The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, Volume 2

by Dorothy L. Sayers

  If the Church wants people to accept the idea that there is neither male nor female, bond nor free, she must really begin by allowing that women have, as the foundation of their special female nature, a share in common human nature – that they can plainly need warmth and convenience in their clothing, comfort in the bus, and an opportunity for intelligence in their work, quite apart from any peculiar “feminine angle” on the matter. One of the best things the war has done is to cause women to be killed as well as men – that at any rate is a human occupation which cannot be denied. And there will not be the same proportion of “surplus women” after this show to embitter relations and confuse statistics.

  You may notice that I have not used the words “their rights”. I don’t believe much in “rights”. I can see only common human needs; and I think that if the whole question has become bitter it is largely because of the indecent position produced by the commercial cult of the idle woman, and the removal of the creative occupations from the home. Any attempt to cope with the post-war economic situation must take these things into account.

  In theory, I believe the Russians have got hold of the right end of the stick about this, though I don’t know how it works there in practice, and I don’t like their totalitarian organization anyhow. In this country, it looks as though the balance of intelligent work for all was being stabilised in – of all unexpected quarters – the Services, especially the Air Force. These girls who do the radio work have to be pretty well as intelligent as the pilots, and are often in nearly as much danger. But they are not doing that work in order to “ape the men”, or to qualify themselves to be more bedworthy, or in order to have a nice hobby, but because the work has to be done and done properly, otherwise we are all in the soup. To have work to do, and know that his work is wanted, is the basic human need – I don’t care whether it’s of man or woman. But we treat the woman as we treat the fighting man –

  It’s ape and slut and job-snatcher and “Polly, you’re a liar”,

  But it’s “Thank-you, Mary Atkins,” when the guns begin to fire.6

  Join up – your country needs you – but don’t suppose that any of the jobs we train you for are going to be permanent. And, in the meantime, after eight hours a day being a bus-conductor, you can surely find time to clean the flat, cook the dinner, and make yourself attractive to your young man – because that’s a woman’s job. You can only be counted as a human being in an emergency, and in addition to being a full-time female.

  I know the whole thing bristles with difficulties, like every other economic “problem”; but it can’t be solved by leaving out all the common human factors.7

  I wanted my friend Miss Byrne8, who feels strongly about the business, to do you an article; but I don’t know whether she will be able to manage it. If not, and you feel that some of these points are worth putting, shall I try to tidy them up into some kind of an article or letter?9 Indeed and indeed, the Church must pull her socks up and introduce a spot of reality into this controversy, for if she will not allow the equal possession of a common human nature, who will?

  Forgive all this splurge and emphasis, but the democratic new order is heading for another nasty cropper over the woman question if it doesn’t look out.

  With again thanks and appreciation of the book,

  Yours sincerely,

  [Dorothy L. Sayers]

  1 See letter to Maurice B. Reckitt, 8 May 1941, note 13.

  2 The reference is: “Such writers as T. S. Eliot, Middleton Murry, Charles Williams, and Dorothy Sayers are listened to because to prophecy they add, in their different manners, the compulsive power of art, and an insight which only the artist can have” (p. 279). To be listed with Middleton Murry cannot have pleased her very much (cf. her letter to Father Herbert Kelly, 24 May 1938), but she was no doubt gratified to be in the rest of the company.

  3 Christendom: A Journal of Christian Sociology, a quarterly edited by Maurice B. Reckitt, Ruth Kenyon, V. A. Demant and P. E. T. Widdrington. The June issue of 1941 (volume 11, No. 42, pp. 104–109) contained a symposium entitled “The Emancipated Woman Comes of Age”. The authors were W. G. Peck, Rosalinde Wilton and J. V. L. Casserley.

  4 The Latin word homo means man in the sense of a human being; vir means man in the sense of a male human being; femina means woman. (The prefix homo-, as in “homosexual”, is derived from Greek and means “same”, “identical”.)

  5 J. V. Langmead Casserley (1909–1978), author of The Christian in Philosophy (Faber and Faber). D. L. S. quotes from his book, The Fate of Modern Culture in The Mind of the Maker, Methuen, p. 7, note 1. He also contributed a volume to the “Signposts” series, Providence and History, 1941, No. 11. In the Symposium, Casserley had said: “The earlier convention conceded to the husband marital rights over his wife.…The new convention has in effect transferred the sexual initiative to the wife, a transfer plainly at war with the physical facts.”

  6 Adaptation of lines by Rudyard Kipling: “Oh, it’s ‘Tommy this an’ Tommy that, an’ Tommy, go away;’ But it’s ‘Thank you, Mister Atkins’ when the band begins to play.” Tommy.

  7 In a draft for a curriculum vitae, undated but drawn up in 1928, D. L. S. set down her views on Women and Marriage: “Consider that chief difficulties in most cases are economic. Extremely keen that all women, married or not, should be able to make money for themselves and take their share in the upkeep of the house. Consider that it will soon be thought as degrading to be ‘kept’ by a husband as ‘kept’ in any other way. Would welcome legislation to abolish husband’s liability for wife’s income-tax, personal debts and other unfair distinctions.” (The MS is in the possession of the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Illinois.)

