John Buchan and Charles Williams: A Guest Post by G. Connor Salter

John Buchan

John Buchan, best known for his spy thriller The Thirty-Nine Steps, rarely gets mentioned alongside Charles Williams. Besides Glen Cavaliero comparing the “time-fantasy” novel The Greater Trumps to Buchan’s rare science fiction novel A Gap in the Curtain in Charles Williams: Poet of Theology, few writers have seen similarities between their work. It’s not even clear that Williams read Buchan. He reviewed many thrillers in the 1930s (collected by Jared Lobdell in The Detective Fiction Reviews of Charles Williams, 1930-1935), including books by Buchan’s contemporaries like Sax Rohmer and M.P. Shiel, but Buchan never appears in these reviews.

However, the assumption that William didn’t know Buchan may be more due to timing and underexplored archives. Our knowledge of Williams’ reading comes from his letters (many still unpublished) and his published book reviews (of detective stories and thrillers). Buchan’s 1930s output was mostly military history, biographies, historical fiction, and atypical experiments like The Gap in the Curtain or his children’s book The Magic Walking Stick. He remained one of Edwardian England’s best-known thriller writers, but little he wrote would have appeared in the weekly review piles mailed to Williams.

If Williams did read Buchan, it would explain something that several Inklings researchers have mentioned in oral or written discussions: the surprising similarities between Buchan’s 1910 adventure novel Prester John and Williams’ first finished novel, Shadows of Ecstasy. As Mark Valentine has discussed in a Wormwoodiana post, this novel shows clear influence from Rohmer, so it is not a stretch to consider other Victorian-Edwardian pulp influences.

Buchan’s novel opens with young Scot David Crawfurd and his friends walking along the coast near their village and seeing something strange. A visiting African clergyman, John Laputa, appears to be performing a dark magic ritual in the moonlight. Years later in South Africa, Crawfurd discovers Laputa plotting an African revolt. Laputa recruits followers by wearing a ruby necklace called “the Great Snake” associated with Prester John, the legendary Christian king connected to the Magi and sometimes to grail legend.

The basic plot may not sound much like Shadows of Ecstasy, which features sorcerer Nigel Considine using African rebels and anti-Semitic mobs to create chaos until the British Empire gives him the African continent. Writers like Valentine and Aren Roukema have compared Considine to Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu: a mysterious man whose London activities fit within a larger conspiracy threatening British superiority. But if the London setting and supervillain overtones fit Rohmer’s formula, several plot elements more strongly resemble Prester John than anything in the Fu Manchu stories.

The most obvious connection is the name Prester John. Stephen Hayes’ blog post on Prester John highlights how Williams uses this figure in his second novel War in Heaven as a mystical grail guardian. Without using Prester John as a character in Shadows of Ecstasy, Williams does use overtones that Buchan generates via the name. In Prester John, the way Laputa takes on Prester Jonh’s mantle evokes Christ as king, setting him up as Africa’s messiah, but he is also a follower of Satan. Williams uses Christ imagery to suggest Considine is a messiah with his plans to free Africa from Britain but Sørina Higgins notes on The Oddest Inkling that Considine is an inverted Christ. Williams and Buchan offer Christ associations but then complicate the Christlike overtones to make their villains appear blasphemous.

The fact Williams associates his villain with Africa also suggests a stronger influence from Buchan than Rohmer. As Roger Lockhurst discusses in his essay for Lord of Strange Deaths: The Fiendish World of Fu Manchu, Rohmer preferred exploring the East in his stories—often China, more often Egypt. Williams and Buchan both imagine Africa as the epicenter of mysterious things, using it to explore fears about reverse colonialism. While Buchan imagines this threat rising (rebels gathering in South Africa), Williams imagines its realization (Africans causing chaos in London, reports of their reinforcements landing on British shores).

Jewels as a totem driving the plot also figure strongly in both books. In Williams’ case, the jewels are a collection belonging to the recently deceased financier Simon Rosenberg. While these jewels are not connected to a saintly figure as the Great Snake is connected to Prester John, Williams gives them an otherworldly significance. One character, Bernard Travers, mentions Rosenberg collected the jewels for his wife to wear; she provided a center for their glory and Rosenberg saw no point to the jewels after her death.

Williams and Buchan both offer secondary villains reacting to the otherworldly jewels. Crawfurd seeks to undermine Laputa through Laputa’s Portuguese follower Henriques, who craves the Great Snake. Considine’s plan to exploit anti-Semites craving Rosenberg’s jewels gets undermined when his German follower Mottreux craves the jewels.

Shaka (spelled Tchaka or Chaka in older texts), the famous Zulu king who ruled from 1816 to 1828, is a background character in both stories. Crawfurd’s friend Mr. Wardlaw warns him a rebellion could happen any time: “Supposing a second Tchaka showed up, who could get the different tribes to work together.” Crawfurd concedes that “if there was some exiled prince of Tchaka’s blood, who came back like Prince Charlie to free his people, there might be danger…” In Shadows of Ecstasy, this possibility nearly comes true. Considine’s plan involves manipulating Inkmazi, a Zulu prince educated in the West who is “chief of the sons of Chaka.”

For Williams and Buchan, the reference to Shaka opens up a larger discussion about kingliness. Laputa is the villain but undisputably a leader. When Crawfurd sees Laputa at a ceremony, he thinks: “Then I knew that, to the confusion of all talk about equality, God has ordained some men to be kings and others to serve.” When Inkmazi gets rescued from a racist mob and hides at a London home, he tells his rescuers his full title and they are impressed, even unsettled, by the regal power he emanates. Neither Buchan nor Williams may offer a story in which Africans achieve independence. But by offering an African king-to-be who even enemies respect, they cut against some racist expectations and suggest that Edwardian readers should not be shocked that a black man could be a great ruler.

Nigel Considine may be inspired by Rohmer’s tales about Scotland Yard uncovering sinister conspiracies in London alleys. But the African theme in Shadows of Ecstasy, particularly the complex image of Africa as a land treated as exotic yet to be respected, reads more like something Willaims would have gotten from Buchan than anything in Rohmer.

As of this writing, more work must be done exploring Williams’ archives to see how well he knew Buchan’s work. Even if references to Prester John cannot be found, the work matters for dispelling an accidental misconception about Williams and other Inklings. Many scholars discuss Williams and his friends being influenced by canonized classic authors—writers like Chaucer, Dante, and Milton—or newly canonized Victorian fantasists such as George MacDonald. These discussions are important but may give the impression the Inklings never read popular literature from their period (Holly Ordway addresses this problem in Tolkien’s Modern Reading). Exploring how familiar the Inklings were with authors like Buchan, less reputable figures who informed Victorian-Edwardian culture in inescapable ways, shows the Inklings were well-read but not snobs.

(Much thanks to Eric E. Rauscher whose comment about Shadows of Ecstasy being similar to Prester John prompted this discussion)

 G. Connor Salter