DLS: Busman's Honeymoon

[truepenny]

Previous DLS posts: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey, and Ralph Lynn, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson, media whimsies, music, aspidistra & ampelopsis, Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1 & 2, Strong Poison, The Five Red Herrings, Have His Carcase 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors 1, 2, & 3, Gaudy Night 1 & 2.

Spoilers.


Dorothy Sayers says in the dedicatory epistle to Busman's Honeymoon that the novel "is but the limbs and outward flourishes" to the play she co-wrote with Muriel St. Claire Byrne (DLS), and my major goal for this post is to deny that. The play of Busman's Honeymoon is a charming, light, straightforward romantic comedy of a detective story. It ends, to give the simple example, immediately after Peter's deduction of Crutchley's guilt:

PETER. This part of the business always gets me down. (His hand goes out blindly for comfort. HARRIET takes it--he pulls her to him.) Don't leave me.
HARRIET. You shan't be left.
PETER. Never again.
HARRIET. I feel as if the evil spirit has been cast out of this house, and left it clean for you and me.
PETER. For you and me! (They embrace, down-stage centre. GEORGE and BILL enter simultaneously back and left and begin to roll up the rug from opposite ends. As they reach the feet of the pre-occupied couple in the centre
The Curtain Falls
(DLS & MSt.CB)

In the novel, the "evil spirit" is Noakes himself, whereas in the play it is at least as much murderer as victim, enabling a much simpler end and a much more unproblematic sense of closure.

Also, of course, less satisfying.

That, for me, is the chief difference in play and novel. The play is fun, light, witty. The novel is satisfying. It wrestles with the difficult issues the play delicately skirts, particularly the delicate structures of Peter's psyche. And alone of the Wimsey novels, it deals with the aftermath, which Sayers pointedly acknowledges most detective stories do not do:

Miss Harriet Vane, in those admirable detective novels with which she was accustomed to delight the hearts of murder-fans (see blurb) usually made a point of finishing off on a top-note. Mr. Robert Templeton, that famous though eccentric sleuth, would unmask the murderer with a flourish of panache in the last chapter and retire promptly from the stage amid a thunder of applause, leaving somebody else to cope with the trivial details of putting the case together.
(DLS 345)

The reappearance of Robert Templeton is a flag, warning us that again our author is squaring off against the conventions of her genre, as she did in Have His Carcase. And thus the Epithalamion, with its odd mix of genres, awkward angles, and liminally-textual anxiety. The aftermath of the case is the true beginning of Peter and Harriet's marriage, as the titles of the parts signal: "Prothalamion," before the marriage; "Epithalamion," upon the marriage. The aftermath of the case is when Peter's masks truly begin to disintegrate. He has discarded many of them himself, as Harriet recognizes in Gaudy Night, but the last mask is the hardest to get rid of, the mask of independence and wholeness.

Sayers showed from the beginning of the series that Peter was damaged by the war, and that fact is rarely entirely absent from the narrative's awareness (except possibly in The Five Red Herrings). But that fact has also been an extremely private one. This is only the second time in the series we witness a break-down, and the only time we see it subjectively. In Whose Body?, the narrative retreats from Peter's consciousness and does not enter Bunter's (if that makes any sense--the actual episode of shell-shock is relayed as dialogue and stage-directions with almost no interiority). But in Busman's Honeymoon, we see the whole thing through Harriet. Sayers spares neither Peter nor herself.

But this relentless honesty also makes the end of the novel ... I can't think of the word I want, but it makes it matter in a way that Sayers's own disclaimer literally disclaims. The novel is far more than an appendage to the play, and despite Sayers's self-deprecating apology--"If there is but a ha'porth of detection to an intolerable deal of saccharine, let the occasion be the excuse" (DLS)--it is not saccharine, and the romantic element does not deserve to be labeled as such. Busman's Honeymoon is genuinely a novel about marriage, about compromise and awakening and all sorts of things that romances usually bring down the curtain before they have to deal with--in that way, the Epithalamion section of BH is as much about the aftermath of a romance novel as it is about the aftermath of a detective novel.



