Th think that Miss Climpson should have been in The Nine Tailors

[Jemima232]

Miss Climpson did not appear in this book.

The purpose of this thread is to examine why this oversight occurred.

The Chalet School books may be mentioned if people wish.

Bertrand they got carried away and Peter unleashed Harriet's shabby tiger, but they did not shag until their wedding night, when Peter discovered that the tiger was anything but shabby.

Yes, the dress was Worth. As was my own wedding dress.

I think the near miss episode & the shaggy tigers is supposed to be them finding out that they fancy each other enough nearly to 'go too far'. His uncle picks up on the unrequited sexual tension.

LP would never have shagged Harriet before marriage because of her not being a virgin - it would have implied that he didn't respect her as much as if she had been virginal.

I’ve been misinterpreting for years!!!!!!!
Oh well, as I said on another thread, I think that misinterpretation is the fault of the writer not the reader....

If I'd been washed by my manservant in cold water and smelled of paraffin on my wedding night I think I'd have been put off shagging.

Maybe not.

I genuinely love the smell of paraffin. Yet another reason why I should have been Lady Wimsey Peter.

Isn't the reference to shabby tigers to do with the Ralph Hodgson poem "The Bells of Heaven" which HV and LPW would have been familiar with at the time BH was written?

The whole book is littered with references to literature. Even the police officer (Blundell?) does his bit.

On God - the patronising amazement that a village policeman knows how to read literature. Much worse than the stuff about Miss Twitterton knowing Harriet's title.

NB - I meant DLS being patronising, not you Jemima

“What you need is an hour in the company of a great mind”

Love that so much.

I fear I always imagine the not-so-shabby tiger like a soft-focus take on the Blake poem, sort of shot like an 80s rock video for some kind of declamatory ballad about the Power of Love.

XXcstatic I realised that you meant DLS, not Moi.

Miss Twitterton told the ghastly (and murderous) Crutchley that she "knew quite well how to address people of rank" (although Mrs. Ruddle clearly did not.)

Poor Mrs. Ruddle - victim of DV (although she describes Ruddle as a good husband) and perennial worrier about who would get Bert's dinner when she had to go to the inquest on Noakes...…….then she is lambasted by Bunter for agitating the bottles of port.

Bunter does not come out of this exchange well. And although he has already saved Peter's life twice, he then gets a telling-off from Peter for not keeping a closer eye on the lower orders, who have stopped him having a glass of ludicrously expensive booze.

Going back to Harriet Vane's clothes...

This is a Worth-style gold-lame dress from the 1930s that would fit the description (approx) of Harriet's wedding-dress (Venetian portrait, ie16th century; stiff fabric ) in Busman's Honeymoon:
www.pinterest.com/pin/166773992421311632/

I thought that the wine-red evening frock worn by Harriet Walter in the BBC TV production of Have His Carcase was very much like the description in the book. You can see a similar style here on this website: www.dresses2019.com/Red1930sEveningDresses147429mcrbfuva/
Just scroll down until you come to the picture of the 1934 'Vogue' dress-making pattern.

Re the slender silhouette of the 1930s frocks, a museum costume expert once told me this rhyme, about 1920s-1920s fashions:
'The Englishwoman is so refined
She has no front and no behind.'

Ah yes. Have His Carcase.

That cryptogram - did the book need ninety pages (or whatever it was) to describe how they worked it out? Just as there were several pages describing the cryptogram in TNT.

I suppose it is easier to figure out than the train times in Five Red Herrings. Marginally.

Thanks flora -that's really interesting.

The plot doesn't work in Have His Carcase, unfortunately. I won't say why because it would be a massive spoiler. But the key revelation about the victim wouldn't have the effect DLS thought it would. It's still one of my favourite LPW books though, because it's Harriet-centred.

That cryptogram does not make an exciting section of audiobook!

You mean the diagnostic revelation, @XXcstatic? Interesting. (Though I only read it because of so much Harriet, too, so the plot is not of surpassing interest, and I skip the code.)

