Dorothy Sayers - The Documents in the Case

Yours, Bungie, if indeed anything of one’s self can ever be anybody else’s which, as an up-to-date young woman, you will conscientiously doubt, but, at any rate, with the usual damned feeling of incompleteness in your absence, yours, blast you! yours,Jack

6. The Same to the Same

15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater 4th October, 1928

Dear Bungie,

Yours to hand, and your remarks about middle-aged spinsters noted. I will try not to be ( a ) catty; ( b ) mid-Victorian; ( c ) always imagining myself to be truly run after. I did not know I was all those things, but, being a modern woman and a successful novelist, no doubt you are quite right. Also, of course, you are quite right to speak your mind. As you say, married life should be based on mutual frankness.

In return, may I just hint that there are some sides of life which I, as a man, may possibly know more about than you do, merely through having lived longer and knocked about more. I assure you I can size up some types of people pretty well. However, it may give you pleasure to learn that Mrs Harrison, at any rate, is not out for my scalp. She has read Deadlock and is disgusted with its coarseness and cynicism. How do I know? Because I was in Mudie’s when she went in to change it. The girl said, no, it wasn’t a very nice book and she was afraid at the time Mrs Harrison wouldn’t care for it, and would she like the latest Michael Arlen? Which she did.

Our place really looks very jolly now; I wish you could come and see it. The Picasso is over the studio fireplace and the famille rose jar is in my sitting-room, and so are the etchings. They give my surroundings quite a distinguished-man-of-letters appearance. I wish I could get rid of this damned Life and get back to my own stuff, but I’m being too well paid for it, that’s the devil of it. Never mind — I’ll pretend I am the Industrious Apprentice, working hard so as to be able to marry his master’s daughter.

Glad the book seems to be working itself out amiably. For God’s sake, though, don’t overdo the psycho-analytical part, It’s not your natural style. Don’t listen to that Challenger woman, but write your own stuff. The other kind of thing wants writing (forgive me) fearfully well if it’s to be any good, and even then it is rather dreary and old-fashioned. Glands, my child, glands are the thing, as Barrie would say. Pre-natal influences and childhood fears have gone out with compulsory Greek.

A Don who encountered a MaenadWas left with less wits than the Dean’ad;Till the Dean, being vexed by a Gonad,Was left with less wits than the Don ’ad: This shows what implicit relianceWe may place on the progress of Science.

Talking of Science, I have brought up all standing by Nicholson’s book on The Development of English Biography . According to him, ‘pure’ biography is doomed, and we are to have the ‘scientific biography’, which will in the end prove destructive of the literary interest. There are to be nothing but studies of heredity and indoctrine secretions, economics and aesthetics, and so on — all specialised and all damned. This is where I get off; I only hope this infernal work will get itself published before the rot sets in. So back to the shop, Mr Keats!Yours, while this machine is to him, Jack

On looking this through, I seem to be rather in a scolding mood. But it’s only because I think so highly of your stuff that I don’t want you to get sloppy and psycho. That kind of thing is all sentimentality, really. Tout comprendre, c’est tout pardonner; tout pardonner, c’est tout embêter .

7. The Same to the Same

15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater 8th October, 1928

Darling old Bungie, old thing—

All right, damn it, no! I don’t want to hector and lay down the law. You carry on in your own way, my child, and don’t pay any attention to me. I quite see what you say about taking things for granted — so we’ll lay it down quite clearly for future guidance that, although I am always right, I must never be so ex officio and because I am a man and a husband. No doubt it is irritating. I hadn’t quite looked at it from that point of view, but possibly there is something in it. Signed Jacko, the almost-human Ape.

Making a strenuous effort to adopt this feminine viewpoint, I am beginning to wonder whether my neighbour goes quite the right way to assert his position as head of the household. I fancy he must have read somewhere that women like to be treated rough and feel the tight hand on the rein and that sort of thing. Unfortunately, nature did not design him for a sheik part, having made him small, dry, and a little bald on top.

We were just starting off to dine with Lambert the other night, and were waiting in the hall for a taxi, when Mrs H. came in, rather flurried and very wet. She was hanging up her waterproof, when Harrison came charging out on the landing and called down:

‘Is that you, Margaret? Do you know what time it is?’

‘I’m sorry — I won’t be a moment.’

‘Where on earth have you been?’

‘That’s a secret’ (in the tone of voice of someone who wants to have the secret teased out of her. She was laughing to herself, and had a fattish parcel tucked under her arm).

‘Oh! I suppose it’s all the same to you if the dinner’s uneatable.’

Evidently no interest was to be taken in the ‘secret’. The next effort was along the lines of cheerful common sense.

‘Why didn’t you begin without me?’

‘I don’t choose to. This is my home — or supposed to be — not a hotel’ (in a tone of peevish protest).

She had gone past us up to the first-floor landing, and, like the Wedding-Guest, we could not choose but hear.

‘I’m sorry, dear. I was getting something for tomorrow.’

‘That’s no excuse, You’ve been chattering to some of your office friends in some tea-shop or other and forgetting all about what you were supposed to be doing. No, I don’t want any dinner now.’

‘Oh, very well.’

He came running downstairs then and saw us. I think it gave him a shock, because he pulled himself up and smiled and said something vague. Then he turned and called up the stairs again:

‘All right, my dear, I’ll be up in a minute.’ His eyes were unhappy. There’s something wrong in this house — something more than a little misunderstanding about dinner time. I shouldn’t wonder if she gives this man a devil of a time — probably without meaning it, that’s the rub. Lathom, who is at the chivalrous age, was all for youth and beauty, of course, and wanted to hop out and sling the old boy into his own umbrella stand, but I told him not to be an infernal ass. Why shouldn’t the woman come home in time for meals? It’s not much to do, and I don’t believe she has any other job in life except to sit reading novels in the front window all day. I know, I’ve seen her at it. All the same, I do wish we had a separate staircase. It’s a bore to have people fighting out their matrimonial quarrels on one’s front doorstep. I’m a man of peace, I am.

I heard afterwards (per Lathom, via Miss Milsom) that the mysterious parcel was a present for Harrison, the next day being their wedding-anniversary. The row in the hall rather spoilt the sentiment of the occasion, I gather. Lathom says the man is a brute. But I don’t altogether see that. He couldn’t be supposed to know, and anyhow, what is the good of giving a person a lavish display of affection with one hand and rubbing pepper into his eyes with the other?

Oh, Bungie, it’s the silly little things of life that I’m afraid of. Don’t they frighten you, too, competent as you are?Yours always, Jack

8. The Same to the Same

15a, Whittington Terrace, Bayswater 12th October, 1928