I therefore took note when I came across what seems to be a reference to one of those books Lewis gave away, which I thought I'd share here for those interested in such things.
The book in question is by Charles Williams, the first of his theological books (the first to be published, anyway): HE CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN (1938). Alice Mary Hadfield, in her biography of Williams, notes that
On the flyleaf of C. S. Lewis's copy of He Came Down
From Heaven, in Charles's hand, is written 'At Shirreffs,
2.10, 4th July 1938'. He must have been spending a lunch
-hour with Lewis at his favourite restaurant-bar,* Shirreffs,
at the bottom of Ludgate Hill, under the railway bridge
across the road from the King Lud pub, and have given
him a copy of this new book to read in the train home.
At the end of his copy Lewis wrote 'July 26 1938',
probably the date when he finished his reading and
making notes. Sadly, Shirreffs has gone, and the site
no longer holds a restaurant
[Hadfield p. 164-165]
Hadfield's source for this is identified in a note on p. 245: 'By courtesy of Mr. George Sayer.'
If follows, then, that Sayer must have Lewis's copy of this book, and it seems likely that he was given it by Lewis himself.
As it happens, we have Sayer's own account of that event, in his biography of Lewis (JACK: C. S. LEWIS AND HIS TIMES), in which Sayer describes making as his initial pick George MacDonald's UNSPOKEN SERMONS, which Lewis was apparently too attached to to be able to let go, hence Sayer "hastily withdrew my choice and asked to be allowed to have something else" (JACK p. 249). That 'something else' now looks likely to have been the Charles Williams book -- an odd choice, I shd have thought, for Sayer. As Chuck Berry says, it just goes to show you just can't tell.
--John R.
P.S.: By the way, Lewis himself left an account of this lunch-meeting in his Preface to ESSAYS PRESENTED TO CHARLES WILLIAMS (p. viii):
[During the period 1936-1939] There were many meetings
both in my rooms at Magdalen and in Williams's tiny office
at Amen House. Neither Mr. Dyson nor my brother, Major
W. H. Lewis, will forget a certain immortal lunch at Shirreff's
in 1938 (he gave me a copy of He Came Down From Heaven
and we ate kidneys 'enclosed', like the wicked man, 'in their
own fat') nor the almost Platonic discussion which followed
for about two hours in St. Paul's churchyard.
*
It's delightful, isn't it, to notice this connection? Lewis's reference to the book makes the link to the book itself, the inscription in which gives us the exact date of the lunch, something we'd otherwise never have known. And proof that Lewis did, in the 1936-39 period, go to London to see Williams at least occasionally. I noted this connection in my article on Dyson in Mythlore 82 (1997), p. 25-26.
ReplyDeleteDear David
ReplyDeleteYes, it was a wonderful feeling to see how the information in Hadfield synced up with the oblique account in Sayer, then how both fit into what Lewis had to say. And how fortuitous that it was this particular lunch meeting Lewis happened to mention out of what were apparently several over that three-year period. From one account we learn the exact date; from another who all was present* and even what they had to eat; from a third how the book came to be in Sayer's possession.
It's rare, and gratifying, when things from different sources fit together so well.
I wonder where that particular book is now -- I hadn't heard of Sayer's collection being dispersed, nor of its being acquired.
--John R.
*though that may be making an assumption; I find myself wondering if we can be certain that Hopkins wasn't at that little gathering as well.