The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Vol. 1 by Dorothy L. Sayers
I know what people will say about this: “All tyrannies unite the subjugated people against them. There is no difference between Hitler in Europe and the British in India”. Yet that would be true only if we saw Hitler eagerly fostering Polish national feeling, earnestly endeavouring to compose differences between Croat and Slovene, and bestowing on the conquered countries precisely those educational facilities and political institutions which would provide them with arguments and weapons against him. But a result so often obscures the road by which it was reached: the Allies are all in uniform, therefore they must have abandoned freedom just like the Germans; Poland and India both want to be independent, therefore the one must have been treated as badly as the other, and with the same intention. It is not true; but if we hear it said often enough and loudly enough, we shall begin to believe it ourselves. Because there is enough plausibility in it to make us doubt our own good faith.
I don’t think the British worry about outside criticism very much, provided that it does not ally itself with what you so rightly call “the subtler temptations that, finding us in our privacy, break our wills by confusing our minds”. But the mind, especially the British mind, is very easily confused, and in the years between the wars something very benumbing did happen to our will. I am sure that what I have said in my article about “scrupulosity” is true. It was only when Hitler appeared at the Channel Ports that we began to think better of ourselves. We were like the pessimistic philosopher in Chesterton’s Manalive4, who doubted whether life was worth living. Whereupon, you remember, the gentleman with the pistol chased him out to the extreme end of a gargoyle and keeping him in that precarious position forced him to repeat:
I thank the goodness and the grace,
That on my birth have smiled,
And perched me in the curious place,
A happy Christian child.
So here we are, perched in this very anxious place at the edge of Europe, between the Dictator and the Deep Sea, and we’ve jolly well got to feel happy and Christian about it, or else, as they say on your side, Curtains for us. Another letter all about England. But the awful thing is that nations can really go under. It did happen in France. And upon my soul I don’t know why it didn’t happen here. Perhaps for no reason except that we are an island. Perhaps because we had got to that place in the mind when one says: “Here stand I; God helping me, I can no other.”5
Meanwhile, having discovered where your book is to be got, I will purchase several copies as Christmas presents for my friends.
With all good wishes for the New Year (I expect this letter will arrive too late for Christmas),
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
And so, in the short space of seven years, having already
achieved world renown as an author of detective
novels, Dorothy L. Sayers had become, as a result of
her plays, articles and speeches, a figure of
influence and significance both in her own country and abroad.
This extraordinary development had occurred
so rapidly that she herself was
disconcerted by it and scarcely knew which direction
her work should now take.
The unexpected direction it did take and the consequences
which arose are the subject of
letters contained in the next two volumes.
1 Cf. letter to Father Herbert Kelly, 4 December 1937 and note 8.
2 “They Tried to be Good”, first published in World Review, November 1943, pp. 30–34; later published in Unpopular Opinions.
3 Latin: to be read, not praised.
4 Published in 1912.
5 A translation of the statement by Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms, 18 April 1521.
Appendix
Particulars of the birth of John Anthony
In my biography, Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul, and in the Notes to the first volume of her Letters, the account of the circumstances concerning the birth of Dorothy L. Sayers’ son, John Anthony Fleming, were per force incomplete, owing to lack of information. Particulars have since come to hand which clarify a good deal that was left unexplained. Above all, the mystery as to why she chose Southbourne, Hampshire1 for the place of birth is now solved.
William White, John Anthony’s father, was born in the Isle of Man on 14 June 1892. His mother died at his birth and his father, the Rev. Henry Gattan White, vicar of Kirk St Ann, Ramsey2, died four years later. Thereafter William was brought up by his father’s sister, Dot White, who lived near Wakefield in Yorkshire. In 1907, at the age of 15, he was sent to Denstone College, a public school near Uttoxeter in North Staffordshire, where he became a member of Lowe House. Denstone College, of which the foundation stone was laid in 1868, is the Senior School of the Woodard Corporation in the Midlands. Situated to the south of the Peak District, it commands views of rolling countryside of great beauty. The original school buildings, dedicated in 1873, were designed by Hubert Carpenter and the chapel is recognized as one of the finest of its kind in the country. For three years, until he left in 1910, William received an excellent education in this privileged environment. The school was strong in Latin and Greek and held a distinguished record of scholarships to Oxford and Cambridge. In 1907, the year William entered the school, a young enthusiastic French master, F. S. Whitmore, joined the staff. He also organized productions of Shakespeare, in which Wiliam enjoyed taking part.3
Soon after leaving school William White applied for a post as clerk in Coutts Bank, 440 The Strand, London, where he began work on 21 October 1912 at a salary of £100 a year. In his spare time he took up motorcycling and learned to fly. He resigned for war service on 24 April 1916, by which time his salary had risen to £132. During his time in the Army he was on half pay from the bank.
