All posts tagged Ellen

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers (1926)

‘Lord Peter Wimsey in the witness-box—very distressin’ to feelin’s of a brother. Duke of Denver in the dock—worse still. Dear me! We’l, I suppose one must have breakfast.’

‘Wimsey would be one of the finest detectives in England if he wasn’t lazy.’
(The opinion of his friend, Detective Parker, Chapter 2)

‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘there’s no accounting for a man like Cathcart, no accounting at all. Brought up in France, you know. Not at all like a straight-forward Englishman.’
(Colonel Marchbanks on damn foreigners!)

‘If only I’d been at Riddlesdale none of this would have happened. Of course, we all know that he wasn’t doing any harm, but we can’t expect the jurymen to understand that. The lower orders are so prejudiced.’
(The Dowager Duchess’s attitude)

Lord Peter was awake, and looked rather fagged, as though he had been sleuthing in his sleep.

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ said Parker. ‘Can’t think why I said that—rotten bad form—beg pardon, old man.’
(Comedy posh boys)

‘The Sherlock Holmes of the West End’
(Popular newspaper’s description of Wimsey)]

‘…a series of unheard-of coincidences…’
(Sir Impey aptly describes the plot)

‘In the majority of cases of this kind the evidence is confused, contradictory; here, however, the course of events is so clear, so coherent, that had we ourselves been present to see the drama unrolled before us, as before the all-seeing eye of God, we could hardly have a more vivid or a more accurate vision of that night’s adventures.’

Introduction

‘Clouds of Witness’ is the second Lord Peter Wimsey novel. It is longer than the first and even more convoluted. It has a long subtitle which reads: ‘The solution of the Riddlesdale mystery with a report of the trial of the Duke of Denver before the House of Lords for murder’ and it is just that.

Right at the start, there is a really long verbatim account of the inquest held on the death of one Captain Denis Cathcart which sets the whole story in motion. And right at the end of the narrative, the trial of Peter Wimsey’s brother, the sixteenth Duke of Denver, in the House of Lords (a duke can only be tried by a jury of his peers i.e. other lords) stretches over several chapters.

In this and other ways the Wimsey stories feel verbose and windy, littered with set pieces which are described at some length. Compare and contrast with her rival, Agatha Christie, whose works and prose style got steadily more pithy and focused.

Setup

Wimsey is 33. After the tribulations of the case described in book one, about the body in the bath, he went for a three month holiday on Corsica, living the simple life. He’s en route back to Blighty and has only just checked into a hotel in Paris, when his man servant, Bunter, reads the paper and discovers that his brother, Gerald, the 16th Duke of Denver, has been arrested for murder! Bunter books them onto the first flight leaving Paris for London.

On the flight they read a detailed account of the inquest, which allows Sayers to insert a detailed account of the events surrounding the alleged murder.

It’s a country house murder and also a closed circle murder, in the classic style. Gerald had invited half a dozen friends to a shooting lodge he’d hired for the summer (Riddlesdale Lodge). In the inquest these guests are called one by one to give their version of events but a fairly clear narrative emerges: one of the guests was a Captain Denis Cathcart who had been engaged for eight months to Gerald and Peter’s sister, Lady Mary ‘Polly’ Denver (five years younger than Peter).

All went well with the normal round of breakfast, walks, spot of shooting, big dinner etc until the night in question (Wednesday 13 October into Thursday 14 October). Late on this night the other guests overheard Gerald and Cathcart having a flaring row, Cathcart stomping off through the house’s french windows into the night and the pouring rain, while Gerald went up to his bedroom and banged his door in a fury, ignoring the couple of other chaps who’d come out into the hallway to ask him what all the fuss was about.

At the inquest Gerald explains that that evening he’d received a letter from an old chum from Oxford who’s now working out in Egypt, Tommy Freeborn. This Freeborn had only just read about Lady Mary’s engagement to Cathcart (he’s working as an engineer far up the Nile) and was writing to say that once, on holiday in Paris, he’d met this Cathcart and from others in his circle learned that he was notorious for cheating at cards. Now this might not bother you or me very much (I assume all card games are a cheat of a sort) but this accusation, in this posh class, was the greatest insult a man could receive, at this time.

So Gerald goes straight up to Cathcart’s bedroom, knocks, and is struck straightaway by Cathcart’s own distracted attitude and filthy mood. Quite obviously something is bothering him as well (what the something is, we will only learn right at the end of the book). Anyway, Gerald’s accusations about cheating trigger a rant from Cathcart who says he won’t stay under this roof another minute etc etc and storms down the landing, down the stairs, across the living room, through the french windows and out into the pouring rain, with Gerald yelling after him before storming back into his own bedroom and slamming the door.

So that’s part one of the scene. Next part is that in the wee small hours, about 3am, some people hear creaking of doors and footsteps and, at the inquest, Gerald admits, with huge implausibility, that he felt like going for a bit of a stroll, in the rain, at 3am.

This is important because the next thing the guests know there’s the sound of a gunshot and when several of them go downstairs, they find Gerald bending over a body just outside the french windows, a body which turns out to be Cathcart, shot through the lungs.

When the police arrive and do a search of the grounds they find a little way away, in a clearing, the revolver which shot Cathcart, a handkerchief and lots of blood. And it is Denver’s revolver which, he tells the cops, he usually keeps lying around in his desk drawer.

But here the inquest throws up contradictory information because the Lodge’s gamekeeper, John Hardraw, explicitly says he heard a shot about 10 to midnight, 3 hours before the one Lady Mary claims woke her up.

So did Wimsey’s angry brother shoot Colonel Cathcart dead? Why did the witnesses claim to have heard two different gunshots at widely separate times? And if Gerald didn’t do it, who did? And why?

Reading the detailed account of the inquest which conveys all these facts covers the time it takes Wimsey to fly from Paris to London, catch a train to wherever in the country this posh house is (Riddlesdale, nearest station Northallerton), get a taxi, and then make a dramatic entrance! Having read it all, Wimsey sums it up to the surprised house party guests in his best honking Bertie Wooster impersonation:

‘I say, Helen, old Gerald’s been an’ gone an’ done it this time, what?’

Developments

Evidence of a mystery man Parker and Wimsey thoroughly explore the grounds of the Lodge and come across evidence that a tall man broke into the grounds, probably shot Cathcart and for reasons unknown dragged his body up to the house before running back to the wall surrounding the estate, climbing up and over spiked railings where he cut himself and left half his belt snagged on the spike. In the shrubbery where the police found the gun, Wimsey notices a little cat-shaped piece of jewellery on the ground.

Motorcycle There are the tracks of a motorcycle and sidecar and, separately, a local vicar has reported to the police that his motorcycle plates have been stolen. Parker and Wimsey nickname this unknown man Number 10 on the basis of his large footprints.

Grider’s Hole and Mr Grimethorpe So Parker and Wimsey split up: Wimsey goes exploring the surrounding villages, in the course of which he visits a place called Grider’s Hole and comes across the extremely disagreeable Mr Grimethorpe who keeps bullies and dogs to guard his land and terrorises his (beautiful) wife and child. Why? What have they got to do with anything?

Paris Meanwhile, Parker travels to Paris to check out Cathcart’s flat – interviewing his concierge and neighbour in St. Honoré – interview his bank manager and review his accounts (which tell a familiar story of pre-war affluence which gradually declines during the war, until Cathcart reports generating income from unknown sources – gambling?).

But his breakthrough comes when he signs of sleuthing and goes to do some underwear shopping for his sad spinster sister and finds himself looking in the window of a jewellers shop and recognising the spitting image of the little cat jewellery they found in the ground of Riddlesdale Lodge.

He makes detailed enquiries within – Monsieur Briquet’s in the Rue de la Paix – and establishes that only 20 were made, and makes them go through their records till he establishes the one he’s interested in was bought in February, sold to an Englishman accompanied by a dazzling blonde. Now Parker knows from their background research on Cathcart that Lady Mary was in Paris at this exact time. Surely the Englishman who bought it for his girlfriend was Cathcart, and the girlfriend Lady Mary.

Back in London Wimsey and Parker are reunited, swap notes and generate new hypotheses for what might have happened on the fatal night. Then a) Wimsey goes off to see the Head of Scotland Yard while b) Parker waits for him. Two things happen:

Lady Mary confesses Parker’s wait stretches on and on and then the doorbell rings and he’s surprised at the arrival of Lady Mary arrives. For the past week or so she had taken to her bed at the Lodge claiming to be sick with a high temperature. So he’s very surprised to see her well and vehement. She gives a full confession to Parker leading up to the stunning revelation that she shot Cathcart – which he in fact refuses to believe, although she insists on it.

Wimsey is shot After his meeting with the Scotland Yard boss concludes, Peter is accosted by old friend Miss Tarrant, a loud Socialist, who hauls him off to the Soviet Club in Soho where, she says, there’s going to be a speech by Mr Coke, the Labour party leader, about converting the forces to communism. Over dinner there, there’s some light satire on contemporary literature, which namedrops Joyce and D.H. Lawrence, before Mary tells him all about a Mr Goyles, one of their leading young speakers, and goes on to make the revelation that this was the man Lady Mary was in a relationship with and all their friends expected them to get married. Wimsey is able to explain his side, which is he’d vaguely heard about all this while he was off at the war, but his family stepped in and broke up the match as completely unsuitable, which is why she became engaged to posh bounder Cathcart on the rebound.

At that moment Mr Goyles enters the club, Miss Tarrant spots him and goes over to introduce him. Wimsey notes that Goyles is tall and wearing a glove, maybe to hide an injured hand, so maybe he’s Number 10, the man whose traces in the grounds of Riddlesdale Lodge he and Parker detected.

As if to confirm his suspicions, Goyle takes a look in Wimsey’s direction, panics and bolts for the door of the club. Wimsey chases him out, and it turns into a chase through Soho alleyways, until Goyle turns and shoots Wimsey (in the shoulder). Wimsey is knocked sideways onto a nearby disused bedstead that’s outside a rag and bone shop and passes out.

Wimsey bounces back Next morning Wimsey is back in his Piccadilly apartment having spent the night in hospital (the Charing Cross Hospital) and been bandaged up and sedated. He’s feeling right as rain and holds court to Bunter, Parker, the Duchess (his rambling mother) and Lady Mary who now, finally, spills the beans. Mary (or Polly as Wimsey calls her) explains that 1) she had come to dislike Cathcart and had broken off the engagement; 2) on the night in question, she had made an arrangement to rendezvous with Goyle, elope and get married to him, she’d packed a bag and everything, which is why she was first on the scene of Gerald kneeling down over Cathcart’s body.

The gunshot she claimed she heard at 3am was pure fiction, made up on the spot to explain what she was doing out of bed, which was contradicted by everyone else at the inquest, her confusion and distress all explaining why she went back to bed and pretended to be ill (putting the thermometer in her hot water bottle when no-one was looking in order to fool the local doctor that she had a dangerous temperature, that kind of thing…)

Grimethorpe A big breakthrough in the story relates to the horrible domestic tyrant Grimethorpe. Wimsey had been puzzled why his wife emerged from the shadows of his dark kitchen when Grimethorpe went off to call his men and get his dogs set on Wimsey; his wife emerged terribly flustered and telling him to leave quickly, then changed her tune when she saw Wimsey in the lamplight, as if she initially mistook him for someone else. Now Wimsey speculates that Cathcart was having an affair with this lower class woman, that Grimethorpe had got wind of it – and broke into the grounds of Riddlesdale Lodge in order to kill Cathcart in revenge!!

