The Wimsey Papers (2 page)

Briefly, I have asked for an intense and extensive advertising campaign (one broadcast, by nobody in particular, at a time when few people can listen, is useless). The aim is to inform the pedestrian public of the driver's difficult (which they do not in the least understand) and to place before them my own trifling precautions which keep me safe when I take my little dog for his nightly constitutional. (He is very well, by the way, but has taken a violent dislike to all his persons in tin hats, which makes his company tant soit peu embarassing.) My rules are very simple.
1. Take a torch. (If you cannot get batteries, wear some white thing about you.)
2. Before crossing the road, look to see what is coming, remembering that unless you carry a lighted torch, the driver will not be able to see you till you are practically under his wheels.
3. When you decide it is safe to cross, switch on your torch and keep it on till you reach the opposite kerb. No driver can fail to see that moving pool of light. (If you have no torch, agitate some white object - it is better than nothing.)
4. If you have a torch, direct the light on the ground, and not into the driver's eyes, to deprive him of such light as he has.
5. Never walk in the roadway, except to cross the street.
6. Cross as the pedestrian crossing, if you can identify it; the driver expects to find you there.
Vous voyes, ce n'est pas sorcier! My manservant, who makes use of the omnibus service, desires me to add that if the London Passenger Transport Board would place the route-number at the side of the vehicle, as well as in front and behind, it might be possible to discover which omnibus has arrived at the stop without darting out before it as before an oncoming juggernaut. He informs me that this all-important number is placed so high from the ground as to be invisible to any passenger but an eagle (he himself is slightly myopic), and that moreover the number varies in position and style of design from one omnibus to another. I have checked his statement by personal observation and find that it is so.
If, my dear Peter, you can bring these matters in any way to the attention of someone with real influence and active imagination, you will be instrumental in saving civilian lives to the number of a small army by the time the war is over.
With every confidence in your ability to assist your country in this perplexity,
Your affectionate Uncle,
PAUL AUSTIN DELAGARDIE
P.S. - I have just seen a placard: "BERLIN SUPPRESSES CHURCHILL." If Berlin can do that, it can do anything, and we might as well lay down our arms at once.
3. Harriet, Lady Peter Wimsey, to Lord Peter Wimsey, somewhere abroad. (Extract.)
TALLBOYS,
PAGGLEHAM,
NR. GREAT PAGFORD, HERTS.
17th November, 1939.
... I've been trying to write an article about war-aims and peace-aims, though I'm not at all sure that all this definition doesn't end by darkening counsel, on the principle of "Mummy, I think I might understand if only you wouldn't explain." We all know pretty well that something we value is threatened, but when we try to say what, we're left with a bunch of big words like justice, freedom, honour, truth, and so on, that embarrass us, because they've been misused so often they sound like platform claptrap. And then there's "Peace." Peter, I'm terrified by this reiterated demand for "enduring peace and lasting settlement" - it's far too like the "war to end war." Do we really still persuade ourselves that there's some final disposition of things - territory, economic adjustment, political machinery - that will stabilist all human relationships by a stroke of the pen? That the story can end in the old-fashioned way with wedding-bells - "so they married and lived happy ever after"? If so, we need an Ibsen to deal with public life.
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 humourous 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.