The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Vol. 1 by Dorothy L. Sayers
Well, all that is my artistic funeral; I only mention it as an example of the kind of difficulty one comes up against. …
1 Latin: the corruption of the best, which is the worst corruption.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO THE BISHOP OF CHICHESTER1
27 July 1940
My dear Lord Bishop,
Look! Here are the things I have contracted to do during the next three months or so:
Finish book on the Creative Mind (over-due);
Write and deliver two broadcasts on Christianity;
Ditto one broadcast on keeping up morale;
Choose, copy, and arrange vast religious Anthology (about one-third done);2
Write twelve broadcast plays on Life of Christ (not begun);
Write paper for Archbishop of York’s Conference (ditto.);
(?) Write broadcast detective drama (may not be wanted, but has not been cancelled);
Two articles for Guardian (promised, but not yet tackled);
Write “Anti-Rumour” pamphlet for M.O.I.3 (held up by violent quarrel with Ministry, but may be wanted);
Write and deliver talk at Chatham House on August 20th.4
I don’t really think I can honestly take on anything more; especially as I have now no secretary. I had one, but she has now left the district, her husband having been lost on the Scotstoun.5 (This accounts for my messy typing, for which I apologise.)
I would have liked to come to Brighton, but I think you will understand when I say that I simply cannot manage it.
With regrets,
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 The Rt Rev. George Bell (1883–1958), who as Dean of Canterbury (1924–1929) had encouraged the re-introduction of drama into the Cathedral. He was Bishop of Chichester from 1929 to 1958.
2 This work has not been traced.
3 Ministry of Information.
4 Not known.
5 The Scotstoun, 7,046 tons, was a liner built in 1925, converted in 1939 as a Royal Navy armed merchant cruiser. She was sunk in the North West approaches north of Ireland on 13 June 1940 by a torpedo from U25. (See British Vessels Lost at Sea 1939–1945, 2nd edition, 1983.)
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO THE REV. ERIC FENN
28 August 1940
Dear Mr. Fenn,
Many thanks for your letter. I am glad you thought the second talk came over all right. I have not yet seen the notice in the Listener,1 but I am glad to find that I succeeded in satisfying the Church Times; I was afraid I might get trounced for making the basis of the Sacramental position too broad, but it is a job to address talks like these to all the various Christian sects, without offending any of them.
I have offended some people, of course, but as a number of these appear to be candidates for the loony bin, I am not too much distressed. A number of people have written complaining that the talks were not published in the Listener and asking whether they are to appear in pamphlet form. I believe the Listener has the option on first publication, but if they are not going to take this up, I will turn the matter over to my agents and get them to approach the publishers.
I am afraid you have been seeing and hearing a good deal lately of Mr. Hitler’s friends. They have looked us up once or twice lately, and the other day staged a very noisy dog-fight over our back garden. My husband was much affronted because it all took place above the clouds, where he could not see it. Personally, I don’t want to see it and retired to the cellar with my knitting.
With best wishes,
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 15 August 1940. Under “The Spoken Word”, p. 248, W. E. Williams wrote: “In the way of accomplished exposition I have seldom heard anything more admirable than Dorothy L. Sayers on the essentials of Christian belief (August 11). She tackled a most recalcitrant theological topic without making any concessions to mere piety. In one of his moods of elephantine obstinacy Dr Johnson once ridiculed the notion of a woman in the pulpit. I’d back Dorothy Sayers to put the case for Christianity better than many of our wireless padres; and if she will promise to abate a wayward high note in her voice I will gladly listen to her for a month of Sundays.”. See letter to Eric Fenn, 11 June 1940, note. See also letter to Cardinal Heenan, 31 August 1940.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO FATHER PATRICK MCLAUGHLIN1
28 August 1940
Dear Father McLaughlin,
Forgive my delay in answering your letter, I have been kept rather busy with preparing talks and speeches and also in struggling with a series of broadcast plays on the Life of Christ for children, which has got very much behind hand.
I should like to give a broadcast talk for you if possible, though I hate broadcasting and am always dried up by the atmosphere of Langham Place. My correspondents, by the way, seem to be getting quite annoyed (some of them), by the way the Church “ropes in”, as they express it, the outsiders to talk about religion, the implication being that the Church consists only of the Clergy, and that the outsiders have no business to lift their voices.
