nineveh_uk | Random DLS ponderings

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Random DLS ponderings

Leafing through some DLS for dialogue help in the course of drafting some fic, a couple of paragraphs struck me.

The first is from the short stories. I don't read them much - they're not particularly good short stories - but I ought to read them more, as they have some interesting little passages in them. Like this one from The Unprincipled Affair of the Practical Joker.

[Peter is staying in a grand hotel somewhere-or-other that liners dock from Africa (Southampton?), and Mrs Ruyslaender has spotted his name on the register and, desperate, come to his suite at 11 pm to try to get his help on a case. Bunter admits her to the sitting room.]

The man stepped noiselessly to the bedroom door and passed, shutting it behind him. The lock, however, failed to catch, and Mrs Ruyslaender caught the conversation.

"Pardon me, my lord, a lady has called. She mentioned no appointment, so I considered it better to acquaint your lordship."

"Excellent discretion," said a voice. It had a slow, sarcastic intonation, which brought a painful flush to Mrs Ruyslaender's cheek. "I never make appointments. Do I know the lady?"

"No, my lord. But - hem - I know her by sight, my lord. It is Mrs Ruyslaender."

"Oh, the diamond merchant's wife. Well, find out tactfully what it's all about, and, unless it's urgent, ask her to call tomorrow."

The valet's remark was inaudible, but the reply was:

"Don't be coarse, Bunter."

*

I assume that Peter is still being sarcastic here, and not actually ticking Bunter off in the final sentence - it would be a bit much if he were, given that he started it. There are other passages of what Peter and Bunter and Peter and Parker talking about women/sex within the books, but I think that this is the most obviously blokish one.

*

Second, Busman's Honeymoon.

[Chapter 4, Bunter and Peter the morning after, not quite a page after Bunter's "I trust your lordship found everything satisfactory?"]

"Then buzz off and get breakfast before I get like the Duke of Wellington, nearly reduced to a skellington.... I say, Bunter."

"My lord?"

"I'm damned sorry you're having all this trouble."

"Don't mention it, my lord. So long as your lordship is satisfied - "

"Yes. All right, Bunter. Thanks."

He dropped his hand lightly on the servant's shoulder in what might have been a gesture of affection or dismissal as you chose to take it, and stood looking thoughtfully into the fireplace till his wife rejoined him.

*

All things considered, perhaps it's a good thing that the body turned up in a cellar and gave them all something to talk about...

Just spell it out for a moment. There's Bunter coming in, asking in code if Peter had a good night's not-sleep, and Peter giving a "you cannot seriously think I'm going to answer that" response and changing the subject. Then they waffle on about business (a bit awkwardly? A little excessively normal?) before Peter appears to feel guilty, calls Bunter back, apologises, ostensibly for the trouble (this the man who in the past has booked a holiday cottage with no indoor plumbing at all without remorse), Bunter brings up - something - again, gets an answer, and the final ambiguous gesture of reassurance/don't need you anymore, and Peter stares at the fireplace Bunter has just relaid mulling over - something - the options being presumably (1) yes, that was a highly satisfactory night, or (2) Oh God, is this about to be a bit difficult?

All of which I've thought before, and tended to assume that Peter is intending to be sympathetic if abstracted. What I haven't thought about before is the implication of Bunter potentially taking it seriously as a dismissal. It certainly makes Peter's laughing about the morning's Humorous Soot/Sink Incident an awful lot harsher from Bunter's POV, and adds greater force to his being off-kilter over the next few days and the absolute triumph when he beats Harriet to be the one wanted once again. No wonder the Duchess wonders how things are going after talking to him.

***

And yet people still think that Bunter fantasises about racehorses. Well, I suppose they have big noses and are famously well-endowed. (Do you think I'd get away on the Yahoo list with "Bunter has a dirty night out in the Denver stables" on the grounds that it if you don't accept anything at all is going on re. Peter then something must be going on re. Equus caballus?)

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but still didn't count in any way that mattered

And though a "very attached and superior fellow" only gets £50 in the Will.

Mm, yes. I'm always a bit annoyed at the contrast between Peter/Harriet and Charles/Mary, with each of the women giving up her own social class in favor of her husband's. Perhaps Peter would have been happier with an arrangement of someone else controlling his money, doling out to him an amount equal to Harriet's royalties. Or not.

I only hope that Peter's three pages of sensible comment to Harriet included the lines "I can't honestly recommend the sort of set-up my sister has, putting her in an entirely false position and tenable only because she hates opening school fetes, and enjoys playing at housekeeping and cooking fish. I do not wish to cook fish." I can cope with Harriet's moving into Peter's circles, because she actually benefits. I accept that at the time, _socially_ Parker can't move into Mary's class. But Parker and Mary's financial arrangement is bloody stupid (though I think DLS implies it is - it is SO convoluted). If she really wants to be a middle-class housewife, why don't they at least use her money to buy themselves a nice house? But no, it's all about limiting Mary to salve Parker's pride, and it's irreversible. At least Harriet continues to earn her own income and could choose not to spend Peter's money - and according to a DLS letter, it's her income, postwar when the Estate/other income is way down, that keeps them paying super-tax, which is a nice consolation.

