#Wimsey

[likeniobe]

"Anyway, it was ten past when I wound that there clock. And it keeps good time." "It's right now," said Kirk, glancing at his watch. Harriet's wrist-watch confirmed this, and so did Joe Sellon's. Peter, after a blank glance at his own watch, said "Mine's stopped," in a tone which might have suggested that Newton's apple had been observed to fly upward or a B.B.C. announcer heard to use a bawdy expression. "Perhaps," suggested Harriet, practically, "you forgot to wind it up." "I never forget to wind it up," said her husband, indignantly. "You're quite right, though; I did. I must have been thinking of something else last night."

dorothy sayers, busman's honeymoon

[o-uncle-newt]

Enter Sir John (and Lord Peter)

This is basically a Sayers blog alongside a Finnemore blog at this point- and this is going to be mostly a Sayers post but also a bit of a window into my other detective fiction reading, which I don't really post about here but kind of want to. A bit of an experiment. (Also, some spoilers to a very old and AFAIK out of print book that I don't particularly recommend below, as well as a Sayers novel.)

So I have been reading a LOT of random old timey detective fiction recently, and at one point made a reading list based on having read the fabulous The Golden Age of Murder by Martin Edwards, which I highly recommend to basically anyone with even the faintest interest in the subject (and even more so to Christie and Sayers fans). ANYWAY, I made the list, then completely forgot where I got it from, ordered a bunch of books through the NYPL's interlibrary loan system, and somehow got all of them at once. So now I have a stack of books from five states on my dresser, many of which are first editions. One of those is my copy of Enter Sir John by Clemence Dane and Helen Simpson, which isn't only a first edition but literally has the pencil inscription by the original owner from Christmas 1928, when he bought/received the book. Gah I love reading other people's old books.

Reading other people's old books in general is fun- reading this particular one was more of a mixed bag. The pacing was kind of weird, the mystery was kind of thin (and the motive was... PECULIAR for a 21st century reader, a mix of oddly progressive and deeply, deeply problematic depending on how you look at it), and the characterization of most of the characters was pretty thin. The atmosphere of the small-time theatrical setting was fun, and the detective, Sir John Saumarez, is reasonably entertaining. To go through, and mildly spoil (you'll see why shortly), the plot- someone is found dead who had been known to have previously quarrelled with a woman in the past, under circumstances which make it clear that this woman had both motive, means, and opportunity. The woman is arrested and her trial is attended by a man with a title who is struck by her and feels compelled to work on her behalf. He works hard to find the actual killer when the trial goes poorly for her, and realizes that he is in love with her and confesses his feelings to her.

Sound familiar?

For context, Enter Sir John was published two years before Dorothy L Sayers's Strong Poison, and to be transparent I fiddled a bit with the timing and phrasing to make the synopsis as CLEARLY correlated as it is (he doesn't confess his feelings to her until after he's gotten her off the murder charges, she's actually in the room when the murder victim is found, she actually is convicted and her conviction is overturned on appeal, among other changes). If the above plot sounds interesting and you HAVEN'T read Strong Poison, just skip and read Strong Poison because it does the whole thing SO much better. For one thing, the mystery is better- this was Dane and Simpson's first mystery, and while I largely enjoyed Dane's earlier novel Regiment of Women (which I may post my thoughts about sometime), this book just didn't really work for me. It's technically fair play, I guess, but there aren't a whole lot of actual suspects or clues (there aren't many suspects in Strong Poison either, but there are many more clues and there's a much more robust structure).

The other major difference, and this is pretty important because it's at exactly the point where the two books are so similar, is that the characterization of the romance in Enter Sir John is REALLY NOT GOOD. Sure, as Sayers noted in her 1929 introduction to her Omnibus of Crime anthology, love interests in detective novels are often shitty and this isn't necessarily significantly worse than certain others I have read. But while there do seem to be attempts to describe the suspect's personality in a way that makes her sound more honest, frank, straightforward, etc (the kinds of ways that Harriet Vane comes across later in Strong Poison), she also comes across really naive and dumb, and really doesn't have a whole lot to do in the book at all to counteract that impression. On the plus side... she isn't AS racist as some other people, I guess? (This plays into the motive, which I can describe in the comments for people- it's too annoying to get bogged down in.) But anyway, Sir John largely (apparently? it's not characterized super well) is compelled by her and falls in love with her because of her striking appearance and her good breeding and gentility or whatever, and it's all just super awkward. (Also, there's the same "oh no I didn't realize you were proposing" awkwardness in this book as in Regiment of Women, which does it MUCH better and for MUCH better characterization-related reasons. In this book it's just kind of skin-crawling to read.)

