DLS: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1

[truepenny]

Previously, on Mole, Delving:
Part 1: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey
Part 2: Whose Body?
Part 3: Clouds of Witness
Part 4: Unnatural Death

Important caveat
This is a compare-and-contrast post; it will be looking back at Unnatural Death and forward to Strong Poison, so aside from the usual canon-pervasive spoiler warnings, be y'all aware that there will be heavy spoilers for those two particular books.

My second post on The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club will focus on the book in-and-of-itself.

And now on with the show!


For me, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club stands like a swinging door between the first three books of the series and the last six. In particular, it has very close thematic and characterological relationships with Unnatural Death and Strong Poison, and I'm going to start by dissecting those.

All three books deal with the wills made (or not made) by old ladies: Agatha Dawson, Felicity Fentiman Dormer, and Rosanna Hubbard Wrayburn (Cremorna Garden). The murder(s) in UD come from Miss Dawson's refusal to make a will; the murder in TUatBC comes from Lady Dormer's idiotic way of going about making a will, and the murder in SP comes from mucking about with Mrs. Wrayburn's will. The tangled inheritance issues in each book come about because of family schisms: Clara Whittaker's falling-out with her family was one reason she left her money to Agatha Dawson; Lady Dormer and General Fentiman haven't been on speaking terms for 60 + years until their deathbed reconciliation--which sparks the General's murder; and of course Norman Urquhart's Big Lie about the disposition of Rosanna Wrayburn's money hinges exactly on whether she did or did not forgive Philip Boyes for the bitterness between previous generations.

All three are books about the failure of love (as is Clouds of Witness): romantic and/or familial. I covered the familial half in the previous paragraph. Mary Whittaker, as I said in the UD post, is the negative image of love; Miss Climpson, in both UD and SP, presents us the life at least tolerably complete without either romantic or familial love, although we also know that Miss Climpson is not a spinster by choice. UD also features the failed romance of Dr. Carr and Nurse Philliter. TUatBC has Ann Dorland and Dr. Penberthy (and Naomi Rushworth and the interminable Bohemian soap opera of Marjorie Phelps's life) on the romantic side--plus, of course, Marjorie Phelps's quasi-proposal to Peter. And SP presents the dismaying tale of Harriet Vane and Philip Boyes.

But this is also one particular place where I see TUatBC as a pivot. SP, of course, introduces the series' abiding love story between Peter and Harriet (and finally cements the relationship between Mary Wimsey and Charles Parker, also Freddy Arbuthnot and Rachel Levy), whereas UD (as I also said in the post on it) presents nothing but failed romances. TUatBC does have its share of romantic disasters, but it also has two relationships which suggest a change is coming.

One is the romance between Major Fentiman and Ann Dorland, hinted at in the last chapter. Ann Dorland is a kind of prefiguration of Harriet Vane: they both have heavy eyebrows and beautiful, deep voices; both get tangled up in murder cases where it is all but impossible to prove their innocence. Ann Dorland gets off lightly; DLS engineers a confession from Penberthy, and (since we never see Ann or the Fentimans again) we can assume that no further unpleasantness transpired. For Harriet is reserved the full, realistic working-out of consequences and aftermath. Ann, like Harriet, is in a relationship with a man who doesn't value her (Penberthy, Boyes); Ann, like Harriet, finds a relationship with a man who does value her (Fentiman, Wimsey). I'm grateful Ann Dorland didn't become the series' Harriet, because I don't like her very much and I don't think I could stand a heroine who painted terrible pictures and didn't seem to know it. But she does very clearly pave the way for Harriet, and her relationship with Major Fentiman is the first romance in the Wimsey books which seems to be tending toward success.

