Gaudy Night, chapters 13 & 14
Brief synopsis: In which there is much tension, and Peter arrives at last. We meet the punt.
Chapter 13
A chapter in which nothing much happens but mood. It’s the morning after the dramatic events on the river. All pretence at solidarity is at an end, and Harriet insists that it is time for the college to call in the professionals. The Dean anticipates a difficult session with Miss Newland’s parents. This reader pauses to admire the Poltergeist’s choice of target, someone given sufficient external doubt that she deserves to be at Shrewsbury that she is easy pickings. Psychology - or personal experience? Either way, the Poltergeist isn’t stupid. Academic life goes on, and the tension ratchets up. Everyone distrusts one another. Harriet tries to contact the Cattery, but Miss Climpson and Miss Murchison aren’t available, and Harriet, with her own nerves getting frayed at the edges and worrying how people will react finds herself desperate enough to call on the one guaranteed attentive, unshockable, trustworthy person - Peter. Only he isn’t there, even with international phone calls. More tension. Harriet chewing on the mouldy bone of her own personal life again (and never thinking for a minute that in fact any one of the single dons might have a past or present relationship she doesn’t know about - my money’s on Miss Edwards, if only because she’d put down a fling with a man at a conference as scientifically perfectly justified as a release of natural urges). Dinner with Dr Threep, which isn’t funny (maybe you need greater experience of hard-fronted shirts), though I like Harriet and the Dean losing control over a private joke, and the news that report of funny goings on at Shrewsbury have come to official attention at the highest levels of the university, though Dr Threep, at least, seems inclined to put it down to the green-ink brigade and back the university women. And so more and more tension, and even Miss Schuster-Slatt, descending like the worst of those people who think that the place you live is a theme park, until finally pathetic fallacy leaps in to save us in the form of a thunderstorm. Phew!
Chapter 14
The calm after the storm (or possibly merely the warm sector after the first cold front). The weather is sunny and bright and it is lovely and spring-like and no doubt the beeches are very fresh and green. Harriet, showing for once and for all that she is definitely not a DLS author avatar, notes that she would never have thought of church on a Sunday morning in 1934, but trots off with her to the University Sermon where everything is incredibly stereotypically Anglican in a ceremonial sort of way and suddenly Harriet is face to face with Peter Wimsey who is not in Warsaw after all. Wimsey is polite, Harriet is dazed, and the Dean heralds the arrival of Lord Peter: sex god of Shrewsbury. Harriet, naturally, instantly starts to work herself up into a mixture of guilt, paranoia, and
Harriet: Oh no! Have never looked up Peter’s academic career. Am monster of callous ingratitude. Also, will quickly show Dean that am not in relationship with Peter by saying we can’t go to my room.
Dean: You can snog him on my sofa instead.
Peter arrives and is shattered. They converse about the Future of Europe and Peter’s too tired even to tell Harriet to give it a rest when she goes on about being selfish and unkind, and instead is full of Weltschmertz and gloom, though he cheers up with the thought process that Harriet thinks Saint-George is good-looking, and Harriet thinks that Peter looks like Saint-George, so Harriet thinks that Peter has nice hands and would she like them on her body (he doesn’t say the last bit out loud). And really things are going well, because she also agrees to go up to Denver, though Peter doesn’t seem to cherish his-beautiful-house-at-Pemberley ambitions of the place. So they agree to go punting and Peter promises not to be embarrassing, and symbolic same-sized gowns are symbolic.
Dean: You are dressed in white.
Symbolic white: Is symbolic.
Harriet: *flatters Peter’s vanity before students*
Peter: Who are you and what have you done with Harriet Vane?
It is sunny and lovely and they punt, and there is the usual carnage involved on a busy stretch of river on a sunny day in spring and Peter’s past as a tourist attraction is revealed. Also that he developed his speed as a punter in order to get away from people he had been rude to.
Peter: Hey! You have a toyboy. Of course, I will disclaim all worry it’s my nephew. Oh dear God tell me it’s not my nephew.