I don’t know whether the subject of Preparation for Death is one I should choose myself – I have a strong objection to dying – possibly you may feel that this is an excellent reason why I should talk about it, but I can’t honestly pretend that I am of the stuff of which martyrs are made. I am, however, quite prepared to uphold the Chestertonian view about the time when
death and hate and hell declare
that men have found a thing to love2
and if you really want me to do it, I will do my best with it.
I am extremely glad to see that somebody is dealing with the heresy of economic man. I am always very much distressed by the total neglect by Socialists, as well as by Capitalists, of the question of the value of work done, as apart from the price paid for the work. There is certainly a screw loose somewhere in the economic aspect of society. We seem to have got as far as considering the importance of Man, but nobody seems to feel that they have any sort of duty towards Matter.
May I take this opportunity of saying how very highly I think of the Signposts series.3 They all seem to me excellent, with the possible exception of Bentley’s Resurrection of the Bible,4 which seems to be unnecessarily fundamentalist. It has puzzled and bothered a good many people and is likely perhaps to lead us into further difficulties with the opponents of Jonah and the Whale.
I agree with you about the Writers’ Guild.5 I certainly think it would be a good thing to have more meetings, but like you I feel that we don’t get on with the job as well as we might. I feel we need to do something rather more definitely. Perhaps some day when you and I are both in Town, we might meet and think up a few suggestions for getting the Guild to take a more active line. There is a little obscurity about our ends; if these are only to pray and eat lunch, all is well, but if we are also supposed to “bear witness” in our writings, then we ought to try and organize our efforts a little.
Perhaps you would send me a line telling me when you are likely to be available in London.
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Father Patrick McLaughlin (1909–1988), Vicar of St Thomas’ Church, Regent Street, with whom D. L. S. collaborated on the work of St Anne’s House, Soho, a centre of discussion between Christians and agnostics.
2 The Napoleon of Notting Hill, from the dedicatory poem to Hilaire Belloc, stanza 4.
3 “Signposts” was the name of a series of books on Anglo-Catholic theory and doctrine, price one shilling.
4 Geoffrey Bryan Bentley. His book was published in 1940.
5 The Guild of Catholic Writers.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK1
York
30 August 1940
Your Grace,
Thank you very much for your letter and your suggestion that I should write a play for the Youth Council. Although as a rule I am ready to snatch at any opportunity of writing plays, I am in rather a difficulty about the next three months.
I have madly undertaken, in addition to my other work, to write a series of twelve short broadcast plays on the life of Christ for the Children’s Hour. I am only just tackling the first of these in which Herod has to explain, in words of one syllable, the extremely complicated situation in Judaea and to rage characteristically in language suitable for the nursery! If this effort pleases the authorities I shall then have to write the eleven other plays, in which case I don’t think I could honestly undertake to do anything about Wilfred or Alcuin this side of Christmas, even if I knew anything about Wilfred or Alcuin, which I can’t say I do. Of course, if the religious powers at the B.B.C. don’t like Herod, then I shall be released from the undertaking, but I cannot count on their disapproval, so I am afraid I shall have to say no, much as I should have otherwise enjoyed the task if it had come at a more convenient season.
I hope Herod will not get mixed up with the appalling questions with which I am faced at the conference in November!2 In spite of Mr. Kirk’s pleading for practical suggestions, I don’t know that I can offer much of a “solution”. Everybody wants “solutions” to world problems, as though they were some kind of detective story and by some simple trick you can discover [one] and there you are. However, I will do my best about it.
I am, your Grace,
Yours very sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Dr William Temple (1881–1944), Archbishop of York from 1929 to 1942, Archbishop of Canterbury from 1942 to 1944; author of Readings in St John’s Gospel (1939) and Christianity and Social Order (1942).
2 The Conference called by Archbishop Temple, deferred until January 1941 and held at Malvern to be out of the way of air-raids.
D. L. S. asked Dr. James Welch if it would be posssible for Val Gielgud to produce her plays on the life of Christ; she had enjoyed working with him on the broadcast of her Nativity play He That Should Come. Dr Welch replied that it would not be possible for Gielgud to produce the plays as they would be broadcast from Bristol by the Children’s Hour Department. He thought it would be appropriate to invite Derek McCulloch (known to listeners as “Uncle Mac”) to produce the plays as Head of that Department, “if after meeting him, you can confidently trust the production to him”. He asked if she would go to Bristol to meet him.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO REV. DR JAMES WELCH
30 August 1940
Dear Dr. Welch,
Thank you so much for your letter. I am sorry about Val Gielgud, because, as you know, he and I understand each other’s way of working. However, if it can’t be I suppose it can’t be.