The other harbinger of change in TUatBC is the marriage of George and Sheila Fentiman. Now, goodness knows, George and Sheila are Mr. and Mrs. Dysfunctionality 1928, but that they still love each other is clear when George turns up at the police-station in Clerkenwell. George and Sheila's arguments are painfully well-observed, and I feel very badly for both of them, but Sheila, like Wimsey, plainly understands that George's difficulties come from the War, and she stands by him. Other marriages we've seen are Sir Reuben and Lady Levy (destroyed by Sir Julian Freke); the Duke and Duchess of Denver (Mr. and Mrs. Dysfunctionality 1927); the Marchbanks and the Pettigrew-Robinsons (who are both very much background, and who cancel each other out); the ghastly deal worked out between Mary and Cathcart, which mercifully does not go through. There are no marriages in Unnatural Death. So George and Sheila Fentiman's difficult but persevering marriage seems to me to be part of the same trend that Ann Dorland and Robert Fentiman represent: a new hopefulness.

And I think TUatBC is also where we begin to see a change in Peter. In the early books, he is a character ... oh dear, I'm not sure if I can put this in a way that will make sense to anyone else. In the first three books, Peter is a sympathetic character, and we are very clearly shown (as, for example, with his shell-shock relapse in Whose Body?) that his "silly ass" act is covering up some fairly deep psychological abysses. But TUatBC is where we start seeing Peter using the silly ass act, as he does with George Fentiman more than once. Also, by dealing very matter-of-factly with the walking wounded who comprise the younger generation at the Bellona Club, the book lays down a foundation for dealing with Peter as a psychologically realistic and three-dimensional character. This is also the only book where Peter himself says anything about the damage done him by the war (until his fits of self-loathing in Busman's Honeymoon); he tells Ann Dorland:

I remember ... one time when something perfectly grinding and hateful had happened to me. I played patience all day. I was in a nursing home--with shell-shock--and other things. I only played one game, the very simplest ... I just went on laying it out and gathering it up . . . hundred times in an evening . . . so as to stop thinking.
(TUatBC 215)
[N.b., ellipses with spaces, ". . .", are in the original; ellipses without, "...", are mine, indicating editorial lacunae.]

It's interesting, too, that he confides in Ann, the proto-Harriet.

TUatBC also widens the gap between Peter and Charles Parker, again prefiguring SP. (And, I just noticed, both UD and TUatBC feature scenes in restaurants where Parker demonstrates a perfectly culpable mundanity about food.) In TUatBC Peter "for the first time ... was seeing him [Parker] as the police" (TUatBC 193). And they quarrel over exactly the issue that will separate them in SP; Parker, lacking intuition, accepts the obvious solution: Ann's, and then Harriet's, guilt. Peter, having brilliance and imagination, can see the truth. Parker can follow Peter, but he cannot keep up with him, and Peter does not need a follower. As we learn both in Whose Body? and more specifically in Busman's Honeymoon, Peter's psychological cracks are most apt to split open exactly over having too much responsibility for other people's lives. Charles Parker may be Peter's closest friend, but there are ways in which he is not the person Peter needs. Peter is outgrowing Charles, and in that way, too, TUatBC is a pivot between UD and SP.


Next up, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 2.

---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. 1928. New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1995.

Comments

[kattahj.livejournal.com]

I don't have anything intelligent to say, just that I really love these analysises.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[ambar.livejournal.com]

Me too, the more so since I am reading the books for the first time. I'm very glad you discussed Ann prefiguring for Harriet; that really struck me when I read TUatBC yesterday.
(I read MMA, then the 4 Harriet Vanes in order, now circling back to pick up everything else.)

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Peter uses the silly-ass act in Clouds of Witness when talking to Grimethorpe, quite, quite consciously.

Generally, I think you have a point, but all the same he does.

I find it very hard in re-reading not to read in the psychological depth from the later books as if it had always been there.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I find it very hard in re-reading not to read in the psychological depth from the later books as if it had always been there.

Me, too. Especially since I first read them wildly out of order.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Damnation. You're right.