Harriet: Not your nephew.
Peter: Phew! I admire a man with good taste. Let more men throw themselves at you, it can only be to my benefit.
Harriet: You don’t bloody need to visit my flat when you walk about like that inside my head.
Then the river explodes in clouds of noxious gas, and we pass swiftly on to the Thames.
Wtf 1930s Oxford?:
University Sermon: All the various dignitaries in the University dress up in their sparkly gowns and trot along to St Mary’s Church to be preached at. Incidentally, though Shrewsbury has a chapel, there is no mention of who takes the services in it. Presumably a local curate obliges? Does anyone know what the women’s colleges did at the period - Somerville was, unusually, ecumenical.
Very tiny, but I love the “inexpert pretence at knowledge of some historian from another university.” Oh, academia, you never change.
University tourist tat in the shops on the High. Some things are universal.
Whatever the faults of modern town planners, at least they don’t stick the town dump next to popular leisure spots. This has, happily, been corrected since the thirties.
References:
Not a lot in 13, though horti conclusi crop up again - Donne, and the Song of Songs, which is a bit ironic really.
14, with Peter, is richer. And he is right about Keats. Nothing excuses the greedy shark.
Discussion questions:
Not my strong point. Thank goodness I’m not a teacher.
What do you think of the dons’ various reactions in the wake of the Newland Case? Can anyone explaining convincingly about the popping shirts? Do you find the lengthy popping shirt scenes funny? And is Peter arriving at the church door showing the way to heaven or hell?
We’ve been waiting for Peter to turn up for ages. What do you think of him when he does? Do you find his Foreign Office adventures convincing? And is he really so sanguine about attractive young men throwing themselves at Harriet? And why isn’t there a single Zuleika Dobson reference in the whole novel? What has Saint-George been saying to Peter in his letter’s to have Peter worrying that he might be interested in Harriet (or vice versa)? Will Sayers ever give the snobbery a rest in her condemnation of every single other person on the river? Is Harriet’s white frock see-through - probably!
Proposals
None. Except for a punt trip.
Chapter 13
A chapter in which nothing much happens but mood. It’s the morning after the dramatic events on the river. All pretence at solidarity is at an end, and Harriet insists that it is time for the college to call in the professionals. The Dean anticipates a difficult session with Miss Newland’s parents. This reader pauses to admire the Poltergeist’s choice of target, someone given sufficient external doubt that she deserves to be at Shrewsbury that she is easy pickings. Psychology - or personal experience? Either way, the Poltergeist isn’t stupid. Academic life goes on, and the tension ratchets up. Everyone distrusts one another. Harriet tries to contact the Cattery, but Miss Climpson and Miss Murchison aren’t available, and Harriet, with her own nerves getting frayed at the edges and worrying how people will react finds herself desperate enough to call on the one guaranteed attentive, unshockable, trustworthy person - Peter. Only he isn’t there, even with international phone calls. More tension. Harriet chewing on the mouldy bone of her own personal life again (and never thinking for a minute that in fact any one of the single dons might have a past or present relationship she doesn’t know about - my money’s on Miss Edwards, if only because she’d put down a fling with a man at a conference as scientifically perfectly justified as a release of natural urges). Dinner with Dr Threep, which isn’t funny (maybe you need greater experience of hard-fronted shirts), though I like Harriet and the Dean losing control over a private joke, and the news that report of funny goings on at Shrewsbury have come to official attention at the highest levels of the university, though Dr Threep, at least, seems inclined to put it down to the green-ink brigade and back the university women. And so more and more tension, and even Miss Schuster-Slatt, descending like the worst of those people who think that the place you live is a theme park, until finally pathetic fallacy leaps in to save us in the form of a thunderstorm. Phew!
