The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers. Vol. 1
Page 32
12 An echo of the phrase attributed to the celebrated Dr Spooner: “a half-warmed fish”, by which he meant “a half-formed wish”.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO THE EDITOR
The Sower1
21 April 1941
Dear Sir,
CHRIST CARPENTER
I am greatly obliged to you for sending me the April number of The Sower, with its reference to my suggestion (made in an address at Brighton)2 that a church might at some time be dedicated to “Christ Carpenter”.
I particularly welcome the emphasis you lay upon “the kind of work which is not just ‘a job’ … but is indistinguishable from play, an end in itself, like the Holy Mass”. This sentence, in fact, summarises the argument of my address, which was directed to show that the “economic” concept of work adopted alike by the representatives of Capital and Labour was corrupt, unchristian, and contrary to the true needs and nature of Man. The Divine joy in creation, which Man should inherit in virtue of his participation in the image of the Godhead, has been largely destroyed, persisting today almost alone among artists, skilled craftsmen, and members of the learned professions; and it is this loss of “the sense of a Divine vocation” in “Man’s daily work” which lies at the root of our social and economic corruptions. In a letter to The Catholic Herald (18 April) I have briefly stated the theological grounds for my attitude; I am also taking the liberty of sending you a copy of the address itself, in the hope that you may find time to glance at it.
I am most anxious that nothing said by me should be supposed to commit me (still less, by implication, the Church of England) to the kind of political significance which has so unfortunately become attached to the word “Worker”. In particular, the attempt to draw a distinction between manual and mental labour is disastrous, and calculated to make the reintegration of Man and Society impossible. As for its theological corollaries – the horrid suggestion that the Divine Person of Christ should be used as a kind of emblem in a class warfare, or should be so sub-divided as to effect a virtual opposition between the Galilean Workman and the Eternal Logos – I can only call them so blasphemous and so heretical as to shock any Christian conscience. Any devotion to “Christ Worker” which starts from a limited political and economic concept of Work is unsound. A true devotion must find its theological basis in that Divine Energy “by Whom all things were made”, Who knows no necessity to work except His own delight in creation, and after Whose image and likeness Man’s proper nature is made.
Yours faithfully,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 No periodical of this name has been traced. It may have been a church magazine. The address of the editor was 763 Coventry Road, Birmingham.
2 Entitled “Work and Vocation”, given at the Dome, Brighton, 8 March 1941; reprinted in part as “Vocation in Work” in A Christian Basis for the Post-War World (Student Christian Movement Press, May 1942) and as “A Plea for Vocation in Work” in Bulletins from Britain (New York, 103, 19 August 1942, pp. 7 10). Later entitled “Why Work?”, it was included in Creed or Chaos?, Methuen 1947, pp. 47–64.
24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex
TO HER SON
7 May 1941
Dear John,
I have been galloping round the country addressing meetings, carrying your letter with me in the hope of getting it answered, but I never seemed to get a moment for thinking in.
I’m glad you find the book1 interesting. I think your first difficulty is due to your having extended the analogy beyond its terms of reference. It applies to “the mind of the artist engaged in an act of creation”, and (for the purposes of the book) is restricted to that and nothing else – i.e., it doesn’t set out to deal at all with the personality of the artist.
It could, of course, be used so as to apply to that. In that case “the Father” would be what one might call the “timeless self”, comprising the whole of the man’s existence, “the end in the beginning” – the permanent or eternal selfhood so to speak. “The Son” would be the whole of the self as expressed in action (thought, word, deed, etc.) including the manifestation in space and time, from beginning to end. (This is all we ever see or know directly of the personality – “the Father can only be known by the Son”.) “The Ghost” would be the man’s self-awareness and other men’s awareness of him, including the power of his personality exercised in history. So that there is no “trinity behind the personality” – the trinity is the personality.
I didn’t use this particular image because it is more involved and difficult than the more restricted image. Also, when it came to including the creative work of the personality, one would have to define and display it in so many different and vague senses; the ordinary man’s personality is a rather feeble “image of the Creator”, whereas that of the-artist-creating, though more restricted, is more definite and satisfactory.
Rather similarly, the difficulty about God. It’s not quite enough, theologically, to say that God “has will” – He is will, just as He is beauty, goodness, justice and so forth. The theologian’s phrase is that “God is all that He has”. It is true that God’s will always issues in creation – He is creativeness. That is what is meant when people say that “God’s creation is necessary to Him” – so it is: though not necessarily this or any particular creation. Thus one may take “the Resurrection of the Body” in the widest possible sense – not applying it merely to the power of the creature to remake its own form, but to the continual power and will of the Son to create, and manifest Himself in Form. I thought of writing a chapter on this, but the book was too long already. This is God’s experience: but the Father cannot experience evil; the Son experiences it – or the results of it – in His manifestation by continually transforming it into good.
I hope this makes things a little clearer. Of course one can’t limit God’s Trinity to this one creation; why should one? Even the human creator isn’t limited to a single work – not even to a single work at a time, though he doesn’t enjoy God’s infinite freedom in this respect. Since, however, we have no knowledge or experience of any creation but this one, we cannot very usefully argue about others.
