not just that harriet has her moment of realization in the punt
but peter realizes that she realizes
AND NEITHER OF THEM SAYS ANYTHING
they just blush and breathe like the reserved darlings they are
and then continue to discuss the case
You’ve made me pull out my DVD’s, because although the adaption of Gaudy Night is tragically wrong many times, absolutely spot on casting of Edward Pethebridge and Harriet Walter almost makes up for it.
I’ve always connected the image of the ‘under the beech trees’ from Harriet’s secksy dream with the punt encounter later. And then of course, after she finally agrees to marry him, they spend the night making out in a punt.
(gratuitous forearm porn with a smug Peter)
And a punt is really ideal for making out. Very romantic and …flat 😉
how that punt survived the culmination of five years’ fervent pining without spontaneously combusting and propelling itself down the Cherwell like a Viking funeral we will never know
The thing that’s endlessly maddening and entrancing is trying to figure out exactly what’s happening during the secksy bits. Yes, they kissed madly all night in a punt. In the good ol’ U.S. of A, that would mean making out, which would mean some feeling up…and down.
So what exactly happened in this scene:
He had brought her home after the theater, and they were standing before the fire, when she had said something–quite casually, laughing at him. He had turned and said, suddenly and huskily:
“Tu m’enivres!”
Language and voice together had been like a lightning-flash, showing up past and future in a single crack of fire that hurt your eyes and was followed by a darkness like thick, black velvet,…When his lips had reluctantly freed themselves, he had said:
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake the whole zoo. But I’m glad, my God! to know it’s there–and no shabby tigers either.”
“Did you think mine would be a shabby tiger?”
“I thought it might, perhaps, be a little daunted.”
“Well, it isn’t. It seems to be an entirely new tiger. I never had one before–only kindness to animals.”
“My lady gave me a tiger, A sleek and splendid tiger, A striped and shining tiger, All under the leaves of life.”
A bit of upstairs/outside only? Some less than dignified groping? Or is simply the acknowledgement that Harriet wants to have sex, rather than to acknowledge she’s in love? Apparently this is something that you can tell by sight, as she starkly tells Miss Hillyard when that grumpy don accuses Harriet of being bring her lover to the college. If you knew anything of such things, you would know we’re not lovers. And after Whatever Happens At the Fireplace, Dirty Old Uncle Paul knows they’ve got a hankering and the Dowager Duchess can tell something’s up.
I have no answers to this, but I just want to point out that in these scenes DLS never misses an opportunity to drag Philip Boyes (and, by extension, John Cournos) for his lack of sexual prowess.
“Only kindness to animals”? BURN.
*clears throat* I’m so glad that I’m not the only one who thinks about these things. As for What Happens By The Fireplace, I think that @it-is-bugs‘ point that Harriet (and Peter) are forced/allowed to acknowledge the, um, physical implications of their mutual desire is pertinent. It may be “only” kissing, but I think that the key difference between The Fireplace Incident and what the Dowager Duchess describes as “passionately kissing each other in a punt, poor darlings,” is that The Fireplace Incident is something that is not self-contained in its satisfaction; rather, it acknowledges the urgent desire for something more (something eternally, essentially impossible? Who knows.) As the perceptive and lascivious Uncle Pandarus Paul observes about it, “Il arrive toujours le moment où l’on apprend à distinguer entre embrasser et baiser.” The difference is explicit enough that the Dowager Duchess tells Paul to shut up, because this is her son he’s talking about. (I shall here avoid a disquisition on “baiser” in late 19th-century French poetry of the type to which Paul probably introduced Peter.)
On the same topic, I can’t resist pointing out that, sitting in the Daimler on the wedding night, October chill notwithstanding, the kissing progresses in such a way that Peter quotes Keats and Catullus in rapid succession…!! And he still has to confirm (in French, of course) that she really wants to have sex that night. Precious reserved darlings.
AND The Fireplace Incident is the evening of the day when Peter receives the John Donne letter as a gift from Harriet. Sacred and profane love circling each other everywhere you look.
@oldshrewsburyian Actually I would like to formally request the “disquisition on “baiser” in late 19th-century
French poetry of the type to which Paul probably introduced Peter.” Please?
GLADLY. Be it noted, this is a disquisition informed more by my reading of French poetry and teaching of history than by an in-depth study of decadent literature as such. Also by the fact that I spend a lot of time thinking about the Wimsey novels, but this is self-evident. I’m going to translate the French here and hope this doesn’t insult anyone’s erudition. All corrections welcomed.
