Wednesday
Arguing all evening with P-; very leftish, of course, denouncing the present economic system and eloquent about freedom and equality. What madness coupled those two words together? They are mutually destructive. The "system" arose from the determined struggle to "free" economics from the control of Church and State. The war-cry was "equal opportunity" for all. What happens when you demand equal opportunity for the rabbit and the tiger? P- talks about "the natural law"; I presume he does not mean the law of the jungle, nor yet whatever it is theologians understand by the term. (Who was it said that whenever the word "nature" came into an argument he prepared himself to hear bad reasoning?) What do we know about nature, except that it is man's nature to be "unnatural"? Where does man begin? Marx said that man "first distinguished himself from the animals when he produced the means of subsistence." First - chronologically? We have no means of knowing what man did "first". If he lived like an ape on wild fruit and made a song to celebrate the largest pumpkin, was the song the act of an animal? And where is the proof that the song came into history later than the sowing of pumpkin-seed? This is Rousseu's noble savage all over again. We have no proof either way. Song and pumpkin-seed are alike subject to mutability.
Birds sing - but it is always the same song. Only man sings a new song every day.
"Man first distinguished himself" - "first," then, in the sense of the primary quality of the distinction. But that is to assume what you set out to prove. ...
Thursday
... I was glad last night's discussion was carried on in French. It would have been better still if I could have spoken Z-'s language, or he mine, but at least we had both to make the same kind of mental adjustment, in order to think in the same speech. To negotiate, not knowing what the other fellow's words mean to him, or what one's own words mean to him, is like wrestling with a feather bed. The professional interpreter is a minor miracle - far better than a man translating his own words badly into a language in which he cannot think - for he does interpret and not merely de-code. Even so, I have heard a phrase change status and stature - change emphasis - in the course of interpretation. The original speaker is still thinking in his own tongue, and the hearer in his. It's a question of approach to the subject; in speaking another language one instinctively alters one's mental attitude to suit the medium. The mere knowledge that other attitudes are possible is a safeguard against insularity of thought, and the politician with no language but his own can never really hope to solve international problems - worse, he can never really understand what the problem is at all. That was the value of the classical education - nothing to do with whether Latin fits you to be a successful pill-merchant or engineer - the value of the double mind. If a diplomatist is not double-tongued he will almost certainly appear double-faced; not through treachery but through ignorance. I would have no man eligible for Parliament that could not think in two languages. ...
Friday
... Poor P-! he avoided me in the street today. At least I think so. Why else should he dive so hurriedly into the baby-linen shop by mistake for the café next door? It must have been an error of haste - even if some unfortunate indiscretion had brough baby-linen into his life, he would scarcely be making his purchases in person. He probably thought I was going to tackle him about Russia. I wasn't. Does one button-hole a man in the street for a chat about his wife's elopement? Le chef de gare il est cocu, poor devil, and that's all there is to be said about it. He's sincere, and the Helsinki business has been a severe shock to him. He isn't one of the whole-hoggers who are ready to accept an interregnum of fraud and vuilence as a necessary preliminary to the Kingdom of Man on earth. [Passage deleted here, dealing with probably military and political repercussions] Still, oddly enough, my own immediate feeling is a queer sense of liberation. All these years, to express my doubts about the Russian experiment has laid one under the imputation of upholding capitalism, class-privilage, and so on, for the sake of one's own advantage. As though one had been shown God and had slammed the door in His face for fear of judgement. Difficult to explain that the fear was of another kind - or perhaps not fear, but an instinctive mistrust - something in the back of one's mind saying "C'est louche." "A plague o' both your houses," one said, "Moscow and Berlin alike; the moment you get inside the door there's the same bad smell in the basement." Now the offence is rank, and stinks in P-'s nostrils. Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds. But was Soviet doctrine ever anything but a weed at root, like the other?
The Catholic padre makes no bones about it. "Both started," he says, "by denying God, and no figs could grow from that thistle." But I have no such rational grounds for saying, "I told you so." For me to say, "I object as a Christian" would be rather like saying "I object as a native of Norfolk" - the one qualification bearing about as much relation to my conduct as the other, and being just about as geographical. I don't demand that my bootmaker should have Christian principles. I don't object to an atheist barber - though, come to think of it, I suppose nothing in theory need prevent an atheist barber from cutting my throat if he feels like it. The law is framed on the assumption that my life is sacred; but upon my word I can see no sanction for that assumption at all, except on the hypothesis that I am an image of God - made, I should say, by a shockingly bad sculptor. And if I see no sanctity in myself, why should I see it in Finland? But I do. It seems altogether irrational.
All the same, I still have the sense of liberation. "Fall into the hand of God, not into the hand of economic humanity." One can say it now without feeling obliged to apologise for one's class prejudices. ...
Saturday
... Like the gentleman in the carol, I have seen a wonder sight - the Catholic padre and the refugee Lutheran minister having a drink together and discussing, in very bad Latin, the persecution of the Orthodox Church in Russia. I have seldom heard so much religious toleration or so many false quantities. ...
