The Wimsey Papers
If one looks back at the last twentry years, one sees at how many points we might have prevented this war, if it hadn't been for our inflexible will to peace. We said "Never again" - as though "never" wasn't the rashest word in the language. "River, of thy water will I never drink" We will never go to war again, we will revise all treaties in conference; we will never revise anything for frar of starting a war; we will never interefere in other people's wars, we will always keep the peace." We wooed peace as a valetudinarian woos health, by brooding over it till we became really ill. No wonder we couldn't stand by the Covenant of the League, which set out to enforce peace by making every local injustice an occasion for total war. That idea was either too brutal or too heroic, I'm not sure which. A mistake, anyway. What I want to say is that there's no hope of getting peace till we stop talking about it. But I don't suppose that view will be very popular!
Oh, well! Meanwhile, Paggleham continues to adapt itself to war conditions. On Wednesday we had a fire-practice, with Mr. Puffett in charge. (His all-round experience in the building and chimney-sweeping way is held to qualify him to take the lead in emergencies of this sort.) I said they might hold their demonstration here, on the strict understanding that little Paul should take no personal part in the proceedings and that the pouring of water inside the house should be a purely symbolic act. We arranged a very fine performance - an incendiary bomb was to be deemed to have come through your bedroom ceiling, with accompaniment of high explosive in the scullery, the maids playing parts as casualties, and the children and I as victims of the fire. We thought it better not to sound the local siren and whistles for fear of misunderstanding, but Mr Goodacre kindly gave the signal for the attack by having the church bells rung. Everything went off beautifully. Miss Twitterton was with us, having come over from Pagford for choi-practice (even in war-time, Wednesday is always choir-practice), and rendered first-aid superbly. I lent her your old tin-hat ("for protection from shrapnel and falling brick-work"), and her pleasure was indescribable.
We evacuated Polly and Bredon from the bedroom window and the other two from the attic in a sheet, and had just got to the pièce de rèsistance - my own rescue from the roof with a dummy baby under one arm and the family plate under the other - when Mr. Goodacre's kitchen-maid arrived panting to say that the Vicarage chimney was afire and would Mr. Puffett please come quick. Our gallant fire-captain immediately snatched away the ladder, leaving me marooned on the roof, and pleted up the lane, still in his gas-mask, and followed by the A.R.P Warden crying that it would be black-out time in half an hour, and if Hitler was to catch sight of that there chimney ablaze there wouldn't half be trouble with the police. So I retired gracefully through the skylight, and we transferred the venue to the Vicarage, getting the fire extinguished in nineteen and a half minutes by the warden's watch - after which, the fire-fighters adjourned to the 'Crown' for beer, and I had the Goodacres to dinner, their floor being - like Holland - not actually flooded, but pretty well awash. ...
4. Extract from a sermon preached on November 12th, 1939 (Armistice Sunday), by the Rev. Theodore Venables, Rector of Fenchurch St. Paul, Lincs, and printed in that week's issue of "The Fenland Weekly Comet."
... It is well, I think, that we should have chosen to commemorate this day, rather than that on which the Peace Treaty was signed; for the Armistice was at least was it claimed to be, but the Peace turned out to be no true peace. Indeed, several writers yesterday pointed out, very truly, that the whole interval between this war and the last had been indeed a period of armistice - not peace at all, but only an armed truce with evil.
We are, perhaps, too much inclined to imagine that peace is a thing that can be made once for all, and then left to look after itself. Something occurs to disturb us, and we make great efforts to be rid of it, and suppose that we have done with it for ever. This is true, whether the thing that disturbs us is good or bad. You know very well - there is no need for me to tell people like you who work on the land - that if you clear the weeds from a patch of ground you have not finished. The seeds are still there, and will spring up again, unless you are very vigilant to keep on rooting them up, and careful to plant good crops in their place. Just so, it is not enough to overthrow a wicked tyranny; we have to see to it that the seeds of strife and injustice are prevented from sprouting anew in the world, and that in their place we industriously sow the good seed that brings forth the fruits of the spirit. But it is comforting to remember that good things also cannot be wholly destroyed by a single act of violence. When King Herod slaughtered the Innocents, he did it in the name of peace and quietness - an evil peace and a false quietness - to put an end to the Jewish hope of a deliverer. And once again, when Pilate had Christ executed as a disturber of the Roman peace, he, too, thought he had settled that troublesome matter for ever; but he was mistaken.
In this world there is a continual activity, a perpetual struggle between good and evil, and the victory of the moment is always for the side that is the more active. Of late years, the evil has been more active and alert in us than the good - that is why we find ourselves again plunged into war. Even evil, you see, cannot prosper unless it practises at least one virtue - the virtue of diligence. Good, well-meaning, peaceable people often fail by slipping into the sin of sloth, that is what our Lord meant when he said that the children of this world were wiser in their generation than the children of light. He commended them for it and told us to imitate them. Because if Christian men and women would put as much work and intelligence into being generous and just as others do into being ambitious and covetous and aggressive, the world would be a very much better place, and there would not be nearly so many occasions of warfare.
