Conundrums for the Long Week-End

by Robert Kuhn McGregor

  7. Sayers, “The Omnibus of Crime,” 95–97.

  8. Ibid., 97–109. For an intriguing critique of Sayers’s critique, see Raymond Chandler, “The Simple Art of Murder,” in Haycraft, Art of the Mystery Story, 222–37. Two later discussions of Sayers on the mystery story are Catherine Aird, “It Was the Cat!,” in Dale, Sayers Centenary, 79–86; and Aaron Elkins, “The Art of Framing Lies: Dorothy L. Sayers on Mystery Fiction,” in Dale, Sayers Centenary, 99–107.

  9. Reynolds, Sayers: Her Life and Soul, 173. Sayers enjoyed playing with character names as well. In the short story “The Undignified Melodrama of the Bone of Contention,” two brothers named Haviland and Martin fight over their father’s unusual will. In the novel Have His Carcase, the murderer takes an assumed name while camping out in disguise—the name: Haviland Martin.

  10. Sayers, Whose Body? 244. For a discussion of Sayers’s debt to Bentley, see Barbara Reynolds, “The Origin of Lord Peter Wimsey,” Sayers Review 2, no. 1 (May 1978): 1–16, 21.

  11. Sayers, “The Omnibus of Crime,” 104.

  12. Dorothy L. Sayers, introduction to E. C. Bentley, Trent’s Last Case (1930; reprint, New York: Carroll and Graf, 1991), x–xiii; quotation xii.

  13. Sayers, Unnatural Death, 250; Sayers, “The Omnibus of Crime,” 108; DeAndrea, Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, 126–27.

  14. Sayers, “The Omnibus of Crime,” 103.

  15. Ibid., 102.

  16. Sayers, Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, 304; Willard Huntington Wright, “The Great Detective Stories” in Haycraft, Art of the Mystery Story, 58; DeAndrea, Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, 367.

  17. Sayers to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, Oct. 30, 1930, Letters, 310.

  18. Sayers to Victor Gollancz, Jan. 22, 1931, Letters, 312.

  19. Sayers, Five Red Herrings, 142; DeAndrea, Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, 62; Sayers, “The Omnibus of Crime,” 102–3.

  20. Two essays considering this issue are R. B. Reaves, “Crime and Punishment in the Detective Fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers,” in As Her Whimsey Took Her, 1–13; and R. D. Stock and Barbara Stock, “The Agents of Evil and Justice in the Novels of Dorothy L. Sayers,” in Hanay, As Her Whimsey Took Her, 14–22.

  21. Sayers, Five Red Herrings, 194–95; Sayers to Victor Gollancz, Sept. 20, 1930, Letters, 309–10; Freeman Wills Crofts, Sir John McGill’s Last Journey (Catchogue, N.Y.: Buccaneer Books, 1930).

  22. Sayers, “The Omnibus of Crime,” 108; DeAndrea, Encyclopedia Mysteriosa, 79.

  23. Sayers, Five Red Herrings, 272; Sayers, “The Omnibus of Crime,” 79.

  24. Sayers, “The Omnibus of Crime,” 89.

  25. For a comparison of Sayers’s use of railways to that of Freeman Wills Crofts, see P. L. Scowcroft, “Railways and the Detective Fiction of Dorothy L. Sayers,” Proceedings of the Seminar, 1980 (Witham, Essex: Dorothy L. Sayers Historical and Literary Society, Archives, 1980).

  26. Sayers to Victor Gollancz, Jan. 22, 1931, Letters, 311–12.

  27. Have His Carcase, 14, 61.

  28. Ibid., 187.

  29. Ibid., 290.

  30. Ibid., 112.

  31. Sayers to Victor Gollancz, Sept.14, 1932, Letters, 322–23.

  32. Sayers to Harold Bell, Mar. 12, 1933, Letters, 330.

  33. Sayers, “Gaudy Night,” 209–10. For a discussion of Sayers’s plotting, focusing on Murder Must Advertise, see Stephen Hahn, “‘Where Do Plots Come From?’ Dorothy L. Sayers on Literary Invention,” Columbia Library Columns 37 (Feb. 1988): 3–12.

  34. Dorothy L. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise (New York: HarperPerennial, 1993), 118.

  35. For a brief description of Sayers’s most successful campaign, see “Do You Remember the Mustard Club?,” pamphlet (Witham, Essex: Dorothy L. Sayers Historical and Literary Society, 1976).

  36. Terrance L. Lewis, A Climate for Appeasement (New York: Peter Lang, 1991), 109–25.

  37. Sayers, Strong Poison, 229.

  5. LORD PETER ACHIEVES A BALANCE

  1. Sayers, Have His Carcase, 278–79.

  2. Taylor, English History, 262–97, 321–50; Graves and Hodge, The Long Week-End, 235–53.

  3. Robert C. Tucker, Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1928–1941 (New York: Norton, 1990); Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, 1917–1932, 2d ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

  4. Victoria De Grazia, How Fascism Ruled Women: Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).

  5. David Schoenbaum, Hitler’s Social Revolution: Class and Status in Nazi Germany, 1933–1939 (New York: Norton, 1997); Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).

