The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Vol. 1 by Dorothy L. Sayers
My Lord, the people have forgotten so much. The thing has become to them like a tale that is told. They cannot believe it ever happened. They look at the atrocities of wicked men today, and wonder that God does not interfere. They forget that those same atrocities were once perpetrated upon God. Priests and elders and Roman dictators no longer seem to them to be “wicked men”, as we understand wickedness, for the old familiar obsolete phrases have been sterilized by pious associations and hurt nobody any more. In trying to avoid the hurt, we draw a veil between man and his own sin, and in trying to avoid irreverence we protect the wicked from the world’s judgment. But how can it honour God to make His enemies seem less cruel, less callous, less evil than they were?
The people are apathetic, because the story has become unreal, and the priests are in despair how to bring its reality home to them. If a blunt phrase or an ugly word can show the listener exactly what it was that man did to God, ought we to mind if he recoils in horror? And if we are blamed, shall we be the first or the greatest to be blamed for startling people with the truth?
I am, my Lord,
Yours sincerely,
Dorothy L. Sayers
I find that I have neglected to congratulate your Lordship upon your call to the See of York. And – which is the more discourteous – that I have also neglected to thank you for the support you have given to these plays of mine. Please accept the congratulations and the thanks, together with my apology.
1 The Rt Rev. Dr Cyril Garbett.
Having won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, John Anthony decided to put in some war service before going up. Accordingly he signed on with the Technical Branch of the Royal Air Force, where he remained for three years.
As from 24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex
TO HER SON
28 March 1942
Dear John,
Here’s your cheque – with love – I think the only snag that could possibly occur about banking it is that sometimes banks aren’t keen to open an account with so small a sum. But this will probably be quite all right if you can show that you are in employment and known to somebody – e.g. the head-bloke at the works or what not – somebody local, I mean. I think so – I remember starting my own account in Town with £100, on the strength of working at S. H. Benson’s, who also bank at Lloyds.
I think you’re quite right to have got more comfortable rooms. And I shouldn’t consider a certain sensitiveness about clean tables to be a sign of decadence! There is no particular merit in dirt and disorder. I rather thought you would find the working population interesting at close quarters, but if the quarters are too close, too long at a time, the situation is apt to be trying. A different background and a different sense of humour do make a difference. The workers of this country are damned good stuff, take them all in all, though it is an error to suppose that, merely by being a worker, a man becomes endowed with infallible virtue and wisdom. That’s not the case, though a great many Socialist Utopias are built on that curious assumption. The intelligent humanist is liable to make a major divinity of the proletariat – but they are merely human beings, with their own virtues and vices like other people. And, having discovered for yourself the deficiencies of a too-intellectual education, you will probably now discover those of a too exclusively technical education – one of which is to place the victim at the mercy of words and generalizations.
All is well at home, except for the difficulty of getting any sort of servants. We are in the middle of an upheaval of this kind – coinciding, of course, with the moment when I have to go and interview the Bishop of Winchester about “realism” in Biblical plays! But no doubt things will sort themselves out eventually.
Love and best wishes,
D. L. S.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO MISS STORM JAMESON1
4 May 1942
Dear Miss Storm Jameson,
I have no biography! I was born, educated, and married as per Who’s Who, and shall presumably die some day and depart from that volume into Who Was Who!
I am all agin the notion that the public should neglect one’s work, such as it is, for one’s incidental circumstances, such as they are. A fortiori, of course, such as they are not – I have just read in an American paper that “Mrs. Sayres-Fleming … plays poor contract bridge, is not quick at puzzles, even the crossword variety, and abhors solitaire.” Every word of this is incorrect, and I can’t think where they got it from. My name is not spelt like that, and we don’t hyphen our maiden and married names in this country, I have never played contract bridge, even poorly, but I am fond of puzzles, a dab at crosswords, and a confirmed player of what right-minded people call “patience”. Home Chat once announced that I was devoted to gardening; I cannot imagine a greater lie. If I had done anything really spectacular, such as being divorced ten times, or being nearly eaten by cannibals, or having been the first detective novelist to swim the Channel, I should doubtless be charmed to see these exploits figure in a biographical note; but from the humdrum triviality of my career I fear I cannot spin out any exciting story.
I do hope you are now really rested and are feeling better, and that your husband2 also has recovered.
Kind regards,
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 (Margaret) Storm Jameson (1891–1986), novelist and author of poetry, essays, criticism and biography.
2 The historian Guy Chapman.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO DR JAMES WELCH
6 May 1942
Dear Dr. Welch,
I think you will be pleased and amused by the enclosed letter from my friend, Miss Barber, whom you met in the Studio two plays ago. She is English mistress in an evacuated school, and House-mistress of a small bunch of children in Berkhamsted. Most of her little bunch are Jewesses, but she has two or three small Gentiles, whom she faithfully collects on Sundays to listen to the shows.
