Conundrums for the Long Week-End

by Robert Kuhn McGregor

  This time he turns to Harriet to help him through. She, of course, provides all the rational reasons why he cannot blame himself for the nearing execution, but those reasons do not matter, really, to either of them. Peter must feel what he does; he has a conscience. And now he has a spouse as well; he must share all, even his worst moments. Finally he begins to weep against Harriet’s breast. The wounded detective and the romantic lover at last meld into a single person.

  Strange to say, Dorothy L. Sayers did not intend to end the Wimsey series with this moment. That is to say, she had plans for further novels, and she did write additional short stories featuring Peter Wimsey. But the “Epithalamion” reads very much like a conclusion, a summing up of a career. Peter is brought full circle, his family explained, the fierce loyalty between Wimsey and Bunter illuminated, and the last stumbling blocks to true love removed. Peter is still the shell-shocked veteran of Whose Body?: he is also the detective and the lover triumphant. The triumph is strange and painfully human, characterized not by a crow from the rooftops but by an embarrassed fit of bitter tears. There was very little room left for Peter to grow. As matters turned out, Busman’s Honeymoon proved to be the last Peter Wimsey novel.

  6

  Lord Peter and the Long Week-End

  JUST WHAT HAPPENED TO LORD PETER WIMSEY? HE WAS VERY much alive in 1936 and 1937, his marriage celebrated both in the novel and on the stage. Corresponding with Wimsey devotees, his creator outlined ideas for new novels exploring both his hopeful future and his less-than-happy past. The “Wimsey industry” busily continued to fill in the gaps in his heritage, making his family participants in every important event in England’s history since William the Conqueror—often on both sides of the issue at hand. New short stories appeared (no better than the old) chronicling minor investigations and the birth of a Wimsey son. The promised twelfth Peter Wimsey novel never appeared. Why did Dorothy L. Sayers abandon this highly popular series at the peak of her success?1

  Biographers and essayists have offered a variety of explanations, all encompassing at least a grain of truth. Perhaps the intoxicating magic of the stage did Peter in—Sayers thoroughly enjoyed the entire process of staging Busman’s Honeymoon, a cooperative experience far different from the lonely exercise of wrestling with the novel form. New opportunities to explore her talents as a playwright opened in 1936; she rapidly took advantage of them. Perhaps Lord Peter was simply abandoned as Sayers took to writing plays.2

  Intimately connected to Sayers’s newfound affinity for the stage was a new focus on religious issues. In October 1936—before her plunge into play writing had become public knowledge—the organizers of the annual Canterbury festival invited her to write a play appropriate to the history of the cathedral. Though she was known to the general public almost exclusively as a mystery writer, with no published works bearing seriously on religious issues, she had achieved a reputation for Christian sensitivity in important quarters. She was a minister’s daughter, and she had managed to hide her sins quite effectively. And, in The Nine Tailors, she had conveyed a heartwarming empathy for the essence of Christian doctrine in a vehicle possessing widespread popular appeal. Presumably she could do as much for the Canterbury festival. Delighted with the invitation, Sayers fell immediately to work, completing The Zeal of Thy House in ample time for production in June 1937. Her long-latent interest in religious issues was piqued. It would be difficult to reconcile this new devotion with the career of a detective adamant in his indifference to religion.3

  There was also the fact that Dorothy L. Sayers had several times confessed to being fed up with Lord Peter and his whimsical ways. His character had become surpassingly difficult to confine to paper; she had harbored a desire to have done with him since at least 1929. Maybe she had quietly decided that enough was enough, that Busman’s Honeymoon had brought Peter to an artistic conclusion. Though she scribbled a few more things, her heart obviously was not in it—the best course was to let Peter go.4