Chapter 14
The calm after the storm (or possibly merely the warm sector after the first cold front). The weather is sunny and bright and it is lovely and spring-like and no doubt the beeches are very fresh and green. Harriet, showing for once and for all that she is definitely not a DLS author avatar, notes that she would never have thought of church on a Sunday morning in 1934, but trots off with her to the University Sermon where everything is incredibly stereotypically Anglican in a ceremonial sort of way and suddenly Harriet is face to face with Peter Wimsey who is not in Warsaw after all. Wimsey is polite, Harriet is dazed, and the Dean heralds the arrival of Lord Peter: sex god of Shrewsbury. Harriet, naturally, instantly starts to work herself up into a mixture of guilt, paranoia, and
Harriet: Oh no! Have never looked up Peter’s academic career. Am monster of callous ingratitude. Also, will quickly show Dean that am not in relationship with Peter by saying we can’t go to my room.
Dean: You can snog him on my sofa instead.
Peter arrives and is shattered. They converse about the Future of Europe and Peter’s too tired even to tell Harriet to give it a rest when she goes on about being selfish and unkind, and instead is full of Weltschmertz and gloom, though he cheers up with the thought process that Harriet thinks Saint-George is good-looking, and Harriet thinks that Peter looks like Saint-George, so Harriet thinks that Peter has nice hands and would she like them on her body (he doesn’t say the last bit out loud). And really things are going well, because she also agrees to go up to Denver, though Peter doesn’t seem to cherish his-beautiful-house-at-Pemberley ambitions of the place. So they agree to go punting and Peter promises not to be embarrassing, and symbolic same-sized gowns are symbolic.
Dean: You are dressed in white.
Symbolic white: Is symbolic.
Harriet: *flatters Peter’s vanity before students*
Peter: Who are you and what have you done with Harriet Vane?
It is sunny and lovely and they punt, and there is the usual carnage involved on a busy stretch of river on a sunny day in spring and Peter’s past as a tourist attraction is revealed. Also that he developed his speed as a punter in order to get away from people he had been rude to.
Peter: Hey! You have a toyboy. Of course, I will disclaim all worry it’s my nephew. Oh dear God tell me it’s not my nephew.
Harriet: Not your nephew.
Peter: Phew! I admire a man with good taste. Let more men throw themselves at you, it can only be to my benefit.
Harriet: You don’t bloody need to visit my flat when you walk about like that inside my head.
Then the river explodes in clouds of noxious gas, and we pass swiftly on to the Thames.
Wtf 1930s Oxford?:
University Sermon: All the various dignitaries in the University dress up in their sparkly gowns and trot along to St Mary’s Church to be preached at. Incidentally, though Shrewsbury has a chapel, there is no mention of who takes the services in it. Presumably a local curate obliges? Does anyone know what the women’s colleges did at the period - Somerville was, unusually, ecumenical.
Very tiny, but I love the “inexpert pretence at knowledge of some historian from another university.” Oh, academia, you never change.
University tourist tat in the shops on the High. Some things are universal.
Whatever the faults of modern town planners, at least they don’t stick the town dump next to popular leisure spots. This has, happily, been corrected since the thirties.
References:
Not a lot in 13, though horti conclusi crop up again - Donne, and the Song of Songs, which is a bit ironic really.
14, with Peter, is richer. And he is right about Keats. Nothing excuses the greedy shark.
Discussion questions:
Not my strong point. Thank goodness I’m not a teacher.
What do you think of the dons’ various reactions in the wake of the Newland Case? Can anyone explaining convincingly about the popping shirts? Do you find the lengthy popping shirt scenes funny? And is Peter arriving at the church door showing the way to heaven or hell?
We’ve been waiting for Peter to turn up for ages. What do you think of him when he does? Do you find his Foreign Office adventures convincing? And is he really so sanguine about attractive young men throwing themselves at Harriet? And why isn’t there a single Zuleika Dobson reference in the whole novel? What has Saint-George been saying to Peter in his letter’s to have Peter worrying that he might be interested in Harriet (or vice versa)? Will Sayers ever give the snobbery a rest in her condemnation of every single other person on the river? Is Harriet’s white frock see-through - probably!
Proposals
None. Except for a punt trip.