The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Vol. 2, 1937-1943: From Novelist to Playwright
Page 2
Threaded among the public letters are personal ones, showing her maturing relationship with her son, her contacts with friends, her delight in absurdity. Though she is writing no more novels, the Wimsey saga still lives on in her imagination and there are tantalizing mentions of Lord Peter and Harriet. Though bells were silenced in war-time, echoes of The Mine Tailors chime in the background with her election as an honorary member of bell-ringing societies. Air-raids, the shortage of food, the difficulty of obtaining domestic help are referred to with a characteristic lightness of touch: the time-bomb which falls in the garden of the pork-butcher across the road and the local excitement it causes, the arrival of a lemon, sent as a precious gift, packed like a rare gem in a jeweller’s box, conversation in a London restaurant with members of the Metropolitan police summoned to investigate suspected Fifth-columnists; reactions to The Man Born to be King, abusive letters from the public at the outset, later outnumbered by letters of gratitude, her husband, the “gruff warrior”, being moved to tears as he listened to one of the plays, the evacuated school-children clustered round the radio, fascinated by the story of Jesus (“I know He didn’t stay dead,” said one, “because I’ve been reading on ahead”) – there are many such moments which bring back the sound of voices talking, the gestures of people who, long dead, seem still alive.
Ideas take time. The realization that Dorothy L. Sayers was far more than an author of brilliant detective novels is gaining ground. The claim is being made increasingly that she was a creative force in the intellectual life of the twentieth century. We are a long way yet from assessing the full measure of her mind. These letters and those which follow in succeeding volumes reveal a Dorothy L. Sayers who lives on, more man can ever be estimated, in the work of those whose minds she enlivened.
“What we make is more important than what we are,” she wrote in a letter to her son, “particularly if ’making’ is our professsion.” It will be seen that her letters are themselves a form of making.
BARBARA REYNOLDS
13 June 1997
1 See The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899–1936, p. 4.
2 See Barbara Reynolds, Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul, p. 20.
3 In chronological order: Busman’s Honeymoon, The Zeal of Thy House, He That Should Come, Love All, The Devil to Pay, The Man Born to be King (consisting of 12 plays). In addition, her short story “The Unsolved Puzzle of the Man with No Face” was adapted as a play and broadcast on 3 April 1943, the first in the new series, “Saturday Night Theatre”.
4 The Just Vengeance and The Emperor Constantine.
5 Including a play on Herod the Great and another on Admiral Darlan.
NOTE
EDITIONS OF WORKS BY DOROTHY L. SAYERS TO WHICH LETTERS IN THIS VOLUME REFER
Plays
Busman’s Honeymoon (Gollancz, 1937; Kent State University Press, 1984)
He That Should Come (Four Sacred Plays, Gollancz, 1948)
The Zeal of Thy House (Gollancz, 1937; repub. Four Sacred Plays, Gollancz, 1948)
The Devil to Pay (Gollancz, 1939; Harcourt Brace, 1939; repub. Four Sacred Plays, Gollancz, 1948)
The Man Born to be King (Gollancz, 1943; Harper and Brothers, 1949; Eerdmans, 1976)
Love All (Kent State University Press, 1984)
Books
Begin Here (Gollancz, 1940)
The Mind of the Maker (Methuen, 1941; Harper San Francisco, 1979; Mowbray, 1994)
The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899–1936 (Hodder & Stoughton, 1995; St Martin’s, 1996)
Articles and Lectures
Unpopular Opinions (Gollancz, 1946)
Creed or Chaos? (Methuen, 1947)
Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World (ed. Roderick Jellema, Eerdmans, 1969; repub. as The Whimsical Christian, Macmillan 1978)
Are Women Human? (including also “The Human-Not-Quite-Human”, intro. by M. McDermott Shideler, Eerdmans, 1971)
A Matter of Eternity (ed. Rosamond Sprague, Eerdmans, 1973)
Dorothy L. Sayers: Spiritual Writings (ed. Ann Loades, Cowley Publications, 1993)
Acknowledgements
My first expression of gratitude must be to Baroness James of Holland Park (the novelist P. D. James) for her continuing encouragement. As for the first volume, so now for the second she has provided an illuminating and discerning Preface.
