Donne Undone. Only Harriet.

abby, she/her, thirty-one

[talkingpiffle]

“One First of April, the question had arrived from Paris in a single Latin sentence, starting off dispiritedly. “Num…?”- a particular which notoriously “expects the answer No.” Harriet, rummaging the Grammar book for “polite negatives,” replied, still more briefly, “Benigne.””

— -Gaudy Night, Dorothy L Sayers (via summersanginme)

[donneundoneonlyharriet]

Lord Peter on the Feast of All Fools:

[amnesiaguy]

best m/f dynamic is a flamboyant bisexual show-off desperately in love with an extremely practical girl who’s difficult to impress 🤩

[donneundoneonlyharriet]

[modernism-in-metroland]

Stairwell, Dorset Estate, Bethnal Green

1951-57

Skinner, Lubetkin and Bailey

Image from RIBApix

[talkingpiffle]

Fierce bustle about wedding-dress—Worth's—period gown in stiff gold brocade, long sleeves, square neck, off-the-face head-dress, no jewels except my long ear-rings that belonged to great-aunt Delagardie. (N.B.—Publisher must have come well up to scratch on new book.)

–Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman’s Honeymoon, “Prothalamion,” 1937.

Image: Worth gold evening gown, 1930s. (x)

[talkingpiffle]

MARRIAGES

WIMSEY—VANE. On the 8th October, at St. Cross Church, Oxford, Peter Death Bredon Wimsey, second son of the late Gerald Mortimer Bredon Wimsey, 15th Duke of Denver, to Harriet Deborah Vane, only daughter of the late Henry Vane, M.D., of Great Pagford, Herts.

[talkingpiffle]

–Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman’s Honeymoon, “Prothalamion,” 1937.

Photo: St. Cross Church, Holywell, Oxford, circa 1920. (x)

[donneundoneonlyharriet]

Happy 90th anniversary to Peter & Harriet!

[donneundoneonlyharriet]

Excerpt from Chapter III, “Jordan River,” from Busman’s Honeymoon

Excerpt from Chapter IV, “Household Gods,” from Busman’s Honeymoon

Excerpt from Chapter IV, “Household Gods,” from Busman’s Honeymoon

Excerpt from Epithalamion Part 3, “Talboys: Crown Celestial,” from Busman’s Honeymoon

[mswyrr-deactivated20181203]

It’s a longstanding point of media sadness to me that Leslie Howard never played Lord Peter Wimsey on screen

[kivrin]

Leslie Howard/Judy Davis for PDBW/HDV

[donneundoneonlyharriet]

Excerpt from Chapter XXI of Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night (1935).

We don’t talk about this paragraph enough.

[donneundoneonlyharriet]

*that* chapter in gaudy night out of context

[donneundoneonlyharriet]

Leslie Howard and Kay Francis in Michael Curtiz’s British Agent (1934).

Excerpt from Chapter VII, “Alarming Experience of a Chief-Inspector,” from Dorothy L. Sayers’s Murder Must Advertise (1933).

[donneundoneonlyharriet]

Excerpt from Chapter XXIII of Dorothy L. Sayers’s Gaudy Night (1935).

“Allegro” to Concerto for 2 Violins in D Minor, Johann Sebastian Bach.

[no-where-new-hero]

“Oh, damn!” said Lord Peter Wimsey at Piccadilly Circus. “Hi, driver!”

The first line of Whose Body?

Quite suddenly, he said, "Oh, damn!" and began to cry—in an awkward, unpractised way at first, and then more easily. So she held him, crouched at her knees, against her breast, huddling his head in her arms that he might not hear eight o'clock strike.

The final paragraph of Busman's Honeymoon

To have Peter's first and last lines of the series be the same, with such a span of difference in the tone, the situation, the sincerity of the oath that can only be understood in the way he's changed over the books––I again want to scream about how perfect and incredible and amazingly artistic Dorothy Leigh Sayers is oh my god

[pricklysplendours]

"Your narrative style," said Parker, "though racy, is a little elliptical. Could you not begin at the beginning and go on until you come to the end, and then, if you are able to, stop?"

- Murder Must Advertise, ch V

[no-where-new-hero]

“placetne, magistra” officially the sexiest way to propose of all time congrats dorothy l sayers girlies you win

[no-where-new-hero]

every girl (gn) needs an eccentric detective to be feral about and make their whole personality. the weirder habits they have, the better

[donneundoneonlyharriet]

Lord Peter on the Feast of All Fools: