The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Vol. 1 by Dorothy L. Sayers
Finally – if you decide to read some Christian literature, give it your serious attention. Don’t just explode into fury when you meet something that challenges your assumptions – that is behaving like the people who were outraged by Galileo and indignant over Darwin. Christianity does and will challenge almost every conviction you have. That is its business. So don’t blame me – You have been warned!
Yours faithfully,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 The Tyranny of Words by Stuart Chase, Methuen, first printed in Great Britain in 1938.
There follows the list of books which accompanied the letter. Since she mentioned many of them frequently in her letters to other correspondents they must represent her own reading. Her comments, intended to be helpful to Mr Duff, also reveal her own opinion of the works. Three of them (John Macmurray’s The Boundaries of Science, V. A. Demant’s The Religious Prospect, and Charles Williams’ He Came Down from Heaven) are included in Begin Here, Gollancz, 1940, under the heading “Some Books to Read”, pp. 157 160.
A. Books dealing with the nature and limitations of scientific method, etc.
J. Macmurray: The Boundaries of Science (Faber)
R. L. Kapp: Science versus Materialism (Methuen) (Written by an engineer – not particularly from the Christian point of view)
A. H. Whitehead: Science and the Modern World (Penguin) (Note especially the passage which stresses the dependence of scientific method on an act of faith in the rationality of the universe)
B. On philosophic method:
Michael Roberts: The Modern Mind (Faber) (This book deals with the historical development of methods of thinking from the late Middle Ages onwards. Contains valuable cautions about the way in which the meaning of certain technical terms – e.g. “reason”, “imagination”, “science” – gets altered in common use as time goes on.)
C. Books about the failure of Humanism (the doctrine that Man is self-sufficient) and the present World-Situation generally:
J. V. L. Casserley: The Fate of Modern Culture (Dacre Press: Signposts series) “Signposts” are a series of little books on Theology, published at one shilling. They are all by Anglicans.
Michael Roberts: The Recovery of the West (Faber)
V. A. Demant: The Religious Prospect (Muller) (This is much the most profound and important book of the four. Unfortunately the author writes rather crabbed and involved English, so that it is by no means easy reading.)
All these books deal primarily with the negative side – i.e. the result of ignoring Christian philosophy and the failure of rival philosophies. The books which follow deal more positively with the Christian religion itself.
D. Books about the Existence and Nature of God.
C. S. Lewis: Broadcast Talks (Bles) (Lewis started out as an atheist, and can therefore tackle the whole subject from personal experience. He is extremely pungent and witty. Being a set of radio talks, the book is very simply written in a popular style, but it is not at all superficial.)
H. H. Farmer: Towards Belief in God (S.C.M. Press, 2 vols.) Written some years ago, but now rewritten and its treatment brought “up-to-date”. It hasn’t Lewis’s sparkle and punch, but is quietly and soundly reasoned.
Charles Gore: Belief in God (Pelican) An old book, but still a very good one.
E. Books about what the Christian Faith actually is:
A lot of the people who attack Christianity have only very inadequate or inaccurate notions of what Christians do actually believe – often denouncing alleged “Christian doctrines” which Christians would be the first to repudiate as distortions and travesties.
J. S. Whale: Christian doctrine (C.U.P.)
Bede Frost: Who? (Mowbray) (The doctrine of the nature of God – i.e. not chiefly Christology. The method is what is called “scholastic”, i.e. abstract and intellectual, in the manner of the mediaeval schoolmen, rather than inductive or empirical. The author is an Anglican.)
Leslie Simmonds: What Think Ye of Christ? (Bles) (A handy little statement of orthodox Christology – i.e. what the Church believes about the nature and person of Christ.)
Eric Mascall: Man: His Origin and Destiny (Signposts) (The Christian doctrine of the nature of Man is probably the point at which it most conflicts with “modern” thought. There are not many good books about it, but this one will do as a start, and there are more in the next section that deal with it.)
D. L. Sayers: The Mind of the Maker (Methuen) (I’ve put this in here because some people say it has made the doctrine of the Trinity more comprehensible to them than the more regular theological treatises. It is really a book about the nature of creative mind, illustrating the Christian doctrine of God by analogy with the mind of the artist. It is a “freak” sort of book, and by rights I should have shoved it in at the end under “miscellaneous”.)
F. Books about Evil, Sin and Redemption:
T. M. Parker: The Re-Creation of Man (Signposts)
C. S. Lewis: The Problem of Pain (Bles) (A brilliant book, that made a small sensation when it first appeared. If anybody was really troubled about human suffering and wanted to know something of Christianity as a living faith, I should be rather inclined to give him this book to start with.)