He joined the Royal Engineers (Motor Cyclists Section) as a Pioneer and was subsequently promoted Corporal. He saw active service in France as a despatch rider and was himself mentioned in despatches. As a result of Mr Whitmore’s teaching he had learned to speak French fluently. This qualified him to serve for a period as an interpreter. He was for some time attached to General Headquarters Staff, and later to a Field Survey Company in the neighbourhood of Arques. He was never wounded but was in hospital at one time with trench fever. He was demobilized on 15 September 1919 and returned to Coutts Bank at a salary of £156. He resigned from this post on 1 May 1920.4
He decided next to try his fortune in the fast developing motor trade. In 1914, in London, he had married Beatrice Mary Wilson (1881–1964), herself the daughter of a clergyman. They had one daughter, Valerie, born in 1915. In his attempt to make a living he moved from place to place, his family sometimes joining him as he took short-lived jobs in various parts of the country. They once spent a year with his aunt, Dot White, in the town in Yorkshire where he was brought up. In 1922 they were living in Southbourne, in an attic flat of a house belonging to Mrs White’s brother (“Rollestone”, 91 Southbourne Road), and William went to London alone to try to find work, returning to visit his wife and daughter at weekends. He took a room with friends in the flat above Dorothy’s, at 24 Great James Street.
It was there that Dorothy got to know him, as she relates in a letter to her mother dated 18 December 1922. She describes him as “a poor devil who has been staying with the people above me, and whom I chummed up with one weekend, finding him left lonely.…”5 She invited him to spend Christmas at her father’s Rectory in Christchurch, Cambridgeshire, and they rode down together on his motorcycle. The tone of this letter and of subsequent references to him in letters home do not suggest that Dorothy was then aware that Bill, as she called him,6 was married. She said that he had “not a red cent or a roof” and from later letters it appears that she often provided meals for him and lent him money.
He accompanied her to theatres, dances and dinners. She introduced him to her friends and he escorted her to a staff dance at Benson’s. He told his wife about these out
Dorothy and Bill became lovers and in the Spring of 1923 Dorothy found that she was pregnant. It may be that only then did Bill admit to Dorothy that he was married. His next move was surprising. He asked his wife to come to London to celebrate the anniversary of their wedding. The following morning he told her that Dorothy was pregnant, saying “She is in a state about it, not wanting her father to know or to lose her job”. He added: “I know you will help her.” Mrs White’s response was still more surprising. Out of compassion and perhaps also in an attempt to save her marriage, she agreed to help.
On the day she and Dorothy met they went round together to Bill’s flat (he was then living off Theobalds Road) and they found him with another girl. Dorothy said to Mrs White: “He’s like a child in a power-house, starting off machinery regardless of results. No woman on earth could hold him.” She told Mrs White that she had never intended the pregnancy to occur and promised that if only she could be helped through the birth she would never see Bill again and would put the baby into the care of foster parents.7 In return Mrs White invited Dorothy to come to Southbourne during the last stages of her pregnancy. She took a room for her at a guest house and arranged for her brother, Dr Murray Richmond Osborne Wilson, L.R.C.P., M.R.C.S., to attend the birth, which took place at Tuckton Lodge, a nursing-home in Ilford Lane, Southbourne. It was not revealed to Dr Wilson that he had been engaged to deliver his brother-in-law’s child.
Valerie was then eight years old. Looking back 73 years, from 1997 to 1924, she remembers “a very large woman swathed in flowing garments” sitting beside the fire “in long earnest conversations” with her mother. Mrs White, whose own daughter had been born when she was 35, was in a position to give sympathetic encouragement to Dorothy, a primipara aged 30. A sisterly bond may have developed between them during this period: they both loved the same charming but unreliable man. Mrs White pledged to keep the baby’s existence a secret and did so until after Dorothy’s death in December 1957. Then, on 10 March 1958 she wrote a letter to her daughter, at last revealing to her that she had a half-brother.8
Mrs White agreed to occupy Dorothy’s flat in Great James Street during her absence, and, in order to lend credibility to the pretence that Dorothy was still living there, to send on letters to her and to post hers from London. Valerie, who accompanied her mother, remembers the flat clearly, in particular a cat called Agag, whose name Dorothy told her meant “he who treads lightly”. She recalls also that there was a large supply of children’s books in the flat. It is said that Bill joined them there occasionally.
About four years later, Mrs White, without preamble or explanation, informed her daughter that she had divorced her husband. She did not cite Dorothy as co-respondent; this was not necessary, as Bill continued to be involved with other women. Valerie never saw her father from then on. Nevertheless, she remembers him as a charming person. She recalls sitting on his knee while he taught her French. He showed her how to fly a kite and bought her instalments of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopaedia. He took particular care that she should speak English correctly. After the divorce he is said to have gone to live in the north of England. It is not known whether he married again or when or where he died.
