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tylikI've been re-reading Dorothy Sayer's Gaudy Night. It's one of those old favorites I come back to every couple of years. (The latter part of today I had headaches again, so reading fiction was about what I was good for.) Last time through I think I paid most attention to the themes surrounding academia and relationships. This time what is standing out is the attention to finding one's work, especially in the passage below. (Or part of the passage below. But I am including the whole bit.)
(Well, those things, and that it is a better crafted mystery than I had initially thought. And that while I am generally quite fond of the character of Lord Peter, in comparison Harriet makes him look rather two dimensional -- especially in this book, which is really her story. Though when I think how believably Peter brought most of his romantic problems on himself, I feel less like slapping him.)
*********
"I quite agree with you," said Miss de Vine, "about the difficulty of combining intellectual and emotional interests. I don't think it affects women only; it affects men as well. But when men put their public lives before their private lives, it causes less outcry than when a woman does the same thing, because women put up with neglect better than men, having been brought up to expect it."
"But suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," said Harriet, failling back on words which were not her own, "suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?"
"You can usually tell," said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistkaes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes fundemental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of a lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that it."
"I made a very big mistake once," said Harriet, "as I expect you know. I don't think that arose out of lack of interest. It seemed at the time the most important thing in the world."
"And yet you made the mistake. Were you really giving all your mind to it, do you think? You mind? Were you really being as cautious and exacting about it as you would be about writing a passage of fine prose?"
"That's rather a difficult sort of comparison. Once can't, surely, deal with emotional excitements in that detached spirit."
"Isn't the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?"
"Yes, of course it is. At least, when you get the thing dead right and know it's dead right, there's no excitement like it. It's marvellous. It makes you feel lik God on the Seventh Day -- for a bit, anyhow."
"Well, that's what I mean. You expend the trouble and you don't make any mistake -- and then you experience then ecstacy. But if there's any subject in which you're content with the second-rate, then it isn't really your subject."
"You're dead right," said Harriet, after a pause. "If on'es genuinely interested one knows how to be patient, and let time pass, as Queen Elizabeth said. Perhaps that's the meaning of the phrase about genuis being eternal patience, which I always thought rather absurd. If you truly want a thing, you don't snatch; if you snatch, you don't really want it. Do you suppose that, if you find yourself taking pains about a thing, it's a proof of its importance to you?"
"I think it is, to a large extent. But the big proof is that the thing comes right, without those fundemental errors. One always makes surface errors, of course. But a fundamental error is a sure sign of not caring. I wish one could teach people nowadays that the doctrine of snatching what one thinks one wants is unsound."
"I saw six plays this winter in London," said Harriet, "all preaching the doctrine of snatch. I agree that they left me with the feeling that none of the characters knew what they wanted."
"No," said Miss de Vine. "If you are once sure what you do want, you find that everything else goes down before it like grass under a roller -- all other interests, your own and other people's. Miss Lydgate wouldn't like my saying that, but it's as true of her as of anybody else. She's the kindest soul in the world, in things she's indifferent about, like the peculations of Jukes. But she hasn't the slightest mercy on the prosodical theories of Mr. Elkbottom. She wouldn't countenance those to save Mr. Elkbotoom rom hanging. She'd say she couldn't. And she couldn't, of course. If she actually saw Mr. Elkbottom writing in humiliation, she'd be sorry, but she wouldn't alter a paragraph. That would be treason. One can't be pitiful where one's own job is concerned. You'd lie cheerfully, I expect, about anything except -- what?"
"Oh, anything!" said Harriet, laughing. "Except saying that somebody's beastly book is good when it isn't. I can't do that. It makes me a lot of enemies, but I can't do it."
"No, one can't," said Miss de Vine. "However painful it is, there's always one thing one has to deal with sincerely, if there's any root to one's mind at all. I ought to know, from my own experience. Of course, the one thing may be an emotional thing; I don't say it mayn't. One may commit all the sins in the calendar, and still be faithful and honest towards one person. If so, then that person is probably one's appointed job. I'm not despising that kind of loyalty; it doesn't happen to be mine, that is all."
"Did you discover that by making a fundamental mistake?" asked Harriet, a little nervously.
"Yes," said Miss de Vine. "I once got engaged to somebody. But I found I was always blundering -- hurting his feelings, doing stupid things, making quite elementary mistakes about him. In the end I realized that I simply wasn't taking as much trouble with him as I should have done over a disputed reading. So I decided he wasn't my job." She smiled. "for all that, I was fonder of him that he was of me. He married an excellent woman who is devoted to him and does make him her job. I should think he was a full-time job. He is a painter and usually on the verge of bunkruptcy; but he paints very well."
"I suppose one oughtn't to marry anybody, unless one's prepared to make him a full-time job."
"Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don't look on themselves as jobs but as fellow-creatures."
"I should think Phoebe Tucker and her husband were like that," said Harriet. "You met her at the Gaudy. That collaboration seems to work. But what with the wives who are jealous of their husbands' work and the husbands who are jealous of their wives' interests, it looks as though most of us imagined ourselves to be jobs."
"The worst of being a job," said Miss de Vine, "is the devastating effect it has on one's character. I'm very sorry for the person who is somebody else's job; he (or she, of course) ends by devouring or being devoured, either of which is bad for one. My painter has devoured his wife, though neither of them knows it; and poor Miss Cattermole is in great danger of being identified with her parents' job and being devoured."
"Then you're all for the impersonal job?"
"I am," said Miss de Vine.
"But you say you don't despise those who make some other person their job?"
"Far from despising them," said Miss de Vine; "I think they are dangerous."