  8 Muriel St Clare Byrne did contribute to the following issue (Volume 11, No. 44, December 1941, pp. 234–247), entitled “‘Emancipated’ Woman and Vocation. Female or Human?”, an incisive, cogent and factual article, to which J. V. L. Casserley replied briefly (Vol. 12, No. 45, March 1942, pp. 39–40). The same number contained an article by Mary Ryan, “Woman and Catholic Teaching”, pp. 41–43.

  9 The letter was “tidied up” into the article “The-Human-Not-Quite-Human”, first published in Christendom: A Journal of Christian Sociology, vol. xi, no. 43, September 1941, pp. 156–162. It was later included in Unpopular Opinions (Gollancz, 1946), pp. 116–122. See also her article “Are Women Human?”, included in the same volume, pp. 106–115, first given as a paper to a Women’s Society in 1938.

  Public indignation about the broadcasts by P. G. Wodehouse continued. In response the Minister of Information, Duff Cooper, directed that a statement should be made by the B.B.C. This responsibility was entrusted to William Connor on the staff of the Daily Mirror, whose pen name was “Cassandra”. Under this alias, on 15 July, he broadcast a talk which gave great offence to D. L. S. and to others.1 See also her letter to The Daily Telegraph, 7 July 1941.

  [24 Newland Street

  Witham

  Essex]

  TO SIR STEPHEN TALLENTS

  Director of Talks

  Broadcasting House

  London W.I

  15 July 1941

  My dear Sir Stephen,

  In writing to you, I am probably addressing my protest to the wrong person – indeed, I hope I am. When I was at Broadcasting House last month, you received me kindly, and I should like to think you were in no way responsible for tonight’s deplorable broadcast, and that you perhaps deprecate it as much as I do, and as many others must.

  In view of the controversy that has arisen, I can understand that it may have been necessary to make some kind of public allusion to the unhappy affair of P. G. Wodehouse if only to dispel the notion that a popular and wealthy man would receive preferential treatment from authority. But was it necessary that this painful task should be entrusted to a speaker of whom I will say only that he faithfully serves and represents the journal whose name was advertised in the broadcast?

  W7as it necessary that the attack sho
uld be made with such vulgarity, that it should be directed against professional reputation as well as against personal character, that it should be such as to inflict the greatest possible pain upon any friends or relatives who might have had the misfortune to hear it, and that it should be embellished with a nauseating Scriptural parallel which, in the context, in that manner, and from that speaker, was as shocking as a blasphemy?

  That the lightmindedness which we admired, and the money with which we rewarded it, could lead a man to commit treason, whose penalty is death, is a fact grim enough to need little embroidery. And even the most sober statement should have been made only by someone whose standing and reputation set him above even the suspicion of envy, malice, or self-advertisement. If no man of unquestionable integrity could be found to undertake this hangman’s office, that might have raised a doubt whether the thing should be done at all. However weighty the reasons of State which prompted it, it would have been better left undone than done like this. It was done without dignity, done without decency, and probably so done as to defeat its own object; since nothing so moves men to the condonation of crime as the spectacle of a vindictive judge, whose relish in pronouncing sentence seems sharpened by personal spite.

  I have never heard anything like this from the B.B.C. before; I hope I never shall again. It was as ugly a thing as ever was made in Germany.

  Yours faithfully,

  [Dorothy L. Sayers]

  Sir Stephen Tallents replied on 17 July stating officially that the broadcast was given under the direction of the Ministry of Information, but in his own handwriting he added the following note:

  Since we have taken tea together I do not hesitate to add privately that this script was strongly objected to by all concerned at the B.B.C. The Minister ordered it, notwithstanding, to be broadcast. Your letter puts admirably, if all too temperately, what I felt about it. I should add only the point that it seemed to me contrary to the English tradition to abuse or condemn a man who could in no real sense answer. A disgusting business.

  In the meantime D. L. S. had written also to the Public Relations Officer of the B.B.C.

  1 Four years later George Orwell wrote an article “In Defence of P. G. Wodehouse”. First published in The Windmill in 1945, it was reprinted in Critical Essays, Seeker and Warburg, 1946, pp. 156–169.

  [24 Newland Street

  Witham

  Essex]

  16 July 1941

  Sir,

  Mr. P. G. Wodehouse

  I do not know Mr. Wodehouse. I deplore that he should have become the tool of enemy propaganda, and I believe that his conduct should be the subject of enquiry by a legal tribunal when he is in a position to explain and, if possible, defend it.

  Nevertheless, I feel that “Cassandra’s” broadcast offends both justice and decency.

  It appears to me to be a violation of the principles of justice that a man who cannot at present reply, and who may in the future have to appear before a judicial body, should in the meantime be attacked by an anonymous speaker, and that the B.B.C. should cooperate to give such an attack the widest possible publicity.

  Furthermore, the terms of the broadcast must have struck many listeners as being in the worst possible taste. A compound of sneers and sanctimony, it descended almost to the Nazis’ own level, and left a sense of shame that public opinion should be so vulgarly misrepresented.

