Conundrums for the Long Week-End
Page 4
Her first thought was to feature Wimsey in a play. Back in England and teaching at Clapham High School, Sayers roughed out a few pages of The Mousehole: A Detective Fantasia in Three Flats. The action was to begin with the discovery of a financier and a woman not his wife dead of carbon monoxide poisoning in the flat above Lord Peter’s in Piccadilly. On the scene immediately, Peter was described as “sleek, fair, monocle, dressed in a grey suit, with the exception of his coat, whose place is taken by a luxurious dressing-gown.” Peter soon meets Police Inspector Sugg, a familiar antagonist in the published Wimsey tales.
Though Peter has already acquired his eyeglass, his character is not entirely crystallized. At thirty-two he is a bit too old; more importantly, his speech has not yet acquired the clipped pronunciations of East Anglia’s upper class: “Excuse me butting in like this Mr. ?—er—I’m so sorry, I really don’t know your name, but—is anything the matter? I thought I heard somebody knocking—Oh, dear! (Observing the bodies.) How distressing. Did—er—did they have a fit or something?” Not quite right. Still, Peter readily admits to Sugg that his hobby is “other people’s business.”26
The Mousehole got no further. Sayers dropped the play to take up a more promising premise in January 1921. Years afterward she confided to a reporter that the basic story line for Whose Body? evolved at a party, with several friends adding elements to the puzzle.27 In a letter to her mother, Sayers described the initial idea: “My detective story begins brightly with a fat lady found dead in her bath with nothing on but her pince-nez. Now, why did she wear pince-nez in her bath? If you can guess, you will be in a position to lay hands upon the murderer, but he’s a very cool and cunning fellow.”28 She set Peter Wimsey to work to find the “cunning fellow.”
The Wimsey character that took shape under Sayers’s pen between January and November 1921 became the essential basis for all the elaborations of the following fifteen years. He was the product of a portentous time, a literary transition embracing the best aspects of the lost prewar world while facing the uncertain future with determined cheerfulness. If his amiability is a bit mannered, his air self-consciously light, there is good reason for it. Like English society as a whole, Wimsey has been scarred, perhaps irreparably, by the war.
Just as any writer of detective novels in the twenties, Dorothy L. Sayers had first to acknowledge the formidable influence of Sherlock Holmes, the stereotype for all would-be amateur detectives. Sayers is quite forthright in acknowledging her debt to Arthur Conan Doyle. Five pages into Whose Body? Wimsey prepares himself mentally to take on the mystery by announcing, “Exit the amateur of first editions; new motive introduced by solo bassoon; enter Sherlock Holmes, disguised as a walking gentleman.” Later, facing up to a small but important error in the observation of minutiae, he calls himself Watson.29 The name of Sherlock Holmes is invoked in every one of the ten novels that follow.
Wimsey, of course, had to be discernibly different from Holmes, had to be something new in a detective. Where Holmes is tall, rather dark, and ugly, Wimsey is short, fair, and unremarkable to look at, with at least a strong chin. Holmes is of uncertain class but the embodiment of middle-class mentality; Lord Peter is emphatically of the aristocracy. Holmes cares little for wealth or appearance; Peter is a fashion plate with money and a connoisseur of what it will buy. Both are musical virtuosos, though they prefer different instruments (Holmes the violin, Wimsey the piano).
The differences run far deeper than these simple comparisons of characteristics. Sherlock was the evocation of an age, a paragon of all that the Victorian male might aspire to be. He was virtuous and displayed great chivalry toward women, but he was careful to maintain a complete and masterful separation from the opposite sex. He was a man of science, skilled in experimentation, determined to place the work of detection on an empirical footing. Relentlessly logical, he regarded all emotion as weakness. To Holmes, things were just what they were. This made him the court of final appeal, the ultimate source of justice.
