No translation work today. But no book review either. Maybe tomorrow. Today I’ve been preparing a couple lectures I’ll be delivering to a class at our seminary on Thursday. I’ll talk about the Viking raid at Lindisfarne and the conversion of Norway. I have Things to Say on both subjects, springing from my ever-ready stock of opinions, based on life-long study and my association with a certain independent-minded scholar.
I always try to make it clear that the theories I talk about are theories only. “Don’t look at me! I’m just the errand boy!”
The book I’m reading right now is Dorothy Sayers’ Strong Poison. It’s a landmark volume in the series, because it’s here that Lord Peter Wimsey first meets the novelist Harriet Vane. She’s on trial for murder, and he makes up his mind to save her, largely because he’s fallen in love with her and can’t conceive of the woman he loves being a murderess.
It was adapted for TV back in 1987, with Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane, and Edward Petherbridge as Lord Peter. I quite liked Miss Walter in her role. Petherbridge I found less successful. He looked more like the character than Ian Carmichael in his classic performance (though too tall), but I didn’t like his portrayal. It had a strong basis – the author’s own statements that Lord Peter was basically depressed due to being shell-shocked in the Great War and disappointed in love. His Wodehouseian persona was an act. But Petherbridge played him as a sort of mope who cracked jokes. I think Lord Peter carried the thing off rather more elegantly than that.
Anyway, Strong Poison includes one of my favorite Sayers characters – “Blindfold Bill” Rumm, the reformed safecracker. Bill is a man of no great intelligence or sophistication, but is an absolute master at the art of lock-picking. He turned from that life after Lord Peter caught him breaking into his own safe one night, and pumped him for knowledge rather than turning him in. Soon after he was converted to Evangelicalism (there’s a suggestion that it might have been through Chief Inspector Parker, who’s an evangelical), and now he pastors a house church. However, when Lord Peter needs his help in training someone to crack a lock, Blindfold Bill happily assists. He believes (erroneously) that Lord Peter is also a believer, and (correctly) that all he does is in the service of good.
Dorothy Sayers was a well-known Church of England believer (not an evangelical), who wrote brilliant apologetics. Yet she wrote her mystery stories for the publisher Victor Gollancz, who was an influential Communist. The idea of writing a story in the C.S. Lewis vein, with an evangelical lesson, would have repelled her. And by her own account, she took offense when people suggested she’d make Lord Peter a believer eventually (“Keep your hands off my character!”). I find that perfectly understandable as a novelist, and rather sad as a Christian.
But Blindfold Bill shows how she did include Christian themes in her work, consistent with her views of art. Bill is no Christian Mary Sue, no fantasy-fulfillment character for the Christian reader. He’s remarkable only for two things – his skill (however illicit) as a craftsman, and his unashamed (even awkward) gospel witness. His testimony isn’t intellectually compelling or very appealing. But it’s sincere, and one feels his heart is good.
In short, Blindfold Bill is a realistic Christian character. We’re allowed to laugh at him a little, but he leaves a strong positive impression. I think that’s a subtle kind of apologetics.