The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Vol. 1 by Dorothy L. Sayers
The fury of the iconoclasts is to be expected. What is depressing is the attitude of the pious who dislike having the actuality of the Gospel forced upon their notice. “Kings in Judaea” is “so unlike the beautiful, simple Gospel” – so it is; because they have managed to forget the whole background of the Gospels. Herod is a child’s ogre, Rome is a decorative frieze, the rough inn is an arbour in rustic trellis-work, the common people of Galilee are curates with Oxford accents, and the brutal Roman gallows a pattern stamped in gilt on the cover of a prayer-book. “The play”, said one correspondent angrily, “seemed to bring God down to earth” – so, one would think, did Christmas – “instead of raising man to God”; and I suspect that this is the old Arian serpent raising its head to say again that salvation is of man – Gloria in excelsis homini, for man is the master of his fate and captain of his soul (always provided he speaks like a gentleman and doesn’t use slang or go to the theatre).
Well, set up the labarum3 in Langham Place,4 and in hoc signo vince!5
Yours ever,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Lukewarm, after the church of the Laodiceans. (Revelation, chapter 3, verses 14–16.)
2 Churchill, “Their finest hour”.
3 The Roman imperial standard with Christian symbols added.
4 Where Broadcasting House is situated.
5 Latin: in this sign conquer. The words shown in a vision to the Emperor Constantine before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, A.D. 312, are usually quoted as “in hoc signo vinces”, in this sign thou wilt conquer.
On 8 January Dr Welch wrote to report that at a meeting chaired by the Bishop of Winchester, Dr Cyril Garbett, only a few minor objections were raised to some of the wording of the second and third plays. And he said: “We stand where you and I have always wanted to stand.”
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO C. ARMSTRONG GIBBS1
12 January 1942
Dear Mr. Armstrong Gibbs,
Thank you so much for your delightful letter. I am very glad indeed that you enjoyed The Mind of the Maker and it is particularly good to know that your experience as a musician bears out what I have tried to say about the mind of artists in general. It is always tempting to generalise from one’s own personal experience, and when one has done it, one is overtaken by qualms lest a painter, or a composer, should rise up and say that may be how the writer works, but that he does the thing quite differently.
It is most interesting that you have had the same sensation of things being “right” in a particular place, and have only afterwards discovered why. Another helpful and kind correspondent unearthed for me a letter of Mozart’s, in which he said that while writing a composition he was able to “survey it at a glance, like a beautiful picture, … and I do not hear it in my imagination successively, as it must afterwards appear, but as it were all at once”. Being myself only musical, and not a musician, I had no idea whether a musician could have such an experience, and was enchanted to discover that he actually could and sometimes did.
I am most grateful to you for having written, and I hope that your musical work in Westmorland will prosper, in spite of war difficulties, which must be very great.
With renewed thanks,
Yours very sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Armstrong Gibbs (1889–1960), composer, student of Vaughan Williams and Sir Adrian Boult at the Royal College of Music.
On 13 January Eric Fenn wrote:
I’m glad we seem to be getting to a thinning of the trees, even if we are not yet out of the wood. But it’s been a trying time for you – probably more than for me, I imagine. … When you move the settled stone of religious complacency such very odd creatures run out, don’t they?. … It must feel as if you’d had a severe illness. …
Val Gielgud also wrote an encouraging letter, to which D. L. S. replied:
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO VAL GIELGUD
13 January 1942
Dear Val …
Bless you and thank you – yes. The first round is won, and let’s hope they now keep quiet till next time.1 Oh, gosh! I should like some peace about this show! How right Christ was about bringing not peace but a sword. One has only to mention His name and everybody is up in arms. I wish it didn’t make one so self-conscious about the job. I wish one didn’t see Mr Kensit2 lurking behind every page of the A.V.3 I wish one hadn’t to fight desperate rear-guard actions with the Press, trying to shut them up, and yet not to alienate them so hopelessly that they would start a fresh campaign of hate against the next play. When we go to heaven all I ask is that we shall be given some interesting job and allowed to get on with it. No management; no box-office; no dramatic critics; and an audience of cheerful angels who don’t mind laughing. …
I do think Dr Welch has fought a courageous and skilful fight. And the unanimity of the Committee was really rather a triumph. …
I’ve had lots of praise for the performance of “Kings in Judaea”, and reports of two sets of children of tender age who thoroughly enjoyed it – especially Baby Jesus’ bib! I saw the Pilgrim Players act this scene on a small stage and in modern dress. It was quite alarmingly intimate and real. However, an old lady next to me wept buckets all through it, so it must be more or less all right. …
I mustn’t forget to congratulate you on your O.B.E. Just fancy your being decorated by His Majesty, when you are living in the Temple of Blasphemy4, and working hand in glove with one who has (according to my kind correspondents) emulated Judas and committed the Unforgivable Sin! Anyhow, you deserve to be decorated –
“Take him and cut him out in little stars”5
and may you twinkle for ever.