I have been trying to drive the thing about “the integrity of the work” into the heads of the multitude – all very difficult. They always want the economic system altered before they begin to think what they want it altered to or for, and consequently, they end with exactly the same economic tyranny, rather differently administered. Except, of course, the pure mystagogues, who assume that as soon as control of the means of production passes into the hands of the workers, the whole of society will automatically become, not only selfless and virtuous but endowed with intellectual discrimination and impeccable artistic taste. This seems a large assumption! What they expect is the automatic emergence of Sinless Man – which, as certain of their own psychologists have said, is, to say the least of it, unlikely.
Hope you will have a good term,2 and harvest like anything when the time comes along –
Much love,
D. L. S.
1 The Mind of the Maker. It is evident that she sent him the typescript or a proof copy since the book was not published until July of that year.
2 John Anthony was still at Malvern College, aged 17.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO MAURICE B. RECKITT1
8 May 1941
Dear Mr. Reckitt,
Thank you very much for your letter and for the enclosure from Philip Mairet2. What he says is very valuable; in particular I welcome the realism that suggests we may be in for a “war period”. Have you noticed the curious way in which we have come to talk about peace as a “normal” condition – not in the same sense in which we speak of “normal eyesight” (a standard generally desirable but seldom met with, by which we measure our individual defects) or as we might speak of Christ as “the norm of
humanity”, but as though it were a usual condition, into which we may expect the world to relax automatically when some exceptional pressure is removed? Historically, such a condition of world-wide peace has, I suppose, never been experienced; but because we are determined to look on war as an exception to the common run of things, we adjust ourselves badly to war conditions. Admittedly, this is a very large, alarming and unpleasant war, and it’s difficult to “be ordinary” when one’s liable to have bombs dropped on one at any moment, – nor, of course, do we want “Business As Usual”; but I can’t help thinking that if we had faced the prospect of war as one of the things that do happen, instead of assuring each other that it was “unthinkable”, we should have been more on the spot to prevent it from coming or to grapple with it when it came. When one looks at the flimsy houses and the glass palaces that we built in the inter-War years, it seems as though our whole way of life had been deliberately out of touch with a reality that included the likelihood of aerial bombardment. But if one says that to people, they reply that to take precautions against war is to accept and acquiesce in the idea of war, and so encourage it – though I notice they don’t think that the putting of locks on the doors and safes in banks is a wicked acquiescence in the idea of burglary. I believe at the back of their minds they are superstitious about it – like the man who refuses to make his will because he doesn’t like thinking about death, and feels he may bring it on by taking notice of it. But there it is; to be as realistic as the people who peppered the country with border keeps is to “admit that war is normal”. It seems to me just as normal as any other sin and wickedness. What’s the good of saying “we ought to have progressed beyond the ideas of the Middle Ages” when, as a matter of brutal fact, we have not done any such thing so far as war is concerned. Progress (if there is such a thing) doesn’t come all of a piece and all along the line – it happens in bursts, and sometimes we go back and have to start again. We wash more than the seventeenth century, but less than ancient Rome; we are kinder to some animals than we used to be, and the manners of village children have improved; but Spaniards are cruel to mules and Germans to Jews, and England is the only country that needs a N.S.P.C.C.3 – so where are you?…
Goodness knows if we shall be able to do anything with the G.C.W.4 The trouble is that we include a number of pious scribblers, but not nearly enough real writers. But we shall see. It’s helpful to know that the N.E.W.5 can offer us a platform – I only hope the paper shortage won’t drive us all out of business!
Talking of writers, in an article the other day in World Review6 I expressed the opinion that the leading Christian thinkers were writing about world-events with a depth and insight which left the secular builders of the New Jerusalem standing. (Not that that’s saying a great deal, for the Utopians’ combination of shallowness with wishful thinking doesn’t take much beating.) Now comes John Gloag,7 with the sneering question: “Leading Christian thinkers? Who are they?” I must give him an answer, and there are a number of names I’d like to mention. But, for confirmation and my better instruction, who should you say were the people who really had the surest grasp of fundamentals in “this present crisis”? The real high-level of Christian thinking? I’d like to hand him a list of about a dozen – including Romans and foreigners, on whom I’m rather weak. Actually, I’m weak on the subject altogether; I only know that when, in my desultory reading, I get hold of a Christian commentator – whether it’s Maritain8 or Demant9 or Niebuhr10 or Berdyaev11 or yourself – he seems to be a damn sight closer to reality than the Human-Perfectibilitarians or the Scientific-Progressives or the people who invoke the Great God Economic-Planning, and the Sinless Proletariat.12
Meanwhile, in my efforts to carry out Philip Mairet’s ideas about war literature, I have produced a curious book called The Mind of the Maker – a sort of exercise in Applied Theology. Demant thinks well of it, so I hope there’s something in it. I’ll see that the N.E.W. gets a review copy and will hope, as they say, for “favourable consideration”. I shall certainly read your autobiography.13
Fr. McLaughlin is away at the moment. I shall tackle him about the G.C.W. as soon as he returns. I’m glad you approve our sub-committee – it seemed the only idea which held out a reasonable hope of getting anything done.