  If in the national interest it is thought advisable to express condemnation of the actions of one of our countrymen in enemy hands, let it be done as forcefully as necessary but with dignity by some responsible (and not anonymous) speaker.

  I do not flatter myself that this letter from an obscure citizen will carry any special weight, but you will doubtless receive many others in similar strain, and I write in the hope that their cumulative effect may assist you to assess national opinion.

  Yours faithfully,

  [Dorothy L. Sayers]

  [24 Newland Street

  Witham

  Essex]

  TO THE REV. J. G. WILLIAMS

  17 July 1941

  Dear Mr. Williams,

  Thank you so much for your letter. I enjoyed doing the talks and am very glad you were pleased with them. I expect they were rather stiff going for the majority, but my own feeling is that it may be quite as well to let people exercise their brains a bit; so many of them have the idea that the “simple gospel” is something that anybody can understand and put into practice without having to think twice about it.

  I had a number of letters informing me that it was not possible for God to die and a number, of course, of the usual objectors furnished with texts to prove that Christ was not God. Also the usual collection of tracts and lunatics. I don’t think any letters came from the Forces, but then I don’t think the Forces have very much time to write letters. The Resurrection produced two protests – one accusing me of gross materialism and the other of being a Christian Scientist; so I think I must have about hit the happy medium.

  What I have received is a number of thoughtful and appreciative letters asking whether my talks were going to be printed as they would like to study them. I have replied to this that it depends on what happens to the Series as a whole.1 Do you think it likely that anything could be done about this? And would they make a really coherent exposition of the creed if they were all published together? I have a feeling that my line of exposition was probably a good deal more rigid and dogmatic than any of the others and that the Series might be too much of a patchwork to make a study-book.

  I spent Tuesday night up to one in the morning writing a solemn protest against that atrocious broadcast about P. G. Wodehouse. Did you ever hear anything more indecent? No doubt something had to be said about him, but why they should have chosen the most notorious contributor of the most notorious trash paper to deliver a talk, so vulgar and so envenomed by spite, passes my comprehension. We were all flabbergasted. One usually accuses the B.B.C. of too much public-school gentility, but this came straight out of the gutter. As for the nauseating scriptural parallel, it turned my stomach. I hope that some of you people in the Religious Department have had something to say about it.

  Yours very sincerely,

  [Dorothy L. Sayers]

  1 The talks on the Nicene Creed were not published.

  24 Newland Street

  Witham

  Essex

  TO MAURICE B. RECKITT

  22 July 1941

  Dear Mr Reckitt,

  I find that Miss Byrne is doing her article after all. I must not, therefore, take her place – particularly as the remarks which I quoted to Fr McLaughlin, and which caused him to suggest the writing of an article for Christendom, were her remarks in the first place.

  However, since you seem to think you would like to have something from me on the subject, I am elaborating some of the more frivolous and plain-spoken portions of my letter to you and finishing up the “Martha-and-Mary” passage, so as to produce a more or less coherent piece of rhetoric, which, if you have the space and inclination, could appear in addition to Miss Byrne’s article, or in a subsequent number. I have left it to her to deal with the more practical aspects of the subject, on which she is far better qualified, both by training and experience, to speak than I am.

  I do feel very strongly that this whole question is one with which the Church ought to deal, and deal honestly. Her past record is bad, and is responsible for a very great amount of anti-clerical feeling among educated and intelligent people, both men and women. The signs of the times suggest that after the War the issue will become an acute one, violently disputed; and unless the Church will face the fundamental issue, she will only make a surface contribution to the question, and bring herself into still further disrepute. I use that word quite advisedly.

  If you think my article unsuited for the chaste pages of Christendom, I will take it away and place it elsewhere. But I would rather it appeared in a specifically Christian organ than that it should arrive, as it were, from out
side, and be hailed as “another attack upon the Church”. Attacks upon the church are, I think, better delivered from inside, for obvious reasons.

  Oh, no! don’t imagine that in my careless youth I really saw that Socialism was Capitalism turned inside out! I only, as I said, was faintly aware of a bad smell. Or rather, I was like a cousin1 of mine, who took an odd, instinctive dislike to her bedroom in a particular house. She said she never felt comfortable in it, and suffered from peculiarly vivid and disagreeable nightmares. Eventually (upon some occasion or other) a technical expert arrived upon the premises, whereupon: “DRAINS!” said he in a voice of authority; and revealed an escape of odourless sewer-gas directly below her bedroom window. She accepted this explanation as intellectually satisfactory; and it proved, in fact, to be correct. In much the same way, I accept the “economic heresy” as the fons et origo2 of my early instinctive dislike. But I could not have discovered it for myself.

  G. K. Chesterton was a grand person – quite extraordinarily sound and shrewd about most things. Again and again I discover how right he was about literature and theology. But he seems never to have grasped that there was more than one kind of woman in the world: at any rate, there is only one kind of woman in his novels. But that is a common weakness among male writers – the correlative of the weakness of the female writer for whom every man is Edward Fairfax Rochester.3 These arc the dream-men and the dream-women, begotten by Fantasy upon Desire, and tell us more about the limitations of their creators than they do about the sexes they are supposed to typify.