  If Sayers was not fed up with Lord Peter, she may well have had her fill of his fans. As the Wimsey stories became increasingly popular, Sayers found herself answering increasingly aggravating letters from readers. A letter to a Miss B. S. Sturgis written in April 1937 finds Sayers patiently explaining that there is no relation “between Mr. Tallboys and Talboys,” that “Peter would always have his shirts made for him,” and so on. The “infernal nuisance of writing letters to sentimental Wimsey-addicts” eventually wore away her desire to continue, as she admitted in a letter written in 1949.5

  A fifth explanation examines the direction of the material that Sayers did produce after 1936 detailing the further adventures of Lord Peter. The directions she could take were far from limitless. Before Gaudy Night, Sayers was free to place her detective in any situation suited to her imagination—a vacation in Scotland, a layover in Fenchurch St. Paul, or an infiltration of an advertising agency. Now she had saddled Peter with a wife and an abundant supply of happiness; the openings for cases became correspondingly smaller in number. Moreover, when Sayers did take up the pen to turn out another novel, her portrayal of marriage came appallingly close to mirroring the conditions that brought on the great constitutional crisis of 1936. Enough was seemingly enough.6

  Any and all of these reasons are credible, and there is perhaps one more. Peter Wimsey had sprung to life early in the 1920s, in part the product of the optimism accompanying the birth of the modern age. The prospect had seemed rosy then: a boundless advance into a future of everlasting peace, limitless freedom for men and women of all classes, an embrace of technological wonders, and an end to the malignant stupidities of past leaders, political and social. That future, rather than proving limitless, had lasted for something like eighteen years before the iron door closed once more. There had been no birth of a new civilization from the ashes of the Great War. By 1937 it was obvious that the time that had passed since Armistice Day had been simply a respite, a pause for breath. Europe, having expended nine hundred thousand lives for exactly nothing, was about to go back to war. The “long week-end” was drawing to a close. Peter Wimsey, intimately a product and a figure of that long week-end, was finished as well. An ominous combination of national and international events signalled the end of the era.7

  The event striking closest to home for the British was the death of King George V on January 10, 1936. The old king had been an enduring and celebrated symbol of government since his accession in 1910 at the age of forty-five. Striking a royal tone suggesting the common touch in an era of increasing democracy, George V became increasingly popular with the English people, as the power of the aristocracy faded. While soldiers and civilians alike lost faith in “the blimps” as the Great War dragged on, George V won hearts with his plain and obvious sympathy for the common enlisted man. He demonstrated a continued wisdom and restraint during the many political and economic crises that punctuated the years following the war. Now he was dead, after suffering bravely through painful illness. Countless thousands listened on the wireless for news of the end. More than a king was passing; a symbol of quiet and steadfast security was giving way before an uncertain future.

  The closing of an era might not have had such a dramatic impact had it not been for the sequel. Heir to the throne was the eldest son of George V, forty-two-year-old Edward Albert, Prince of Wales. Possessed of some good and sensitive qualities, he was nonetheless a weak and in effectual human being. This did not preclude his accession—one of the paramount characteristics of kingship is that you have filled the entire job description when you are the first male born to the current occupant. There are expectations, however. By the twentieth century, the throne was a cipher in real politics but a critically important symbol of church and state. Above all, the king must prove a fitting symbol.

  This, Edward VIII could not do. Scandalous rumors began to circulate almost immediately. Edward had foolishly fallen in love with an American (bad enough) divorcee (still worse) who was in the process of obtaining a se
cond divorce (unthinkable). When Edward VIII made known his intention to marry Wallis Simpson and make her queen, the ministry dug in its heels as one. The head of the Church of England under no circumstances could marry a divorced woman. Stanley Baldwin, prime minister since Ramsey MacDonald’s retirement, gave the political performance of his life in guiding England and its wayward king through the crisis. Edward must choose between kingship and love—and do so before his coronation. He chose Mrs. Simpson, which was probably for the best. His younger brother, crowned George VI, proved to be a far more steady and intelligent symbol of leadership.8

