The Wimsey Papers (7 page)

It's not that I don't believe in a free Press. It would be a bad thing if even that kind of criticism were censored away. I shouldn't mind if I were equally free to say to the umpteen millions of readers all over the country, "That's all right, but do remember that papers have to please their advertisers." But no paper is going to make its columns free to letters of that sort, and I hate being made to feel helpless.
If only one could get a platform, one could say to these poor goops, "Do realise that, in the end, you can be the masters! Policy depends on advertising, but advertising depends in the long run on circulation. If enough of you stop taking a paper, its advertising revenue will fall off and its space-rates drop. A consumers' strike will bring any commercial body to heel." But they wouldn't do it, because they want the football news or the racing news or the fashions, so they swallow the pill of policy with the sugar. The public is fair game, very likely - but, nevertheless -
This is a queer line for me to take, isn't it? "Ingleby's always so cynical." That's why I write what you are good enough to call "convincing copy." But I've suddenly got a distaste for the game. I'm a coward, too. I don't propose - you needn't imagine it for the moment - to give up my time and energies to enlightening the public mind. I've managed to wangle an Army job, and I'm clearing out, washing my hands, behaving exactly like Pontius Pilate and all the other respectable people who let crimes go on because it's too much trouble to try and stop them. So my cynicism holds good, you see.
You've always been very kind to me, and I have a lot to thank you for, so I thought I'd prefer to tell you the truth, for once. I'm not taking a self-righteous line about the people who stick to the job. I admire those who put their shoulders to the wheel, even when the waggon has stuck fast in the midden. I've no right to the luxury of being fastidious. I despise myself for not having the guts either to shove or to take a spade to the midden. I'm the worst sort of Laodiccan, and propose to spew myself out with the least possible delay.
The gist of all this rigmarole is that I can't see my way to withdraw my resignation, and have written to that effect to Mr. Pym - putting it on the ground of "National Service", God forgive me! Please accept my assurance that nothing could be less heroic than my conduct, and believe me, - Very gratefully yours,
C. INGLEBY
Harriet, Lady Peter Wimsey, to Mr. Paul Delagardie, in London.
TALBOYS,
GREAT PAGFORD, HERTS.
15.1.40.
Dear Uncle Paul,
Your amusing letter came just in time to put me in a good temper and prevent me from writing a stinker to Helen, which would only have aroused family prejudice and done the Ministry of Instruction and Morale no good at all. I've sent her a postcard, and make my complaint to your sympathetic ear instead.
It was only a trifle, really. For the last four months I have been badgering H. for speakers for our W.R.I., and get nothing but evasive promises. Now the M.I.M. want to send someone down, and Helen is "astonished" because I can't let her have a date before the summer. She knows perfectly well that we have to get our lists our early - she had plenty of experience of that kind of thing at Duke's Denver. But because she is in an official position, she pretends to be "astonished."
The rulers of this country seem to live in a perpetual state of "astonishment." They are "astonished" that anybody should think the German propaganda needs answering - surely the spirit of the people is too good to allow them to listen to what the Germans say. (It jolly well needs to be good - you can depress the boldest spirit by neglect and indifference, and it's not fair to leave the common man to defend his bit of the moral front without leaders or weapons.) The P.M. is reported to be "astonished" at the "strong reaction" among the people and in the Press over the Belisha business. But obviously the people are going to get a bit of a jolt when the War Office swaps horses in mid-battle, so to speak, without any warning or preparation; and obviously the Press, who have been suffering from headline-starvation for weeks, are going to smack their lips over the feast - so why be "astonished"?
