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It is generally supposed and often stated that Charles Williams long infatuation with Phyllis Jones was a wholly non-physical affair - yet this is contradicted by a passage I failed to notice until very recently (despite several re-reads) in Alice Mary Hadfield's Charles Williams: an exploration of his life and work.
From Page 72.
Probably in 1929, [Charles Williams] wrote to Phyllis, (...) What a year! (...) Do you remember offering to take me to The Ghost Train? But instead I took your arm - which to me was much like a weekend at Brighton - and we talked about almighty God... it was only the second time in my life I had taken - even so remotely as that - a woman's arm. And certainly certainly only the second time that the idea of kissing her had crossed my mind - as it did at Victoria. And took four months to eventuate, blessed be he.
So, kissing eventuated four months after the taking of the arm.
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The Ghost Train was a popular play of the time, written by Arnold Ridley who much later became very famous as Private Godfrey in the BBC classic sitcom Dad's Army.
The reference to 'a weekend at Brighton' is an old smutty joke for a 'dirty weekend' or adulterous holiday - Brighton being the classic location for such liasons - convenient for those living in London, but sufficiently remote. The participants in a weekend in Brighton were stereotypically (ahem) a boss and his younger secretary.
I'm not sure what is meant by the 'it' in 'as it did at Victoria' - but Victoria is the London railway station for the line which goes to... Brighton.
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So Williams is saying that for him (who had only ever taken his wife's arm before, and who had a bit of a 'thing' about girls' arms) the holding of Phyllis's arm was equivalent to an adulterous weekend together - he may even be referring to an actual weekend in Brighton - but either way, the tone of this passage is anything but Platonic!
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4 comments:
Doesn't the "it" in "as it did in Victoria" refer back to "the idea of kissing her"?
I suppose it depends on what one includes under 'physical', but note also page 82, "your [...] inscribed hands", and compare page 106 with respect to one of "his young women students" some years later: "Sometimes he would write on her hand or arm with the tip of a metal paper knife or darning needle, or he would slightly prick or make circular movements or patterns".
For what it is worth, I have never encountered any evidence suggesting that "he may even be referring to an actual weekend in Brighton"!
Rereading Mrs. Hadfield's quotation from the letter as you quote it, I find myself wondering if I am being too unsuspicious in always assuming that it merely refers to facts... But perhaps this is mostly symptomatic of wishing for more context - even more than Gavin Ashenden has given - which Grevel Lindop's new biography may soon supply!
David Llewellyn Dodds
28 April 2014
@DLD - My main point was the kissing - which certainly 'crossed a line' into non-Platonic for CW. Also, the tone by which CW addresses PJ is 'rougish' in a way that implies the relationship had a physical aspect.
CW's prolonged infatuation would be easier to understand, if indeed there had briefly been a significant physical element - which was then withdrawn.
It was very astute of you to deduce all of this before Grevel's bio, which of course now confirms this hypothesis in spades. I've also read the "Century of Poems to Celia" and the "Dianeme" poems, and they also back you up.
@Sorina - I think we nowadays often underestimate the powerful emotional significance of what seem to recent generations very "mild" physical contact. We are rather desensitized.
There is often also a sex difference thing at work, with men more focused on the physical and women the emotional - and possibilities of different reactions to each from the two perspectives. Thus Charles is very focused on the physical things of Phyllis, her hands and arms; while with Phyllis was impressed by Charles's mind, and his high literary status.
And Charles would probably have said to Michel that his infidelity was trivial, just a bit of holding hands and kissing, just maybe one "dirty weekend" in Brighton...
But to Michal, the real infidelity was probably the years of secret obsession with Phyllis - the transfer of Charles's love from herself, and the pretence to still be loving Michal. The time and energy behind the innumerable poems from C to P, his many gifts to Phyllis (which was money the Williams family could ill afford)...
Also that "everybody" knew about Charles and Phyllis, and was sniggering behind Michal's back. She was, it must have seemed, "the only one" who did not know.
To Michal, the physical infidelity - while real and hurtful - was perhaps the least of Charles's offences!
(I am saying nothing here of the difficulties of Michal as a person - she seems to have been a very difficult character indeed! But I am trying to guess and infer how things seemed to her.)
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