Anyway, why have I made you all read about why I didn't particularly like a not-super-easy-to-find book that you were unlikely to ever read anyway? Well, partly because it's an interesting curiosity- and because as I was reading I was like "what the hell, how did Sayers get away with this?" So I cracked open my copy of The Golden Age of Murder again and in its description of the book realized that it mentions that Sayers and Simpson were friends and that Enter Sir John is of interest as an inspiration to Strong Poison, which in retrospect is probably why I put it on my list in the first place.

But I'm still left with some lingering questions. While the actual murder plot and motive are entirely different, this particular throughline on the part of the detective is really STARTLINGLY similar, not least because Sir John Saumarez has some distinctive surface resemblances to Wimsey. For one thing, the method used to trap the killer (casually having them be part of a reenactment/discussion of the way the murder took place) is used by Sayers in Strong Poison as a ruse that Wimsey uses to try to catch Harriet Vane out, if there's anything to catch (when he "casually" brings up the murder-for-book-profits mystery plot idea he had). For another, like Wimsey later would in Strong Poison, Saumarez has a whole inner monologue about how he has only a month to solve the case (though in his case it's before the suspect is executed, and in Wimsey's case it's the IMO more plausible situation of being before the retrial occurs).

All that being considered, one major difference is, of course, that at the end of Strong Poison Wimsey and Harriet don't get engaged, and Saumarez and the suspect (whose name I don't even remember, if I'm being honest, she REALLY wasn't that memorable) do. But Sayers famously wrote that she wanted to use this book to marry Wimsey off! If she had followed through, and still used this same book as a way to do it, would she have literally lifted, if substantially improved, this plotline from her friend's book in order to do it? She was such an original writer- would she have borrowed so significantly from another writer to finish off a series that she had worked so hard on, even if it was one she was wearying of?!

It's interesting, because I wrote in a previous post about how it feels like after writing the Omnibus of Crime intro, including how bad mystery romance plots are, she dared herself to do it better. Reading this book makes me wonder if she read THIS PARTICULAR BOOK and decided she wanted to do it better. Which would be fascinating whether that was a decision that she made before she'd decided to continue the series after this book or afterward- before, in which case she'd be wholesale lifting the plot but at the same time elevating it lol I feel like I'm writing crossword clues) just by virtue of better writing and characterization in both that plot and the mystery that surrounded it, or after, in which case one of her ways of elevating it would de facto BE changing the ending to make it less corny and awkward, and writing a detective romance which is actually psychologically plausible and satisfying rather than just pairing pants and a skirt, so to speak.

Anyway- decidedly mediocre book that I don't particularly recommend, but one that made me ask some questions that I had a lot of fun pondering! I also had fun writing this, and am considering doing another one on Leo Bruce's The Case for Three Detectives, which was tremendously fun as a pastiche of Wimsey as well as Poirot and Father Brown.

[dickensianenglishbulldog]

Me: *uses italics to emphasise a typed point*

The little Miss Climpton that lives in my head: Ahh, I am so glad to see you using italics. I always feel they add such emphasis to a sentence don’t you?

Me: ... Right, we’ll now I’m going to have to rely upon the weight of my arguments to covay emphasis. Bloody hell.

[e--q]

Ringing in a Whimsical New Year with Lord Peter Wimsey 

(Handmade Soft Toy inspired by the character created by Dorothy L. Sayers)

[earlgraytay]

God, there really is nothing like 20s detective fiction to remind you that prejudice is a social construct.

