The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Vol. 1
Page 15
On the other hand, I agree with you that it is going to be far easier for you to study the humanities on your own than mathematics on your own – from the purely practical point of view, that is. If it is possible to keep both sides of the thing working together for a little longer, the time will – or should – shortly arrive when you will know without question which is the right side for you to come out on.
There is also, of course, the very mundane question, whether there is better opportunity for getting a job in the one subject or the other. This is a particularly important point if you should turn out not to be creative. I should not advise anyone to “go in for literature” if he is not to some extent creative.
I doubt whether I shall be able to see Mr Cosgrove in Town this week; but he shall be written to, at any rate.
Thank you very much for your Christmas present, which is very pretty and will come in most useful.
With love and best wishes,
Mother
1 Such as, for example A. R. Peacocke, Creation and the World of Science: The Bampton Lectures, 1978 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979).
On 6 January 1939 the Manchester Guardian published an item under “Our London Correspondence Column” taking D. L. S. to task for using the phrase “words are actually a kind of high explosive” in the course of a talk she gave at a Conference of Educational Associations on the careless and inaccurate use of English in newspapers. This was followed on 13 January by a paragraph entitled “She ought to know better”. D. L. S. replied as follows:
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO THE EDITOR OF THE GUARDIAN
15 January 1939
Dear Sir,
The writer of the paragraph “She Ought to Know Better” in your issue of January 13th. seems to be a little confused in his mind. There is nothing whatever to prevent one from saying “Words are actually a kind of high explosive”. The “kind” in question is, of course, a mental kind, and the whole expression figurative. The word “actually” means “in actual fact; really” (see O.E.D.),1 and its antonym is “supposedly”.
Similarly, one may say, if one is so minded, “Religion is actually a kind of opiate” – the implication being, “and not, as you seem to suppose, a valuable mental stimulant”.
What one may not say is: “Words are literally trinitrotoluol” or, “Religion is literally morphia”. These expressions would be incorrect, since the word “literally” specifically excludes a figurative interpretation, as the word “actually” does not, even where the metaphorical nature of the phrase is not further pointed by the use of the words “a kind of”.
Yours faithfully,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Oxford English Dictionary.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO VAL GIELGUD
16 January 1939
Dear Val Gielgud,
Thank you ever so much for your letter; I am so glad you enjoyed working on the show. I shall be delighted to come some time to talk over fresh plans. At present I have no engagements to take me to Town until the 25th of this month when we start rehearsals for the Zeal tour. I shall be free all day on Friday the 27th and the following week I shall be there every day, though I expect lunch time will be an affair of a hasty chop in Baker Street between the morning and afternoon calls. However, I expect we can fix up something if you are free at any time during that period.
After I had written to you I received a great bunch of letters forwarded by the B.B.C., all favourable; I am having some of these copied for American propaganda, so that if you would like to see them they will be available. The half-wits and hysterics seem to have left me alone and concentrated on you, praise God!
Yours very sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO VAL GIELGUD
20 January 1939
Dear Val Gielgud,
Many thanks for your letter; I shall be delighted to lunch with you one day during my rehearsal; shall we say Wednesday, if that would suit you? We usually finish rehearsal about one o’clock. We shall be at the Portman Arms in Baker Street, so if you could suggest a meeting-place at some point between there and Langham Place it would be easier for me than getting down to Soho. How about Pagani’s in Great Portland Street? Perhaps I should warn you that I am a little apt in the heat of rehearsal to forget other engagements, so that it might be as well if your secretary would kindly send me a reminding postcard to reach me at Great James Street on that morning!
People are still writing about He That Should Come, and I have now had one disgruntled letter from an agitated old lady; but as she is the only one out of about thirty-three, I think I may take it that the protests represent no more than three per cent of the listening population.
Looking forward to seeing you,
Yours very sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO G. C. PIPER1
24 January 1939
My dear Sir,
Nothing would induce me to “set down my religious beliefs and convictions”. Setting down what I understand to be the Church’s beliefs and convictions is a different matter; but in any case the place for the novelist is not in the pulpit, and if anybody asked me to preach in St. Martin-in-the-Fields, I should promptly refuse.2
Yours faithfully,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Of Messrs Skeffington and Son, Ltd., Publishers.
2 But see her letter to Muriel St Clare Byrne, 11 February 1942, in which she says that she has just arrived from delivering a sermon in St Martin-in-the-Fields!