Once again, my heartfelt thanks are due to the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, Illinois, where the originals of most of the letters in this second volume are held. I am much indebted to the research facilities which have been granted me there by the Wheaton College Board of Trustees, to the unfailing help provided by the Associate Director, Mrs Marjorie Lamp Mead, as well as by all members of staff. As previously, I thank Mr Tony Dawson for his accurate typing of the letters onto disc.
I thank Mr Laurence Harbottle, executor of the estate of Anthony Fleming, and Mr Bruce Hunter of David Higham Associates for authorizing me to enter into negotiations with the Dorothy L. Sayers Society and with Carole Green Publishing for the production of this and the next two volumes. I further thank Mr Hunter for much patient advice and encouragement. I also express my grateful appreciation of the generous sponsorship which has helped to make this project possible.
I am grateful to the many people who have answered questions, looked up information, identified persons and tracked down quotations, particularly Mr Andrew Lewis, who helped me with innumerable learned references. I also thank the staff of the Cambridge University Library for their patience and courtesy. Mr Jack Reading, Secretary of the Society for Theatre Research, has pursued the dates of birth and death of numerous actors. To him I owe also the inclusion of several delightful letters to Muriel St Clare Byrne and Marjorie Barber. Mr David G. Humphreys most kindly supplied three letters to Dennis Arundell and two photographs relating to Busman’s Honeymoon. Mr Giles Watson drew my attention to a letter relating to the Theological Literature Association; I thank the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Trustees of Lambeth Palace Library for allowing me to publish it. I also thank the University of Sussex for permission to publish several letters addressed to Maurice B. Reckitt (from the Reckitts Papers, SxMs44, Manuscripts Section, University of Sussex Library); the University of Michigan (the Van Volkeburg-Browne Papers, Special Collections Library) for permission to print a letter to Maurice E. Browne; the Victoria and Albert Picture Library for permission to reproduce three photographs; and Constable Publishers for permission to reproduce the clerihew and cartoon by E. C. and Nicolas Bentley from Baseless Biography, thank the C. S. Lewis estate for permission to publish a letter and Mr Walter Hooper for a quotation from C. S. Lewis: a Companion and Guide. Mr Jeremy Stevenson supplied information about recordings and productions of The Man Born to be lang. Miss Pauline Adams, Librarian of Somerville College, has again helped me with identities and dates. Mrs Penelope Hatfield, Archivist of Eton College, kindly sent me information concerning one of the masters, Mr J. D. Upcott. Mr Charles Noon, archivist of Blundell’s School, provided information about the former Headmaster, the Rev. Neville Gorton. Mr James Pailing traced a rare pamphlet by G. F Woodhouse, inventor of a change-ringing machine. Canon J. A. Thurmer helpfully clarified a note on a difficult theological phrase. Miss Anne Scott-James enabled me to be precise in my note concerning her father R. A. Scott-James, author, editor and literary critic. Dr Geoffrey Lee clarified the identity for me of certain members of the Leigh family. Mr Joseph Pearce instantly placed two quotations from G. K. Chesterton. Mr John Wagstaff, Acting Senior Reference Librarian of the B.B.C. Music Library, provided me with a copy of the once famous but now forgotten song “Hybrias the Cretan”. In my search for a quotation from Greening Lamborn I was kindly helped by Mr C. B. L. Barr, Dr Donald Nicolson and Mr J. S. G. Simmons; in this connection I thank also Miss Ursula Bickersteth and Dr Jennifer March. Special thanks are due to Mrs Valerie Napier for the particulars concerning the birth of her half-brother, John Anthony Fleming, published here for the first time in the Appendi
x.