---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Busman's Honeymoon. 1937. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, n.d.

Sayers, Dorothy L., and Muriel St. Clare Byrne. Busman's Honeymoon. 1936. Love All and Busman's Honeymoon. Ed. Alzina Stone Dale. N.p.: The Kent State University Press, 1984.

Comments

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I read the Wimsey novels seriously out of order - Strong Poison was the first one, and after that I hunted back and forth along the bookshelves and read them promiscuously, without worrying about which came first. (My parents had all the novels, and one volume of short stories: I bought the rest of the Wimsey short stories in paperback, quite unable to believe I was this hooked.) I did manage to read the four novels in which Harriet Vane appears in chronological order, and I remain eternally grateful that I read Busman's Honeymoon last of all. I couldn't find it on the shelves - possibly my mum was reading it at the time - and ended up going out to buy more with my pocketmoney and reading the short stories, including much of Montague Egg. And then I found BH. And I read it.

And I sat there, stunned, genuinely overwhelmed with closure, for quite a while after the closing lines. "And the trumpets sounded for her on the other side."

Of course, fifteen years later, I was very happy to hear that I was going to find out more about Harriet and Peter post-BH, thanks to Jill Paton Walsh, - but at the time, I genuinely didn't want any more.

The Disclaimer

[hms-yowling.livejournal.com]

Somewhat of an aside:

I think I found the Sayers novels when I was 9 or so and may have read Strong Poison at age 11. The disclaimer made me feel guilty for loving the novel so much -- as if I should have been more intelligent/intellectual and appreciated one or other of the other novels more.

[Total aside] Have you managed to see any of the BBC productions of the Wimsey mysteries? (I haven't) If so, were any of them any good? Just curious [/aside]

Thanks for these Sayers posts, btw. I enjoy them immensely.

Re: The Disclaimer

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

Which ones were the BBC productions? The most recent adaptations I remember came out about 17 years ago, and they weren't terribly good, not least because they tried to pack too much into too little - Strong Poison and Gaudy Night both 2 hours, Have His Carcase 3 hours.

Re: The Disclaimer

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

If I'm remembering correctly (and any and all of this might be wrong), there were two separate series. The first was in the early 70s or late 60s with Ian Carmichael, including _Murder Must Advertise_, _Five Red Herrings_, _The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club_, _The Nine Tailors_, and I think _Clouds of Witness_, but I'm not sure about that one. Ian Carmichael had grey, rather than "primrose" hair, and has been said to be too old for the role, but I adored him and the actor who played Bunter. (My grandmother thought Lady Mary "too silly", which she was.) The theme music, which combined jazz violin and harpsichord, has remained indelibly stuck in my memory since my childhood, and was guaranteed to send me racing to the living room (intially because I loved the music, not because of any particular interest in Lord Peter).

I never saw more than a few seconds of the second series, which aired in the mid-late 80s, and starred (correct me if I'm wrong) Edward Petherbridge. I believe they did all of the Vane quartet, and from the brief glimpse I got, Harriet looked perfect. However, I was too crushed at the absence of my beloved Ian Carmichael ever to bring myself to watch it. Also I was in college by that time, and the dorm TV was permanently tuned to MTV, making PBS a bit tricky to flip to.

Re: The Disclaimer

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's anything wrong with loving Strong Poison--it has the séance in it! It's not as heavy as the later Vane novels, but in some moods that's a reason to love it more.

I haven't seen any of the BBC adaptations, but oracne has, and she reviewed (http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=oracne&keyword=Wimsey+on+DVD&filter=all) them, too.

And you're very welcome. I find it immensely gratifying that other people enjoy thinking about DLS's work as much as I do.

[hedda62.livejournal.com]

More satisfying doesn't even begin to say it. I've never got round to reading the play -- I can see why the dialogue and staging was done that way and the light touch maintained; it would be lovely to see the novel done justice to cinematically, but I'm not sure it's possible. Possibly because of the masks thing -- you're exactly right about Peter's masks, and you can't strip off the mask of an actor in quite the same way as you can that of a character.