Sherlock Holmes was still going strong in the 1920s (Doyle published his last Holmes story in 1931), but he had become an anachronism. These last stories either were placed in retirement settings or were tales of adventure from the good old prewar days. Holmes was no longer the ideal; he had become an impossibility. Peter Wimsey was more the man of the twenties, brilliant but scarred and unsure. Wimsey triumphed through reliance on an uncertain combination of scientific observation, deductive intuition, psychological insight, real assistance from close associates, and occasional good luck. His was a brilliant mind but a mind that acknowledged the existence of factors beyond his control. Wimsey would never be the complete master of a situation.
The difference between the creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and that of Dorothy L. Sayers is manifest in the very tenor of the stories. Holmes was best suited to the short story format: a quick visit to 221B, the proposal of the problem, the logical weighing of the factors to point up probabilities, the testing of the hypothesis, and the exposure of the felon. Apart from Holmes himself, there is little character portrayal; it is extraneous to the plot.30
The successful Wimsey stories are the long narratives. (The short stories are enjoyable only if you have read the novels and therefore know something of Wimsey and other participants.) Character development is crucial to the novels. From the very first, solution turns not so much on the analysis of clues as the understanding of character. For a Sayers story to be fulfilling, the readers must have a fairly complex understanding of the people involved. Only the novels provide that opportunity.
At the heart of the first nine novels is Wimsey himself. He emerges from the first chapters of Whose Body? as a clever if somewhat unconscientious chatterbox, a blithering talker of the first order. He is capable of celebrating in song when presented a body in a bath, calling a close friend a “fathead,” and mercilessly lampooning a dull-witted police inspector. It is difficult to believe he can be completely serious about anything. As the medical student, Mr. Piggott, noted of Peter, “He talked the most fatuous nonsense, certainly, but in a disconcerting way. He didn’t dig into a joke and get all the fun out of it; he made it in passing, so to speak, and skipped away to something else before your retort was ready”(188–89).
Wimsey is, however, a man of taste, as even Mr. Piggott (of suspect mercantile antecedents) could attest. We glimpse little more of Peter’s belongings than his library in this first novel, but we are immediately made to understand that this “was one of the most delightful bachelor rooms in London.” The decor is darkness set off by primrose, the furniture elegant but dutifully comfortable, the wall shelves taken up by priceless first editions bound in leather. A baby grand piano, often used, graces one corner. Oh yes—this is the domain of a wealthy man (26, 189).
And a wealthy, aristocratic man was Wimsey. Sayers determined finally that Lord Peter was the second son of the Duke of Denver, a noble family with roots extending back at least to the Norman invasion. His mother, the Dowager Duchess, is very much in evidence in the story; his father has passed on, leaving the title to Peter’s older brother, Gerald. The current duke is a model of convention; like his father, he will not entertain self-made men at Duke’s Denver.
Though Sayers does not allude to the fact, Denver and his family are examples of a rapidly vanishing country tradition. The twenties saw a visible contraction of aristocratic landholding as the nobility sought to rid itself of an unprofitable commitment to highly taxed agricultural properties. As the elite divested, both their influence and their privilege among the rural population declined. Sayers envisioned Denver as an exception to this trend, subsequently explaining that Gerald, the wealthiest of England’s dukes, could afford to maintain the agricultural traditions at an economic loss. By the end of the series, both he and Lord Peter are convinced that the heir to the title will inevitably sell the properties to Hollywood.31
In Whose Body? it is Peter who seems prepared to cast away the traditions and entitlements of his station. Ger
ald is much irritated by Peter’s lack of proper aristocratic mien, wants him to “marry and settle down and live quietly, doin’ something useful.” For reasons left obscure in this first novel, Peter’s attempt to conform to the model has been a washout. Now Gerald has to worry that Peter might off and marry a chorus beauty. It is bad enough having him appearing as witness in police court.32
Even if he is a “beastly blot on the ’scutcheon,” Peter is a beneficiary of aristocratic privilege. In Whose Body? we learn little more than that he possesses an Oxford education, and we can infer that he attended the best of the public schools, Eton. “The playing fields of Eton” is a watchword for a standard of upper-class English assumption, a very expression of the culture. It is on the playing fields that young men learned the necessary value of fair play, of being a good sport. The game itself is tantamount, sacred—more important than any individual player. Every participant is expected to adhere to the letter and spirit of the rules while giving all they have to win. At the same time, no player could ever suggest, by word or action, that he was trying to win or even cared about the outcome. Wimsey belonged to a family of sportsmen, skilled hunters who nonetheless had never killed a fox. (Much later in the series, Sayers, speaking of sport through Harriet Vane, observes that the “tom-fool word has got more people in trouble than all the rest of the dictionary put together.”)33
The sense of fair play stands Wimsey well in his proper social circle but is a definite impediment to his chosen career as an amateur detective. Peter has no impelling reason to chase down criminals; the work is neither dictated by his class standing nor necessary due to straitened circumstances—quite the opposite. The essential justification he offers in Whose Body? is simply that investigation is a kind of hobby, a distraction. Not unlike crossword puzzles or other exercises for the mind, criminology provides mental stimulation, exhilaration, adventure (73, 186, 216).
