When the economic downturn brought a measure of desperation to the English people, it served to inspire an array of political solutions. The British tracked events in Europe with a mixture of awe and apprehension. Totalitarianism was on the march: in Russia in 1917, Italy in 1922, Germany in 1933, and Spain in 1936. Politicians at both ends of the political spectrum were prepared to lead Britain down the same path toward a dream of utopian salvation. Sayers grasped the dangers very early in the game, suggesting their pernicious influence in several novels before meeting the issue head-on in Gaudy Night. Her answer to totalitarianism was simple and conservative, a celebration of the essential efficacy of Britain’s traditions. True, the British people were poorly organized, often divided, often in the way of one another’s potential achievements, but there was an unmatched strength to be found in a freedom grounded in traditional values. A rigorous devotion to honest work, coupled with the old-fashioned notion of a sporting ideal and a healthy skepticism of their own history, would see the British through. This was not a terribly original thought, perhaps, but an important expression of opposition to totalitarian assumptions, geared to a popular audience.
While Sayers was well attuned to life in the public sphere, blending into the background of her novels images of both current events and persistent conditions, she was perhaps more vitally interested in the problem of values in English society. What distinguishes Sayers’s detective stories is her persistent refusal to paint her fictional world in black-and-white opposites. Every situation, every character, is a realistic blend of good and bad. The persons populating her stories must confront moral ambiguity at every turn. Every action has its consequence; there is no possibility of acting for unremitting good. Even catching the murderer leads to anguished remorse: now another human being must die.
The qualities that Sayers seems to admire most, perhaps because they are so hard to come by, are the elemental virtues of loyalty, honesty, and personal integrity. For all his lighthearted, breezy, devil-may-care pose, these are the attributes most consistently found in Peter Wimsey and in the people he loves most. He falls in love at a distance with Harriet Vane for her honesty; he values his one true friend, Charles Parker, for his cautious integrity. Within his own family, he is closest to his mother and sister, mainly because they have chosen not to behave according to the dictates of their class, but rather to face life plainly.
Sayers became more forthright in her later books, outgrowing the basic dictates of the detective story to investigate the possibilities of a larger world. The values that occupied her attention achieve central importance in the last three novels. The question of doing Christian good in a modern world lies at the heart of The Nine Tailors, though Sayers is careful not to proselytize. A minister’s daughter, she refrained from taking any religious stand in her novels. Lord Peter remains aloof, while nonconformists look for handles and High Church members become roaming Catholics. Still, the tale of quiet horror in Fenchurch St. Paul has its message: religious questions reflect the very nature of what makes us human.
Gaudy Night, the first story in which Sayers set out to point a moral, raises the riddle of human integrity to a new level. It is a confusing world, Sayers allows, full of contradictory messages and instructions. The only answer is to look into one’s own soul and discover what it is that one truly cares about. Doing one’s proper job simply means living the life that conscience, ability, and desire dictate. Anyone choosing to place that decision in the hands of another—be it a parent, a lover, a preacher, or a dictator—is a fool. This is Dorothy L. Sayers’s essential answer for those who live in a modern world. Memories of the war may weaken the desire to do right, science may threaten traditional moral values, society may wish to deny women the freedom to choose their own lives, and the world may seem a hectic and empty place. Look within, determine your job, and let no obstacle stand in your path.
Both Gaudy Night and Busman’s Honeymoon consider another complex of values and responsibilities, perhaps the questions that concerned Sayers most. Certainly the problems posed by love and marriage plagued her own life most consistently; it is a reflection of her intellectual integrity that she chose to explore them in print. Dorothy L. Sayers was unlucky in love, a victim first of unrequited love, followed by a passionless affair with a prig, then by a short, meaningless affair producing a child whom the father did not want. Then marriage—blissful at first, but turning steadily sour as the years flowed by. The degree of Sayers’s success as a writer could be measured by the concomitant unhappiness in her marriage. Given such a history, it is truly amazing that she remained an idealist when it came to romantic love.
The long, painfully awkward courtship of Lord Peter and Harriet Vane would never have occurred had Sayers not believed in true love. It was her strict adherence to a code of love with integrity that forced her to keep Harriet out of Peter’s arms at the close of Strong Poison. Having then trapped herself, she proceeded to make her main characters—two, now—as human as possible, embodying the capability to love, to distrust, to err, to forgive, and to seek forgiveness. A genuine love, a true love match, must be constructed on a foundation of mutual honesty and respect, an equality of giving and taking.