… I loved it,1 and so did the children who had duly returned from their tennis. We were alone this time and sat quietly round the wireless – and it moved them to the deepest and most searching questions as to the necessity of the Cross and the origin of evil and what not. My young Edith – whom the others call our liquorice Allsorts, because she is a blend of Greek-Turk and Hungarian Jew, born in Rotterdam and brought up in Vienna is nominally a Christian and is rapidly becoming one under the influence of the plays and S. Mark with me on Thursday afternoons! She made a revealing remark, “I know He didn’t stay dead because I’ve been reading on ahead”. Which just shows the pagan world one lives in. They were particularly pleased with Mrs. Pilate and the carriage bit – which I thought awfully well done, but the high light for me was Bobby Speaight’s reading of the Lord’s Prayer more beautiful than I’ve ever heard it … I was thrilled with Judas, surnamed Pétain.2
I don’t think Miss Barber’s little mongrel is alone in not knowing the end of the story! I keep on trying to tell parsons that half the youth of this country is pagan, but they won’t believe me.
I am driving on with the eighth play3 – of course it is packed much too tight; there seems to be a fearful lot of necessary incidents to be got in during that hectic week in Jerusalem, including “suffer little children”, which under the circumstances we can scarcely omit. There is a very vulgar heckling party about the lady who married the seven brothers, which would have been still more vulgar if I didn’t have to remember the Children’s Hour and the Archbishop elect.4
Yours ever,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 The sixth play, “The Feast of Tabernacles”, broadcast on 3 May 1942.
2 Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain (1856–1951), who signed an armistice with Hitler on 25 June 1940 and thereafter became head of the Vichy Government. His name became a by-word for treachery.
3 “Royal Progress”.
4 Dr Cyri
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
MISS KATHLEEN M. PENN1
15 May 1942
Dear Miss Penn,
Thank you very much for your kind letter. I am so glad you and others were interested by the ideas I tried to throw out at Eastbourne.2 I am afraid the great thing is not so much to do something energetic instantly – though, of course, it is all the better if one can – but to get such a change of attitude in one’s own mind to some of those things, that when one is faced with a practical problem, one instinctively takes the right line of action about it. It is interesting for example, and useful, when examining schemes for post-war reconstruction, or reading books and articles, or newspaper correspondence, to see how far the writers are still clinging to false conceptions about work and money, etc – conceptions which they take so much for granted that they have never even begun to question them. I find myself that when one makes a habit of doing this, one really does begin to see how deep the trouble lies, and how important it is to tackle it from the very root. Naturally, all this kind of thing can be done extremely well in Study Groups. I often think it would be a good idea if these Groups were to take for their study, not merely the pronouncements of politicians and Archbishops, but now and again the correspondence columns of some paper like The Daily Telegraph, or even Picture Post, and examine the surprising assumptions that very often underlie the expressed opinions of the ordinary mind.
There are a good many people like your R.A.F. officer; one of their troubles is the rooted assumption that human nature ought to be steadily progressing towards a state of perfection, and that life is not worth living if this is not the case. This is not a Christian assumption – indeed the Christian assertion is quite different, namely that there is a snag in human nature, which causes it to always deviate from the normal, and that when its deviations become too great, it lands itself in an intolerable position and draws down upon itself the judgment of war, famine, or some other calamity. Consequently, the Christian life must always be a struggle, in which the grace of God so works as to redeem the evil by turning it into good; the supreme instance being, of course, the redemptive power wrought by the suffering of the supremely innocent God. However, this is theology and too complicated for discussion in a letter.
As for the subsidiary question about personal immortality, the great Russian writer, Berdyaev3, has pointed out that many of the finest minds feel no relish for the idea. I think we have made it much more difficult for people by leading them to suppose that immortality has something to do with a prolonged existence in time; whereas time is something that ceases outside this universe, and has no connection whatever with eternity, or what the Church calls “life everlasting”.
The answer to what your sergeant friend said is, I think, contained in what I said earlier, namely that if a moral revolution is not effected peaceably, then bloodshed will be the only way out of the intolerable situation, but bloodshed does not, in itself, produce a better world. The mistake we made after the last war was I think in supposing that we could abolish wars merely by disapproving of them, but nobody can abolish the consequences of sin and error, merely by cutting them in the street! As a matter of fact, for the last couple of hundred years we have been hoping to get rid of human selfishness by merely saying loudly, and repeatedly, that we don’t believe there is any such thing, which is rather as though when an incendiary bomb fell on the house, we were to shut our eyes tightly, and say that we didn’t believe in bombs. That wouldn’t prevent the house from burning down.
With all good wishes,
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Identity unknown; she lived in Eastbourne.