This fits some of the facts: it renders both Goyle and Lady Mary (and Gerald, still languishing in prison awaiting trial) innocent of Cathcart’s murder. But can you see how contrived and awkward it is? Why would a man like Grimethorpe break in anywhere, why not confront Cathcart in full daylight somewhere, in one of the local villages, or make an official visit to the Lodge and humiliate him in front of all the other guests?

George Goyle’s story After the police put out an alert, Goyles was captured at Folkestone trying to leave the country and brought back to London. Wimsey, Parker and Mary go to interview him. His story is simple: he and Mary planned to elope, he told her to be ready at 3am in the grounds with a suitcase; it had to be that time because he was making a speech at a local Labour club and it would take a few hours to drive over. He broke into the Lodge grounds and was tiptoeing towards the house when he tripped over a body, feeling it, realised it was cold and dead. This panicked him, he turned and ran through the undergrowth and hoisted himself over the palings, cutting his hand and leaving his belt caught in the spikes, as Parker and Wimsey found.

So that is a believable version of events, although it puts Mary off Goyle for being such a coward (and for being so sullen and aggressive towards Wimsey who has graciously agreed not to pursue an action against him for shooting him), so that she formally returns his engagement ring.

Parker, Mary and Wimsey go on to lunch at the solicitor, Mr Murbles, where we have an extended description of the clever and successful barrister, Sir Impey Biggs in action. But the next step is for Wimsey to return to Yorkshire and do some more investigating of the horrible man Grimethrope, who they are all now suspecting of murdering Cathcart. They need a full confession in order to get Gerald off the hook…

In Yorkshire Wimsey and Bunter trawl the pubs of the market town nearest to Riddlesdale Lodge, namely Stapley. This takes a while, and includes comic portraits of various local yokel characters. Their aim is to build up an account of the movements of the horrible Mr Grimethorpe on the night of the murder, and it certainly becomes suspicious with Grimethorpe coming into town to do some business but then disappearing from his pub late at night, only to reappear in the early hours covered in mud, compatible with him having travelled to Riddlesdale, broken in, killed Cathcart in a struggle, and straggled back to his Strapley pub.

Groot They also learn of a man named Groot who claimed to see a man wandering over the fell late that night, so they decide to go an interview him and get a carter to give them a lift out to the track leading to Groot’s cottage.

The fog and the bog Basically they don’t get much out of this Groot, and decide to walk the not great distance to Grider’s Hole to confront Grimethorpe himself. What they hadn’t counted on is that they are no longer in Piccadilly – they are on a high fell in Yorkshire late on a November day. A thick fog suddenly descends, they get hopelessly lost and blunder into a bog where Wimsey gets trapped and starts to be sucked down. Bunter manager to carefully slide forward on solid tufts of grass and hold Wimsey arms as they both yell for help. Eventually out of the fog emerge three men who rescue them.

At Grimethorpe’s They turn out to Be Grimethorpe’s men who take him to the angry man’s house, who tries to turn them away, but his men point out the cops will clobber him if the men (Bunter and Wimsey) come a cropper, so they’re forced to take them in, clean and feed and give them a bed for the night, in fact Grimethorpe’s own bed in the marital bedroom.

The letter In the morning, while Bunter gets hot water to shave in from the kitchen, Wimsey idly takes a wad of paper stuffed in the sash of the window to stop it rattling, and is astonished to discover it is the missing letter from Tommy Freeborn. It can only possibly have gotten here if Gerald himself brought it here and used it as a window stopper.

Gerald has been there himself!! Hang on. Suddenly Wimsey sees the light. His brother Gerald was having an affair with Grimethorpe’s beautiful wife!!! That’s where he slipped out to on the night of the murder, that’s why he was coming back to the Lodge at 3am very suspiciously, that’s why he refuses to account for his movements: he is chivalrously protecting Mrs Grimethorpe (whose husband would murder her if he found out) as well as his own and his family’s reputation (Gerald is married, to Lady Helen (who no-one seems to like)).

Wimsey feverishly tries to persuade Mrs Grimethorpe to give evidence in Gerald’s trial but she is absolutely terrified for her life and at that moment Grimethorpe comes into the room, angry and suspicious as always.

So I think the reader now knows what happened: on the night in question:

  1. Gerald slipped out of the Lodge and across the moors to Gride’s Hole (two and a half miles away) where he had sex with Grimethorpe’s wife (!) taking advantage of the fact that Grimethorpe is away from home, staying the night in Stapley. When he tries to slip quietly into the Lodge he is astonished to trip over a corpse.
  2. Grimethorpe, strongly suspecting Gerald was sleeping with his wife, leaves the pub in Stapley and travels cross country to Riddesdale Lodge, breaks in and somehow confronts Cathcart, presumably mistaking him for Wimsey, and shoots him, panics and foots it back across country.
  3. Meanwhile, in a completely different storyline, young Goyles has arranged to elope with Lady Mary and she indeed comes down to the french windows with her suitcase packed but instead finds her brother kneeling over a dead body and, for a moment, thinks Gerald has killed Goyles – before she recovers and realises the body is Cathcart’s.

OK, but there are still holes, like: how did a revolver belonging to Gerald end up being used to shoot Cathcart? Grimethorpe had no access to it. So, how?

Gerald’s trial Bunter and Wimsey return to London and we are treated to an extended account of Gerald’s trial in the House of Lords (during which we learn it is set in the year 1920). In fact before that kicks off Wimsey has a revelation based on some old blotting paper he found in Gerald’s room which makes him race off to Paris, obviously something to do with Cathcart, who lived there – before returning breathlessly, hassling the American ambassador for an emergency visa to the States, and then, with mad implausibility, takes ship from Liverpool to America!

So we get a day of trial proceedings with various witnesses being cross-examined them, on I think the third day, the defence barrister, Sir Impey, asks for an adjournment because Wimsey has cabled to say he is flying back across the Atlantic with vital evidence! The press was already covering the trial of a duke, a great rarity, but now they go bananas about the mercy dash across the Atlantic with headlines like ‘Peer’s Son Flies Atlantic’, ‘Brother’s Devotion’, ‘Will Wimsey Be in Time?’

What evidence? What took him to Paris, then to America?

But while Wimsey is off gallivanting in New York, there’s a radical new development when Grimethorpe’s wife turns up, arriving at midnight at the London apartment of Mr Murbles, the defence solicitor, and when being admitted, saying she is ready to testify to save Gerald’s life, that he was with her for the crucial early hours of the fateful October night – even though she knows her husband may track her down and kill her for it.

A conference of Murbles, Parker and Lady Mary are torn because they want her evidence but are horrified at the danger she’s placed herself in. In the event, the next day she is kept in a separate room at the court (which is being held in the old hall in Parliament) to be held in reserve in case needed.

Later that morning Wimsey makes a dramatic entrance into the great hall, before the serried ranks of British aristocracy, marches up to the bar and presents his Big Piece of Evidence. This is a love letter Cathcart wrote to the Great Love of His Life bidding her adieu and saying that, since she dumped him for an American millionaire, life has no meaning and so he is going to commit suicide!

(This lover was the woman Wimsey realised was the statuesque blonde who the Paris jewellers sold the little cat mascot which Lady Mary swore she’d never seen before, the blonde accompanying Cathcart when he bought it. In Paris he managed to establish her name – Mademoiselle Simone Vonderaa – and then discovered that she had taken up with American millionaire – a Mr Cornelius Van Humperdinck – and that they’d both returned to New York. Which is where Wimsey tracked her down and, after much pleading, persuaded her to surrender Cathcart’s last letter, in effect a suicide note, which is now read out with dramatic impact to the audience of assembled peers of the realm.

Now you might have thought (or hoped) that this would be the end of the trial and the story, but you would be very much mistaken indeed. There are three more chunky chapters still to go and the trial itself barely falters.

I’m quite shagged out writing this much, so I won’t give away the end of the story and the final revelations. The whole thing is available online (see link below).

Cast

  • Lord Peter Wimsey
    • Bunter – his valet
  • Gerald ‘Jerry’ Denver, 16th Duke of Denver
    • James Fleming – his man
  • Helen, Duchess of Denver – wife of Gerald Wimsey, and so Lady Mary Wimsey’s sister-in-law and Lord Peter Wimsey’s sister-in-law – ‘whose misfortune it was to become disagreeable when she was unhappy’
  • Lady Mary Wimsey – sister of the Duke, ‘a very objectionable specimen of the modern independent young woman’
    • Ellen – her maid
  • The Dowager Duchess of Denver – ‘She was a long-necked, long-backed woman, who disciplined her hair and her children. She was never embarrassed, and her anger, though never permitted to be visible, made itself felt the more’
  • Captain Denis Cathcart – fiancé of Lady Mary, found shot dead after a furious row with Gerald
  • Miss Lydia Cathcart – the captain’s aunt, disapproved of him and his Parisian ways
  • Colonel Marchbanks
  • Mrs Marchbanks
  • Mr Theodore Pettigrew-Robinson – a county magistrate
  • Mrs Pettigrew-Robinson
  • Riddlesdale Lodge – a roomy, two-storied house, built in a plain style, and leased to Lord Denver for the season by its owner, Mr Montague, who has gone to the States
    • Ellen – the housemaid
  • The Honourable Freddy Arbuthnot – posh and dim
  • John Hardraw – the gamekeeper
  • Dr Thorpe
  • Inspector Craikes from Stapley
  • Detective-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard, lives in a flat in Great Ormond Street
  • Mr Murbles – the solicitor
    • Simpson – his man-servant
  • Mr Foulis – local parson
  • Sir Impey Biggs – barrister, ‘the handsomest man in England, and no woman will ever care twopence for him’ – 38 and a bachelor
  • Dr Lubbock – the ‘analytical gentleman’ i.e. forensics
  • Monsieur Briquet – owner of jewellers shop in Paris
  • His shop assistant who sold the jewelled cat
  • Sir Andrew Mackenzie – the Chief of Scotland Yard who Wimsey goes to visit about his brother, before bumping into…
  • Miss Tarrant – ‘a good Socialist’ – ‘a cheerful young woman with bobbed red hair, dressed in a short checked skirt, brilliant jumper, corduroy jacket, and a rakish green velvet tam-o’-shanter’ – takes Wimsey to the Soviet Club
  • George Goyles – tall fair revolutionary who Wimsey chases through Soho before he turns and shoots him – turns out to have planned to elope with Lady Mary
  • Wilkes – under-gardener at Riddlesdown
  • Grimethorpe – surly, angry, violent owner of Grider’s Hole farmhouse
  • Mrs Grimethorpe – his stunningly beautiful wife who, it turns out, was having an affair with Gerald Denver
  • Greg Smith – landlord of the Bridge and Bottle
  • Mr Timothy Watchett – landlord of the Rose and Crown – ‘a small, spare, sharp-eyed man of about fifty-five, with so twinkling and humorous an eye and so alert a cock of the head that Lord Peter summed up his origin the moment he set eyes on him’ i.e. he’s a Londoner
  • Bet – barmaid at the Rose and Crown
  • Jem – ostler at the Rose and Crown
  • Sir Wigmore Wrinching – the Attorney-General
  • the Lord High Steward
  • Mr. Glibbery – assistant lawyer to Sir Impey Biggs
  • Grant – the pilot who flies Wimsey across the Atlantic
  • Mr Cornelius van Humperdinck – very rich and stout and suspicious
  • Mademoiselle Simone Vonderaa
    • Adèle – her maid, ‘thin-lipped and wary-eyed, denying everything’

Biographical trivia

Peter Wimsey was a Major in the army and had a breakdown before the end of the Great War. He has occasional flashbacks, PTSD.

