talkingpiffle

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June was dying among the roses, the hedges were darkening to a duller green; the blatancy of red brick sprawled along the highway was a reminder that the present builds inexorably over the empty fields of the past.

Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

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Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers

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And I said, 'What-ho! that absolutely whangs the nail over the crumpet.' Because the idea struck me, really, as being the caterpillar's boots.”

I love when Sayers makes Wimsey go full throttle Bertram Wilberforce Wooster

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Romantasy and dark romance authors need to stop making big brooding guys whose only personality is "touch her and you die" and consider the appeal of creating a hero whose face is likened variously to a worm wriggling out of old cheese and an adjutant stork and who says things like "don’t let’s bring Socrates into this” and “I had found you beyond all hope or expectation, at a time when I thought no woman could ever mean anything to me beyond a little easy sale and exchange of pleasure and I was so terrified of losing you before I could grasp you that I babbled out all my greed and fear as though, God help me, you had nothing to think of but me and my windy self-importance, as though it mattered, as though the very word of love had not been the most crashing insolence a man could offer you."

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Oxford 🪄✨🧙🏼‍♀️🧙🏼‍♂️👞🎓

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Happy 132nd!

Dorothy L. Sayers (June 13, 1893-December 17, 1957)

Happy 124th birthday!

Portrait by Sir William Oliphant Hutchison, c. 1949-50.

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(Gaudy Night)

Excuse me I just need a minute

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"Private, indeed?" muttered Harriet to herself, as she smacked her proofs irritably into brown paper. "You not alone, when you are still alone, O God, from you that I could private be!"

gaudy night

You not alone, when You are still alone, O God from You, that I could private be, Since You one were, I never since was one; Since You in Me, my self since out of Me, Transported from my Selfe, into Your being; Though either distant, present yet to either, Senselesse with too much Joy, each other seeing, And only absent, when Wee are together. Give Me my Selfe, and take your Selfe again, Devise some meanes, but how I may forsake You; So much is Mine, that doth with You remain, That taking what is Mine, with Me I take You; You do bewitch Me, O that I could flie, From my Selfe You, or from your owne Selfe I.

michael drayton, idea (1619 edtn.), sonnet 11

She flicked the pages over hurriedly. "When I am from him, I am dead till I be with him. United souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other; which being impossible, these desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction." That was a most uncomfortable passage, whichever way you looked at it.

gaudy night

Omitting all other, there are three most mysticall unions; Two natures in one person; three persons in one nature; one soule in two bodies. For though indeed they bee really divided, yet are they so united, as they seeme but one, and make rather a duality then two distinct soules. There are wonders in true affections, it is a body of AEnigmaes, mysteries and riddles, wherein two so become one, as they both become two; I love my friend before myself, and yet me thinkes I do not love him enough; some few months hence my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all, when I am from him, I am dead till I bee with him, when I am with him, I am not satisfied, but would still be nearer him: united soules are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truely each other, which being impossible, their desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction.

thomas browne, religio medici (1643)

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Are you still doing the Detective Drama Casting Hour? If so, one of each kind of question, both for a Wimsey adaptation (and feel free to be flexible on timing): 1) Who would you cast to play Mr Murbles?

2) What role would you give to Rachael Stirling? (I have my own idea but I want to hear yours, partly because I think I'm wrong)

I mean, obviously he's too big a star for the part, but Anton Lesser would delight me. His comic timing and gravitas are alike impeccable, and he has enough authority that one can absolutely imagine Lord Peter saying "--don't laugh, I couldn't argue the point with Murbles!"

Perhaps the obvious choice for Rachael Stirling is Miss Meteyard. I'm not sure, to be honest, where else I would place her, except in the Shrewsbury SCR.

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You knew it was coming. 

He’s different from Psmith, I swear! You can tell ‘cause I gave him different…glasses frames. Yeah. 

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I am so charmed by how tumblr-esque dorothy l sayers' way of expressing her fondness for her hero is. she truly was spinning that guy around in an anachronistic microwave and chewing on him and beating him with hammers and biting him biting him biting him and so on with the greatest affection imaginable fr fr. she may have been vastly more articulate and educated than I'll ever dream of being and I respect her writing skill immensely, but blorbo brain recognizes blorbo brain across the ages too. she literally starts out at 'he's like a little worm ❤️in a top hat :)' and only keeps going from there and it's glorious. tell me that descriptions like 'he looked, with his long, narrow face, like a melancholy adjutant stork', 'true, he is all nerves and nose --' and 'he was a colourless shrimp of a child' are not in the same literary tradition as, if removed in time from, the modern tumblr idiom for blorbo appreciation. you can't. I'm right about it. anyone can give their hero hard grey eyes and ptsd but it takes tumblrina instincts to also repeatedly liken him to a bewildered heron

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you cannot fix that blond man please step away and let the professionals take over

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A house i saw today..

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If you're still doing detective drama casting hour - may I request cameo / guest star roles for Harriet Walter and/or Edward Petherbridge in the Wimsey reboot of your dreams?

Harriet Walter for the Warden of Shrewsbury (and queen of my heart forever and ever, amen.) Edward Petherbridge, with his indelibly Wimsey-ish face -- and hands! -- as the wise and scandalous Uncle Paul.

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“I take it, Harriet, that you have no new answer to give me?” “No, Peter. I’m sorry, but I can’t say anything else.” “All right. Don’t worry. I’ll try not to be a nuisance. But if you could put up with me occasionally, as you have done tonight, I should be very grateful to you.” “I don’t think that would be at all fair to you.” “If that’s the only reason, I am the best judge of that.” Then, with a return of his habitual self-mockery: “Old habits die hard. I will not promise to reform altogether. I shall, with your permission, continue to propose to you, at decently regulated intervals—as a birthday treat, and on Guy Fawkes Day and on the Anniversary of the King’s Accession. But consider it, if you will, as a pure formality. You need not pay the smallest attention to it.” “Peter, it’s foolish to go on like this.” “And, of course, on the Feast of All Fools.” “It would be better to forget all about it—I hoped you had.” “I have the most ill-regulated memory. It does those things which it ought not to do and leaves undone the things it ought to have done. But it has not yet gone on strike altogether.”

–Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night, Chapter IV, 1936.

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“One First of April, the question had arrived from Paris in a single Latin sentence, starting off dispiritedly. “Num…?”- a particular which notoriously “expects the answer No.” Harriet, rummaging the Grammar book for “polite negatives,” replied, still more briefly, “Benigne.””

— -Gaudy Night, Dorothy L Sayers (via summersanginme)

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#the entire reason I started reading Sayers was that her books were described to me as#what if bertie wooster was only pretending to be an idiot so he could solve murders#and also jeeves is still there#dorothy sayers#lord peter wimsey (via @nonasuch)

(Peter Wimsey voice) Let's get something out of the way. I know I look and sound like I personally know Bertie Wooster. I know that my entire mien is that of a devoted attendee of his gentleman's club. I know. Unfortunately I am the smartest person in a ten mile radius and there's been a murder.