2 “Why Work?”, given at Eastbourne 23 April 1942. Given previously at Brighton, in March 1941, it was later published in Creed or Chaos?, Methuen, 1947, pp. 47–64.
3 Nicolas Berdyaev (1874 1948), Russian philosopher. His two best-known works are Freedom and the Spirit (tr. O. F. Clarke), 1935 and The Meaning of History (tr. G. Reavey), 1936. D. L. S. considered this “one of the world’s really great books” (See letter to L. T. Duff, 10 May 1943, list.)
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO VAL GIELGUD
[No date, but May 1942]
Dear Val,
As proof that I am doing something, and because it is urgent, I am sending you Mary Magdalen’s song to be set. You remember where it comes – the Soldiers will not let her and her party through to the foot of the Cross unless she sings to them – “Give us one of the old songs, Mary!”1
The song is thus the, so to speak, “Tipperary” of the period, and must be treated as such. That is to say, the solo portion is nostalgic and sentimental, and the chorus is nostalgic and noisy; and the whole thing has to be such as one can march to. We want a simple ballad tune, without any pedantry about Lydian modes or Oriental atmosphere.
I enclose, by way of guide, the “pattern tune” to which the song was written. (I think all lyric-writers fit their lines to some such vamped-up melody, composed of reminiscent bits and pieces.) The composer is not, of course, asked to incorporate any of this hotch-potch, but there are one or two points which it illustrates, desirable for the dramatic effect:
1. Note that the solo verse is to be sung by a trained singer – the Gracie Fields2 touch is what we want – and wants to be cooing and fluid, so as to make tough legionaries burst into tears and ask to be taken home to Dixie. The chorus is to be sung by the soldiers (with the singer, of course) and should therefore be quite straightforward in style and rough in execution. I take it that the thing will be recorded by a professional soloist – will the composer and music department please take care that the pitch of the song and the quality of the voice are such that we can readily believe that Marjorie Mars3 is the singer. (Unless she is the singer, in which case it would be best if she could record it herself.)
2. I have given the whole song with its two verses complete; but in the play, Mary breaks down at the third line of the second verse. Consequently we want one thoroughly soppy phrase at that point, rising to its highest point at the word “brooks” in the first verse (“lad” in the second), and including one of those heartbreaking, not to say vulgar, musical intervals which the crooner loves, and all chaste musicians deplore.
3. There is no reason, I think, why the soldiers should not put some simple harmonies into the chorus – we may imagine them, if we like, to have as much musical capacity as, say, the average Welshman. But, whether or no, the words “Company, halt!” must be sung in unison, on a rising melody that mimics the word of command, and with a strong break after them.
I implore you, in the bowels of the Lord, not to destroy yourself with work before the next show!
Yours ever,
[D. L. S.]
I want a tune that is both obvious and haunting – the kind that when you first hear it you go away humming and can’t get out of your head! And quite, quite, low-brow.4
1 In the 11th play, “King of Sorrows”, scene 2, sequence 3, ‘At the Foot of the Cross’.
2 (Dame) Gracie Fields (1898–1979), a popular singer.
3 Marjorie Mars (1903–1951), singer.
4 For some unknown reason, the task was entrusted to Benjamin Britten, who disregarded her wishes and wrote something totally unsuitable, to her great disgust. He also composed the Soldiers’ Song in Play 10. See her letter to Val Gielgud, 22 September 1942.
In June Dr Welch wrote to tell D. L. S. that the members of the Central Religious Advisory Committee had expressed delight with the plays: “They agreed that the Church would have to learn something about evangelism from your plays! Personally I believe that drama, and possibly feature programmes, provide the finest weapon for the Church to use today; the old-fashioned methods are done for and the spoken word is at a serious discount.… We must make you a prophet to this generati
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO DR JAMES WELCH
9 June 1942
Dear James,1
I have unfortunately forgotten all the handsome Scriptural names I once invented for you! There is a certain ceremony about “James”, unsuited, I feel, to your energetic character – though I notice a touch of the Old Boanerges vein when you sail into the L.D. Observers,2 which links you fittingly with the Apostle your namesake.…
Yes, do go on opening the letters, and make a note of anything significant. I am keeping most of them, in case they may come in useful when we write our prefaces to the published plays. I have unhappily destroyed some of the really potty and abusive ones, which might have adorned a page; but I daresay you can produce plenty of these from your own collection. This last little lot were all favourable, but not specially interesting – except that there was another person exercised in mind about the identification of Mary of Bethany with Mary Magdalen. I told him, more or less, that what was good enough for Augustine was good enough for us; having just learned from Fr. Biggart C.R.3 that the theory is, in fact, Augustine’s, though he didn’t give me the reference. This confirms my general impression that if there is anything at all that was not dealt with by Augustine, it was dealt with by Aquinas, and that if one could give one’s self up to read the whole of the works of these two saints one would never need to read anything else.…