Dorothy L. Sayers had not reached the end of what she had to say on the subject of love when Peter Wimsey reached the end of his existence. As the long week-end drew to a close with the distant drone of approaching war planes, Sayers bowed to the call of other voices, other demands. She was a popular fiction writer acutely sensitive to the nuances of the real world. Demanding honesty of the characters in her novels, she herself portrayed the England she knew as honestly as she could. When the “great fun” of the detective stories ceased to be appropriate, she stopped writing them. She gave no warning, no explanation, no epitaph. Things were such that she had to make a stop, and she did so. Long afterward, she came to realize that the popular fiction portion of her writing career was done. Purposeful or not, the close of the Peter Wimsey series had the effect of making the stories an identifiable product of a specific historical moment. More than any other popular character, Lord Peter is of that era between the wars; he belongs to no other.
Sayers never killed Wimsey (as much as she at times would have liked to). Never living and never dying, he is oddly immortal. Probably if he had understood his fate, he would have grinned with a wry mouth. He was a responsible, even a serious, detective, but he is remembered best as a lighthearted soul, given to a habit of piffling that Harriet Vane came to share. The last glimpse of the Wimseys comes in the long-unpublished short story, “Talboys”—an utterly forgettable story, but for one line, one last glimpse of Peter at his mischievous best: “Harriet, absolve me now from all my sins of the future, that I may enjoy them without remorse” (451).
Ideal love.
Appendix A:
Coordinated Timeline
1918
ENGLAND
The Armistice (November); Parliamentary Reform Act (women thirty years and older can vote); general election (Lloyd George)
SAYERS
Publishes Catholic Tales; meets Eric Whelpton (May)
WIMSEY
Intelligence work in Germany; “dreadfully ill”; frontline officer; broke up with girlfriend Barbara
1919
ENGLAND
Treaty of Versailles; IRA organized; Sex Qualification Removal Act; railway strike; Sankey Commission; cenotaph constructed
SAYERS
Leaves Blackwell’s (May); L’Ecole des Roches, Verneuil, Normandy (July); concentrated interest in detective fiction
WIMSEY
Nursing home, shell shock
1920
ENGLAND
Government of Ireland Act; coal strike; unemployment insurance extended
SAYERS
Wimsey invented; leaves Normandy (September); official degree from Oxford (October); teaching post, Clapham High School
WIMSEY
Bunter enters Peter’s service (January); Attenbury Emerald
s; Mrs. Bilt’s Affair; “Copper Fingers”(April)
1921
ENGLAND
Coal miners locked out; Irish Free State; Government of India Act
SAYERS
Experiments with detective fiction (January); meets John Cournos (March); quits teaching, illness (summer); new teaching post, Acton (autumn); Whose Body? completed (November); Clouds of Witness begun
WIMSEY
“Footsteps That Ran” (summer)
1922
ENGLAND
Lloyd George resigns; Bonar Law becomes prime minister; Conservatives win general election; BBC formed; economic slump leads to chronic unemployment; Fascists seize power in Italy
SAYERS
Begins work at Benson’s (May); relationship with John Cournos ends (late summer); affair with Bill White (December)
WIMSEY
Three months in Italy, two in Paris; “Article in Question” (April); Whose Body? (November); “Bone of Contention” (November)
1923
ENGLAND
Stanley Baldwin prime minister; Housing Act subsidizes construction; France occupies Ruhr
SAYERS
Becomes pregnant (spring); affair with White ends (May); work on Clouds continues; Whose Body? published (May); two months leave from Benson’s
WIMSEY
Three months in Corsica; return to Paris; Clouds of Witness (October–following January)
1924
ENGLAND
Ramsey MacDonald prime minister; Conservatives win general election (Baldwin prime minister)
SAYERS
John Anthony born (January 3); returns to Benson’s (February); discovers Cournos has married; begins correspondence (August)
WIMSEY
“Meleager’s Will” (June); “Man With No Face” (August)
1925
ENGLAND
Britain returns to the gold standard; Widows Pension Act; end of subsidization of coal industry
SAYERS
Meets Mac Fleming (latter half of year); last letter to Cournos (October)
WIMSEY
“Practical Joker”; “Dragon’s Head” (October)
1926
ENGLAND
General Strike; Electricity Act
SAYERS
Clouds of Witness published (February); marries Fleming (April 13); four short stories done; working on Unnatural Death
WIMSEY
“Stolen Stomach” (May); “Matter of Taste”
1927
ENGLAND
Trade Union Acts make sympathetic strikes illegal; collapse of the Beecham Trust
SAYERS
Unnatural Death published (September)
WIMSEY