Tuesday
... My papers have arrived, so the balloon goes up tonight. When M- handed them over, he said, "You have a wife and family, haven't you?" I said "Yes," and felt curiously self-conscious. The first time it has mattered a curse whether I went west or not. M- looked at me as I used to look at my own married officers when they volunteered for a dirty bit of work, and it all seemed absurd and incongruous.
I shall not keep a diary over there. So, in case of accident, I will write my own epitaph now: HERE LIES AN ANACHRONISM IN THE VAGUE EXPECTATION OF ETERNITY.
8. From Mr. Paul Delagardie to Lady Peter Wimsey at Talboys.
EUROPEAN CLUB,
PICCADILLY, W.
December 9th, 1939.
My dear Harriet,
I am charmed to learn that you are all progressing favourable in your rustic retirement. Thank you, mon enfant, my arthritis is better, in spite of the idiosyncrasies of the climate, which continues to exhibit the British illogicality and independence of enlightened cosmoploitan opinion in its most insular and insolent form. However, it has its uses as a deterrent to that fellow Hitler's aerial ambitions; I understand from the papers that the elimination of this country is now postponed until May.
This will give us time to get forward with your scheme - of which I cordially approve - of immediately pulling down the disgusting rookeries in which the unfortunate proletariat are huddled. My only quarrel with your admirable pamphlet on National Housing is that it does not go far enough. I would pull down everything; but perhaps, when we have destroyed the hovels of the poor, enemy bombers will complete the process by blowing up the palaces of the rich and the soulless villas of the middle-class. Then (always supposing we survive the attack) we shall be able to start from a tabula rasa, to construct those houses for human beings which you - very wisely - desire, rather than the "houses for heroes" postulated by our previous grandiloquence. (What an expression! It suggests some species of Gothic Valhalla, decorated with baroque ornament in the German manner. But in fact, if I remember rightly, our first attempts to materialise this ambit
ious scheme were carried out in compressed cow-dung.)
I say, I would pull down everything. I am not being barbarian or perverse - I am being purely logical. Consider how in former days, when Reason was still acknowledged as a universal reality, the structure of buildings was adapted to the method of warfare in vogue. The mediaeval castle or town expected assault horizontally, from arrows or primitive artillery: it was therefore defended vertically with thick exterior walls and loophole windows. Today, attack may be looked for vertically from the air - would not the logical consequence be to remove the defences from wall to roof - from the vertical to the horizontal position? Yes, as the science of ballistics and acrobatics advances, we continue, in defiance of common sense to erect tall buildings with immense acres of glass and even with glass skylights! If we did not suffer from a dislocation of mind that prevents any rational synthesis of aim, we should model our domestic architecture upon the Maginot Line. We should build downwards and interpose at least thirty feet of good, smothering earth between ourselves and air-borne high explosive.
You will say: Do you wish to turn us into Troglodytes? Why not? "Troglodyte" is a descriptive epithet; it is not a term of abuse. When the development of civilisation makes it appropriate to dwell in caves, then to be a Troglodyte is highly civilised.
Consider the increased beauty and utility of the country-side when all the ugly evidences of man's habitation shall have been removed to a decent subterranean privacy! The whole face of England would be one uninterrupted countryside, embellished only by such elegant relics of overground civilisation as might be thought worthy of preservation, such as cathedrals, castles, colleges, family mansions, and so forth. These would be maintained as a national heritage, and could be made the objects of excursions and educational visits, by means of the surface-roads, which I would have reserved purely for pleasurable purposes. No longer would it be necessary to traverse many miles of hideous suburbs to gain the open country. Rural delights would be - not at your door, but on your roof; the nearest municipal lift would life you and your car, in a few minutes, into the enjoyment of the wide open spaces. No longer would rich arable land be rendered sterile by the operations of the speculative builder. On every foot of English soil, the corn would wave, trees flourish, and flocks and herds find pasture. At threat of aerial assault, the cattle could be swiftly removed to a safe harbour below ground where they and the civil population could remain at ease while the bombs exploded harmlessly over their heads.
Defence would be greatly simplified. Nothing would need to be guarded except the entrances and ventilating shafts; and indeed these, in time of emergency, could be closed in by strong trapdoors and covered with sandbags, while a central plant dispensed chemically produced artificial air to the protected city. Thus attention could be concentrated upon sea-routes and coastal defences, with great economy of man-power. The disposal of sewage presents itself to me as problem - but I have no doubt that engineering ingenuity could deal with it by pumps, septic tanks and so forth, transporting it to sewage farms placed on the surface at a sufficient distance from the pleasure-routes. (After all, the Maginot Line presumably enjoys sanitary advantages of this kind.)
As for transport and communications, these would be carried, as the Mersey traffic is at present, by great arterial tunnels for road and electric rail, which would also form conduits for water, electricity, telephones et hoc genus omne. Ventilation would be artificial, as proposed for the Channel Tunnel; and as the lighting would be equally good by night and by day no headlamps would be necessary. Only light vehicles would be permitted on the surface-ways; every species of monstrum horrendum, informe, ingens, whether lorry, omnibus, army caterpillar or goods-train, would be confined below, to the great improvement of the landscape and the general amenities of travel.
