In the hierarchy of the four laid out roads that make
up that well to do late Victorian and early Edwardian residential area of Kingston upon Hull it is by far the
grandest by virtue of the broadness of the road, verge and paths and the
calibre of its former residents as shown by the concentration of Civic Society
Plaques.
One quaint terraced house, number 80, was for a short time occupied by one
of the female contributors to the golden age of crime writing in the decades
between the two world wars.
Dorothy L Sayers is revered for her contribution to
this genre amongst her contemporaries of Agatha Christie and Marjorie Allingham.
She resided there from 1916 to 1917 during her position as a teacher of modern
languages to the mostly privileged daughters of the merchant class, middle and
upper class families of Hull and the wider East Riding of Yorkshire at the Hull
High School for Girls at Tranby, about 4 miles west of her quarters.
Of course,
the last two years of the Great War were hard times and Sayers may have had
little time to put down serious wordage for what became her illustrious career
as a novelist in between her school mistress obligations.
There was no
questioning her intelligence and application to all things academic, creative
and literary and even though well known for her crime fiction she was also held
in high regard for her contributions to scholarly works such as a translation
of Dante and as an advertising copywriter with the trademark Toucan of Guinness
Beer being attributed to her.
Sayers took up her post in Hull at the age of 23
and within just three short years she had published the first of her many
novels.
In 1928 her upper class toff of an amateur sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey
first appeared and he quickly became a firm favourite with the population who
craved a bit of light entertainment after the dark and traumatic conflict
years.
These
included multiple suspects, a lot of red herring false trails, fiendish
murderers and even cleverer detectives.
Prior to the rise to prominence of
Sayers and others there was no real or dedicated application to the genre.
In
the preface to a book entitled The Best Detective Stories of 1928-1929 the
crime novelist and all round humourist Ronald Knox, himself a clergyman which was
often the primary vocation of literary crime fighting characters, drew up his
ten rules by which he felt that classic crime writing themes should follow.
These were, in no particular order, the criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of a story but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.
All supernatural or preternatural agencies are ruled
out as a matter of course.
Not more than one secret room or passage is
allowable.
No hitherto undiscovered poisons may be used nor any appliance which
will need a long scientific explanation at the end.
No accident must ever help
the detective nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to
be right.
The detective must not be the perpetrator of the crime.
The detective
must not light on any clues which are not instantly produced for the inspection
of the reader.
The stupid friend of the detective, the Watson equivalent, must
not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence must be
very slightly below that of the average reader.
Twin brothers and doubles
generally must not appear unless the reader has been duly prepared for them.
The final rule is by today’s ethics and policies of inclusion a lot dodgy in that no Chinaman must figure in
the story.
Dorothy L Sayers in her due diligence for research into her characters
and plot lines will certainly have been aware of Knox’s views and this may have
inspired her in the 1930’s to co -found The Detection Club, a prestigious and elitist
organisation and the wording, attributed to her of the Oath of its members;
“Do you
promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented
to them, using those wits which it may please you to bestow on them, and not
placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition,
Mumbo-Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence or Act of God ?”
Sayers principal detective, Lord Peter
Wimsey, was a well educated, charming and rather likeable toff who was good at just
about everything. His back story was one of great fictional detail even to the
extent of a family tree which appeared to show a bit of an obsession by Sayers
in her own creation.
His endearing side was one of a whittering on in certain situations and a nervous
disorder from shell shock suffered on active service in the First World War.
He
does have some characterisations which are common to his class and background,
mainly a fear of responsibility and commitment.
In spite of these flaws he went
down well with fans of crime writing and retains this populist status to the present
day.
As a bit of a coincidence in my home City, Hull, the locally born actor
Ian Carmichael became synonymous with Wimsey in his portrayal of the character
in TV productions in the 1970’s and 1980’s.
It’s strange how those blue plaques high up on a house frontage,
which can often be overlooked, set you on a trail of investigation and
discovery in the best style of a sleuthing detective from that golden age of crime fiction.
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| Dorothy L Sayers |
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