Christian Greats Challenge - Wrap-up Post

On the Incarnation by Athanasius

A Chameleon, a Boy, and a Quest by J.A. Myhre

The God Who is There by Francis Schaeffer

Life Under Compulsion by Anthony Esolen

Flynn of the Inland by Ion Idriess

In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden

North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

The Nine Tailors by D.L. Sayers


The link up page is here if you wanted to add your review of any books you've read for this challenge.
Thank you to those who joined in!

Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers (1932)

Have His Carcase is the second book by D. L. Sayers to feature Harriet Vane who was first introduced in Strong Poison (1930) when Lord Peter Wimsey decides she is not guilty of a murder charge and sets out to prove it.
I’ve been filling in the gaps of my Sayers’ reading lately and Have His Carcase was one of the books I decided to read. It’s been quite a few years since I read Strong Poison and I don’t remember a great deal of it so I probably should have read that again before this one. I do remember quite a bit of Gaudy Night which comes after Have His Carcase, though.

Harriet Vane, the detective novelist, has just been acquitted of murder and embarks on a walking tour along the south-west coast of England.

'The best remedy for a bruised heart is not as so many people seem to think, repose upon a manly bosom. Much more efficacious are honest hard work, physical activity, and the sudden acquisition of wealth. After being acquitted of murdering her lover, and indeed, in consequence of that acquittal, Harriet Vane found all three specifics abundantly at her disposal; and although Peter Wimsey, with a touching faith in tradition, persisted day in and day out in presenting the bosom for her approval, she showed no inclination to recline upon it.'

While on a deserted beach she discovers the body of a young man whose throat had been slashed and after some sleuthing she heads to the next town to report her findings. During this time the tide comes in and the corpse disappears. Once again Harriet Vane is drawn into the investigation of a murder where she is a possible suspect.

Lord Peter Wimsey gets wind of the situation and turns up at the hotel where she is lodged. Wimsey is still pursuing Harriet and much of the banter between them is just delicious. Harriet is having breakfast when he arrives on the scene:

‘Good morning, Sherlock. Where is the dressing gown? How many pipes of shag have you consumed? The hypodermic is on the dressing-room table.’

‘How in the world,’ demanded Harriet, ‘did you get here?’

‘Car,’ said Lord Peter, briefly. ‘Have they produced the body?’

‘Who told you about the body?’

‘I nosed it from afar. Where the Carcase is, there shall be eagles gathered together. May I join you over the bacon-and-eggs?’

‘By all means,’ said Harriet. ‘Where did you come from?’

‘From London - like a bird that hears the call of its mate.’

‘I didn’t -‘ began Harriet.

‘I didn’t mean you. I meant the corpse. But still, talking of mates, will you marry me?’

Harriet is attracted to Wimsey but complicating their relationship is the offence she feels at Wimsey’s patronage towards her. She resents the gratitude she owes him for getting her out of a death sentence. His influence protects her from the hostility of men like Inspector Umpelty and the sensationalist reporter of the Morning Star, Salcolme Hardy, and she is bitterly distressed about this.

Wimsey had been building cautiously building a ‘delicate structure of confidence’ between this ‘scathed and embittered woman and himself’ but this new situation threatened to annihilate what he had built.

'You think you can sit up there all day like King Cophetua being noble and generous and expecting people to be brought to your feet...You think if you go on long enough I ought to be touched and softened...I suppose every man thinks he’s only got to go on being superior and any woman will come tumbling into his arms.'

King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid by Sir Edward Burne-Jones (1884)

Wimsey’s reply to this outburst reveals his heart and his often comic behaviour when he’s around her. According to him he’d have a better chance if he was, ‘deaf, blind, maimed, starving, drunken or dissolute,’ so that she could have the fun of being magnanimous!
He treats his deepest feelings in a comic way to save himself the pain of her being disgusted by them. Poor Peter.

This tussle between Harriet and Wimsey is cleverly portrayed. Amusing but at the same time poignant. As usual, Sayers' plot is clever and inventive; full of connections and rabbit trails. A chapter is basically devoted to the pair working on a cipher that the deceased had used in some letters he wrote, but it went over my head. Puzzles are not my strong point.
I was a little disappointed with the ending to this book. The crime was solved but the evidence was such that a jury would likely reject it so it was left hanging, so to speak. Apart from that, this was an enjoyable and intelligent read.