To be quite plain with you I would really rather not come down to Bristol for discussions. Quite apart from the time and energy wasted on the long journey, it is my experience that to talk over any work which one is doing has the curious effect of destroying one’s interest in the work itself. I will finish the first play, after which if you pass it from the religious and general point of view, as regards the subject matter, the only person I shall really want to see is the producer. If Mr. McCulloch can’t get up to Town then I shall have to come and see him, but I must leave all this until the first play is done. I am taking it that I may allow myself on the average from eight to a dozen actors, plus crowd effects if required, with small musical effects, such as a sung hymn, or a little playing on the harp or lute, if it seems necessary. If later on I can manage to get down for rehearsals I shall try to do so, because there I may be able to make myself useful. It is only discussion beforehand that is apt to get in the way of the job.
I am getting on with the Magi and struggling at present with the difficult job of sketching in briefly, and in language which the children understand, the political situation in Judaea. This is very important, because in some ways Judaea was so much like Hitler’s idea of a territory protected by the Reich, but the way in which the Christmas story is usually presented to school children, and indeed to grown-ups too, usually leaves out all the historical background. I never remember being at all clear about the position of Herod with regard to Rome, or what Augustus Caesar had to do with it, or why he was taxing people, or why Herod should have been in such a rage at hearing of the birth of a Messiah. When you come to think of it, the Magi must have thought that the heir whom they were sent to announce would be a Prince of Herod’s house, or why did they go to Jerusalem and ask Herod to produce him? I have got the poor men hastening in, full of enthusiasm and expecting to be very well received with their gifts and what-not, and much taken aback by the consternation into which the Palace is thrown. If I can once get this idea about the earthly kingship properly fixed at the beginning of the series, then the later working out will be very much easier.
I am sure you will understand my reasons for not wishing to come to Bristol at the moment, and not consider me in any way ungracious.
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO THE REV. J. C. HEENAN1
31 August 1940
Dear Dr. Heenan…
I enclose the scripts of the two broadcast talks. The one on Sacraments was difficult to do, because it had to be made reasonably acceptable to all sorts, from Catholics to Quakers. I expected to be roared at by the “spikes”2 for making the sacramental basis of life too broad; but I got away with it in the Church Times, so I suppose it is all right. Oddly enough, no teetotallers have yet written to protest about the sacramental drinking of healths – they must have accepted the rubric about the permissive use of lemonade and tea! Also, to my surprise, the passage about praying with candles provoked no more violent opposition than the one pamphlet abusing “Infallible Popes” (the printing of which was undoubtedly a “sacrilegious abuse of matter” within the meaning of my last paragraphs).
I know, of course, that the foolish public would always rather hear about religion from a detective novelist than from an ex officio expert; I try to do as little as possible, for fear of being classed as a “religious writer”; but it’s difficult to refuse. I think one of the troubles is that so few parsons are really trained in the use of words. They use the standard technical phrases without quite realising how they sound to the ordinary reader or listener. The result is that when the trained writer restates an old dogma in a new form of words, the reader mistakes it for a bright new idea of the writer’s own. I spend half my time and a lot of stamps telling people that I have not been giving them fancy doctrine of my own, but only the same old doctrine that they have heard and ignored a thousand times. Typical of this is the woman who writes to say: “I can’t agree with you that Christ is the same person as God the Creator”. One can only say: “It isn’t a question of agreeing with me – I have expressed no opinion. That is the opinion of the official Church, which you will find plainly stated in the Nicene Creed, whether or not you and I agree with it.” I do wish, by the way, that the word hypostasis3 had been translated by anything but persona, or that the word person had not acquired such a “personal” meaning in the vulgar tongue. It makes so many explanations necessary and lays so many traps for one’s feet. But that is now past praying for. But who was the Anglican bloke who carried on that long correspondence with Haldane4 about religion, during which they argued for many weeks about transubstantiation, or dividing the Substance, or some such subject, without any effort on the Christian’s part to inform Haldane that “substance” in theology had no connection with material structure, or to ask him whether, by “the substance of a document” he really meant the ink and paper that composed it?
Forgive my rambling on so long. It is very kind of you to tell me how many people liked the talks. Mo
With many thanks,
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
P.S. Got it! the “Anglican bloke” was Arnold Lunn.5 He was in process of conveying himself over to Rome during the controversy – perhaps they will have taught him there a little polemical tactics.
1 Cardinal Heenan (1905–1975).
2 Slang, for people who are extreme in Anglo-Catholic belief and practice.