Wimsey is five foot nine tall, Parker is 6 foot. Parker attended Barrow-in-Furness Grammar School (quite a contrast from Eton).

  • ‘Narrow grey eyes’
  • ‘Wimsey’s long, flexible mouth and nervous hands…’

Wimsey’s motivation:

Although he had taken to detecting as he might, with another conscience or constitution, have taken to Indian hemp—for its exhilarating properties—at a moment when life seemed dust and ashes, he had not primarily the detective temperament. (Chapter 4)

Achievements:

He was a respectable scholar in five or six languages, a musician of some skill and more understanding, something of an expert in toxicology, a collector of rare editions, an entertaining man-about-town, and a common sensationalist. (Chapter 4)

Cane:

His favourite stick—a handsome malacca, marked off in inches for detective convenience, and concealing a sword in its belly and a compass in its head. (Chapter 11)

Sir Impey

Charismatic leading barrister, Sayers gives him some satirical observation about lawyers.

‘I am doing my very best to persuade him, Duchess,’ said Sir Impey, ‘but you must have patience. Lawyers enjoy a little mystery, you know. Why, if everybody came forward and told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth straight out, we should all retire to the workhouse.’ (Chapter 3)

‘Damn it all, we want to get at the truth!’
‘Do you?’ said Sir Impey drily. ‘I don’t. I don’t care twopence about the truth. I want a case.’ (Chapter 10)

Or the object of jokes:

‘I fear we may have to wait a few moments for Sir Impey,’ said Mr. Murbles, consulting his watch. ‘He is engaged in Quangle & Hamper v. Truth, but they expect to be through this morning—in fact, Sir Impey fancied that midday would see the end of it. Brilliant man, Sir Impey. He is defending Truth.’
‘Astonishin’ position for a lawyer, what?’ said Peter.
‘The newspaper,’ said Mr. Murbles… (Chapter 10)

Oscar

Sayers has a few pokes at the aristocracy. To my mind, these kinds of deprecating jokes made by aristocratic types about their own class always sound like Oscar Wilde.

‘It is possible, my lord, if your lordship will excuse my saying so, that the liveliness of your lordship’s manner may be misleading to persons of limited—’
Be careful, Bunter!’
‘Limited imagination, my lord.’
‘Well-bred English people never have imagination, Bunter.’
‘Certainly not, my lord. I meant nothing disparaging.’

Bookish connoisseur

The loving descriptions of books, attributed to bookish characters, are obviously by a connoisseur i.e. Sayers herself.

Cathcart’s books here consist of a few modern French novels of the usual kind, and another copy of Manon with what the catalogues call ‘curious’ plates.

Opposite the fireplace stood a tall mahogany bookcase with glass doors, containing a number of English and French classics, a large collection of books on history and international politics, various French novels, a number of works on military and sporting subjects, and a famous French edition of the Decameron with the additional plates.

All this stuff about the ‘plates’ – specialist knowledge.

Elsewhere Sayers mocks her own bookishness in the random stream-of-consciousness of the Dowager Duchess, where you can play Spot the Literary Reference.

‘What oft was thought and frequently much better expressed, as Pope says—or was it somebody else? But the worse you express yourself these days the more profound people think you—though that’s nothing new. Like Browning and those quaint metaphysical people, when you never know whether they really mean their mistress or the Established Church, so bridegroomy and biblical—to say nothing of dear S. Augustine—the Hippo man, I mean, not the one who missionized over here, though I daresay he was delightful too, and in those days I suppose they didn’t have annual sales of work and tea in the parish room, so it doesn’t seem quite like what we mean nowadays by missionaries—he knew all about it—you remember about that mandrake—or is that the thing you had to get a big black dog for? Manichee, that’s the word. What was his name? Was it Faustus? Or am I mixing him up with the old man in the opera?’ (Chapter 9)

Literariness

Wimsey is given to making literary references but then so is Charles Parker. The latter has an amateur interest in theology, so both men might make Biblical or scholarly references. This gives them a distinctive flavour, a bit off-putting for the general reader, you’d have thought.

‘There are many difficulties inherent in a teleological view of creation,’ said Parker placidly. (Chapter 3)

After which he went to bed, and read himself to sleep with a commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews. (Chapter 5)

Wimsey quotes ‘The Merchant of Venice’:

From such a ditch as this,
When the soft wind did gently kiss the trees
And they did make no noise, from such a ditch
Our friend, methinks, mounted the Troyan walls,
And wiped his soles upon the greasy mud.

Refers to Sir Walter Scott’s ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’ and quotes lots of other songs and folk poems. He quotes a clerihew in its entirety.

‘What I like about Clive
Is that he is no longer alive—
There is a great deal to be said
For being dead.’

And music

As in the first book, Wimsey is depicted as knowledgeable about classical music.

He leaned on the wall and began whistling softly, but with great accuracy, that elaborate passage of Bach which begins ‘Let Zion’s children’. (Chapter 3)

Here he revived sufficiently to lift up his voice in ‘Come unto these Yellow Sands‘. Thence, feeling in a Purcellish mood, he passed to ‘I Attempt from Love’s Fever to Fly.’

The self-consciousness of detective fiction

‘Hitherto,’ said Lord Peter, as they picked their painful way through the little wood on the trail of Gent’s No. 10’s, ‘I have always maintained that those obliging criminals who strew their tracks with little articles of personal adornment—here he is, on a squashed fungus—were an invention of detective fiction for the benefit of the author. I see that I have still something to learn about my job.’ (Chapter 3)

‘Trouble?’ she said. ‘Why, you silly old Peter, of course I’m in trouble. Don’t you know they’ve killed my man and put my brother in prison? Isn’t that enough to be in trouble about?’ She laughed, and Peter suddenly thought, ‘She’s talking like somebody in a blood-and-thunder novel.’

I’m amazed that, just like Agatha Christie, Sayers apparently feels compelled to namecheck Sherlock Hlmles in every novel. He is like a ghost that every detective story has to raise in order to exorcise it – not once, but five times! Here’s Wimsey’s mother, the Dowager Duchess:

‘I think my mother’s talents deserve a little acknowledgment. I said so to her, as a matter of fact, and she replied in these memorable words: ‘My dear child, you can give it a long name if you like, but I’m an old-fashioned woman and I call it mother-wit, and it’s so rare for a man to have it that if he does you write a book about him and call him Sherlock Holmes.’ (Chapter 6)

Here’s Parker waiting for Wimsey when he hears the door open and:

His first thought was that Wimsey must have left his latchkey behind, and he was preparing a facetious greeting when the door opened—exactly as in the beginning of a Sherlock Holmes story—to admit a tall and beautiful young woman, in an extreme state of nervous agitation… (Chapter 7)

Here’s Wimsey arguing with his brother:

‘I wish you’d jolly well keep out of it,’ grunted the Duke. ‘Isn’t it all damnable enough for Helen, poor girl, and mother, and everyone, without you makin’ it an opportunity to play Sherlock Holmes?’ (Chapter 11)

And the garrulous landlord of the xxx pub:

He smacked open a Daily Mirror of a fortnight or so ago. The front page bore a heavy block headline: THE RIDDLESDALE MYSTERY. And beneath was a lifelike snapshot entitled, ‘Lord Peter Wimsey, the Sherlock Holmes of the West End, who is devoting all his time and energies to proving the innocence of his brother, the Duke of Denver.’

Wimsey versus Poirot

Poirot is head and shoulders above Wimsey. I quite enjoyed reading some of the Wimsey novels but have two big objections:

1. Wimsey’s caricature poshboy speech becomes really irksome really quickly. And I don’t really believe in it either, don’t believe someone relatively clever could come across as such an upper-class twit.

2. Somehow this, and Wimsey’s general verbosity, feel like they get in the way of the story. In the two Wimsey novels I’ve read, I felt I didn’t follow the logic of numerous developments, something you rarely experience with Christie whose exposition is often clarity itself. For example, I didn’t follow why Wimsey went to visit Grimethorpe. It feels like numerous clues and elements in the plot are forced and contrived, while at the same time you’re trying to penetrate the fog of Wimsy’s silly manner. Here, for example, is the first time he comes to Gride’s Hole and finds one of Grimethorpe’s men blocking the big gate to the house. This is how Wimsey addresses him when he confirms that Grimethorpe lives in this house:

‘No, does he now?’ said Lord Peter. ‘To think of that. Just the fellow I want to see. Model farmer, what? Wherever I go throughout the length and breadth of the North Riding I hear of Mr. Grimethorpe. ‘Grimethorpe’s butter is the best’; ‘Grimethorpe’s fleeces Never go to pieces’; ‘Grimethorpe’s pork Melts on the fork’; ‘For Irish stews Take Grimethorpe’s ewes’; ‘A tummy lined with Grimethorpe’s beef, Never, never comes to grief.’ It has been my life’s ambition to see Mr. Grimethorpe in the flesh. And you no doubt are his sturdy henchman and right-hand man. You leap from bed before the breaking-day, To milk the kine amid the scented hay. You, when the shades of evening gather deep, Home from the mountain lead the mild-eyed sheep. You, by the ingle’s red and welcoming blaze, Tell your sweet infants tales of olden days! A wonderful life, though a trifle monotonous p’raps in the winter. Allow me to clasp your honest hand.’

Surely the gritty Yorkshire farm hand he’s addressing would be fully justified in punching Wimsey in the face, the patronising toff.

By contrast with all this, Christie is wonderfully crisp and clear in the presentation of her cases. More, Poirot feels like a kind of walking expression of the detecting principle; somehow, he epitomises the stories themselves. The stereotypical scenes where he brings all the suspects together in one room and goes through their stories one by one are not only fictionally effective, but feel like they penetrate to the essence of the detective story as a genre. They feel like X-rays through the body of the murder mystery genre. In this way Poirot is a profound figure, something approaching an archetype.

Wimsey is not. He is often an irritating pillock. The stories are OK, but the clutter of detail is not clarified by Wimsey in the same way that Poirot so acutely picks out details to help the reader. Instead it feels like quite hard work trying to pierce through Wimsey’s silly mannerisms and posh bluster to find out what’s going on.

