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?

Whoops - meant to add that you won’t be able to listen via BBC Sounds until after it is broadcast on Monday morning.

Oh thanks @clary - glad it wasn't just me then!

Nettie how interesting you never liked Margery Allingham. I read them all avidly (book completist!) but have never wanted to reread them. On the other hand, my DLS novels are reread frequently! There is something unlikeable about Albert Campion, a coldness, I feel.

She was a good writer, though. I recently read The Oaken Heart, which is her account of the early years of the war and how it affected her village, and it was really excellent. There were interesting tales of the culture clash between the locals and the evacuee families. Many of the young East End mums were so bored they went home.....they were horrified by the simple life

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

Peter is posher than the queen and significantly posher than JRM!

Talking about writers who would not be welcome today, has anyone read R Austin Freeman? He was very keen on eugenics (in the 1920s) but his detective novels are really excellent! Very Sherlock Holmes in tone, intriguing plots and really good characters.

Yes teaandstrumpets that is exactly right about Campion. Thanks for alerting me to The Oaken Heart. It sounds really interesting - I will give it a whirl.

Oh good, nettie! I'm sure you will enjoy it.

Agreed, @BertrandRussell. Peter is considerably posher than the queen! The Wimsey family backstory involved the first Baron Wimsey being created (I think?) by Richard the Lionheart — I cant remember who upgrades them to Earl, but I think that the Wimsey at Bosworth was made a Duke by Henry VII. And the title has passed directly down 16 generations? (Though someone who has thought rather more about it also points out that when Gerald is tried in the House of Lords, he’s described as ‘in the Peerage of GB and Ireland’, which sounds as if the title is post-1801, but I assume that’s just a slip.)

Oh I'm definitely going to listen to that, thanks for the tip nettie.

I really enjoyed the re-run they did of Murder on the Orient Express recently, so am quite excited about another murder mystery!

Ian Carmichael reads some of the books on Audible- I think he does them brilliantly. Unfortunately your favourite and mine (making wild assumptions here!) Gaudy Night, is read by someone else who isn’t anything like as good, and who makes some really annoying gaffes in pronunciation and phrasing.

I'm so glad you said that! I have just been listening to some of the recent audiobooks and the mispronunciations were driving me mad, but were mainly of words I know from reading rather than speech so have been second-guessing myself and going to pronunciation websites to check! It's infuriating!

Elisabeth- they do get better! And the voice levels down a bit, which makes for much easier listening.

I adore Sayers and especially Lord Peter and Harriet, but dialect was not her strong point, whether that's the upperclass twit or the country yokel. For a non-native speaker, I wouldn't always bother trying to fathom out the grammar, especially of people's speeches in the book. Some is idiomatic, some is idiosyncratic and some is just plain weird.

@PotteryWheel - the inconsistency in the Duke's title is explained in this book, by the Royal Herald CW Scott-Giles, which was the result of a correspondence between him & DLS over many years, in which together they invented the whole family history of the Wimseys.

The question of the Duke's description arose after DLS's death, so it was Scott-Giles who invented found the explanation.
The 12th Duke died in 1817, leaving no heirs to the title, his heir having been killed at Waterloo. The property was left to a very distant Wimsey relative who was descended from the younger brother of the 1st Earl of Denver and therefore couldn't inherit the Dukedom, though one of his later ancestors had married the daughter of the 6th Duke so he was connected through the female line to the earlier Dukes.

In 1820, due apparently to the lobbying of the Duke of Wellington, a new creation of the Denver title was made in respect of this heir. Scott-Giles says "Technically he was the 1st Duke of the new creation but as this was still in the Wimsey family he was usually styled the 13th Duke"
The book is great fun to read - my copy is very old now (1979) but apparently it's still available from the Dorothy L Sayers Society www1.sayers.org.uk/press/wimseyfamily.html

I've just consulted my Fowler's Modern English Usage on 'ain't'. He abhors its use for 'isn't' but defends it as a natural contraction for 'am not', as in 'ain't I?'.

Regardless, I think the usage in Sayers is ironic.

I found the idea of Busman's Honeymoon intriguing as you're not supposed to write of the happy ever after.

It's also got quite a lot of sex in it considering the times.

I think it's always interesting to see the casual racism, classisms and other non pc stuff as I'm fascinated by cultural history. I think it's a useful lesson to see and compare what was acceptable, unremarkable so recently.

If Flyingfish is reading Wimsey to improve her English, I think she will be led astray. As mentioned earlier, it is an attempt by an author to simulate the slang and informal speech patterns of a bygone age and a slim fraction of the population to which she did not belong. I think some of her stories with racist and antisemitic content are out of print, though I have seen some.

At one time I worked and lived in Witham, I was led to believe that Sayers looked on her crime novels as potboilers to support her serious work of religious and philosophical books and learned translations.

There is a statue with her cat in the High Street.

She might be better learning English from Bunter.......

@RiftGibbon To be very honest with you: I am not sure what the poem Tommy is about.
When I read it the first time I thought it was about a man who served in the military but the people are opposed to it maybe because of their pacifist attitude... and he points out how the military provides safety for them... but I heard others express the opinion that it doesn’t have to do with his military service but they dislike him for being working class and he points out that they can be working class and still serve in the military. Here is the poem: www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/tommy.html

Maybe someone can tell me.

@akkakk Sorry, I am not sure if I can understand the difference.

It's about how ordinary working-class men are glorified as heroes when they are required to bear the brunt of the fighting in the front line of a war, but rapidly lose their 'hero' status when they return home and are discriminated against in peacetime.

'Thomas Atkins' was the random name used in military manuals to show late 19thc soldiers how to fill out forms, so 'Tommy Atkins' or 'Tommy' became a popular generic name for a rank and file soldier.

Thamks for explaining. Is he only discriminated because of his class or also because of pacifist sentiment so to speak. I think he is called a brute once. Am I right to assume this is about him being a soldier?

It's nothing at all to do with pacifism -- Barrack Room Ballads, the collection this poem is from, was hugely successful at a fairly jingoistic time in British history. It's to do with ordinary working-class men being temporarily regarded as heroes when needed to fight a war, and poorly treated when they aren't, and Kipling's representative Tommy is sharply aware of the double standard.

It's because he is considered to be a common man of low class. He resents being looked down on.

Navy docks and barrack towns get a reputation for drunkenness and fighting. Once earned, it is hard to lose.

Okay. I see. Thanks for explaining.