Technical Difficulties

If you've been wondering who Lord Peter was talking about in Busman's Honeymoon: "Dear me! what a shocking sound--like Nell Cook under the paving-stone!" (BH 72), the answer is in the Ingoldsby Legends and can be found here:

'There is a heavy paving-stone fast by the Canon's door,
Of granite grey, and it may weigh some half a ton or more,
And it is laid deep in the shade within that Entry dark,
Where sun or moon-beam never play'd, or e'en one starry spark.
*
'That heavy granite stone was moved that night, 'twas darkly said,
And the mortar round its sides next morn seem'd fresh and newly laid,
But what within the narrow vault beneath that stone doth lie,
Or if that there be vault or no -- I cannot tell -- not I!
*
'But I've been told that moan and groan, and fearful wail and shriek
Came from beneath that paving-stone for nearly half a week --
For three long days and three long nights came forth those sounds of fear;
Then all was o'er -- they never more fell on the listening ear.


My gift to you all on a slow Friday afternoon.

And you thought I'd never do it.

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.

Spoilers.

( Harriet's looking at Mecklenburg Square. I can't be bothered to get up and find the book for the exact quote. )

There will be a post on Busman's Honeymoon, because I at least want to talk about some of the difference between the novel and the play. Suggestions of other topics are, as always, welcome--either for BH or GN.

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.

At long last, the third Nine Tailors post, in which we will discuss religion, realism, and anything else that happens to cross my mind. Discussion inspired from the replies to this post, with much gratitude!

Spoilers abounding.

( 'That's torn it!' said Lord Peter Wimsey. )

---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. The Nine Tailors. 1934. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., n.d.

Photographs of aspidistras: 1, 2, and 3. Close-up of an aspidistra leaf.

There also is (or was) a racehorse named Aspidistra.

And whatever the plural of ampelopsis is: 1, 2 (scroll down to find the ampelopsis its own self), 4, 5, 6 and 7 (all over the shop, indeed).

Previous DLS posts: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey, and Ralph Lynn, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson, the media, 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.

Think about literature as a shameless way to avoid ... thinking about literature.

Some days I suspect that my life is ever so slightly fucked up.

In any event, this is the post about music in the canon. I don't know that I have any great insights to come to, but we shall see. Canon-wide spoilers.

( Music's his line. )

Onward, then, to The Nine Tailors.

---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. 1936. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, n.d.

---. The Nine Tailors. 1934. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., n.d.

---. Strong Poison. 1930. New York: Perennial Library-Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987.

---. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. 1928. New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1995.

---. Whose Body? 1923. New York: Avon Books, 1961.

Okay, sorry about the Subject line.

Previous DLS posts: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson, Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 2, Strong Poison, The Five Red Herrings, Have His Carcase 1, Have His Carcase 2, Have His Carcase 3, Have His Carcase 4, Have His Carcase 5, Have His Carcase 6, Have His Carcase 7, Murder Must Advertise.

The discussion of Have His Carcase spun off two ideas for series-spanning posts (there's a better word for that, but I'm not going to think of it at this hour of the morning): one on the media, and one on music. I've decided to use those two posts as a kind of buffer between Murder Must Advertise and The Nine Tailors; I love The Nine Tailors, but I always have to psych myself up for it.

So this post will contain indiscriminate spoilers for (potentially) all the Wimsey stories, and a crucial plot point for The Nine Tailors.

( Editors are ghouls and cannibals. )

Previous DLS posts: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson, Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 2, Strong Poison, The Five Red Herrings, Have His Carcase 1, Have His Carcase 2, Have His Carcase 3, Have His Carcase 4, Have His Carcase 5, Have His Carcase 6.

Last post on Have His Carcase. Chapter 28 to the end. Spoilers.

( The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. )

I think I'm going to save the music and media posts to use as a buffer zone between Murder Must Advertise and The Nine Tailors. So my next Sayers post will be on Murder Must Advertise.

---
WORKS CITED
Caudwell, Sarah. The Sirens Sang of Murder. 1989. New York: Dell Publishing, 1990.

Sayers, Dorothy L. The Five Red Herrings. 1931. New York: Perennial Library-Harper & Row, Publishers, 1986.

---. Have His Carcase. 1932. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, n.d.

Previous DLS posts: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson, Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 2, Strong Poison, The Five Red Herrings, Have His Carcase 1, Have His Carcase 2, Have His Carcase 3, Have His Carcase 4.

In the last post, I started to distract myself by a consideration of Paul Alexis as a doppelganger of Lord Peter Wimsey. Consider, therefore, this post as a kind of intermission in the narrative progression through HHC, while I pursue my self-afflicted chimera.

Indiscriminate spoilers for all of Have His Carcase, again including the identity of the murderer. Also assume spoilers for the rest of the canon. Specific mentions of Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors, and Gaudy Night.

( The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. )

Next up, Have His Carcase 6.

---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Have His Carcase. 1932. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, n.d.

Previous DLS posts: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson, Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 2, Strong Poison, The Five Red Herrings, Have His Carcase 1, Have His Carcase 2.

Endemic and pandemic spoilers--especially, for people who are reading HHC for the first time, I should warn you that there will be spoilers for later parts of HHC. I'm discussing Ch. 2 through Ch. 10, but will be referring to much later bits of the plot. Including the identity of the murderer. Proceed at your own risk.

( The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. )

Next up, Have His Carcase 4.

---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Have His Carcase. 1932. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, n.d.

[I should mention, btw, that I keep all my book-analysis posts "indexed" on my Memories page. "Indexed" is in sarcastic quote-marks because, as melymbrosia bewailed some time back, LJ's Memories feature is about as much like a real index as a stuck-together clump of grubby post-it notes is like a card catalogue. But anyway, my book posts are archived there.]

Previous DLS posts: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson, Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 2, Strong Poison, The Five Red Herrings.

The inscrutable exhortations of my soul tell me that this afternoon I need to talk about Have His Carcase, and I'm not about to argue.

This is going to be a longish subseries of posts, and because HHC is a long and complicated book, I'm going to be making the posts as I go along. If I wait until I've finished reading to post about Chapter One, I'll just end up having to read Chapter One again. And while that's not really so much of a hardship, it does seem awfully damn recursive.

I'm also (for a change) following the rules of writing literary criticism and laying out the schematic of my argument before I wade in. This is contrary, you understand, to the natural human instinct to keep secrets, and especially to save the really clever bits as a surprise. But I think it will help all of us keep track of where we're going and which way is up on the map.

( The best remedy for a bruised heart is not, as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. )

Next up, "The Evidence of the Corpse," Have His Carcase Chapter One.

---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. "The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers." Lord Peter: A Collection of All the Lord Peter Wimsey Stories. Compiled, introd. James Sandoe. 1972. New York: Perennial Library-Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987 (The Reader's Digest Association, 1990): pp. 1-20.

---. The Five Red Herrings.

---. Have His Carcase. 1931. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, n.d.

---. Strong Poison. 1930. New York: Perennial Library-Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987.

---. Unnatural Death. 1927. New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1995.

---. Whose Body? 1923. New York: Avon Books, 1961.