I’ve mentioned Wimsey’s bookishness, his expertise in old editions and his endless dropping of literary and poetic quotes and tags and references. On the one hand you could say this is a cause of readerly enjoyment i.e. it adds to the multitextual feel, and it certainly gives him an Oxford literary vibe. But in a different mood, you could see it as more of the verbiage and clutter which obscures the stories.

Adventure

On the plus side, I suppose you can put the visceral thrills of some parts of the narrative. The scene where Wimsey and Bunter stumble into the swamp and Wimsey starts to get sucked down into it is, despite being corny as hell, thrilling and exciting. And you can see how the vivid description of Wimsey’s flight in a single-propellor plane across the Atlantic in a storm (broken into two parts by a chapter of the trial coming in the middle; piloted by a world-famous aviator named simply ‘Grant’) is also intended to be as thrilling as possible.

In other words, Sayers threw into her stories a good dollop of Bulldog Drummond / Sexton Blake thrills and spills that Poirot, fastidiously brushing an invisible speck of dust off his shiny spats, couldn’t be further from. I wonder if there’ll be similar thrills and spills episodes in the subsequent books…

Credit

‘Clouds of Witness’ by Dorothy L. Sayers was published in 1926 by T. Fisher Unwin.

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by Simon on October 29, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Crime, Detective stories, Novel
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Posted by Simon on October 29, 2025

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2025/10/29/clouds-of-witness-dorothy-l-sayers/

Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie (1937)

‘They don’t understand – old people don’t… they can’t… They don’t know what it is to live!’
(young Theresa, Chapter 2)

‘Let me tell you that no matter is finished with until Hercule Poirot ceases to concern himself with it!’
(Poirot telling off Hastings, Chapter 6)

‘The dog hunts rabbits. Hercule Poirot hunts murderers.’
(Poirot to Hastings, Chapter 9)

‘If one is going to tell a lie at all, it might as well be an artistic lie, a romantic lie, a convincing lie!’
(Poirot justifying fibbing to the people he interviews, Chapter 10)

‘Always trouble after a death, anyway. A man or woman is hardly cold in their coffin before most of the mourners are scratching each other’s eyes out.’
(Miss Peabody, Chapter 10)

‘The various characters in our drama begin to emerge more clearly. In some ways it resembles, does it not, a novelette of olden days. The humble companion, once despised, is raised to affluence and now plays the part of lady bountiful.’
(Poirot acknowledging the hackneyed quality of many of Christie’s plots and characters, Chapter 12)

‘There is something in the depths there – yes, there is something! I swear it, by my faith as Hercule Poirot, I swear it!’
(The conviction that motivates the investigations of not only Poirot but the independent investigators in all her other murder mysteries, Chapter 18)

Dumb Witness

‘Dumb Witness’ is the 17th Hercule Poirot book, the 14th novel (given that the 17 include 2 books of short stories and a play). Interestingly, it is the last one to feature and, indeed be narrated by, his sidekick Captain Hastings, until the final Poirot novel, ‘Curtain: Poirot’s Last Case’ in 1975, a gap of nearly 40 years.

It’s notable because Hastings’s narrative only starts in Chapter 5, the first four chapter having been told by a third-party omniscient narrator, a combining of the two types of narrator which we had previously encountered in ‘The A.B.C. Murders’.

Christie was an restless experimenter not only with the form of her novels, but also the form of her murders. There is a relentless experimenting or playing with who the murderer turns out to be throughout the stories. The experiment in this one is having the murdered person dead and buried months before Poirot is even involved. So instead of being on the spot or arriving at the crime scene the next day, and interviewing everyone for a day or two before briskly revealing the murderer, this is more in the manner of a cold case, months old and, crucially, nobody thinks it was a murder. Everyone thinks an old lady passed away in a perfectly ordinary way, after a series of illnesses and accidents, and left her money to her companion. Bit odd, maybe, but nothing to see here, and the world has moved on.

So why does Poirot get involved or suspect anything untoward? Because, as in numerous previous novels, Poirot is roped in via a letter from the deceased. But the start of the mystery is that she, the deceased, Miss Emily Arundell, died in May and yet Poirot doesn’t receive the letter asking him to come and visit her till nearly two months later, 28 June – and the letter was dated 17 April. Hmm. Puzzling.

Setup

‘Dumb Witness’ is an amusing and entertaining portrait of the clash between the generations in the kind of traditional Victorian family which Christie herself grew up in.

In Miss Arundell’s day, women took second place. Men were the important members of society.

The old-fashioned character of 70-something Miss Arundell is persuasively, lovingly and entertainingly described. Miss Arundell is the doughty old representative of a grand family, the last survivor of five children to long-dead General Arundell, whose drunken binges were kept well hidden from the outside world.

The first four chapters describe her giving a house party for her three closest relatives: Charles and Theresa (brother and sister, children of Miss A’s brother Thomas) and Bella (daughter of Miss A’s sister, Arabella). In these opening scenes we learn how all three of them badly need the fortune Miss A is sitting on i.e. have plenty of motive to bump her off. In fact Charles freely admits telling her to her face that her tightness with money would lead to someone ‘bumping her off’.

These opening chapters are slow and detailed and entertaining and I was just starting to really like Miss Arundell’s character when the fifth chapter jumps us forward a couple of months to the June morning when Poirot opens the letter from her saying she is worried about a family affair and would like to consult him – except that, upon enquiring, Hastings and Poirot discover that Miss Arundell died a month ago, the will was read, she left her entire fortune to her lady companion, Miss Lawson (much to the anger of the three young relatives) and that the fine old Victorian house where the opening chapters are set, Littlegreen House, is up for sale.

If the fears Miss Arundell expressed in her letter to Poirot are justified, if someone was trying to murder her, if she was indeed murdered, then the case has not only gone completely cold but also nobody else, none of the authorities, even think a murder has been committed. Poirot has to first find the evidence that there even has been a murder, before he can think about trying to find the culprit.

All of which explains why I described it as being a characteristically interesting experiment in the form of the detective novel and the type of murder.

So, as you might expect, Poirot and Hastings head off to Market Basing, where they pretend to be interesting in buying the house in order to be given a tour by the servants (who have agreed to stay on and maintain it till it is sold), discreetly pumping them for information along the way. They then interview everyone they can find in the town, namely Miss Arundell’s contemporary, the acid-tongued Miss Peabody, staid young Dr Donaldson, and the two spiritualist sisters, Miss Julia and Miss Isabel Tripp, close friends of the companion who inherited Miss A’s fortune, Miss Minnie Lawson.

Then it’s back to London to interview the younger generation – Charles and Bella and Theresa – in a bid to understand whether a murder did in fact take place and, if so, who committed it…

It seems too obvious to suspect that Miss Lawson, the person who gained most, was the culprit. More like Christie is the notion that one of the aggrieved three younger relatives tried to pull off a complicated plot which backfired and left Miss Lawson the beneficiary. Or is it a double bluff, and the apparently dim, ineffectual Miss Lawson was in fact a cunning mastermind?

First of all we have to accompany Poirot as he delves deeper into bitter grievances and poisonous enmities of yet another Christie family which turns out to be at war with itself.

‘Miss Peabody tells us that Charles Arundell would murder his grandmother for twopence. Miss Lawson says that Mrs Tanios would murder any one if her husband told her to do so. Dr Tanios says that Charles and Theresa are rotten to the core, and he hints that their mother was a murderess and says apparently carelessly that Theresa is capable of murdering any one in cold blood. They have a pretty opinion of each other, all these people!’ (Chapter 18)

Cast

  • Miss Emily Arundell of Littlegreen House in the little country town of Market Basing, well over seventy, the last of a family of five
  • Bob – her wire-haired terrier
  • Miss Wilhelmina ‘Minnie’ Lawson – her paid companion (and lackey), very interested in seances and clairvoyancy etc. Emily doesn’t think much of her: ‘Poor Minnie! Emily Arundell looked at her companion with mingled affection and contempt. She had had so many of these foolish, middle-aged women to minister to her – all much the same, kind, fussy, subservient and almost entirely mindless’ – and: ‘She is a fool,’ said Aunt Emily, ‘but she is a faithful soul. And I really believe she is devoted to me. She cannot help her lack of brains’

Miss Arundell has three surviving relations:

  • Bella Biggs – ‘Emily Arundell’s niece, had married a Greek, Dr Jacob Tanios. And Emily Arundell’s people, who were what is known as “all service people,” simply did not marry Greeks’ – Bella ‘was a good woman – a devoted wife and mother, quite exemplary in behavior – and extremely dull!’ — In Miss Arundell’s mind a Greek was ‘almost as bad as an Argentine or a Turk’ – Bella had money of her own but Tanios has lost it through speculations – now they want money to pay for the education of their children, Mary and Edward and John
  • Theresa – beautiful and grand, engaged to young Dr Donaldson – ‘Theresa’s clothes were expensive, slightly bizarre, and she herself had an exquisite figure’ – she wants Miss A’s money to continue funding her lifestyle but also free Donaldson to do his research – ‘[Miss Arundell] had no control over Theresa since the latter had come into her own money at the age of twenty-one. Since then the girl had achieved a certain notoriety. Her picture was often in the papers. She belonged to a young, bright, go-ahead set in London – a set that had freak parties and occasionally ended up in the police courts’
  • Charles – ‘tall and good-looking with his slightly mocking manner… charming though he was, was not to be trusted’ – Charles wants Miss A’s money to pay his numerous debts
  • Dr Tanios – a big, bearded, jolly-looking man, married to Bella, but a) has lost most of her money on bad speculations and b) is controlling
  • Dr Rex Donaldson – assistant to Market Basing’s established old doctor, ‘a fair-haired young man with a solemn face and pince-nez’, fiancé of Theresa, clever but ineffectual

Others

  • Caroline Peabody – another older lady from a ‘good’ family, shares the same Victorian values as Miss Arundell: ‘They had known each other for considerably over fifty years. Miss Peabody knew of certain regrettable lapses in the life of General Arundell, Emily’s father. She knew just precisely what a shock Thomas Arundell’s marriage had been to his sisters. She had a very shrewd idea of certain troubles connected with the younger generation. But no word had ever passed between the two ladies on any of these subjects. They were both upholders of family dignity, family solidarity, and complete reticence on family matters’
  • Julia and Isabel Tripp – friends of Minnie, spiritualists, vegetarians etc
  • Dr Grainger – Emily’s doctor: ‘a man of sixty odd. His face was thin and bony with an aggressive chin, bushy eyebrows, and a pair of very shrewd grey eyes’
  • Mr Gabler – estate agent: ‘a grey-haired, middle-aged man entered with a rush. His eye, a militant one, swept over us with a gleam.’
  • Miss Jenkins – can’t-be-bothered assistant in the estate agent’s
  • Ellen – the elderly house-parlour-maid,
  • Annie – the cook
  • Mr Lonsdale – local vicar
  • Mr Purvis – the family lawyer, ‘a big, solidly built man with white hair and a rosy complexion. He had a little the look of a country squire. His manner was courteous but reserved’
  • the gardener – ‘a big, rugged old man’
  • local chemist – ‘a middle-aged man of a chatty disposition’
  • Nurse Carruthers – nursed Miss Arundell in her final illness, ‘a sensible-looking, middle-aged woman’

Good humoured, amiable knowledge of life, or the kind of lives her characters lead. Thus the old lady’s bantering relationship with her doctor:

Emily Arundell replied with spirit – she and old Dr Grainger were allies of long standing. He bullied and she defied – they always got a good deal of pleasure out of each other’s company! (Chapter 4)

Poirot’s method

Christie repeats the basics of Poirot’s method.

