Lord Peter and Harriet

[Patrick Gore]

I've been rereading Strong Poison (bless these summers off) and I'm struck this time by the artificiality of Wimsey's secenes with Harriet Vane. I haven't yet read Have His Carcass or Gaudy Night or Busman's Honeymoon, so I don't know if their relationship grew more natural in later books, but on this reading I'm finding the (very brief) scenes with Harriet to be the weakest moments in a very strong book. Any thoughts on this? I know that there is a pro-Harriet camp and and anti-Harriet camp, and I wonder if both sides are represented here...........

[BlackAdder]

I am very fond of the Wimsey short stories, not so much of the novels (except for "Nine Tailors" and "Murder Must Advertise"). Just started re-reading "Whose Body?" -- a book I only read once as a teenager, when we went on a family camping trip in Michigan and got rained out (they had a lending library there, of sorts, and I picked up this book out of curiosity, as it was the only mystery in stock -- spent a day reading it inside the tent, with water seeping up through the floor, pouring down outside, and thought it was very silly, but fun). My opinion hasn't changed -- it is still a silly but fun book, eh, what, by Jove?

[BlackAdder]

"Busman's Honeymoon"

Is it you, Nick Fuller, who proposed this as one of the top
detective/locked-room mystery stories (I went searching for prior
posts but didn't find it here or on GAM)? Anyway, it, apart from
"Gaudy Night" was one of the only Sayers books I'd never read because
their descriptions by the critics turned my stomach. Now I'm doing it, because
somebody recommended it (damn you). I can see why now why it was panned, even only halfway through "Busmans's Honeymoon" which chronicles, in tedious detail, the marriage of Lord Peter with Harriet Vane, complete with 'my turtledove, my dearest' at every opportunity. Yuch!

With that going on, even though Sayers explains it in her preface that
this is a love story with incidental detection of a mystery and
doesn't really apologize -- take it or leave it, she says to mystery
fans. I wish she would just have said 'they fucked their brains out'
rather than going on and on about nuptual beds and having to put up
with Lord Peter spouting off obscure things in Latin and French when
his butler Bunter can't get the cook to serve the breakfast eggs
boiled properly. This is an AWFUL book. The murder itself isn't
revealed until page 125 or so (although it is hinted at) after you
have waded through loads of crap. Very mawkish claptrap that almost
made me want to toss the book into the rubbish bin.

I will grant that there is some nice stuff that points out the mores
of the times, such as we now have never been privileged enough to
enjoy, as exemplified by Bunter telling the milkman to go back to the
village and get the latest edition of the Times for Lord Peter. Some
very funny bits, a la Wodehouse, involving a chimney-sweep who goes on
and on about 'corroded sut', a vicar who shoots a shotgun up the
cmimney to clear it out out (disastrously), and idiotic rustics of
various sorts including the police who just tug their forelocks and
say yes'm and no, m'lord.

A nice comedy of manners based on the times, but hardly a great
mystery novel. Read the book as a bit of Social History, even ignoring
the fact that that life-style was pretty much gone even in Sayers's
times. This is basically an updated Regency Romance, and it really sucks, if you will pardon my Englsh.

BTW, nobody has replied to my question why Peter Wimsey is called Lord
Peter, since he doesn't have a title (this was on GAD). Also there is the protocol, which was pointed out here, that Harriet Wimsey (nee Vane) should be addressed as Lady Peter.* How silly can this sort of thing be and still
be readable? A very dumb detective story, even if it has historical
and social interest. Wimsey in this story is worse of an ass than he
was in his first ("Whose Body?"), even though he is shown to have
'matured' about human passions, etc. and occasionally acts like a real
human being.

PS. I am now into re-reading the Sayers books and stories, but only a
book at at time. I like the short stories (which I re-read, some of
them, constantly) but never liked the novels where Lord Peter's
'personality' became the central point. That is where Sayers's
productions fell apart, but I'm sure encouraged the trend among
mystery writers to get into stuff regarding their detectives' personal
lives. To me, not that I propose that as a directive, it denigates
from pure detection, making me an S.S. Van-Dunce of sorts. The later
Sayers books do present Wimsey as being more self-aware in the sense
that he realizes that his title and clout with Scotland Yard, and that
people (even villains) don't just kow-tow to him and say, 'yes,
m'lord, I done it', does give him qualms. But the fact that the author
fell in love with her own creation, as critics have pointed out, makes
me wonder about her personal life -- not that that's the business of
literary criticism in spite of older fashions in 'psyching out' authors.