A. H. Sleight, Editor of Modern Languages, the journal published by the Modern Language Association, of which D. L. S. was President, asked her to let him have a copy of her Presidential Address in a form in which she would wish it to appear in the journal. She replied:
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO A. H. SLEIGHT
24 January 1939
My dear Sir,
I weep for you, the Walrus said, I deeply sympathise,1 but I’m afraid you have about as much chance of getting that address as a snowball in Hades!
I start rehearsals tomorrow for the Spring Tour of Zeal of Thy House, which opens at Wimbledon on February 6th. As soon as that is off my mind, I shall have to work full-time on my new play for Canterbury, which is already badly in arrears. I simply cannot spare the time to do all over again a job that is done and dismissed from my mind. I am afraid you will have to fall back on the Times report,2 which is probably more or less accurate so far as it goes.
Speaking in public is one thing, and the reading of papers is another. The extraordinary modern habit of writing out public speeches in extenso and reading them from the platform accounts for the dreary level to which public speaking has fallen, and also for the badness and slackness of present-day reporting. Upon my soul, I don’t know why speeches should be delivered at all, if they are to consist of written papers, which might just as well be multigraphed and handed round, to the great saving of the audience’s time and convenience. To save my life, I couldn’t recapture the rhythm of the spoken word – and as for turning the thing into a printed essay, it would need a week’s work.
I’m sorry – but things should be reported as spoken, or left to the happy oblivion that enfolds – thank God! – the ephemeral utterances of the human voice.
I don’t blame you for not having the stuff reported. The same thing happens continually. Newspaper-men besiege me to hand them speeches before they are delivered, and flatly refuse to believe that the “speech” is represented by a dozen headings on a half-sheet of paper. Such are the times we live in.
Yours sympathetically,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Quotation from Lewis Carroll, Throu
gh the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.
2 In the issue of March 1939 of Modern Languages, p. 7, the editor wrote: “Our readers will notice the omission of the Presidential address from this number, but Miss Sayers spoke from notes only, and owing to the pressure of work in attending rehearsals of her plays at Wimbledon and Canterbury, and in fulfilling similar demands upon her energies, our new President has not been able to send us the full written address. We hope, however, to include the address in the June number but cannot be certain of doing so.” Alas, the hope was not fulfilled. The address, given on 5 January 1939 and entitled “The Dictatorship of Words”, was reported in The Times of the following day, p. 7. She took the opportunity to attack propaganda, which had made possible “Germany’s bloodless conquest in Austria and the Sudetenland”, and expressed her opposition to the muzzling of the Press.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO THE BISHOP OF NOTTINGHAM1
25 January 1939
Dear Lord Bishop,
I do not quite know what to say to your suggestion. I have tried for various reasons – as, that speaking is not a writer’s job, that religious instruction is not my job, that such activities interfere with my work and that my perpetual appearance in the pulpit will only detract from the force of whatever I might say about Christianity – to get out of invitations to speak on any subject connected with religion. Speaking to the clergy is, however, rather a different proposition from speaking to the “Youth of this Country”.2 I suppose if the laity do not sometimes tell the clergy what it is they would like to hear from them, they cannot blame the clergy for being perplexed about the response of the laity, in their ministrations. I think, perhaps, I had better say I will come on the strict understanding that I am not required to hold forth about “What God means to me” or “Spiritual Communion with the Unseen” or “Avenues of Prayer” or anything of that kind. I shall be happy to tell you at some length and with some force a number of extraordinary ideas which anti-Christians, un-Christians and semi-Christians have contrived to get into their heads, and possibly suggestions of a few ways of countering the prevalent impression that the Christian religion is unreal, depressing and fit only for very stupid people. The latter are sentiments which I should happily oppose even if I were a Mohammedan or a worshipper of Odin. Perhaps I can take the misconceptions before lunch and the suggestions for combating them after lunch when we are refreshed and put into good spirits.
Yours very sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 The Rt Rev. Neville S. Talbot, of the Roman Catholic diocese.
2 See her talk to the Presbyterean Fellowship of Youth “Worship in the Anglican Church”, published in Seven: An Anglo-American Literary Review, vol. 12, 1995, pp. 31–48
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO LADY FLORENCE CECIL
8 February 1939
Dear Lady Florence,
Many thanks for your letter. I do not know that I had any particular solution in mind when I wrote the first chapter of Double Death1. The idea is that each writer should lay down a certain number of clues for the other writers to elucidate and add to so as to arrive at some sort of logical solution to the problem. Actually, I believe the writers who carried on after myself and Mr. Crofts2 did not pay very much attention to the logical development of the detection.
