Seattle Press on Line - A Full Peal of Grandsire Triples

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A Full Peal of Grandsire Triples

By Stephen Herold

Jun 20, 2002 -- In bookstores, and in our minds, books are defined and placed by their categories, however precarious that may be in fact. Sometimes it is those labels and assumptions that delude us and keep us from some of the best of literature, and all in the name of organization and simplicity. Certainly, as a bookseller, I agonize over great books that fit no one category since they can not be in two places at once, and "catch-all" sections attract few and please none. Mysteries offer many opportunities to see this in action, for when, as often happens, they rise to the level of great fiction we are stymied. With no writer is this more obvious than with Dorothy Sayers, arguably one of the greatest writers of the 20th century.

Most people only know of her as the author of some 16 novels and a few short stories featuring the suave talents of Lord Peter Wimsey, the famous collector of incunabula and master tongue of great wine. Scholars, however, praise Sayers for her magnificent translation of Dante, and clerics for her soul-tingling Christian works that spring from her spirit-filled Anglicism. As a voracious reader I have encountered her in all these works, and in each have felt the tingling presence of epiphany. Her insights into the soul of man, the song of poetry and the word of God have little equal in our era.

Of all her mysteries it is fairly universally agreed that The Nine Tailors is the acme of her work that stands in a class few other writers can approach. The words, phrases, plot, development and multi-layered complexity demand multiple readings and much research to unravel and comprehend. It is a travelogue and a puzzling problem; it is a historical description of places and customs of minute and exact details; it is an unfolding of human emotions and sad chronicle of our failings; and, in the end, it is virtually impossible to put down if you are a true reader. I have read it some six times and find new insights and fresh delight every time I read it. In a review of the book many years ago Sinclair Lewis distilled his view of the greatest mystery stories down to four: "I am not sure but that of all of these The Nine Tailors is the best."

Set in the low-lying land of the Fens of East Anglia, a land slowly reclaimed from the sea by Dutch experts over centuries, the book introduces us to a place of slow change and conservative temperament where the Anglican churches are the center of the community and ancient customs still walk the land of the living. Lord Peter is accidentally dropped into this world when his car suffers an accident on his way to New Years with friends. He arrives just in time to save a record-making peal of change ringing from failure. When the ringer for Saboath, the second of a tuned set of eight bells, is struck down with flu, Lord Peter saves the day with his remembered youthful skills. He becomes friends, visits Fenchurch St. Paul often and is, of course, called in when an extra body, sans hands and face, is found in a grave.

The novel is structured around change ringing, a peculiarly English style of bell ringing that uses mathematical permutations rather than musical tones--a tour de force in itself to pull off. Weaving back and forth between an old burglary, personal secrets and the use of ancient custom and much modern history the story uncovers new turnings even as it resolves old problems. Even the forces of nature play an essential role in this drama of life. And just as with life, The Nine Tailors shows that there is no beginning, no end and no boundaries to society and its events. Ultimately the burglary is solved, divine justice and fate temper the need for law, some crimes are shown to be no crime and some innocence proves not quite so. Our firm separation of good and evil collapses as even the best-hearted people prove to be the inadvertent doers of ill.

The poetry of her words can be clearly seen in her passages:

The air was so heavy with water, that not till they had passed Frog's Bridge did they hear the sweet, dull jangle of sound that told them that the ringers were practicing their Christmas peal; it drifted through the streaming rain with an aching and intolerable melancholy, like the noise of the bells of a drowned city pulsing up through the overwhelming sea.

How could anyone resist such rich prose that welds archetypal mythology to our breathing world?

Steve Herold operates the Wit's End Bookstore in Fremont.

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