The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers Vol II: 1937-1943: From Novelist to Playwright
Page 41
In the midst of all this agitation, I have finished the fifth play.2 They are coming out fairly well, but not one bit Children’s-Hour. Judas is shaping rather nicely, I think; and Matthew is a poppet. He is so common and so sweet. Dr. Welch is deeply in love with Matthew. Eric Fenn apparently had a qualm, because he didn’t like to think that a gospel should be named after a person so vulgar and illiterate, and began mumbling about the “Fragment of Papias”.3 Dr. Welch, however, said strong-mindedly, “Never mind that qualm, old boy! Matthew is a real live person”. I said (over the ‘phone to Welch) that I thought it was rather rubbish to say that a person couldn’t have a Gospel named after him on account of his commonness – and that anyhow Matthew was a tax-collector, and they were the lowest of the low – like rotten little Vichy officials putting the screw on their own countrymen for the benefit of the Nazis – and one couldn’t get over that, could one? I think Val will like Matthew; he will be a nice change from the dignified and refined stage-peasant who always haunts religious plays.4 Matthew comes into the fourth play mostly, but I’ve managed to squeeze a little fun out of him in the fifth. He is a landsman (he would be, of course) and doesn’t at all like being in a storm on the Lake of Galilee, with water sloshing into the boat and people walking on the water at him, poor lamb! I am getting quite fond of the disciples. And, by the way, I have the feeling of “guessing right” about Judas, because the things seem to be fitting in – you know how they do. The only thing that still bothers me is the thirty pieces of silver. They bother everybody. But I daresay it will all come out in the wash.…
Yours rather irritable but still going strong,
With love,
D. L. S.
1 An echo of the Diary of Samuel Pepys, who ended several of his entries: “I threw my boots at her [his wife] and so to bed”.
2 “The Bread of Heaven”.
3 Papias (c. 60–130), Bishop of Hierapolis, credited with fragments on the origin of the Gospel of St Matthew by Irenacus and Euscbius.
4 The dialogue between Matthew and Philip in Scene 1 of the fourth play, “The Heirs to the Kingdom”, was read aloud to journalists at the press conference on 10 December. Reported sensationally, it caused an uproar.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO MAURICE B. RECKITT
19 November 1941
Dear Mr Reckitt,
Many thanks for your letter and for the proofs of Miss Byrne’s article.1
The origin of the latter was really that I mentioned to Fr McLaughlin (on the way to Malvern) that Miss Byrne felt very strongly that unless, in the various plans for a Christian Social Order, the Church was ready to face the difficulty about the status of women, there would be no chance of any real improvement, since the continued existence of an exploited class exploiting the exploiters would hamper any efforts towards a stable economic situation. In consequence of this, Fr McLaughlin suggested that she should contibute something towards the forthcoming discussion in Christendom. Unhappily, when the first articles on the subject appeared, it was clear that, while Miss Kenyon had not, perhaps, precisely shirked the issue, she had so framed the question as to allow of its being shirked. Worse still, both Peck and Casserley – particularly the latter – had profited by this loophole to introduce both the revolting vulgarities and the factual inaccuracies that usually disfigure these discussions.
One really cannot allow such things to pass, lest one should seem to admit them by default.
There is, of course, every reason to distinguish what are, properly speaking, “feminine functions”. The fundamental assumption, however, that has to be attacked is the unexamined dogma that this functionalism extends to the whole of life, and that they are the most important disjunction of human activities. For example: the domestic function of a cat, quâ cat, is to catch mice; the question whether a tom or a moggy should be employed for this purpose rests on no distinction of ability in that vocation, but on the individual preference for kittens or smells about the house. Indeed, this particular vocation can quite well be exercised by a neuter (a solution of the problem against which there is a prejudice in the case of humanity). The tom is not held to be “aping” the moggy or the moggy the tom, when either carries out the common feline function of hunting.
The thing that is intolerable is the assumption that woman’s preoccupation with sex extends to all her activities, and that, when performing any common task (whether agreeable or disagreeable) which is not demonstrably determined by sex, she is “trying to beat the men at their own game”. In actual practice, when the fitness of a woman for a particular job of work has been established for a long enough time, and when that job is a thing which the workers themselves take seriously, it is never judged by the sex of the worker, but by the standard of accomplishment. For instance, nobody, I am happy to say, has reviewed The Mind of the Maker as a “feminine angle on God”: though if the book had been written 100 years ago, nothing but a male pseudonym would have saved it from such treatment.
The vote, as you say, was merely a symbol. Of itself it can do nothing while the minds of both men and women are clouded by the obsession of sexuality. The letter killeth; the spirit giveth life. But it is something to have even the letter of the law, since it provides a framework within which the spirit can work.
That women are not satisfied with their present “emancipation” [I] readily admit – how could they be, when the letter of it is continually traversed by a spirit which does all it can to make their status as uncomfortable as possible?
