Large in laughter and achievements

Press, 31 October 1981, Page 17

Large in laughter and achievements

Dorothy L. Sayers: The Life of a Courageous Woman. By James Brabazon. Gollancz, 1981. 227 pp, illustrations, appendix, notes, bibliography and index. $28.25. (Reviewed by Joan Curry) Dorothy L. Sayers was a large lady. She was large in intellect, in her achievements, in her enthusiasms, her personality, her voice, her figure, her laughter, and even her misfortunes. She was remarkable in a number of ways, but it is as the creator of the blueblooded detective/hero Lord Peter Wimsey, and the dozen or so mystery novels which featured him, that she is best known. She once said that she did not remember inventing Lord Peter. She was thinking about writing a detective story and he walked in, spats and all, and applied for the job of hero. Such was the casual genesis of one of the best known fictional detectives in English literature. However, there was a lot more to Dorothy L. Sayers than the writing of mystery novels, however stylish and literate. She was a lady with a formidable intellect, nurtured during a lonely childhood, miraculously unharmed during the miseries of boarding school, then disciplined at Somerville College, Oxford. She worked in advertising, became a theologian and Christian apologist; she wrote poems, plays, essays, articles, critical studies and short stories; she gave lectures with wit and panache; her last undertaking was a translation of Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” a task she did not live

to complete and for which she learned Italian. She was a woman of passion who was vexed by an unprepossessing exterior. She was afraid of her emotions. The only time she allowed herself free emotional rein she was plunged into such despair that she cried every night for three years. It is typical of her that no-one who knew her at the time was aware of her misery, except presumably the man who was the occasion of it. She then consigned romance to the pages of fiction and focussed her emotions on intellectual pursuits. Sir John Gilroy, who was an advertising colleague of hers at the time, appreciated Dorothy with a painter’s eye. He found her “enormous fun — witty, entertaining and bawdy .-.. besides being brilliant at her job, and not unattractive sexually — terrific size — lovely fat fingers — lovely snub nose — lovely curly lips — a baby’s face in a way.” The Wimsey novels were written simply as a source of income, but when she felt financially secure and emotionally stable in a makeshift marriage, Dorothy L. Sayers abandoned detective fiction and turned to the theatre, where she could make large gestures and create extravagant scenes. She plunged into the writing of religious dramas for church festivals, designed for performance against the majestic interiors of cathedrals and churches. The spectacular nature of these occasions was very much to her taste, but it was in the writing of plays in which

Man argued with Heaven that Dorothy's skill as a theologian and then as Christian apologist developed. In writing dialogue for the angels she had to ensure that the arguments were theologically sound and Dorothy’s considerable intellect came into its own. She also practiced polemics on such stately bodies as the Lord’s Day Observance Society, the Ministry of Information and the 8.8. C., not to mention the cranks and maniacs who wrote to her or who challenged her at public meetings. In the field of religious drama she is probably best known for the series of radio plays on the life of Christ known as “The Man born to be King.” In her wrangles with the 8.8. C. on the production .of this series, Dorothy was hugely assertive about her rights, appealed to the highest possible authority and announced that “the writer’s duty to God is his duty to the work, and that he may not submit to any dictate of authority which he does not sincerely believe to be to the good of the work.” The 8.8. C. retreated with dignity, which is more than can be said of Miss Sayers, who was not always dignified, but who usually won. Dorothy L. Sayers was, in more ways than one, a woman of mysteries. She preferred to keep her private life to herself and insisted that a writer’s testimony was to be found in her work. Nevertheless when she died in 1957 “large of body, large of personality, loud of voice and loud of laughter, her death made a large gap in many lives.”