Women, Work and WimseyJames Brabazon: Dorothy L. Sayers;Charles Scribner's Sons; New York.

by Keirh Bower

"I like the Gargoyle best," Dorothy1.Sayers wrote in a poem from her mid­teens. She continues, ". . . while theparson, full ofpride I Spouts at his wearyflock inside IThe Gargoyle, from his loftyseat I Spouts at the people in the street."The figure was prophetic, for, thoughshe could never have known it at thetime, Dorothy 1. Sayers would somedayfind her vocation imitating that archi­tectural fixture. A gargoyle serves anumber ofpurposes, from the mundaneto the metaphysical. According toRussell Kirk, who makes a hobby ofsuchinnominati, their foremost purpose isplumbing: they throw rain off the roofsso as to protect the stone walls from beingstreaked. They represent the demons ex­cluded from the sacred precincts of thechurch. Most pertinently, they remindcomplacent passersby that evil does exist,and that it is grotesque.

Dorothy L. Sayers will be principallyremembered for her masterly detectivenovels, but for her, that was not her truework. Nor was applying her considerablepoetic talents to the composition ofGuinness advertisements for Benson's,an agency where she once toiled. WhenDorothy 1. Sayers wrote about work,there was no temptation for her to over­rate it, as some of the Distributistwritings tend to; she was a realist. Work,for some, is the sweat of the brow igno­miniously converted into bullion. Butwhen in the proper relationship with itsagent ("the work proclaims the wonh ofthe workman"), work is a uanscendentthing.

Work is considered the cenual point ofDorothy L. Sayers's life in]ames Braba­zon's biographical ponrait. "Creativity"

Mr. Bower is an editor of HillsdaleReview.

is a berter term, sidestepping the morassofeconomic and sociological cliches withwhich our age tends to consider the sub­ject. The demysticized perspective ofwork-in which it functions as pan ofthelabor-capital-profit equation-was a­bominable to her. As Brabazon writes,Sayers "tarred capitalism and socialismwith the same brush" on this account,and she was even willing to support themedieval Church in its hatred of usuty,not just because ofthe biblical injunctionbut because in seeming to create some­thing (interest) from nothing (money),man was mocking God's creativity.

Her best work of apologetics is an ex­tended analogy entitled The MindoftheMaker. Throughout his biography,Brabazon points out how fittingly sheassumed the tasks she took up, and this isa prime example. Dogmatic theology is adistant field for any layman, as difficultto popularize as campanology, which sherendered comprehensible to solve theWirnsey mystety of The Nine Tailors. InThe Mind ofthe Maker Sayers used thecreative process of art as a model andneatly transposed the three acts ofinrui­tion, energy and enthusiasm into the Tri­une Godhead, thus making it easy to seehow three distinct faculties could ema­nate from one mind. Her analogy forPurgatoty in her Introductory Papers onDante is sweet and irrefutable. There isno evidence of her having sat in at thetraining sessions for FJ. Sheed's street­corner catechists, but her supreme talentwas like theirs: the ability to communi­cate about realities ranging from theeternal to the evanescent.

It is a temptation of literary biogra­phers to see their subject's life as an ex­tension ofone oftheir themes, and I can­not fault Brabazon for doing this; it is socompelling in this case. From GaudyNight to her commissioned play for theCanterbuty Festival, Zem to Thy House,Sayers was struggling to come to gripswith her life. She seemingly found an an-

swer with her theoty of "the right job."Stemming from her analogy of the Ttin­ity, it's the idea that one's dignity as ahuman comes from superseding the fi­nancial considerations ofwork, and put­ting one's energy at the service of intui­tion and talent instead. C.S. Lewis onceargued with her that this theoty was sim­ply an excuse for doing what she fancied,with the addition of God's blessing.