You'll have a story with a crossdressing thief which is mildly transmisogynistic but completely devoid of modern vitriol; it literally comes off as "here is a fun oddity that lets me be Clever about French grammar"

And in the very next story you will learn fifteen different slurs for Italians

[fromthedeskofcripslock]

This really ought to top every “Best Opening Lines,” list. The 21st century reading public is sleeping on Dorothy L Sayers.

(Have His Carcase 1932)

[aceredshirt13]

if there's one thing about classic literary detectives it's that they are not conventionally attractive. doyle told sidney paget to stop drawing holmes so pretty. christie was like "let me introduce you to this short pudgy balding man who is retirement age and i hate him." sayers compares wimsey to maggots on literally the FIRST PAGE

i love it. i love them. stop casting hot people in these roles. we need our detectives to be Charmingly Weird-Looking

[frommybookbook]

For some reason, the cover preview of this Dorothy Sayers murder mystery on my library's website is actually the Cat in the Hat. I'm not saying there isn't a lot of character overlap between the Cat and Peter Wimsey, but I still don't think this is quite right.

[m-a-salter]

Period Drama Appreciation Week 2024 | Day 2: Favorite Character | Edward Petherbridge as Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy L. Sayers Mysteries (1987)

[elodieunderglass]

Friend and I were pondering the curious specificities of the Permitted Aristo

[likeniobe]

Peter, of course, was just as tiresome as he could be, and that is saying a good deal. [...] I was prepared to do everything in my power to see that the thing was done properly, if it had to be done at all. But my mother-in-law took it all out of my hands, though I am sure we were distinctly given to understand that the wedding would take place on the day I had suggested, that is, next Wednesday. But this, as you will see, was just one of Peter's monkey tricks. I feel the slight very much, particularly as we had gone out of our way to be civil to the girl, and had asked her to dinner. Well! Last Monday evening, when we were down at Denver, we got a wire from Peter, which coolly said, "If you really want to see me married, try St. Cross Church, Oxford, to-morrow at two." I was furious—all that distance and my frock not ready, and, to make things worse, Gerald, who had asked sixteen people down for the shooting, laughed like an idiot, and said, "Good for Peter!" [...] Presently the bride and bridegroom vanished, and we waited a long time for them, till my mother-in-law came down, all smiles, to announce that they had been gone half an hour, leaving no address.

helen's letter in busman's honeymoon

At her lying in town this last parliament, I found means to see her twice or thrice we both knew the obligations that lay upon us, and we adventured equally, and about three weeks before Christmas we married. And as at the doing, there were not used above five persons, of which I protest to you by my salvation, there was not one that had any dependence or relation to you, so in all the passage of it, did I forbear to use any such person, who by furthering of it might violate any trust or duty towards you. The reasons, why I did not foreacquaint you with it, (to deal with the same plainness that I have used) were these. I knew my present estate less then fit for her; I knew, (yet I knew not why) that I stood not right in your Opinion; I knew that to have given any intimation of it had been to impossibilitate the whole Matter. And then having those honest purposes in our hearts, and those fetters in our Consciences, me thinks we should be pardoned, if our fault be but this, that we did not by fore-revealing of it, consent to our hindrance and torment.

john donne's letter to sir george more on his marriage to ann more, february 2 1601/1602

[o-uncle-newt]

A friend of mine just made the mistake of telling me she's going to Oxford to do research at the Bodleian this summer- I sent her back a five minute long voicenote screaming about Sayers and Wimsey and Harriet Vane and have not heard from her since

Welp, at least she's not going to Cambridge- if she were I'd probably have found a way to attach an audio file of the full 28 minutes of Here's What We Do

[dickensianenglishbulldog]

Father Brown: Beneath the foolish-seeming exterior there lies an analytical, supremely sympathetic man.

Lord Peter Wimsey: Beneath the foolish-seeming exterior there lies an analytical, supremely sympathetic man. Beneath him there lies another very silly man, except this one reads Donne.

[thesarahshay]

Thinking about her (the 9-year-old girl from Gaudy Night who says "I don't want a husband, I'd rather have a motorcycle").

[wormtimenow]

Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane my beloved

[hailingsweetpotatoes]

this sucks so bad I need to [remembers suicide jokes only worsen my mental health] investigate a naked corpse that was found in the bathtub of an architect my mother met one time