To an underground population, the English climate would be robbed of more than half its terrors; and in addiotn, there would be a great saving in such items of domestic expenditure as rain-proofing, frost-proofing and heating. You cannot have failed to notice the equable temperature of such natural caves as Wookey Hole, for example, which are warmer in winter and cooler in summer than any spot on the surface. This economy would counterbalance the necessarily increased expenditure in lighting. No doubt there would be a great outcry from old-fashioned persons of the fresh-air brigade; but, as you know, I have no prejudices in favour of "le courant d'air" any more than any other healthy animal. My cat and my dog are not such unnatural fools as to sleep - or endeavour to sleep - exposed to the violent stimulants of strong air and light; they very sensibley choose the snuggest corner, and bury eyes and nose as deeply as possible in their fur. Thus they anaesthetise themselves to slumber, in the same manner as birds and other creatures that are not afraid to trust their God-given instincts. Animals prefer to be either definitely indoors or definitely out-of-doors. It is "man, proud man," who confounds all natural distinctions by setting the windows of his house ajar and taking his outdoor exercise enclosed in a box. Thus, either way, he relinquishes the healthy enjoyment of cosiness on the one hand and fresh air on the other, to indulge in a perverted passion for draughts. Not that I condemn his passion as such, for all man's passions are perverted; I object, logically, to his miscalling them virtues, and breaking all natural laws in the name of "Nature."
No, my dear child: if we truly desire to see "England's green and pleasant land," let us refrain from building a shoddy brick Jerusalem all over it. Let us quietly dig ourselves in - and this not merely "dig for victory," as the new-fangled slogan runs, but "dig for peace" by removing the temptation to aerial attack which a great, sprawling, vulnerable network of open town must of necessity present to the ill-disposed. No doubt the period of transition would be costly, but less so than a war, and in time we should so adapt our lives and resources that to dig would be as cheap as the buildings of sky-scrapers. Further, agricultural and industrial pursuits could be carried on without mutual interference: towns would no longer devastate agrarian sites, nor would the free pursuit of rural occupations obstruct the proper development of urban districts. All would be orderly; all would be safe; all would be beautiful.
I have, of course, no hope that my reasonable counsel will prevail in the face of rooted prejudice, vested interests and the steady refusal of mankind to contemplate radical changes in their mode of living. I have just read that, last week, three barrage balloons broke loose, fouled the overhead power cables and plunged half a county into darkness. Need I point out that, in the Utopia I contemplate, there would have been no necessity for the balloons and no overhead cables for them to foul? Would any body of people except English business men ever put high-tension cables in the air, to be a menace to birds, cattle, aeroplanes and human beings and perpetually vulnerable to atmospherical conditions and trifling accidents? The excuse given is that it will prove still more costly to bury a defunct civilisation, and that a live rabbit is better than a dead donkey.
I send you my little idea; you might make a novel out of it. It is proof, at any rather, that a rationally-minded person is never too old to contemplate revolution.
Meilleures amitiés. Embrasse les enfants de ma part.
Bien à toi -
PAUL AUSTIN DELAGARDIE
9. Honoria Lucasta, Dowager Duchess of Denver, to Lady Peter Wimsey (Harriet Vane) at Talboys.
THE DOWER HOUSE,
BREDON HALL,
DUKE'S DENVER, NORFOLK.
December 15th, 1939.
Dearest Harriet,
How tiresome for you that Polly should have caught this horrid 'flu germ! I can't think why the Almight should have wanted to make such a lot of the nasty little creatures - misplaced ingenuity I should call it in anybody else. Though I read in a book the other day that germs were probably quite well-behaved, originally, but had taken to bad habits and living on other people, like mistletoe. Interesting, if true, and all Adam and Eve's fault, no doubt. Anyway, I saw Mary in Town and told her not to worry and she sent love and said how sweet of yo
u to stay at home and look after her erring offspring.
I hope you have received all the parcels. I couldn't get a gas-mask case to match the dress-pattern exactly, but the one I sent tones in pretty well, I think. The shoes have had to be specially dyed, I'm afraid - it seems to be rather a difficult colour. I hope the Christmas cards will do. I had a terrible time with the sacred ones - there seems to be nothing this year between quaint missals and modern ones with the Virgin and angels either very thin and willowy and ten feet tall, or else very chubby and smirking, such an unrobust idea of the whole affair, don't you think? The attendant in the last shop - I tried five - was deeply apologetic. She said it wasn't their fault - the public insisted on sentiment, and the clergy were much the worst - personal taste, I wonder, or pandering to what they think their flocks prefer? Such as mistake, too, to imagine that children approve of Baby Cherubs and little darling boys and girls swarming over everything. At least, I know my children always wanted stories and pictures about proper-sized people, whether it was knights or cavaliers or pirates or St. Michael all in scarlet with a big sword, and just the same with their dolls and things - I suppose it gave them a grown-up feeling and counteracted their inferiority complexes and things.
The Wimsey Papers Page 3