  6. Henry A. Turner, German Big Business and the Rise of Hitler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Detlev J. K. Peukert, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life (London: Batsford, 1987).

  7. Eksteins, Rites of Spring, 300–331; Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (New York: Aaron Asher Books, 1992).

  8. Graves and Hodge, The Long Week-End, 312–45; Taylor, English History, 396–97.

  9. Taylor, English History, 284–86, 374, 418–19.

  10. Sayers, Murder Must Advertise, 19, 277.

  11. Sayers to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, June 24, 1935, Letters, 350.

  12. Sayers to Victor Gollancz, Sept. 26, 1935, Letters, 357.

  13. Ibid., author’s note, vii; Pauline Adams, Somerville for Women: An Oxford College, 1879–1993 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); S. L. Clark, “Harriet Vane Goes to Oxford: Gaudy Night and the Academic Woman,” Sayers Review 2, no. 3 (Aug. 1978): 22–43.

  14. Sayers to Victor Gollancz, Sept. 26, 1935, Letters, 357; Dorothy L. Sayers, “Are Women Human?” in Unpopular Opinions (London: Victor Gollancz, 1946). Two discussions of Sayers and feminism are Laura Krugman Ray, “The Mysteries of Gaudy Night: Feminism, Faith, and the Depths of Character,” Mystery and Detection Annual (Beverly Hills: D. Adams, 1973), 272–85; and Kathleen L. Maio, Unnatural Women: A Feminist Study of Dorothy L. Sayers, Women and Literature Ovular, Goddard/Cambridge Graduate Center (Oct. 1975).

  15. For a discussion of Annie Wilson, see S. L. Clark, “The Female Felon in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night,” Publication of the Arkansas Philological Association 3 (1977): 59–67.

  16. Sayers to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, Sept. 8, 1935, Letters, 354.

  17. Sayers to Muriel St. Clare Byrne, July 16, 1935, Letters, 350.

  18. Sayers to Ivy Shrimpton, Aug. 21, 1934, Letters, 341–42.

  19. Sayers, “Gaudy Night,” 211–12.

  20. A persuasive discussion of this aspect of the story is Carolyn G. Hart, “Gaudy Night: Quintessential Sayers,” Sayers Centenary, 45–50.

  21. Reynolds, Sayers: Her Life and Soul, 265–67.

  22. In 1935, Gollancz acquired the rights to the first four Wimsey novels from the original British publishers, reissuing each with the “Biographical Note” appended.

  23. Sayers, “Biographical Note,” in Whose Body? vii–xv.

  24. Wilfred Scott-Giles, The Wimsey Family (London: Victor Gollancz, 1977).

  25. Reynolds, Sayers: Her Life and Soul, 265–67; Sayers to C. W. Scott-Giles, Feb. 26, 28, Mar. 25, Apr. 10, 15, Aug. 5, 1936, Letters, 368–74, 381–85, 397–98.

  26. Reynolds, Sayers: Her Life and Soul, 263–75.

  27. Dorothy L. Sayers and Muriel St. Clare Byrne, Busman’s Honeymoon: A Detective Comedy, published with Dorothy L. Sayers, Love All: A Comedy of Manners (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1984).

  28. Reynolds, Sayers: Her Life and Soul, 261–72.

  29. For a brief discussion of marriage and the detective story, see P. D. James, “Ought Adam to Marry Cordelia?” Murder Ink, ed. Dilys Winn (New York: Workman Press, 1977), 68–69.

  30. Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman’s Honeymoon: A Love Story With Detective Interruptions (New York: HarperPerennial, 1993), 92, 115.

  31. For a discussion of the marriage, see B. J. Rahn, “The Marriage of True Minds, in D
ale, Sayers Centenary, 51–65.

  32. Sayers and St. Clare Byrne, Busman’s Honeymoon (play), 120.

  33. Sayers and St. Clare Byrne, Busman’s Honeymoon (play), 120.

  34. Sayers, Busman’s Honeymoon (novel), 349.

  6. LORD PETER AND THE LONG WEEK-END

  1. In a general review of mysteries published by Time in 1938, the author noted that “the erudite Dorothy Sayers is now one of the most popular of mystery writers; her successful Murder Must Advertise sold only 9,000 copies, her audience growing slowly with each book until her most recent. Busman’s Honeymoon reached a high of 20,000.” “Murder Market,” Time 31 (Feb. 28, 1938): 67.

  2. Alzina Stone Dale argues this position in Maker and Craftsman, 99–100; as does Brabazon, Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography, 158; Hitchman, Such a Strange Lady, 112–13; and Durkin, Dorothy L. Sayers, 81.

  3. Barbara Reynolds seems to lean toward new-found religious inspiration in Sayers: Her Life and Soul, 240; Catherine Kenney makes a stronger argument in The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers, 215–16. Details on the composition of Zeal of Thy House may be found in Reynolds, 273ff.

  4. Ralph E. Hone emphasizes this explanation, Dorothy L. Sayers: A Literary Biography, 82; David Coomes favors this as well, Dorothy L. Sayers: A Careless Rage for Life, 119.