Mrs Simon Phipps has kindly allowed me to reproduce a photograph of her late husband the Rev. Dr James Welch. The Marion E. Wade Center has authorized me to publish a photograph of a portrait of Val Gielgud by Sayers’ husband, Atherton Fleming. Two photographs already published in Ralph E. Hone’s Dorothy L. Sayers: A Literary Biography are here reproduced by his kind permission.
I am grateful to three members of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society who checked the proofs of this volume and verified the notes: Mr Christopher Dean (Chairman), Mr Philip L. Scowcroft (Research Officer) and Mrs Chris Simpson (Publications Officer). I am grateful also to Mr Pat Mills for his helpful sub-editing.
Finally, I express appreciation to Mr Geoff Green for his elegant design of this book.
BARBARA REYNOLDS
1937
Behind the scenes
At the beginning of 1937, Dorothy L. Sayers was still involved with the reception of her play, Busman’s Honeymoon, and with the timing of the publication of the novel she had made of it. Gradually her commitment to the play for Canterbury Cathedral was to demand more and more of her attention.1
24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex
TO MURIEL ST CLARE BYRNE2
4 January 1937
Dear Muriel,
To set against the pronouncements of some of our London critics,3 who complain that they do not know whether we meant to write farce, melodrama, or sentimental comedy, here is the considered judgement of my gardener. I may say that this came out of him entirely unsolicited and unprompted, and that I have reproduced his words as exactly as I can remember them:
“What I thought was, it was meted out just right. There was a bit of everything – a bit of a thrill and then a bit of a laugh and then a bit of what I call the sob-stuff. That’s what I like – not the same thing all the time, but go on just so long and then you’re off on to something else. It’s natural, ain’t it? because life’s always a mix-up. You may say, ‘I’ve had seven years’ good luck, or seven years’ bad luck’ – but when you come to look at it in detail, like, even those years have been a mix-up. Something sad, and then something funny comes along of it – that’s how life is.”
I really do not think, if we had tried with both hands for a fortnight, we could have stated our own theory – or Will Shakespeare’s practice – very much more forcibly or concisely.
I hope you’re having a good rest. Mine was a dose of flu, all right. It didn’t hurt much at the time, but it’s left me curiously shaky, and not altogether eager to tackle 120 Somervillians4 at the end of the week. However, London will probably cheer up the old system, and so long as the cast escape the Scourge I don’t much mind what happens. In the meantime I have asked various people to various meals – nobody replies to my letters or tells me anything!!5
Bless you, dear, and all the best,
Dorothy
1 The terms of the contract had been settled in November 1936.
2 Muriel St Clare Byrne (1895–1983), O.B.E., a contemporary at Somerville and close friend, part-author with D. L. S. of the play Busman’s Honeymoon. See The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899–1936.
3 “The play seems to have made some of the critics very cross indeed.” (From her letter to Maurice Browne, 31 December 1936, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899–1936, p. 414.)
4 She was about to attend a meeting of the Somerville College Council.
5 An echo of John Galsworthy’s James Forsyte: “Nobody tells me anything.”
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO VICTOR GOLLANCZ1
17 January 1937
Dear Mr Gollancz,
We were all very sorry that you were unable, after all, to join us on Monday night. As I said to you on the telephone, I can see no objection to the distribution of advance copies of Busman’s Honeymoon2 to the book-sellers; the only danger I foresee, would arise if mere were too much advance publicity to the public so as to disappoint them when they could not get the book. Thank you for sending Mr Cadness Page’s3 letter; he wrote me one himself in somewhat similar terms. I am very much pleased to have approval of this novel from him and from one or two other men, since while the woman’s side of a honeymoon novel would be easy for me to write, the man’s side of it is bound to be more conjectural. I am so sorry that we are having to hold you up like this on the novel, but as I think Miss Pearn4 explained to you, I feel deeply responsible to the management and to the cast, and have pledged myself to do nothing that might hamper the run of the play. I do feel that at this moment publication would be a mistake; for one thing there would be people like my Aunt, who, having read the novel beforehand, felt a little bewildered by the play, feeling that a great deal had been left out of it. For another thing, one has to reckon with the critics, who may very well say that here is the novelist doing her own proper business, which is novels, and that therefore the novel is better than the play. If the play succeeds in establishing itself, then I think its objections will disappear. In any case we will keep our fingers firmly on the pulse of the thing and give you good warning when the time comes for publishing.