We often quote the Sermon on the Mount, as though that were the only pronouncement Christ ever made about peace, but He said a good deal more than that - some of it very strange, and looking very contradictory. "Think not that I came to bring peace unto the world; I came not to bring peace, but a sword." And when He saw that the time for peace had gone by, He said, "now, he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one." He reminded Peter that "they that take the sword shall perish by the sword" - but that was all He said would happen, and He said also, "Fear not them that kill the body." The sin that was worse than violence, that incurred a heavier penalty than death, was a cold and sneering spirit; "He that saith unto his brother, thou fool, is in danger of hell-fire." Yet He is called the Prince of Peace - "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you. Not as the world giveth give I unto you." He thought of peace, you see, as something that happens inside the mind - something extra bestowed as a gift when we are going about our work in a spirit of active faith.
On this Armistice Sunday, don't let us think of peace as something that concerns governments, statesmen, other people: let us consider what we can do, each one of us, here and now, to make the world better, in the hope and faith that peace may be given to us as a result. ...
5. Letter from Miss Agnes Twitterton, of Great Pagford, Herts, to a Friend at Worthing. (Extract.)
Sunday evening, 19th November, 1939
... So I rushed over to the Vicarage, and there was Mr. Goodacre taking dead leaves out of the bird-bath. "Oh, Vicar," I said, "what has happened? I've played the voluntary twelve times, and it's a quarter past eleven, and there's not a soul in church." So he said, "My dear Miss Twitterton, didn't you put your clock back?" - So that just shows you how war upsets everybody, for if there is one thing I never forget...
6. From Miss Katherine Alexandra Climpson to Lord Peter Wimsey, somewhere abroad.
FLAT 718, UTOPIA COURT,
OXFORD STREET, W.
Sunday, Nov. 19th (24th after Trinity).
My dear Lord Peter,
I am just seizing a moment this evening to write you a little letter PERSONALLY: of course all the reports have been duly send in every week regularly to the PROPER QUARTER - and I must tell you again how proud and delighted all the members of the "Cattery" (to use your own hu
mourous phrase!) are feeling to know that they are really being of use to their country in this terrible time of emergency. Especially the older ones - because it is so humiliating and depressing when one comes to a certain age, to feel that one is NOT WANTED, and though you are always so wonderfully sympathetic, I'm sure even you can't realise the callousness, well really one might almost say cruelty, with which older women are sometimes treated when they apply for employment, either in a national or a civil capacity. Would you believe it, a man actually said, only the other day, to a highly-trained University woman of only THIRTY-SIX - a most able person in the prime of her intellect and capacity - that she was too old for a position of responsibility on his staff, and had the brutal insolence to add: "We don't want you to die on our hands, you know"!! This is absolutely true - it was told me by the Head of the most important organisation for the employment of University women. I am afraid, in these days, experience and skill are held of very little account by comparison with cheapness - except, of course, when it comes to the very top. CABINET MINISTERS and people like that seem to come rather elderly, and perhaps have almost an excess of rather OUT-MODED experience! - but then, of course, I suppose nobody has to pay them extra for having experience!!
But dear me! I seem to be rambling away into POLITICS! which is very naughty of me, because I'm sure you don't want to be bothered with any ignorant observations! It must be just the pleasure of being able to sit down and chat to you for a little bit. Sunday evening is my quietest time now - of course we have to have Evensong in the middle of the afternoon, what with the black-out and winter time, and the choir-school has been evacuated and two of the assistant priests have gone to be Army chaplains, so we have to have Low Mass instead of High Mass, and what with an Air-Raid Shelter in the Crypt and one thing and another, we are beginning to feel quite persecuted like Early Christians in Catacombs! Though indeed I oughtn't to talk in that light-hearted way when Christians in Germany and Austria are being really persecuted - so subtly and wickedly, too, the older people being allowed to go to church, and all the CHILDREN being kept away by Hitler-Jugend meetings on Sundays, and being taught to insult Christ and despise their parents for believing in religion. It must be terrible to be a father or mother and feel that the Government is deliberately ALIENATING one's children and BREAKING-UP the family and encouraging quite little boys and girls to read horrible, dirty stories about Jews and priests in that dreadful Stuermer. I believe they even teach those horrible things in schools. But I suppose a Totalitarian State can't afford to allow any group of people to have interests and ideas of its own - not even the FAMILY! And when one thinks how deeply the nicest Germans have always been attached to their gemuetlich (isn't that the word?) home-life, it seems quite heart-breaking.
Well, we must try to be cheerful. What do you think one of my younger "cats" (quite a "KITTEN really!) said to me the other day? , She said, "Oh, I do hope the British Agents who have been captured in Holland weren't either of them Lord Peter!" I said, "My dear girl, Lord Peter wouldn't ever be captured, how can you think he would be so thoughtless? Besides, he has much too much sense and experience to let Germans get the better of him! And if he'd been killed, he'd be certain to have let us know." So I hope we shall soon have a letter from you to say you are NOT killed or anything dreadful!!
