Connection
Peter Death Bredon Wimsey
- Infos
- Photos
- Best films
If you like this character, let us know!
Lord Peter Death Bredon Wimsey is a fictional character in a series of detective novels and short stories by Dorothy L. Sayers, in which he solves mysteries—usually murders. A dilettante who solves mysteries for his own amusement, Wimsey is an archetype for the British gentleman detective.Born in 1890 and aging 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 were patterned after those of academic Roy Ridley. He also possessed considerable intelligence and athletic ability, evidenced by his playing cricket for Oxford University while earning a First. He created a spectacularly successful publicity campaign for Whifflet cigarettes while working for Pym's Publicity Ltd, and at age 40 was 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. He is an expert on matters of food (especially wine), male fashion, and classical music. He excels at the piano, including Bach's works for keyboard instruments. One of Lord Peter's cars is a 12-cylinder ("double-six") 1927 Daimler four-seater, which (like all his cars) he calls "Mrs Merdle" after a character in Dickens' Little Dorrit who "hated fuss".
Biography
BackgroundLord Peter Wimsey's (fictional) ancestry begins with the 12th-century knight Gerald de Wimsey, who went with King Richard The Lion Heart on the Third Crusade and took part in the Siege of Acre. 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 is blazoned as "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."
Early life
Lord Peter was 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. The Dowager Duchess is witty and intelligent, and strongly supports her younger son, whom she plainly prefers over his less intelligent, more conventional older brother, Gerald, the 16th Duke. Gerald's snobbish wife, Helen, who detests Wimsey, and their devil-may-care heir, Viscount St. George (Wimsey's nephew, who likes him), also make appearances in the novels. So does Lady Mary, the younger sister of the Duke and Lord Peter, who leans strongly to the political left and scandalizes her family by marrying a policeman of working class origins.
As a boy, the young Peter Wimsey was, to the great distress of his father, strongly attached to an old, smelly poacher living at the edge of the family estate.
According to the novels, Lord Peter 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 would still be well remembered decades later, leading to the near unmasking of his incognito in Murder Must Advertise. Though not taking up an academic career, he was left with an enduring and deep love for Oxford.
At this time, Lord Peter was considerably influenced by his maternal uncle Paul Delagardie, who took it upon himself to instruct his nephew in the facts of life as Paul himself understood them – i.e. to conduct various love affairs, often in the more permissive atmosphere of France, and treat his various lovers respectfully but avoid any deep emotional entanglements.
To his uncle's disappointment, Peter eventually 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. 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 service. In 1918, Wimsey was severely 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) and was eventually sent home. After 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 he 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".
Detective work
Lord Peter begins his hobby of investigation by recovering The Attenbury Emeralds in 1921. He also becomes good friends with Scotland Yard detective Charles Parker, a sergeant in 1921 who eventually rises to the rank of Commander. Bunter, a man of many talents himself, not least photography, often proves instrumental in Peter's investigations. However, Wimsey is not entirely well. At the end of the investigation in Whose Body? (1923) he hallucinates that he is back in the trenches. He soon recovers his senses and goes on a long holiday.
The next year, he travels (in Clouds of Witness, 1926) to the fictional Riddlesdale in North Yorkshire to assist his older 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.
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, the loyal Bunter and Inspector Parker know he is still 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.
During the 1920s, Wimsey has affairs with various women, which are the subject of much gossip in Britain and Europe. This part of his life remains hazy: it is hardly ever mentioned in the books set in the same period; most of the scanty information on the subject is given in flashbacks from later times, after he meets Harriet Vane and relations with other women become a closed chapter. In Busman's Honeymoon Wimsey facetiously refers to a gentleman's duty "to remember whom he had taken to bed" so as not to embarrass his bedmate by calling her by the wrong name.
There are several references to a relationship with a famous Viennese opera singer, and Bunter – who evidently was involved with this, as with other parts of his master's life – recalls Wimsey being very angry with a French mistress who mistreated her own servant.
The only one of Wimsey's earlier women to appear in person is the artist Marjorie Phelps, who plays an important role in The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. She has known Wimsey for years and is attracted to him, though it is not explicitly stated whether they were lovers. Wimsey likes her, respects her, and enjoys her company – but that isn't enough. In Strong Poison, she is the first person other than Wimsey himself to realise that he has fallen in love with Harriet.
In Strong Poison Lord Peter encounters Harriet Vane, a cerebral, Oxford-educated mystery writer, while she is on trial for the murder of her former lover. He falls in love with her at first sight. Wimsey saves her from the gallows, but she believes that gratitude is not a good foundation for marriage, and politely but firmly declines his frequent proposals. Lord Peter encourages his friend and foil, Chief Inspector Charles Parker, to propose to his sister, Lady Mary Wimsey, despite the great difference in their rank and wealth. They marry and have a son, named Charles Peter ("Peterkin"), and a daughter, Mary Lucasta.