When the Russo-German Pact was signed, the Government proclaimed themselves not only "astonished", but "astounded" and "thunderstruck." If they were, they'd no business to be, since any intelligent person who could read had had the probability of something of that kind dinned into his mind for months and years. Governments ought to be able to read, and they ought to know how people are going to react to things. If they are "astonished," then it simply means that they don't know how the people of this country are thinking and feeling - which is the one thing that a representative government must know, or what is it there for? I'm quite sure Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria didn't spend their time being "astonished" by their subjects' feelings - they knew; and Ministers and Parliaments ought to know, too - they're paid to know it. If novelists weren't better psychologists than politicians appear to be, they might whistle for their royalties. And yet writers are supposed to be a dreamy, unpractical lot! But one can't blame the politicians too much. The people put them where they are, under the impression that "practical men" are the sort to get things done. As a nation we don't trust men of imagination and don't put them in power, so we've really only ourselves to thank when our leaders are "astonished" at every glimpse of the obvious.
And it's true that the "imaginatives" tend to hold aloof from public affairs. They feel it's their job to show and to teach, and leave the rest of the world to do the organising; but it looks as though, without imagination, you can't even organise things properly. And all the time there's this perpetual fight against stupidity, and the commercial mind that battens on stupidity. Trying to get people to see and act with imagination is like trying to hack one's way through a jungle with a penknife. But if you give up trying - well, there's Germany to look at. Even the low-brows ought to realise by now that a country that allows its intellectuals to be rendered completely impotent is not a very edifying spectacle.
So much for that - and now read me your little lecture on "la raison" and the superiority of the French attitude to life. I quite agree it's time we went back to learning from the French. They are our Allies, and we shared their civilisation for a good many centuries! ...
(The remainder of the letter deals with family affairs)
Mr. Paul Delagardie to Lady Peter Wimsey at Talboys
CHATEAU L'OREILLER,
EDREDON-SURE-LE-NEZ,
LA GRIPPE,
ANGLETERRE.
January 22nd, 1940.
My dear Harriet,
As you will see by the address, I have fallen victim to the English climate. Rassure-toi. My malady has passed the feverish and entered the catarrhal stage; I mention it only to excuse the inelegance of my handwriting and certain lack of intellectual clarity which will no doubt betray itself in my epistolary style.
My child, I hasten to answer your letter which finds me full of sympathy. It is indeed a strange misfortune that in the England of today the two most excellent of her national characteristics should have suffered a public divorce. I refer, of course, to the poetic imagination and the talent for practical statesmanship. I believe this has never been the case before, or never to the same extent. Francis Bacon was no isolated phenomenon. That poets should be politicians and diplomats men of letters was a commonplace so long as England shared her culture with the Continent. Account for it how you will, learning and imagination were never despised until the whole population became - I will not say "educated", for it is not that, but at any rate literate. You see the result of this unhappy development in that lack of vision in plain life of which you very properly complain. And you are right in saying that it is the writers and thinkers who must exert themselves, at whatever personal sacrifice, to close the gap, for if they wait till the other side makes the advance they will wait for ever.
If I say that they order this matter better in France, you will laugh - here is Uncle Paul riding his old hobby-horse. But it is true that the man of letters finds it easier là-bas to secure a recognised place in the machinery of public life. Our neighbours have not that English tendency to regard a man's art and poetry, like his religion, as a private and personal indulgence. It is, I suppose, that very tendency which was held in check so long as English letters and civilisation derived their life blood from the common European source. Even in the fourteenth century the Englishman was held to be insular; yet the educated Englishman of all centuries down to the present was far more cosmopolitan in his method of thought than he is today; and it was he who then guided public affairs. In those days, travel was difficult and, for that reason, educative: one could not make a tour of the world in a few weeks, finding a stereotype of England in every foreign land.