At least that is how matters begin. As long as the body in the bath is an abstract puzzle, the perpetrators faceless, detective work can be an unusually enjoyable kind of game. As soon as suspects acquire identities, become people with traits of character, admirable or otherwise, Wimsey suffers an attack of conscience. Suspecting real people of heinous activity, in some cases (of necessity) unjustly, and snooping into their lives is not playing the game. Peter’s closest friend and associate, Police Inspector Charles Parker, makes this plain: “You want to look dignified and consistent—what’s that got to do with it? You want to hunt down a murderer for the sport of the thing and then shake hands with him and say ‘Well played—hard luck—you shall have your revenge tomorrow!’ Well, you can’t do that. Life’s not a football match. You want to be a sportsman. You can’t be a sportsman. You’re a responsible person” (159).
This conflict of emotions lies at the core of Peter Wimsey’s character throughout his career. At first blush he seems superficial, a man playing a game with life. But he is responsible. He cares about what happens to the people he encounters, even the most evil of murderers. Yet he is also sanguine enough to understand that he possesses unique powers that he must use. His most important duty is to society.
In allowing Peter Wimsey to agonize over such a fundamental issue, Dorothy L. Sayers fashioned a singular kind of popular fiction hero: a man who carefully considers his own motivations and explores the consequences of his actions. Sherlock Holmes, along with most of the great fictional detectives of the postwar era, bows out with the solution of the puzzle, the author paying little more than lip service to the fact that exposure of the criminal will fundamentally alter the lives of many people. Sayers explores this fact. Peter Wimsey’s triumphs are muted by the certainty of human suffering to follow.
The reader catches the merest glimpses of Peter’s ingrained sense of responsibility in Whose Body? Mostly he portrays himself as a regular cheerful idiot, blithely irresponsible about money, appointments, or just about anything. Charles Parker is obliged to warn him that he will never make a true detective “till you learn to do a little work.” The one person able to comprehend the necessity of this blither is the great nerve specialist, Sir Julian Freke. Examining Wimsey with the latest scientific instruments, he determines that Peter “must learn to be irresponsible.” Wounds exist in Wimsey’s brain, producing a “sensitive nervous temperament.” The only hope of avoiding further trauma is to avoid opening the old wounds. Peter Wimsey must be frivolous (218–19).
The wounds are a consequence of Peter’s service in the Great War. Sayers reveals this to the reader suddenly and unexpectedly. Peter, grasping the solution to the puzzle of the man in the bath, recoils in horror. Abruptly, he is in the manservant Bunter’s bedroom, ordering him to keep the lights out, babbling of sappers and artillery. Major Wimsey has returned to the war, to the trenches. His teeth chatter; the terror he feels is palpable. With difficulty, Sergeant Bunter gets his man to bed. Subsequently, we learn that this is the latest of several such attacks, that Peter was “dreadfully ill” in 1918 (171, 173, 214).
From that moment on, the frivolous, babbling Wimsey of the early portions of Whose Body? staggers to the finish as a damaged, fragile individual. We learn few specific details of Peter’s war record save that he must have done some intelligence work at one point. He “remembered having once gone, disguised, into the staff-room of a German officer.” For the rest, he must have served as a frontline officer, as fears of the enemy penetrating his entrenchments lay most heavily on his mind (214).