‘As you say – a regrettable failure to employ order and method in the mental processes, and without order and method, Hastings –’
‘Quite so,’ I interrupted hastily. ‘Little grey cells practically non-existent.’ (Chapter 5)

Suspect everyone.

‘Mon ami, you know my suspicious nature! I believe nothing that any one says unless it can be confirmed or corroborated… “He says”, “she says”, “they say”. Bah! what does that mean? Nothing at all. It may be absolute truth. It may be useful falsehood. Me, I deal only with facts.’ (Chapter 12)

He hates talk of intuition or instinct. These are nothing but the accumulated insights of order and method.

‘Instinct! You know how I dislike that word. “Something seems to tell me” – that is what you infer. Jamais de la vie! Me, I reason. I employ the little grey cells.’ (Chapter 5)

‘You have the mistaken idea implanted in your head that a detective is necessarily a man who puts on a false beard and hides behind a pillar! The false beard, it is vieux jeu, and shadowing is only done by the lowest branch of my profession. The Hercule Poirots, my friend, need only to sit back in a chair and think.’ (Chapter 6)

The importance of psychology

‘Do not neglect the psychology – that is important. The character of the murder – implying as it does a certain temperament in the murderer – that is an essential clue to the crime.’
‘I can’t consider the character of the murderer if I don’t know who the murderer is!’
‘No, no, you have not paid attention to what I have just said. If you reflect sufficiently on the character – the necessary character of the murder – then you will realize who the murderer is!’
(Chapter 22)

Thinking

‘Then think, Hastings – think. Lie back in your chair, close the eyes, employ the little grey cells.’ (Chapter 25)

How to soften up your interviewee

I have often had occasion to notice how, where a direct question would fail to elicit a response, a false assumption brings instant information in the form of a contradiction. (Chapter 7)

Discussions of death and such matters do more to unlock the human tongue than any other subject. Poirot was in a position to ask questions that would have been regarded with suspicious hostility twenty minutes earlier. (Chapter 8)

Poirotisms

As far as I know I’ve coined the term ‘Poirotism’ for the occasions when Christie mocks her creation by having him mangle a well-known English proverb or saying. For some reason ‘Dumb Witness’ is particularly rich in Poirotisms.

‘On the contrary, my friend, ‘any old lie,’ as you put it, would not do. Not with a lawyer. We should be – how do you say it? – thrown out with the flea upon the ear.’ (Chapter 13)

‘The only thing is – I am afraid.’
‘Afraid? Of what?’
He said gravely: ‘Of disturbing the dogs that sleep. That is one of your proverbs, is it not?’
(Chapter 18)

‘It is true that I am pig-headed – that is your expression, I think? Yes, definitely I have the head of the pig,’ said my friend meditatively. (Chapter 21)

Poirot patted her reassuringly on the shoulder. ‘It was the narrow squeak – yes?’ (Chapter 26)

‘Bien,’ said Poirot, rising with the check in his hand. ‘We have done our part. Now it is on the knees of the gods.’ (Chapter 26)

‘She is not one who wishes to wash the dirty linen in public, as the saying goes.’ (Chapter 29)

Poirot and Hastings bicker like an old married couple

Poirot to Hastings:

‘This conversation has occurred on previous occasions. You are about to say that it is not playing the game. And my reply is that murder is not a game.’ (Chapter 15)

Hastings is confused:

‘You know, Poirot, I don’t quite understand all this.’
‘If you will pardon my saying so, Hastings, you do not understand at all!’ (Chapter 25)

Foreignness

Much is made of how the older generation of posh ladies don’t like or trust foreigners, specifically the Greek doctor, Tanios, who Miss Arundell’s niece Bella has married. Animosity against and distrust of him run through the story like a silver thread.

Bella had married a foreigner – and not only a foreigner – but a Greek. In Miss Arundell’s prejudiced mind a Greek was almost as bad as an Argentine or a Turk. The fact that Dr Tanios had a charming manner and was said to be extremely able in his profession only prejudiced the old lady slightly more against him. She distrusted charm and easy compliments.

Or as Miss Peabody puts it:

‘His manners are really delightful. But I don’t trust foreigners. They’re so artful!’ (Chapter 15)

Here’s the housekeeper, Ellen:

‘Miss Bella’s husband, the foreign doctor, he went out and got her a bottle of something, but although she thanked him very politely she poured it away and that I know for a fact! And I think she was right. You don’t know where you are with these foreign things.’ (Chapter 20)

Even Hastings is prey to glib stereotypes about swarthy Mediterranean types:

I must say that my first sight of Dr Tanios was rather a shock. I had been imbuing him in my mind with all sorts of sinister attributes. I had been picturing to myself a dark bearded foreigner with a swarthy aspect and a sinister cast of countenance. Instead, I saw a rotund, jolly, brown-haired, brown-eyed man… (Chapter 17)

Poirot mocks Hastings for his xenophobia:

‘You found him an agreeable man, open-hearted, good-natured, genial. Attractive in spite of your insular prejudice against the Argentines, the Portuguese and the Greeks – a thoroughly congenial personality?’ (Chapter 18)

This of course echoes and amplifies the fact that Poirot himself is a foreigner and outsider in England, although he can see it both ways i.e. sometimes he feels an outside to the class system, posh public school diction about ‘playing the game’, about the intricacies of the aristocracy, and so on. But other times he is able to use his outsiderness, as when he soothes Bella’s irritation at old Miss Arundell for mistrusting her husband.

‘As you say, elderly ladies distrust foreigners sometimes,’ said Poirot. ‘I am sure they think that English doctors are the only doctors in the world. Insularity accounts for a lot.’ (Chapter 16)

Abroad was far away

But it’s as well to remind ourselves that 1936 was not 2025: there were far fewer means of travel, planes were expensive, cruise ships time consuming, and so travel abroad was a luxury, a rarity. Hence the atmosphere of exoticness and luxury which trails around her stories set on the Blue Train or Orient Express or Rhodes. As demonstrated by this statement by Dr Tanios which was, presumably, unremarkable in its day:

‘Yes, indeed. I am very fond of my wife.’ There was a rich tenderness in his voice. ‘I always feel it was so brave of her to marry me – a man of another race – to come out to a far country – to leave all her own friends and surroundings.’ (Chapter 23)

Nobody would think of moving to Greece as a brave action, leaving friends and family for ‘a man of another race’ nowadays.

Sherlock

There is always at least one reference to Sherlock Holmes in every one of her novels. It’s compulsory. Here there are two.

‘Poirot, I – the humble Watson – am going to hazard a deduction.’
‘Enchanted, my friend. What is it?’
I struck an attitude and said pompously: ‘You have received this morning one letter of particular interest!’
‘You are indeed the Sherlock Holmes! Yes, you are perfectly right.’ (Sherlock Holmes)

And she mentions the incident of the dog in the night-time, again.

‘Well, out with it. What’s the interesting point? I suppose, like the “incident of the dog in the night-time”, the point is that there is no interesting point!’ (Chapter 5)

In praise of things Victorian

The sympathetic descriptions of old Miss Arundell take in an appreciation of her old-fashioned habits and values, the Victorian values Christie herself (born 1890) was brought up amidst in her late-Victorian childhood and, to some extent, an affectionate portrait of her mother and her lady friends and their generation. Anyway, the book has notably more references to Victoriana of various types than any of her earlier books.

‘She has made her bed and she must lie on it.’ And having uttered this final Victorian pronouncement she went on: ‘I am going to the village now…’ (Chapter 1)

But her sensible, shrewd, Victorian mind would not admit that for a moment. There was no foolish optimism about the Victorians. (Chapter 3)

This room was definitely Victorian. A heavy mahogany dining-table, a massive sideboard of almost purplish mahogany with great clusters of carved fruit, solid leather-covered dining-room chairs. On the wall hung what were obviously family portraits.

In especial, one big jar with a lid on it seemed to attract him. It was not, I fancy, a particularly good bit of china. A piece of Victorian humour – it had on it a rather crude picture of a bulldog sitting outside a front door with a mournful expression on its face. (Chapter 8)

Morton Manor proved to be an ugly substantial house of the Victorian period. (Chapter 10)

[Miss Peabody] She chuckled – a rich Victorian fruity chuckle. (Chapter 10)

‘He’s a dear little doggie…’

Personally I don’t like dogs. Out on country walks I’ve been terrorised, chased and bitten by them, and seen small children scared out of their wits by huge barking animals, to have anything but fear and aversion to them. Plus the dog poo everywhere. And the streets reeking of dog pee whenever it rains.

But I appreciate that tens of millions of people love dogs, including Christie, and this book is by way of being a tribute to doggy love in the shape of the charismatic wire-haired terrier named Bob, old Miss Arundell’s pet, who everyone claimed to love and play ball with.

I’ve mentioned the two narrators – the third-person narrator who opens the novel and then Captain Hastings who takes over – but in a jokey way there’s a third voice, because Christie spends some time imagining what Bob the dog is saying, via his barks and expression. Thus:

The bushes were thin at that point and the dog could be easily seen. He was a wire-haired terrier, somewhat shaggy as to coat. His feet were planted wide apart, slightly to one side, and he barked with an obvious enjoyment of his own performance that showed him to be actuated by the most amiable motives.
‘Good watchdog, aren’t I?’ he seemed to be saying. ‘Don’t mind me! This is just my fun! My duty too, of course. Just have to let ’em know there’s a dog about the place! Deadly dull morning. Quite a blessing to have something to do. Coming into our place? Hope so. It’s durned dull. I could do with a little conversation.’ (Chapter 6)

Or:

[Poirot] stopped and patted Bob. ‘Brave chien, va! You loved your mistress.’
Bob responded amiably to these overtures and hopeful of a little play went and fetched a large piece of coal. For this he was reproved and the coal removed from him. He sent me a glance in search of sympathy.
‘These women,’ it seemed to say. ‘Generous with the food, but not really sportsmen!’ (Chapter 8)

Christie also appreciated the savage violence of dogs, although I imagine the following is intended to be humorous and charming:

Then we strolled off in the direction of Littlegreen House. When we rang the bell. Bob immediately answered the challenge. Dashing across the hall, barking furiously, he flung himself against the front door.
‘I’ll have your liver and your lights’ [note 1] he snarled. ‘I’ll tear you limb from limb! I’ll teach you to try and get into this house! Just wait until I get my teeth into you.’ (Chapter 20)

Everyone thinks their dog is a sweety, and when it barks its head off at small children or the postman or terrifies cows or savages sheep, it’s always ‘playing’, right up till the moment when it rips a baby’s face off. Ellen the housekeeper makes the usual dog owner’s excuses:

‘He makes such a noise and rushes at people so it frightens them [but] he’s quite all right, really.’