However, since advanced degrees in English are all about learning to rationalize unsupportable claims, I will say that I think there's a difference between using the silly ass act as a defense mechanism (e.g. Grimethorpe) and using it in the strange, kind way he uses it with George Fentiman. One outbreak is all about the investigation, but the other is purely for the sake of calming George and his inferiority complex down. It's a more sophisticated and self-aware usage. I think.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

Peter plays roles: he does it very explicitly in Murder Must Advertise and in the short whose name I forget where he's working his way into the secret society after having been killed out in Africa (IYSWIM!). I think that the cure started by realising he was over Barbara and completed by getting Denver off - as Parker puts it, he had the sense to go out and get drunk on the strength of it - lets him get away from the things that were trapping him. What does he say in Gaudy Night about growing by being forced out of his barriers and habits and loving Harriet because she does that to him? He takes something he'd done by instinct, for self-preservation, and turns it into a persona that will serve him. Again in Gaudy Harriet comments to someone (contermporary at the Gaudy, but not the awful Schuster-Slatt) who saw him being very toffee-nosed and chinless at Ascot that he's at his sharpest when he acts like that and was probably detecting something. If this is the hinge book of the flat characters becoming real, when Peter has become real to himself, it's nice that he can take the flat character and make it useful.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I am enjoying these analyses SO MUCH. I'm glad it's my fault!

The Ann/Harriet thing had never occurred to me! Though it explains why I rather like Ann. I think she did know her pictures weren't good--I think, when she tells Marjorie she isn't really one of the bohemian crowd, I think she's admitting it then.

And I think TUatBC is also where we begin to see a change in Peter. In the early books, he is a character ... oh dear, I'm not sure if I can put this in a way that will make sense to anyone else. In the first three books, Peter is a sympathetic character, and we are very clearly shown (as, for example, with his shell-shock relapse in Whose Body?) that his "silly ass" act is covering up some fairly deep psychological abysses. But TUatBC is where we start seeing Peter using the silly ass act, as he does with George Fentiman more than once. Also, by dealing very matter-of-factly with the walking wounded who comprise the younger generation at the Bellona Club, the book lays down a foundation for dealing with Peter as a psychologically realistic and three-dimensional character.

Yes. Ummm, yes. I would say more, but you said it. And how interesting we don't SEE Peter having a spectacular crash at the end of BELLONA CLUB. But I assume he did. Probably right after Penberthy shoots himself and Peter leaves. (Incidentally, in the tv version, you get to see his reaction to the shot; and as the credits roll, he walks out of the Club, fairly quickly.)

Charles Parker may be Peter's closest friend, but there are ways in which he is not the person Peter needs. Peter is outgrowing Charles, and in that way, too, TUatBC is a pivot between UD and SP.

Another difference between them that just occurred to me--Parker wasn't in WWI, was he? I don't remember it ever being mentioned, and a policeman would have been exempt, I think--needed at home.

Peter never outgrows Bunter, does he? Because Bunter never WAS his equal? Though we see some passing of the torch from Bunter to Harriet in BUSMAN'S HONEYMOON. And Bunter is not mentioned in "Talboys."

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Glad you like!

Parker is never mentioned in conjunction with the war, but considering how blankly he reacts to Peter's relapse in Whose Body?, I think we can safely say he never saw combat.

And Bunter is in "Talboys"! He's the one who gets dispatched to take care of Cuthbert at the end. So, no, Peter never outgrows Bunter. But as you say, the relationship between the two men is never an equal relationship. Peter employs Bunter and it's emphatically HIS intellect, but in all other ways, he is very much the junior partner. Bunter's subservience to Peter is a polite fiction maintained by both sides in defiance of its patent untruth.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

And Bunter is in "Talboys"! He's the one who gets dispatched to take care of Cuthbert at the end.

Oh, goodness. My brain must be rotting. And so soon after the 35th birthday...somehow I thought it would take longer.

Oh, damn! I shall have to read "Talboys" again! What pain and suffering!

I like that Bunter is always subservient but gets his own way anyway--the whole maneuvering so Peter never has to give orders thing The Dowager talks about in BH.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Charles Parker may be Peter's closest friend, but there are ways in which he is not the person Peter needs. Peter is outgrowing Charles

Thank you very much for inspiring me to finally read the series in order. The Harriet books always get read in order, of course, but I've always just bounced around among the other ones, and haven't read any of them in over a decade.

So I'm reading along starting with Whose Body? and wondering "Why didn't I properly appreciate Charles Parker before?" He's intelligent, responsible, is a good friend to Peter, and reads theology in his spare time. What's not to like? Then I got to Ann Dorland and remembered.

