Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey (later 17th Duke of Denver) is the fictional protagonist in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, and their continuation by Jill Paton Walsh. A dilettante who solves mysteries for his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective. He is often assisted by his valet and former batman, Mervyn Bunter; by his good friend and later brother-in-law, police detective Charles Parker; and, in a few books, by Harriet Vane, who becomes his wife.
Biography
Background Born in 1890 and ageing in real time, Wimsey is described as being of average height, with straw-coloured hair, a beaked nose, and a vaguely foolish face. Reputedly his looks are patterned after those of academic and poet Roy Ridley, whom Sayers briefly met after witnessing him read his Newdigate Prize–winning poem "Oxford" at the Encaenia ceremony in July 1913.
Twice in the novels (in Murder Must Advertise and Busman's Honeymoon) his looks are compared to those of the actor Ralph Lynn. Wimsey also possesses considerable intelligence and athletic ability, evidenced by his playing cricket for Oxford University while taking a First in history (referred to in Gaudy Night). He creates a spectacularly successful publicity campaign for Whifflet cigarettes while working for Pym's Publicity Ltd, and at age 40 is able to turn three cartwheels in the office corridor, stopping just short of the boss's open office door (Murder Must Advertise).
Among Lord Peter's hobbies, in addition to criminology, is collecting incunabula, books from the earliest days of printing. He is an experienced church bell-ringer. He is an expert on matters of food (and especially wine), male fashion, and classical music. He excels at the piano, including Bach's works for keyboard instruments. Among his favorite poets is John Donne, whose work is quoted by Sayers in epigraphs (as at the beginning of Gaudy Night), in dialogue during his courtship. Vane gifts Lord Peter a letter penned by Donne on love as a wedding present, prompting the Dowager Duchess to note that he "has always been queer about Donne." Lord Peter likes driving fast and keeps a powerful Daimler (for example, a 1927 Daimler Double-Six sleeve-valve V12 four-seater); he calls these cars "Mrs Merdle" after a character in Charles Dickens's Little Dorrit who "hated fuss". In the eleventh novel, Busman's Honeymoon, we are told he has owned nine Daimlers with this name.
Lord Peter Wimsey's ancestry begins with the 12th-century knight Gerald de Wimsey, who went with King Richard the Lionheart on the Third Crusade and took part in the Siege of Acre.Strong Poison, Ch. XXI. This makes the Wimseys an unusually ancient family, since "Very few English noble families go that far in the first creation; rebellions and monarchic head choppings had seen to that", as reviewer Janet Hitchman noted in the introduction to Striding Folly. The family coat of arms, first mentioned in Gaudy Night, is "Sable, 3 mice courant, argent; crest, a domestic cat couched as to spring, proper". The family motto, displayed under its coat of arms, is "As my Whimsy takes me."Clouds of Witness reissue, Dorothy Sayers. London: Victor Gollancz, 1935 (preface).
Early life and education Lord Peter is the second of the three children of Mortimer Wimsey, 15th Duke of Denver, and Honoria Lucasta Delagardie, who lives on throughout the novels as the Dowager Duchess of Denver. She is witty and intelligent, and strongly supports her younger son, whom she plainly prefers over her less intelligent, more conventional older son Gerald, the 16th Duke. Gerald's snobbish wife, Helen, detests Peter. Gerald's son and heir is the devil-may-care Viscount St George. Lady Mary, the younger sister of the 16th Duke, and of Lord Peter, leans strongly to the political left. At one time she planned to elope with a radical left agitator, and though this did not come about she did scandalise Helen by marrying a policeman of working-class origins.
Lord Peter Wimsey is called "Lord" as he is the younger son of a duke. This is a courtesy title; he is not a peer and has no right to sit in the House of Lords, nor does the courtesy title pass on to any offspring he may have.
As a boy, Peter was, to the great distress of his father, strongly attached to an old, smelly poacher living at the edge of the family estate. In his youth, Peter was influenced by his maternal uncle, Paul Delagardie, who took it upon himself to instruct his nephew in the facts of life – how to conduct various love affairs and treat his lovers.
As a child, Lord Peter had a French governess and so, like his sister, is fluent in French. He was educated at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class degree in history. He was also an outstanding cricketer, whose performance was still well remembered decades later. Though not taking up an academic career, he was left with an enduring and deep love for Oxford.
Great War and aftermath To his uncle's disappointment, Wimsey fell deeply in love with a young woman named Barbara and became engaged to her. When the First World War broke out, he hastened to join the British Army, releasing Barbara from her engagement in case he was killed or mutilated. The girl later married another, less principled officer.
Wimsey served on the Western Front from 1914 to 1918, reaching the rank of major in the Rifle Brigade. He was appointed an intelligence officer, and on one occasion he infiltrated the staff room of a German officer.Whose Body?, Ch.11 Though not explicitly stated, that feat implies that Wimsey spoke a fluent and unaccented German. As noted in Have His Carcase, he communicated at that time with British Intelligence using the Playfair cipher and became proficient in its use.
