The dear, dead days before direct dial

[nineveh_uk]

Following on from antisoppist’s recent post on whether Peter Wimsey enjoyed his job in advertising in part because it gave additional opportunities for stalking running into Harriet leads me to a further question:

when Peter rings up Harriet’s flat for the first time in Gaudy Night, how did he get her phone number?

Harriet has just been abroad for 18 months. Peter knows she is back because she’s been mentioned in the Times*. She has recently returned to a new flat, and a new telephone number. I think we can assume that the new number is not in the phone book on the grounds that even if she weren’t ex-directory**, which I’d expect her to be given that if she can’t avoid nasty letters from strangers she doesn’t want nasty phone calls as well, there hasn’t been time for the number to enter a new book in the few weeks in which she’s been in London again.

A quick search of the internet has not been especially fruitful, but the Daily Mail tells me that directory enquiries started with the first telephone service, so that would have been an option, except that Peter doesn’t know Harriet’s new address (she tells him that she has moved flat in answer to his comment that she has a new phone number), and if the books were being used we’re back to the original problem of her not being in them.

So how did he get the number so quickly? Would the operator have sufficient local knowledge to put him through to Miss Vane, newly living in a Bloomsbury flat at an unknown address? Has he phoned the host of the literary party, or got Sally Hardy to do so? Has he phoned Harriet's agent with an excuse, or is that too embarrassing? As Parker lives round the corner, has he got him to make an official enquiry?

I am assuming that he didn’t in fact see her at Ascot, have her trailed home, and only waited for the paper to give him an excuse for knowing she was back, or got whatever border agency there was at the time to report...

*As Bunter’s duties including reading the paper and picking out notable articles, one can only imagine what he was thinking as he marked that particular column in black ink.

**Assuming that to be an option at the time.

Comments

[serriadh]

How much of an excuse would he need to get her number from her agent? Or how unscrupulous would we expect Peter to be? (Considering that he's ringing her up when she's gone abroad and then moved flat without giving him either the address or phone number, he should have guessed she's not that keen for him to be in touch.)

I wouldn't be surprised if Notable Detective Lord and Well-Known "Friend" of Harriet Vane called up her agent and said. 'Oh dear me, so dashed silly of me, forget my monocle if it wasn't screwed in, but I can't seem to find Harriet's new phone number, what, and was rather hoping she'd be able to take me to [restaurant/show] this ev'ning. Don't suppose you could help out a silly fellow, could you?' And the agent handed over the number like a meek little lamb.

[edited because I clicked send too soon]

[nineveh_uk]

I think Peter's pretty unscrupulous. Though he has apparently set himself a line of not actually seducing H.*, he clearly doesn’t take anything other than a direct answer as a negative (having taken her getting in touch after the trial and never in fact refusing his invitations as permission to continue them). He doesn’t write to her while she’s away, because she specifically told him not to. She didn’t say anything about when she was back, and her own thoughts about “bringing the relationship to a cool and friendly close” suggest that she’s expecting to be in contact with him at some point to do it.

"Oh what an idiot I am" sounds entirely plausible (if embarrassing) as an approach. Since everyone knows about the relationship, he might as well take advantage of it (as he does in arranging the dinner somewhere conspicuous).

*Unless this is just what he tells himself to cover up his anxiety that what if she didn’t go for him even then ;-)

[antisoppist]

If "By the way you have changed your telephone number" isn't a way of telling her that he has ways of tracking her down no matter what she does (which would not be conducive to asking her out), it sounds accusatory and slightly miffed, which I take as implying he has just rung the old one and found she wasn't there.

I'm inclined to think it's a helpful telephone exchange operator but my knowledge of operators comes from my grandmother's tales of a small village where everyone knew everyone else and the operator knew everybody and possibly London didn't work like that. Unless the new tenant of her old flat gave him the number (would the new tenant have her number and would they give it out to stray gentlemen callers?)

Also Harriet doesn't answer "yes, how the hell did you find out what it is?"

[nineveh_uk]

Friendly operator (and normal behaviour) seems to be the LJ consensus, too.

I’ve decided that he doesn’t think in the first place that Harriet might have got a new flat after being away for 18 months because he has a big enough income that the fact she probably needed the rent money to support her travels simply hasn’t occurred to him.

[antisoppist]

simply hasn’t occurred to him
Very good point, no it wouldn't.

The start of the call with "Miss Harriet Vane?.. Is that you Harriet?" in a voice of curious huskiness and uncertainty also sounds like someone who has just phoned the wrong person by mistake and is worried it might have happened again. Not that I have ever analysed it in such detail before.

Did the operator need to give him the number or would they just connect him to the right person? And if the latter, is "you have changed your telephone number" a subtle request that she tell him what it is now please, which she does not take him up on? Unless she answered the phone by giving the number, something I still automatically do when at my parents', to the bemusement of the Finn who says "but they know what the number is, they just dialled it."

[nineveh_uk]

I always put the huskiness down to the emotion of getting to talk to Harriet about, and how she is going to reply, what if she tells me to go away? But the wrong phone numbers can't help. It is all very well to regard other people's breakfasts as collatoral damage in the quest, but the emotional strain tells. Hopefully the operator said, "Ah, [Bloomsbury 647]" so he could remember for the future. I note that also in GN, Harriet either knows Peter's number or assumes the operator will connect her via the address, as she doesn't check it when about to phone before wimping out.

Answering phones is definitely one of those things one inherits from parents. It's like the mitochondrial DNA of modern communications. I say "Hello".

[antisoppist]

I find the "Miss Harriet Vane?" a bit odd as a starter. Is he repeating what she answered the phone with?