The release at the end isn't there without the pain before it, of course -- that long build-up after the case is solved, with Peter's depression hanging over everything and his treating Harriet like a piece of sexual furniture and his madly riding off in all directions trying to do something. Then there's the point when he can't do anything any longer, because the time has come and it's all over, and... "you're my corner and I've come to hide." Mmm. But it is an issue of time, I think -- time has to pass in between the end of the detective story and the beginning of the true marriage; it can't happen in a few lines of dialogue. It's hard work.

One might, of course, think they worked hard enough to get where they were at the end of Gaudy Night, but it set a precedent, and I think Sayers couldn't leave it till it had been dealt with properly.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Gaudy Night is about Harriet's barriers, about Sleeping Beauty finally being able to cut down enough of the briars to meet her prince halfway. Busman's Honeymoon is, by that logic, the companion piece, a Beauty and the Beast reworking if you will, in which the Beast is less a Beast than an automaton, a marionette, and the prince the fragile, damaged psyche that's been pulling the strings.

My fairytale metaphors are getting the better of me.

I think a really innovative film could do a great deal with Busman's Honeymoon, but it would have to be willing to rework the text. You could get a very very long way with the metaphor of Peter as actor, but that's not a metaphor available immediately upon the surface of the novel. You'd have to go digging for it. And your casting choices had better be perfect.

I agree. It's the time that's important at the end of Busman's Honeymoon, in part because that's what marriage is about: time.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I think it's probably worth noting that there are essentially no other books on the subject which come anywhere near Busman's Honeymoon. There are things with which one can compare GN, but not really BH, it is sui generis.

I think the motif of the chimneys is also worth contemplation.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

And if one contemplates the motif of the chimneys, what does one discover?

[papersky.livejournal.com]

The chimneys are blocked, necessitating the sweep, and consequent Peter's joy at being told the sweep has come. Then there's the quest for the correct pots. Noakes's meanness with the pots has diminished the house and they will restore it. (The one they find is being used as a sundial, marking time, which relates to the fact of marriage and time, I think.)

[oursin.livejournal.com]

I've never thought about this, but yes! (Reparation, anybody?)

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Not much time to comment but--that play ending is fine, but having seen the novel's ending, the play's ending SO does not satisfy.

You're right. As usual!

Am hoping to make it to the Spectrum Awards this afternoon--they're at 3 pm, I think. If the schedule hasn't changed yet again. Good luck!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

On both counts.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

Harriet and Peter and their relationship is so real in BH; the murder and almost all the other characters far less so. The plot and dramtis personae would fit a light, frothy play, or a Robert Templeton novel, but here they even make Harriet and Peter's trials and triumphs matter so much more, even compared to murder and suspicion

The ending

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

I was greatly moved by the ending of the novel. It made me understand that Peter wasn't just a plot device for solving mysteries, and took me to a place no other mystery had.

[profshallowness.livejournal.com]

I know it has been a good while since you wrote these wonderful essaylets, but I've been reading them over the last few days, and enjoying it so much. Both erudite and insightful, and, well, the best compliment I suppose I can pay them and all the thoughts that they've churned in me is to let you know how reading the books in order has shot up my to do list.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Appropriately enough, this comment will be appearing just below another one that is more or less identical.

I don't know whether you have LJ set up to send you comment notifications -- if not, then thirteen years on you'll have no idea anybody said anything -- but starlady linked to these posts a while ago, and since then I've had the index for them open in a tab, because I'd read most but not all of the novels (Gaudy Night and Busman's Honeymoon being the exceptions), and those out of order. I browsed through the posts for the books I remembered moderately well, and next thing I know I'm going through the entire series, this time in order. (Most of the series. I apparently gave away my copy of The Five Red Herrings, on account of not having liked it very much, and I couldn't be bothered to wait and get it from the library when I had the next in sequence sitting on my shelf.) I'd read the post(s), then read the book, then look back through the post with the story fresh in my mind -- skipping stage one with the two books I hadn't read before, of course.

Thank you so much for these. You've said so much that's intelligent about these books, and given me a great deal to think about.