The present uproar about the calling-up of women is typical. When the war began, eager women were told to go away and play: the men must be absorbed first. Now, women are wanted: but they are not conscripted on a common human basis, with a promise of hard work and adequate pay. All they get is sloppy “appeals” and low wages.…2 Why should they be treated like that? I am not treated like that by my publishers, who take my work seriously. My sex does not exonerate me from necessary labours, nor does it debar me from proper remuneration; consequently, I do what has to be done and do it with reasonable readiness.
But do not tell me that things are not better today than they were. I remember my father’s sisters, brought up without education or training, thrown, at my grandfather’s death, into a world that had no use for them. One, by my father’s charity, was trained as a nurse; one, by wangling, was received into the only sisterhood that would take her at her age – an ill-run community, but her only refuge; the third, the most attractive3, lived peripatetically as a “companion” to various old cats, saving halfpence and cadging trifles, aimlessly doing what when done was of little value to God or man. From all such frustrate unhappiness, God keep us. Let us be able to write “hoc feci”4 on our tombstones, even if all we have done is to clean the 29 floors of the International Stores.
Yours very sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 See letter to Maurice B. Reckitt, 12 July 1941 and note 8.
2 She refers here to a letter in The Times of 17 November 1941, signed by Katharine Furse, who wrote: “…women have been called on mainly to fill gaps, but not to take a lead in responsibility”…
3 The sisters mentioned are Edith (1859–1917), a nurse: Anne (1858–1948), joined Community of St Katherine of Alexandria: Gertrude (1860–1931).
4 Latin: this I did.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO THE ARCHBISHOP OF YORK1
24 November 1941
Your Grace,
I am afraid I had already written to Miss Carcaud to cry off the Brains Trust idea. I probably said I was very busy, which is quite true.
But also, I have to admit that I am not fearfully fond of Brains Trusts. The way in which the B.B.C. is running their show has made me shy off the thing. They seem to be giving people the idea that art and learning are a kind of parlour game, in which the fun is to shoot questions at well-known “authorities” on these
subjects, in the hope of catching them out. The result is, especially in the lamentable case of Professor Joad,2 that quick wits and superficiality ring the bell every time, whereas the sounder people, who never advance any statement without verifying their references, are put at a great disadvantage. This seems to me a pity, because people are already sufficiently inclined to despise facts and authority, and to prefer snap judgment[s] and personal opinions. I am a fairly good examination candidate myself, and this probably inclines me all the more to distrust this particular game, since I know, only too well, through having been constantly judged above my merits during my scholastic career, how unreliable a game it is.
Consequently, I really should very much prefer not to take part in a Brains Trust if you will not think me too tiresome, and obstructive – greatly as in some ways, I should enjoy the fun. I ought also to add that the plays I am doing for the B.B.C. are going to keep me pretty busy up to Easter, what with writing them and going up to London for rehearsals, and so forth; so that a good deal would depend on the proposed date, even if my constitutional shrinking from the game itself could be overcome.
Trusting that you will understand my reluctance,
Yours sincerely,
[Dorothy L. Sayers]
1 The Most Revd Dr William Temple.
2 See letter to Dr James Welch, 2 January 1941, note 5.
[24 Newland Street
Witham
Essex]
TO MISS AMY DAVIES1
26 November 1941
Dear Miss Davies,
It is curious and interesting that you should have been first “interested and thrilled” by The Mind of the Maker and afterwards startled by the unintelligibility of “The Greatest Drama Ever Staged”, because that is rather like being charmed by the Differential Calculus and disconcerted by the Multiplication Table. Because the one, in each case, presupposes the other; and if the doctrine summarized in “The Greatest Drama Ever Staged” is not true, The Mind of the Maker is meaningless nonsense.
I’m afraid it would take too long to answer all your questions fully. But I may try to clear up a few misconceptions.
First of all, you seem surprised that “The Greatest Drama” should contain “all the old arguments”. Actually, it contains no “arguments”; it is merely concerned to state, in the simplest possible language, what it is that the Church asserts about Christ. Naturally, the statements are the “old” statements. A primer of Arithmetic, whether written by some one as ancient as Euclid or as modern as Einstein, will still contain the same old stuff about the product of two plus two and the same uncompromising information as to how many beans make five. The Christian Creeds contain certain statements of what purport to be historical and philosophic fact, to which the whole apparatus of Christian ethic and principle form the superstructure. Without those facts, the whole structure collapses; and the first task of “clear thinking” is to realise that such is the case.