One of Sayers's most delightful essayson Christianity is "The Other Six DeadlySins," wherein she does a marvelousanalysis of the state ofGluttony, Avarice,Wrath, Covetousness, Pride, Sloth andLust (which had stolen center stage) inwanime England. The penultimate of­fense, Sloth, is considered briefly andprincipally as that mortal sin which keepspeople from thinking clearly. No onecould accuse Dorothy 1. Sayers ofhavingtransgressed in this regard; a mere glanceat her bibliography thwarts such a suspi­cion. Yet, she characterizes "whifflingactivity of body" as a dissemblance oftenfabricated by Sloth to snare souls. Obvi­ously, if it is possible to wrap the facts ofanyone's life around the kernel of onemasterful vice, this would not be theenergumen in Dorothy L. Sayers's soul.Wrath perhaps, but not as long as she wasso consistently ill-tempered at the properevils of her day: pomposity, stupidity,intolerant tolerance (liberalism). Andthese last two she rightly categorized assins of Slothfulness, the fust against in­tellect and the second against the spirit.

She was proud by nature, but Pridewas no harnessing factor in her life. Shefought the good fight against it. Sayers'sfaithful marriage and submission to theself-important and self-centered OswaldAtherton Fleming exonerates her. If it ispossible truly to "die to self' outside ofacontemplative order, she came vety closeto doing it. Yet she was lusty-in heryouth at least. The consequences of herlapse into luxuria were an illegitimateson, a lifetime ofgrief and self-consciousdoubt. A dreadful hypocrisy consumed

_iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.21September 1982

her: at fust she had kept son John An­thony's parentage a secret in order to saveface among her colleagues at Benson'sAgency. Then, with the unexpectedpopularity of Zeal to Thy House, shebecame a sought-after advocate of tradi­tional orthodox Anglicanism. Like theperpetual foundling in an Edwardiancomedy, the child's discovery by theLondon papers must have been a griev­ous fear indeed. She did not want toscandalize her Church with her ownMaria Monk saga. The secret was neverrevealed, even her closest friends neversuspected the truth until after her death.No, she paid for her lust with an unimag­inable Purgatory on earth.

One of the main reasons for her out­of-wedlock child was her dogmatismabout sexualiry. She would not toleratecontraceptives. Her long, frustratingrelationship with the writer John Corn­ous resulted in a stalemate over her insis­tence that any relationship, in or out ofmarriage, must honor her desire to be amother and-eventually, at least-awife. The father ofthe child was the mostunlikely acquaintance possible for her: asemiliterate, fairly handsome, shiftlessmechanic. He introduced her to dancingand passion. It was straight out of Ten­nessee Williams. The upshot of the ca­tastrophe was that she never dancedagain; and she locked up her feelingspermanently after "crying every nighrforthree years." Her instincts had beenright, but, as Brabazon comments, theshortage of men after World War I putmany plain women like Dorothy in thesame position.

The true sadness of Dorothy L.Sayers's life is revealed at the end of thistender biography. All of her years actingthe gargoyle-aiding the Church fromthe outside, keeping its walls unstreakedby preserving the secret ofher one folly­notwithstanding, she failed at the end.She was not defeated, but dispiritedbefore the one cardinal sin she most con­stantly warred against: Sloth. In her in·troduction to Dante's Purgatory for thePenguin series, her definition ofCornice

4: Sloth or Accidie (Acedia) reads: "Thefailure to love any good object in its prop­er measure, and, especially, to love Godactively with all one has and is." JamesBrabazon, her fellow worker in the thea­ter, analyzes her life as the story of awoman struggling for purpose, findingit, reluctantly, in her role as one of thegreat modern apologists of the Church,only to learn that despite the intellectand scholarship she applied to explain­ing Christ's message, faith demandedsomething more than even her industri·ousness could provide.

She was churchwarden of St. Anne'sHouse in Dean Street, Soho, and haddevotedly worked to preserve a footholdof the Church in the rundown theaterdistrict she had loved so much as ayoung, starving Oxford graduate. Tire­lessly, she had arranged lectures and dis­cussions there with the greatest minds ofthe day-Charles Williams, C.S. Lewis,T. S. Eliot. She had grown up in a vicar·age and knew parish politics, but with allher savvy she couldn't keep the Housealive. A new breed of "apologist" was onthe scene; they wanted to "take peoplefrom where they were," to downplay thesort of concrete dogma that had once at­tracted Englishmen. There was a debateone night between Sayers and one ofthese brilliant Pelegians (as Dorothymight have called him), John Wren­Lewis. What she encountered was thenext wave of the Latitudinarian move·ment. After having spent her life bat­tling outright agnosticism, her defenseswere down. It was Maundy Thursday,and, after the debate, which continuedon into the vestry, Dorothy wrote Wren­Lewis a seventeen-page letter pouringout her soul, her doubts. She confessedthat her strident concern for the "dog­matic pattern" was probably notenough, as we would now say, "to meetthe needs ofmodern man." She conced­ed that the Creeds, upon which her Faithpredominantly hinged, were left ume­vised by future generations solely be­cause of the historical accident of theGreat Schism after the Council ofNicea."It may be that our particular type of in-