And since, my dear, you propose turning your intelligence to the service of your country, may I mention to you something which gives me considerable pain and disquiet? I am distressed by the failure of all our public bodies and national organs to forge any links of sympathy between ourselves and the French people at this important juncture. True, we have an Allied command; true, we have a united Economic Front - but there it seems to me to end. Neither in the newspapers, not in broadcasting, nor in any other way do I detect any attempt to make Britain aware of France nor yet to recommend Britain to the French. We treat our partner, indeed, as the Englishman treats his wife - we love, honour and take her for granted. this seems to me a great folly, as well as a great discourtesy. A true understanding between our two countries would be a noble foundation for an intelligent peace and a united Euope - yet I think we felt more in common with France in the days when she was our "sweet enemey" than we do today, when she is our closest friend and ally. And we ought to take pains to understand France, for there is a great community of culture and interests, despire a great difference of language and temperaments. Understanding under these circumstances is easier, perhaps, than with a nation like America, where a likeness of language tends to obscure from us a profound unlikeness of tradition and outlook
What do I want to see done? A great many things are possible? The B.B.C. could do so much. Concerts of French music, little dramas of French history, talks about French literature or performances of French plays, a running commentary from time to time upon French life under war-time conditions, an exchange of views between - shall we say? - French and English housewives, or what not? And in the papers, articles on these subjects, photographs, stories - que veux tu? I do not ask for a heavy educational propaganda - that would defeat its own purpose - nor for the wagging of flags, such as we suffered from too much in theh last war. I ask only for a little direction to be given to our thoughts and sympathies. I find more pictures, more headlines, more news, more gossip, devoted to other countries - to Finland, to Russia, to America, to Italy, to the various neutrals,a nd above all to Germany - than to our ally in arms. And I cannot think this to be wise or right.
We say we stand for liberty and democracy - is there any nation that has so good a right to speak on these subjects as France? We are so concerned for the good treatment of political minorities and foreign colonies - cannot France offer us a varied and important experience in such matters? We wish to preserve our Mediterranean civilisation - through whom, if not through France, did we inherit that civilisation? We are proud of our mongrel race and our noble mixed language double-rooted in Saxon and Latin - have we forgotten that France is one-half of that language and the more intellectual half of that language?
And besides all this, ought we not to try very hard to make the spirit of our own people known to the people of France? Do we suppose ourselves so natually amiable as to capture their affections without the politeness of a trifling exertion? I fear we are too complacent.
Here, my dear Harriet, is a task for you writers. You have the imagination which the politicians so singularly lack. You must write, you must speak, you must besiege the Press and the wireless; you must even endeavour to impress your opinion upon the Ministry of Instruction and Morale, and if they are "astonished" and inform you that the spirit of Allied understanding is excellent and needs no fostering, you must nevertheless persevere. Keep in your mind that it is this very complacency which makes the incidence of divorce so high in the British home, and that an ally, like a wife, must be won daily with kind and modest attentions. You yourself, mon enfant, are satisfied with your husband - I am happy to know it; but let me assure you that Peter would have been as complacent as the average Briton had I not taken his education in hand from the beginning and impressed upon him that a partnership cannot flourish without a continutal effort of intelligent planting and pruning and the assiduous rooting-up of the chickweed of indolence.
With this fine horticultural metaphor, I will leave the subject to your consideration. Believe me, my dear child, your very affectionate uncle,
PAUL AUSTIN DELAGARDIE
From Lord Peter Wimsey, somewhere abroad, to Harriet, his wife, at Talboys. (Extract.)
... You are a writer - there is something you must tell people, but it is difficult to express. You must find the words.
Tell them, this is a battle of a new kind, and it is they who have to fight it, and they must do it themselves and alone. They must not continually ask for leadership - they must lead themselves. This is a war against submission to leadership, and we might easily win it in the field and yet lose it in our own country.
I have seen the eyes of the men who ask for leadership, and they are the eyes of slaves. The new kind of leaders are not like the old, and the common people are not protected from them as they were from us. In our time their ignorance was a protection, but now they have eaten knowledge and are left naked. I have no time to explain myself properly, but you will understand.
It's not enough to rouse up the Government to do this and that. You must rouse the people. You must make them understand that their salvation is in themselves and in each separate man and woman among them. If it's only a local committee or amateur theatricals or the avoiding being run over in the black-out, the important thing is each man's personal responsibility. They must not look to the State for guidance - they must learn to guide the State. Somehow you must contrive to thell them this. It is the only thing that matters.