We played this game once before in The Floating Admiral3 and there the writers were all members of the Detection Club and, therefore, were conscientious about sticking to the facts supplied to them; but this particular bunch did not, I think, take their responsibilities so seriously! I am afraid in the end the result was rather disappointing.
I am hoping to get on with another Peter story4 before long, but I have been exceedingly busy just lately with theatrical work.
With kindest regards,
Yours very sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 Double Death: A Murder Story, by Dorothy L. Sayers, Freeman Wills Crofts, Valentine Williams, F. Tennyson Jesse, Anthony Armstrong, David Hume (Gollancz, 19 January 1939). D. L. S. wrote Part I, “The Riddle of the Poisoned Nurse”, pp. 21–61.
2 Freeman Wills Crofts (1879–1957).
3 By G. K. Chesterton, Dorothy L. Sayers, V. L. Whitechurch, G. D. H. and M. Cole, Henry Wade, Agatha Christie, John Rhode, Milward Kennedy, Ronald A. Knox, F. Wills Crofts, Edgar Jepson, Clemence Dane and Anthony Berkeley; published by Hodder and Stoughton, 2 December 1931.
4 This may refer to Thrones, Dominations.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO THE BISHOP OF NOTTINGHAM
7 March 1939
Dear Lord Bishop,
Alas, too well do I know that keen parson with the glowing eye! He turned up last at Oxford, and I meet him continually in other parts of the country; his influence is mesmeric, one shrivels beneath the glance and only escapes by murmuring that if he will write one will give him an answer after consulting one’s engagement book!
Since I shall be coming to Nottingham in any case, I don’t mind doing a second job while I am there; but you are right in assuming that I refuse to be a Christian evangelist. I could not attempt to “kindle the younger generation with the Gospel”, the most I could do would be to suggest to them that the Christian Faith is a logical explanation of the Universe well worth their attention, and neither an irrational myth nor a system of ethics which will stand by itself when the dogmatic foundation has been removed from beneath it. The only point which I am at pains to hammer home to people is that the Christian belief is not a kind of intellectual weakness for which any reasonable person should feel bound to apologise. Further than this I am not inclined to go on the lecture platform; the only medium in which I am fitted to communicate enthusiasm is the novel or the stage. If you do not mind this somewhat chilly approach to the subject, I will tackle the young people, only I do hope that this precedent will not set in motion an interminable procession of hypnotic parsons, because after all one has one’s daily work to do.
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO REV. A. R. JAMES
10 March 1939
Dear Mr. James,
Many thanks for your letter; I am afraid Good Friday is quite an impossible date for me to come to Shanklin1 – and besides, you know I am really a novelist and dramatist and not a Christian evangelist. In fact, I think that too much direct preaching from people in my position does more harm than good in some ways. I mean, that any imaginative treatment of the Christian faith comes with less force from anybody who has become an official apologist.
I am sorry, but not surprised to hear of the prevalence of paganism in Shanklin; as a matter of fact nine people out of ten in this country are ignorant heathens. I do not so much mind the heathendom, but the ignorance is really alarming. Nevertheless, I feel that the business of writers like myself is primarily to show rather than to exhort.
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 On the Isle of Wight.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO DOROTHY ROWE
? March 1939
… You can’t expect decent work, if somebody has to sit down there and then [and] bung it off, regardless of whether he’s had time to think of either theme or plot. I told Mr. Bartlett that whether the proposition attracted me or not would chiefly depend on whether I happened to have something I really wanted to say in that form, and I’ll swear that’s the only way to get an honest play written. So one really ought to be able to allow three months for brooding and three months for hatching. It’s not an easy proposition: one set, small cast, lashings of females, vigorous action, clearly-drawn characters that don’t demand enormous technical range in the performance, and a theme equally important a
nd comprehensible to the rustics of Little-Doddering-under-the-Wallop and the sophisticated ladies and gentlemen of Highbrow-End Garden City.
Meanwhile, I am struggling with Acts 2 and 3 of Faustus. Having invented a tender, wise, unworldly and finely symbolical Pope for dramatic technological purposes, and written him a tender, wise etc. speech, I was fool enough to consult the Encyclopaedia in an idle way to see who the contemporary Pope actually was. He turns out to have been the notorious Alexander VI – the most flagrantly vicious and corrupt Borgia that ever defiled a family or the Vatican. This seemed a little too thick – I mean, symbolism is all very well, but nobody could accept Alexander VI as a symbol of anything but putrefaction. I shall have to make it Julius II, and turn the battle of Pavia into the Sack of Rome. Oh, dear!
Yours distractedly,
[D. L.]
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]