tellectual has had his day ... I think it isvery likely that the time has come that weought to be superseded." The new foe toher faith was not just another truculentheresy, but a new generation. And, com­bined with her long-standing doubtsabout her own spirituality, and thedeaths of her husband and Charles Wil­liams, she was an easy mark for Acedia,the sin of the flagging spirit. She diedwith the third parr of Dante's Com­media unfinished.

What would her life have been like ifshe had let the world know abour herson, if she had accepted what she felt tobe irredeemable disgrace? Harriet Vane,who is as close to an autobiographicalcharacter as Sayers gets in her fiction,sheds some light on this. After havingher reputation forever tainted in an affairmade public by the death of her lover,Harriet is acquitted of the murder byLord Peter in Strong Poison and is por­trayed in two more novels painfullyweighing the decision to acceptWimsey's proposal of marriage. Thescandal only serves to increase the sales ofHarriet's novels, which Dorothy musthave contemplated in her own case. Burwith the utter defeat ofher pride, HarrietVane begins to realize in Gaudy Nightthat a higher calling awaits her. Wimseyhas glimpsed some Beatrician vision inher and through his persistence she real­izes the importance of this "death toself" which has animated Lord Peter, adapper little Whig with a protruberantnose, to a state of grace.

It was to be seven years before DorothyL. Sayers discovered Charles Williams'sFigure olBeatnee and with it the exhilar­ation of locating the path out ofher owndark wood ofSloth, but in Gaudy NightLord Peter, in completing a poem startedby Harriet, furnishes the proof that sheintuited it all along:

Lay on thy whips, 0 Love, that we uptight,Poised on the petilous point, in no lax bed,May sleep, as tension at the vetbetam coteOf music sleeps; for, if thou spare to smite,Staggering, we stoop, stooping, fall dumb

and dead,

221iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiii1iiiiiiiiiiiiChronicles of Culture

In the Mail

"The Peace Movement and the Soviet Union" by Vladimir Bukovsky; The Otwell Press; NewYork. Bukovsky shows how Lenin's statement, "As an ultimate objective peace simply meansCommunist wotld control," is being manifested in the world.

Tax-Based Incomes Policies: A Cure for Inflation? by Jack Carr, William Scanh and RobenSchuettinget; the Fraser Institute; Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. An insightfulanalysis of the causes and CUfCS of inflation written in nootechnicallanguage.

Science and the Questfor Meaning by Donald M. MacKay; Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.;Grand Rapids, Michigan. MacKay argues that there is little teason fot a dichotomy betweenscience and faith in two lively lectutes.

besian view. Although they recognizedthat the preservation oflife is a precondi­tion to any other achievements in thisworld, the signers of the Declaration ofIndepencence would have sacrificedtheir lives, fonunes and sacred honor topreserve their status as a free people. Forthem, and for the system ofgovernmentthat they instituted, one cannot achievehappiness as a slave.

By rejecting an "ethic of ultimateends" and eschewing the responsibilityto decide whether either of these alter­native ethical visions is preferable, Hoff­man maintains his links with the relativ­ism that now reigns in the American aca­demy. His inability to choose, on princi­pled grounds, between the vision of theAmerican founders and the vision of theSoviet leaders reflects the paralysis result­ing from that relativism. As an intellec­tualleader among current teachers of in­ternational politics, Hoffman is an ar­chitect ofthe strategy ofcapitulation thatis a logical result of this intellectualparalysis. That paralysis is unlikely to becured until our intellectual elite developsa capacity to discuss differences betweendisparate sets of ideas in a more seriousmanner. If nothing else, Hobbes's in­fluence will outlast Hoffman's becausehe painted a more accurate picture of theresults ofsuch intellectual evasions. D

Four American Indilln Literary Masters by Alan R. Velie; University of Oklahoma Press; Nor­man, Oklahoma. An introduction to four outstanding contemporary Indian writers-N.Scott Momaday,James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko and Getald Vizenor.