While on a fishing holiday in Scotland, Wimsey instigates and takes part in the investigation of the murder of an artist, related in Five Red Herrings. Despite the rejection of his marriage proposal, he continues to court Miss Vane. In Have His Carcase, he finds Harriet is not in London, but learns from a reporter that she has discovered a corpse while on a walking holiday on England's south coast. Wimsey is at her hotel the next morning. He not only investigates the death and offers proposals of marriage, but also acts as Harriet's patron and protector from press and police. Despite a prickly relationship, they work together to identify the murderer.
Back in London, Wimsey goes undercover as "Death Bredon" at an advertising firm, working as a copywriter (Murder Must Advertise). Bredon is framed for murder, leading Charles Parker to "arrest" Bredon for murder in front of numerous witnesses. To distinguish Death Bredon from Lord Peter Wimsey, Parker smuggles Wimsey out of the police station and urges him to get into the papers. Accordingly, Wimsey accompanies "a Royal personage" to a public event, leading the press to carry pictures of both "Bredon" and Wimsey. In 1934 Wimsey in (The Nine Tailors) must unravel a 20-year-old case of missing jewels; an unknown corpse; a missing World War I soldier believed alive; a murderous escaped convict believed dead and a mysterious code concerning church bells.
By 1935 Lord Peter is in continental Europe, acting as an unofficial attaché to the British Foreign Office. Harriet Vane contacts him about a problem she has been asked to investigate in her college at Oxford (Gaudy Night). At the end of their investigation, Vane finally accepts Wimsey's proposal of marriage.
The couple marry on 8 October 1935, at St. Cross Church, Holywell Street, Oxford, as depicted in the opening collection of letters and diary entries in Busman's Honeymoon. The Wimseys honeymoon at Talboys, a house in east Hertfordshire near where Harriet had lived as a child, that Peter has bought for her as a wedding present. There they find the body of the previous owner, and spend their honeymoon solving the case, thus having the eponymous "Busman's Honeymoon".
Over the next five years, according to Sayers' short stories, the Wimseys have three sons: Bredon Delagardie Peter Wimsey (born in October 1936 in the story "The Haunted Policeman"); Roger Wimsey (born 1938), and Paul Wimsey (born 1940). However, according to the wartime publications of The Wimsey Papers, published in The Spectator, the second son was called Paul. It may be presumed that Paul is named after Lord Peter's maternal uncle Paul Delagardie. "Roger" is an ancestral Wimsey name. Sayers told friends orally that Harriet and Peter were to eventually have five children in all.
In the final Wimsey story, the 1942 short story "Talboys", Peter and Harriet are enjoying rural domestic bliss with their three sons when Bredon, their first-born, is accused of the theft of prize peaches from the neighbour's tree. Peter and the accused set off to investigate and, of course, prove Bredon's innocence.
Played by the actor
Filmography of Peter Death Bredon Wimsey (1 films)
Add to a movie list
Busman's Honeymoon (1940)
, 1h39Directed by Richard Thorpe, Arthur B. Woods
Origin United-kingdom
Genres Drama, Comedy, Comedy-drama, Crime
Themes Théâtre, Films based on plays
Actors Robert Montgomery, Constance Cummings, Leslie Banks, Seymour Hicks, Robert Newton, Googie Withers
Rating61%
Lorsque Lord Peter Wimsey, un détective amateur, se marie avec Harriet Vane, une écrivain spécialisée dans les romans policiers, ils s'engagent à abandonner le crime pour de bon. Pour faire une surprise à Harriet, Peter achète un cottage dans le Devon, où ils prévoient de passer leur lune de miel, accompagnés de leur fidèle valet Mervyn Bunter. Toutefois, le lendemain de leur arrivée, le corps de Noakes, à qui Lord Peter avait acheté le cottage, est retrouvé. Bien que ce village soit généralement paisible, un certain nombre de suspects sont possibles, de la nièce de Noakes à Sellon, le policier du village. Ils ne veulent pas s'impliquer dans l'enquête, mais l'arrivée de leur ami vieil l'inspecteur de Scotland Yard Andrew Kirk change la donne. Peter finit par trouver le coupable et le couple décide de se rendre dans un lieu plus calme mais, quand ils entendent des coups de feu à l'intérieur de l'auberge où ils comptaient s'arrêter, ils s'en éloignent préciitamment.