But if I were a woman, I wouldn't encourage a Lord Peter at all, in
fact I'd avoid him like the plague, and spit in his face if he quoted
Catulus at me. As a man, I'd toss his Chateau Whatsis crap, vintage
1887, into the aspidistra plant and say give me a good single malt Scotch.

As you can see, I am not a Lord Peter Wimsey fan, in fact despise him,
yet I have to say that when she was in her prime as a detective-story
wirter Sayers was one of the best ever at writing good detecive stories. Is that a contradiction to say you like the writer but can't stand the detective?

* Personal note, ignore this if you don't care. My sister married the heir to an English title, Duke of something or other, descending from the Wars of the Roses time, used to own Pontefract Castle (they are now long ago divorced). My parents had a hell of a chore addressing the wedding intros properly and all that stuff, what to call the groom's mother, who was Lady Lacy. Her first name was Lucy, but they had to hire somebody in the know to specify it in the invites as Lady Lucy Lacy or Lucy Lady Lacy -- Jesus! I forget the result and certainly couldn't care less, but isn't that absurd? (My ex-brother-in-law, who by the way found me his only friend in the in-law and marital wars, has now inherited the title, whatever it is, from his older brother, who worked
as a garbageman, and he is working the phones in a taxi-dispatch place)

His son, my nephew (32 years old, damn it) is a nice chap but pretty much inept and too much into cocaine, although that didn't stop him from moving in with us for two months with his girlfriend when he decided that he had no future in London so should immigrate to NYC -- little did he know about Green Cards and that sort of thing, but he went back last week because he spotted that his British passpsort was going to expire on Sept. 5! And of course hadn't found any work except as a temp off the books at the Javits Convention Center hauling boxes around.

PSS. Please explain to me why things I post (expecially when pasted from somewhere else) do not align in the text box, at least in Preview, but have bits of text sticking WAY out to the right side instead of wrapping around. Does it have something to do with those invisible carriage return thingies?

[BlackAdder]

Shit, my previous message disappeared for some reason. I spent half an hour composing it! Then clicked Submit, then got returned this blank screen I'm writing on.

Oops, there it is just after I wrote this complaint. Patience is a virtue, as I always tell my cats when they demand food right now. I'm just not as focussed as they are. Same as when my wife tells me, "Don't you know we are going out to dinner with the DIpschutz's tonight? Why aren't you ready, I told you this last week?"
"Harrum," (I say, not knowing what she was talking about), "I thought you said NEXT Wednesday."

[Patrick Gore]

Originally Posted by BlackAdder

* Personal note, ignore this if you don't care. My sister married the heir to an English title, Duke of something or other, descending from the Wars of the Roses time, used to own Pontefract Castle (they are now long ago divorced). My parents had a hell of a chore addressing the wedding intros properly and all that stuff, what to call the groom's mother, who was Lady Lacy. Her first name was Lucy, but they had to hire somebody in the know to specify it in the invites as Lady Lucy Lacy or Lucy Lady Lacy -- Jesus! I forget the result and certainly couldn't care less, but isn't that absurd? (My ex-brother-in-law, who by the way found me his only friend in the in-law and marital wars, has now inherited the title, whatever it is, from his older brother, who worked

as a garbageman, and he is working the phones in a taxi-dispatch place)

What a great story. Funnier than anything in Carter Dickson. You could work this into a detective story.

By the way, though I haven't read Gaudy Night (well, only bits) or Busman's Honeymoon, I have always read that Gaudy Night is, despite the emphasis on courtship, far better than Honeymoon.

The (a?) trouble with Lord Peter in love is that Sayers didn't really seem to know how to depict men's romantic thoughts. This is a problem many male writers have with women characters, of course. But Peter, who is kind of an ass generally, behaves like an overgrown incontinent twelve-year-old when Harriet comes into the picture, which pace Sayers is not charming but embarassing. (Which is too bad, because he's quite mature and charming in his dealings with other women, whom he doesn't "love," like whatsherface he was involved with in Bellona Club [I think] before he met Harriet -- she appears in Strong Poison as well if that helps you make sense of my ramblings.)

I will have to re-read Nine Tailors since I remember being bored out of my mind and feeling that it was terribly overrated, despite the ingenious least-likely-suspect gimmick, but Murder Must Advertise is great, with Lord Peter much more adult and in control of himself than in Strong Poison or (from what I've read of it) Gaudy Night.