Charles Williams: He Came Down from Heaven (Heinemann) (It is rash of me to recommend this, because the treatment is mystical, and therefore – according to temperament – people find it either intensely illuminating or completely incomprehensible. It’s a case of like it or leave it.)
Miscellaneous:
C. H. Cochrane: Christianity and Classical Culture (O.U.P.) (A very brilliant book about the collapse of culture under the Roman Empire and the rise of Christian civilization through the storms of the Dark Ages. The parallel between Roman and present-day philosophies is very interesting and illuminating. But one needs to know something about Roman history and Greek philosophy, and even then it’s not exactly light reading.)
N. Berdyaev: The Meaning of History (Bles) (This, I think, is one of the world’s really great books, and very exciting – but again, it is not altogether easy reading. The author is Russian Orthodox and a mystic.)
L. de Grandmaison: Jesus Christ: His Person – His Message – His Credentials (Sheed and Ward, 3 vols.) (This vast work by a Roman Catholic theologian covers almost the whole ground of Biblical criticism, and I have heard of at least one person who was converted to Christianity on the strength of it. I don’t know that I should expect it to have such a drastic effect on most people. I put it forward here, chiefly as proof that Catholic theologians are not – as most people suppose – ignorant of, or loftily indifferent to, problems of textual criticism, comparative religion and all the rest of it.)
G. K. Chesterton: Orthodoxy (Sheed and Ward) The Everlasting Man (Hodder and Stoughton) (Some people are merely infuriated by Chesterton’s “paradoxical” style. But for going down to the centre of things and hitting the nail plumb on the head, it’s hard to beat him. But the average materialist, rationalist or atheist – who is usually very serious-minded – tends to dislike him, and fails to realise how genuinely serious he is, and how shrewd.)
This list, of course, leaves out all the great Christian classics – because I was confining myself to modern apologetics. But of course Christianity is a historical religion, with a tradition of nearly twenty centuries, and one can’t really understand its history and development without a nodding acquaintance with Augustine, Aquinas, and so on, any more than one can follow the development of modern science without knowing something about Aristotle, Bacon and Newton, etc.
I haven’t put in any devotional books, or books dealing with purely “personal” religion, or books with an emotional appeal. Nor have I included books which confine themselves to Christian conduct, ethics and sociology – I have tried to keep it doctrinal.
I haven’t been able to find a book particularly devoted to the subject of miracles. Apparently this isn’t a burning question at the moment as it was in the 19th century. This is probably because, on
Frank Morrison: Who Moved the Stone? (Faber)
The interesting thing about this book is that the writer began with the a priori assumption that “miracles do not happen”; but ended by drawing a conclusion based on the actual documentary and historical evidence: a change of attitude and method which is rather unusual. The author is not a theologian but (I believe) a lawyer.1
1 He was a colleague of D. L. S. at Benson’s. His real name was A. H. Ross.
Mr Duff took over a month to reply (“you gave me many things to think about”). He expressed himself amazed at the trouble she had taken. He could not undertake to read all the books she recommended but would choose a few and promised to approach them with an open mind. In his long letter he raised many points on which he disagreed with hers. She replied at once. See her letter dated 16 June 1943.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO B. E. NICOLLS
12 May 1943
Dear Mr. Nicolls,
Thank you for your letter. I didn’t think the recording of The Man Born to be King was at all bad, all things considered, and seeing the very considerable variations of volume the sound-track had to carry. But, of course, so far as I am concerned, nothing could be more agreeable than to do the show again “live”, with the time-limit eased, the cuts restored, and the various slips and errors remedied. (Human nature being what it is, they will of course be replaced by new errors, but even here variety is pleasing.) All that sort of thing is a playwright’s paradise – the blood, tears, toil and sweat1 fall to the lot of the producer. If Mr. Gielgud is game, I shall be only too delighted.
I shall be seeing him in about ten days’ time and will discuss the matter with him, including any changes in the cast that may seem desirable. In the meantime, judging from my correspondence, the re-play seems to have been well received. The opposition has more or less folded up, and criticisms have been almost entirely confined to questions of verbal detail. The most entertaining comment was that of a friend of my secretary’s, who solemnly informed her that the second performance was far superior to the first, “because this time they had got hold of some people who knew how to act”. My secretary assured her that it was the same people and the same performance – in fact, a recording. The friend pooh-poohed this, maintaining that it was “quite a different thing altogether”. “But”, said my secretary, frustrate with rage at an obstinacy so irrational, “I know it was a recording! Who should know, if I don’t?” The friend, however, would not be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. Which just shows!