Baiser (noun or verb) is a kiss of passion. Lovers may also embrasser, but baiser is the kind of kiss that is basically a euphemism in opera libretti. Anyway! I leave aside Manon Lescaut in this discussion because, curiously (?) the word only appears 6 times in the novel, and baisers are disposed by the (anti-)heroine hurriedly and almost perfunctorily, whereas the two times that the hero(?) kisses Manon, he bestows them by the thousands, with tenderness and with despair. Revenons à nos moutons:
Exhibit A, Baudelaire, “Le Léthé”
Je veux dormir! dormir plutôt que vivre! Dans un sommeil aussi doux que la mort, J’étalerai mes baisers sans remords Sur ton beau corps poli comme le cuivre.
Pour engloutir mes sanglots apaisés Rien ne me vaut l’abîme de ta couche; L’oubli puissant habite sur ta bouche, Et le Léthé coule dans tes baisers.
If that first stanza about remorselessly kissing “your beautiful body, polished as copper,” isn’t obliquely referenced in “The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers,” I’ll eat my hat. The second stanza is less dysfunctional, however, and gives us: “To drown my satisfied sobs / nothing will do but the abyss of your bed; / mighty oblivion dwells on your mouth / and the waters of Lethe stream in your kisses.” *fans self* I make this connection in part because both Peter and Harriet have struggled, at different times and for different reasons, with feeling worthy of living at all, and this is brought up in Busman’s Honeymoon. Also, the temptation of forgetfulness comes up in the novel as well, with Peter saying something along the lines of “I don’t seem to be able to eat lotus, even with you.” (Parenthetical realization: my copy of Busman’s Honeymoon is not on the shelves! What has happened to it?!? Crisis mode activated!)
Continuing with Baudelaire, this time from “Le Balcon”:
Ces serments, ces parfums, ces baisers infinis, Renaîtront-ils d’un gouffre interdit à nos sondes, Comme montent au ciel les soleils rajeunis Après s’être lavés au fond des mers profondes? — Ô serments! ô parfums! ô baisers infinis!
This, THIS is sensual mysticism at its finest (imho) and arguably finds a parallel in Harriet’s “darkness like thick, black velvet.” This is “These vows, these perfumes, these infinite kisses / will they be reborn from a gulf we cannot fathom / as suns, renewed, rise into the heavens / having been washed in the deeps of the profound seas? / O vows! o perfumes! o infinite kisses!” *fans self harder*
ETA: Also, Harriet’s “lightning-flash, showing up past and future in a single crack of fire” uncannily echoes these lines from “À une passante:”
Un éclair… puis la nuit! — Fugitive beauté Dont le regard m’a fait soudainement renaître, Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l’éternité?
Again the images of rebirth and eternity! The more I look at this the more intense it gets, honestly.
Exhibit B, Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac. This might be too sentimental for Uncle Paul, but it is all about Duty and Honor and Self-Abnegation and Really Intense Feelings Mediated Through Language, so… I assume that Peter owns at least one copy. Maybe Harriet gives him the 1947 Dubout edition as a present! Ahem, where was I:
Un baiser, mais à tout prendre, qu’est-ce ? Un serment fait d’un peu plus près, une promesse Plus précise, un aveu qui veut se confirmer, Un point rose qu’on met sur l’i du verbe aimer ; C’est un secret qui prend la bouche pour oreille, Un instant d’infini qui fait un bruit d’abeille, Une communion ayant un goût de fleur, Une façon d’un peu se respirer le cœur, Et d’un peu se goûter, au bord des lèvres, l’âme !
What is a kiss, after all? What but a solemn oath made closer, a more precise promise, the confirmation of a vow, a roseate dot upon the action loving, a secret with the mouth for its ear, an instant of eternity making no more noise than a bee, a communion that tastes of flowers, a method of breathing – a little – one another’s souls, and of tasting – a little – on the lips, the soul.
My translation is obviously approximate and awkward, but, um, yes. There’s that.
Exhibit C: Finally, and perhaps most pertinently to The Fireplace Incident, there is a fairly well-known tag attributed to the great realist writer Guy de Maupassant: “Le baiser est la plus sûre façon de se taire en disant tout.” A kiss is the surest way to be silent while saying everything.
I have the best followers.
I did some research and Uncle Paul is really not mincing words here (does he ever?). While the noun un baiser is the word for a kiss, the verb baiser had shifted to a different meaning by Lord Peter’s time.
« C’est ainsi qu’aux alentours du xixe siècle, ces verbes acquirent dans le langage courant le sens que nous connaissons : enlacer remplaça embrasser, embrasser remplaça baiser et baiser remplaça foutre. » (x)
“It’s sometime around the 19th century that these verbs acquired in common parlance the meanings we are familiar with now: enlacer replaced embrasser (in the sense of ‘to embrace’), embrasser replaced baiser (’to kiss’), and baiser replaced foutre (’to fuck’).”
So when Paul Delagardie remarks “Il arrive toujours le moment où l’on apprend à distinguer entre embrasser et baiser”, he’s essentially saying “there always comes a moment when one learns to distinguish between kissing and fucking.”
Mooncustafer 