I say "hello" on my own phone but "Exchange and number" if I have to answer my parents' phone, as instructed as a child, when even my mother has now switched to "Hello, farm name". Though mostly we were instructed never to answer the phone ever on pain of death in case we said yes to someone selling vast quantities of fertiliser or wanting dad to bale their field. This has resulted in all three of us being scared of telephones.

[azdak]

I find the "Miss Harriet Vane?" a bit odd as a starter. Is he repeating what she answered the phone with?


My guess would be that she just said "Hello?" when she picked up the phone, and Peter wasn't entirely confident he wasn't addressing a stranger (like answering the phone with your number, so that anyone who's dialled the wrong number realises that at once).

[nineveh_uk]

That's my assumption, especially if he's already got it wrong once. He does not, interestingly, introduce himself.

I always answer "Hello" (accept at work, where I say my full name). I once had a row on the phone as a child with someone who had dialled the number wrongly and insisted on being told what ours was, whereas I wasn't allowed to give it out.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

We have "You have reached [number]" on our answering machine, so as to give a clue to those who have gotten the number wrong that it's not the folks they want.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

Asked mutual friends, perhaps (asking Marjorie Phelps to make enquiries?). I imagine most of Harriet's friends would have wanted to preserve her privacy, but some might well have been misguidedly romantic enough to pass on the information.

[littlered2.livejournal.com]

As for phoning Harriet's agent with an excuse being too embarrassing, he could always have deputised poor Bunter.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It's true that since there's no point keeping secrets from Bunter, LPW might as well take advantage of his knowing them!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I rather like the glimpses we get of Harriet's friends' view of the relationship - namely, "if you can't make up your mind, stop complaining that he's not treating you like you've made a firm decision".

[helenajust.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly sure that Directory Enquiries would have been able to provide the number for Miss Harriet Vane without needing to know her address - it's an unusual name, and there were very few subscribers in those days. I can remember being able to get numbers very recently without knowing the address as long as there weren't two people with the same name. (I'm going back to just before they started charging for it.)

I see your point about Harriet's being ex-directory, but I'm guessing that nuisance phone calls would have been unusual precisely because the operator connected all calls before direct dial, and therefore would have known who was calling (or at least from which number). (Plus the type of person who writes anonymous letters might feel a phone call was too personal.)

[fjm.livejournal.com]

I was at least 30 the first time directory enquiries refused to give me a number without my first being able to give them the address. People used to be much more casual about information.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

It's definitely sounding like Peter wouldn't need to be sneaky for this one, thanks.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

So all he has to do is phone up the old number, find it’s wrong, re-connect to the operator and ask for Harriet by name. Simple! Harriet is also apparently able to ring Peter’s flat without needing to look up the number (on the assumption she hasn’t got it memorised!), so “Wimsey, 110a Piccadilly” doesn’t seem more embarrassing than “Mayfair 1281” or whatever it would be.

The point about it being harder to make malicious phone calls via an operator isn’t something that had occurred to me, but makes sense.

[azdak.livejournal.com]

Given Harriet's somewhat - ahem - conflicted feelings about Peter, I wouldn't put it past her to have mentioned her new number more than once to a talkative mutual acquaintance (not Marjorie, I hope - I want Harriet to be tactful where Marjorie's concerned) without ever admitting consciously to herself that the information might mysteriously filter through to him.

Although I admit that directory inquiries is the much more likely option.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Harriet’s friends, while publicly deploring the book on how long it would be before she moved in with Wimsey, nonetheless all had a bet in it, and were quite accustomed to his visits to art shows etc. in the hope of picking up news. They mostly didn't feed him false rumours to see how he would react... I can see someone merrily passing on a phone number.

I would like Harriet to be tactful, but since she doesn't seem to have known her that well pre-trial, and Peter presumably won't mention it, then unless Sylvia or Eilunedd have picked up on Marjorie's feelings Harriet could put her foot in it badly without realising.

[bookwormsarah.livejournal.com]

She would have been in a Kelly's Directory (or equivalent) for the area - they listed entire streets by name, occupation and phone number. I've played with the Cambridge version and have yet to spot a break indicating someone had been omitted...

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of that Kelly's Directory (squirrels knowledge away). Would she be in so quickly, though - she's only been in the flat a couple of weeks - or would it be the previous tenant.

[antisoppist.livejournal.com]

They're useful if you're doing history of a local area or specific address as they come out more often than the census and can be seen before 100 years have passed. I researched the farm at one point sitting on the floor going through them in Southend library. I thought they were meant for businesses/tradespeople and householders posh enough to have an entry rather than absolutely everybody though.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Except the new Kelly's would most likely not have been out yet. Also, was being ex-directory even a thing yet at that time?

Incidentally, in the US newspapers used to routinely give people's full addresses if they'd been quoted in a story. My father got any amount of mail after a story about him in the Chicago Tribune just after the war.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I'm increasingly feeling that a "history of social telephony between the wars" would be an interesting read!

I don't know whether British papers gave full addresses, but the anonymous letter-writers are finding Harriet's somehow (though in fact "Miss Harriet Vane, Authoress, Bloomsbury" would probably have reached her, since "Bill Bryson, Yorkshire Dales" reached him in the 90s).

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I always liked the bit (have probably mentioned this before) in Whose Body? where Lord Peter "sat down to the telephone with an air of leisurely courtesy, as though it were an acquaintance dropped in for a chat." Well, naturally -- except this is before most people thought of telephone conversations as being another form of cozy chat.

[auntyros.livejournal.com]

Might he have phoned the old number and the new residents there have been able to give him the new number? A bit like forwarding mail. I have no idea whether people did this, but it seems plausible.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

I had wondered about that, but if Harriet had given up her flat before going abroad and not yet got a new one (rather than paying rent for a place she wasn't using), then it seems unlikely they'd have the new number. The helpful operator seems to have emerged as the most likely scenario.