Unnatural Death (April–June); “Cat in the Bag” (summer); Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (November–December); “Cave of Ali Baba” begins (December)
1928
ENGLAND
Voting age for women lowered to twenty-one; de-rating brings relief to depressed areas; sound films introduced; BBC comes under government control
SAYERS
Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club published (July); Great Short Stories, First Series (September); father dies (September); Lord Peter Views the Body (November); move to Witham, Essex (November)
WIMSEY
In disguise as ex-footman Rogers to gather evidence for “Ali Baba”
1929
ENGLAND
General election (MacDonald, Labour); Local Government Act; Coal Mines Act; Beaverbrook Crusade for free trade; diplomatic relations with USSR; Hatry Group crashes
SAYERS
Tristan published (July); mother dies (July); leaves Benson’s (August)
WIMSEY
Phillip Boyes murdered (June); “Ali Baba” ends (December); Strong Poison begins (December); road accident at Fenchurch St. Paul (New Year’s Eve)
1930
ENGLAND
London Naval Conference; colonial secretary opposes Jewish emmigration to Palestine
SAYERS
Documents in the Case (completed February, published July); visits Kircudbright (May and September)
WIMSEY
Strong Poison ends (January); Nine Tailors investigation (spring); Five Red Herrings (August); vacation with Bunter in Scotland (Kircudbright); returns to Fenchurch St. Paul (Christmas Eve)
1931
ENGLAND
Great Depression begins; gold standard suspended; National Government formed under MacDonald; General Election (MacDonald, National Labour); Statute of Westminster; Japan invades Manchuria
SAYERS
Strong Poison published (January); Five Red Herrings published (January); Great Short Stories, Second Series; work on Wilkie Collins biography begun
WIMSEY
Nine Tailors ends (mid-January); Have His Carcase (June); “Incredible Elopement” (November–following January)
1932
ENGLAND
Mosley forms British Union of Fascists; Import Duties Act; Means Test; Lausanne Conference ends war reparations
SAYERS
Have His Carcase published (April)
WIMSEY
Murder Must Advertise (June–July); “Image in the Mirror” (fall); “Necklace of Pearls” (Christmas); “Queen’s Square” (late December)
1933
ENGLAND
Hitler establishes dictatorship
SAYERS
Murder Must Advertise published (February); Hangman’s Holiday published (May)
WIMSEY
“Absolutely Elsewhere” (fall); “The Folly” (October)
1934
ENGLAND
Germany withdraws from League of Nations
SAYERS
Nine Tailors published (January); Great Short Stories, Third Series
WIMSEY
“In the Teeth of the Evidence” (February)
1935
ENGLAND
General election (Baldwin); Britain begins to rearm; Italy invades Abyssinia; military conscription in Germany; George V Silver Jubilee
SAYERS
Work on Busman’s Honeymoon (play)(February–September); Gaudy Night published (September)
WIMSEY
Gaudy Night (spring); Busman’s Honeymoon (October–following January)
1936
ENGLAND
George V dies; accession of George VI; abdication crisis; Spanish Civil War begins
SAYERS
“Thrones, Dominations” begun; Busman’s Honeymoon opens in London (December); “Gaudy Night” essay written
WIMSEY
“Haunted Policeman” (November)
Compiled by the authors, who freely acknowledge the differences between this and other efforts. The dates provided for some of the Wimsey short stories are admittedly guesswork—one guess is as good as another! Our most profound deviation from other chronologies is the dating of “The Cave of Ali Baba”; our justifications may be found in chapter three of the text. For other Wimsey chronologies, see Hodge, “Chronology,” Sayers Review; Geoffry A. Lee, “The Wimsey Saga: A Chronology,” Pamphlet (Witham, Essex: Dorothy L. Sayers Historical and Literary Society, 1977); Stephan P. Clarke, The Lord Peter Wimsey Companion (New York: The Mysterious Press, 1985), 522, 524; Terrance Lewis, Sayers’ Wimsey, 123–27.
Appendix B:
On Sayers and the Sonnet
Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned, Mindless of its just honours.
—Wordsworth
It is of little import to the body of our text, perhaps trenchant only to “some scholar who might some day observe”—as Harriet’s imagined academic does of Harriet’s imagined Study of Le Fanu—that “the authors have handled their subject with insight and accuracy” (Gaudy Night, 241). Yet the dexterity with which Sayers puts the sonnet to work in the epigraphs as well as in the text of Gaudy Night, her most allusive novel, merits comment.
Harriet and Peter’s sonnet recalls a recitation by (“Number there in love was slain”1) Romeo and Jul
iet. To initiate their love, Shakespeare’s pair craft a sonnet. Closing on a couplet that the couple shares, the form—British, or in deference dubbed Shakespearean—suits their union perfectly:
Conundrums for the Long Week-End Page 28