Christumity & CivU'il:ation edited byJames B.Jotdan; Geneva Divinity School; Tylet, Texas. Thiscollection of essays is subtitled "The Failute of the Ametican Baptist Culture," a topic that isthoroughly examined.

human conduct to the beastly. A trueethics of responsibility would begin byrecognizing the vicious character of cer­tain "ideals" and conceding the respon­sibility of politicians to prevent theirsociety from the pursuit of such viciousends. For Hobbes, the worst fate thatcould befall man was the violent deaththat was a constant threat in the state ofnature. The responsibility to protect themere existence of life thus became theprimary task of the Leviathan. GivenHoffman's recurrent assertions of theimportance of preventing violence andpursuing peaceful change, one can onlyconclude that he does not understandthe extent to which he remains underHobbes's influence.

The leaders of the Soviet Union rejectthe Hobbesian view, believing that theyhave a historical responsibility to estab­lish a socialist international order con­sistent with the principles of dialecticalmaterialism. For them, life has valueonly as long as it promotes this "ideal."The role of the gulag in the Soviet Unionand the sequence of events demonstrat­ing the desire of the Soviets to impose asocialist order on other societies aroundthe globe indicate the seriousness withwhich they pursue their vision. The A­merican founders also rejected the Hob-

description of the ideal that has beenchosen. Hoffman is content to inform hisreader only that his is a liberal vision, thecharacter of which is to be inferred fromthe vision of a good world that he subse­quently describes. He simply assumesthat the reader shares this vision, for hemakes no effort to convince those whomight hold another that the good viewedthrough his lenses is superior to the idealsoffered by others.

One suspects that Hoffman wouldhave a great deal ofdifficulty attemptingto convince others of his vision of thegood because he appears incapable ofthe serious discussion of ideas. He isquick to dismiss any assertions of oppos­ing parties in international disputes as"ideology." His major avoidance of theserious discussion of conflicting ideas ishis embrace, early in the text, of MaxWeber's notion ofan "ethics ofresponsi­bility," as opposed to an "ethics ofultimate ends." A realist would acknowl­edge that an "ethics of responsibility" ispossible only if the ultimate goals havealready been chosen. One can have a no­tion of "responsible" (that is, right) con­duct only after one has decided what theproper standard of human conductshould be in the given situation. Untilthese standards have been chosen, orunless one assumes universal agreementto the most vaguely asserted "ideals,"one is still lacking an idea of the sub­stance under consideration. The truerealist realizes that discussion under suchconditions is simply wasted air.

Although a caricature of Hobbes wasdismissed early in the text, Hobbes's realproblem resurfaces throughout thebook. As a founder of modern liberal­ism, Hobbes knew that the star'e ofnature was not merely a fiction that couldbe wished away because people do notact consistently in a vicious manner. Hisinfluence endures because he expressed,more eloquently than anyone before orsince, that, however ardently politiciansaspire to establish a good society, theiractions will always be governed in a criti­cal sense by those who seek to reduce

24 liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.Chronicles of Culture

Wishing Away Hobbes

And, dying so, sleep our sweet sleep no more.

Dorothy 1. Sayers once wrote that"The first life of any celebriry is nowa­days accepted as an interim document,"andJames Brabazon's biography ofher iscenainly that. It was written to suaightenthe record before the "chaff-chewing"experts descended upon her. The biogra­phy is an honest, though obviously in­complere account, appearing, with the

Stanley Hoffman: Duties BeyondBorders: On the Limits andPossibilitiesofEthical International Politics; Syr­acuse University Press; Syracuse, NewYork.

by Edward). Lynch

The study of ethics addresses ques­tions about the ways in which people canlive together well. It looks to the ex­emplars ofhuman conduct and holds outthese models as guides for lesser monals.The conclusion of ethical study is theestablishment of principles of right con­duct, or, the definition of the good.