For dog owners and lovers, their beast frightening the living daylights out of people is just fine. They don’t mean it, really.

Anyway, what with all this emphasis on Bob the dog (not a very imaginative name, is it?) and his involvement in the first suspicious incident i.e. Miss Arundell supposedly tripping over his rubber ball and falling down the stairs and nearly breaking her neck, and with the cover of the book featuring a big picture of a wire-haired terrier, I for a long time thought that Bob would turn out to be the dumb witness of the title – that somehow something the dog did would provide the key which unlocks the case. So it was very disappointing to reach the end of the book and find out this wasn’t the case.

Note 1: incidentally, in that quotation, ‘lights’ is a butcher’s term meaning ‘the lungs of an animal, typically pigs, sheep, or other livestock.’

House prices

Here’s the estate agent’s details for Littlegreen House:

‘Period house of character: four reception rooms, eight bed and dressing rooms, usual offices, commodious kitchen premises, ample outbuildings, stables etc. Main water, old-world gardens, inexpensive upkeep, amounting in all to three acres, two summer-houses, etc. Price £2,850 or nearest offer.’

Bargain.

Credit

‘Dumb Witness’ by Agatha Christie was published in 1937 by the Collins Crime Club.

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by Simon on August 15, 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Detective stories, Novel
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on August 15, 2025

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2025/08/15/dumb-witness-agatha-christie/

To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (1927)

One could not say what one meant.
(Mrs Ramsay laments, p.23)

Who knows what we are, what we feel?
(Lily Briscoe ponders, p.159)

No, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again…
(Lily ponders some more, p.165)

‘To The Lighthouse’ is Virginia Woolf’s fifth novel and generally considered to be her most popular. It is really quite brilliant. It showcases her phenomenal strengths as a writer and also her limitations. It is divided into three parts.

Part 1. The Window (105 pages)

Mr and Mrs Ramsay are the parents of no fewer than eight children who are, of course, in the approved upper middle-class way, all exceptional.

  1. Andrew (extraordinary gift for mathematics)
  2. Jasper (likes shooting birds)
  3. Roger
  4. James (aged 6)
  1. Prue (takes your breath away with her beauty)
  2. Rose (wonderfully gifted with her hands)
  3. Nancy
  4. Cam (aged 7)

The Ramsays take their children for their annual holiday to an island in the Hebrides (called Finlay? p.56), where every summer they rent the same ramshackle old house. The rent of the house (presumably for a week), along with the garden and tennis court, is precisely two-pence ha’penny, or about one modern penny (p.29).

It is a Victorian family so Mrs Ramsay has also brought servants – Mildred the cook, and two maids, one named Marie from Switzerland (her father is dying of cancer, poor thing, p.30), the other named Ellen. (Back at home, in Oxford (?) they have Kennedy the gardener who Mrs R routinely accuses of being lazy, p.63. You just can’t get the servants!)

Mr Ramsay tends to abrupt and unfeeling truth-telling, often upsetting their children. Mrs Ramsay (aged 50) is, of course, much more conciliatory and supportive. She is a great empathiser. She visits the sick and poor of their parish, helping them out, writing down in her notebook details of their wages and spending. She wants to go out to the lighthouse on an island in the bay purely to give gifts to the lighthouse keeper, Sorley, and his son who is afflicted with a tuberculous hip, lonely souls!

Mr Ramsay supports all this by being an academic philosopher, writing about ‘Subject and object and the nature of reality’ as his son, Andrew, sums it up (p.26).

Mrs Ramsay is, of course, too busy being a mother to read any of his books or the books given to her by the poets and authors of their acquaintance (‘Croom on the Mind and Bates on the Savage Customs of Polynesia’). Like Mrs Dalloway, she has a superficial smattering of culture but isn’t that bothered. But then she has something more important than education or culture; she has feeling.

She knew then — she knew without having learnt. Her simplicity fathomed what clever people falsified. Her singleness of mind made her drop plumb like a stone, alight exact as a bird, gave her, naturally, this swoop and fall of the spirit upon truth which delighted, eased, sustained… (p.31)

The novel opens with Mrs Ramsay promising one of her children, James, aged 8, that they will go out to the lighthouse on the island, tomorrow. To her irritation, her husband immediately contradicts her, saying the wind is in the wrong direction.

Her husband is a successful academic and author, a philosopher, and has an irritating habit of attracting fan students, young men who come and stay with them and the rest of the family has to put up with. On this holiday it is a bony youth, a ‘conspicuous atheist’ named Charles Tansley. (For Mr Ramsay’s supposed ‘thoughts’, see ‘Intellectual shallowness’ below.) When Mr Ramsay says the wind is in the wrong direction, he is immediately backed up by Tansley to Mrs Ramsay’s irritation.

After breakfast one day Mrs Ramsay invites Charles to accompany her into the nearest village to do a few chores. They pass a Mr Augustus Carmichael, the old poet, lying out in the sun. In town she sees a one-armed man pasting up a big poster on a wall for a circus that’s coming to town. She finds out more about Tansley, that he’s one of nine children, his father was a lowly chemist, he paid his way from the age of 13, he’s dragged himself up by his shoestrings to become a junior academic and is now writing a book about the influence of someone on someone else. (Mrs Ramsay is a mother of a certain age; she’s not interested in the details, she doesn’t really listen to whatever Tansley’s dissertation is about, a point so important to Woolf she repeats it, on pages 16, 64 and 96).

They go to a house where Mrs Ramsay disappears upstairs, presumably to talk to the wife or mother, Elsie (?), maybe bed-bound. As they walk the street, a workman stops his digging to look at her. Tansley realises he’s half in love with her.

Cut back to the present where Mrs Ramsay is cheering James up by selecting pictures in the Army and Navy catalogue to cut out. The other children are playing cricket. She, Mrs R, is being painted by another guest, young Lily Briscoe (33). In fact Lily is staying in a house in the village, along with William Bankes (60), ‘old enough to be her father too, a botanist, a widower, smelling of soap, very scrupulous and clean’.

Twitchy young Charles Tansley has made an enemy of Lily by boldly telling her women can’t paint and women can’t write, a phrase she remembers with scorn half a dozen times, more or less every time she looks at him. (And comes to realise is typical of the way people say things which aren’t meant to be true but feed some kind of need in themselves.)

Tradition and innovation

At the time, the way the narrative of ‘To The Lighthouse’ weaves in and out of the characters’ thoughts and memories which, by definition, are from various points in the past, was considered highly innovative. A hundred years later, we have become so used to mixed-up narratives, not just in high literature, but in popular films and TV shows, that the technique feels completely natural and accessible, more or less transparent.

No, what comes over instead is the deep, deep traditonalness of the subject matter: the sensitive feelings of an upper middle-class mother and those around her, with a central focus on Love. As Anthony Burgess says in his biography of D.H. Lawrence, the novel is an essentially bourgeois art form and Virginia Woolf’s novels describe characters at the upper end of the bourgeoisie. Lovely people having lovely thoughts, no wonder they have remained popular to this day with bookish ladies who pride themselves on their sensitivity.

One of the commenters on one of her novels on Amazon says how lovely and elegant Woolf’s prose is. Exactly. It is exactly this quality which holds it back. No matter how ‘modernist’ her enjoyment of flitting between her characters’ points of view, the actual sentences themselves are constrained by good manners. Their vocabulary is limited by good taste. They always strive for the same effect of melliflousness, of politesse and refinement. The result is that they delve, exquisitely and with perfect decorum, but into a very limited, narrow, blinkered experience of the world: the same calm and demure and polite good taste.

Here’s an example. It’s a long sentence but the subordinate clauses are arranged clearly and logically, so it flows simply enough.

Qualities that in a desolate expedition across the icy solitudes of the Polar region would have made him the leader, the guide, the counsellor, whose temper, neither sanguine nor despondent, surveys with equanimity what is to be and faces it, came to his help again.

The balancing of antitheses – ‘neither sanguine nor despondent’ – and the vocabulary itself – counsellor, temper, equanimity – hark back to the stately elegancies of the eighteenth century. Although her perceptions are often ‘modern’, Woolf’s style is almost always Georgian.

Woolf’s novels radiate all the pampered privilege of her class while mocking the very men – the politicians and financiers and businessmen and imperial soldiers – which made her life of sensitive impressions possible, whose farflung empire provided the flowers and foodstuffs and finery which her privileged female protagonists enjoy sampling and savouring. And she is aware of it and expresses it.

A square root? What was that? Her sons knew. She leant on them; on cubes and square roots; that was what they were talking about now; on Voltaire and Madame de Staël; on the character of Napoleon; on the French system of land tenure; on Lord Rosebery; on Creevey’s Memoirs: she let it uphold her and sustain her, this admirable fabric of the masculine intelligence, which ran up and down, crossed this way and that, like iron girders spanning the swaying fabric, upholding the world, so that she could trust herself to it utterly, even shut her eyes, or flicker them for a moment, as a child staring up from its pillow winks at the myriad layers of the leaves of a tree. (p.98)

It just doesn’t matter to her. It’s not what she’s about. Men are the adults who create and maintain the structure of the world, and women…? Women do something else, no less important, subtle and enduring.

Intellectual shallowness (Mr Ramsay)

Like so many novelists, Woolf would have us believe that her male protagonist is a successful and respected Thinker, a philosopher with a post at Oxford (I think, since there’s mention of Balliol College). He is said to be frequently distracted from everyday life by Great Thoughts about philosophy. And yet, when she comes to portray these Great Thoughts, they are pitifully inadequate. In fact they aren’t philosophy at all. Does he ponder on the mathematical bases of philosophy like Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead, does he respond to the dazzling theories of the young Ludwig Wittgenstein, does he engage with the moral philosophy of G.E. Moore, is he aware of the turn to linguistics signalled by the rise of the logical positivists or the Vienna Circle, does he engage with the sociocultural implications thrown up by Darwin’s theory of evolution or its recasting into the scientific positivism of Herbert Spencer? Has he heard of Continental philosophy? What does he make of the German tradition of Kant, Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, or Nietzsche? Does he have views on the creative evolution of Henri Bergson?

No. Instead Woolf has Mr Ramsay wandering up and down his garden with a head full of tragically simple-minded, obvious, trite and clichéd cultural questions from mid-nineteenth century magazines: would culture have been different if Shakespeare had never lived? Is culture the product of great men? How do you measure culture and civilisation, by how it affects everyone, or as a product for an elite? And so on (pages 43 to 44).

These are not the questions asked by professional philosophers anywhere, they are the tired, hackneyed themes of thousands of half-baked essays by half-educated litterateurs. What a complete failure to understand or depict the thoughts of a supposed ‘philosopher’. Mr Ramsay is (rather hilariously) described as ‘so brave a man in thought’ and yet, on the evidence of these ‘thoughts’, he could barely think his way out of a paper bag; is not much different from the guide on a coachload of American tourists: ‘And on our left, ladies and gentlemen, the birthplace of William Shakespeare, the jewel in the crown of our national culture’ etc.

