'Harriet Vane sat at her writing table and stared out into Mecklenburg Square. The late tulips made a brave show in the Square garden, and a quartet of early tennis-players were energetically call the score of a rather erratic and unpractised game. But Harriet saw neither tulips nor tennis-players. A letter lay open on the blotting-pad before her, but its image had faded from her mind to make way for another picture. She saw a stone quadrangle, built by a modern architect in a style neither new nor old, but stretching out reconciling hands to past and present.'
Bloomsbury and Oxford - two of my favourites in a long list of favourite places in England. Gaudy Night should have gone over a treat, but alas....it did not. I love nothing more than to sink into the prose of Elizabeth Bowen or Virginia Woolf, so I found myself ever more frustrated at the seemingly clinical way in which Sayers doled out late night episodes of vandalism in the colleges of Oxford. Epithets spray-painted on the wall of the library were apparently too shocking to share, but I wanted to know the topic of the vandal's ire. I'll admit that I judged the poison pen letters sent to Harriet and other members of staff with a does of twenty-first century cynicism, because the waves of negativity on social media has hardened me. When Peter Wimsey arrives on the scene to help Harriet wade through a few clues, I laughed out loud. Would someone employed by the Foreign Office have the time of day to deal with a disgruntled busybody?
I emailed Mary (Mrs Miniver's Daughter) the other day to complain about the lack of description when it came to food in Gaudy Night. Where were the gas-rings? The mouthwatering descriptions of cake? Harriet had been back and forth to her flat in Bloomsbury but I was still none the wiser about the pattern on her curtains or her bedclothes. Does Harriet wear perfume? Elizabeth Jane Howard gave her readers all sorts of detail when setting a scene, painting a portrait with words. Mary was quick in her defense of the author which led me to point out a tea basket pulled out from under the seat of a punt while touring the river. Not one mention of what was inside said basket until a page and a half later when Wimsey feeds crumbs to the ducks. Crumbs from what, I ask you?
My favourite character in Gaudy Night is Lord Peter Wimsey's unabashedly entitled young nephew, Lord Saint-George. Charm and handsomeness aside, his posh ignorance as to the cost of anything was more entertaining than it should have been.
Then a message kept creeping in - equality for women and the desire to choose education and profession over marriage. It was what drove me to keep turning pages, because I couldn't have cared less who was sending poison pen letters to women at the college. Although, I did gasp when Harriet left a women, while drunk and unconscious, flat on her back as she went for help. Didn't they know about the recovery position in the 30s? I digress.
It wasn't until the last handful of pages that I warmed up to Harriet Vane, or rather Dorothy L. Sayers' writing. A heartwarming scene at the end of the story won me over...it probably had something to do with the fact it was absent of a single clue or red herring! I wanted more of that style of writing, but it wouldn't be the sort of writing that made Sayers so popular. The problem is all mine.
We drove to the lovely university city of Guelph yesterday, to scan the tables at their annual Friends of the Guelph Library book sale (a must if you live within travelling range!). My husband came looking for me with a book in a pretty shade of blue in his hand....a Folio Society, no less.