This new information clarifies many points but some questions remain unanswered. Dorothy’s letters to Ivy Shrimpton and particularly those to John Cournos draw a different picture in some respects. One puzzling matter is her off-hand reference to Mrs White in her letter to Ivy Shrimpton when she had returned to London after leaving the baby in her care:
I was a bit weary yesterday, because I came home to find that the fool
I’d let my flat to had locked up the keys inside the flat.…9
This is a surprisingly ungracious (and uncharacteristic) comment about someone who had shown her so much kindness.
Another puzzling problem is Dorothy’s delay in writing to her cousin Ivy to ask if she would be willing to foster the baby. Why did she wait so long – in the event two days before the birth? Had she perhaps agreed to give the baby up to someone else, advised possibly by Dr Wilson, and then changed her mind at the last moment? This seems the most likely explanation. If so, it sheds new light on Dorothy’s attitude towards her child.
There are still dark patches in this period of her life. Perhaps she could not have explained them herself. They contrast strangely with the woman she later became, the woman revealed in her mature writings and in the remarkable letters contained in this volume.
There is a touching post-script. In 1991 Mrs Napier decided at last to try to make contact with her half-brother. She wrote as follows:10
Dear Anthony,
Perhaps I should have written this letter thirty years ago when I first heard of your existence; I could have contacted you earlier, but didn’t wish to cause any embarrassment.
I’ve recently read Brabazon’s biography of your mother (whom I knew when I was a small child), and thought you might be interested to know a bit more about your father, William White (Bill).
Bill was not the common, ill-educated little clerk he was made out to be in the book. Both my mother and yours agreed that he was a “charming rotter”! His father was a clergyman in the Isle of Man, and Bill had been well educated at Denstone [College], and was a good Shakespearian actor during his school-days. He spoke good French, and was always crazy about cars and motor-bikes. He was a despatch rider in France during the First War, being himself mentioned in despatches. Afterwards he returned to his employment at Coutts Bank, having put most of my mother’s money into several motor businesses, with varying success.
After Dorothy died my mother wrote me a detailed letter (which I still have) about the circumstances of your birth. She had been married to Bill since 1914. I was born the following year.
We lived in a flat in the Southbourne house of my uncle, Dr Murray Wilson. At Bill’s request (!) my mother arranged for her brother to attend Dorothy at the Tuckton Nursing Home, during which time my mother and I stayed at the [Great] James Street flat, in order to forward letters, to prevent Dorothy’s parents discovering her absence from London. I have memories of long discussions between the two women, but did not understand the situation.
My parents divorced later and Bill went to live in the north of England.… There are no relations left from my own generation; and that is why I should like to get in touch with you; we do have something in common!
I do hope you don’t find my letter “embarrassing or distressful” (your words).11 After all these years I certainly don’t, and, if you are willing, I should like to get to know you better – I always missed not having a brother.…
This letter was sent c/o the publishers, Victor Gollancz Ltd. It was returned unopened. John Anthony had been dead for seven years.
B. R.
1 Now part of Dorset,
2 He was curate at Kirk Ballough, Ramsey from 1870 to 1877 and vicar at Kirk St Ann from 1878 to 1894, retiring two years before his death.
3 I am indebted to Mr M. K. Swales, Hon. Secretary of the Old Denstonian Club, for information about Denstone College.
4 I thank Ms Tracey Earl, Archivist of Coutts and Co., for this information.
5 See The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899–1936, pp. 197–198.
6 His wife called him “Willy”
7 Dorothy and Bill did, however, keep in touch for some time after the birth of John Anthony. See my biography, Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul and her letters to Ivy Shrimpton and John Cournos in The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899–1936.
8 Some of the details in this account have been drawn from this letter. For further details I am indebted to Valerie (Mrs S. V. O. Napier) and to her daughter, Ms. F. M. Crawford. Both Mrs Napier and Ms Crawford remember Mrs White as an exceptionally kind and gentle person.
9 See The Letters of Dorothy L. Say
10 Published with the permission of Mrs Valerie Napier, who retains the copyright.
11 Quoted from Brabazon.
Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest.
For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Pages of letters to persons are printed in bold.
“The Abominable History of the Man with the Copper Fingers”
“Absolutely Elsewhere”
Acland, Sir Richard
Adams, Robert
Admiral Guinea
Adoptionism
Ainley, Henry
Alexander, Mary
Allen, Dorothy
Allen, Sir Hugh Percy
“An Account of Lord Mortimer Wimsey, the Hermit of the Wash”
Anatomy of Murder
Apollinarianism
Aquinas: see St Thomas Aquinas
Arianism
Arneil, Harold