On this night – the last dark evening of the old year the first morning of the new – there will be listeners over all the earth. Big Ben will sound at midnight. It may be that in the last hour the Clock Tower itself will be damaged or destroyed. But even so the bells of Big Ben will be heard. For there is a tense listening independent of the ear, a listening that causes the blood to wait and the heart itself for a moment to be hushed.
England will hear Big Ben in darkness. Perhaps as the hour is tolled, there will be the roar of explosives and the deathly murmur of bombing planes – or the night may be a quiet one over there. In any case the bell will sound in our mind’s ear. And these will be among the listeners: the sentries keeping watch over the dark channel; the city people in the air-raid shelters; and the homeless who huddle together on the platforms of the tubes; old farmers in wayside pubs. In the wards of hospitals the hurt and restless they also will hear. And somewhere a frightened child with an upturned face. A rough, rosy soldier on duty at an airport will blow warm breath into his cupped hands, stamp on the frosty ground, and stand silent for a moment at midnight. These, then, will hear – for the sound will echo through the cities and all the countryside of the dark island.
Nor will the echoes stop there. The time will not actually be midnight everywhere. But the twelve slow strokes will for a moment seem to effect a synthesis of time throughout the world. In the defeated lands Big Ben will bring hope and, to the souls of many, a fevered quiver of rebellion. And if the people of the Axis countries were allowed to hear this bell who knows what their feelings and their doubts might be?
We in America will be listeners on this New Year. In all the states the tones of Big Ben will be broadcast. From Oregon to Georgia, in the homes of the comfortable who taste egg-nog from silver cups and in the grim tenements of the poor, the English New Year will be heard. Down in the South it will be early evening. Quiet, orange firelight will flicker on kitchen walls, and in the cupboards there will be the hog-jowl and the black-eyed peas to bring good fortune in the coming year. On the Pacific coast the sun will still be shining. In the Northern homes, with the cold blue glow of snow outside, the gathered families will wait for the hour.
On this night, London may be grey with fog, or the clean moonlight may make of the Clock Tower a silhouette against the winter sky. But when the bells sound it will be the heartbeat of warring Britain – sombre, resonant, and deeply sure. Yes, Big Ben will ring again this New Year, and over all the earth there will be listeners.
[Vogue, 1 January 1941]