Also, you have just given me a fic idea, thank you!

The private/sergeant analogy works well, I think.

to write the working out of the Harriet-Peter-Bunter triangle, eventually resulting in Peter keeping Bunter as the lover he can order around and Harriet as the wife he can't

Write that fic and I will give you my hypothetical first born. Maybe even my real first born if I can arrange it.

*splutter*

Really they are not crying over Bunter at all but over "not wanting Peter to lose anything". Anything rather than anyone, that is. This isn't that helpful to Bunter either, but he might be reassured by evidence that Harriet is not going to see to it that he's sacked the minute she crosses the threshold.

Isn't that all Bunter gets in Ali Baba as well? Admittedly it was only a fake will, and therefore presumably reflected other people's expectations rather than what Peter was actually planning to leave Bunter, but it's noticeable that it's about what he spends on one set of chessmen for Harriet.

he might be reassured by evidence that Harriet is not going to see to it that he's sacked the minute she crosses the threshold.

Well, since she hasn't said she wants a completely new set of staff, he's probably fairly confident she isn't going to do that. On the other hand, who knows what will happen if Peter fails to satisfy her and she gets all bitter and frustrated...

Au contraire, Bunter does rather well in Ali Baba - an annuity of £500 a year, and the lease of the flat (which either must mean the leasehold OR the rent must cost an awful lot less, given that his continuing to live there not being really weird is a requirement of the plot).

Question: had the chessmen not been smashed, and Harriet turned Peter down, would she have felt obliged to return them? Or is asking for them essentially saying that she's not, ultimately, going to turn him down?

who knows what will happen if Peter fails to satisfy her and she gets all bitter and frustrated...

Obviously she will turn to his virile manservant for consolation.

Filthy mind yourself! But true, the triangle having struck him at last, Peter does seem to be trying to grease the wheels.

And I am going to have to read the whole canon again, I can see.
There are worse fates.

I wouldn't hold my breath on the story, though I wouldn't mind getting your first born either. *grin*

The worst thing about Mary's financial arrangements is that it's all so phony. Peter and Gerald have control of her money, but if Mary came to them and said "Look, something's happened, I need my money," do you honestly think either of them would say no? So the only thing keeping her from the money is her own scruples, and if her scruples are enough why bother with the legal rigamarole?

I like the idea of Harriet's money keeping them in the style to which Peter is accustomed after the war.

Oh, yay!

Harriet's accepting his advice on Wilfred is her saying she's not ultimately going to turn him down and that's what makes him risk proposing, when at the start of that conversation he was only asking leave to go back to the beginning and start again properly. So the chessmen have to be earlier in the thawing process and not as decisive IMO.

As asking for them at all was a gift from her to him, maybe the rules of etiquette have to go into reverse and she gets to keep them, as throwing them back at him would be even more insulting than turning him down.

That's assuming Bunter hasn't already walked out because she left the cap off the toothpaste one time too many. Not to mention continuing to pack Wrong (what's the significance of the repacking, by the way? Byond the harmless sense of having to get used to servants seeing intimate bits of your life in a way that can be quite discomfiting at first?)

Or is asking for them essentially saying that she's not, ultimately, going to turn him down?

I don't know that it's a definite commitment, as such, but I don't think Harriet would have felt able to ask for them if she hadn't been willing to accept that this was raising his hopes, so in that sense, yes, it's a sign that she will ultimately accept him.

I'm not sure about returning them - what a complex question of etiquette, fraught with dangers! I don't suppose she would have wanted to keep them if she'd turned Peter down. And it would certainly feel - at least to me - like having accepted a gift under false pretences. Perhaps she could give them to a charity shop :-)

*Considers packing entire Sayers collection in suitcase*

If I keep talking about it, I will have to write it. I do have about 12 hours thinking time on trains this weekend.

So she doesn't show Peter up when her luggage is unpacked by servants at Duke's Denver? Can't have gossip in the servants' hall about her new ladyship clearly having packed her own suitcase.

I do have about 12 hours thinking time on trains this weekend

*rubs hands in anticipation*

In Clouds of Witness he not only held Peter's weight in the mud for half the night

Yes, but this is magic fandom angst mud, in which the weight is only the weight of their Manly Pain.

I must get mud into the Angsty Fic of Doom. Maybe Peter can stare at the vegetable patch in fear and loathing.

it's all so phony

Absolutely - it feels to me as if she's somehow "playing at being middle class". Even if the stuff is in "trust" for the children, with P and G as the trustees the scope must be pretty broad.

I must get mud into the Angsty Fic of Doom. Maybe Peter can stare at the vegetable patch in fear and loathing.

I did start a prequel to Fear and Loathing in the Vegetable Patch, aka Mud, Mud, Glorious Mud, but I've got stuck :-(

Oh yes, there's definitely a lot going on in the background in BH. What's interesting is the extent to which it isn't always obvious. The novel's origins as a play, it seems to me, are evident not just in the rather visual and enclosed murder plot, but the way that the background functions more as background than in some of the previous novels.

I did start a prequel...but I've got stuck

Can you not gird yourself and leap free in one mighty bound, leaving your wellies behind you?

And tell more!

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Random DLS ponderings

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