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Echo of “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat”, from a speech in the House of Commons by Winston Churchill on 13 May 1940 on the motion of confidence in the new government.
It is not known precisely when D. L. S. first wrote to C. S. Lewis or when they first met. From such evidence as exists, Walter Hooper has pieced together the following account.1
Dorothy L. Sayers was very impressed by The Screwtape Letters, and she had possibly singled out Letter XIX as containing much good sense about Love and Marriage… About the beginning of April 1942, Dorothy L. Sayers asked Lewis to write on this subject for her Bridgehead series. In his reply, which is undated, he said: “But why not write the book yourself?” …She would not give up and asked again for a book. He replied on 6 April 1942: “Come and lunch on 2 or 3 June - I’ve booked them both.”
This may have been their first meeting.2
The earliest extant letter from D. L. S. to Lewis is the following. Intended for the “Lowest Official Circles”, it accompanied an advance copy of The Man Born to be King (published on 24 May 1943). Written in a spirit of wry self-mockery, it apes the style of The Screwtapc Letters. An entertaining “behind the scenes” supplement to her correspondence with L. T. Duff, it belies the great trouble she was taking in her response to him.
24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex
TO C. S. LEWIS
13 May 1943
Dear Mr. Lewis,
Knowing that you have the entrée into the Lowest Official Circles, may I beg you to hand the enclosed volume3 to the person whose name4 appears on the fly-leaf.
My Personal Attendant5 desires that the following Memorandum may be forwarded to the same address:
Memo on Policy: Ref: 7734rev6
In connection with the attached volume, I would draw your Sublimity’s attention to a certain lack of Planning, which seems to permeate the whole policy of the Low Command, and threatens to disintegrate our entire war-time strategy,
I should begin by stating that I have always been a Liberal Regressive and convinced Deteriorationist. By this time, surely, the old-fashioned doctrine of Original Righteousness is completely discredited. I can, therefore, only attribute the anomalies which have come under my notice – not to anything inherently virtuous in the make-up of the Creation, but to some failure on our part; some lack of scientific method, perhaps, if it is not sheer slackness in certain departments.
So far as my department is concerned, I can assure your Sublimity that no fault can be found. The effect of writing these plays upon the character of my patient is wholly satisfactory. I have already had the honour to report intellectual and spiritual pride, vainglory, self-opinionated dogmatism, irreverence, blasphemous frivolity, frequentation of the company of theatricals, captiousness, impatience of correction, polemical fury, shortness of temper, neglect of domestic affairs, lack of charity, egotism, nostalgia for secular occupations, and a growing tendency to consider the Bible as Literature. You will remember that it was agreed that a work undertaken and carried out in that spirit could only do Harm in the best sense of the word, and that the original well-meant opposition was withdrawn, after strong representations from Below.
But I must point out that the success of the policy adopted is contingent upon proper collaboration among the departments. What is the use of my doing my duty if other Tempters merely sit on their tails in complacent inactivity? The capture of one fifth-rate soul (which was already thoroughly worm-eaten and shaky owing to my assiduous attention) scarcely compensates for the fact that numbers of stout young souls in brand-new condition are opening up negotiations with the Enemy and receiving reinforcements of faith. We knew, of course, that the author is as corrupt as a rotten cheese; why has no care been taken to see that this corruption (which must, surely, permeate the whole work) has its proper effect upon the listeners? We ought not to take the Enemy’s word for it that a corrupt tree cannot bring forth good fruit. If He is telling the truth, this stuff ought to poison people. But the fools cat it and it does them good. Either the Enemy is really able to turn thorns into grapes and thistles into figs, or (as I prefer to believe) there is mismanagement somewhere.
A flagrant instance of the same kind of thing has just occurred here. A sound Atheist of the old-fashioned materialist kind wrote my patient a highly offensive letter about miracles, accusing her of ignorance and dishonesty in the vulgarest language. I persuaded her to answer it still more rudely and offensively. This should have inflamed the situation. Instead, the man seemed pleased to be taken notice of. His subsequent letters (though still discourteous and infidel) became more moderate in tone, and his latest effusion contained an apology and expressed readiness to read some Christian literature, if my patient would send him a list. This I could not prevent her from doing,7 though I saw to it that her motive was mere pride and self-sufficiency, not in the least contaminated by “lo