Just what was the nature of this war that it could lie so deeply ingrained in the aristocratic mind of a Peter Wimsey? Why was Peter’s condition so recognizable to Sayers’s readers in 1923, a full five years after the war had ended? Why did the fact of shell shock make an otherwise frivolous character so universally sympathetic to the postwar world? The answers lie in the very nature of the trench warfare that comprised too much of the Great War.
The trenches were the war. Strategically, historically, the war was fought elsewhere as well. It can be said quite honestly that the war was lost and won on the seas. But the trenches were the grinding fact of life, a perpetual horror punctuated by occasional moments of terror. When all was calm, as many as a thousand men a day fell victim to sniper fire. Artillery barrage shattered earth and sanity all too often; poison gas wafted across the fields when the wind was right. Technology remained omnipresent, but it had turned its face against humankind. The trenches meant shelter and survival at a dehumanizing cost.
Between 1914 and 1918 Europe’s governments issued more than ten million shovels to their infantrymen. The men used them to dig a series of three parallel ditches ten feet deep and three hundred miles long, generally two hundred fifty yards from the enemy. One or more support trenches lay behind the frontline diggings. Some distance behind the support trenches lay the main encampments, with barracks, headquarters, hospitals, ordnance and supply, and so forth. Members of the British Expeditionary Force in France rotated between front lines, support lines, and the encampments, hoping to experience three days of relative quiet for every four days of exposure and danger. The true rotation varied greatly from place to place. There were only a few places where geography realistically gave the enemy any opportunity to attack. Those places were often in an uproar for weeks on end, forcing thousands to endure what seemed eternal frontline duty.34
There was literally no language to express what soldiers saw and heard. Enemy artillery laid down sustained barrages with concussive impact to rob men of sleep and sanity, if not life and limb. No-man’s-land became a lifeless, barbed-wire hell pockmarked by muddy craters in which wounded drowned. Corpses, often disintegrated, littered the landscape. Rats, sleek and fat, fed lustily.
Three full years of savagery wrought only more of the same. Cold rain, perpetual mud, rats, lice, dysentery, sniper’s bullets—those were the lot for a calm and average day. Strategists seemed to have no more answer than to send more men over the top to near-certain death. French forces finally mutinied, refusing to attack anymore. Bri
tish morale did not sink quite so low, but the war did shatter precious cultural institutions. Well-educated, aristocratic leaders of the military became the blimps—uninformed, uncaring, hopelessly outdated and dull witted. It became impossible for the private soldier to even mouth the platitudes of deference to their “betters” when obedience only got them killed. The last illusions of corporate hierarchy died in the trenches.35
Faith in progress and civilization, so central to Victorian thinking, withered in France. The sense of community grew smaller and smaller, defined at last as the mates who shared a dugout while enemy shells shook the earth. Men struggled to sustain some semblance of middle-class values, knowing that it was all an illusion. It was hard to maintain a sporting desire for fair play against an enemy issuing poison gas—better to poison them first. Many dreamed of leave, of returning to England long enough to bed a “nice girl” feeling sorry for a poor infantryman.36
Traditional values were displaced by a harsh and cynical humor. Broadsides advocated lice (in a variety of sizes and colors) as pets. Unit newspapers asked the common soldier if he suffered symptoms of optimism. One unit put on a play, written by the soldiers themselves, behind the frontlines. The scene was the trenches, the year 1966. They were all still there, staring across no-man’s-land at the Germans. So were their grandchildren.37
Dorothy L. Sayers steered a careful but inspired path in concocting Peter Wimsey’s war record. To be acceptable to a public acutely cognizant of who had served and who had not, a young aesthete such as Wimsey had to possess a service record. But Wimsey was an aristocrat—dangerous ground. How easy to imagine him a young blimp. By placing him in the frontlines as a major who actually suffered shell shock, Sayers preserved the credibility of his lordly upbringing and education while giving him a real experience of horror shared by millions. And, in refusing to talk about it or dwell on it until forced to do so, Wimsey walked in step with just about every frontline veteran. They had seen far too much that was unspeakable.