  The distraction could not have come at a worse possible moment. Stanley Baldwin was lionized for his handling of the constitutional crisis of 1936, but the policies of government apart from the crisis were disastrously weak. Fascist aggression throughout Europe was met, not with firm opposition but dithering compromise. Mussolini’s government invaded Abyssinia in October 1935, eventually incorporating the ancient kingdom into an Italian fascist empire. The League of Nations imposed pathetically limited economic sanctions, but without visible impact; these were gone within a year. Hitler had already withdrawn from the League, which was pursuing dreams of disarmament while he was imposing military conscription in Germany. Britain, despite criticism from both left and right, began to rearm. In March 1936, Hitler marched troops into the Rhineland, a direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles. Britain made no response, nor did France. German territorial ambitions grew apace—Hitler now aimed to reunite all German-speaking peoples under the Nazi banner.9

  In July 1936, military aggression found a new outlet, as fascist forces led by Francisco Franco revolted against the newly formed liberal government of Spain. Italy and Germany supplied Franco, while the Soviet Union supplied his opponents. An international brigade of idealists joined the leftist cause and found out just what modern war was all about. The watchword was not valor, it was mechanization or, perhaps, air power.10

  As peace disintegrated, war assumed an ominous shape. Civilian terror had become an intimate adjunct to military tactics. Feelings ran high in Britain during the Abyssinian crisis, as reports circulated of deliberate bombings of Ethiopian hospitals and schools. In Spain, German planes levelled the defenseless village of Guernica in 1937, massacring most of the inhabitants. The British slowly came to understand that they were not immune. As early as 1932, Stanley Baldwin had warned, “I think it is well for the man in the street to realize that there is no power on earth that can prevent him from being bombed. Whatever people may tell him, the bomber will always get through. . . . The only defense is in offense, which means that you have to kill women and children more quickly than the enemy if you want to save yourselves.” By 1934, Baldwin was advising that Britain’s military frontier lay not at the Cliffs of Dover but at the Rhine. It was a shame that he did not do more to secure the boundary he so correctly assessed.11

  Slowly, inexorably, incompetently, Britain chugged toward a war footing. While Baldwin and then his successor, Neville Chamberlain, made concession after infamous concession to Hitler, the military built up and trained its air forces, preparing for the worst. Conscription was introduced in April 1939; by the following September Britain was at war. This time, there was no celebration.12

  As the atmosphere turned drastic after 1935, the spirit of Dorothy L. Sayers’s Wimsey tales could not help but suffer. With few exceptions, Sayers had consistently endeavored to give her books a sense of historical immediacy—as if the events she described had just occurred. In Murder Must Advertise, Lord Peter accompanies a royal personage to the theater, while Ginger Joe is asked if he would prefer to meet Ramsey MacDonald rather than Charles Parker. In The Nine Tailors, Sayers makes reference to a series of scandalous and headline-grabbing murders and suicides. And, in Gaudy Night, she specifically notes that the events take place in the year of King George V’s jubilee: 1935.

  After turning almost entirely inward to narrate the events of Busman’s Honeymoon, Sayers planned to return Lord and Lady Peter Wimsey fully to the public arena in her next detective story. The plot of the new novel would be constructed around the most arresting event of the era, the death and funeral of George V.

  Dorothy L. Sayers began plotting this novel in the summer of 1936 after completing the novel Busman’s Honeymoon. She became thoroughly excited as she sketched out her ideas, saying as much in a letter written to Helen Simpson in July 1936: “The scheme looks nice and neat; and is very nearly symmetrical except for the little bulge of PH emotional development, which leads to the solution. I find this scheme so satisfactory that it hardly seems worth while writing the book, does it?”13

