As is tradition in this journal, I have a birthday cake for everyone: recs!

This year, it's Wimsey-flavoured. All of these should be read after reading Gaudy Night.

All Our Scattered Leaves by marycrawford. No archive warnings apply, rated G. "A selection of letters and diaries on the eve of the Armistice."

21 Oct 1918.-- Saunders has toothache and refuses to do anything about it, silly woman, walking around with her cheek swollen and smiling horribly at everyone like a perfect martyr, so tiresome of her and I have no patience with it -- have made appointment for her with Mr. Platt down in the village, whose ideas on sedation really quite modern, nothing like that horrible tooth-drawer my father had us visit when I was a girl, like something out of Hoffmann or am I thinking of Grimm?

That a Lover have his Desire by Nineveh_uk. Creator chose not to use archive warnings, rated G. "... because apparently it all happened quite late on Sunday evening, and they sat up half the night, kissing one another madly in a punt. From the Balliol hall to the morning after; at the end of Gaudy Night, Harriet and Peter take a punt on the river. Missing scene fic, the rest of that evening that DLS (curse her!) didn't give us."

'However did you do it?'

'Stood the porter a pint to 'phone Padgett and ask if Lord Peter Wimsey could be trusted with a punt. Don't worry: Padgett is as silent as the grave.'

'Is that the honour of the regiment?'

'Of course,' Peter continued, 'if you'd prefer the Daimler, an elderly and probably oil-stained Burberry, and to take your chances with the cow-pats...'

'Not on your life! I shall learn to live with luxury.'

'I certainly hope so.'

Peter and the Power of Suggestion by keswindhover. No archive warnings apply, rated G. "For once, Lord Peter Wimsey is at a loss. What on earth can a man buy his wife for Christmas that costs under a guinea? Harriet also has a one guinea budget for Peter's present, but she has had the good sense to ask for assistance from Miss Climpson. (And sometimes the best presents are the ones you make yourself.)"

She had mentioned a house and Peter bought it for her. Presumably if she had mentioned the desire for a tiger and some peacocks, there would now be a small zoo in the garage, along with Mrs Merdle. This time, she had felt, Peter needed a firm hand.

So for their second Christmas together she had stipulated, very clearly, that she required something small and modestly priced – no more than a guinea she had added hastily, realising just in time that Peter’s definition of modest was likely to vary from her own. Look on it as a chance to live within somebody else’s means, she had added, a little imp of mischief urging her on. And had been rewarded when she saw Peter’s eyes suddenly gleam behind his monocle, as he realised that a challenge had been laid down.

“Dulcius ex asperis,” he had declared, “Domina, I accept.”

Gentle Antidote by x_los. No archive warnings apply, rated T. "At twenty-one, Harriet Vane gets her Name. It's rather longer than she expected."

“Oh I don’t say that one can’t or shouldn’t love a man not one’s soulmate, of course, only that my husband could at times make himself quite difficult to like. So I quite understand taking care with these decisions, because heaven knows the lithesome limbs of youth and suchlike don’t long endure, nor does their memory adequately compensate one for the grumbling sulks of age."

Green Ice by Adina. No archive warnings apply, rated G. "Wooster has a reputation for pinching things--necklaces, amber statuettes, umbrellas--a reputation that becomes dashedly awkward when Lord Attenbury's emeralds go missing."

"Bertie, you blot on the family escutcheon!" the aforementioned aunt, my good and deserving Aunt Dahlia, cried. "What are you doing here?"

"I like that," I responded with no little heat. "Here I drove from the distant metrop. in answer to an ancient relative's urgent telegram, only to have her look at me like some battered corpse the cat dragged in."

"I sent no blasted telegram!"

I tut-tutted. "You most certainly did."

"I did not."

"You did."

Traces Through Time by brutti_ma_buoni. No archive warnings apply, rated T. "Katherine Climpson explores the documentation of an unusual example of medieval matrimony."

Climpson, K., The Wimseys of Bredon: a textual study in marital relationships among the 14th century English high nobility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), [xi, 439pp].

Introduction

Peter, second son of Mortimer Wimsey, 5th Duke of Denver, is well-known as an exemplar of unconventional medieval noble life. His bibliophily, cultural patronage and prominence in jurisprudence have been examined by, most recently, Pharos and McLellan in their illustrated biography, and challenged by Jones, who sees the Wimsey reputation for charitable giving as a typical example of high-status fourteenth-century power politics, rather than an exceptional personal commitment. This work does not attempt to reappraise the life of Wimsey alone. It contends, on the contrary, that his relationship and eventual marriage with Harriet (also Harriott, Henriet) Vane is a genuinely enlightening and exceptional case. With parallels to the John of Gaunt-Katherine Swynford marriage, its successor by half a century, the relationship transgressed social norms and was subject to censure and comment within high-status circles. These will to some extent be examined within the present volume. The focus, however, is on the reconstruction of an emotional relationship from the surviving records.

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