Lord Peter Wimsey - linguistic question

[Flyingfish2019]

A linguistic question I (as a non native speaker of English) had reading Lord Peter Wimsey novels. There is sometimes unusual grammar like.

“To myself says I“ or “I see him. Mr. if forgot his name) that is“ or use of ain’t all the time.

To me it seems like “I said to myself“, “I see him. That is Mr...“ would be more correct English. Are the characters meant to speak odd or is it oldfashioned English or is it just me not knowing enough about the english language?

@TeaAndStrumpets I think Busman's Honeymoon was written and performed as a stage play before being reworked and published as a novel.

Ah, thanks minniee I knew there was a play involved!

And the play was co-written with a friend of DLS.

Agreed on the cheery Dickensian yokels being offensively terrible in BH. Though she’s often nastier about the lower-middle class, I think. I’ve always found it deeply annoying that Peter remarks on how Miss Twitterton has enough know-how to get Harriet’s new title correct when she first meets her, despite otherwise being presented as ‘joke village spinster’.

Oh god yes, Miss Twitterton! Peter says dieting awful which I have wiped from my memory because I love him so much. DLS didn’t want to write BH-she wanted to finish the series with the wedding and get on with her Dante translation. But her readers wanted to know what happened next.

“Her life has had some snatch of honour in it. Who was her father?”

God, @Bertrand, even reading that makes me see red! I can’t remember who Agnes Twitterton’s Father was — assuming he ‘married down’, but his lingering standards mean that Miss Twitterton somehow knows it’s ‘Lady Peter’, not ‘Lady Wimsey’?

(Incidentally, I’ve always wondered why Harriet doesn’t feel a lot odder about suddenly being addressed as ‘Lady Peter’, given her worries about marriage and independence etc. This is only her wedding day, after all...?)

The only slight light in the situation is that it was her mother who supplied the “honour” by being a school teacher- her father was a farm labourer.

I've seen (or rather read) 'ain't' used by aristocratic/titled characters in late Victorian novels. So possibly still current in the Wimsey era.

The only slight light in the situation is that it was her mother who supplied the “honour” by being a school teacher- her father was a farm labourer

But are we supposed to think that Aggie Twitterton has inherited her mother's low tastes by repeating them in her liaison with Frank 'Good-Looking Thug' Crutchley?

Oh yes, “ain’t” was definitely a posh boy thing!

I think “ain’t” was one of those things like “what/pardon” where the middle classes tried to refine the language and the upper classes just carried on regardless. Off to Google!

So in BH, the comic char woman (can’t remember her name) and Peter would have said ain’t. Miss Twitterton as aspirational lower middle class wouldn’t, very consciously, and Harriet, as established middle class just wouldn’t, without thinking about it.

The dialect does jar a bit — every time she wrote "reely" in Whose Body? it broke the flow of my reading!

“To myself says I“ or “I see him. Mr. if forgot his name) that is“ or use of ain’t all the time.

To me it seems like “I said to myself“, “I see him. That is Mr...“ would be more correct English.

Different meanings...

I see him. Mr xxx that is - is a statement:
'I see him', clarified by 'Mr xxx that is'

whereas I see him. That is Mr xxxx - is explanatory
'I see him.' explained by 'That is Mr xxx'

so in the first the assumption is that speaker is clarifying which of several known people he is seeing - the listener is presumed to already know Mr xxx and therefore the speaker is simply confirming that he now sees him...

in the second, the speaker is confirming that he sees Mr xxx and introducing Mr xxx to the listener who is assumed to not be able to identify him otherwise

subtle but different

Five Red Herrings is really not very good. Sayers wanted to prove that she could do a really technical murder mystery and actually proved only that it wasn’t worth doing. I can recite all the others by heart though.

Sorry, I've only just spotted this in the thread
Lord Peter is upper class (probably upper middle class) with a university education and a service record so the form of speech uses is typical.

He's the son of a Duke! He couldn't be more proper upper class aristocrat if he tried, hence being Lord Peter Wimsey. There is nothing remotely middle class about him - it's (the wonderful) Harriet Vane who is middle class and that's just one of the divisions between them. Bridged by Oxford and love in the end...

Re reading- have just got to a bit I’d forgotten. A brief but chilling passage about male violence. Blimey. I’ll see if I can find it to post.

I remember that, I think, Bert. Is it something about the women clinging together?

Peter has just discovered that someone had shaken the port and raised his voice from the kitchen.

“ The last word sounded to Miss Twitterton painfully like an oath.
"O-o-oh! I do hope he won't be violent."
"Violent?" said Harriet, half amused and half angry. "Oh, I shouldn't think so."
But alarm is infectious...and much-tried men have been known to vent their exasperation upon their[Pg 330] servants. The two women clung together, waiting for the explosion.
"Well," said the distant voice, "all I can say is, Bunter, don't let it happen again.... All right.... Good God, man, you needn't tell me that ...of course you didn't.... We'd better go and view the bodies."
The sounds died away, and the women breathed more freely. The dreadful menace of male violence lifted its shadow from the house.
"Well!" said Harriet, "that wasn't so bad after all.... My dear Miss Twitterton, what is the matter? You're trembling all over.... Surely, surely you didn't really think Peter was going to—to throw things about or anything, did you? Come and sit down by the fire. Your hands are like ice."
Miss Twitterton allowed herself to be led to the settle.
"I'm sorry—it was silly of me. But... I'm always so terrified of ...gentlemen being angry...and...and...after all, they're all men, aren't they?...and men are so horrible!"

I am a native English speaker and I have never understood the 'not but what' construction in these books. Was that an attempt to render working class speech? Did people actually say that?!

I read The Franchise Affair (Josephine Tey, roughly contemporary to DLS) and spent years afterwards wondering why the tabloid newspaper was called the 'Ack-Emma'. Finally I realised it was WW1 radio operators' slang for 'AM'. Aspects of period books can really become mysterious over time.

I love the Peter Wimsey books but I flung Five Red Herrings in the recycling bin! I hate written out accents.

phineyj there's an Agatha Christie book with a key plot line based on twins born at midnight being called Pip-Emma! I was a lot older before I worked it out.

I love the language in old books, so rich (not outdated terms we no longer say obv). DLS is a bit if a racist I won't deny, but I do so love the books, MMA is prob my fave

That’s one of my favourite Christie books clary

Five Red Herrings is no good sorry. I hate the accents - awful awful (like Wuthering Heights my god I have to skip over the Yorkshire bits ughhhh)

Lord Peter is upper class (probably upper middle class)

You regard a Lord as upper middle class? This can only be either the Queen or Jacob Reece Mogg.

Ian Carmichael is completely wrong for LPW.

Yes for TV but on the radio he is perfect - he captures the speaking style really well. I’m another one who prefers the Jill Paton Walsh updates. So much ‘Golden Age’ detective fiction is riddled with casual racism and snobbery which was acceptable at the time. I put up with it in Sayers and Tey but have never liked Marjorie Allingham.

FlyingFish2019 - if you would like to hear a radio adaptation, they are repeating Whose Body on Radio4 Extra. Lower on the casual snobbery scale than some of the others and thank goodness no terrible attempts to represent a Scottish accent on the page.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bvp2