  But write it she did—at least the first one hundred seventy pages. The uncompleted manuscript was found in her attic in Witham after her death in 1957. The title, just as she had advised Helen Simpson, was to be “Thrones, Dominations,” derived from a verse discovered in Milton’s Paradise Lost: “Hear all ye Angels, Progenie of Light, / Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Vertues, Powers, / Hear my Decree, which unrevok’t shall stand.” The theme of the book, “in a nutshell” according to Sayers, was encapsulated in a further verse from Paradise Lost. Beelzebub advises his fellow angels, forced from Heaven, that “Thrones and imperial Powers, off-spring of heav’n, / Ethereal Vertues; or these titles now / Must we renounce, and changing stile be call’d / Princes of Hell?” The question Beelzebub poses is a puzzler: should they retain the trappings of heaven in the hope of regaining heaven, or should they cast aside the familiar and start from scratch to create the best hell that they can? A murder mystery built around such a theme would be intriguing indeed.14

  That there was to be a murder is not in doubt, although no one had died as yet when Sayers stopped writing. The story centered on the interactions between the Wimseys and another married couple, Lawrence and Rosamund Harwell. The Harwells’s story parallels that of the Wimseys in certain fundamental ways: Lawrence is wealthy, his wife a former model whom he has rescued from the humiliation of an arrested father. Unlike Peter and Harriet, the Harwells are for the most part unhappy, engaging in bouts of stultifying jealousy. Apparently, Sayers planned to continue the exploration of marriage begun in Busman’s Honeymoon.

  Certainly the story picked up exactly where the previous novel left off. Immediately following Frank Crutchley’s execution on January 10, 1936, Peter and Harriet depart for Paris, where they first come across the Harwells. A series of vexing scenes installing Harriet in London society ensue, providing Sayers repeated opportunities to contrast the attitudes of Peter and Harriet with those of Lawrence and Rosamund. All comes to a sudden and crashing halt with the news of the death of King George V.15

  Dorothy L. Sayers planned to make greater use of an actual historical event in this novel than in any Wimsey story to date. She carefully portrays the variety of reactions to the sad end of a reign, following characters as they move through a London society in mourning. Three days after the king’s death, Peter watches the funeral procession to Whitehall in the company of a young French painter. The artist expresses his amazement at the inadequacy of the police and military presence.

  “This is just a village funeral,” said Peter. “Nobody would dream of making a disturbance. It is not done. When it comes to a public ceremony, precautions will be taken. But not when we are private.”

  “It is fantastic,” said Gaston Chapparelle. “You think of yourselves as a practical people, yet your empire is held together by nothing but a name and a dream. You laugh at your own traditions and are confident the world will respect them. And it does. That is the astonishing thing about it.”

  “It may not last.”16

  Two episodes apparently follow the funeral procession, the first involving a series of unhappy confrontations between the Wimseys and the Harwells, the second comprising a rather frank discussion of sexual matters between Peter and Harriet, with Uncle Paul Delagardie joining in. The manuscript breaks off at this maddening point, with no clear indication even of who
is about to be murdered.17

  A sense of loss, of onrushing disaster, pervades the manuscript. At the bottom of this disorganized and uncompleted stack of handwritten pages is a leaf encapsulating a conversation between Peter and his brother, the Duke of Denver. They are trapped at a dinner party ruthlessly organized by Helen, Duchess of Denver, for Harriet’s “coming out” in society. Helen finds Harriet impossible to countenance, let alone accept, but Gerald struggles to understand.

  “Well, I say you did dead right,” said the Duke. “Good luck to it.”

  “Thanks, old man.”

  The Duke hoped something would be forthcoming, but Peter’s usually busy tongue was well bridled tonight. A queer business, thought the Duke. Independence. Silences. Reservations. Modern marriage. Was there any sort of actual confidence? A slippery affair, & he could get no grip on it. He led the way upstairs. At the top of the landing he paused, & said with an odd air of defiance:

  “I’ve been planting oaks in Boulter’s Hollow.”

  Oaks! Peter met his eye firmly, & said without emphasis:

  “They should do well there.”18

  An odd air of defiance, indeed. Gerald is planting oaks, those most slow-maturing and forward-looking of trees, while Europe crumbles and his most unsatisfactory son prepares to sell out the family estate. Oaks may well prove a vain gesture, a disdainful sentiment directed toward a reckless and unheeding modern world.