This is the first volume of Dorothy Sayers’s letters, actually. It’s properly called, The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers: 1899 – 1936: The Making of a Detective Novelist. I am displeased at having two colons in the title. You know what was most satisfying about this book? How when I got all through with it, I kept remembering bits of it and thinking, Darn, wish I’d marked that passage, and then glancing back through the book and finding that I had. Hurrah for me!
Dorothy Sayers was an interesting lady, and this book covers the period of her life with which I am most familiar. She goes to school, she goes to Oxford (before the women actually, you know, got degrees at the end), she works as a teacher, she works in publishing, she works in advertising, she finally settles down to being a writer. I found these career difficulties rather soothing, as I am having a hard time of adulthood so far. It is nice to know that someone whose writing I admire had the same difficulties.
Barbara Reynolds, the editor, also a Sayers biographer, does a brilliant job of selecting and editing the letters. I expect most times when people produce volumes of letters, it’s for the sake of scholars. I know that my Oscar Wilde letters book contains zillions of letters of no particular importance or significance to someone not researching him (and probably loads of people who are). And I can see why people don’t do volumes of letters like this very often, for a more casual audience, because really, how much of a readership can they expect in that case? But it’s lovely when they do it, and Dorothy Sayers was an excellent letter-writer. These made me want to read a proper biography of Dorothy Sayers, and I shall as soon as I go to the library.
So this is the best Dorothy Sayers story I know so far. Ready? Okay. Once upon a time she had an affair with a writer called John Cournos. He sounds terrible. “John was ‘nice’ enough Friday week in a general way, but I fear he has no sympathy with Lord Peter, being the kind of man who takes his writing seriously and spells Art with a capital A.” Anyway she was madly in love with him and wanted to get married and have babies, but he kept saying he didn’t love her, she wasn’t interesting, and he just wanted to get laid. She refused to use contraception, and he refused to have sex without it, and what with one thing and another they broke it off. And he made fun of her for writing detective stories.
(Do you know that Edna St. Vincent Millay poem that says He laughed at all I dared to praise / And broke my heart, in little ways? I love that bit. I bet that is just how Dorothy Sayers felt.)
Anyway, she went off and had an affair with a guy she didn’t care much about, and although they did use contraception, she still got pregnant; and he went off and married a detective novelist and told her, essentially, that if she’d had sex with him he would have married her and it was a test and she failed. Cad. She had the baby in secret and fostered it with a cousin and never told her parents. It’s not clear to me yet whether she ever told the baby; later on in his life, she and her husband (not the baby-daddy; a different person) “adopted” him, and he was told to regard her as his adopted mother. Which must have been strange.
She never told her parents. I mean, I think her life would have been easier if she had, but serious props to her secret-keeping ability. She would write them letters that referenced the cousin, Ivy, who was keeping the baby, along with some other children, and even referenced the baby, without saying it was hers. Behold:
I think [Ivy] would be sorry to give up the children and the girl would hate leaving her – though no doubt she will have to sometime. The baby, I gather, can, if necessary, be disposed of, if time is given to make arrangements.
(But don’t worry. Ivy sorted out her living arrangements and carried on fostering John Anthony.)
There are also a quantity of letters to John Cournos, written after she had the baby and he got married, where she tells him her secret and they apparently rehash their whole affair. Terrible idea! I wanted her to stop, as he had obviously won the break-up, but she carried on writing to him. I can’t blame her, poor baby, with that enormous secret on her mind. Eventually she fictionalized him as Philip Boyes in Strong Poison and poisoned him with arsenic, and I imagine it was tremendously satisfying.
He got revenge by fictionalizing their affair in one of his books, and talking all about all the stuff they did and quoting from her letters like a cad, but you will be pleased to hear, it was terribly dull and silly and only had the effect of making him look like a prat. But at least he didn’t burn all her letters like some writers I could mention who didn’t want to look bad even though they are bad, yes Ted Hughes, I am talking to you (it was journals really, in Ted Hughes’ case).
It was interesting too, reading about her work on the Harriet Vane books, especially Gaudy Night. It is fun reading about the process that created characters and books – I suppose because in spite of what Barthes says I am still intrigued by knowing what the author intended, especially here when she managed it so nicely. Sayers sounded rather apologetic when she sent Gaudy Night to her publisher, saying that it wasn’t really one thing or another, but it had to be written. It must have been a hell of a thing to get finished, and I felt triumphant on her behalf that it turned out so good. And apparently nobody liked Harriet Vane! I can’t imagine why. Harriet Vane is utterly one of my favorite characters ever! But here’s the evidence:
You are one of the very few people with intelligent sympathy for Lord Peter and his Harriet. Most of them beg me not to let him marry ‘that horrid girl’. They don’t understand the violent conflict underlying her obstinacy – I am glad you do. There’s stuff in Harriet, but it isn’t the conventional heroine stuff, you see. My only reason for holding her up is that the situation between her and Lord P. is psychologically so difficult that it really needs a whole book to examine and resolve.
And, on writing Gaudy Night (I sympathize!):
I think I have got over most of the technical snags in Gaudy Night now, but the writing is being horribly difficult. Peter and Harriet are the world’s most awkward pair of lovers – both so touchy and afraid to commit themselves to anything but hints and allusions!
On the mysteries question:
I have also been annoyed (stupidly enough) by a lot of reviewers who observed the identity of the murder was obvious from the start (as indeed it is also in Unnatural Death and The Documents in the Case). Personally, I feel that it is only when the identity of the murderer is obvious that the reader can really concentrate on the question (much the most interesting) How did he do it?
And why. Sensible woman. I can’t proceed to her next volume of letters until I’ve read some of the works referenced therein, her plays and Christian writing. I love reading letters. Do y’all have any suggestions of interesting letters I can read? I’ve done Tolkien, I’m in the midst of Sayers right now, and of course I’ve done the lovely Browning letters. Bless.
While I’m on letters, this is brilliant. Van Gogh’s letters are all nicely digitized, in facsimile and in translation, and with useful notes as well as images of any pictures he references. The Van Gogh Museum is made out of win.
Jenny's Books 