Old Oxonians

[mayhap]

I have just worked out from the Lord Peter Wimsey Internal Chronology that Hilary Thorpe and St. George must have been up at Oxford together, although it is evident that Hilary did not attend Shrewsbury, or Lord Peter would have certainly spotted her charming red head.

I have a new OTP and they have never even met.

Comments

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

If one wanted to meet Hilary Thorpe (canonically speaking), where would one look?

[mayhap]

She is the charming young girl who wants to be a writer from The Nine Tailors. I'd quote the wonderful conversation she and Peter have about writing and writers, but it would be awkward to find and transcribe from the audio.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Ah, right--thanks. I have a copy of the book somewhere....

[mayhap]

I'll type it up anyway just to have it for my own reference:

"Well, it was; but I'd rather like to look at it again. You see, I'm wondering just exactly how the—the——"

"How they got the body there? Yes, I thought you'd be wondering that. I've been wondering too, Uncle doesn't think it's nice of me to wonder anything of the sort. But it really makes things easier to do a little wondering, I mean, if you're once interested in a thing it makes it seem less real. That's not the right word, though."

"Less personal?"

"Yes; that's what I mean. You begin to imagine how it all happened, and gradually it gets to feel more like something you've made up."

"H'm!" said Wimsey. "If that's the way your mind works, you'll be a writer one day."

"Do you think so? How funny! That's what I want to be. But why?"

"Because you have the creative imagination, which works outwards, till finally you will be able to stand outside your own experience and see it as something you have made, existing independently of yourself. You're lucky."

"Do you really think so?" Hilary looked excited.

"Yes—but your luck will come more at the end of life than at the beginning, because the other sort of people won't understand the way your mind works. They will start by thinking you dreamy and romantic, and then they'll be surprised to discover that you are really hard and heartless. They'll be quite wrong both times—but they won't ever know it, and you won't know it at first, and it'll worry you."

"But that's just what the girls say at school. How did you know? . . . Though they're all idiots—mostly, that is."

"Most people are," said Wimsey, gravely, "but it isn't kind to tell them so. I expect you do tell them so. Have a heart; they can't help it."