I heard you had been ill. I hope you are better now. I was sorry not to meet you at Malvern – but you had, on the whole, a happy escape.
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
P.S. I return Mairet’s letter.
1 See letter to him, dated 21 February 1940, note.
2 Philip Mairet (1886–1975), to whom T. S. Eliot dedicated Notes Towards a Definition of Culture. The editor of The New English Weekly from 1934 to 1949, he was one of the contributors to The Church Looks Ahead. (See letter to Val Gielgud, 24 February 1941, note 1.)
3 National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
4 Guild of Catholic Writers, affiliated to the Church Social Action Group (of which the Rev. Patrick McLaughlin, later associated with the Society of St Anne, Soho, was appointed Secretary). See also letter to Patrick McLaughlin, 28 August 1940.
5 The New English Weekly.
6 “The Church in the New Age”, World Review, March 1941, pp. 11–15. It is preceded by the following introduction by the editor, Edward Hulton: “An uncompromising statement on the Church’s function in the community by a distinguished laywoman who is more widely known as the creator of Lord Peter Wimsey. Her outspoken utterances on the Church’s attitude towards morality at a recent ecclesiastical conference [Malvern] led to bitter newspaper controversy.” In her article D. L. S. makes many of the same points as in her paper for Malvern.
7 In World Review, May 1941, under “Correspondence Cross-Section”, p. 78, John Gloag (1896–1981), novelist and author of works on architecture and design, wrote: “I have read with interest and perplexity the article by Dorothy Sayers. In the one paragraph in which she is specific, she mentions ‘the best Christian thinkers’ and states that they are ‘writing and speaking of world events with an insight and profundity’. Who are they?”
8 Jacques Maritain (1882–1973). French philosopher, who opposed Bergson; author of Humanisme Intégral (1936), tr. M. R. A. Adamson, True Humanism (1938), De la philosophic chrétienne (1933), Science et la sagesse (1935).
9 See letter to V. A. Demant, 4 April 1941, note 1.
10 Ronald (Reinhold) Niebuhr (1892–1971), American theologian. His Beyond Tragedy was published in 1937.
11 Nicholas Berdyaev (1874–1948), Russian philosopher, who championed a return to religious values. Author of The Meaning of History (tr. G. Reavey, 1936); Solitude and Society (tr. idem, 1938).
12 Having received suggestions from M. B. Reckitt. D. L. S. wrote the letter which follows.
13 As It Happened: An Autobiography, Dent, 1941.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
[TO THE EDITOR OF WORLD REVIEW]
No date1
Mr John Gloag asks for the names of some leaders of Christian thought who interpret world events with depth and insight. Here are a few: Jacques Maritain, Nicolas Berdyaev, V. A. Demant, Reinhold Niebuhr, William Temple, Christopher Dawson,2 E. L. Watkin,3 Charles Williams, T. S. Eliot, and that dynamic, if less strictly intellectual personality, Karl Barth. Perhaps these will do to begin with. If he desires to pursue his studies further, I shall be happy to present him with a further selection.
Dorothy L. Sayers
1 Published in World Review, July 1941, under “Correspondence Cross-Section”, p. 78. The same issue published her article, “How Free is the Press?”, pp. 19–24, later published in Unpopular Opinions.
2 See here, note 18.
3 Ernest Lucas Watkin (1876–1951).
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO THE RT REV. NEVILLE TALBOT
Bishop of Nottingham
12 May 1941
; My Dear Lord Bishop,
Thank you very much indeed for your letter. I am struggling with the six talks on God the Son and am appalled by discovering how much technical knowledge of theological terms is required before the average uninstructed Christian – much more Heathen – can begin to understand what the Creed is supposed to be about. I am particularly embarrassed while dealing with the clauses about the Incarnation, by the fact that “for us men and for our salvation” demands a preliminary instruction on the nature of man and the nature of sin, which I can’t possibly squeeze into a ten minute talk, which has to deal at the same time with “coming down from Heaven” the “Virgin Birth” and the perfect Manhood. The people who made the Creed were not faced with the preconceptions of the modern man, to whom the whole concept of sin is unfamiliar and unconvincing; they could rely on people taking it for granted that whatever man was he wasn’t what he should be. I am relying on your opening talks to hammer the idea of sinfulness into the listener’s head – this is where it properly belongs.1 I shall have to say something about it I suppose, bearing in mind that one cannot count upon one’s hearers having followed the whole series of talks, but I shall only touch on the subject lightly.
As soon as I have got this talk done I will try and let you have a copy. I am taking the line that my business is to explain as well as I can what the clauses of the Creed actually mean, rather than to exhort people to belief. I don’t see how they can believe in a thing which is so much unintelligible abracadabra to them. This seems to me the justification for a strong emphasis upon “doctrine”. After all, if people are to be exhorted to hold the Catholic Faith, it is what G. K. Chesterton calls “an intellectual convenience”2 for them to know what the Catholic Faith is. …
1 The Bishop replied that he had only “rather incidentally” referred to sin.