My reports are very encouraging, really, and show that there is a wonderful spirit among the people, just as the papers say, but they do rather feel that the Government has been a little UNIMAGINATIVE about some things - dislocation of commerce, and evactuation and that kind of thing. They seem (the Government, I mean) to have thought out the beginning of everything very well, and then to have rather stopped thinking! For instance, there was one poor gentleman who works for a French firm that makes scent-bottles over here - Well, I suppose you might say nobody ought to want luxuries in war-time, but still, they've put a lot of French money into the firm and employ British workers, and it is all employment, isn't it, and after all the French are our ALLIES and we must all have money for the war! And you can't have money unless you make it, can you? Anyway, these people can't go on making their bottles because of one tiny part that has to be imported from FRANCE, and the Board of Trade won't let them import it because of letting money go out of the country. So the poor French people have offered to send over the little part for nothing and only be paid after the war's over - but apparently that won't do either, so they'll have to stop manufacturing and all the bottles and stoppers and things will be wasted and the men thrown out of work, and it doesn't seem very kind or sensible, does it? Especially when we are talking such a lot about a United Economic Front, whatever that means? Of course, it may be quite right - but don't you think, if there's any good reason for obstructing trade, the Board should give it and EXPLAIN, and not just say flatly they see no hope of ever doing anything.
It's rather like the school-children. I expect it was necessary to get them out without any books or pencils or anything to the nearest available place; but I do think the Government might have helped the subsequent arrangements rather more, and got the schools together and organised the distribution of equipment and things. If they would only make a picture in their heads of what it MEANS to teach under such difficulties! I do think it's a pity so many children are drifting back to Town - it's being so good for them to find out how people live in the country. I must tell you about my nice taxi-driver the other night. He'd driven me back a long way in te dark and we had such a conversation on the door-step while I was finding change, having stupidly put my money in the wrong compartment of my hand-bag, and got it all mixed up with my gas-mask.
His wife and family had been evacuated to Hertfordshire (quite near your wife's village, so perhaps she knows them) and he said his wife found the country a little dull, but the CHILDREN were doing splendidly and getting so fat and sturdy on the good country food and fresh air. He said he thought country people were so kind, much more NEIGHBOURLY than they were in Town. So I said, I expected that was because on had fewer neighbours and VALUED them more, and of course, in case of sickness and so on, one couldn't always get to a doctor or hospital so quickly, so that neighbours expected to help one another. But the thing that MOST struck him, he said, was that his children were learning such a lot. He said: "You'd be surprised, the things my kiddies are getting to know - all about animals, and what they eat and how to look after them, and how to grow things - the know a lot more than their parents, my kiddies do. It makes me realise," he said - he was a very intelligent man and so nice - "that I don't know nothing! What do I know? Only how to drive a cab round London - anybody could do that. But I go down there and talk to the family that's taken us in - very kind people they are - and we sit down after supper and talk about quite different TOPICS from what I'm used to. My wife, too - you know, the women usually (excuse me, miss) just talk gossip and that; but down there, we all discuss topics."
Now isn't that a splendid tribute to the country people? And isn't it nice to think that those children, when they grow up, will understand what they read about Agriculture, and Milk and Pig-Marketing Boards, and all those DIFFICULT "Topics" that we all have to vote about - so often without knowing anything!
I've put all this into my report, of course, but it cheered me up so much, I thought I'd like to tell you. Your friend in "the Department" (even to you, I'd better not mention names, had I?) is most friendly, and says our reports are VERY helpful, because we just LISTEN to what people say, instead of asking questions - and as you so RIGHTLY say, dear Lord Peter, if you ask questions, everybody gets self-conscious and tells you what they think will sound well. I used to think it was so cynical of one's nurse to say, "Ask no questions and you'll hear no LIES" - but I dare say she was really a very good psychologist in a practical sort of way.
I must stop now. All your "cats" and "kittens" send you their very LOUDEST purrs!!!
Most sincerely yours,
KATHERINE ALEXANDRA CLIMPSON
7. Extracts from the private D
iary of Lord Peter Wimsey, somewhere abroad.
Tuesday
... My brother writes that he is planting oak-trees in the Long Coppice. I acknowledge that there is something in him that is indomitable. He is persuaded that the next generation, if not this, will see the end of our stewardship, and for him (being what he is) that means the end of everything that was England. Even if we, by some miracle, are not left ruined beyond repair, even if a new kind of society does not take the soil from us and hand it over to God knows what kind of commercial spoliation, his personal situation is hopeless, because he can place no confidence in his heir. He knows well enough that Jerry would not care if the whole place were surrendered to ribbon-building or ragwort. But what the land requires, the land shall have, so long as he is alive to serve it. All the same - oaks!
Two hundred years ago, life presented little difficulty for such as us. Personal privilege and personal responsibility marched together. Now, something within us makes common cause with those who attack privilege, but forbids us to deny the responsibility. I have tried - Heaven knows how hard - to view myself in the light of history and acquiesce in my own decay, but there is some vital imperative in my blood that breaks down my own indifference. ...