@florascotia2, I love the gold 1930s dress you linked to, which is a relief because whenever I tried to visualise a stiff gold brocade gown that could be vaguely bridal, it never looked very nice in my head -- rather like other key fictional dresses, like Miranda's Disaster in Antonia Forest, which apparently makes Nicola look astonishingly beautiful but which sounds rather like an expensive nightie (cream silk, falling from a high yoke) rather than something even the most confused au pair would think appropriate for a school supper dress.

And the fact that the Dean describes the wedding dress as gold lamé always makes me think of Harriet sweeping down the aisle to claim Peter, flanked by dons but dressed like a nightclub singer, while the Duchess stared in horror and muttered about unsuitable adventuresses.

@XXcstatic

I agree - medical details not fully understood by DLS.

No worse than the bizarre medical details EBD went into in the Chalet School books (putting girls to bed immediately if they went pale due to minor emotional distress.)

Everyone who gets wet seems to get pneumonia, too. Weird. But at the time the books were written I suppose this was generally believed to be a truism.

@florascotia2

Wow. Thank you for those links.

Yes, the ‘Worth-style’ dress is rather nice - though not exactly as I imagine.

And I absolutely deny wasting an hour or more this afternoon scrolling through Matches and Net-a-Porter for Gold Dresses. (Just in case Netflix or whoever should decide to film it.) If anyone had done that they probably wouldn’t have found anything worthy of Harriet. Gold, these days, seems to mean either sequins or bias cut lingerie rather than stately triumph.

Oh, I liked the sound of the disaster dress. There was a trend for nightie-style dresses in, I think, the 90s? I was a bit young but remember people wearing things that definitely looked quite boudoir-ish. Not that this helps with Nicola.

Weirdly, Lucy Mangan's book about getting married (which is a hoot) includes her dressmaker pointing out that while doesn't really suit most people and she's better off with something a bit warmer in colour, and I think gold would look rather nice on someone with Harriet's colouring, rather than white.

I too have met the Perfect Harriet Vane that is Harriet Walter
The first time in the Dirty Duck in Stratford when she was Helena in Midsummer Night’s Dream
collections.shakespeare.org.uk/search/rsc-performances/mnd198107-a-midsummer-nights-dream

Second time at the Donmar in Henry IV, all women production

Both were amazing experiences, she was fabulous
First occasion I gabbled and was gormless
Second occasion ditto though I did manage to discuss the play and was delighted when she admired my suitcase, which is another story

I have been rereading the novels, listening to audio versions and rewatching TV adaptations

What a world DLS created

What a world DLS created

And what superbly-crafted writing.

I re-read the books quite often just to find bits I might have missed previously. Always worth another go.

Marjorie Phelps

Yet another character who is madly in love with LPW.

Are there no characters, in any of the books, who actively dislike him? I exclude the murderers.

Ha! Got it - Helen, Duchess of Denver

I always felt very sorry for her when the denouement took place in Clouds of Witness. And sorrier yet for the unfortunate pilot who flew LPW across the Atlantic - and nearly ran out of fuel while doing so.

Brilliant thread. I have nothing to add except that I thought the ‘shabby tiger’ belonged to Peter rather than Harriet. Will have to go back and re-read!

Many of us spent the 1980s and 1990s looking either like milkmaids, Kate Greenaway children or Wee Willie Winkie’s sister.....

Oh, I don’t think Peter’s tiger would have been at all shabby. Sleek, shiny and well fed I reckon!

Has Peter given up his various fabulous opera singers and kept women since falling for Harriet in Strong Poison? Or don’t they count if you’re from a certain level of society, because it’s like keeping hunters or your measurements at a Savile Row tailor?

(Isn’t that conversation in Busman’s Honeymoon between the Dowager Duchess and Pervy Cousin Paul Delagardie after the Sexual Tension Dinner with Peter and Harriet excruciating, especially when Paul says he had Peter taught his sexual ‘métier’, and that he does him credit AND he would like to be in his position? )