(Same happens a bit later when Mr Ramsay walks by chuckling to himself at the thought of the philosopher David Hume grown so fat he once got stuck in a bog. Is he given a witty joke about Hume’s philosophical scepticism and metaphysical naturalism, his devastating demolition of the argument from induction? No. Instead, Ramsay chuckles over Hume getting fat and falling in a bog. This is Laurel and Hardy, not philosophy. And Woolf likes it so much she has Mr Ramsay think about it on three separate occasions, pages 62, 66 and 70)

It is not for the quality of her ‘thought’ that anyone reads Virginia Woolf. There isn’t much ‘thought’ on display. Move Woolf a few inches outside her comfort zone of bookish book chat and she is lost. It is the extraordinary quality of her art which makes her great – which means a combination of her perceptions and insights into human psychology, arranged into beautiful patterns, and expressed in elegant and mellifluous prose.

The beautiful protagonist (Mrs Ramsay)

It helps a lot when your protagonist is effortlessly beautiful, ‘astonishingly beautiful’ (p.112):

She bore about with her, she could not help knowing it, the torch of her beauty; she carried it erect into any room that she entered; and after all, veil it as she might, and shrink from the monotony of bearing that it imposed on her, her beauty was apparent. She had been admired. She had been loved.

This – being beautiful and sensitive – is much more important than reading books and knowing things. Woolf is a great feminist saint but I always find it ironic how counter-feminist her fictions actually are. Mrs Ramsay, like Clarissa Dalloway, isn’t clever or well-read or particularly cultured or well-informed, but she is valued by Woolf simply because she is beautiful and sensitive.

And because she wants to give. Mrs Dalloway thinks her own strength is in bringing posh people together at her house, being a wonderful party host. Mrs Ramsay thinks her strength is caring for her eight children plus all sorts of miscellaneous good causes – ‘this desire of hers to give, to help’. Both, as you can see, live for others in the most clichéd stereotype of the selfless, empathetic upper middle-class woman.

The core subject of ‘Mrs Dalloway’ and ‘To The Lighthouse’ is Love. Women are depicted as a) a bit dim and ineffectual but that’s OK because they are b) continually thinking about lost loves, past loves, present loves – as if a woman’s life was entirely one of emotions and feelings, and nothing to do with rational thought and achievement. What could be more sexist?

More events in part 1

‘Plot summary’ or ‘synopsis’ are both a bit too precise for what happens in a Woolf novel. Things happen but mostly people have sensitive feelings, memories, perceptions and polite conversations.

Lily just can’t capture on canvas the vivid colours she sees in real life. She is embarrassed when Mr Ramsay wanders by and sees her canvas.

Two other young people are staying, Minta Doyle (24; a tomboy) and Paul Rayley. As is the way with classic bourgeois fiction, the interest here is in whether Paul will propose to Minta and whether she will accept him. Women, in this ideology, have only one purpose and that is to get married – at least, this is Mrs Ramsay’s view.

Minta must, they all must marry, since in the whole world, whatever laurels might be tossed to her (but Mrs Ramsay cared not a fig for her painting), or triumphs won by her (probably Mrs Ramsay had had her share of those), and here she saddened, darkened, and came back to her chair, there could be no disputing this: an unmarried woman (she lightly took her hand for a moment), an unmarried woman has missed the best of life. (p.49)

Later, Mrs R suddenly wants young Lily Briscoe to marry William Bankes. ‘What an admirable idea! They must marry’ (p.68). Maybe it’s only here, though. At the end of the novel, Lily wonders what lay behind Mrs Ramsay’s ‘mania’ for marriage (p.163).

Mrs Ramsay reads her son, James, the story of the Fisherman and his Wife, continually interrupted by her own thoughts about her husband, her marriage, her children (they grow up so fast, don’t they?), wondering whether Paul has proposed to Minta, worrying why they haven’t come back for a walk.

She finishes the story and James goes off to have supper with the rest of the children. Mrs Ramsay mentions them all being given baths and then put to bed, activities she seems to have no involvement in and so, presumably, are conducted by the three woman servants. Hard life.

During all this the lighthouse light is lit and she observes the triple beam which swings over sea and shore. Sometimes she wakes and sees it on the floor of the bedroom.

She is continually worrying that repairs to the greenhouse back home are going to cost £50 and she hasn’t plucked up the courage to tell her husband yet. She thinks their gardener, Kennedy, is lazy. She remembers her Aunt Camilla who was, of course, ‘the most beautiful woman I ever saw,’ said Mrs Ramsay. (She also has an Uncle James, in India.)

Mr and Mrs R are walking in the garden. It’s just past 7pm. They arrive at the gap in the red hot pokers and see the lights of the town twinkling on the sea. He wants to apologise for being a bit harsh when rebuffing her suggestion they all go to the lighthouse tomorrow, but can’t. They are happily married but there are gulfs between them.

Lily sees them walking and, as dusk falls, has a vision of them as perfect emblems, ‘symbols of marriage, husband and wife’.

Early on in the book we learned that old Mr Ramsay is developing the habit of wandering round declaiming poetry out loud, because the early pages have lines from Tennyson’s poem The Charge of the Light Brigade scattered through them. Once again it’s not the idiosyncrasy it’s the extreme ancientness of the poem, published in 1854, which is striking.

Minta and Paul had indeed gone down to the beach as Mrs Ramsay suspected, taking with them not only Andrew but Nancy, too. They are still children and scatter to explore rock pools. When the tide starts coming in, Nancy squeals and runs up the beach, round a big rock and bang into Minta and Paul who are having a kiss. They separate and Nancy and Andrew are bad tempered on the walk back because of the embarrassment. Half way back Minta realises she’s lost the brooch her grandmother gave to her and starts crying. They go back to look but the tide’s coming in and it’s getting dark. Paul promises to get up at dawn and come and find it tomorrow.

The dinner

It’s getting dark as they arrive back at the house and the lamps are being lit for dinner. There are fifteen for dinner (Mr and Mrs R and their 8 children, Charles Tansley, Minta and Paul, Mr Carmichael, and Mr Bankes has agreed to dine with them for the first time.)

Mrs Ramsay looks out the window at the rooks settling in the trees. She’s nicknamed the oldest one Old Joseph.

A servant rings the gong for dinner, Mrs Ramsay proceeds in stately manner to the dining room, everyone assembles and sits and starts on the soup, and there is a Woolfian smorgasboard of everyone’s thoughts intertwining.

Young uncomfortable Charles Tansley covers his embarrassment by despising everyone for their dinner tittle-tattle. Mrs Ramsay talks to Mr Bankes about a mutual friend, Carrie Manning whose house at Marlow she used to visit, who she hasn’t thought about in decades. Mrs Ramsay is interrupted to give orders to the servants and Bankes wistfully wonders how perishable human friendships are, wonders what it’s all about, really etc.

Charles is twitching with frustration so Lily very consciously, as a favour to Mrs Ramsay, speaks to him and sparks a torrent of feeling about the plight of poor fishermen, which involves criticising the present government, and both Lily and Mrs R can sit back and let the men crap on. God, how boring they and their politics are!

It’s dark and Mrs Ramsay orders the candles to be lit which suddenly transforms the room and the long table into a fairy land. Minta and Paul burst into the dining room, very late indeed, Minta crying about losing her grandmother’s brooch. Minta sits down next to Mr Ramsay and he immediately starts flirting with her. Mrs Ramsay is jealous but, then again, likes the way the young women he likes surrounding himself with keep him young. Also, Minta has a golden aura about her and Mrs R guesses Paul proposed and she said yes (since getting married is, in her eyes, the most important thing a young woman can do with her life).

When Paul tells his end of the table that he’s planning to get up at the crack of dawn and go and find the brooch, Lily is swept with enthusiasm and asks if she can come and help him, to which he is suddenly brutally indifferent. Please yourself. Mrs Ramsay notices this, thinking how cruel love can be, has made the handsome Paul. Sitting near him both plain Lilly and ugly Charles suffer in comparison.

Some argument starts up about Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels and when someone says something about work which lasts she knows that will trigger her husband, who is very conscious of not being truly great, that his best years are behind him, that he is already turning into a back number. But luckily Minta with her golden glow says something flattering and defuses the tension.

Incidentally, the centrepiece of the dinner is a big chunk of beef, cooked Bœuf en Daube according to a recipe of Mrs Ramsay’s grandmother. (There’s a passage of conversation about how lamentable British cooking is.)

Most people have finished eating when she hears her husband reciting a poem to golden Minta and slowly the general conversation dies down as they all listen. Mrs Ramsay stands and walks to the door, taking Minta’s arm. This rather glorious family dinner is over.

The party breaks up. Mr Bankes takes Charles Tansley out onto the terrace to carry on talking about politics, as men will. Lily watches Mrs Ramsay walk stately upstairs to check on the younger children who should be in bed. It has been a memorable evening, one everyone present will remember. She pauses to look out the window at the black outline of the elm trees, to steady and centre herself. The ghost of Woolf’s madness momentarily casts its shadow…

Irritatingly, the children are still awake, not least because someone called Edward (not otherwise mentioned in the text) had sent the children the skull of a pig which someone nailed to the wall of their bedroom and now they can’t sleep for fear of it. So Mrs Ramsay covers it in her shawl and tells her impressionable young daughter, Cam, that now it’s like a lovely bird’s nest.

As she goes back downstairs Prue calls up that some of them had thought of going down to the sea to watch the waves, and Mrs Ramsay is transfigured with girlish enthusiasm. Off they go but, in fact, something keeps her behind; it is her duty to go into the living room and be with her husband who is anxiously reading a novel by Walter Scott, anxious because he is always anxious whether his work will last.

She picks up a volume of poetry and they both read in companionable silence. Marriage, reflects Mr Ramsay, probably reflecting an opinion of Woolf’s, is not all about going to bed with a woman. There are also these moments of soul peace.

Suddenly he wants her to tell him she loves him. She knows it but rarely says it. She stands at the window looking at the beams of the lighthouse. Then she turns and, astonishingly beautiful as she is, gives him a radiant smile.

Part 2. Time Passes (15 pages)

I was expecting some major change of time or setting but part two follows on without a break from part 1. Mrs Bankes, Prue and Andrew come back from the beach. It was so dark they couldn’t distinguish between the sea and the sand. Slowly the lamps go out all round the house. Darkness falls and cheeky little draughts explore the old house.

But then it kicks in, and part 2 becomes a wild farrago of purple prose, about winter winds, hails, waves destroying, ravages, tattered flags, gold letters on marble pages describe death in battle and bones bleaching in faraway deserts. I presume this all refers to the First World War. In the long dark winter Mrs (Maggie) McNab the housekeeper comes to air and tidy the house. Spring comes round and summer and another winter.

Meanwhile, bracketed against the long convoluted paragraphs of purple prose, is a series of short, factual declarations which tell us the news of the family, in hard square brackets. It is hard, heart-breaking news.

  • In a throwaway sentence we learn that Mrs Ramsay, heart and soul of part one, has died.
  • In May Prue, looking beautiful, gets married.
  • A year later Prue dies from complications of childbirth.
  • Andrew, in the British Army in France, is killed instantly by a shell.
  • Old Carmichael brings out a volume of poetry which has an unexpected success. War has given the public a taste for poetry.