The study of intern3,tional politicscommonly addresses other aspects ofhu­man behavior. It draws its exemplarsfrom the abyss of human attitudes andusually seeks suitable means of avoidingthe worst deeds within the capacity ofmankind. Because students of interna­tional relations haven't often accuratelypredicted the depths to which some oftheir fellow men will sink, their writingtends to involve post-hoc descriptions ofthe forms of conduct that we might liketo avoid in the future. Those who writeexpositions of "the ethics of interna­tional politics" must, at some point, dealwith the divergent tendencies inherentin their subject. As much as they mightprefer to avoid the task, the authors of

Dr. Lynch is a free-lance writer living inBdtimore.

author's apologies, before Dorothy hadwished one to be written. Her forebod­ings in this matter were primarily to spareher son and her Church, and to wait until"griefand passion have died down, untilemotion can be remembered in tranquil­iry. " She needn't have worried about anydamage to the Faith, and her son cenain­ly may be proud ofhis ancestry. This per­sonal and compelling account of her lifeand work would assuage all her doubts.

the best books attempting to synthesizethe studies ofethics and inrernational re­lations eventually realize that they mustcome to terms with that prophet of ulti­mare gloom, Thomas Hobbes. Betterthan any other thinker, Hobbes de­scribed in lurid detail the summum mal­um, that is, the greatest evil of humanconduct. He depicted that condition as astate of nature, a war of each against all,where human life is solitary, poor, nasry ,brutish and shon.

Stanley Hoffman has served as a pro­fessor ofinternational relations for manyyears, and he acknowledges the need toconfront Hobbes as he commences thisseries of lectures on the ethics of the in­ternational order. Early on, Hoffmanassures his reader, "Not at all times arestates in a situation of war of all againstall," and, "Nor is survival the only goalof states." Having said as much, theauthor dismisses the sage ofMalmesburyand proceeds to preach his own standardsof order in the current world.

Professors commonly ernploy the alibithat they are theorizing as an excuse toabandon the leavening of responsibilitythat is the focus of serious study. Hoff­man repeatedly asserts that he is a"realist" and therefore recognizes thelimits of day-to-day politics, constitu­encies and ideologies that prevent theachievement ofhis "ideal" world. Never­theless, he has labeled his discourse aquest for the possibilities ofethical inter­national politics. As a result, his vision of

an ethical world perrneates the text.Hoffman's vision begins with the as­

sertion, "The purpose of moral action ininternational affairs ought to be to di­minish the suain of the antinomies thatweigh on the statesman and on the citi­zen.... A moraliry ofself-restraint entailssimply raking into account the existenceof the moral claims of others." Stated inthis fashion, one suspects that what fol­lows will include some guidelines aboutwhat constitutes a valid moral claim, thatis, a discussion ofthe ends ofpolitics. Butinstead ofa philosophic discussion of theresponsibilities of real politics, the textsoon degenerates into vacuous postulat­ing. The author eschews any discussionof the ends toward which moral politicsought to be directed. Hoffman informshis reader that "no philosophy ofhistoryprovides us once and for all with a tool kitor a destination," and he adds, "At pres­ent there are incompatible codes oflegit­irnacy.... The only common code ... isnational egoism." In effect, his verypremises deny the possibiliry of philoso­phy, of a reasoned discussion by whichone can decide which code of legitimacyis more valid than others, since it pro­vides higher standards for human con­duct and a serious purpose for human ex­istence within an international order.Instead, Hoffman offers empry slogans.We are told that the Israelis should beguaranteed claims to a state in the Mid­dIe East, while we should concede thelegitimate claims of the Arabs who sur­round them. He passes over the matter ofreconciling these competing claims, i.e.the fact that many of these Arabs believethat their legitimate rights cannot behonored as long as Israel exists. He alsoassures his reader that hard-and-fastprinciples are very difficult because theconditions ofinternational politics are sofrequently ambiguous. His example ofambiguiry is the Soviet invasion of M­ghanistan, the very event that evenJim­my Carter found a clarifying influence onhis understanding of the character ofSoviet conduct.

A serious ethical study provides somegroundwork to guide one toward the

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September 1982