You are more confused, I think, than is really necessary about the doctrine of Christ’s “double nature”. His personality is, according to the Christian faith, the personality of God, expressed in human terms . … And, as far as that goes, of course Shakespeare was an “ordinary commonplace person” with genius. Did you think he was some kind of monster? The word “commonplace” of course begs the question, since, if you start by saying that a genius is something out-of-the-common, then “commonplace man of genius” is a contradiction in terms. But there is no sense whatever in which a genius does not share the common humanity of the ordinary commonplace person; indeed, in so far as he attempts to dissociate himself from common humanity, he is so much less the genius . … But the Divinity asserted of Jesus is the Divinity of His personality; His body, mind, and emotions were fully human, and the Church has never thought otherwise. (The Nestorians, who thought He had two personalities, human and divine, were pronounced heretical – and that line of thought has always proved sterile and contradictory.)
As regards the miraculous – Jesus never said He was able to work miracles because He was God. He said over and over again that anybody could work miracles. The working of miracles is, or should be, a human power. But they can only be worked under certain conditions. The will has to be wholly submitted to God’s control, for one thing. There must be a similar response in the wills of those receiving the miracle (a concentrated atmosphere of antagonism could prevent even Jesus from performing any miracles). And the miracles could not, or must not, be worked for selfish ends. If Jesus had multiplied food for himself, or if he had called in “legions of angels” to escape crucifixion, he would have been doing something contrary to his own nature. That is the meaning of that story about the Temptation. A power derived from complete selfishness literally cannot be used for selfish ends; because the egotism dries up the power at the source. It was literally true that “he saved others, himself he could not save”.
What makes you assert that he was “apparently sexless”? This is a very wild statement, supported by no documentary evidence whatever. Of his thirty-three years of life, we know about only three. By that time we certainly find a person in whom the passion for the work that was to be done had swallowed up all other passions. But whether that state was arrived at without struggle we simply do not know at all. A single devotion will, in fact, destroy all lesser devotions; the single-hearted person has usually no attention to give to competing interests – but this has nothing to do with physical peculiarity but with dominant purpose. One thing at least is very remarkable: that Christ, alone of all religious teachers, made no difference between women and men, laid down no separate rules for female behaviour, was equally unselfconscious with both sexes, gave just the same serious attention to the questions and opinions of women as of men, never used female faults and failings to point any particular moral, and indeed, made sex no part whatever of his teaching, except to say, when challenged, that men were as much to blame as women for sexual sins, and that dirty thinking was just as bad as dirty living. He appears, in fact, to have been completely sane on the subject – a thing quite impossible to any abnormal person, and unusual in anybody. But he certainly did not give that exaggerated importance to sex which became fashionable among European romantics, who somehow got it into their heads that it was the be-all and end-all of existence. The Christian Church has admittedly been very much less sane than he was; but it had to cope with a bad Jewish and pagan tradition in the matter, which it has not yet got rid of. Here, by the way, Art and Christianity are at one; sex has inspired great works of art; but not the very greatest. The very greatest music and poetry and painting and architecture deal with things more important and fundamental.
Naturally, the whole stigma of crucifying God is in the fact that He came “incognito” – that is to say that, so far from “loving the highest when we see it”, we do not see it, and merely hate it instinctively. Nor did He come with the “determination to be crucified”; but in the face of the fact that (as it very soon became obvious) men were determined to crucify Him. Every man crucifies God, and every man is crucified with God, wittingly or unwittingly. But crucifixion is redemptive only if it is accepted by the will. But the thing called “original sin” is precisely the direction of the human will towards itself instead of towards its own real nature – the inability to do the things one really wants to do, because of the determination to exercise a selfish choice which conflicts with one’s real aims. (Psychologists know about this splitting of the will all right, though they don’t always recognise that it is the same thing which the Church has known about for many centuries under a different name.)
Then you say “what is the crucifixion of one man – even if he were a God-man – compared with all the pain and agony of hundreds of men etc now?” – But that is the crucifixion, as St. Paul says. Every time it happens, the Son of Man is crucified afresh. The Crucifixion of God is an epitome of all history2 .…
I think you would find things clearer if you were to read a little real theology, because,
if I may say so, you give me the impression of never having been grounded properly in the subject. I get the impression that you acquired a sort of “child’s-eye” view of Christian doctrine in early youth, and have never done any stiff reading on the subject, so that you are now judging with an adult mind doctrines which have only been presented to you in very simplified form – rather as though you were to say that Shakespeare’s profundity had been much over-rated, when actually you had never read the plays themselves, but only something called “Shakespeare for the Nursery”. I say this, because you seem to have supposed that The Mind of the Maker was something different from “the same old arguments”, whereas it is, in fact, just the same old arguments, founded on the same old dogmas. I think what you really want is to see how one gets, as it were, from the one to the other. Because, as I said before, The Mind of the Maker is pure nonsense if you regard it as a piece of original invention – or at least, if not absolute nonsense, it is quite irrational, because it corresponds to no historical reality.
I suggest that you might like J. S. Whale’s book Christian Doctrine, just published by the Cambridge University Press, seven shillings and sixpence, which is a remarkably sound and “modern” statement of “the same old arguments”. C. S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain might be useful, too, on the particular point bothering you.