If it had been just Ann, or just Harriet, maybe things would be different, but by writing him as being convinced of the guilt of *both* of them, DLS damages my sympathy for Parker in a way that I just can't entirely recover from. It's not just that it highlights how unintuitive he is compared to Peter; it also highlights how conservative he is. I'm left wondering just how influenced he was by the fact that Ann and Harriet were both non-traditional young women.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Yes. I hadn't thought of that, but Parker is portrayed as being prudish and conservative, as well as unintuitive and unempathetic. And I think it DOES color his reactions to Ann and Harriet.

[loligo.livejournal.com]

Furthermore I wonder if there isn't some displacement of some conflicted feelings about Mary. Parker acts like it's class that's the stumbling block, like Mary's too good for him, but it would make sense that this more obvious and less emotional conflict might in part be masking its opposite. Just what had Mary been up to during those rebellious Socialist days, anyway? I don't think that this is a question that he would be comfortable admitting to himself, but on some level he *must* be thinking it.

Charles and Mary just doesn't seem to me like a relationship that should work. DLS obviously thinks that it should, but I wouldn't have minded getting more insight into how and why.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It always seems to me as if Sayers just wants to get Mary and Charles tidied out of the way. (I've just gotten to Mary & Peter's conversation about Charles in SP, and what Mary sees in Charles continues to baffle me.) The course of their relationship in Clouds of Witness is so stereotypical of the romance sub-plot in Golden Age mysteries (it's one of the things DLS parodies with Harriet's book in Have His Carcase, and I will be talking about that at MUCH greater length): the detective falls for the beautiful damsel in distress (and it's the sort of thing Parker WOULD do, the great goop); the damsel is involved with another, but learns the error of her ways, and turns to the detective; yada, yada, everybody join in on the chorus. And then in SP it's as if she's just noticed that nothing has ever come of that (much like Freddy and Rachel Levy), and simply shoves it bodily out of the way.

And we never get enough of Mary and Charles as a couple to have ANY idea of how their relationship works. Which is fine, because I don't want to see it, but it does make them frustratingly opaque.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Parker's not just prudish, he's literally provincial, and every time she wants to contrast his reaction to Peter's, she mentions the specific place he comes from, Barrow-in-Furness, which (I have been there) is possibly the most provincial place in England, it's a small industrial town stuck on the end of a farming peninsula, it's an hour (now) by train to Lancaster, which is in itself a provincial city, and not a large one. (It wasn't even a city until 1937, and didn't have a university until the 60s, when Parker was growing up it would have been far less cultured a place than when I lived there.)

I think what she was trying to do with Mary and Parker, or what I imagine she was trying to do, was showing Mary finding something (someone) real at last. Parker wasn't enough for Peter, but he was enough for Mary. It's very strange though. I can't imagine them having a normal conversation.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the invaluable piece of contextualization. I wouldn't know Barrow-in-Furness from a hole in the ground--although from what you say there might not be all that much difference to begin with.

It is perfectly clear that, although Mary is far more temperamentally sympathetic to Peter than Gerald is, her intellect isn't up to Peter's. "An energetic young lady, but not ingenious" is Bunter's damning summation (CofW 61). So her intellectual life (such as it is) won't be hobbled by her husband. But still.

And it is true that Parker is very down-to-earth, very practical and prosaic; Mary seems to find this attractive. Perhaps it's just the fact that I don't that makes this mystifying to me.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

Charles and Mary are blissful domesticity; a very useful foil for Peter and played very nicely in Murder Must Advertise against the smug-druggling de Momerie crowd. Mary gets to be more useful than she had managed before (I doubt if she typed very well as Goyle's secretary). It's one of the things that makes the world so real; that you have such a cross section of society and of milieus. Mary and Charles are the typical antithesis to the outrage and moral inversions of crime, the peaceful domestic interior where the price of fish and the threat of measles are the highest drama. I think there's an interesting contras between how well it suits them and the former scholar in Gaudy Night who's ground down by domesticity and the tyranny of farming and tells Harriet that the whole world of books and study seems like a dream to her now. Harriet has the feeling she's seen a race horse making shift with a coal cart; some people suit bohemia and some a life with a compromise between pride and comfort (the two flats joined into one, Mary's allowance matching Charles' salary).