Yours,
[D.L.S.]
1 D. L. S. received abusive telephone calls, insulting letters, many of them anonymous, and was the subject of disparaging comment in the press, all before even one of the plays had been broadcast.
2 The Secretary of the Protestant Truth Society.
3 The Authorized Version of the Bible.
4 Cf. Val Gielgud: “Every possible attempt was made by prejudice, by sensational paragraphs in the newspapers, even by advertisement, to damn the project in the eyes of the public. A headline went so far as to proclaim Broadcasting House ‘A Temple of Blasphemy’ ”, Years of the Locust, Nicholson and Watson, 1947, p. 110.
5 Romeo and Juliet, Act III, scene 2, line 22.
[24 Newland Street
Wtham
Essex]
DR. JOHN SHIRLEY1
Trenarven House
St. Austell
Cornwall
16 January 1942
Dear Dr. Shirley,
I am so sorry but I find that what with one thing and another I simply cannot find time for a holiday in Cornwall this term. I should have greatly liked to come and see you all, but I have already a great many engagements, and now that it seems as though our radio plays on the life of Christ were really going through, I shall be kept hard at work with writing and rehearsing them. It is a great disappointment, but there it is, and I fear I shall be tied by the leg to London for some months to come.
I don’t know whether you have followed all the details of our fight with the Lord’s Day Observance Society, and the Protestant Truth Society! It was the kind of skirmish you would have enjoyed. All the same, we are rather horrified by the amount of fetish worship which it has revealed to us among the Christian people of this country. I never before really believed in the apocryphal gentleman who said, “never mind the ‘ebrew and the Greek, give me the sacred English original” – but he exists in enormous numbers. The helpful people who have arisen to point out that the Greek of the Gospels is extremely colloquial will probably have administered a still further shock to the unfortunate gentleman’s constitution. Rather fortunately, the protesters were so eager to attack (a) the B.B.C., (b) the Church of Rome, (c) the st
With again the deepest regrets, and kind remembrances to you all,
Yours very sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Canon Shirley, Headmaster of King’s School, Canterbury. The school had been evacuated to Cornwall. (Cf. letter to him, 6 July 1937.)
Witham
TO MARJORIE BARBER1
27 January 1942
Dearest Bar,
Thank you so much for your letter, my dear – I hoped you might find time to send a report2 – not only because you know what one’s driving at and can tell about the children, but also because you’re one of the few people who remember that the p– b–3 actors and producer have anything to do with the show. And bless me! how I missed you when I got back from Town, very much exhausted, on Sunday night! Mac was very sweet, and said he had liked it, and that we had “got a good Christ”;4 but what I wanted was the ever-open sympathetic car into which I could pour remorseless details, as to one who had suffered play-production!
We had three days for the four rehearsals; I suppose waiting for an invasion would be really more nerve-racking, but this was quite a good preparation. The first read-through was all right – only enlivened by Christ being twenty minutes late, owing to another engagement. This (as the streets were slippery) gave us just nice time to wonder what would happen if he broke his leg, after all the fuss and kerfluffle about him. The actors seemed pleased with their stuff. It was evident that we’d have to do some pretty fierce cutting – however, I’d more or less allowed for that. The second day we rehearsed in a ghastly great studio miles away in Maida Vale – all warming up nicely; but this, of course, was the rehearsal in which Val took the show to pieces, and told John Baptist not to be too grandiloquent and Christ not to be too ecclesiastical. One knows what happens next. Unfortunately, other people didn’t: so next day along comes Dr. Welch, as nervous as a cat, to hear J-B wavering and staggering between two different readings, and J-C gambolling through his part at a canter, and sounding exactly like everybody else, while the Crowd reacted by being as slow and fumbling as possible. So poor Dr. W. cheered us up with a few of those remarks which begin, “I’m rather disappointed . …” I assured him that nothing else was to be looked-for at the moment, that all would yet be well, but he found it hard to believe. However, he gave Val and me a superb lunch at the Dorchester, and we went to it again – making a final (in Val’s words) “murderous” cut, which removed bodily the whole story of the birth of John-Baptist, and so cut out the last faint pretence that we were telling Bible-stories in the Children’s Hour! (Poor Derek McCulloch! Thank Heaven, he wasn’t there, Val having got rid of him with a firm hand.) Naturally, things now went more smoothly, J-B and J-C having wobbled back to stability, and Dr. W. said he felt “much better”. He said, “The morning rehearsal did worry me.” “Oh,” said I, “I knew it would be like that.” “Did you?” said he, with a naive veneration for Grandma’s omniscience. “Yes”, said I, “I know exactly what actors are like at 10.30 a.m., after all their readings have been altered.” – So he took heart, and entered keenly into a conspiracy with “Effects” to provide God with an extra allowance of thunder. After which we had tea; everybody fighting against a vague sense that Bobby Speaight was about to undergo a major operation.5 Dr. Welch would insist on inquiring of him