What has particularly interested me in the writing of the novel has been the problem of rethinking the story in terms of narrative, and of writing a book which should not be the ordinary novel of the play, but a distinct novel of the same [name]. I know that it would probably not fit in with your publicity scheme to tackle the thing along those lines, but I suggest that if the play should run, it might become desirable to look at the thing from this point of view in order to protect ourselves against the general feeling that there doubtless is about “the novel of the play”. Of course we do not yet know how long the present business is going to keep up,5 but we are at present playing to extraordinarily steady sheets, especially taking into consideration the influenza epidemic.
Yours very sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Victor Gollancz (1893–1967), her publisher, knighted in 1965. For further particulars, see The letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899–1936., pp. 262–263.
2 The novel Busman’s Honeymoon was first published in New York by Harcourt Brace on 18 February 1937. Gollancz published the play in February and the novel in June of the same year.
3 Cadness Page wrote: “I have been an ardent follower of Miss Sayers from the beginning but I am sure that in this book she has far surpassed anything she has written before. The humanity and character drawing in the book are first-class and many sides of her talent as a writer are admirably illustrated in Busman’s Honeymoon. I am sure it will be very successful”.
4 Her literary agent, Nancy Pearn (nicknamed “Bun”), of the firm of Pearn, Pollinger and Higham.
5 The play ran for nine months at the Comedy Theatre and was then transferred to the Victoria Palace.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO ELIZABETH HAFFENDEN1
17 January 1937
Dear Miss Haffenden,
I was at Canterbury last week talking over with Miss Babington2 and Mr Laurence Irving3 the matter of the Canterbury Play, and they felt that the time had come when I ought to get into touch with you about the designs for the costumes. I have so far only sketched out the first section of the play, and the pageant which ends it,4 but as this pageant contains most of the really difficult problems of stage management and design, the bits I have done will perhaps afford us sufficient basis for discussion. Mr Irving was very keen that we should have a final tableau full of colour and splendour bringing in all the various craftsmen5 and so on who contribute to the building and furnishing of the church, and I feel that we ought to be able to have some fun over planning the costumes for this. There is also a matter of certain gigantic angelic figures forming a kind of chorus to the play about which we shall have to talk. I understand from Mr Irving that there are some costumes in existence which could be adapted for these angels. What I particularly want
is to find out from you how far one may go in the matter of fantastic design, and how far angels could be expected to move about when encumbered by, what I understand will be, large quantities of gold american cloth!
I have to be in Town next Wednesday the 20th, and it would be very convenient if we could manage to meet on that date, or if it does not suit you I could manage to stay over until Thursday. Perhaps you could come along to my flat either morning or afternoon as suits you best, when I could show you the bits of the play I have done and go into all these questions. As I shall be away from home on Tuesday, would you very kindly either write to me at 24, Great James Street, Bloomsbury, W.C.I. or ring me up there on Wednesday morning – HOLborn 9156.
Yours very truly,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Elizabeth Haffenden had designed the costumes for Charles Williams’ play Thomas Cranmer of Canterbury, written for the Festival of 1936. She was also to design the costumes for D. L. S.’ second Canterbury drama, The Devil to Pay (see illustrations). She later became well known as a designer of costume for films.
2 See following letter.
3 Laurence Irving (1897–1988) designed the permanent sets in the Chapter House of the Cathedral against which the play was performed. He was the son of H. B. Irving and the grandson of Sir Henry.