1/12/2024 0 Comments Radio echoes lord peter wimsey![]() ![]() In Whose Body?, he recognises and appreciates the intelligence of his opponent early on in the investigation, saying, “. First of all he enjoys playing the part, dressing up with the eye-glass and his specially made walking stick-as he says in Whose Body?, “Enter Sherlock Holmes disguised as a walking gentleman.” He also enjoys matching wits with wrongdoers. To consider Wimsey as a detective we need to look at his reasons for detecting and his attitude towards criminals. I take people out to lunch and tell them funny stories and work them up to mellowing point.” Some turn goes wrong and they send on the patter-comedian to talk the house into good humour again. At times, though, people wonder-as does a fellow club member in “The Unprincipled Affair of the Practical Joker” (1928)-whether his “incredible fatuity was the cloak of ignorance or the mask of the hardened poker player.” In Gaudy Night, he describes his technique to Harriet in this way, “I’m the professional funny man of the Foreign Office. ” He frequently plays up his silly-ass appearance to deflect suspicion of his true intentions. jolly useful when you want to take a good squint at somethin’ and look like a bally fool all the time.” But, he adds, “. It is a powerful lens which not only corrects his sight but is also, as he says in Whose Body?, “. While he is interviewing Harriet at the police station after she has stood trial for poisoning her lover in Strong Poison (1930), he says, “I know I’ve got a silly face, but I can’t help that.” To complete the picture of the typical aristocrat, he wears a monocle. He had a receding forehead and a long, narrow chin, grey eyes with drooping lids, a wide and flexible mouth, and sleek, flat, straw-colored hair. ” His narrow, rather beaky face generally wore a supercilious expression, while his arched and lean nose gave him a parrot-like profile. In Whose Body? Sayers says of his appearance, “His long, amiable face looked as if it had generated spontaneously from his top hat. Wimsey was a Dante scholar as well, as we see at the outset in Whose Body? and also in Unnatural Death (1927). ![]() Sayers’ scholarship found its culmination in her latter years when she translated Dante’s Divine Comedy. Also in that novel, he shows he is quite able to hold his own on High Table at Shrewsbury College, discussing with Miss Hillyard her paper on Henry VIII’s divorce and the appropriation of monastic funds. A Fellow of All Souls says of him in Gaudy Night (1935) that his knowledge of the printing and distribution of Reformation polemical documents is expert. He is a Balliol man, with a First in Modern History. In 1927 he writes “a very scholarly little monograph” called “Notes on the Collecting of Incunabula” and visits the British Museum “to collate a 12th century manuscript of Tristan“-work which Sayers herself engaged upon for her 1929 translation of Tristan in Brittany.Īnd so, like Sayers, he is a scholar. George, in the intricacies of typefaces and dates. Book dealers know his reputation and in a later short story he instructs his nephew, Viscount St. Sayers ensures that readers don’t consider this a dilettante pursuit, by making us aware of Wimsey’s scholarly approach to the subject. When Wimsey says “Oh, Damn!” at Piccadilly Circus, he is on his way to a sale of incunabula (early printed books). He exists in his own right and not to please you. He walked in complete with spats and applied in an airy don’t-care-if-I-don’t-get-it way for the job of hero.” And later, in The Mind of the Maker (1941), she states, “He is what he is. In an article entitled “How I Came to Invent the Character of Lord Peter Wimsey” (Harcourt Brace News, July 15th 1936), Sayers says of her creation, “I do not as a matter of fact remember inventing Lord Peter Wimsey. Sayers reveals many aspects of Lord Peter’s complex personality in this novel, showing that he is not, as many of his detractors would have it, some sort of scatterbrained sleuth in the mold of Bertie Wooster (a judgment which in turn begs the question about Wooster, who is a published writer, an able musician, chivalrous, and not as stupid as some might think). Sayers’ first Wimsey novel, Whose Body? (1923). “‘Oh, Damn!’ said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus.” These are the first words uttered by Lord Peter on his initial appearance in Dorothy L. In this article from issue 17, Chris Willis takes a look at Dorothy Sayers’ classic character Lord Peter Wimsey, one of the archetypal British gentleman detectives. For back issues, mystery books, and much more, visit our shop. To subscribe, please visit our subscriptions page. ![]()
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