(Well, those things, and that it is a better crafted mystery than I had initially thought. And that while I am generally quite fond of the character of Lord Peter, in comparison Harriet makes him look rather two dimensional -- especially in this book, which is really her story. Though when I think how believably Peter brought most of his romantic problems on himself, I feel less like slapping him.)
*********
"I quite agree with you," said Miss de Vine, "about the difficulty of combining intellectual and emotional interests. I don't think it affects women only; it affects men as well. But when men put their public lives before their private lives, it causes less outcry than when a woman does the same thing, because women put up with neglect better than men, having been brought up to expect it."
"But suppose one doesn't quite know which one wants to put first. Suppose," said Harriet, failling back on words which were not her own, "suppose one is cursed with both a heart and a brain?"
"You can usually tell," said Miss de Vine, "by seeing what kind of mistkaes you make. I'm quite sure that one never makes fundemental mistakes about the thing one really wants to do. Fundamental mistakes arise out of a lack of genuine interest. In my opinion, that it."
"I made a very big mistake once," said Harriet, "as I expect you know. I don't think that arose out of lack of interest. It seemed at the time the most important thing in the world."
"And yet you made the mistake. Were you really giving all your mind to it, do you think? You mind? Were you really being as cautious and exacting about it as you would be about writing a passage of fine prose?"
"That's rather a difficult sort of comparison. Once can't, surely, deal with emotional excitements in that detached spirit."
"Isn't the writing of good prose an emotional excitement?"
"Yes, of course it is. At least, when you get the thing dead right and know it's dead right, there's no excitement like it. It's marvellous. It makes you feel lik God on the Seventh Day -- for a bit, anyhow."
"Well, that's what I mean. You expend the trouble and you don't make any mistake -- and then you experience then ecstacy. But if there's any subject in which you're content with the second-rate, then it isn't really your subject."
"You're dead right," said Harriet, after a pause. "If on'es genuinely interested one knows how to be patient, and let time pass, as Queen Elizabeth said. Perhaps that's the meaning of the phrase about genuis being eternal patience, which I always thought rather absurd. If you truly want a thing, you don't snatch; if you snatch, you don't really want it. Do you suppose that, if you find yourself taking pains about a thing, it's a proof of its importance to you?"
"I think it is, to a large extent. But the big proof is that the thing comes right, without those fundemental errors. One always makes surface errors, of course. But a fundamental error is a sure sign of not caring. I wish one could teach people nowadays that the doctrine of snatching what one thinks one wants is unsound."
"I saw six plays this winter in London," said Harriet, "all preaching the doctrine of snatch. I agree that they left me with the feeling that none of the characters knew what they wanted."
"No," said Miss de Vine. "If you are once sure what you do want, you find that everything else goes down before it like grass under a roller -- all other interests, your own and other people's. Miss Lydgate wouldn't like my saying that, but it's as true of her as of anybody else. She's the kindest soul in the world, in things she's indifferent about, like the peculations of Jukes. But she hasn't the slightest mercy on the prosodical theories of Mr. Elkbottom. She wouldn't countenance those to save Mr. Elkbotoom rom hanging. She'd say she couldn't. And she couldn't, of course. If she actually saw Mr. Elkbottom writing in humiliation, she'd be sorry, but she wouldn't alter a paragraph. That would be treason. One can't be pitiful where one's own job is concerned. You'd lie cheerfully, I expect, about anything except -- what?"
"Oh, anything!" said Harriet, laughing. "Except saying that somebody's beastly book is good when it isn't. I can't do that. It makes me a lot of enemies, but I can't do it."
"No, one can't," said Miss de Vine. "However painful it is, there's always one thing one has to deal with sincerely, if there's any root to one's mind at all. I ought to know, from my own experience. Of course, the one thing may be an emotional thing; I don't say it mayn't. One may commit all the sins in the calendar, and still be faithful and honest towards one person. If so, then that person is probably one's appointed job. I'm not despising that kind of loyalty; it doesn't happen to be mine, that is all."
"Did you discover that by making a fundamental mistake?" asked Harriet, a little nervously.
"Yes," said Miss de Vine. "I once got engaged to somebody. But I found I was always blundering -- hurting his feelings, doing stupid things, making quite elementary mistakes about him. In the end I realized that I simply wasn't taking as much trouble with him as I should have done over a disputed reading. So I decided he wasn't my job." She smiled. "for all that, I was fonder of him that he was of me. He married an excellent woman who is devoted to him and does make him her job. I should think he was a full-time job. He is a painter and usually on the verge of bunkruptcy; but he paints very well."
"I suppose one oughtn't to marry anybody, unless one's prepared to make him a full-time job."
"Probably not; though there are a few rare people, I believe, who don't look on themselves as jobs but as fellow-creatures."
"I should think Phoebe Tucker and her husband were like that," said Harriet. "You met her at the Gaudy. That collaboration seems to work. But what with the wives who are jealous of their husbands' work and the husbands who are jealous of their wives' interests, it looks as though most of us imagined ourselves to be jobs."
"The worst of being a job," said Miss de Vine, "is the devastating effect it has on one's character. I'm very sorry for the person who is somebody else's job; he (or she, of course) ends by devouring or being devoured, either of which is bad for one. My painter has devoured his wife, though neither of them knows it; and poor Miss Cattermole is in great danger of being identified with her parents' job and being devoured."
"Then you're all for the impersonal job?"
"I am," said Miss de Vine.
"But you say you don't despise those who make some other person their job?"
"Far from despising them," said Miss de Vine; "I think they are dangerous."