For reasons never clarified, after the end of his spy mission, Wimsey in the later part of the war moved from Intelligence and resumed the role of a regular line officer. He was a conscientious and effective commanding officer, popular with the men under his command—an affection still retained by Wimsey's former soldiers many years after the war, as is evident from a short passage in Clouds of Witness and an extensive reminiscence in Gaudy Night.
In particular, while in the army he met Sergeant Mervyn Bunter, who had previously been in domestic service. In 1918, Wimsey was wounded by artillery fire near Caudry in France. He suffered a breakdown due to shell shock (which we now call post-traumatic stress disorder but which was then often thought, by those without first-hand experience of it, to be a species of malingering, or even cowardice) and was eventually sent home. While sharing this experience, which the Dowager Duchess referred to as "a jam", Wimsey and Bunter arranged that if they were both to survive the war, Bunter would become Wimsey's valet. Throughout the books, Bunter takes care to address Wimsey as "My Lord". Nevertheless, he is a friend as well as a servant, and Wimsey again and again expresses amazement at Bunter's high efficiency and competence in virtually every sphere of life.
After the war, Wimsey was ill for many months, recovering at the family's ancestral home in Duke's Denver, a fictional setting—as is the Dukedom of Denver—about 15 miles (24 km) beyond the real Denver in Norfolk, on the A10 near Downham Market. Wimsey was for a time unable to give servants any orders whatsoever, since his wartime experience made him associate the giving of an order with causing the death of the person to whom the order was given. Bunter arrived and, with the approval of the Dowager Duchess, took up his post as valet. Bunter moved Wimsey to a London flat at 110A Piccadilly, W1, while Wimsey recovered. Even much later, however, Wimsey would have relapses—especially when his actions caused a murderer to be hanged. As noted in Whose Body?, on such occasions Bunter would take care of Wimsey and tenderly put him to bed, and they would revert to being "Major Wimsey" and "Sergeant Bunter".
In the reissue of The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club (1935), the biography of Wimsey is "brought up to date" by his uncle, Paul Austin Delagardie, purportedly at the request of Sayers herself, further giving the illusion that he is a real person. At this point, Wimsey is claimed to be 45 years old and "time he was settled". The biography takes up the last eight pages of the book and concludes with the statement that Wimsey "has always had everything except the things he really wanted, and I suppose he is luckier than most."
Detective work Wimsey begins his hobby of investigation by recovering The Attenbury Emeralds in 1921. At the beginning of Whose Body?, there appears the unpleasant Inspector Sugg, who is extremely hostile to Wimsey and tries to exclude him from the investigation (reminiscent of the relations between Sherlock Holmes and Inspector Lestrade). However, Wimsey is able to bypass Sugg through his friendship with Scotland Yard detective Charles Parker, a sergeant in 1921. At the end of Whose Body?, Wimsey generously allows Sugg to take completely undeserved credit for the solution; the grateful Sugg cannot go on with his hostility to Wimsey. In later books, Sugg fades away and Wimsey's relations with the police become dominated by his amicable partnership with Parker, who eventually rises to the rank of Commander (and becomes Wimsey's brother-in-law).
Bunter, a man of many talents himself, not least photography, often proves instrumental in Wimsey's investigations. However, Wimsey is not entirely well. At the end of the investigation in Whose Body? (1923), Wimsey hallucinates that he is back in the trenches. He soon recovers his senses and goes on a long holiday.
In Clouds of Witness (1926), Wimsey travels to the fictional Riddlesdale in North Yorkshire to assist his elder brother Gerald, who has been accused of murdering Captain Denis Cathcart, their sister's fiancé. As Gerald is the Duke of Denver, he is tried by the entire House of Lords, as required by the law at that time, to much scandal and the distress of his wife Helen. Their sister, Lady Mary, also falls under suspicion. Lord Peter clears the Duke and Lady Mary, to whom Parker is attracted.
As a result of the slaughter of men in the First World War, there was in the UK a considerable imbalance between the sexes. It is not exactly known when Wimsey recruited Miss Climpson to run an undercover employment agency for women, a means to garner information from the otherwise inaccessible world of spinsters and widows, but it is prior to Unnatural Death (1927), in which Miss Climpson assists Wimsey's investigation of the suspicious death of an elderly cancer patient. Wimsey's highly effective idea is that a male detective going around and asking questions is likely to arouse suspicion, while a middle-aged woman doing it would be dismissed as a gossip and people would speak openly to her.
As recounted in the short story "The Adventurous Exploit of the Cave of Ali Baba", in December 1927 Wimsey fakes his own death, supposedly while hunting big game in Tanganyika, to penetrate and break up a particularly dangerous and well-organised criminal gang. Only Wimsey's mother and sister and the loyal Bunter know that he remains alive. Emerging victorious after more than a year masquerading as "the disgruntled sacked servant Rogers", Wimsey remarks that "We shall have an awful time with the lawyers, proving that I am me." In fact, he returns smoothly to his old life, and the interlude is never referred to in later books.