It is some years later and Mrs McNab surveys the mouldering old house, all the clothes rotting in their wardrobes, the pipes overflowed and the carpet ruined. Rats in the attic. The garden overgrown and alive with rabbits. The family had promised to return but the war made travel difficult.

Suddenly after years of silence Mrs McNab receives a letter asking her to make the place ready. It is such a ruin she has to recruit the help of her friend Mrs Bast and her son, George. Builders have to replaster, fix doors, and locks. It is an epic amount of work.

Then one day Lily Briscoe arrives, followed by old Mr Carmichael. Mrs Beckwith (who we’ve never heard of before) comes to stay.

Part 23 The Lighthouse [ten years later] (55 pages)

Overnight, as if by magic, the other surviving members of the family have arrived – Mr Ramsay, Nancy, James and Cam. And somehow, the next morning they breakfast early because it has been arranged to go out to the lighthouse.

And Lily, rather like the reader, dazed and confused by everything which has happened, sits at the breakfast table wondering what it’s all about: What does it mean then, what can it all mean? What does one do? Why is one sitting here after all?

I’ve mentioned Woolf’s mental illness more than once: here again, in the sense of profound disorientation, the reader feels it again.

Sitting alone (for Nancy went out again) among the clean cups at the long table she felt cut off from other people, and able only to go on watching, asking, wondering. The house, the place, the morning, all seemed strangers to her. She had no attachment here, she felt, no relations with it, anything might happen, and whatever did happen, a step outside, a voice calling (‘It’s not in the cupboard; it’s on the landing,’ some one cried), was a question, as if the link that usually bound things together had been cut, and they floated up here, down there, off, anyhow. How aimless it was, how chaotic, how unreal it was, she thought, looking at her empty coffee cup. (p.138)

The extraordinary unreality was frightening… Such were some of the parts, but how bring them together?… If only she could put them together, she felt, write them out in some sentence, then she would have got at the truth of things…

Here, as in the mad sections of ‘Mrs Dalloway’, it feels like Woolf is recycling her many weeks and months and years of illness and mania, of the special peripheral vision it gives you, of the world and of yourself.

It is ten years since Lily left her painting unfinished (which is why commentators generally take the dates of the two visits to be 1910 and 1920). She is now 44 with an ‘old maidish’ manner. A long passage is devoted to Mr Ramsay coming up to her where she’s painting and exerting the full weight of his grief, his need, his exorbitant self pity, on her, demanding that she say something sympathetic, but she just stands there, hostile and dumb.

Suddenly, randomly, she notices his lovely brown boots and says out loud how nice they are, and to both their astonishment, he bucks up, becomes proud and lively and shows them off, and a knot he uses, of his own invention. Cam and James arrive (sulky 16 and 17 year olds) and Mr Ramsay declares they’re off to the lighthouse and marches them down the garden.

Leaving Lily facing a blank white canvas and riddled with doubts and conflicting emotions. Woolf spends quite a while describing the feelings she has as she makes the first marks on the canvas. It is an essay on the feeling of painting. It’s also mixed up with her love-hate relationship with patronising poor Charles Tansley. She remembered a happy moment when they took to playing ducks and drakes across the sea, and how it only happened because Mrs Ramsay, like God in Bishop Berkeley’s philosophy, watched it happen.

What is the meaning of life? Is there a meaning to life? No. There is no one great Revelation. Instead there’s a steady stream of epiphanies and insights.

What is the meaning of life? That was all—a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark… (p.150)

She walks over to a view of the sea and sees the little boat with Mrs Ramsay, James and Cam in it set sail and move out beyond the others, towards the lighthouse.

In the little sailing boat Mr Ramsay gets impatient. He has forced two more new characters, Macalister and Macalister’s boy, to come with them. He makes Macalister tell him about the great storm last Christmas, which drove 11 ships into the bay of which three were shipwrecked. When the wind picks up and they start properly sailing, tense Mr Ramsay can relax. But Cam and James are surly and resentful at having been forced to go on this trip, purely to lay their father’s ghosts. They really hate him, Cam in particular remembering:

that crass blindness and tyranny of his which had poisoned her childhood and raised bitter storms, so that even now she woke in the night trembling with rage and remembered some command of his; some insolence: ‘Do this,’ ‘Do that’; his dominance: his ‘Submit to me.’ (p.158)

Back in the garden, Lily continues trying to pain, her mind aswirl with memories of Mrs Ramsay’s presence, when she last tried to paint here, when she played ducks and drakes with Charles Tansley, moments in time, why does she remember some and forget huge stretches of others?

She remembers going to visit the Rayleys (Paul and Minta after they married) in their place at Rickmansworth and finding the atmosphere terribly strained. Some time later she went back and found them reconciled and friendly, and this was because Paul had taken a mistress with radical political views like his, and Minta thoroughly approved.

From this Lily rambles on to thinking about her own relationship with the much older William Bankes. How Mrs Ramsay wanted them to get married and how they dated and went places together and felt great affection but never enough to marry. This long passage of meandering thought has taken us deep into mysteries:

What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life?—startling, unexpected, unknown? (p.167)

And she finds herself crying and saying Mrs Ramsay’s name out loud.

Cut to James in the sailing boat. The wind slackens and the sail flaps and James lives in terror of his father looking up from the book he’s studiously reading and reprimanding. James lives in permanent terror of his father’s reprimands and hates him with a white-hot hatred. He remembers being seven and wanting to go to the lighthouse and the harshness of his father’s refusal – the scene which opens the novel, a resentment he’s never forgotten. His memories of boyhood are like grains of misery.

Cut to Cam remembering being small and coming across her father sitting quietly in his study, accompanied by another venerable old gentleman, a copy of the Times crinkling in someone’s hand, as her father wrote slowly and neatly across the pages of his book. And she looks at her father now, curled up in the middle of the boat and quietly, purposefully reading, and her heart softens towards him.

Cut to Lily on land thinking about what you feel for things depends on whether they’re far or near: the nearer, the more familiar and funny; the further away, the more hazy and venerable. Then the light changes, the mood of the sea changes, and she is unhappy. She looks at her painting and thinks she hasn’t caught it at all. And Woolf delivers a little lecture on the struggle to create, to capture life in art.

Phrases came. Visions came. Beautiful pictures. Beautiful phrases. But what she wished to get hold of was that very jar on the nerves, the thing itself before it has been made anything. Get that and start afresh; get that and start afresh; she said desperately, pitching herself firmly again before her easel. It was a miserable machine, an inefficient machine, she thought, the human apparatus for painting or for feeling; it always broke down at the critical moment; heroically, one must force it on. (p.178)

Compare T.S. Eliot 1940:

       and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion…

Samuel Beckett in 1983:

Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better.

And plenty of other examples in between. The inability of language to adequately express our feelings and perceptions is a fairly common trope in the literary world.

Lily looks at slumbering Mr Carmichael. He’s famous now but still the same polite old geezer she’s always known. People can be two people, in fact people can be many people. One thing leads to another and she tells us that Charles Tansley got his fellowship, got married, lives in Golders Green. She went to hear him speak during the war, in a half-empty hall droning on about brotherly love, and again she remembers for the third or fourth time the occasion when she and he played ducks and drakes at some cask which came floating in on the waves while Mrs Ramsay watched them.

Lily remembers countless times seeing Mr Ramsay losing his temper, shouting, behaving badly, throwing a plate through the air, then loitering round his wife waiting for her forgiveness. Odd that all this comes out at the very end of the text because only now does it make sense of the scene which opens the novel, the couple’s sharp disagreement about whether to go to the lighthouse on the morrow. Canny withholding.

Lily notices someone has finally gotten up and is moving about inside the house and for a mad moment she thinks it’s her beloved Mrs Ramsay.

Cut to James in the sailboat. They are getting close to the lighthouse now and he can see it, a tall tower on jagged rocks. He observes his father getting to the end of the book he’s been reading. Finally he finishes it and announces he’s hungry. He opens the packet with their sandwiches in. Out of respect to Macalister he stops Cam throwing a half-eaten sandwich over the side. Macalister is 75 and Mr Ramsay shares that he’s 71.

And his father finally praises James’s steering. All this time James’s hatred is based on his father’s unerring criticism. Just one word of praise makes him pitifully grateful. All through this Cam lives in two worlds, part of her seeing her shabby father, the other part excited because he is taking them on an adventure. Freudian ambivalence.

Finally the boat reaches the lighthouse jetty, Mr Ramsay buttons his jacket, puts on his hat, tells the kids to get the packets which Nancy had wrapped for the lighthouse keeper, stands erect at the bow and steps ashore.

Cut back to Lily on the island who is joined by Mr Carmichael standing up. They both look towards the lighthouse which has become hazy and agree they must have arrived by now. And Lily looks from the steps up to the terrace, then back at her painting, and then has the inspiration on how to finish it. And the novel ends with a symbolic phrase which describes not only what Lily has seen and captured, but what Woolf the author has also done – achieved her vision.

She looked at the steps; they were empty; she looked at her canvas; it was blurred. With a sudden intensity, as if she saw it clear for a second, she drew a line there, in the centre. It was done; it was finished. Yes, she thought, laying down her brush in extreme fatigue, I have had my vision. (p.192)

It’s a masterpiece.

Cast

Woolf’s fictions overflow with people, not just the primary characters but also a throng of secondary and tertiary characters, people who pop up sometimes for just one mention, for one sighting only, but who add to the sense her novels give of a dense tapestry of human lives all impinging on each other.

The Ramsays

1. Mr Ramsay

2. Mrs Ramsay

3. Lily Briscoe

4. Andrew Ramsay

5. Jasper Ramsay

6. Roger Ramsay

7. James Ramsay

8. Prue Ramsay

9. Rose Ramsay

10. Nancy Ramsay

11. Cam Ramsay

House guests

16. Charles Tansley, student writing his dissertation

17. Augustus Carmichael, old poet with white beard stained yellow

18. Lily Briscoe, painter

19. Minta Doyle, tomboy

20. Paul Rayley, young and handsome

21. William Bankes, scientist

Servants

12. Mildred the cook

13. Marie the Swiss maid

14. Ellen the maid

15. Kennedy the gardener

22. Aunt Camilla

23. Uncle James

24. Mrs McNab

25. Mrs Bast, helps Mrs McNab clean up the old house

26. George Bast, scythes the grass

27. Mrs Beckwith, turns up as a guest in part 3

28. Old Macalister

29. Macalister’s boy

30. Miss Giddings – mentioned just once, as being startled when Mr Ramsay suddenly, randomly quoted some poetry at her.

31. Mr Langley – also mentioned precisely once, in an anecdote Mrs Ramsay tells, that he had been round the world dozens of times but told her he never suffered as he did when my husband took him across to the lighthouse (p.85).

32. Mrs McNab – the housekeeper who airs and maintains the house in the family’s absence, through the long dark winters.

Credit

‘To The Lighthouse’ by Virginia Woolf was first published by the Hogarth Press in 1927. Page references are to the 1977 Granada paperback edition, although the text is easily available online.

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by Simon on March 28, 2025  •  Permalink
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Posted by Simon on March 28, 2025

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2025/03/28/to-the-lighthouse-virginia-woolf/