as if I had slipped and come down on my head on the
pavement. J had told me when I came into College that Charles was ill, and it
would mean a serious operation;
and then went off to see him: I haven't seen him since. I felt dazed and
restless, and went out to get a drink: choosing unfortunately the King's Arms, where during the
winter Charles and I more than
once drank a pint after leaving Tollers at the Mitre, with much glee at
"clearing one throats of varnish with good honest beer": as Charles
used to say.
There will be no more pints with Charles: no more "Bird and Baby": the
blackout has fallen, and the Inklings can never be the same again. I knew him better
than any of the others, by virtue
of his being the most constant attendant. I hear his voice as I write, and can see his thin form in his blue
suit, opening his cigarette box
with trembling hands. These rooms will always hold his ghost for me. There is something horrible, something unfair about
death, which no religious
conviction can overcome.
"Well, goodbye, see you on Tuesday Charles" one says — and you have
in fact though you don't know it, said goodbye for ever. He passes up the
lamplit street, and passes out
of your life for ever. There is a good deal of stuff talked about the horrors of a lonely old age; I'm not sure
that the wise man — the wise
materialist at any rate — isn't the man who has no friends. And so vanishes one of the best and
nicest men it has ever been my
good fortune to meet. May God receive him into His everlasting
happiness.
W.H. Lewis (Warnie)
Brothers & Friends (1982)
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