Moozle has just started reading some of Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey books and read this after me. (I think some of her books are more suitable for older readers but this one was O.K.) She really enjoys them and said that she ‘gets’ many of the literature allusions & ramblings because of all the literature she’s read over the years such as mythology & Shakespeare, plus bits of Latin and French, both of which she’s been studying. I have to credit Ambleside Online for introducing us to a lot of that goodness.

These are the Sayers’ books I’ve read & written about:

Whose Body?
Clouds of Witness
Unnatural Death
The Five Red Herrings

Regarding King Cohetua, see here & also this blog.

Nature Notebook: Fungi Study

We've had ideal conditions for a study of fungi in the past month and we found some interesting specimens. The green and the black fungi were new to us but we see bracket fungi all the time in our area and the coral fungi pops up now and again.
This is Moozle's nature notebook entry for this past week.

We made some spore prints: turn the cap upside down so its gills sit on top of some white paper; cover with a glass jar or dish to keep out any draught and leave for about 24 hours.
We were able to confirm the name of one specimen we were unsure of by observing the colour of its imprint.

If you wanted to keep these imprints, the paper should be covered very thinly with egg white or an adhesive gum to hold the spores fast. Moozle just observed and drew them this time.

The new discovery...a friend (thanks Anna M!) suggested this might be Dermocybe austroveneta.

Resources:


Handbook of Nature Study, First Studies in Plant Life in Australasia, a guide to our local area's flora & fauna and for young children, Mushrooms & Molds by Robert Froman (out of print) is a good 'Let's Read and Find Out Science Book,' with some hands on activities. There's a preview of it here. 
The Wonderland of Nature by Nuri Mass has a good, basic section with some simple pen & ink drawings.




Online resources:


Fungimap & lichenised fungi

Australasian Mycological Society

Australian Fungi - Australian National Herbarium

An Australian Fungi Blog!

FungiOz

If you'd like a crime mystery with your fungi study, The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers centres around a fungi expert whose death was caused when he ingested a bowl of deadly mushrooms! This is the only mystery novel that I've read by Sayers where Lord Peter Wimsey is absent entirely. It's been a while since I've read it but it's probably best for around age 16 years and older.

Unnatural Death by Dorothy L. Sayers (1927)

An elderly lady suffering from cancer dies suddenly but her young doctor is suspicious. His patient was a tough old lady and he had given her another six months to live and here she is, dead, only days after his prognosis. He refuses to sign the death certificate with but no evidence of foul play after an autopsy, he is left looking like a fool.
Three years later, the doctor chances to overhear Lord Peter Wimsey and his good friend, Detective-Inspector Parker of Scotland Yard,  discussing a similar case as they sat at an adjacent table in a restaurant. The doctor interrupts their conversation to introduce himself and tell them of his own experience.
Lord Peter, of course, is immediately interested.

‘Do you know,’ he said, suddenly, ‘I’m feeling rather interested by this case. I have a sensation of internal gloating which assures me that there is something to be investigated. That feeling has never failed me yet - I trust it never will.’

And so Wimsey gets involved in the affair, enlisting the reluctant Parker of whom he says,
‘He’s the one who really does the work. I make imbecile suggestions and he does the work of elaborately disproving them.’

Evidence of foul play begins to show itself once Wimsey gets involved with the death of the old lady's maid and then an attempt is made on Wimsey's life. However, although there is a suspect, there doesn't appear to be a motive.

The banter between Wimsey and Parker, who later marries Wimsey’s sister Mary, is very entertaining. Parker is conservative and formulaic whereas Wimsey is as his name implies - whimsical.

Wimsey wants to introduce Parker to ‘a friend of his,’ ‘- rather an experiment...quite comfortably fixed in a little flat in Pimlico...’
Much to Parker’s surprise, Miss Climpson was not a love interest but a middle-aged single lady with Edwardian-styled iron-grey hair, covered by a net, who would have made a very good lawyer but had never had the education or the opportunity.
She was a kind of ‘inquiry agent’ for Wimsey: his ears and his tongue. Wimsey believed Miss Climpson to be ‘a manifestation of the wasteful way in which this country is run,’ and that women like her who are ‘providentially fitted’ for work carried out by 'ill-equipped policemen’ are allowed to go to waste.

So far I’ve read seven out of fifteen of Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey books. Unnatural Death is the third in the series and although it’s not her best it’s still a jolly good read.
Sayers doesn’t write down to her readers. Her characters and plots are rich and full of detail with frequent allusions to literature and sundry interests leaving the reader with a knowledge of such diverse topics as advertising, bell-ringing, Shakespeare, and architecture.