  5. Sayers to B. S. Sturgis, Apr. 9, 1937, Letters, 20–21; Sayers to Sir Henry Aubrey-Fletcher, Oct. 24, 1949, quoted in Reynolds, Sayers: Her Life and Soul, 339.

  6. See Alzina Stone Dale, “Wimsey: Lost and Found,” The Armchair Detective (Spring 1990): 142–51, esp. 145–46.

  7. Janet Hitchman, Such a Strange Lady, 112; and Ralph E. Hone, Dorothy L. Sayers, 82, mention this possibility, though neither explores it.

  8. Graves and Hodge, The Long Week-End, 346–65; Taylor, English History, 398–405.

  9. Joachim Remak, The Origins of the Second World War (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976).

  10. Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War, rev. ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1977); George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1938).

  11. Graves and Hodge, The Long Week-End, 312–26; quotation, 315.

  12. Taylor, English History, 389–437.

  13. Sayers to Helen Simpson, July 2, 1936, Letters, 395.

  14. Ibid., 396; Reynolds, Sayers: Her Life and Soul, 339–40.

  15. The original manuscript of “Thrones, Dominations” is among the holdings in the Sayers Collection, Wade Center. Alzina Stone Dale provides a synopsis of the manuscript in “Wimsey: Lost and Found,” 147–51; reprinted in Sayers Centenary, 67–78. The manuscript has now been completed and published: Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh, Thrones, Dominations (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998).

  16. Dorothy L. Sayers, “Thrones, Dominations,” Unpublished MS, MS 219, Sayers Collection, Wade Center, 92. The selection is misquoted in Dale, “Wimsey: Lost and Found,” 150. Jill Paton Walsh renders this conversation correctly in Sayers and Walsh, Thrones, Dominations, 74.

  17. Sayers, “Thrones, Dominations,” MS 219, Sayers Collection, Wade Center. Jill Paton Walsh omitted the discussion of Peter’s sexuality from her completed version of the novel. Apart from this omission, Walsh followed Sayers’s storyline quite faithfully, reorganizing the pages in a sensible fashion but retaining Sayers’s words almost verbatim. Roughly the first one-third of the completed version of Thrones, Dominations is Sayers; the remainder is the creation of Walsh.

  18. Sayers, “Thrones, Dominations,” 171; Sayers and Walsh, Thrones, Dominations, 31.

  19. Sayers to L. C. Kempson, Dec. 20, 1936, Letters, 409–10.

  20. Sayers to Nancy Pearn, Nov. 5, 1938, Letters, 94.

  21. Sayers to Sir Donald Tovey, Apr. 18, 1936, Letters, 388–89.

  22. Dorothy L. Sayers, In the Teeth of the Evidence (New York: Harper Perennial, 1993). All of the Wimsey short stories are gathered in Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter: A Collection of All the Lord Peter Wimsey Stories, ed. James Sandoe (New York: Harper and Row, 1972).

  23. Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Master Key,” Unfinished MS, MS 133, Sayers Collection, Wade Center; Janet Thom, “Lord Peter Passes His Prime,” New Republic 102 (Feb. 19, 1940): 253.

  24. Dorothy L. Sayers, “The Wimsey Papers: Number 14, Harriet Vane to the Duchess of Denver,” MS 242, Sayers Collection, Wade Center.

  25. Dorothy L. Sayers, “Wimsey Papers,” The Spectator (Nov. 1939 to Jan. 1940). Eleven “papers” appeared in all.

  26. Sayers, “Wimsey Papers: Number 7, Extracts from the Private Diary of Lord Peter Wimsey,” MS 242, Sayers Collection, Wade Center.

  27. Sayers, “Talboys,” Lord Peter: Collection, 431–53.

  28. For an analysis of the moral themes in Sayers’s detective fiction, see Janice Brown, The Seven Deadly Sins in the Work of Dorothy L. Sayers (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1998), 53–214.

  29. Sayers, “Are Women Human?” 106–13.

  APPENDIX B: ON SAYERS AND THE SONNET

  This epigraph is taken from Wordsworth’s “Scorn not the Sonnet; Critic, you have frowned,” The Complete Poetical Works of Wordsworth, ed. Andrew J. George (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932), 4.

  1. Cf. “The Phoenix and the Turtle,” l. 28. The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans, et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), 1891.

  2. With which compare: “Pleasure might cause her reade, reading might make her know, / Knowledge might pitie winne, and pittie grace obtaine” (Sir Philip Sidney, “Astrophel and Stella,” 1.3–4). The sonnet closes on the dictum, “looke in thy heart and write.” His “conceited . . . conclusion” notwithstanding, Wimsey doubtless followed Sidney’s advice.

  3. Cf. Alexander Pope’s definition of wit, from ”An Essay on Criticism,” in The Poems of Alexander Pope, ed. John Butt (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), ll. 297–98.

  4. Complete Poems of W. H. Auden, ed. Edward Mendelson (New York: Vintage, 1991), 126.

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