tenderly whether he felt nervous – a suggestion which I thought inadvisable at that late hour – Bobby put a bold face on it, and said he was firmly looking at it as a job of professional work and trying not to think of anything else. At 5.10 we all patted him on the back and took leave of him, with an inward impression that we might never see him again. The actual performance was – rather surprisingly and unusually – better than any of the rehearsals. I must say the cast behaved quite nobly; not one of them lost his head at any point. We were running fearfully close to time, especially as we had urged Bobby to let himself rip in the Temptation Scene and not let himself feel hurried; and by a miracle the three old funnies playing the Jews in the last little scene, stimulated by knowing that we had dropped forty seconds, and keeping their eyes on the clock, suddenly played their bit with galvanic briskness, and we ran out comfortably thirty seconds ahead of the time-pips. Poor Val was sweating like a pig. …
Robert Speaight, later to play Christ
Dorothy L. Sayers, Robert Speaight and Val Gielgud rehearsing
The Man Born to be King
The newspapers apparently decided that the thing didn’t offer the vulgar sensations they had hoped for, since none of them seem to have said much about it, except The Star, which couldn’t help itself, having delivered a slashing attack on the whole thing the previous Saturday. As you will see from the enclosed, the critic is a little hampered by the fact that he can’t distinguish John Evangelist from John Baptist – and he also raises doubts in my mind whether in fact he knows much about the Gospels, since he shows no surprise at finding Judas in the company of John Baptist, or any of the other additions to the narrative. …
Well, bless you, my dear! and thank you again and again –
Yours ever,
D. L. S. …
1 South Hampstead High School, where Marjorie Barber taught English, had been evacuated to Berkhamsted, Herts.
2 On the broadcast of the second play, “The King’s Herald”, on 25 January 1942.
3 poor bloody
4 The actor Robert Speaight (1904–1976).
5 i.e. the experience of acting the part of Christ, a role no actor had performed in England since the time of Oliver Cromwell.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO VAL GIELGUD
8 February 1942
Dear Val,
This is just to say that, fluffs or no fluffs, my husband thought this the best show of the three,1 and says he astonished himself by ending up very much moved – giving, indeed, a touching impersonation of the “gruff warrior with tears in his eyes”, familiar to sentimental fiction! – a thing, according to him, which hasn’t happened to him for years. He says that anything which moved him would move anybody! – Personally, I think gruff warriors tend to overestimate their own insensibility; still, there’s no doubt about it, the thing did get across to him, especially the ending.
Play Number Six is being typed, and you shall have it with the usual notes, etc. in the course of the next few days. After that, we shall find ourselves with:
7. Events centring about Raising of Lazarus
8. “ “ “ Entry into Jerusalem
9. Last Supper and Gethsemane
10. Trial (with crowing cock for Peter, and suicide of Judas)
11. Crucifixion
12. Resurrection…
Oh, and by the way, I suppose we shall have to have some voices of dear little babes and sucklings to cry “Hosanna!” in Play Eight.
I’m bothered about Peter’s cockcrow. One cock pooping off by itself may sound too “arranged” and slightly comic. Would it be possible to have a proper “cockcrow”, starting with one cock in the far distance, and taken up and answered by adjacent poultry? That’s the way it usually happens in actual fact. Other little troubles to come from Effects are the earthquake at the Crucifixion and Judas’s thirty pieces of silver on the Temple floor, and the nasty crowd saying A-r-r-h! a-r-r-h! a-r-r-h! and, if possible, the breaking of the unleavened bread at the Passover!! It would be a thing like a Jewish motze – or a thin Captain biscuit – And it would be nice if we could hear Pilate washing his hands, provided we can distinguish it from a storm at sea!
Love and blessings,
[D. L. S.]
My old Cook thought it was lovely, and the voice
1 The third play, “A Certain Nobleman”, broadcast on 8 February 1942.
24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex
TO MURIEL ST. CLARE BYRNE
The Old Rectory
Fen Ditton,
Cambridge1
11 February 1942
Dear Muriel…
I saw Rieu2 on Friday, and found him in the act of concocting the enclosed letter, which, having dealt with, I now pass on to you. I do wish that when these elderly gents get excited about religion it did not take them in these incalculable ways!3 I told him that whereas there might be no logical objection to what he proposes, and perhaps even no sound theological objection, I should as editor4 oppose the starting of this particular hare, since it would arouse all the reviewers rushing away down a side-track. I also said that while there was, in fact, no insuperable difficulty to prevent women from preaching in Church (I had just arrived myself from delivering a sermon in St. Martin-in-the-Fields)5 the priesthood of women was in some respects open to the same objection which I personally feel for seeing Elisabeth Bergner play King David.6 He said he was deeply disappointed by my attitude. …
With love,
Yours ever,
Dorothy
1 Bedford College, London University, at which Muriel St Clare Byrne was teaching, had been evacuated to Cambridge.
2 Dr E. V. Rieu, Literary and Academic Adviser to Methuen, later Editor of Penguin Classics.