I chose this book for No. 9 of my Christian Greats Challenge: A Good Old Detective or Mystery Novel Mystery. J.I Packer called this type of novel, 'stories of a kind that would never have existed without the Christian gospel. Culturally, they are Christian fairy tales, with savior heroes.'

Towards the end of this book, Wimsey is looking for Miss Climpson and stops at the church she attends during the week to see if she is there. Not finding her, on impulse he asks the priest, Mr Tregold, for advice on a moral problem, a ‘hypothetical case,’ that involved killing a person who was going to die, who was in awful pain, kept under morphia etc.

‘I know you’d call it a sin, of course, but why is it so very dreadful? It doesn't do the person any harm, does it?'

‘I think,’ said Mr Tredgold, ‘that the sin - I won’t use that word - the damage to Society, the wrongness of the thing lies much more in the harm it does the killer than in anything it can do to the person who is killed. Especially, of course, if the killing is to the killer’s own advantage...’

The Lord Peter Wimsey crime series are in print and available here.

Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy L. Sayers (1933)

It's been a few years since I read Murder Must Advertise and although it wasn't one of my favourites, I did enjoy reading it. However, two of my children say it's their favourite Lord Peter Wimsey novel and that the background setting of an advertising firm was really interesting (Sayers worked as a copywriter with a London advertising agency for nine years). Most of my children started reading the Wimsey novels around 14 to 15 years of age and the books do sometimes contain some mild adult themes. I asked my 14 year old son to write a brief review which I've put below.

The Lord Peter Wimsey crime/mystery novels are scheduled for free reading in the Ambleside Online Year 10 curriculum.

Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers (1926)

So far I've read over half of the Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels by Dorothy Sayers. I've enjoyed all of them but I have some favourites and Clouds of Witness has just been added to those.

It was the shooting season and Gerald, the Duke of Denver, with a party of guests had been lodging in the village of Riddlesdale. In the absence of his wife, his sister Lady Mary, was acting as hostess. At three o'clock one morning the dead body of a man was found on the threshold. It was Lady Mary's fiance.

Lord Peter Wimsey had been in Corsica for three months refreshing himself after the exertions of a previous crime investigation (Whose Body?) and had just returned to Paris to spend a fortnight there when, to his surprise, he found Bunter his butler packing their belongings in order to return to England.

In answer to Lord Peter's consternation, Bunter produced a copy of The Times where Wimsey read the following:

RIDDLESDALE  INQUEST

DUKE OF DENVER ARRESTED

ON MURDER CHARGE

'Dear me! Poor old Gerald arrested for murder. Uncommonly worryin' for him, poor chap. Always hated my bein' mixed up with police-courts. Now he's there himself. 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! Well, I suppose one must have breakfast.'

'Who's on the case, by the way?'

Mr Parker, my lord.'

'Parker? That's good. Splendid old Parker! Wonder how he managed to get put onto it...'

Meanwhile, back at Riddlesdale, the Duchess had hastily returned to the lodge and an inquest had been held which found the deceased had quarrelled with the Duke of Denver the evening before his death. A pistol belonging to the Duke had been found near the crime scene and Lady Mary had collapsed after giving evidence and was understood to be very ill.

Wimsey arrived on the scene and together with Detective-Inspector Parker they commenced investigations only to find that the Duke refused to co-operate and appeared to have something to hide and Lady Mary had lied at the inquest and was using her illness to avoid being questioned further.

From complicated love interests, a shooting attempt on Wimsey's life, a night on the bleak Yorkshire moors which almost ended in tragedy, to court room antics and encounters with a ferocious farmer, Clouds of Witness is a great story. I enjoyed getting to know Wimsey's relatives in this story and his lame humour scattered throughout the book added to its pleasure.

The man spat again, pulled his hat over his forehead, and said briefly:

'What doost 'a want?'

'Well,' said Peter; 'it's so uncommonly jolly finding' all you Yorkshire people so kind and hospitable, what? Never mind who you are, always a seat at the fireside and that kind of thing. Excuse me, but do you know you're leanin' on the gate so as I can't open it? I'm sure it's a pure oversight, only you mayn't realise that just where you're standin' you get the maximum leverage. What a jolly, charmin' house this is, isn't it? All so jolly stark and grim and all the rest if it...Who lives in it?'

A list of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels in the order of when they were originally released is here.