Lord Peter Wimsey

Dorothy Sayers and the Wholeness of Marriage

I have always loved a good detective story. Sherlock Holmes is, of course, a must read for anyone who wants to get into good mystery and detective fiction. I remember the first Sir Arthur Conan Doyle book I ever read, which happens to be the first book I ever read in a digital format, The Hound of the Baskervilles.¹ Years later I eventually read/listened to the complete Sherlock Holmes novels and short stories. There is a lot to appreciate about the famous sleuth. He has many witty remarks about the powers of observation and how most people have a blindness to what is right in front of them. One of Holmes’ most famous declarations states, “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” I have found this principle to be on point and applicable to a number of situations in life.

One thing that is hard for many fans concerning the Sherlock stories, however, is how closed off he is to everyone (including Watson). The reader never really gets to know him as much as one might like. This is a core part of his character, of course, and it is admittedly part of what makes him fascinating. In the midst of all the mysteries he solves before the reader’s eyes Sherlock remains the greatest mystery of all. Nonetheless, despite the allure of his mysterious personality, Holmes ultimately lives a solitary life and dies alone. Movie and television adaptations of the Sherlock stories demonstrate that none of us really want this for the beloved hero and, therefore, few of those adaptations have allowed it to stand that way in the end.

There are many other places to turn for mystery enthusiasts. Among the greats are G.K. Chesterton’s stories featuring Father Brown, a crime solving Catholic priest. Again there is Agatha Christie’s arrogant (but nonetheless always right) Poirot who shows up in many although not all of her mystery novels. There are countless other mystery writers over the decades and today but many of them are hardly worth your time and amount to what C. S. Lewis would call “penny dreadfuls.” But I will tell you about another series which has quickly become my favorite in the genre.

Recently I have been enjoying a different kind of detective by the name of Lord Peter Wimsey. Wimsey is a British aristocratic sleuth whose stories take place in the early 1900’s. The creation of Dorothy Sayers, most well known by classical school teachers as the author of the essay The Lost Tools of Learning, the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries give us a character that is both a bit more believable than Sherlock and one who is also far more lovable.

Wimsey’s character is introduced to us in the short novel Whose Body? The mystery begins with a deceased man’s body being found naked (except for a pair of pince-nez) in the home of an architect who has no idea who he is or how he came to be there. When you meet Lord Peter he is, to begin with, a young and wealthy social elite that scandalizes his more respectable relatives by getting his hands dirty in crime solving. He is assisted by his faithful butler and valet Bunter who has an interest in photography and is something of an amateur chemist. Bunter, who incidentally was his commanding officer during the Great War but is now his faithful servant, often helps Peter collect and examine evidence. Lord Peter also has a good friend named Charles who is a police inspector with whom he often teams up.

One of my favorite things about this series is the character development of Peter Wimsey over the course of all the stories. He seems to be a confirmed bachelor when you meet him. His life is lived more or less to please himself. He is a kind man, not at all cruel, and generous enough towards his friends and strangers alike but he has little to look after except his own wants and interests. Several times throughout the stories there are situations which someone has died, perhaps even by suicide, and Lord Peter makes a comment something to the effect of how he could see ending himself in the same way at some point.

There is a sense about Wimsey that whenever he slows down enough to examine his life instead of the lives of others he is entirely unsatisfied. He keeps himself busy so he doesn’t have to think about it.² Even though he has access to anything he wants it does not fill him with contentment. He has money and nobility and therefore some power and influence. He has fine clothes and possessions (he is a collector of first edition rare books). He has beautiful women who would marry him at the drop of a hat and he has certainly “been with” some women. Despite his genius and affluence, his wealth and finery, and the fact that he has some devoted friends and a loving mother who dotes on him and supports his detective habit, he really isn’t happy.

If you were only to read one or two of the earlier stories by Sayers you might just conclude “Well, that’s just his character.” But if you stick it out longer and read them all then you will find that something significant happens to Lord Peter when he meets a woman named Harriet Vane. In the novel entitled Strong Poison the story begins with an ongoing murder trial. A woman named Miss Harriet Vane has been accused of murdering her former lover, a man whom she had lived with, unmarried, for some time. I’ll not ruin the whole story for you but suffice it to say that Lord Peter not only judges that she is innocent but he falls completely in love with her. He proposes to her on the spot and promises to get her out of the trouble she is in (but the odds are severely against her).

Harriet is a mystery novelist. She is exceedingly bright and a match to Peter’s wit and charm and he respects her not only as his equal but as very much his better in many ways. Over the course of this story, and several others, he relentlessly pursues her hand in marriage for five long years. To his proposals she stalwartly says “no” time and again but she allows him to take her to dinner once a month and try again. Eventually she says yes. She says yes not so much as a concession (as if to lower her standards), nor does she say yes as a person who has been worn down by the pursuit, but she says yes as a woman finally allowing herself to be happy. This brings us to the novel entitled Busman’s Honeymoon in which the lovers finally tie the knot and run off to countryside for a honeymoon just to get entangled in another murder investigation. The country home they purchased ends up having the former owner found dead in the cellar.

All of the stories are compelling as detective fiction in themselves but this is far from the best thing about them in my opinion. The best thing is seeing the main character change and grow and find meaning and purpose in his life. It is essentially what everyone wanted for Sherlock in his stories but which he never found (nor pursued).

Of all of the mysteries he is involved in over the years the thing that ends up surprising Lord Peter the most is that, in the end, bliss is found in marriage and traditional Christian values. The idea of being really committed to someone outside of himself, the idea of having children, all of the things which the social elite have seemingly “outgrown,” these are the things which at last satisfy his soul.

The following is from Busman’s Honeymoon.

“Harriet,” he said, suddenly, “what do you think about life? I mean, do you find it good on the whole. Worth living?” (He could, at any rate, trust her not to protest, archly: “That’s a nice thing to ask on one’s honeymoon!”)

She turned to him with a quick readiness, as though here was the opportunity to say something she had been wanting to say for a long time: “Yes! I’ve always felt absolutely certain it was good—if only one could get it straightened out. I’ve hated almost everything that ever happened to me, but I knew all the time it was just things that were wrong, not everything. Even when I felt most awful I never thought of killing myself or wanting to die—only of somehow getting out of the mess and starting again.”

“That’s rather admirable. With me it’s always been the other way round. I can enjoy practically everything that comes along—while it’s happening. Only I have to keep on doing things, because, if I once stop, it all seems a lot of rot and I don’t care a damn if I go west tomorrow. At least, that’s what I should have said. Now—I don’t know. I’m beginning to think there may be something in it after all …”

Sayers later wrote a handful of short stories in which the Lord and Lady have three children and these stories are a delightful window into a man (who once had it all but who really had nothing) now come into real life. I can’t recommend the series to you enough both on the merits of a good detective fiction and on the virtues of marriage and family and the joy they can bring to empty people who sought to fill the void with more emptiness.

1. I read it on my “Palm” phone and I was so excited about the idea of having a book on my phone.

2. Incidentally Blaise Pascal talks significantly about the human tendency to distract oneself by any means necessary so that we don’t notice we are miserable.